Browsing by Author "Rodney Engen, Committee Member"

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An Evaluation of a Mental Health Court: Process, Procedure, and Outcome
(2007-04-13) Gurrera, Marlee Moore; Rodney Engen, Committee Member; Catherine R. Zimmer, Committee Member; Virginia Aldige, Committee Chair; Stacy DeCoster, Committee Member; Anne Schiller, Committee Member
Mental health courts (MHC) have proliferated across the country since their establishment in the late 1990's. Although advocates have claimed their success, few empirical studies have evaluated MHCs outcomes. The purpose of this research was to conduct an evaluation of a mental health court. Qualitative and quantitative data were used to examine the causal linkages specified in the developed conceptual model through which MHC participation in one MHC was believed to operate in reducing recidivism. Qualitative data (observations, field notes, and semi-structured interviews) were used to examine court process and procedure, service utilization, defendant compliance, and defendant outcomes. Qualitative data were used as a link between defendant's participation in MHC and their recidivism as indicated in the developed conceptual model. The quantitative portion of this evaluation used a nonequivalent comparison group design with two samples of defendants, MHC subjects and traditional court subjects (TCC), with a one-year follow-up period. Qualitative findings shed light on the mechanisms within MHC operation that link MHCs to improved defendant outcomes. Further, these findings provided insight into MHC defendants' treatment compliance and the impact of treatment services on their lives. Last, results supported the prediction that this MHC successfully marshaled and provided treatment linkages for MHC participants. Multivariate and pre-test post-test analyses supported the prediction that MHC defendants had fewer arrests and when arrested had less serious offenses than TCC subjects during the follow-up period. Similar analyses of MHC completers and non-completers supported the hypothesis that a "full dose" of MHC treatment, monitoring, and supervision produced even better outcomes for MHC completers.
Power, Control, and the Gender Gap in Delinquency: Reconsidering the Gendered Translation of Power from Workplace to Household
(2005-04-19) Cornell, Rena; Maxine Atkinson, Committee Member; Stacy De Coster, Committee Chair; Rodney Engen, Committee Member
Power-control theory provides one of most comprehensive theoretical explorations of the gender gap in delinquency to date. The theory posits that the relative power of husbands and wives in the workplace translates directly into their relative power within the home. Household power relations, in turn, are played out in the relative control of sons and daughters, influencing ultimately the gender gap in delinquency through social psychological processes of familial control and socialization toward risk. This paper reformulates power-control theory in two important ways. First, it borrows from the family and gender literature on status-reversal and single mother households to critique the simplistic discussion of the translation of gendered power relations from workplaces to households. In doing so, the paper specifies an alternative discussion of power relations and family structures. Second, the paper draws upon criminological research and theorizing on gender and delinquency to posit a more thorough discussion of the social psychological mechanisms linking gendered power differentials to the gender gap in delinquency. Thus, the paper presents a reformulation of power-control theory that reconsiders both structural-level power differentials between mothers and fathers and individual-level processes of control and socialization of sons and daughters. From this reformulation, I derive and test hypotheses using a nationally representative sample of youths. The results suggest that further consideration of how power translates from workplaces to households is necessary and also provide some support for recent theorizing about gender differences in the social psychological mechanisms leading to the gender gap in delinquency.
