Presidential reflections

Family stories participate in the formation of culture as they imagine and reproduce ethnic identity. This essay examines grandmother (mémère,) stories in Franco American families as the cultural location of a global moment where family, white ethnic identity, and gender intersect. Within a transnational feminism and performative theory of family storytelling which historidze and situate cultural texts, grandmothers become linked with the motherland and mother tongue in the imagination of Franco American identity. The analysis of a corpus of mémère stories identifies both the performative agency and constraints on traditional ethnic women within structures of gender, culture, ana power. The performance of mémère stories enchants the grandmother as a cultural icon and reproduces the Franco American family. However, the formation of cultural identity through family storytelling in mémère stories is a problematic achievement because it is built upon myths of cultural purity and “goodness,“ although narrative strategies complicate these images.     

Lombroso's Legacy: The Miseducation of Criminologists

This study examines the extent to which criminal justice and criminology Ph.D. students are exposed to contemporary biological and genetic findings associated with aggression and violence. Drawing on multiple sources of information, we find little evidence showing that Ph.D. students are exposed to any biological research on crime and offending. We examine the consequences for this “trained incompetence” and offer suggestions for remedying this deficiency.

If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. (John Stuart Mill)     

Teaching Biosocial Criminology I: Understanding Endophenotypes Using Gottfredson and Hirschi’s Self‐Control Construct

Criminology is experiencing a paradigm shift in theory and research that articulates a more interdisciplinary, biosocial mode of inquiry. Unfortunately, however, graduate‐level criminal justice education rarely encompasses biosocial training. The current review is the first in a series of works that seeks to fill this biosocial training void by providing instruction on concepts in the biological sciences and neurosciences that have direct relevance to criminal justice education and criminology. Here we introduce endophenotypes and demonstrate their relevance to the study of crime using the self‐control construct from Gottfredson and Hirschi’s general theory. Because biosocial criminology is in its nascent stage, it is critical that biosocial criminologists provide service and instruction to their social science‐trained colleagues.     

“Ain't no faggot gonna rob me!”: Anti‐gay attitudes of criminal justice undergraduate majors

This study examines the attitudes of undergraduate criminal justice majors towards gays and lesbians. A sample of 1055 undergraduate students including both criminal justice majors and non‐majors were surveyed at four universities. The analysis indicates that criminal justice undergraduate students are unique in the degree to which they hold negative attitudes towards gays and lesbians