B Mccarthy
Biographic Data
| ID | 54550 |
|---|---|
| NAME | B Mccarthy |
| GIVEN NAMES | B |
| FAMILY NAME | Mccarthy |
| SIGNATURE | MCCARTHY B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Davis |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5593-9918 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 59 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 684 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 58 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1981 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 17 |
Illegal Earnings, Opportunity Structures and the Timing of Life Transitions
We draw from theories of choice and the life course perspective to assess if earning money from crime during adolescence is associated with the timing of entry into stable employment, cohabitation and marriage and consider the timing of two key structural factors—incarceration and bachelor’s degree completion—that may attenuate any observed relationships. We analyze a subsample of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997. Results of proport…
Crime, Policing, and Voter Turnout in Chicago's 2023 and 2019 Mayoral Elections
Politicians and pundits commonly tout campaigning on crime and policing as an effective strategy for winning elections. Yet, scholars have only recently started examining the contributions of both variables to voting. The available research shows that scholars disagree, however, about whether crime and policing, independently or jointly, increase or decrease voter turnout and whether race or ethnicity condition these relationships. We examine the…
The Past as Prologue
Quantitative analyses show that police stop and frisks are highly concentrated by neighborhood. Interview and ethnographic studies show that police routinely share information about neighborhood attributes including crime rates and demographic characteristics such as racial and ethnic composition and economic conditions. Investigations suggest that police also share information about complaints against them. Our analysis bridges these three liter…
Homelessness, Offending, Victimization, and Criminal Legal System Contact
There is now a sizable literature on connections between homelessness, crime, and criminal legal system contact. We review studies on these relationships, focusing mostly on links between the adversity that often characterizes homelessness—the need for shelter, food, and income—and offending, victimization, and involvement with the criminal legal system. We concentrate on multivariate studies from the United States and Canada and consider researc…
California Civil Asset Forfeiture and the Policing of Minority Residents
In Who Are the Criminals? , John Hagan argues that legislators use “crisis framing” to influence how the general public thinks about crime. President Ronald Reagan used reports of a drug use epidemic fueled by organized crime as part of his crisis framing. In 1984, he signed the Comprehensive Crime Control Act (CCCA) as part of his “war on drugs.” The CCCA allowed law enforcement to use civil asset forfeiture (CAF) to keep or sell property that i…
Chicago's Reckoning
Chicago is confronting a racial reckoning that we explain with an exclusion-containment theory of legal cynicism. Mayors RJ and RM Daley used public and private funds to exclude and contain South and West Side predominantly Black neighborhoods where Police Detective Jon Burge supervised torture of over 100 Black men. A 1982 case involved Andrew Wilson’s tortured confession to two police killings. This case coincided with RM Daley’s pursuit of Whi…
Racist Torture and the Code of Silence
We join Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s structural theory of the racialized U.S. social system with a situational methodology developed by Arthur L. Stinchcombe and Irving Goffman to analyze how law works as a mechanism that connects formal legal equality with legal cynicism. The data for this analysis come from the trial of a Chicago police detective, Jon Burge, who as leader of an infamous torture squad escaped criminal charges for more than thirty yea…
The President and the Boss's son
Relatively few theoretical criminologists are recognized for their lasting impact on public policy, and it is therefore instructive to reconsider a scholar whose influence endures. Donald Cressey wrote a theoretically driven Presidential Commission essay that inspired the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). He also advanced a theory of “respectable crime” that explains why this act has more extensively been directed downwar…
Street Harassment Interpretations
How does the intersection of gender and race/ethnicity influence street harassment interpretations? What roles do attitudes and past experience play in these relationships? We examined these questions through an exploratory study of 163 Californian respondents and four hypothetical scenarios: being told to smile, being called "sexy," hearing kissing noises, and being followed. Our findings revealed Black, Latina, and White women were more critica…
Job Attributes and Mental Health
