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RSF: Criminal Justice Contact and Inequality
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RSF: Criminal Justice Contact and Inequality

Editors
Kristin Turney
Sara Wakefield
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$29.95
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7 in. × 10 in. 288 pages
ISBN
978-0-87154-746-0

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Policymakers and the public are increasingly aware of the dire consequences of mass incarceration for millions of individuals and families. However, incarceration is only one component of the larger criminal justice system. Many more individuals have contact with the criminal justice system through arrests, misdemeanor convictions, and the accumulation of fines and fees, without spending time behind bars. In this issue of RSF, editors sociologist Kristin Turney and criminologist Sara Wakefield and a multi-disciplinary group of authors analyze how the range of criminal justice contact create, maintain, and exacerbate inequalities. Contributors show that the vast scope of the criminal jus-tice system disproportionately targets low-income and minority populations, with serious consequences across the life course.

Several articles explore the ramifications of ongoing surveillance. Amanda Geller and Jeffrey Fagan survey adolescents who come into contact with law enforcement and find that intrusive police stops contribute to heightened cynicism toward the legal system, suggesting that aggressive policing weakens youths’ deference to law and legal authorities. Robert Vargas and coauthors study police-dispatcher radio communications and show that data breaches where the dispatcher reveals confidential identifying information about individuals reporting criminal activity are more common in predominantly black and Latino neighborhoods. Because police scanners are accessible by the public, these breaches make residents more vulnerable to criminals, gangs, or predatory businesses. Other contributors explore the effects of criminal justice contact on family life. Frank Edwards examines how families’ interactions with the child welfare system differ by race and shows that black and Native American families living in counties with high arrest rates are more likely to be investigated for child abuse and neglect than similar families in counties with low arrest rates. For whites, by contrast, poverty—rather than arrests—is the strongest predictor for contact with the child welfare system. In an ethnographic study of bail bond agents, Joshua Page and coauthors find that this industry uses predatory methods to extract bail from the female relatives and partners of incarcerated individuals, increasing financial hardship particularly among low-income women of color.

The criminal justice system is an institution of social stratification in the United States. By documenting how regimes of punishment and surveillance extend far beyond prison, this issue advances our under-standing of how social inequalities are perpetuated by a supposedly impartial system.

About the Author

KRISTIN TURNEY is associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine.

SARA WAKEFIELD is associate professor of criminal justice at Rutgers University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Robert Apel, Jeremy Christofferson, Frank Edwards, Jeffrey Fagan, Brittany Friedman, Amanda Geller, David J. Harding, Heather M. Harris, Katherine Hood, David S. Kirk, Joshua Page, Andrew Papachristos, Mary Pattillo, Victoria Piehowski, Kathleen Powell, Kayla Preito-Hodge, Daniel Schneider, Joe Soss, Kristin Turney, Robert Vargas, Sara Wakefield, Vesla M. Weaver, Michael Zanger-Tishler

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RSF: Using Administrative Data for Science and Policy
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RSF: Using Administrative Data for Science and Policy

Editors
Andrew M. Penner
Kenneth A. Dodge
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$29.95
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Publication Date
7 in. × 10 in. 192, 144 pages
ISBN
978-0-87154-759-0

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Administrative data collected by the government, schools, hospitals, and other institutions are essential for effectively managing and evaluating public programs. Yet the U.S. lags behind many other countries when it comes to organizing these data and making linkages across different domains, such as education, health, and the labor market. This double issue of RSF, edited by sociologist Andrew Penner and developmental psychologist Kenneth Dodge, illustrates the tremendous potential of administrative data and provides guidance for the researchers and policymakers. Contributors across multiple disciplines demonstrate how linking disparate sources of administrative data can help us better understand the challenges faced by people in need, thereby improving the reach and efficiency of policy solutions.

Several contributors show how databases tracking educational attainment yield new insights into the role of schools in either ameliorating or perpetuating socioeconomic inequalities. Sean Reardon analyzes standardized test scores of roughly 45 million K-12 students nationwide to explore how educational opportunity varies by school districts over time. He finds that while affluent districts typically provide high levels of early childhood learning opportunities, some schools in high-poverty districts have increased average test scores between third and eighth grade. However, this growth still does not close the large achievement gap between low- and high-socioeconomic-status students. Megan Austin and coauthors analyze the effects of school voucher programs on academic achievement and find that students who switch from a public to a private school with a voucher experience significant declines in achievement, particularly in math.

