Research example #1

The article that I found this week comes from the American Journal of Criminal Justice. The article, titled “Prison Violence, Gender, and Perceptions: Testing a Missing Link in Discretion Research”, is written by David M. Bierie. This article illuminates how agents of criminal justice (police officers, judges, prison staff,etc) exercise their authority and power over those they are in control of. The article examines how gender and perceptions of violence through past experiences can influence the force exerted by those agents. Men and women have different perceptions of violence because of how violence is presented to them in their life experiences. For example, women are more likely to be victims of sexual assault and domestic violence, while men are more likely to be perpetrators of this kind of violence. This impacts their perception when a violent situation occurs and how they react to it. The article focuses on 2 research questions: (1) do male and female officers show similar perceptions of serious violence, yet diverging perceptions of minor assault? and (2) do women perceive less minor violence than men? The study drew from the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ annual Prison Social Climate Survey (PSCS), which contained the opinions of 2,184 correctional staff across 112 prisons in the U.S. The survey used a stratified proportional probability random sampling design to draw a pool of staff from each institution. Each respondent was asked to estimate the number of assaults they knew to have occurred within the last 6 months. They looked at common assault, armed assault and sexual assault. They survey also consisted of demographic data (e.g. race) and job characteristics. They tested where gender impacts perceptions of violence through a fixed-effects regression framework. Information was gathered from the staff in different ways (witnessing, communication, etc.). In conclusion, the study did find that gender and perception do matter.

Bierie, David. “Prison Violence, Gender, and Perceptions: Testing a Missing Link in Discretion Research.” American Journal of Criminal Justice 37, no. 2 (June 2012).