A growing literature advocates for using a labor perspective to study sex work. According to this approach, sex work involves many of the costs, benefits, and possibilities for exploitation that are common to many jobs. We add to the field with an examination of job attributes and mental health. Our analysis is comparative and uses data from a panel study of people in sex work and hairstyling. We examined job attributes that may differ across the…
What the Study of Legal Cynicism and Crime Can Tell Us About Reliability, Validity, and Versatility in Law and Social Science Research
We call for a further appreciation of the versatility of concepts and methods that increase the breadth and diversity of work on law and social science. We make our point with a review of legal cynicism. Legal cynicism's value, like other important concepts, lies in its versatility as well as its capacity for replication. Several classic works introduced legal cynicism, but Sampson & Bartusch named it. Kirk & Papachristos used a cultural framewor…
Neighborhood climates of legal cynicism and complaints about abuse of police power
Research findings show that legal cynicism—a cultural frame in which skepticism about laws, the legal system, and police is expressed—is important in understanding neighborhood variation in engagement with the police, particularly in racially isolated African American communities. We argue that legal cynicism is also useful for understanding neighborhood variation in complaints about police misconduct. Using data on complaints filed in Chicago be…
Dual-process theory of racial isolation, legal cynicism, and reported crime
Significance Cynicism about lawlessness and police crime prevention and protection efforts is often high in predominately African-American neighborhoods, but residents persist in calling 911 and requesting police assistance. These calls continue to rise in neighborhoods that have recently experienced further increases in racial isolation, incarceration, and home foreclosures. These patterns are independent of statistical controls for an array of …
Sex, Gender, and Crime
For several decades, the study of gender and crime has generally eclipsed a focus on sex and crime. This change reflects new understandings of all three concepts – sex, gender, and crime. It also reflects a shift from a focus on males and the crimes they commit to one that includes females and their involvement in illegal behavior. This entry summarizes how sociologists of crime define sex, gender, and crime and discusses two broad categories of …
Poverty, Material Hardship, and Mental Health among Workers in Three Front-Line Service Occupations
Many studies document links between income poverty, material hardship, and mental health; however, we know less about the mental health consequences of within-person changes in income poverty and material hardship, particularly for low-income workers. The authors examine these relationships with longitudinal data from a sample of frontline service workers interviewed in two cities (one each in the United States and Canada). Mixed-effects regressi…
Early Trouble, Long‐Term Consequences
Objectives This study assesses the impact of family instability during childhood on adult intentions to seek healthcare when depressed or in pain, adding to research on the long‐term consequences of family instability and on care seeking. Methods Logistic regression is used with survey data collected from nearly 600 service workers in Sacramento, CA and Victoria, British Columbia. Results Adults who experienced high levels of familial disruption,…
Race, Legal Cynicism, and the Machine Politics of Drug Law Enforcement in Chicago
Using a wide array of official and unofficial data spanning two decades in the neighborhoods of Chicago, we explore connections between legal cynicism, the electoral regime of Mayor Richard M. Daley, and citizen calls for police assistance and police reports of drug crime. We find that the disproportionate concentration of legal cynicism about law enforcement in African American neighborhoods played a prominent and insufficiently understood role …
No experience required
There is a growing body of evidence linking racial discrimination and juvenile crime, and a number of theories explain this relationship. In this study, we draw on one popular approach, Agnew's general strain theory, and extend prior research by moving from a focus on experienced discrimination to consider two other forms, anticipated and vicarious discrimination. Using data on black, white, and Hispanic youth, from the Project on Human Developme…
Occupational Stigma and Mental Health
A large body of research shows a link between stigma and poor health; yet stigma is complex and involves several processes. This paper employs a social determinants of health perspective to shed light on the link between work and one dimension of stigma—discrimination. It examines discrimination and depression with data from a comparative study of three front-line service jobs: sex work, serving food and alcohol, and barbering and hairstyling. Ou…
Stigma, sex work, and substance use
Stigma is a widely used concept in social science research and an extensive literature claims that stigmatisation contributes to numerous negative health outcomes. However, few studies compare groups that vary in the extent to which they are stigmatised and even fewer studies examine stigma's independent and mediating effects. This article addresses these gaps in a comparative study of perceived stigma and drug use among three low-income feminise…
