Becky Pettit
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 254104 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Becky Pettit |
| PRENOMES | Becky |
| SOBRENOME | Pettit |
| ASSINATURA | PETTIT B |
| AFILIAÇÕES | The University of Texas at Austin |
| VERIFICADO | Não |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 35 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 1169 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 35 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1999 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 14 |
Is the Criminal Legal System Becoming More Gender Egalitarian? The Gender Gap in Criminal Court Case Outcomes in Texas, 1993–2015
Racial Polarization in Attitudes towards the Criminal Legal System
Existing research often views attitudes toward the U.S. criminal legal system as reflections of punitive sentiment, overlooking racial differences in how people respond to questions related to crime and punishment. Using over four decades of nationally representative survey data from the General Social Survey, we employ latent class analysis to examine racial variation in attitudes about the U.S. criminal legal system across time. We find that am…
This Is Our Freedom
After Prison
Incomparable Punishments
Low-level misdemeanor and traffic violations draw tens of millions of people into local courts to pay fines and fees each year, generating billions of dollars in revenue. We examine how standardized legal fines and fees for low-level charges induce disparate treatment and result in disparate impact. Using a mixed-methods approach that incorporates administrative court records as well as interviews with criminal defendants from Texas, we find that…
What Is Wrong with Monetary Sanctions? Directions for Policy, Practice, and Research
Monetary sanctions are an integral and increasingly debated feature of the American criminal legal system. Emerging research, including that featured in this volume, offers important insight into the law governing monetary sanctions, how they are levied, and how their imposition affects inequality. Monetary sanctions are assessed for a wide range of contacts with the criminal legal system ranging from felony convictions to alleged traffic violati…
Proliferation of Punishment
Decades of significant crime declines and recent reductions in the number of people confined in prisons and jails in the United States have been accompanied by the emergence of new, and the resurgence of old, forms of punishment. One of these resurgent forms is the assessment of fines, fees, and costs to those who encounter the criminal legal system. Legal financial obligations (LFOs) have become widespread across the United States and are levied…
Employment and Health Among Recently Incarcerated Men Before and After the Affordable Care Act (2009–2017)
Objectives. To explore whether and how the Affordable Care Act (ACA) affects the relationship between employment and health insurance coverage, health care utilization, and health outcomes among recently incarcerated men aged 18 to 64 years in the United States. Methods. With data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), we used a difference-in-differences approach to compare changes in outcomes by employment status among recently…
Confronting Race in American Criminal Justice Reform
Making Sense of Misdemeanors
This paper investigates how the complexity of and everyday interactions within the criminal legal system sow confusion about the causes and consequences of low-level misdemeanor, or fine only, legal entanglements. Drawing on data from 62 interviews with people assessed legal debt and 240 hours of ethnographic observation in courtrooms, we describe inconsistencies between the design of the criminal legal system and the organization of defendants' …
Multimethod Research, Causal Mechanisms, and Case Studies
A Dream Denied
Mass Incarceration and Racial Inequality
Despite two decades of declining crime rates, the United States continues to incarcerate a historically and comparatively large segment of the population. Moreover, incarceration and other forms of criminal justice contact ranging from police stops to community supervision are disproportionately concentrated among African American and Latino men. Mass incarceration, and other ways in which the criminal justice system infiltrates the lives of fami…
Arresting Citizenship
Appealing to Justice
Severe Deprivation and System Inclusion Among Children of Incarcerated Parents in the United States After the Great Recession
The expansion of the criminal justice system over the last four decades and the corresponding rise of parental incarceration raises questions about whether the children of current and former inmates are at an increased risk of material hardship that necessitates social service intervention. Recent sociological scholarship finds that the greater surveillance experienced by former inmates and the criminally involved precludes them from seeking medi…
Reproducing Occupational Inequality
Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society - Volume 23, Number 3, Fall 2016
Civil Rights Legislation and Legalized Exclusion
