Brenda Blackwell

• PhD
• Chair at Georgia Southern University

That boys are more likely to offend than girls is a well-established finding in contemporary criminology; however, few theoretical perspectives directly focus on explaining this gap. In 2002, Hayslett- McCall and Bernard introduced a new perspective, the gendered attachment-self-control theory, designed to explain the gender difference in criminal...

Research indicates that effective advising has important ramifications for students’ coursework as well as future careers, yet, very few studies have assessed how college graduates define their advising experiences, and whether the experience of “bad advising” truly results in negative outcomes for students and departments. To fill this void, atten...

The rise in the use of electronic monitoring tools for management of individuals in both pretrial and post-release correctional stages of the criminal justice system necessitates increased collaboration of criminal justice personnel with private sector companies that provide monitoring services. Given this shift, it is necessary to explore whether...

Several studies have considered the source of job satisfaction across different types of criminal justice professionals. This article identifies factors related to job satisfaction among graduates from a criminal justice program. The authors use a sample of 236 criminal justice graduates to explore the role of education in reports of career satisfa...

Objective This study examines the mechanisms that connect self-control and domestic violence with a specific focus given to the influence of bad parenting and general criminal behavior.Methods The authors used data from a community-based sample of 375 respondents. Path analysis was conducted exploring whether bad parenting (as measured by child vic...

Many studies have considered the influence that education has on career satisfaction. This literature typically has treated education as a trait—something a person has, perhaps in varying degrees. The authors suggest that education should instead be treated as a situational factor that varies between individuals, particularly given that individuals...

Although it has been argued that sentencing guidelines reduce the favorable treatment afforded female offenders, only one study has directly theoretically assessed the impact of guidelines on sentencing outcomes for men versus women. This study examines the influence of guidelines on the outcomes of male and female defendants sentenced in Pennsylva...

This article bridges the gap between two theories that attempt to explain the gender – crime relationship. Power-control theory posits that power relationships of parents in the public sphere are reflected in their relationship at home. Different kinds of households are thus distinguished by degrees of patriarchy. Differential socialization generat...

If the punishment is taken out of the process, and the processes of criminal justice become effective at restoration--and if rigorous empirical research might show that a restorative process costs less money and produces greater public safety--that would be a result everyone would embrace.

Dual arrests in family violence cases have increased following passage of proarrest laws. This study examined the relationship between officers’perceptions of their departmental policies and arrest outcomes. Each officer was given 1 of 6 hypothetical scripts that varied as to whether the wife only was injured or the wife and husband were injured. T...

Power-control theory predicts gender differences in delinquency based on the level of patriarchy in the family. Tests yield mixed results, generally supporting some elements of the theory. However, because previous research does not test the theory at the family level, research does not capture within-family, as well as between-family, differences....

Social bonding theory proposes that individuals are constrained from delinquency by their attachment to significant others, commitment, involvement in conventional activities and belief in the law's legitimacy. Power‐control theory incorporates the attachment variable into the revised control model, which purports to explain gender differences in c...

Over the last several years, the criminal justice system has encouraged survivors of domestic abuse to report their victimization to law enforcement authorities. While some pieces of evidence suggest that police are more sensitive to the plight of domestic survivors, law enforcement response remains incomplete and problematic. This article explores...

Compared with Whites, African Americans generally have less positive attitudes toward the police (ATP) and this is most often attributed to the differential nature of citizen–police interaction experienced by Blacks and Whites. It has been suggested that the media play an important socializing role, in the form of “vicarious” police contacts, in ge...

Hagan (1990) a adapté la théorie du pouvoir‐contrôle pour expliquer le rôle joué par la distinction homme‐femme dans la vulnérabilité au crime, mélange de victimisation et d'offense, et la recherche d'une sortie par rôle déviant. Les auteures « revisitent » ces propos et, con‐sidérant la victimisation et l'offense séparément, essaient d'élargir le...

Compared with Whites, African Americans generally have less positive attitudes toward the police (ATP) and this is most often attributed to the differential nature of citizen–police interaction experienced by Blacks and Whites. It has been suggested that the media play an important socializing role, in the form of “vicarious” police contacts, in ge...

This research addresses the need to incorporate the perceived threats of informal sanctions, specifically, shame and embarrassment, into the power-control model. First, the possibility that gender differences exist in the perceived threats of shame and embarrassment, as well as legal sanctions, and that these differences vary between more patriarch...

Research recently has begun to examine the link between religion and social control. It has been noted that religion, in particular Protestant conservatism, does play a role in shaping public opinion, and as a result, public policy on crime, crime control, and justice. The present research examines the issue of public support for random drug testin...

The influence of religion on attitudes toward abortion is now a well-studied Phenomenon. Past research has consistently shown that religious affiliation and personal religiosity are related to abortion attitudes. ln this study, we have extended the extant literature by examining variation in the effect of personal religiosity on attitudes toward ab...

Power-control theory, at its most abstract level, links gender differences in risk preference to patriarchal family structures. In previous studies, direct tests have focused on adolescent delinquency, which is a specific form of risk-taking, and have used measures of risk preference specific to delinquency. In the present article, we introduce evi...

This study proposes and tests both static and dynamic hypotheses concerning racial differences in the perceived certainty and severity of sanction threats (i.e., shame, embarrassment, and legal sanctions) for theft, assault, and drunk driving. Pooled data from identical surveys, 1982 and 1992, of random samples of adults living in Oklahoma City, Ok...

David Garland's recent book Punishment and Modern Society should prompt a reconsideration of the role of religion in shaping public opinion and public policy in the area of criminal justice. The present study examines the relationship between certain religious beliefs associated with fundamentalist and evangelical Protestantism and support for capi...

In contrast to a recent survey conducted by Miller and Simpson, two earlier surveys of adults, one conducted in 1972 and the other in 1982, reported that women scored higher than men on measures of what Grasmick and Bursik recently have called perceived threats of shame and embarrassment, as well as legal sanctions, for violating the law. Hagan's p...