The Oxford Handbook of Gender, Sex, and Crime
Despite decades of research on intimate-partner violence (IPV), debates and unanswered questions abound in the literature, to which many disciplines—psychology, sociology, criminal justice, law, and public health—have contributed. One long-standing and particularly contentious debate regards gender symmetry, or whether women are as violent in intimate relationships as men. This essay begins with a historical overview of IPV research; it then summ…
Assessing stereotypes of adolescent rape
Sex Work
Breaking Rules
Regulating Sex Work
In this article, we examine various legal strategies used to regulate the sale and purchase of sexual services. We use three broad categories to structure our discussion: full criminalization, partial decriminalization, and full decriminalization. In each section, we discuss laws directed toward the control of sellers, buyers, and third parties. We focus on legislation and practices at the highest level of aggregation (i.e., the national, state, …
New Economics of Sociological Criminology
This paper begins with a summary of the rational choice approach and its implications for the study of criminal behavior. I then review research on offending that uses the rational choice approach in conjunction with more sociological orientations. I also summarize research on game theory and demonstrate how it can be effectively used to understand and predict criminal decision-making. I argue that, contrary to the assessment of many criminologis…
In and Out of Harm's Way
Homeless youth establish a variety of relationships with people they meet on the street. These associations generate different levels of the intangible resources of trust, commitment, and reciprocity that contribute to a person's social capital. We argue that the relationships homeless youth describe as “street families” resemble the fictive kin common among people who have limited resources, and that these relationships are a greater source of s…
When Crime Pays
Several theoretical traditions offer insights into individual success in conventional activities. We extend this work, suggesting that explanations of success also apply to crime: although prosperity in licit or illicit activities has several unique antecedents, success in either endeavor is influenced by common faactors. Most research on conventional success focuses on the effects of human and social capital, and criminal forms of these are impo…
Love, Sex, and Crime
Scholars are often pessimistic about adolescent dating, linking it to increases in depression, interpersonal violence, conflict with parents, school failure, associations with delinquents, substance use, and offending. Yet, the various dimensions of dating may have opposing consequences. The closeness offered by adolescent romantic love may fill an important void found between the weakening of bonds with parents and the onset of adult attachments…
Mentors and Criminal Achievement
Much of the research focusing on conventional occupations concludes that mentored individuals are more successful in their careers than those who are not mentored. Early research in criminology made a similar claim. Yet contemporary criminology has all but ignored mentors. We investigate this oversight, drawing on Sutherland's insights on tutelage and criminal maturation and incorporating ideas on human and social capital. We argue that mentors p…
Mean Streets
Contemporary sociological theories of delinquency emphasize bakcground and developmental factors while neglecting adverse situational conditions. This study uses data from youths on the street and in school to test an integration of strain and control theories that spans background and situational factors. After background and situational factors. After background and street exposure variables are controlled for and after school and street sample…
Getting into Street Crime
Girl Friends Are Better
In recent years, popular media has drawn attention to “mean girls” and their negative treatment of others, particularly other females. But while the attention to girls' aggression and their mistreatment of their peers highlights understudied aspects of female behavior, it neglects the beneficial aspects of female friendship. We argue that compared to relationships with males, friendships with females provide more social control, fewer opportuniti…
Stigma, sex work, and substance use
Stigma is a widely used concept in social science research and an extensive literature claims that stigmatisation contributes to numerous negative health outcomes. However, few studies compare groups that vary in the extent to which they are stigmatised and even fewer studies examine stigma's independent and mediating effects. This article addresses these gaps in a comparative study of perceived stigma and drug use among three low-income feminise…
Homelessness