Civil rights legislation in the 1960s promised greater racial equality in a variety of domains including education, economic opportunity, and voting. Yet those same laws were coupled with exclusions from surveys used to gauge their effects thereby affecting both statistical portraits of inequality and our understanding of the impact of civil rights legislation. This article begins with a review of the exclusionary criteria and some tools intended…
The Degree of Disadvantage
This article examines how the rise in incarceration and its disproportionate concentration among low-skill, young African American men influences estimates of educational attainment in the United States. We focus on high school graduation rates and the persistent gap in attainment that exists between young black and white Americans. Although official statistics show a declining racial gap in high school dropout in recent years, conventional data …
Mass Incarceration, Family Complexity, and the Reproduction of Childhood Disadvantage
In this article we examine the link between family complexity-measured by noncustodial parenthood and multiple-partner fertility-and incarceration. In 2012, close to 2.6 million children, or roughly one in twenty-five minors, had a parent in jail or prison. The risk of having a parent currently or ever incarcerated is disproportionately concentrated among black children and children of high school dropouts, many of whom are noncustodial parents. …
Care Work and Class
Compounded Disadvantage
Spending time in prison has become an increasingly common life event for low-skill minority men in the United States. The Bureau of Justice Statistics now estimates that one in three black men can expect to spend time in prison during his lifetime. A growing body of work implicates the prison system in contemporary accounts of racial inequality across a host of social, health, economic, and political domains. However, comparatively little work ha…
Incarceration & social inequality
America's prisons and jails have produced a new social group, a group of social outcasts who are joined by the shared experience of incarceration, crime, poverty, racial minority, and low education. The social inequality produced by mass incarceration is sizable and enduring for three main reasons: it is invisible, it is cumulative, and it is intergenerational. The social impact of mass incarceration lies in the gross asymmetry of community and f…
Do Prisons Make Us Safer
Employment gains and wage declines
Public policy initiatives in the 1950s and 1960s, including Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity law, helped mitigate explicit discrimination in pay, and the expansion of higher education and training programs have advanced the employment fortunes of many American women. By the early 1980s, some scholars proclaimed near equity in pay between black and white women, particularly among young and highly skilled workers. More recent pol…
Mass Imprisonment and the Life Course
Although growth in the U.S. prison population over the past twenty-five years has been widely discussed, few studies examine changes in inequality in imprisonment. We study penal inequality by estimating lifetime risks of imprisonment for black and white men at different levels of education. Combining administrative, survey, and census data, we estimate that among men born between 1965 and 1969, 3 percent of whites and 20 percent of blacks had se…
Incarceration & social inequality
America's prisons and jails have produced a new social group, a group of social outcasts who are joined by the shared experience of incarceration, crime, poverty, racial minority, and low education. The social inequality produced by mass incarceration is sizable and enduring for three main reasons: it is invisible, it is cumulative, and it is intergenerational. The social impact of mass incarceration lies in the gross asymmetry of community and f…
Black-White Wage Inequality, Employment Rates, and Incarceration
The observed gap in average wages between black men and white men inadequately reflects the relative economic standing of blacks, who suffer from a high rate of joblessness. The authors estimate the black‐white gap in hourly wages from 1980 to 1999 adjusting for the sample selection effect of labor inactivity. Among working‐age men in 1999, accounting for labor inactivity—including prison and jail incarceration—leads to an increase of 7%–20% in t…
The Structure of Women's Employment in Comparative Perspective
In this paper we analyze social survey data from 19 countries using multi-level modeling methods in an effort to synthesize structural and institutional accounts for variation in women's employment. Observed demographic characteristics show much consistency in their relationship to womens employment across countries, yet there is significant variation in the effect of demographic characteristics on womens employment across countries. Disentanglin…
Mass Incarceration, Family Complexity, and the Reproduction of Childhood Disadvantage
In this article we examine the link between family complexity-measured by noncustodial parenthood and multiple-partner fertility-and incarceration. In 2012, close to 2.6 million children, or roughly one in twenty-five minors, had a parent in jail or prison. The risk of having a parent currently or ever incarcerated is disproportionately concentrated among black children and children of high school dropouts, many of whom are noncustodial parents. …
