Everyday Sociology Blog

Losing Youth in Residential Placement

By Janis Prince Inniss

When I first learned of private youth residential facilities (sometimes known as boot camps), I was struck by how ”American” the concept is: pay lots of money to complete strangers to haul away your misbehaving child to parts unknown. I empathize with parents though. It’s the biggest, most important job and yet there are no manuals, licenses or standards to pass before we embark on this lifelong task.

So what’s a parent to do when they “just can’t handle their teen”? What to do with substance using youth and/or those with mental illnesses that may not even be diagnosed, after you’ve done it all? Attendance at boot camps, wilderness programs, and residential treatment facilities has increased dramatically over the last 20 years. Adolescents and youth with disruptive behaviors are more likely to be put in residential facilities and so are those with family problems.

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The tales of abuse suffered by teens at these facilities—particularly the private ones—are growing. Distraught parents realize that their children are not being helped and some suffer abuse, returning home in worse emotional pain than when they left, and many becoming suicidal or substance abusers as a result of their experiences. Youth can be sent to these facilities by their parents or by formal institutions like the juvenile court.

For instance, offending juveniles might be sent to to a boot camp as a punishment. Children in state custody (such as those under the care of child welfare) might be sent there because their behavior makes placing them with a family inappropriate. But with families willing to take in children in short supply, professionals in the child welfare system admit that children are often placed in residential facilities because there is no other placement available.

Take the case of Martin Lee Anderson (click here to see video) . Anderson was a 14-year-old honor student who was sent to a boot camp because he violated the probation he was sentenced to when he went for a "joy ride" in his grandmother’s car. When Anderson resisted orders from facility personnel, seven drill instructors (with a nurse looking on) used “standard law enforcement techniques” on him that led to his death. (In the video of the abuse, the seven are seen punching and kicking Anderson.)

Take a look at the web sites of some of these facilities; they’re easy enough to find but I won’t link to any of them without knowledge of their standards. You’ll see that they entice parents by appealing to their desire to do what is best for their children. (One translation: If you love your child enough, you’ll pay to send him/her here.) These residential facilities cost from about $30,000 to more than $70,000 per year! For parents who don’t have that much money lying around, they’ll help them get a loan!

Where are they located? All over the U.S., although there are also American owned and operated facilities outside of the county. You’ll see many “accreditation” seals on these web sites and glowing testimonials from parents and professionals. But how would a parent know whether the accrediting body is legitimate or whether the testimonials were supplied because the writers were paid?

What entities should monitor these facilities? Undoubtedly, some youth need stringent programs and there is evidence that some facilities do provide treatment for such children. But how can parents tell whether they are handing over their troubled youth to a good or bad program? How do state agencies ensure that children are not being placed in harm’s way?

The process of regulating residential facilities is mind boggling. Not only do the facilities differ by mission, size, administrative structure, and funding sources, but each state has its own rules, some of which are far more lax than others. A nationwide survey found that there’s usually some version of the following regulation measures: licensure and certification, critical incident reporting, complaint reviews, announced and unannounced visits, regulations governing selected characteristics, and accreditation. Adding to the chaos, in most states, more than one agency regulates these facilities. Many states never revoke licenses or deny renewals though, and some states offer licenses in perpetuity; what is the penalty for facility violations then? Even a child’s death or serious injury does not necessarily have to be reported in some states. After the death of a 14-year-old and because of other concerns, the Department of Children’s Services in Tennessee stopped placing children there. However the facility did not lose its license so children continued to be sent there from other states. Even when facilities meet regulatory standards, quality and appropriateness of placement are not addressed.

Where is the outrage when these facilities are built as when homeless shelters are proposed, for example? What should happen to the staff of these facilities when allegations of abuse are found to have merit? The staff involved with the Anderson tragedy was charged with manslaughter and gross negligence but found not guilty. What qualifications should facility staff hold? Interestingly, six of the seven drill instructors in the Anderson case were former military men. Should state and federal laws regulate these facilities? Restraints and isolation of youth are areas of most variability among states, yet you can imagine the kinds of torture that youth can endure with the inappropriate application of either. And finally, why don’t we have residential programs for parents to check themselves into that might help with their parenting skills?

Who's Helping the Evicted?

By Matthew Desmond

Doctoral Student and Ford Foundation Fellow

University of Wisconsin—Madison

Accordingly to the Center for Responsible Lending, over a million foreclosures already have occurred since January.  That’s 6,600 homes lost every day.  By the time you finish reading this post, roughly ten foreclosures will have occurred somewhere in America. 

After things had gone sour in 2008, , Senate Democrats introduced the Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008, which offered aid to struggling homeowners, even if it did much more to help businesses than working families. It passed in the Senate by an eyebrow-raising 84-12 vote. Then, lawmakers passed a $700 billion economic bailout plan intended in part to dam the wave of foreclosures sweeping the nation and rescue the housing market from financial collapse, even if this plan seems more concerned with getting bankers, not homeowners, back on their feet.

But as the fed wraps its arms around the market in the manner of a father embracing a prodigal son, and as politicians debate how to help homeowners staring down foreclosures, one must ask: What is being done for the evicted? What relief is being proposed for those languishing at the very bottom of the housing market?