Criminologists have been reluctant to pursue the idea that situational factors encourage criminal activity. Following Gibbons's work on 'criminogenic situations', we investigate the 'criminogenic' nature of homelessness. Using data on a sample of homeless youth (N = 390) in Toronto, Canada, we find that a significantly greater proportion of these young people commits offences after, rather than before, leaving home. Moreover, this pattern does no…
In the Company of Women
A power‐control theory of the gender‐delinquency relationship draws attention to differences in familial control practices. We extend the theory to address how parental agency and support for dominant attitudes or schemas influence male as well as female delinquency. This extension emphasizes that differences in structure, particularly between more and less patriarchal households, result in different family practices, especially for mothers and s…
Surviving on the Street
This article documents the living conditions of a sample of adolescents (N = 390) who had left home and were living on the street in Toronto, Canada The majority of these youth had spenta considerable amount of time without adequate shelter, food, or income; furthermore, many were involved in a variety of illegal activities and had been incarcerated or suicidal Multiple regression analyses revealed that the most consistent predictors of hunger, c…
Uncertainty, Cooperation, and Crime
Journal Article Uncertainty, Cooperation, and Crime: Understanding the Decision to Co-offend Get access Bill McCarthy, Bill McCarthy University of California at Davis Direct all correspondence to Bill McCarthy, Department of Sociology, University of California at Davis, Davis, CA 95616. E-mail: [email protected]. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar John Hagan, John Hagan University of Toronto Search for o…
Neighborhood climates of legal cynicism and complaints about abuse of police power
Research findings show that legal cynicism—a cultural frame in which skepticism about laws, the legal system, and police is expressed—is important in understanding neighborhood variation in engagement with the police, particularly in racially isolated African American communities. We argue that legal cynicism is also useful for understanding neighborhood variation in complaints about police misconduct. Using data on complaints filed in Chicago be…
The Enduring Significance of Racism
Prominent explanations of the overrepresentation of Black Americans in criminal justice statistics focus on the effects of neighborhood concentrated disadvantage, racial isolation, and social disorganization. We suggest that perceived personal discrimination is an important but frequently neglected complement to these factors. We test this hypothesis with longitudinal data on involvement in general and violent juvenile delinquency in a sample of …
Regulating Sex Work
In this article, we examine various legal strategies used to regulate the sale and purchase of sexual services. We use three broad categories to structure our discussion: full criminalization, partial decriminalization, and full decriminalization. In each section, we discuss laws directed toward the control of sellers, buyers, and third parties. We focus on legislation and practices at the highest level of aggregation (i.e., the national, state, …
Streetlife and Delinquency
The correlation between class and delinquency often observed in areal studies and assumed in prominent sociological theories is elusive in studies of individuals commonly used to test these theories. A restricted conceptualization of class in terms of parental origins and the concentration of self-report survey designs on adolescents in school have removed from this area of research street youth who were once central to classic studies of delinqu…
Danger and the Decision to Offend
Humiliation; incarceration; stigma; loss of income, freedom, and respect: most research on offending emphasizes these sanctions. Yet classical theorists recognized other costs including physical harm. We revive this abandoned insight, arguing that danger—the possibility of pain—figures largely in people's decisions to offend. Although modern states typically eschew violence, many victims, vigilantes, and others assault offenders. This violence is…
Occupational Stigma and Mental Health
A large body of research shows a link between stigma and poor health; yet stigma is complex and involves several processes. This paper employs a social determinants of health perspective to shed light on the link between work and one dimension of stigma—discrimination. It examines discrimination and depression with data from a comparative study of three front-line service jobs: sex work, serving food and alcohol, and barbering and hairstyling. Ou…
The Social Distribution of Femicide in Urban Canada, 1921-1988
How well do conventional perspectives on homicide account for the social distribution of femicide, or the killing of females? An analysis of 670 cases of femicide in Toronto and Vancouver from 1921 to 1988 provides stronger support for an alternative perspective that acknowledges both the intimate, domestic character of femicide and the historically contingent nature of opportunities and motivations for femicide. Rather than coming to resemble ma…
A Gendered Theory of Delinquency and Despair in the Life Course
Sex Work
