POSSIBLE MIDTERM QUESTIONS
TO: Students in CJ 633
FROM: R. B. Taylor
DATE: 10/14/03
RE: Midterm
BACKGROUND.
Attached are possible questions for the midterm. AGAIN: this is a no notes,
closed book, in class midterm. It will take place next Monday October 20th
during the regular class time. I strongly suspect at this time that the format
will be as displayed below except for the following change: One or more sections
may (about a 75% chance I would say) drop out.
REMEMBER: working together is encouraged. Sitting down together to prepare joint answers, however, is specifically DISCOURAGED. It is ok to bat ideas around together; it is not ok to collaborate on doing things like preparing specific outlines or answers.
SECTION A: Answer the following:
1. Describe in your OWN words the processes described by Wilson in his 1996 book WHEN WORK DISAPPEARS, by means of which increasing unemployment, resulting from the spatial deconcentration of manufacturing jobs, results in a more disorderly life on the street of a neighborhood, more delinquency, and weaker adult supervision. Be clear when you are describing these processes to specify the particular level at which these take place. A good answer will want to talk about employment, local institutions, household dynamics, and spatial and temporal distributions of outdoor behavior.
SECTION B: Answer ONE of the following:
2. Summarize BRIEFLY the work careers of Gary McCullough and his father. Argue for or against the following point: the contrast in their two work careers can be explained in part by the macrostructural processes taking place over time, and as described by Wilson in WHEN WORK DISAPPEARS.
3. Summarize briefly the highlights of DeAndre's efforts to obtain gainful, legal employment described during the year covered by THE CORNER. Describe SPECIFICALLY how the features of both his job search behavior, his job attendance, and his relations with supervisors at these job sites can be explained by Wilson's model described in his 1996 book.
SECTION C: Answer ONE of the following:
4. Sampson et al. in the "neighborhood effects" article argue that several problems prevent us from really concluding that neighborhoods are really affecting the outcomes of interest to us. IN YOUR OWN WORDS describe TWO of these problems -- be sure at least ONE of them is selection effects.
5. Sampson in his article on "dynamic contextualism" argues for a different approach to studying crime and criminals. From this perspective, what are the two or three most important points if we apply these ideas to thinking about crime in communities?
SECTION D: Answer ONE of the following
6. What are the main ways that Bursik and Grasmick have "improved" on the Shaw and McKay model of social disorganization? (NOTE: this question looks easier than the one just below, but it probably is not).
7. You will be presented with the diagram of the systemic control model from the B&G book. Specific pathways will be highlighted - anywhere from 2 to 4 - you will be asked: For each highlighted pathway provide a short example to illustrate the process referred to in this pathway.
SECTION E: Answer the following
8. Describe in your own words how the human territorial functioning processes help us "explain" why some streetblocks have more crime than others.
SECTION F: Answer one of the following:
9. Based on your reading of the 1997 JRCD article, what does it mean to say that the streetblock functions as a "behavior setting"?
10. Based on your reading of the 1997 JRCD article, describe two micro-ecological principles discussed there, and provide a brief example of each one you describe.
SECTION G: Answer the following:
11. Argue for or against the following proposition: The HTF model and the systemic model of Bursik and Grasmick are both focusing on the SAME processes to help us understand crime and delinquency in communities.
Questions actually used
SECTION
A: Answer the following:
1.
Describe in your OWN words the processes described by Wilson in his 1996 book
WHEN WORK DISAPPEARS, by means of which increasing unemployment, resulting from
the spatial deconcentration of manufacturing jobs, results in a more disorderly
life on the street of a neighborhood, more delinquency, and weaker adult
supervision. Be clear when you are describing these processes to specify the
particular level at which these take place. A good answer will want to talk
about employment, local institutions, household dynamics, and spatial and
temporal distributions of outdoor behavior.
SECTION
B: Answer ONE of the following:
2.
Summarize BRIEFLY the work careers of Gary McCullough and his father. Argue for
or against the following point: the contrast in their two work careers can be
explained in part by the macrostructural processes taking place over time, and
as described by Wilson in WHEN WORK DISAPPEARS.
3.
Summarize briefly the highlights of DeAndre's efforts to obtain gainful, legal
employment described during the year covered by THE CORNER.
Describe SPECIFICALLY how the features of both his job search behavior,
his job attendance, and his relations with supervisors at these job sites can be
explained by
described
in his 1996 book.
SECTION
C: Answer the following
4. What are the main ways that Bursik and Grasmick have "improved" on the Shaw and McKay model of social disorganization? (NOTE: this question looks easier than the one just below, but it probably is not).
SECTION
D: Answer the following:
5. Argue for or against the following proposition: The HTF model and the systemic model of Bursik and Grasmick are both focusing on the SAME processes to help us understand crime and delinquency in communities.
NUMBERED COMMENTS - KEYED TO YOUR ANSWERS
1. You could be more specific about the processes through which institutional shifts – loss of employment, decreasing presence of local institutions – leads to less informal social control.
2. Your answer would have been stronger had you more clearly connected the changes between increased unemployment of parents, the loosening of supervision of children and young adults, and decreased structure and regularity of outdoor activity.