Along with foreclosures, evictions have skyrocketed since 2006. National data on evictions do not exist; but regional studies show alarming trends. Evictions in Milwaukee County, for example, reached an all-time high in 2007, according to a recent study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee. In an average year, the county processes roughly 500 – 800 evictions each month; last year, it processed 800 – 1,200 evictions a month.

What are the consequences? Homelessness, job loss, family breakups, and a drop in children’s school performance, just to list a few. One study even has linked eviction to suicide. And it goes without saying that prospective renters face significant obstacles when trying to find decent affordable housing after they have been forced out. “As long as you don’t have a conviction or an eviction,” landlords like to tell prospective tenants who confess to having bad credit.

While following poor, evicted families in Milwaukee, I’ve heard this phrase again and again and witnessed the families—tainted by eviction—get turned down dozens of times. I’ve also seen firsthand the hardships that accompany eviction. One family of six lost virtually all they owned, their things snatched up by neighbors after movers placed them on the curb. The two parents and the four kids moved into a run-down trailer, where everyone sleeps on the floor. One woman was eight months pregnant when she was evicted. She and her boyfriend sent three other children to stay with friends in Green Bay, while they and their two-year-old struggled to find housing. It took them two months to land an apartment. Yet another family moved in with friends, an action that violated the latter’s lease and resulted in them getting served an eviction notice.

After being handed her eviction notice, a fifty-six-year-old woman turned to me and whispered, defeated, “They are really hard on us. They don’t have to be. We can’t help it if things happen.” Perhaps, but it is too simplistic to place all the blame squarely on the landlords. Evictions are costly for them as well. Many times landlords incur steep court fees even when they know they have a slim chance of ever seeing the uncollected rent. In rare cases, some are left with a destroyed apartment, a sad parting gift left by angry tenants.

Given this grim scenario, why hasn’t the federal government come rushing to the aid of families at risk of eviction, a disproportionate number of whom are poor African Americans and Latinos? Why, with all this talk about mortgage bailouts and home foreclosures, is the eviction crisis so rarely mentioned?

Foreclosure relief is necessary. It might even slow down evictions by giving property owners some breathing room, but, I suspect, not by much. Foreclosure relief will allow landlords to hold onto their property—we hope—but it will not cause them suddenly to drop their rents, forgive their debtors, or pull their notices.

More direct intervention aimed at tackling the eviction crisis is needed, and lawmakers should develop a federal emergency renters’ assistance program. Such a program could provide interest free grants and loans to low-income tenants at risk of losing the roof over their heads, as do local nonprofits such as the San Francisco’s Eviction Defense Collaborative. It also could offer tenants free legal services and advice, since most tenants served an eviction appear in court without representation (if they appear at all), as well as housing counseling and information about their rights and responsibilities pertaining to eviction.

A federally-based eviction prevention program does not have to be created from scratch; it could model itself after plenty of effective local initiatives. Whatever form such a program might take, what is certain is that we cannot in good conscience apply a generous poultice to the mortgage industry and financial powerhouses with deep-pocketed executives, while turning a blind eye to millions of empty-pocketed renting families, who daily live one misstep away from homelessness.

Photos courtesy of Matthew Desmond

What Constitutes a Good Death?

By Janis Prince Inniss

Recently, I received shocking news that a former colleague had died. In a testament to the use of technology in our lives today, her husband delivered this news by text message. I don’t quibble about his form of announcement because since he sent a text, he was able to send the link for a memorial website and provide other details that are more tedious to share by voice.

My colleague (whom I will call Jean) and I had worked together in Florida and although she had moved to another state a few years ago, we kept in touch with annual texts and occasional emails. Once when my husband and I were visiting in the city where they lived, my husband and I met Jean and her husband to socialize. In other words, I was a link—I think the only work related one—between Jean, her new city, and her former work life in Florida.

On the memorial website, I was able to look at a brief timeline of Jean’s life and read tributes to her. From the website, I also learned that she died less than two weeks shy of her 40^th birthday. I spent a couple days feeling dazed about Jean’s death and then it dawned on me that others of her Florida colleagues would want to know of her passing and more than likely I was the only one here who knew of this.

As I shared the sad news with Jean’s former colleagues in Florida, they all asked the same questions: What happened? How did she die? I wondered the same thing but that information was not in the text message from Jean’s husband. And when I spoke with him he did not volunteer any such information, only saying that Jean had been hospitalized for a couple weeks. I made the decision not to ask about the circumstances of Jean’s death because her husband sounded too grief-stricken to want to talk about it.

A few years ago, I learned of the death of another university colleague from a close friend of his. In telling me of someone I’ll call Mike’s death, she revealed that he had committed suicide. Published reports of Mike’s death said that he died of “undisclosed causes” and indicated that his family did not want to talk about his cause of death. In a deeply moving memorial service that lasted about three hours, no one mentioned that Mike had committed suicide.

Should they have done so? I’m still unsure about how many people knew that Mike took his own life, but at the time of Mike’s death, I thought that his suicide could be used to help teach college students about suicide, particularly because college-age people are among the age group (ages 15-24) for whom suicide is the third leading cause of death. I gave considerable thought to ”outing” the circumstances of Mike’s death to help others, but finally decided to respect the apparent wishes of his family.