Incarceration and the Legitimate Labor Market
Over the past 30 years, the U.S. inmate population has increased dramatically, and the penal system has acquired growing attention in accounts of recent trends in economic stratification. As the prison system has expanded, its population has aged; incarceration rates have risen sharpest among older age groups. A large body of research documents differences in criminal offending and incarceration over the life course, but little attention has been…
Incarceration and Racial Inequality in Men's Employment
To estimate employment-population ratios for black and white men with an adjustment for incarceration—a factor overlooked by most research on employment inequality—the authors combine data from surveys of prisons and jails with data from the Current Population Survey. This adjustment significantly reduces estimated employment rates for African Americans, young workers, and young high school dropouts. The authors find that employment among young b…
Compounded Disadvantage
Spending time in prison has become an increasingly common life event for low-skill minority men in the United States. The Bureau of Justice Statistics now estimates that one in three black men can expect to spend time in prison during his lifetime. A growing body of work implicates the prison system in contemporary accounts of racial inequality across a host of social, health, economic, and political domains. However, comparatively little work ha…
Mass Incarceration and Racial Inequality
Despite two decades of declining crime rates, the United States continues to incarcerate a historically and comparatively large segment of the population. Moreover, incarceration and other forms of criminal justice contact ranging from police stops to community supervision are disproportionately concentrated among African American and Latino men. Mass incarceration, and other ways in which the criminal justice system infiltrates the lives of fami…
Moving and Children's Social Connections
The Degree of Disadvantage
This article examines how the rise in incarceration and its disproportionate concentration among low-skill, young African American men influences estimates of educational attainment in the United States. We focus on high school graduation rates and the persistent gap in attainment that exists between young black and white Americans. Although official statistics show a declining racial gap in high school dropout in recent years, conventional data …
Civil Rights Legislation and Legalized Exclusion
Civil rights legislation in the 1960s promised greater racial equality in a variety of domains including education, economic opportunity, and voting. Yet those same laws were coupled with exclusions from surveys used to gauge their effects thereby affecting both statistical portraits of inequality and our understanding of the impact of civil rights legislation. This article begins with a review of the exclusionary criteria and some tools intended…
Residential Mobility and Children's Social Capital
Objective. This article examines the effects of residential mobility on social connections that are likely to affect children's well‐being. Methods. We use data from a survey of participants in a housing experiment in Los Angeles, California to examine whether families that moved from public housing projects to other neighborhoods suffered short‐term losses of social capital. Results. Results indicate that residential mobility is associated with …
Appealing to Justice
What Is Wrong with Monetary Sanctions? Directions for Policy, Practice, and Research
Monetary sanctions are an integral and increasingly debated feature of the American criminal legal system. Emerging research, including that featured in this volume, offers important insight into the law governing monetary sanctions, how they are levied, and how their imposition affects inequality. Monetary sanctions are assessed for a wide range of contacts with the criminal legal system ranging from felony convictions to alleged traffic violati…
Employment gains and wage declines
Public policy initiatives in the 1950s and 1960s, including Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity law, helped mitigate explicit discrimination in pay, and the expansion of higher education and training programs have advanced the employment fortunes of many American women. By the early 1980s, some scholars proclaimed near equity in pay between black and white women, particularly among young and highly skilled workers. More recent pol…
Reproducing Occupational Inequality
Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society - Volume 23, Number 3, Fall 2016
Incomparable Punishments
Low-level misdemeanor and traffic violations draw tens of millions of people into local courts to pay fines and fees each year, generating billions of dollars in revenue. We examine how standardized legal fines and fees for low-level charges induce disparate treatment and result in disparate impact. Using a mixed-methods approach that incorporates administrative court records as well as interviews with criminal defendants from Texas, we find that…
