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Sociology Department> Research > Crime, law, and deviance

Crime, law, and deviance

Introduction

Since its inception, the Department has had a primary concentration of graduate and undergraduate involvement in instruction, research, and service in work related to studies of crime, law, and deviance. The focus has been on causes and patterns of delinquent and adult criminal behavior, the organization and effectiveness of correctional agencies and programs, the processing of disputes in and outside of courts, and programs of prevention and control of deviant behavior (child abuse, drug abuse). Faculty are active leaders at cross-national, national, regional/local, and institutional levels.

Work focuses on delinquency and its control in Hawai`i and Asia, mandatory senten-cing and its impact in Hawai`i, risk estimates and recidivism in adult probation, evolution and changes in race laws and law enforcement and the courts in Hawai`i, alternative dispute resolution programs in the courts and in neighborhood justice centers. The Department has continues to have contracts and research grants which involve working with personnel in state agencies and institutions. These contracts and grants also support graduate students and facilitate access to data, research, and field inquiry for graduate student research.

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Recent Projects

Youth in Transition - Katherine Irwin

Since the 1980s the study of adolescence has been dominated by a developmental psychological perspective that specifically views the pre-adult years as a time of significant transformation for youths. This study is designed to reflect on the point of transition between adolescence and adulthood by using some of the core concepts in the sociological, rather than the psychological, literature. By interviewing 50 young adults - individuals who have just made the transition between adulthood and childhood - I hope to look at the ways that such organizing forces as race, class, and gender shape the adult opportunities open to youths and contribute to their emerging self-concepts as adults.

This study allows youth to reflect upon the risk categories that psychologists have presented and to explain, in their own words, what aspects of their lives comprised risks to their passage into adulthood. In this way, young adults are asked to reflect upon what helped or got in the way of their ability to become adults.

Beyond Bad Girls: Gender, Power, And Meanness - Meda Chesney-Lind and Katherine Irwin

In recent news articles and popular books (Lamb, 2001; Simmons, 2002; Wiseman, 2002), the concept of "mean girls" has emerged and taken a hold of both popular and academic imaginations. A series of highly publicized exposes have constructed girls as petty, mean, and manipulative characters ready and willing to do anything for popularity. In fact, in an attempt to alarm the public of the horrifying degree of incivility in children's lives, some have claimed that girls' meanness, often called "relationship violence," is equally or more destructive than boys' physical violence.

In response to these claims, Katherine Irwin and Meda Chesney-Lind are currently writing a series of articles and a book to offer a fresh look at the recent trend to hype the destructive character of girls' social worlds. Taking a feminist perspective, we trace the recent constructions of alpha girls to historic attempts to identify, blame, and control bad girls. In other words, we argue that the effort to expose the mean spirited nature of girlhood is the most recent installment in the punishment leveled against girls who are not "sugar and spice and everything nice."

Drug and Criminal Justice Policy in Hawaii - Katherine Irwin and James Spencer (Political Science and DURP)

Working with the Public Policy Center at the University of Hawaii, Dr. James Spencer and I have drafted a working policy paper designed to focus policy makers on the connections between environmental and criminal justice policies in Hawaii. The following provides our policy brief. In addition, I have just provided testimony to the Joint House-Senate Legislative Task Force on Ice and will attach the testimony that I provided in a separate document, just in case you want to include it within the policy work being conducted by members of the department.