Do the circumstances of our death matter? Why is that the first thing that we wonder about? Why do family members sometimes feel compelled to hide such information? How does a person’s cause of death impact the way we mourn them or even remember them? Would people’s impressions of Mike have changed if they learned he had taken his own life? Would their testimonials have been less glowing? Would it have made them angry with him? How would learning that he committed suicide color their grief? And without that information, as with Jean, we are left wanting more information.

What does learning someone had AIDS mean for us in thinking of their death? Or if he or she died as a result of a homicide? Even death has to be contextualized for us. In learning of someone’s death, another question that we usually ask about is their age. We have ideas about what is a reasonable age—and way—to die and events that don’t confirm to those notions can be baffling. When a 95 year old dies, that seems to be in the natural order of things (although probably very little, if at all, less painful for their family). When children die or parents outlive their children—regardless of age—this seems “unnatural”. When we learn that a 39 year old woman died, we have many questions. With today’s high life expectancies, we expect people to live long lives.

If you don’t think that the circumstances of our deaths matter, think about whether you would use a special power to decide how you and your loved ones die. Although the end results are the same, we do feel differently about whether people perish at Jonestown, in a plane crash, are murder victims, commit suicide or die of natural causes.

Generational Differences, Cartoons, and Cooperation

By Jessica Collett

University of Notre Dame

I’m a member of Generation X . My students, on the other hand, are mostly Millennials, sometimes referred to as Generation Y. This difference extends beyond age. As C. Wright Mills explains in The Sociological Imagination, our history and biography are profoundly connected. As different generational cohorts we experienced unique defining moments and cultural influences that have shaped our hopes and our fears, our personalities and our preferences.

For example, because I came of age during the Cold War, the villains in my favorite childhood action movies were Russian or Eastern European. Today, pop culture bad guys tend to be Arabs. In college, I associated one night stands with AIDS, they are associated with the “hook-up” culture. Public service announcements of my youth warned against the devastating effects of drugs (mostly crack cocaine). Today, the truth campaign against smoking and tobacco is Gen Y’s PSA of record.

Increasingly professors and employers are trying to use their knowledge about these cohorts to increase learning, attract top applicants, and enhance employee productivity. Although a tremendous amount has been written, one of the main sources of information on the Millennials is Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation”(2000) by Neil Howe and William Strauss. While there is debate over the generalizability of Howe and Strauss’s assertions, one of their findings that has captured the attention of many is Millennials’ preferences for collaboration. Many believe that they favor teamwork over independent ventures, choosing cooperation over competition.

Maybe globalization is partly responsible for this shift, specifically the diffusion of Saturday morning programming. One of the things that diffuses across the world with globalization is culture, both material and symbolic. Material culture is the “things” of a culture – its food, tools, and art (including children’s television shows). Symbolic culture is the values, beliefs, and norms associated with a group. The two types of culture are intricately connected.

For instance, a cultural group’s art (material culture) likely reflects the group’s values or norms (symbolic culture) and television shows are no exception. When I ask my students what their favorite childhood programs were growing up, The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers always tops the list. What students may not realize is that Power Rangers, actually imported from Japan, is laden with cultural messages that emphasize cooperation over competition. In the end it always takes all the Power Rangers coming together to overtake evil, demonstrating that the whole is better than the sum of its parts.

While the United States has prized individualism for much of its history, Asia traditionally has a much more cooperative culture. Children’s programming in both countries largely reflects these values. Take, for example, national superheroes. In his chapter, “Transformational Magic: Some Japanese Super-Heroes and Monsters,” from The Worlds of Japanese Popular Culture: Shifting Boundaries and Global Cultures (1998), Tom Gill discusses two superheroes of the mid-twentieth century, Superman and Ultraman. Superman is quintessentially American. He’s an immigrant to the United States from some place far away. His human form lets his viewers relate to him and see his power as their potential. He’s ultimately alone, with no Superdad or Supermom or Supersiblings, yet he can win every battle. His story stresses individual achievement to the American children who look up to him. Gill contrasts Superman with Ultraman, Japan’s superhero. Ultraman, unlike Superman, never flies solo. His family grows over time, and his brothers, parents, and other kin are included in storylines and spin-offs. Ultraman often calls home for help in order to defeat his opponent. Watching these programs, Japanese children learn filial loyalty and the value of solidarity.

Ultraman might have never made it to the United States, but other Japanese characters and shows increasingly have. In addition to Power Rangers, many children today follow Teen Titans, Pokemon, and Hamtaro. The opening and closing sequences of Hamtaro, a cartoon about the adventures of a group of hamsters known as the Ham-Hams, are rich with cultural messages, not only of solidarity and cooperation, but also of the importance of school:

It's Hamtaro time!

…When we work together it's much better!

…My best friend!

…My Ham-Hams!

If she heads for trouble, we won't let her!

…Laura's gone to school, let's go to our Ham-Ham Clubhouse!

We can fix their troubles just be quiet as a mouse

Watch out for those cats you know they're smarter than you think

But if we work together we can make their plans sink!

Hamtaro!

Snoozer, Howdy, Penelope, Panda,

My best friends!

