Merry Morash

• Michigan State University

This research explores how empowerment programs impact gender-based violence and the social structures that lead to such violence in the first place. Drawing from interviews with former participants in empowerment programs that focus on building community leaders, the study examines how grassroots women lead interventions and their effects on leade...

This article contributes to methodological discussions of monitoring interviewer-administered surveys during fieldwork on wife abuse in India. Researchers collecting primary data often have to navigate unfamiliar social and cultural norms of conduct, travel to remote locations and have to obtain fluency in multiple languages to begin the process of...

Prior research indicates that student aggression against teachers is widespread, and it has negative impacts on victimized teachers’ emotional and physical well‐being and job performance. However, little is known about the relationship between the recency and duration of victimization and teachers’ thoughts about quitting the teaching profession an...

This research explores how empowerment programs impact gender based violence and the socialstructures that lead to such violence in the first place. Drawing from interviews with formerparticipants in empowerment programs that focus on building community leaders, the studyexamines how grassroots women lead interventions and the resulting effects on...

Research indicates that violence against teachers has detrimental negative effects on teachers’ emotional and physical well-being, connectedness to school, job performance, and retention. However, no quantitative empirical research has been conducted to examine the extent of teacher victimization reported to school officials, school interventions t...

There is much debate about the effects of punitive or treatment responses to the many women who are on probation and parole. This article examines whether types of technical violations (drug or nondrug related) and responses to them (treatment or punishment oriented) as well as supervision intensity predict recidivism. Study participants are 385 wo...

This article describes an exploratory study of why Vietnamese women who migrate to marry South Korean men are vulnerable to abuse. Inductive qualitative analysis of data from 22 Vietnamese wives who experienced abuse reveals inconsistencies in their expectations and their Korean husbands’ and in-laws’ expectations about their roles and influence in...

Few tests of General Strain Theory (GST) have examined the relative effects of objective and subjective strains on delinquency and the mediating effects of situational-based negative emotions linking strains to delinquency. With a sample of approximately 800 Korean adolescents, the present study tests a model that includes five key objective and th...

Identity-based motivation theory identifies individuals’ perceptions of attainable possible selves as the future-oriented component of self-concept that is a necessary first step in an adolescent’s goal setting and motivation for action. This qualitative study analyzed data from interviews with 27 court-involved girls. Girls with histories of sexua...

Although the juvenile delinquency problem in Turkey has become increasingly visible in the last decade, existing research on Turkish youth convicted of delinquency is still in its early stages. The purpose of this study was to apply the age-graded theory of informal social control that was developed by Sampson and Laub to the Turkish context, and t...

The present research uses data from the 2010 Korean National Criminal Victimization Survey to examine gender differences in larceny victimization and in predictors of victimization (i.e., target attractiveness, exposure to potential offenders, target hardening, guardianship, and proximity to crime and social disorder) identified by routine activity...

Empirical studies indicate that violence against teachers is a globally prevalent phenomenon and has damaging negative effects on victimized teachers' physical and emotional well-being and teaching effectiveness. Nevertheless, limited empirical research has been conducted to identify factors affecting emotional distress among victimized teachers. T...

This study was designed to examine whether the shift in juvenile justice policy toward punitive sanctioning disproportionately impacted racial and ethnic minority boys. Using a nationally representative sample derived from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth 1979 and 1997 (NLSY79, NLSY97), this study examines 1980–2000 differences in contact...

The research for this article used available qualitative data from separate studies of South Asian-, Vietnamese-, and Hispanic-origin women victimized by intimate terrorism. Regardless of country of origin, period, or U.S. community, women used similar ways to cope. Consistent with perpetrators' misogynistic attitudes and aim of enforcing patriarch...

Interviews with 27 girls and the professionals who worked with them yielded retrospective accounts of court interventions into families. Contradicting prior criticisms, for the setting and sample, girls were not confined to control sexual activity or as punishment for crimes committed after they ran from abusive families. Intervention problems incl...

This essay makes the case for a transformative critical feminist criminology, one that explicitly theorizes gender, one that requires a commitment to social justice, and one that must increasingly be global in scope. Key to this re-thinking of a mature field is the need to expand beyond traditional positivist notions of “science,” to embrace core e...

The research described in this article applies general strain theory to identify possible points of intervention for reducing delinquency of students in two middle schools. Data were collected from 296 youths, and separate negative binomial regression analyses were used to identify predictors of violent, property, and status delinquency. Emotional...