Other articles demonstrate how the analysis of administrative data can further our understanding of racial and gender inequality. Janelle Downing and Tim Bruckner link housing foreclosure records and birth records to show that foreclosures and related stresses during the Great Recession contributed to premature births and lower birth weights, particularly for Hispanic mothers and their children. Roberto Fernandez and Brian Rubineau investigate hiring data to explore how recruitment through employer referrals affects the “glass ceiling” in the workplace. They show that network recruitment increases women’s representation strongly at lower job levels, and to a lesser extent at higher levels.

As this issue shows, finding innovative ways to combine multiple data sets can facilitate partnerships between social scientists, administrators, and policymakers and extend our understanding of pressing social issues.

About the Author

ANDREW M. PENNER is professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine.

KENNETH A . DODGE is Pritzker Professor of Public Policy and professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Megan Austin, Mark Berends, Rebecca Boylan, Tim Bruckner, Maria Cancian, Kenneth A. Dodge, Thurston Domina, Janelle Downing, Roberto M. Fernandez, Robert M. Goerge, Ingrid Gould Ellen, David B. Grusky, Michael Hout, Lanikque Howard, ChangHwan Kim, Lisa Klein Vogel, Johanna Lacoe, Agustina Laurito, Rebekah Levine Coley, Jing Liu, Susanna Loeb, Portia Miller, Brittany Murray, Jennifer L. Noyes, Andrew M. Penner, Emily K. Penner, Sean F. Reardon, Linda Renzulli, Jane Rochmes, Brian Rubineau, Amy Ellen Schwartz, Patrick Sharkey, Timothy M. Smeeding, C. Matthew Snipp, Sabrina Solanki, Christopher R. Tamborini, Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal, R. Joseph Waddington, Emily R. Wiegand 6 | RSF JOURNAL

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Cover image of the book The Handbook of Research Synthesis and Meta-Analysis
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The Handbook of Research Synthesis and Meta-Analysis

Third Edition
Editors
Harris Cooper
Larry V. Hedges
Jeffrey C. Valentine
Paperback
$99.95
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Publication Date
7.5 in. × 9.25 in. 556 pages
ISBN
978-0-87154-005-8
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PRAISE FOR THE PREVIOUS EDITIONS

“ As someone who is highly involved in conducting meta-analyses and teaching meta-analysis to students, I can say that this handbook has a chapter on every issue that arises. Each chapter is written by a major expert in the field and provides authoritative answers. The Handbook of Research Synthesis and Meta-Analysis is a must-have for anyone working on meta-analysis.”
—JANET SHIBLEY HYDE, Helen Thompson Woolley Professor, University of Wisconsin

“[A] tour de force, an indispensable reference that no meta-analyst will want to be without. It is elegantly organized, encyclopedic in breadth and coverage, and articulate in exposition of the role meta-analysis plays in advancing the cumulative nature of knowledge. [The book] is destined to become a classic . . . highly recommended and a must for any serious student or practitioner of the research enterprise.”
—FREDERIC M. WOLF, Learning Resource Center, University of Michigan

Research synthesis is the practice of systematically distilling and integrating data from many studies in order to draw more reliable conclusions about a given research issue. When the first edition of The Handbook of Research Synthesis and Meta-Analysis was published in 1994, it quickly became the definitive reference for conducting meta-analyses in both the social and behavioral sciences. In the third edition, editors Harris Cooper, Larry Hedges, and Jeff Valentine present updated versions of classic chapters and add new sections that evaluate cutting-edge developments in the field.

The Handbook of Research Synthesis and Meta-Analysis draws upon groundbreaking advances that have transformed research synthesis from a narrative craft into an important scientific process in its own right. The editors and leading scholars guide the reader through every stage of the research synthesis process—problem formulation, literature search and evaluation, statistical integration, and report preparation. The Handbook incorporates state-of-the-art techniques from all quantitative synthesis traditions and distills a vast literature to explain the most effective solutions to the problems of quantitative data integration. Among the statistical issues addressed are the synthesis of non-independent data sets, fixed and random effects methods, the performance of sensitivity analyses and model assessments, the development of machine-based abstract screening, the increased use of meta-regression and the problems of missing data. The Handbook also addresses the non-statistical aspects of research synthesis, including searching the literature and developing schemes for gathering information from study reports. Those engaged in research synthesis will find useful advice on how tables, graphs, and narration can foster communication of the results of research syntheses.