Oxnard, Bijou, Cappy, Maxwell

My Ham-Hams!

Dexter, Boss, Pashmina, Jingle

Hamtaro!

Little Hamsters, Big Adventures!

'scuse me while I work out, gotta run on my wheel

Hamtaro!

Hamtaro's here to help you!

Hamtaro!

Hamtaro's team is for you!

Snoozer, Penelope, Panda, Howdy, Oxnard, Bijou & Boss let’s go!

Zersnoo, Pepenelo, Sobs, Dapan, Dehow Nardox Joubi & Hamtaro!

…Let’s make a wish ­ ooh, ooh

Make it come true

Singing along with us is all you do!

Come on and do your very best, ooh, ooh

Get a hundred on your test

All of your dreams will come true

…This will be our song, come on and sing

Snoozer, Penelope, Panda, Howdy, Oxnard Bijou & Boss let’s go!

Zersnoo, Pepenelo, Sobs, Dapan, Dehow Nardox Joubi & Hamtaro!

Little Hamsters, Big Adventures

Ham-Ham, Hamtaro!

Contrasting the above songs with the theme song of Jimmy Neutron , an American cartoon, is particularly striking:

From here to the stars,

With my candy bars,

Rides a kid

With a knack

For inventions.

A super-powered mind,

A mechanical canine, 

He rescues the day

From sure destruction.

…He's gotta save the world

And get to school on time,

So many things to do

And not much time

Who can we count on?

Jimmy Neutron!

Who can we count on?

Jimmy Neutron!

Who can we count on?

Jimmy Neutron!

Unlike the Hamtaro songs, which highlight the group or team and go so far as to list the names of all of the Ham-Hams, Jimmy Neutron’s episodes and theme songs emphasize the importance of one boy who must constantly save the world. Jimmy Neutron was born with “a knack for inventions [and] a super-powered mind” and school is mentioned in passing, as one of the many things he has to do. Hamtaro, on the other hand, emphasizes doing one’s very best and making a hundred on a test, to make all one’s dreams come true.

While I don’t know of any scientific research on the power of these children’s shows for fostering cooperation or competition, sociology is rich with research on the influence of the media on our perceptions and behavior. It might just be that one of the reasons the Millennials value collaboration is all those Saturday mornings spent with the Power Rangers and the success of the team-oriented shows that continue to follow might be suggestive of media’s tendency to both shape and reflect culture. It might just be that shows demonstrating cooperation over competition are more appealing to today’s young people.

Age, Cohort, and Period Effects of Religion

By Bradley Wright

In sociological research, we often study the change of things over time. It’s reasonably easy to demonstrate how something changes over time, but it’s more difficult to explain why it changes because there are multiple causal processes that produce such change. In particular, three that are frequently described in demographic research are age, cohort, and period effects. I’ll illustrate each one using data about religious change over time.

An age effect is how people change as they get older. As people progress from childhood to adolescence to adulthood they go through various changes. Not only do their bodies change (as we start to lament once we hit middle age), but they change socially as well. For example, political beliefs can change with age; many people report being more liberal in their youth and more conservative in their older age. People tend to earn more money as they age too (at least until they hit retirement).

In terms of religion, it’s commonly observed the people become more religious as they age. To illustrate this, I examined data from the General Social Survey (GSS), a survey collected every two or three years from 1972 to the present. One of the questions asked if respondents identified with a formal religion, and, if so, which one. In the following figure, I chart how many of the respondents professed themselves to be Christians as a function of age. About 75% of the respondents in their twenties professed Christianity (the bar on the left), and this increased steadily until almost 90% of those in their seventies and eighties professed Christianity. This illustrates an age effect—adherence to Christianity increases with age.

Not only do people change with age, but they also change with when they were born. Different cohorts (or generations) act and believe differently than other generations.

Here’s an easy example: If you’re a college student, go find your parents’ high school yearbooks and get a laugh out of how they dressed. In the 1970s and 80s, boys wore their hair long, and girls had frizzy hair, and we all wore embarrassingly short shorts. If you want to see something really crazy, go back another generation and look at young people from the 1960s.

With religion, we might expect a similar effect. Maybe different generations experience religion differently, beyond how they age. To examine this, I used GSS data to look at the relationship between age and Christianity for three different birth cohorts—respondents born in the 1940s and the 1950s. The first graph replicates the graph above, levels of Christianity over age, for people born in the 1940s. The next for those in the 1950s. As you can see, the relationship between age and Christianity changes by cohort. The respondents who were born in the 1940s held steady in their profession of Christianity as they aged, but the later cohort actually declined somewhat.

In addition to age and cohort effects, there are also have history effects. Here society changes in some way that affects everyone. The classic example is the Great Depression of the 1930s. It affected people regardless of their age or their birth cohort. Various aspects of religion change with historical changes. Wars and other times of trouble might reinforce the strength of religious beliefs. The social turmoil of the 1960s led young people to question existing social institutions, including organized religion.

As a simple illustration of a historical effect, I took levels of professed Christianity by decade, for the 1970s, 80s, 90s, and the 2000s. As shown in the graph, a smaller percentage of the population is professing Christianity with each decade. (To be clear, since the population is growing, there are actually more

professed Christians in the country now than in the 1970s, they just constitute a smaller percentage.) This appears to be a historical effect—the times they are a changing.

