SAGE Journal Articles

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Journal Article #1: Brennan, T., Breitenbach, M., & Dieterich, W. (2012). Women’s pathways to serious and habitual crime: A person-centered analysis incorporating gender responsive factors. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 39, 1481–1508.

Abstract: Qualitative approaches for identifying and characterizing women’s pathways to crime are being augmented by quantitative methods. This study applies quantitative taxonomic methods in disaggregating a large sample of women offenders from a prison population to identify diverse pathway prototypes. An array of gender-responsive and gender-neutral factors and full criminal histories was used to characterize each pathway. Cross-sample and cross-method replication tests demonstrated the stable replication of these pathways. The identified prototypes were related to the prior literature, including Daly’s pathway models, Moffitt’s developmental taxonomy, and several prior taxonomic studies of women’s pathways. Eight reliable pathways were identified that were nested within four broad, superordinate pathway categories. Substantial links to the prior pathways literature were noted, although greater complexity was found to exist in the eight identified pathways.

Journal Article #2: Sullivan, C. J., & McGloin, J. M. (2014). Looking back to move forward: Some thoughts on measuring crime and delinquency over the past 50 years. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 51, 445–466.

Abstract: When Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency was first published, criminology was in the midst of an important research stream on the measurement of offending. This never solidified into a strong subdiscipline akin to psychometrics, however. After briefly discussing the goals of measurement and how they correspond to the explanation of criminal events and behavior, the authors consider how the prevailing methodological paradigm, which relies heavily on analysis of a limited number of data sets via variable-based regression techniques, may constrain measurement progress on the whole. In doing so, they highlight the imbalance between the growing sophistication of analytic models and the relative stagnation of the employed data sets and measures. The article then provides some examples of exceptions to this broad trend—both in terms of data collection and measurement techniques. Finally, the authors consider basic lessons drawn from these innovative approaches to measurement.