The third edition of the Handbook provides comprehensive instruction in the skills necessary to conduct research syntheses and represents the premier text on research synthesis.

HARRIS COOPER is Hugo L. Blomquist Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University.

LARRY V. HEDGES is Professor of Statistics and Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University.

JEFFREY C. VALENTINE is Professor of Education and Human Development at the University of Louisville.

CONTRIBUTORS Ariel M. Aloe, Betsy Jane Becker, Michael Borenstein, Kathleen Coburn, Thomas D. Cook, Harris Cooper, Dean Giustini, Julie Glanville, Sean Grant, Larry V. Hedges, Julian P. T. Higgins, Spyros Konstantopoulos, Huy Le, Mark W. Lipsey, Georg E. Matt, In-Sue Oh, Robert G. Orwin, Terri D. Pigott, Frank L. Schmidt, Rebecca Turner, Jeffrey C. Valentine, Jack L. Vevea, Howard D. White, David B. Wilson, Evan Mayo-Wilson, Sandra Jo Wilson, Nicole A. M. Zelinsky

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Cover image of the book Immigration and the Remaking of Black America
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Immigration and the Remaking of Black America

Author
Tod G. Hamilton
Paperback
$35.00
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Publication Date
6 in. × 9 in. 314 pages
ISBN
978-0-87154-407-0
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Winner of the 2020 Otis Dudley Duncan Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Social Demography

Honorable Mention for the 2020 Thomas and Znaniecki Award from the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association

“Using the best available data, state-of-the-art analytical strategies, and sophisticated theoretical framing, Immigration and the Remaking of Black America offers the definitive statement about the diverse experiences of black immigrants to the United States and how they compare to their native-born African American counterparts. Professor Hamilton has unquestionably raised the bar for future scholars who would seek to further advance our understanding of this important, but heretofore poorly understood, population.”
—STEWART E. TOLNAY, S. Frank Miyamoto Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University of Washington

“In the most comprehensive study to date of voluntary black immigration to the United States, Tod Hamilton conducts a tempered and temperate demolition on cherished conventional claims about race, national origin, immigration, and social outcomes. Hamilton’s systematic comparisons of the characteristics and experiences of recent black immigrants vis-à-vis their fellow nationals who remain in their home country, of internal black migrants to the north vis-à-vis those blacks who remained in the south, and of recent black immigrants vis-à-vis the native black American population writ large eradicate cultural-cum-behavioral explanations for ongoing racial inequality in the United States. Immigration and the Remaking of Black America is a masterful study.”
—WILLIAM A. DARITY JR., Samuel DuBois Cook Professor of Public Policy, Professor of African and African American Studies, and Professor of Economics, Duke University

Immigration and the Remaking of Black America teaches us what it means to be black in America today. Its author, Tod G. Hamilton, provides a timely and accessible theoretical and empirical demographic benchmark describing America’s newest black immigrants. More importantly, Hamilton sets today’s black immigrant experience in comparison with native-born black Americans, who still feel the ancestral sting of forced migration from a much earlier and shameful period in U.S. history. America’s burgeoning immigrant and refugee populations from sub-Saharan Africa are too often overlooked but can tell us a great deal about contemporary race relations, race and class dynamics, and immigrant integration in a multiracial society. Immigration and the Remaking of Black America fills the current void.”
—DANIEL T. LICHTER, Ferris Family Professor, Cornell University

Over the last four decades, immigration from the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa to the U. S. has increased rapidly. In several states, African immigrants are now the primary drivers of growth in the black population. While social scientists and commentators have noted that these black immigrants’ social and economic outcomes often differ from those of their native-born counterparts, few studies have carefully analyzed the mechanisms that produce these disparities. In Immigration and the Remaking of Black America, sociologist Tod Hamilton shows how immigration is reshaping black America. He weaves together interdisciplinary scholarship with new data to enhance our understanding of the causes of socioeconomic stratification among both the native-born and newcomers.