If this weren’t confusing enough, age effects can change by both cohorts and periods. (In statistical terms, this is a called an interaction effect.) So, the relationship between age and Christianity now might be different than it was in the past. Who knows, maybe the relationship between age and cohort various by historical period.

The upshot of all of this is that it’s rather difficult to make sense of social changes over time, and this leads to a fair amount of confusion about what’s really going on in society. What seems to be an easy question, for example, changes in professed Christianity over time, is somewhat difficult to make sense of. In this post, I’ve only looked at one aspect of religion, but we could do similar analyses for other religions as well as other aspects of religion, such as belief in God, importance of religion, and attendance at religious services.

I suppose that this post serves as a warning about over-simplifying social trends. If nothing else, this difficulty will always give us sociologists something to do with our time.

Diary of a Mad Black Woman? Double Minority Status and (Un/Under) Employment

By Janis Prince Inniss

I recently learned that an acquaintance, Jim, has been unemployed for a while. I don’t know exactly for how long, but this middle-aged white man had held a number of important sounding positions. I don’t know how or why he is now jobless, but he explained that he is still unemployed because he is the wrong race and gender to be hired today. “It’s because I’m not a black woman,“ he said.

I am. I have a doctoral degree and am the “right" race and gender—a twofer for any employer. They can check off two check boxes that demonstrate their diversity initiative in  action. African/American/black? Check. Female? Check.

In the context of this moment in U.S. history maybe his comment was understandable or excusable. There are currently two songs celebrating “chocolate”: “Chocolate High” and “Chocolate Legs”. And there’s newly elected President Barack Obama. Being black is in, right?

After all of the years of debates about affirmative action and quotas, blacks are preferred, right? All the talk about cultural competence and diversity means that companies are seeking blacks. And as a black woman—and therefore a double minority—I should be solid gold!

So why aren’t folks lined up at the door to hire me? Well, perhaps because I have not been looking for a job. That seems like a pretty good answer. But despite my supposedly ideal race and gender, my research position at a university (supposedly a bastion of liberal leanings) keeps shrinking.

It's not that I’m a terrible employee, which would override my race and gender in order to maintain important academic standards. All of my performance evaluations have been very good. I've also been elected to a departmental council, suggesting that I am also liked and trusted by my peers.

If I’m a good worker, well liked, and black and female, why am I under-employed? I’ve recently been made part-time as some of my grant funded projects have ended. Where are the overtures to me that Jim and others imagine?

In reality, being black and female is no guarantee of employment. Many states are facing their highest unemployment rates in decades. Even in prosperous economic times, unemployment rates among blacks in the U.S. are highest; this same group is being hit harder than whites or Latinos by the current recession. In February, the unemployment rate for whites was 7.3 percent, 10.9 percent for Hispanics, and 13.4 percent for blacks. Why might this be the case? (Think about the industries that have employed large numbers of blacks and those hardest hit by the recession.)

The institute at which I work has three departments and employs about 500 people. (Actually, because of the economic downturn, the institute is now part of a newly formed college that includes five other departments. However, given its newness and my relative unfamiliarity with it, I’m choosing to ignore that for now.) I’m on the faculty in a research position. And in my division, I believe I’m one of two faculty members who are not full-time. At the moment I’m barely over half-time and that is projected to decrease to 35%. (The other person in the department is a white woman who remains much closer to full-time status.) As far as I can tell, of the approximately 85 faculty at the institute, 7 are black; this is less than eight percent black faculty in a city that is more than one quarter black. So there is no clear advantage based on race and gender here.

According to the Institute’s Diversity Plan, there is an expectation that “administrative and organizational processes” is evident in "hiring practices (and) staffing patterns". But as my experience demonstrates, this does not mean that there is any advantage to being black and/or female.

I don’t think anybody owes me anything. Well, that’s not quite true. A few people do, but they know who they are and that has nothing to do with employment. I digress. I’ve worked hard to earn everything I have and expect to always be successful. My success is also due to the fact that many people (of all hues and stripes) have gone out of their way to be supportive of me.

It was and is, however, rather odd to bump up against the notion that my race and gender put me in a position of privilege, especially at a time when I am under-employed. I don’t see this privilege in my own lived experiences nor in the statistics of what is occurring to others across the nation. What do you think fuels the notion that black women are forcing white men out of jobs?

"Beauty" at the Expense of Aging

By Sally Raskoff

Have you noticed the plethora of people who have had “something done” cosmetically? Are you one of those people considering such work? I have had a mini-obsession of late in spotting cosmetic alterations and thinking about them sociologically. I’ve gotten pretty good at identifying people who have had cosmetic procedures – so much so that a make-up artist friend and I entertained ourselves at a high school reunion by quietly noting who had what done and when. Living in Los Angeles, there is a lot to see.

Of course, most cultures socialize people to enhance their beauty and beauty does not come cheap or painless.

I just had a fascinating conversation with a friend who works as an aesthetician. I asked her why some of the people who have had work done look so odd – it’s not just that their features have been altered, their actual skin looks, well, it doesn’t look like normal skin.