The Attitudes and Actions of Others
Contemporary studies of Sutherland's differential association theory argue that people learn about crime predominantly or exclusively through exposure to attitudes and motives that legitimize such behaviours. I suggest that Sutherland's writings demonstrate an equal concern with more direct exposure to crime; that is, with tutelage in criminal methods. I test this interpretation with models of drug selling and theft among a sample of homeless you…
Sex and School
A number of studies document a negative relationship between adolescent sexual intercourse and high school educational experiences and outcomes; yet, this research risks conflating the consequences associated with sex in romantic relationships with those that result when sex occurs in other relationship contexts. We predict that, compared to abstinence, intercourse in romantic relationships will have limited consequences for education, whereas th…
Mean Streets
The risk of childbearing re-evaluated
To determine the completeness of reporting of maternal deaths after live born deliveries in Georgia for 1975 and 1976, we matched death certificates with corresponding birth certificates for women of reproductive age. For these two years, more intensive searching led to our finding a minimum of a 27 per cent higher number of maternal deaths than that found by routine death certificate surveillance. When the delivery-death interval was not restric…
Gender, delinquency, and the Great Depression
Dans cet article, nous 6tudions comment la relation entre sexe et ddinquence a variC, des annees pr6cCdant la Grande DPpression i celles qui l'ont suivie, en passant par les annies mOmes de la Crise. Nos donnkes sont tirCes de rapports de tribunaux de Toronto; nous testons plusieurs facons d'expliquer les changements observk, en nous basant sur la theorie du 'contrble‐pouvoir' et sur d'autres thkories. Les rbultats de l'analyse montrent qu'une th…
Studying Society
What do social scientists do? What contribution can they make to our understanding of human societies? In this useful and thorough introduction the authors illustrtate the central concepts and methods of social science by analysing specific areas of social life: work and unemployment, citizenship, the family, race relations. Students at universities and polytechnics on foundation courses; sixth formers, or those about to take a social science deg…
Homelessness
Criminologists have been reluctant to pursue the idea that situational factors encourage criminal activity. Following Gibbons's work on 'criminogenic situations', we investigate the 'criminogenic' nature of homelessness. Using data on a sample of homeless youth (N = 390) in Toronto, Canada, we find that a significantly greater proportion of these young people commits offences after, rather than before, leaving home. Moreover, this pattern does no…
The Social Distribution of Femicide in Urban Canada, 1921-1988
How well do conventional perspectives on homicide account for the social distribution of femicide, or the killing of females? An analysis of 670 cases of femicide in Toronto and Vancouver from 1921 to 1988 provides stronger support for an alternative perspective that acknowledges both the intimate, domestic character of femicide and the historically contingent nature of opportunities and motivations for femicide. Rather than coming to resemble ma…
Surviving on the Street
This article documents the living conditions of a sample of adolescents (N = 390) who had left home and were living on the street in Toronto, Canada The majority of these youth had spenta considerable amount of time without adequate shelter, food, or income; furthermore, many were involved in a variety of illegal activities and had been incarcerated or suicidal Multiple regression analyses revealed that the most consistent predictors of hunger, c…
Streetlife and Delinquency
The correlation between class and delinquency often observed in areal studies and assumed in prominent sociological theories is elusive in studies of individuals commonly used to test these theories. A restricted conceptualization of class in terms of parental origins and the concentration of self-report survey designs on adolescents in school have removed from this area of research street youth who were once central to classic studies of delinqu…
Mean Streets
Contemporary sociological theories of delinquency emphasize bakcground and developmental factors while neglecting adverse situational conditions. This study uses data from youths on the street and in school to test an integration of strain and control theories that spans background and situational factors. After background and situational factors. After background and street exposure variables are controlled for and after school and street sample…
Not Just “For the Thrill of It”
In his controversial challenge to criminologists, Jack Katz argues for a reexamination of situational factors that precipitate criminal acts, specifically those that concern crime's sensual dynamics. According to Katz, people's immediate social environment and experiences encourage offenders to construct crimes as sensually compelling. Although insightfil, I suggest that this thesis is limited, specifically as it applies to “sneaky thrill” proper…