Hamilton demonstrates that immigration from the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa is driven by selective migration, meaning that newcomers from these countries tend to have higher educational attainment and better health than those who stay behind. As a result, they arrive in the U.S. with some advantages over native-born blacks, and, in some cases, over whites. He also shows the importance of historical context: prior to the Civil Rights Movement, black immigrants’ socioeconomic outcomes resembled native-born blacks’ much more closely, regardless of their educational attainment in their country of origin. Today, however, certain groups of black immigrants have better outcomes than native-born black Americans—such as lower unemployment rates and higher rates of homeownership—in part because they immigrated at a time of expanding opportunities for minorities and women in general. Hamilton further finds that rates of marriage and labor force participation among native-born blacks that move away from their birth states resemble those of many black immigrants, suggesting that some disparities within the black population stem from processes associated with migration, rather than from
nativity alone.

Hamilton argues that failing to account for this diversity among the black population can lead to incorrect estimates of the social progress made by black Americans and the persistence of racism and discrimination. He calls for future research on racial inequality to disaggregate different black populations. By richly detailing the changing nature of black America, Immigration and the Remaking of Black America helps scholars and policymakers to better understand the complexity of racial disparities in the twenty-first century.

TOD G. HAMILTON is assistant professor of sociology at Princeton University.

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Cover image of the book Credit Where It’s Due
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Credit Where It’s Due

Rethinking Financial Citizenship
Authors
Frederick F. Wherry
Kristin S. Seefeldt
Anthony S. Alvarez
Paperback
$29.95
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6 in. × 9 in. 176 pages
ISBN
978-0-87154-866-5
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“Working hard and playing by the rules still casts aside millions. Credit Where It’s Due tells the inspiring story of the Mission Asset Fund’s pathway to belonging and financial citizenship. Inspired and well crafted, this book builds the case for making and illuminates how to make citizenship, immigrant integration, and democracy work for organizations, advocates, and anybody committed to building a better society.”
—THOMAS M. SHAPIRO, director and David R. Pokross Professor of Law and Social Policy, Institute on Assets and Social Policy, The Heller School, Brandeis University

Credit Where It’s Due is an original and masterful examination that goes well beyond the crowded scholarly field of finance and economic exploitation to document the ways in which systems of finance stratify society in areas as basic as human decency, belonging, and recognition. But, far from simply a doom and gloom story, the book presents financial alternatives grounded in the depth of contemporary personal narratives of how finance can be dignity affirming and structured to empower rather than socially degrading and exploitive. This book will advance the field in profound ways.”
—DARRICK HAMILTON, executive director, Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, The Ohio State University

An estimated 45 million adults in the U.S. lack a credit score at time when credit invisibility can reduce one’s ability to rent a home, find employment, or secure a mortgage or loan. As a result, individuals without credit—who are disproportionately African American and Latino—often lead separate and unequal financial lives. Yet, as sociologists and public policy experts Frederick Wherry, Kristin Seefeldt, and Anthony Alvarez argue, many people who are not recognized within the financial system engage in behaviors that indicate their credit worthiness. How might institutions acknowledge these practices and help these people emerge from the financial shadows? In Credit Where It’s Due, the authors evaluate an innovative model of credit-building and advocate for a new understanding of financial citizenship, or participation in a financial system that fosters social belonging, dignity, and respect.

Wherry, Seefeldt, and Alvarez tell the story of the Mission Asset Fund, a San Francisco-based organization that assists mostly low and moderate-income people of color with building credit. The Mission Asset Fund facilitates zero-interest lending circles, which have been practiced by generations of immigrants, but have gone largely unrecognized by mainstream financial institutions. Participants decide how the circles are run and how they will use their loans, and the organization reports their clients’ lending activity to credit bureaus. As the authors show, this system not only helps clients build credit, but also allows them to manage debt with dignity, have some say in the creation of financial products, and reaffirm their sense of social membership. The authors delve into the history of racial wealth inequality in the U.S. to show that for many black and Latino households, credit invisibility is not simply a matter of individual choices or inadequate financial education. Rather, financial marginalization is the result of historical policies that enabled predatory lending, discriminatory banking and housing practices, and the rollback of regulatory protections for first-time homeowners.