She told me about dermabrasion, not to be confused with micro-dermabrasion. Dermabrasion is the more intense process in which the skin is abraded, under anesthesia, after which it grows back. It is this new skin that grows in to replace the removed skin that looks a bit too smooth, a bit too ”new”.

The point of this is ostensibly to replace one’s aged wrinkled skin with new smooth skin – but the process is quite extreme, painful, and yields results that one may not expect. My friend mentioned someone who had this done who now has a face like a mask since her neck and ears and scalp have her normal skin while her face has the regenerated skin. She had this done years ago so it doesn’t age like the older skin nor does it eventually blend in.

Other cosmetic procedures include plastic surgery to remove saggy skin or to plump up facial features like the lips with implants. Collagen injections were popular for plumping up lips although the effects don’t last very long since the body works to remove the foreign substance. Moving fat from one area into the lips or injecting Botox or other similar substances also results in bigger lips and the effect may remain for a longer period of time.

There are dangers to such procedures. Some people find that they are disfigured after such surgery, including facial muscle damage. My aesthetician friend has a client whose surgery did not go well and half of her face is frozen since those muscles no longer work. Also, even more tragically, are the cases where people have died from cosmetic surgeries. Kanye West's mother and author Olivia Goldsmith did.

What is it about our society that has made these procedures so popular? Even in these trying economic times, cosmetic surgery rates have increased (except among Caucasians).

While certain celebrities are obvious and extreme examples, the rates of augmentation and reconstruction among average people are fascinating to analyze. While there has been an overall decrease in plastic surgery, some procedures have actually risen in popularity; note the 203% increase in pectoral implants!

Table from http://www.plasticsurgery.org/Media/Statistics.html

How are these procedures different from the practices of other cultures such as foot binding in China, Mayan head shaping, or Thai neck rings? Besides the fact that the first two are no longer practiced, there may be no difference.

Because each culture has its own standards of beauty, the way people choose to enhance their appearance will vary among cultures.

What fascinates me is that typically cultures define beauty with standards related to health, elements related to sexual interest, or cultural markers of status and power. Thus clear skin, full red lips, shiny hair, and teeth signify attractiveness, all of which generate profit for companies that manufacture such products.

I wonder how the results of dermabrasion and extreme cosmetic surgeries can be considered attractive. Of course, the mismatch between the quest for beauty using these procedures and the actual outcome, especially over time, is a common one in any culture. We strive to be attractive yet whether or not we attain attractiveness is really another issue.

The concept of cultural lag can be useful here. Cultural lag holds that we develop technologies before we know how to effectively use them. Thus, the examples of people who over-use cosmetic procedures to such an extent that they don’t achieve the desired effect-- “attractiveness”.

Tattoos are another example of a procedure that can theoretically enhance one’s appearance in the short term but detract from it over time. When my daughters got their first tattoos a few years ago, I asked them what those tattoos would look like when in another 60 years when their skin begins to sag. I think they figure they can always have them removed, but I don’t think they’ve given it much thought. Likewise, I’m not sure people getting plastic surgery think about how their continued aging will affect their outcomes.

Will we continue using plastic surgery to “enhance” our looks? And if so, what does this tell us about the meaning of age and aging?

Who is Most Likely to be a Crime Victim?

By Karen Sternheimer

If you watch one of the many television crime dramas that are on now, you might think you know the answer to this question. But looking at the actual statistics might surprise you.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics has conducted the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) each year since 1973, asking a random sample of Americans twelve and older about their experiences with crime during the past year.

This survey is important because many crimes, especially minor crimes like theft, never get reported to police. So if we relied solely on law enforcement agency data, we might never get a good picture of the prevalence of crime. For instance, by comparing the NCVS to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports, a database of crimes and arrests based on law enforcement data, we can also get an idea of how many rapes get reported to the police and how many don’t.

Here are some things the NCVS teaches us about crime victimization from 1973 to 2006, the most recent year for which data are available:

1. Violent victimization is on the decline

Between 1973 and 1993, violent victimization held somewhat steady, hovering just under 50 per 1,000 (this means that for every thousand Americans, fifty were victims of violence) to around 20 per 1,000 in 2006. This trend mirrors FBI data, which also details a sharp crime decline after the early 1990s. As you can see below, property crime declined significantly too.

2. Teens and young adults are the most likely victims of violent crime

Young people are the most likely victims of violent crime. In 2006, young adults 20-24 were slightly more likely to report victimization than teens after many years of teens being the group most likely to be victims of violence. This isn’t necessarily because teens themselves are more violent—according to then FBI Uniform Crime Reports the vast majority of people arrested for violent crime (more than 80 percent) are adults.

Take a look at the lowest line on the graph above; despite the common perception that the elderly are highly likely to be victims of violence, they are the group least likely to be victimized.

3. Blacks are more likely to be victims of violence than whites

Unfortunately, the NCVS data on race only considers two categories. From the graph above, it is clear that black victimization is higher than the rate for whites. Although the rates for both groups have declined in recent years, we can see that black victimization has increased slightly, while white victimization has remained flat.