The one-state case study described in this article assesses imprisoned men’s vulnerability to sexual assault by an inmate before policies were implemented to reduce sexual violence. The cases studied were substantiated in an internal hearing procedure. On average, victims were more recently incarcerated, younger, smaller, and less aggressive than t...

arrests of girls increased more (or decreased less) than arrests of boys for most types of offenses. By 2004, girls accounted for 30 percent of all juvenile arrests. However, questions remain about whether these trends reflect an actual increase in girls’ delinquency or changes in societal responses to girls ’ behavior. To find answers to these que...

For a study of police women’s identities, qualitative data were generated from in-depth interviews with 21 women working in two metropolitan police departments and varying in race, ethnicity, rank, and tenure. Most women identified female-male differences but noted exceptions. Many felt characteristics concentrated among women enhanced job performa...

Based on resilience and feminist criminological theories, several individual, family, and community characteristics were hypothesized to predict late-adolescent delinquency for girls varying in early-adolescent risk. Girls aged 12 and 13 were interviewed each year as part of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997. Predictors of late-adolesc...

Girls suspected or convicted of assaults make up an increasing proportion of juvenile arrests and court caseloads. There is indication that changes in domestic violence arrest policies, school handling of student rules infractions, and practices of charging youth for assaults rather than status offenses account for these trends. To determine whethe...

This research examined the direct effects of coping strategies on stress and the moderating effects of coping strategies on the associations between workplace problems experienced by police and stress in South Korea and the United States. Data revealed that coping strategies did not change the strength of connections between workplace problems and...

This article addresses controversy over gender differences in risk and protective factors for late-adolescence assaults. A secondary analysis of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997 cohort considered 2,552 youth aged 12 or 13 in the first survey wave. Comparison of girls and boys revealed, as expected, boys had higher levels of...

For one state correctional system, 1998 through 2006, 121 perpetrators were compared with 121 nonperpetrators. Sexual abuse victimization as a child, a life sentence, and adult sexual assault convictions predicted men’s unwanted sexual touching of other men. History of juvenile robbery and adult sexual assault convictions, more years in prison, and...

Using data obtained from retrospective, in-depth interviews with 20 successful female parolees, the present study examines the effects of women offenders' relationships with people in their social networks (i.e., their network relationships) before, during, and after incarceration on their postrelease desistence from crime. Because women's social n...

The study identifies predictors of women's remaining entangled in abusive relationships. The sample includes 57 women in one Vietnamese American enclave. Women's beliefs in maintaining an intact family, patriarchal decision making, and fear of their partners characterized women remaining. To a lesser extent, seeking help from a variety of places ch...

To understand how constructive responses could be encouraged and supported, research was conducted to show the reasons for female police officers' responses to sexual harassment. A survey was administered in small groups to 117 female officers from 5 law enforcement agencies in a Midwestern state. For the 106 who had experienced harassment in the l...

A grounded theory approach and sensitizing concepts were used to study U.S. best practices for addressing intimate partner violence against 55 Vietnamese American women interviewed at the beginning and end of a twelve‐month period. Advocacy agency, police, and court contact were associated with women's decisions to leave abusive relationships. Also...

Purpose This article aims to examine the sexual harassment experiences of US policewomen by using the Sexual Experience Questionnaire (SEQ) and asking them to describe incidents in which male colleagues’ behavior made them uncomfortable. It seeks to identify areas of discomfort and patterns of response in the context of current harassment policies....

The present article extends prior research to identify the predictors of police stress from work place problems, the resources available through social support, different strategies for coping with stress, and conditions unique to policing in South Korea. The unique conditions are perceived public perception of police and attitudes towards women wo...

Data from in-depth interviews with Vietnamese immigrant women residing in the United States and both interviews and a focus group with service providers for abused Vietnamese immigrants suggest a complex relationship among job market context, changing norms about appropriate feminine behavior, immigration adaptation, masculinity, and men's violence...

This article begins with a consideration of the interconnected troubles and needs that research has documented for girls who become enmeshed in the juvenile justice system. Special attention is given to findings from research that gives girls in the system some ‘voice’ in explaining what services and programs they need and want. After offering some...

This paper uses the social capital framework, with a focus on women's location in multiple contexts, including family, community, and the metropolitan area, and on both positive and negative results of social capital, to enhance knowledge about abused women's patterns of seeking help. Data from in-depth interviews with 62 abused women living in one...

This study identifies risk factors for Vietnamese American women's abuse. Intensive interviews with 129 Vietnamese women immigrants in a northeastern metropolitan area provided data to examine risk factors for sexual, physical, and verbal abuse. Patriarchal gender arrangements in the family, arguments about fulfilling gender and family roles, and p...

Relational, covert, and indirect aggression among girls has recently caught the attention of those interested in school violence prevention. In the name of being gender responsive, violence prevention or antibullying programs are being encouraged to include this form of aggression among the sorts of behaviors one seeks to prevent. The authors revie...