Severe Deprivation and System Inclusion Among Children of Incarcerated Parents in the United States After the Great Recession
The expansion of the criminal justice system over the last four decades and the corresponding rise of parental incarceration raises questions about whether the children of current and former inmates are at an increased risk of material hardship that necessitates social service intervention. Recent sociological scholarship finds that the greater surveillance experienced by former inmates and the criminally involved precludes them from seeking medi…
Arresting Citizenship
Racial Polarization in Attitudes towards the Criminal Legal System
Existing research often views attitudes toward the U.S. criminal legal system as reflections of punitive sentiment, overlooking racial differences in how people respond to questions related to crime and punishment. Using over four decades of nationally representative survey data from the General Social Survey, we employ latent class analysis to examine racial variation in attitudes about the U.S. criminal legal system across time. We find that am…
Proliferation of Punishment
Decades of significant crime declines and recent reductions in the number of people confined in prisons and jails in the United States have been accompanied by the emergence of new, and the resurgence of old, forms of punishment. One of these resurgent forms is the assessment of fines, fees, and costs to those who encounter the criminal legal system. Legal financial obligations (LFOs) have become widespread across the United States and are levied…
Employment and Health Among Recently Incarcerated Men Before and After the Affordable Care Act (2009–2017)
Objectives. To explore whether and how the Affordable Care Act (ACA) affects the relationship between employment and health insurance coverage, health care utilization, and health outcomes among recently incarcerated men aged 18 to 64 years in the United States. Methods. With data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), we used a difference-in-differences approach to compare changes in outcomes by employment status among recently…
This Is Our Freedom
Cultural capital and residential mobility
Cultural capital and residential mobility
Children Who Could Have Been
William Epstein takes an unblinking look at the failure of public child welfare in America. The paltry response to children in need, Epstein contends, opens windows onto the nation s soul, revealing a profoundly disturbing lack of generosity in the face of deserving and needy children. Epstein analyzes in detail the decay of the child welfare system through the case histories of Natalie and Adam, two children who have spent their lives in and out…
Incarceration and Racial Inequality in Men's Employment
To estimate employment-population ratios for black and white men with an adjustment for incarceration—a factor overlooked by most research on employment inequality—the authors combine data from surveys of prisons and jails with data from the Current Population Survey. This adjustment significantly reduces estimated employment rates for African Americans, young workers, and young high school dropouts. The authors find that employment among young b…
Resources for studying public participation in and attitudes towards the arts
Residential Mobility and Children's Social Capital
Objective. This article examines the effects of residential mobility on social connections that are likely to affect children's well‐being. Methods. We use data from a survey of participants in a housing experiment in Los Angeles, California to examine whether families that moved from public housing projects to other neighborhoods suffered short‐term losses of social capital. Results. Results indicate that residential mobility is associated with …
Moving and Children's Social Connections
Mass Imprisonment and the Life Course
Although growth in the U.S. prison population over the past twenty-five years has been widely discussed, few studies examine changes in inequality in imprisonment. We study penal inequality by estimating lifetime risks of imprisonment for black and white men at different levels of education. Combining administrative, survey, and census data, we estimate that among men born between 1965 and 1969, 3 percent of whites and 20 percent of blacks had se…
The Structure of Women's Employment in Comparative Perspective
In this paper we analyze social survey data from 19 countries using multi-level modeling methods in an effort to synthesize structural and institutional accounts for variation in women's employment. Observed demographic characteristics show much consistency in their relationship to womens employment across countries, yet there is significant variation in the effect of demographic characteristics on womens employment across countries. Disentanglin…
Black-White Wage Inequality, Employment Rates, and Incarceration
The observed gap in average wages between black men and white men inadequately reflects the relative economic standing of blacks, who suffer from a high rate of joblessness. The authors estimate the black‐white gap in hourly wages from 1980 to 1999 adjusting for the sample selection effect of labor inactivity. Among working‐age men in 1999, accounting for labor inactivity—including prison and jail incarceration—leads to an increase of 7%–20% in t…