3. In talking about post WWII federally sponsored housing and highway programs that spurred suburbanization, you also could talk about how these programs were racially tilted, and thus helped increase segregation.
4. With the decreased employment, and the decreased travel of adults out of the neighborhood to go to work or to shop (cannot shop because either no money or no stores nearby or both), there is also an increasing social isolation between neighborhoods
5. The decline in manufacturing is mentioned; what also could be mentioned is the changing spatial distribution of manufacturing jobs; these went south, then left the country; the “good” service sector jobs were most likely to be in suburban locations, far from the urban populations.
6. When talking about decreasing commitment to shared norms, one could mention decreased shared commitment to certain daily or weekly patterns of “orderly” street behavior, geared to getting up to go to shift work or school.
7.
8. Could talk about the contrast in wages between the legal employment opportunities available to Deandre, and the illegal opportunity wages afforded him through drug dealing; this pay differential will generate a commitment differential.
9. W/r to Question 5: HTF is shaped partially by local physical dynamics, but not exclusively; this is only one of several classes of predictors in the model. People also manifest HTF through the modifications they make to the physical environment.
SOME ANSWER FRAGMENTS
1.
Describe
in your OWN words the processes described by Wilson in his 1996 book WHEN WORK
DISAPPEARS, by means of which increasing unemployment, resulting from the
spatial deconcentration of manufacturing jobs, results in a more disorderly life
on the street of a neighborhood, more delinquency, and weaker adult supervision.
Be clear when you are describing these processes to specify the particular level
at which these take place. A good answer will want to talk about employment,
local institutions, household dynamics, and spatial and temporal distributions
of outdoor behavior.
A:
*
job migration outward
* coupled with loss of well paying manufacturing jobs
* makes it much harder for those with only a high school education, or less than
high school education, to find a job
* unemployment increases
* increased difficulties getting TO jobs, and even if one gets there, they are
not likely to pay well;
* adult pair bonding decreases
* small businesses, faced with shrinking clientele, close or move out
* institutions in the neighborhood also likely to relocate
* increasing stigma applied to those living in a high unemployment neighborhood
* since parents are not working,
there is less of a set weekday routine;
* children and preteens likely to be out later;
* more tolerance for “disorderly” (which is of course hard to specify)
behavior
* given the increase in one parent households there is less supervision on the
street;
*
if women are working, it is likely to be in low paying service jobs, which means
they are often working more than one job
* given decreased and decreasingly involved local population, and decreasing
connections between neigbhorhoods, there are decreases in organizational
density;
* decreasing attachment to the legal economy, and rising attachment to the
illegal or underground economy
2.
Summarize BRIEFLY the work careers of Gary McCullough and his father. Argue for
or against the following point: the contrast in their two work careers can be
explained in part by the macrostructural processes taking place over time, and
as described by Wilson in WHEN WORK DISAPPEARS.
A:
Wm:
-
no hs education, but could still make a good wage
- came north in great migration
- succession of good manufacturing jobs; these were available;
- able to buy a house and raise over a dozen children
- Am Standard plant closed in 1970s; end of good manuf. Jobs with good hourly
wages
-
had high school and some college
- got one good manuf. Job at Sparrows Point – Bethlehem steel
- went on to other jobs; working several jobs at once;
- moved up as a craft worker and also in contracting;
- trying to hold down several jobs rather than one good manuf. Job paying a
living wage
3.
Summarize briefly the highlights of DeAndre's efforts to obtain gainful, legal
employment described during the year covered by THE CORNER.
Describe SPECIFICALLY how the features of both his job search behavior,
his job attendance, and his relations with supervisors at these job sites can be
explained by
described
in his 1996 book.
4. What are the main ways that Bursik and Grasmick have "improved" on the Shaw and McKay model of social disorganization? (NOTE: this question looks easier than the one just below, but it probably is not).
A:
The main ways B&G “modernized” the Shaw and McKay model was by a) theoretically separating the private and parochial control processes and b) by adding the processes of public control, which link neighborhood organizations and leaders to local external agents and entities; these processes can influence the types of resources coming into (or not coming into) a neighborhood; they make the model less politically naïve.
SECTION
D: Answer the following:
5.
Argue for or against the following proposition: The HTF model and the systemic
model of Bursik and Grasmick are both focusing on the SAME processes to help us
understand crime and delinquency in communities.
A
Some
points you could make:
-htf
concentrates on the parochial level of control, w/i a specific, spatial focus;
systemic looks at three levels of social control
-
htf differentiates parochial control much more
-
htf looks at offender perceptions (and their deterrent value); systemic does not
-
htf is about small, face to face groups; systemic is broader
-
physical environment more relevant for territorial dynamics than systemic
dynamics
-
spatially, htf is more micro
-
htf has an individual level of analysis in addition to a small group, face to
face level of analysis
-
ses relevant for systemic, not as obviously so for htf
-
htf puts a primary emphasis on cognitions about a locale; how residents view it;
systemic does not
-
in htf, social ties can lead directly to less crime or fear, in systemic model,
social ties contribute mainly to socialization and its variations.