This paper focuses on effects of status differences of nationality, gender, age, education, social class, rank, and in the United States, race, on comparing how police cope with workplace stressors. It also considers whether the nature of workplace stressors, a collec‐ tivist orientation, and availability of social support explain subgroup differen...

Actuarial tools, such as the Level of Supervision Inventory—Revised (LSI‐R), are regularly used to classify offenders as “high,” “medium,” and “low” recidivism risks. Its supporters argue the theory upon which the LSI‐R rests (i.e., social learning theory) accounts for criminal behavior among men and women. In short, the LSI‐R is gender‐neutral. Fe...

Purpose The research compared the predictors of work‐related stress for policemen and policewomen. Stressors included workplace problems, token status in the organization, low family and coworker support, and community and organizational conditions. Design/methodology/approach In 11 police departments, racial and ethnic minorities were oversampled...

According to the symbolic interactionist perspective, the juveniles who are most likely to have a police record of arrest are those who conform to police preconceptions about delinquent types, who are perceived as a threat to others, and who are most visible to the police. Several individual and peer group characteristics can serve as cues that you...

The prior literature has highlighted a variety of workplace problems, such as racial and gender bias and lack of influence over work activities, as influences on police stress. Additional explanations for police stress include community conditions, for example, high crime rates and size of the community, token status within the police organization,...

Research Summary This research investigates the effects of poverty and state capital (i.e., state‐sponsored support) on recidivism among women offenders. We seek also to determine whether criticisms directed at actuarial risk tools, such as the failure to take into account gender‐related factors (e.g., poverty status), have merit. A community corre...

Scholars and practitioners have noted the potential for using understanding and language about the unique needs of women offenders to justify special controls over them in the prison setting. Using data from a national study of innovative management and programming strategies among correctional administrators, the present research examines manageme...

Recent corrections research indicates that programs and community services providing assistance and training for women offenders are lacking. Using a sample of 402 female felony offenders, women's needs, including those thought to be criminogenic (i.e., characteristics and circumstances that heighten an individual's recidivism risk), are examined t...

The Michigan Department of Corrections implemented an innovative Life Skills Program that focused on addressing the special needs of female inmates. The primary purpose was to enhance basic life skills such as employability, coping with stress, and parenting. Female inmates participated in the Life Skills Program prior to their release and continue...

Using a social constructionist perspective to guide our research, we combined quantitative and qualitative methods to explore the perspectives of correctional administrators. Specifically, we proposed that how administrators construct gender influences their views of appropriate programming for women offenders, their views of gender specific needs...

This study evaluates corporate security functions and goals. Data from a survey of corporate security directors of Fortune 1000 companies in the US suggest that corporate security carries out functions and processes typically identified in private security literature. These functions include physical security, executive and employee protection, pre...

Studies investigating the trials and tribulations of women offenders in the United States are becoming increasingly common. One theme in the literature is that successful reentry of women offenders is dependent on support of social networks. Generally, social theorists posit that a variety of positive outcomes is associated with healthy social netw...

Social capital theory provided a framework for assessing the impact of participation in the Michigan Victim Assistance Academy (MVAA), an intensive university based education program for people whose job includes assisting crime victims. The MVAA was designed to, among other things, increase participants’ social capital as reflected by quality of r...

The present study, which was designed to improve understanding of the context, patterns, and meanings of violence against wives, uses a standpoint-based approach which incorporates a symbolic interactionist method and a feminist perspective to examine wife abuse in Mexican-descent families. Findings from the study indicate that wife abuse occurs in...

This article considers Ronald Akers' book, Social Learning and Social Structure: A General Theory of Crime and Deviance, in relation to knowledge about crimes against women and the relationship of gender to type, pattern and amount of crime. Contributions of the book are summarized, and shortcomings discussed. Specific criticisms are lack of integr...

This study explored gender differences in perceptions of powerlessness, isolation, and postprison expectation among inmates in the Republic of Korea. Korean women and girls occupy a social location that is characterized by marginalization from the labor force, emphasis on a restrictive gender ideology through family and school socialization, and de...

This study examines domestic violence in Vietnamese American families, focusing on changes in socioeconomic structure and culture, to identify factors associated with wife abuse. Husbands' patriarchal beliefs and dominant positions in the family and conflicts about changing norms and values between husbands and wives were found to be related to wif...

In this paper we identify a number of strategies that police officers use to cope with stress caused by problems in the workplace. We also compare coping strategies for gender and racial groups, and link differences to level of stress. Extensive observational data and a survey of 1,087 police officers in 24 departments were used to address the rese...

Discussed in this Brief: Results of an NIJ-sponsored survey of State- level correctional administrators, prison and jail administrators, and program administrators to deter- mine the special needs of incarcer- ated women in the areas of management, screening, assess- ment, and programming. The sur- vey also sought information on innovative correcti...