Employment gains and wage declines
Public policy initiatives in the 1950s and 1960s, including Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity law, helped mitigate explicit discrimination in pay, and the expansion of higher education and training programs have advanced the employment fortunes of many American women. By the early 1980s, some scholars proclaimed near equity in pay between black and white women, particularly among young and highly skilled workers. More recent pol…
Incarceration and the Legitimate Labor Market
Over the past 30 years, the U.S. inmate population has increased dramatically, and the penal system has acquired growing attention in accounts of recent trends in economic stratification. As the prison system has expanded, its population has aged; incarceration rates have risen sharpest among older age groups. A large body of research documents differences in criminal offending and incarceration over the life course, but little attention has been…
Incarceration & social inequality
America's prisons and jails have produced a new social group, a group of social outcasts who are joined by the shared experience of incarceration, crime, poverty, racial minority, and low education. The social inequality produced by mass incarceration is sizable and enduring for three main reasons: it is invisible, it is cumulative, and it is intergenerational. The social impact of mass incarceration lies in the gross asymmetry of community and f…
Do Prisons Make Us Safer
Compounded Disadvantage
Spending time in prison has become an increasingly common life event for low-skill minority men in the United States. The Bureau of Justice Statistics now estimates that one in three black men can expect to spend time in prison during his lifetime. A growing body of work implicates the prison system in contemporary accounts of racial inequality across a host of social, health, economic, and political domains. However, comparatively little work ha…
The Degree of Disadvantage
This article examines how the rise in incarceration and its disproportionate concentration among low-skill, young African American men influences estimates of educational attainment in the United States. We focus on high school graduation rates and the persistent gap in attainment that exists between young black and white Americans. Although official statistics show a declining racial gap in high school dropout in recent years, conventional data …
Mass Incarceration, Family Complexity, and the Reproduction of Childhood Disadvantage
In this article we examine the link between family complexity-measured by noncustodial parenthood and multiple-partner fertility-and incarceration. In 2012, close to 2.6 million children, or roughly one in twenty-five minors, had a parent in jail or prison. The risk of having a parent currently or ever incarcerated is disproportionately concentrated among black children and children of high school dropouts, many of whom are noncustodial parents. …
Care Work and Class
Severe Deprivation and System Inclusion Among Children of Incarcerated Parents in the United States After the Great Recession
The expansion of the criminal justice system over the last four decades and the corresponding rise of parental incarceration raises questions about whether the children of current and former inmates are at an increased risk of material hardship that necessitates social service intervention. Recent sociological scholarship finds that the greater surveillance experienced by former inmates and the criminally involved precludes them from seeking medi…
Reproducing Occupational Inequality
Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society - Volume 23, Number 3, Fall 2016
Civil Rights Legislation and Legalized Exclusion
Civil rights legislation in the 1960s promised greater racial equality in a variety of domains including education, economic opportunity, and voting. Yet those same laws were coupled with exclusions from surveys used to gauge their effects thereby affecting both statistical portraits of inequality and our understanding of the impact of civil rights legislation. This article begins with a review of the exclusionary criteria and some tools intended…
Arresting Citizenship
Appealing to Justice
A Dream Denied
Mass Incarceration and Racial Inequality
Despite two decades of declining crime rates, the United States continues to incarcerate a historically and comparatively large segment of the population. Moreover, incarceration and other forms of criminal justice contact ranging from police stops to community supervision are disproportionately concentrated among African American and Latino men. Mass incarceration, and other ways in which the criminal justice system infiltrates the lives of fami…
Multimethod Research, Causal Mechanisms, and Case Studies
Sociology (29 obras) · Political science (22 obras) · Criminology (19 obras) · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis (18 obras) · Law (16 obras) · Psychology (16 obras) · Economics (15 obras) · Law (12 obras) · Prison (12 obras) · Criminal justice (10 obras)