To rectify these inequalities, the authors propose common sense regulations to protect consumers from abuse alongside new initiatives that provide seed capital for every child, create affordable short-term loans, and ensure that financial institutions treat low- and moderate income clients with equal respect. By situating the successes of the Mission Asset Fund in the larger history of credit and debt, Credit Where It’s Due shows how to prioritize financial citizenship for all.

FREDERICK F. WHERRY is professor of sociology at Princeton University.

KRISTIN S. SEEFELDT is associate professor of social work and associate professor of public policy at the University of Michigan.

ANTHONY S. ALVAREZ is assistant professor of sociology at California State University, Fullerton.

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Cover image of the book Wrecked
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Wrecked

How the American Automobile Industry Destroyed Its Capacity to Compete
Authors
Joshua Murray
Michael Schwartz
Paperback
$35.00
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Publication Date
6 in. × 9 in. 272 pages
ISBN
978-0-87154-820-7
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“The prevailing view holds that union power and unreasonable demands by workers are responsible for the decline of the U.S. auto industry. In this compellingly argued study, Murray and Schwartz challenge that narrative. The problem, Wrecked lucidly argues, is not workers’ actual power. The root of the problem is that U.S. manufacturers are totally unwilling to form a social contract with workers and their unions, choosing total company control despite the fact that means increased costs and decreased flexibility. Anyone interested in reviving U.S. manufacturing needs to read this book.”
—DAN CLAWSON, professor of sociology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

“It’s almost a truism to lay the decline of the American auto industry at the feet of the trade union movement—for demanding too much, not working hard enough, and in so doing, reducing the competitiveness of the Big Three automakers. But in this brilliant book, Josh Murray and Michael Schwartz place the blame back where it belongs—on the managers and owners and their investment decisions. Whereas Japanese competitor firms based their production model on increasing labor productivity, the Big Three turned increasingly to a low-wage, low-cost model—which quickly lost ground to rival producers. The result has been nothing short of catastrophic for millions of workers in the heartland of American manufacturing. Wrecked sets the record straight. It will take its place as a classic in economic sociology.”
—VIVEK CHIBBER, professor of sociology, New York University

At its peak in the 1950s and 1960s, automobile manufacturing was the largest, most profitable industry in the United States and residents of industry hubs like Detroit and Flint, Michigan had some of the highest incomes in the country. Over the last half-century, the industry has declined, and American automakers now struggle to stay profitable. How did the most prosperous industry in the richest country in the world crash and burn? In Wrecked, sociologists Joshua Murray and Michael Schwartz offer an unprecedented historical sociological analysis of the downfall of the auto industry. Through an in-depth examination of labor relations and the production processes of automakers in the U.S. and Japan both before and after World War II, they demonstrate that the decline of the American manufacturers was the unintended consequence of their attempts to weaken the bargaining power of their unions.

Today Japanese and many European automakers produce higher quality cars at lower cost than their American counterparts thanks to a flexible form of production characterized by long-term sole suppliers, assembly and supply plants located near each other, and just-in-time delivery of raw materials. While this style of production was, in fact, pioneered in the U.S. prior to World War II, in the years after the war, American automakers deliberately dismantled this system. As Murray and Schwartz show, flexible production accelerated innovation but also facilitated workers’ efforts to unionize plants and carry out work stoppages. To reduce the efficacy of strikes and combat the labor militancy that flourished between the Depression and the postwar period, the industry dispersed production across the nation, began maintaining large stockpiles of inventory, and eliminated single sourcing. While this restructuring of production did ultimately reduce workers’ leverage, it also decreased production efficiency and innovation. The U.S. auto industry has struggled ever since to compete with foreign automakers, and formerly thriving motor cities have suffered the consequences of mass deindustrialization.

Murray and Schwartz argue that new business models that reinstate flexible production and prioritize innovation rather than cheap labor could stem the outsourcing of jobs and help revive the auto industry. By clarifying the historical relationships between production processes, organized labor, and industrial innovation, Wrecked provides new insights into the inner workings and decline of the U.S. auto industry.

JOSHUA MURRAY is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Vanderbilt University.

MICHAEL SCHWARTZ is Distinguished Teaching Professor of Sociology at Stony Brook University.

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