Getting into Street Crime
The Attitudes and Actions of Others
Contemporary studies of Sutherland's differential association theory argue that people learn about crime predominantly or exclusively through exposure to attitudes and motives that legitimize such behaviours. I suggest that Sutherland's writings demonstrate an equal concern with more direct exposure to crime; that is, with tutelage in criminal methods. I test this interpretation with models of drug selling and theft among a sample of homeless you…
Mean Streets
Mean Streets is a field study of young people who have left home and school and are living on the streets of Toronto and Vancouver. This book includes the personal narratives and explanatory accounts, in their own words, of some of the more than four hundred young people who participated in the summer-long study, which featured intensive personal interviews. The study examines why youth take to the streets, their struggles to survive on the stree…
Mean Streets
Mean Streets
1. Street and school criminologies 2. Street youth in street settings 3. Taking to the streets 4. Adversity and crime on the streets 5. The streets of two cities 6. Criminal embeddedness and criminal capital 7. Street youth in street groups 8. Street crime amplification 9. Leaving the street 10. Street crime redux
Uncertainty, Cooperation, and Crime
Journal Article Uncertainty, Cooperation, and Crime: Understanding the Decision to Co-offend Get access Bill McCarthy, Bill McCarthy University of California at Davis Direct all correspondence to Bill McCarthy, Department of Sociology, University of California at Davis, Davis, CA 95616. E-mail: [email protected]. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar John Hagan, John Hagan University of Toronto Search for o…
Mean Streets
Mean Streets
In the Company of Women
A power‐control theory of the gender‐delinquency relationship draws attention to differences in familial control practices. We extend the theory to address how parental agency and support for dominant attitudes or schemas influence male as well as female delinquency. This extension emphasizes that differences in structure, particularly between more and less patriarchal households, result in different family practices, especially for mothers and s…
The Meaning of Criminology
When Crime Pays
Several theoretical traditions offer insights into individual success in conventional activities. We extend this work, suggesting that explanations of success also apply to crime: although prosperity in licit or illicit activities has several unique antecedents, success in either endeavor is influenced by common faactors. Most research on conventional success focuses on the effects of human and social capital, and criminal forms of these are impo…
In and Out of Harm's Way
Homeless youth establish a variety of relationships with people they meet on the street. These associations generate different levels of the intangible resources of trust, commitment, and reciprocity that contribute to a person's social capital. We argue that the relationships homeless youth describe as “street families” resemble the fictive kin common among people who have limited resources, and that these relationships are a greater source of s…
La théorie du capital et le renouveau du paradigme des tensions et des opportunités en criminologie sociologique
La théorie du capital social est devenue très populaire en sociologie contemporaine. On a cependant accordé beaucoup plusd'attention aux conséquences positives de l'accumulation de capital social qu'aux obstacles et aux échecs rencontrés par ceuxqui tentent d'accéder à de telles ressources et de les développer. S'inspirant du paradigme des tensions et des opportunités dela criminologie sociologique et voulant à étendre les études sur les jeunes d…
New Economics of Sociological Criminology
This paper begins with a summary of the rational choice approach and its implications for the study of criminal behavior. I then review research on offending that uses the rational choice approach in conjunction with more sociological orientations. I also summarize research on game theory and demonstrate how it can be effectively used to understand and predict criminal decision-making. I argue that, contrary to the assessment of many criminologis…
A Gendered Theory of Delinquency and Despair in the Life Course
Violent Crime
Analysts have long noted that some societies have much higher rates of criminal violence than others. They have also observed that the risk of being a victim or a perpetrator of violent crime varies considerably from one individual to another. In societies with ethnically and racially diverse populations, some ethnic and racial groups have been reported to have higher rates of violent offending and victimization than other groups. This exceptiona…
Sociology (44 works) · Crime Patterns and Interventions (37 works) · Criminology (37 works) · Psychology (31 works) · Political science (25 works) · Social Psychology (19 works) · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis (18 works) · Law (16 works) · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance (15 works) · Homelessness and Social Issues (13 works)