This article summarizes findings from a national study on promising correctional programs for women offenders. Information is provided about program characteristics that experts identify as predictive of positive outcomes. Similarities among correctional experts' and program participants' responses included characteristics of staff and individualiz...

We surveyed security professionals to identify the most important topic areas and subjects for current and prospective security managers in their undergraduate programs. In a national sample, more than 5,600 security managers and directors were surveyed; 1,490 respondents ranked the importance of 100 subjects in 10 topical areas. Security practitio...

Security professionals were surveyed to identify the most important topic areas and subjects that current and prospective security managers should focus on in their graduate program. Almost 1500 respondents ranked the importance of the topical areas and 100 courses. Security practitioners clearly emphasize business and communications skills in the...

This paper focuses on the connection of workplace problems with stress for women and men working in police departments. Field research was used to identify the problems that women experience in police departments, and quantitative measures were developed to measure these problems in a survey of women and men in 25 departments. Although women and me...

This article examines programming for women in U.S. prisons in the 1980s, a decade marked by an increased number of incarcerated women and by court pressure to correct biases in programming. Data from a census of facilities and a sample of inmates reveal that regardless of gender, the prison experience does little to overcome marginalization from t...

The power control theory of delinquency is one of the few that has attempted to account for both gender and class in delinquency causation. This paper assesses critically the model's conceptual framework and reformulates it on the basis of these concerns as well as the results of prior research. We then test the revised model using data from the Na...

There is growing interest in modeling a military boot camp experience in correctional settings. Prior research on the history of military approaches in correctional settings and military basic training and on the images of masculinity that are encouraged in correctional boot camps raises questions about the efficacy of the correctional boot camp re...

In response to recent findings of a connection between mother's age at her first child's birth and her children's delinquency, knowledge of the increasing number of early childbearing mothers, and policy recommendations to confront related issues, the present article reports on an exploratory analysis of four data sets to document and understand th...

Based on extensive, structured interviews with 59 police officers, an effort was made to explain police behavior and to analyze issues relevant to the conceptualization and implementation of a community policing model. Theories of role identity were used to determine officers' ideal, actual, and behavioral identities in interactions with teenagers,...

This article provides an empirical analysis and a qualitative assessment of the major evaluations of policewomen's performance: A number of problems common to research on women are identified. In particular, there is a tendency to emphasize situations and characteristics associated with a male stereotype. Also, policewomen are often evaluated on cr...

Based on a comprehensive list of the factors that affect program and policy implementation in the United States, an assessment was made of the degree to which the National Institute of Justice Exemplary Project documents include information relevant to replicating criminal justice programs. A description of the kinds of programs that have been chos...

The degree to which gender effects on both aggressive and property delinquency are mediated by peer group experiences is examined with data on 588 adolescents in two types of urban communities. The data best support an explanation in which gender has its major effect on the type of peer group to which an adolescent belongs. More specifically, girls...

This article focuses on the utility of social impact assessment as a method for the study of criminal and juvenile justice programs. Social impact assessment is a relatively new research approach which has most often been used not in the field of criminal and juvenile justice, but to predict the many possible impacts of public construction programs...

This article focuses on the common practice of employing masters level mental health professionals (social workers and psychologists) rather than bachelors level probation officers to prepare presentence reports in juvenile court settings. Using a before-and-after research design, the study identified and compared the process of decision making, th...

Cognitive developmental theory has been increasingly offered as on explanation for lawbreaking. The theory suggests that lawbreaking results from individuals not having sufficiently developed reasoning abilities to resolve moral dilemmas, specificially those involving illegal acts. This article reports on on original test of the association between...

The purpose of this study was to compare the identity status of employed, working class youth with status frequencies reported by Marcia for middle class college students of the same age. Also, an exploratory content analysis was used to suggest factors that block and facilitate identity achievement within the working class group. Identity status r...

This paper examines one aspect of liberal ideology which has significantly influenced correctional programs and policy—liberals' ideas about the role of work as a rehabilitative measure. We discuss and criticize the relations between criminality and unemployment and between rehabilitation and work, as espoused by the liberals in their theories, pol...

Thesis--University of Maryland. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 180-199). Photocopy of typescript.

The systems perspective focuses on the importance of considering the linkage between criminal justice institutions in the program evaluation process. This paper reports on a study which employed the technique of social impact assessment to examine the effect of a change instituted by a juvenile justice probation and court agency on police operation...

The study found patterns and types of help for the women that apparently supported leaving the abusive relationship or stopping the abuse. “Best practices” associated with desirable changes included key features of a culturally competent, coordinated community response. This consisted of referring clients to multiple resources, multiple “starting p...