4. Males are more likely to be victims of violence than females

With the exception of rape, males are more likely to be the victims of violent crime than females are. As Sally Raskoff blogged about last year, we tend to believe that females are more vulnerable to violence. Boys and men are more likely to be victims of assault, robbery, and homicide than girls or women are.

5. Low-income people are more likely to be victims

The NCVS data reveal that those with household incomes below $7,500 are more than three times more likely to be robbed than those with incomes above $75,000. This might seem counterintuitive; wouldn’t wealthier people have more and better stuff to take? They probably do, but poorer people are more likely to live in higher crime neighborhoods, and criminals typically victimize those around them the most. It’s more convenient.

Poor people are not just more likely to be robbed. Those at the lowest income level are victims of aggravated assault at the rate of 13 per 1,000, compared with 3 per 1,000 in the $75,000 and over category.

 

Okay, now that we have some basic ideas about the age, race, gender, and class of the most likely victims of crime, let’s think about who is most likely to be featured in crime dramas. The victims on these shows tend to be (although are not always) sympathetic figures; after all, if we don’t care about the victim, we might not care if their assailants are caught and brought to justice.

This might lead to highlighting white female victimization, both in crime dramas and in the news to appeal to a specific target audience. Historically the fear for white women and children’s safety motivated the lynching of many black men and the passage of laws allegedly to protect women’s virtue.

In seeking a middle class audience, producers might also tend to focus on middle class victims, people we might imagine are “just like us” and therefore their victimization hits closer to home. We might also feel more emotional connection to stories about elderly victims, which heighten the sense of outrage against a heartless perpetrator.

So crime shows have a lot of compelling reasons for telling slightly different crime stories than the ones that happen in real life. Drama, after all, is heightened reality, not reality.

But it’s important to recognize that the abundance of crime dramas might distort our perception of who are most likely to be victims. Based on NCVS data, those who are young, black, male, and poor are disproportionally likely to be crime victims. Why do you think we have had an easier time viewing this group as the cause of crime, rather than as crime victims?

Do Guns Deter Crime?

By Jay Livingston

Montclair State University

http://montclairsoci.blogspot.com/

The recent shootings in Alabama, Binghamton, and Pittsburgh along with the anniversaries of massacres at Columbine and Virginia Tech have brought more than the usual calls for stricter gun laws. The pro-gun side is also speaking up loudly, arguing that if more people were armed, we’d have less crime, and an armed citizenry would be a deterrent. If criminals knew that everyone was carrying a gun, the NRA reasons, they wouldn’t dare commit the crime for fear of being shot.

How can we assess these claims? The usual strategy for measuring deterrence is to compare crime rates in states with different gun laws. Some states have strict gun laws. Other states have made carrying a concealed weapon (CCW) widely legal. The problem with this comparison is not just that we need to control for all the other factors that might affect crime. There is also the problem that even in states that do not restrict CCW, we don’t know how many people are actually walking around packing heat. And neither do the criminals.

It would be nice if we could do an experiment. We could create a place in America where everyone carries a gun. We’d give our experiment a few years, then we’d check the crime rates. It’s impossible to do, of course.

But wait. I think I’ve seen such a place. It’s called the Wild West. And in the versions that I’ve seen in movies and on TV, nearly everyone there (at least the men) carries a gun. And none of this concealed weapon stuff--the guns are in plain sight, holstered and ready for a quick deterrent draw.

But is that picture of the West accurate, and how much crime was committed there? Fortunately, there is a systematic study of crime in a real town in the Wild West – Bodie, California, a mining boom town high in the Sierras near the Nevada border.

In the 1870s, when news got out that there was gold or silver in those hills, Bodie’s population quickly grew from a few hundred to about 5,000. For our purposes this town is a good place to examine the links between guns and crime.

On the one hand, Bodie’s demographics should lead us to expect a high rate of crime. Most of the population consisted of young, single, men with no deep ties to the community and a social life centered around saloons, gambling halls, and prostitutes. Bodie had racial minorities (Mexicans and Chinese) and hard drugs (opium). On the other hand, nearly all those men carried guns.

Historian Roger McGrath went back through court documents and newspaper reports to reconstruct the actual crime rates in the five-year period when Bodie was booming. His results can help us decide whether the net result of all those guns was good, or whether it was bad and ugly.

When McGrath counted up the numbers and did the math, it turned out that, by comparison with crime rates today, Bodie didn’t have much crime. Its rate of burglary was about one-sixth that for the U.S. today as a whole. That difference, though, probably has less to do with guns and deterrence than with the absence of things to steal. No iPods, TVs, or even jewelry. People didn’t have silver, they had silver mines, which are a bit harder to make off with. In fact, the most frequently taken items in Bodie were blankets and firewood (nights are cold in the High Sierra).

But what about robberies, where the bad guys are usually after cash? Bodie’s 21 robberies in five years work out to an annual rate of 84 per 100,000. That’s lower than the overall U.S. rate for 2007 (148 per 100,000). The closest cities geographically I could find 2007 data for were Carson City, Nevada, whose rate was much lower (38 per 100,000) and Reno, whose robbery rate was nearly triple that of Bodie.

