Jenness inaugural recipient of SSSP Lifetime Achievement Award
October 2009
Valerie Jenness, Interim Dean and Professor of Criminology, Law and Society, will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Crime and Juvenile Delinquency Division of the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP). The award honors individuals for their distinguished scholarship and for the positive impact of their actions to achieve justice, and address problems of crime and delinquency.
Currie quoted in Patriot-News, October 24
October 2009
"There are no easy answers to stop city violence" - Dr. Elliot Currie, a highly regarded scholar at the University of California, Irvine, states it succinctly: "The kind of inequality that seems most associated with violent crime around the world is best understood as a broader and more multifaceted condition of social disadvantage." He goes on to speak to the issue of social exclusion, a situation where those at the bottom of the social order become more and more separated from the rest of society, blocked from access to many of the social services that shore up the social institutions that support family life.
Calavita elected as AAPSS fellow
October 2009
Professor Kitty Calavita has been elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science in recognition of the contributions she have made to the progress of the social sciences and to communicating that understanding beyond her own discipline. AAPSS designated her a Thorsten Sellin Fellow of the Academy, in keeping with their practice of naming these positions after distinguished scholars who have written over the past centruy for the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. The induction dinner ceremony will take place in Washington DC on May 13, 2010.
Loftus accepts Priestley Award
October 2009
Elizabeth Loftus accepted the 2009 Joseph Priestley Award at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania on October l5, 2009. It was bestowed for her work in the field of human memory, particularly her contributions to our understanding of childhood abuse and traumatic recovered memories. The Priestley Award is Dickinson's most prestigious acknowledgement for achievement in the sciences, bestowed in memory of Joseph Priestley, the discoverer of oxygen. Past recipients include 15 Nobel Laureates, primarily in chemistry, physics and medicine. Margaret Mead, Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould, and E. O. Wilson have also received this award.
Henne paper awarded First by American Society of Criminology
October 2009
The American Society of Criminology (ASC) Division on Critical Criminology will be awarding Kate Henne First Place for the Graduate Student paper competition for her paper “Enemies and Citizens of the State: Die Boeremag as the Face of Post-apartheid Otherness.” The award will be presented at the Division social at the ASC conference in Philadelphia on Friday, November 6th.
Lynch book published
October 2009
Associate Professor Mona Lynch's book, "Sunbelt Justice: Arizona and the Transformation of American Punishment" has just been released by Stanford University Press. The book examines changes in Arizona’s criminal justice policies and practices over a 50 year period as a mode for understanding and explaining the multiple dynamics underlying the dramatic penal transformations and the rise of mass incarceration that occurred across the United States in the late 20th century. To learn more about the book, go to http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=17521
Gascon book chapter to be published
October 2009
Danny Gascón's co-authored book chapter, Both Sides of the Coin?: Personality, Deviance and Creative Behavior, has been accepted for publication in the book The Dark Side of Creativity.
The full citation is Gascon, L. D., & Kaufman, J. (forthcoming). Both Sides of the Coin?: Personality, Deviance and Creative Behavior. In D.H. Cropley, J. C. Kaufman, A. J. Cropley, & M. A. Runco (Eds.), The Dark Side of Creativity. (pp. 13-35). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Parolees' release leads to crime
September 2009
A recent study, conducted by UC Irvine criminologist's John Hipp and Dan Yates, found that, in most cases, reports of aggravated assault, robbery and burglary go up when parolees return to their neighborhoods - and that if they have violent backgrounds, murder rates increase.
Full Story on UCI Homepage
Study quoted in other news sources:
Crime decreases in most L.A. Sheriff's department areas
September 2009
Associate Professor George Tita is quoted in the LA Times about the L.A. area's decline in crime in the face of an economic downturn, saying "This definitely shows the value of saturation policing. The question is can they keep the numbers low like the LAPD has done," Tita said. Read More...
Where are the subprime perp walks?
September 2009
Professor Henry Pontell is quoted in a CNN article discussing the recent economic crisis.
"We really have learned no lessons from the savings and loan crisis," he said, referring to the wave of bank failures in the 1980s that led to a number of notable fraud convictions. The most germane one is that fraud plays a central role in these episodes. It acts as an accelerant for financial bubbles." Read More...
Pontell gives Keynote at Australian Security Conference
September 2009
Professor Henry Pontell gave the keynote address at the Australian Security Conference this August in Sydney. Pontell discussed the impact of trivalizing white-collar crime and implications for security and risk management. Pontell was was also named Green Honors Chair at Texas Christian University.
Henry Pontell is a Professor in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society and specializes in white-collar crime.
CLS PhD Alum Featured in Moore's new movie
September 2009
CLS PhD alum Bill Black is slowly becoming a household name, but he will soon grow in popularity. Featured in Michael Moore's new film, Capitalism: A Love Story, Black discusses the impact of individuals such as Henry Paulson and Timothy Geitner on our economy.
Black completed his PhD at the University of California, Irvine's Department of Criminology, Law and Society in 1998. He is the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One, a revised edition of his dissertation, and Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri. A review of the movie may be found at Time.com
Nguyen Files Dissertation; Takes position at University of Houston
September 2009
Congratulations to Dr. Tomson Nguyen on filing his dissertation, Subprime mortgage fraud and the U.S. economic crisis: A criminological analysis.Tomson has accepted a tenure-track assistant professor position in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Houston. His new position will begin in Spring 2010.
Abstract. Economists, industry practitioners, and government officials have failed to observe the significance of mortgage fraud as an inherent problem related to the subprime mortgage crisis. Relying on intensive interviews with 23 subjects, previously and currently employed in the subprime lending industry, government reports, media accounts, and a variety of secondary sources, this study traces the exponential growth of mortgage fraud to loose underwriting standards, alternative loan products, and inadequate regulation and regulatory oversight of the subprime mortgage industry. The research findings detail and describe various types of financial crimes that constitute a modern form of mortgage fraud; unlike their traditional counterpart, contemporary mortgage fraud contain elements of both fraud for profit and fraud for property. Various types and patterns of mortgage fraud – “data manipulation,” “data fabrication,” and “concerted ignorance” – completely altered the function of the subprime industry. Toward this end, the industry operated not only to provide bad loans to bad credit borrowers but also to provide bad loans to bad credit borrowers who fully lacked the ability to repay the loans. The social and economic implications of fraud are also explored in light of the findings. From a policy perspective, future fraud prevention and intervention strategies should incorporate a multi-faceted approach that includes strict underwriting standards, regulatory oversight, accountability, and mandatory continuous education for loan practitioners.
Trager to be published in Law and Social Inquiry
September 2009
Glenn Trager's solo-authored article, Loosing the Dragon: Charismatic Legal Action and the Construction of the Taiping Legal Order, has been accepted for publication in the journal LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY.
Abstract. This paper develops the notion of legal charisma by analyzing the Taiping Rebellion in mid-19th century China. The concept of legal charisma seeks to capture those normally inchoate aspects of law that transcend its institutionalized incarnations and empower its subjects to act out visions of the universal, often in anarchic and unpredictable ways. The paper further suggests that such charismatic legal behavior, in spite of its anarchic qualities, provides an important means through which systems of legal authority revitalize and strengthen their hold over legal subjects. The Taiping Rebellion provides an example of both these facets of legal charisma: the rebellion drew on visions of collective empowerment inherent in a legal newly articulated legal code to act out a challenge to existing social institutions – even as this same code came to assert an ever tightening grip on the lives of the Taiping rank and file.