Prison, Race and Space: The Impact of Incarceration on Career Trajectories and Labor Market Outcomes
(2003-04-22) Johnson, Kecia Renee; Melvin Thomas, Committee Member; Rodney Engen, Committee Member; Patricia McCall, Committee Member; Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, Committee Chair
There are a number of reasons to expect that incarceration will have long-term, negative consequences for economic/labor market success, and that the consequences may be especially acute for minority ex-offenders. This study replicates and extends Bruce Western's research on the impact of incarceration for wage mobility. I integrate Western's life course approach to examining the impact of incarceration with a discussion of stratification processes that produce inequality in employment and earnings outcomes. I hypothesize that incarceration results in career earnings penalties over and above those associated with foregone human capital accumulation. I suspect that incarceration contributes to a decline in earnings for minority ex-offenders. At the individual level, I replicate Western's research by estimating fixed-effects models to examine wages across the career trajectories of white, Latino and African American men from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth for 1979-1998. When estimating these models, I test whether human capital accumulation that occurs inside or outside the labor market mediates the incarceration-earnings relationship. Furthermore, I examine how local labor market characteristics influence ex-offender career trajectories. I propose that prison records, race/ethnicity and spatial characteristics such as, violent crime rates, unemployment rates, minority concentration, and residential segregation influence the job prospects of workers within metropolitan areas. At the spatial level, I estimate random effects models to examine how local labor market characteristics shape the earnings trajectories of white, Latino and African American male ex-offenders. The individual level results supported the hypotheses that incarceration has a negative effect on earnings and that ex-offenders have lower earnings trajectories than non-offenders. This study did not replicate Western's finding that the earnings penalty experienced by those who had been incarcerated varies by race/ethnicity. The spatial analysis results suggest that the prison effect on wages is not influenced by the spatial characteristics associated with the local labor market. However, the results indicate that the spatial characteristics of the labor market influence race/ethnicity wage disparities across the career. This study makes a contribution to the existing literature on the consequences of incarceration by linking attributes of ex-offenders, emergent career dynamics and local labor market prospects within a stratification framework.
The Social Context of Inmate Misbehavior: A Contextual Analysis of Infractions in North Carolina Prisons
(2003-04-08) Frazee, Sharon Glave; William R. Smith, Committee Chair; Patricia McCall, Committee Member; Rodney Engen, Committee Member; Matthew Zingraff, Committee Member
Inmate misbehavior is a relatively common phenomenon in correctional facilities throughout the United States. While many steps have been taken by correctional authorities to curb such behavior, their level of success is hampered by the lack of information on how social context affects inmate behavior. This research proposes to look at how context interacts with individual characteristics to affect rates of prison infractions in a variety of prison settings. Two major theories of inmate misbehavior, importation and prisonization, are tested and extended using hierarchical linear models on 1997 North Carolina prison population data.
Theoretical Improvement of Braithwaite's Reintegrative Shaming Theory: Specifying Contingencies for the Process of Shaming
(2005-08-12) Botchkovar, Ekaterina V.; Rodney Engen, Committee Member; Stacy De Coster, Committee Member; Charles R. Tittle, Committee Chair; Ronald Czaja, Committee Member
Reintegrative shaming theory has been one of the most undertested and the least empirically supported criminological theories. Drawing mainly on the predictions from self-control theory, general strain theory, and deterrence theory, I attempt to improve Braithwaite's shaming theory by identifying conditions under which its causal process might be more effective in predicting misbehavior. Using data from the first self-report crime and deviance survey ever conducted in Russia, I put shaming theory to the test in its original and elaborated versions. In line with previous research, the study findings indicate that, contrary to the theory's predictions, being reintegratively shamed is positively associated with projected deviance while participating in gossip is unrelated to projected involvement in deviant behavior. While disintegrative shaming was found to be positively associated with future misbehavior, this relationship was not statistically significant controlling for past deviance reports. Interdependency does not seem to enhance the effects of shaming variables. Contrary to shaming theory theory, although anticipated feelings of guilt and fear of losing respect from others for potential misbehavior predict projections of future misconduct, they do not seem to be the links between shaming experiences and projected misconduct. While some of the hypothesized contingencies seemed to condition the effects of shaming on projected deviance, none of these effects were consistent for all types of deviant behavior in this study. These results, in conjunction with the accumulated body of research, suggest that reintegrative shaming theory may be in need of further revision. Suggestions for the future refinement of shaming theory are provided. Overall, this study contributes to the literature in two ways. First, it strengthens shaming theory by specifying some of the boundaries for its explanatory scope. Second, this work provides an extensive empirical test to the original and elaborated statements of shaming theory using data from an unusual locale.