So Bodie’s guns might have made a difference. The bank tellers were all armed, and Bodie had no bank robberies. On the other hand, the stagecoach had an armed guard, but still McGrath counted eleven stagecoach robberies. (Just like in the movies, the bad guys weren’t completely bad. They took the strongbox but usually let the passengers keep their money and valuables.) So were guns a deterrent in Bodie? The overall picture is mixed so far.

But there was one crime where Bodie left contemporary rates in the dust – murder. In five years, Bodie had 31 murders, for an annual rate of 116 per 100,000, twenty times the national rate for the U.S. in 2007. Even our most murderous cities like Baltimore and Detroit have murder rates less than half of Bodie’s.

It’s also clear that the cause of Bodie’s high murder rate was those guns. When men have guns close at hand, ordinary arguments and disputes can become fatal. And remember, guns in 1880 were primitive by today’s standards. We can only wonder what Bodie’s murder rate would have been if those miners had been carrying .357 Magnums.

McGrath describes Bodie in his 1984 book Gunfighters, Highwaymen, and Vigilantes: Violence on the Frontier. As for Bodie, it quickly declined after the 1880s, and by the early 20^th century, it became a ghost town. What do you think this study tells us about the deterrent effect of guns?

Michelle Obama: More Than Fashion Sense

By Janis Prince Inniss

Have you heard of Sleevegate? Best as I can tell, Sleevegate erupted over Michelle Obama’s sleeveless attire at her husband’s first Presidential address to Congress. Columnists in small, and even major papers such the New York Times have had their say on the matter. In the Times piece Maureen Dowd quotes fellow columnist David Brooks as saying of Mrs. Obama’s arms, “She’s made her point. Now she should put away Thunder and Lightning.” Everybody, it seems has an opinion about her arms.

What side are you on? Sleeveless or sleeves? You don’t care? Well apparently that puts you in the minority as lots of people have used tons of ink (and cyberspace) on the issue. There were also lots of articles and television shows directing women on how they too could get toned arms like the First Lady. Reportedly, trainers are now getting requests for “Michelle arms” from their clients.

People have scrutinized Michelle Obama’s entire appearance. Her hair has been the subject of much blogging and even her actual features have been commented upon (and not always kindly). I read some comments from people who were disappointed that the First Lady had not selected an African American designer for her Inauguration Day outfit, and others who complained that her ball gown was not made by an African American.

The attention to Michelle Obama’s clothing started before she became first lady. While on the campaign trail, she appeared on “The View”. At that appearance, she wore a $148 black and white dress, purchased from White House/Black Market. It was an instant hit and sold out overnight!

As the First Couple make their first splash overseas with a visit to Europe, (The President’s first foreign trip was actually to Canada in February.) the First Lady’s every outfit is coming under even greater scrutiny, as member of the international press join in on the commentary. The main event on this trip? Nothing to do with the G-20 summit that is supposedly the trip’s centerpiece! Nope. It was the fashion ‘face-off’ between Michelle Obama and France’s First Lady, former Victoria Secret model and singer, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy!

I haven’t seen anything written about the President’s clothing though. Who does he wear? Does his tie go well enough with his suit? How about his shoes? And was there a fashion faceoff between Presidents Obama and Sarkozy?

No doubt, lots of ink is spent on the appearance of women, regardless of their ”power” positions. And occasionally men get a dose: John Edwards and President Clinton both got a taste of this when the expensive haircuts they received from Hollywood hair-stylists caused a stir.

Why so much focus on Michelle Obama’s fashion sense? Aren’t there more interesting things about her to talk about? This is a woman who graduated cum laude from Princeton with a degree is in Sociology! Michelle Obama is also a graduate of the prestigious Harvard Law School. She served as adviser to her husband, our new President, when he joined her at the law firm of Sidley & Austin. She gave up corporate law for public service, working for Chicago Mayor Daley and then in the city office of planning and development. She was founding Executive Director for an AmeriCorps national service program. Later, Mrs. Obama served as Associate Dean of Student Services at the University of Chicago. In 2005 she became Vice President for Community and External Affairs at University of Chicago Hospitals.

From there, she took a leave of absence to join her husband on the campaign trail, a position from which she resigned this year. She is quite accomplished in terms of career, but it’s hard to tell that the First Lady has such an impressive resume when so much time is spent on whether she should cover her arms up. Or whether her ensembles for the Inauguration Day and evening balls were quite “right”.

Personally, I’m impressed by Michelle Obama, and I love to see pictures of her. But I’m impressed by all of what I’ve learned--not only by her appearance, although she does wear clothes well. Why are we paying so much attention to her appearance though? Why do we spend so much time on any woman’s appearance? That Michelle Obama is the U.S. First Lady heightens that focus. Add to that natural curiosity her straying from convention (Bare arms! And they’re toned! Wow!) and there is even more to talk about. What else could we say about a First Lady? Former First Lady Laura Bush did not engender this much attention to what she wore? How come?

Why haven’t we heard half as much about what Mrs. Obama is doing as First Lady as we have about her appearance? Have you heard much about her Women’s History event? Her trips to federal agencies? Her work regarding military families? Is sexism at work here? Racism?

Video

Did you hear what German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s husband (Joachim Sauer) wore to the G-20 or NATO Summits? How about Nestor Kirchner, husband of Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner? Me neither.