NCJ Number
242749
Journal
Journal of Crime and Justice Volume: 36 Issue: 1 Dated: March 2013 Pages: 53-66
Date Published
March 2013
Length
14 pages
Annotation
This research examines the interrelationships between alternative forms of social control.
Abstract
Most research, drawing on the conflict perspective of social control, examines the causal influence of integrative control (welfare, racial residential segregation) on coercive control (police resources, incarceration). Unfortunately, the results from these studies tend to be inconsistent; often varying across eras, research designs, model specifications, and outcome variables. The present investigation, which is also rooted in conflict theory, attempts to make sense of these disparate findings. Toward this end, we use factor analytic, time series procedures to determine whether or not there is a single underlying dimension of macro-social control (the Quinney hypothesis) or if there are two dimensions of macro-social control (Blauner-Spitzer hypothesis). In brief, the results from the factor analyses of annual, national-level measures of welfare recipients, military personnel, psychiatric hospital patients, policing expenditures, and imprisonment fail to confirm either hypothesis concerning the interrelationships among differing mechanisms of macro-social control. Abstract published by arrangement with Taylor and Francis.