Category Archives: Richard Fording

The Politics of Punishment: Doing Time in Hard Times

Posted on June 21, 2010 by | 2 Comments

This is the title of a new APSA Working Group that will meet during this year’s meeting in DC. If you are not familiar with what a working group is, see the APSA description.

Here is the description of the agenda for this group. For a link to the page and instructions for registering (you must register to participate) look here.

“For quite some time, the number of political scientists working in the area of punishment/ incarceration has been small – both in absolute terms and relative to our cognate discipline of sociology. In the last 5-10 years, however, the number of political science graduate students and young faculty interested in the politics of punishment has grown markedly. The annual meeting panels, regrettably, have not yet reflected this growing interest and energy—given the limited numbers of proposals that can be accommodated within each of the relevant annual meeting sections. So over the last several years, a number of us have broached with each other the possibility of trying to initiate a working group to bring visibility to this burgeoning area of scholarship and to forge intellectual connections among the diverse individuals and groups of scholars writing on incarceration and punishment. This interest has crystallized this year and we are excited to propose a working group on the politics of punishment for the 2010 annual conference. Continue reading →

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Posted in Policy, Richard Fording, War on Drugs

Say It Ain’t So…Dio!

Posted on June 14, 2010 by | Comments Off

RIP
July 10, 1942 – May 16, 2010

Back in 1980, I forgot to return my Columbia House Record Club notice and ended up receiving Black Sabbath’s “The Mob Rules” in the mail as the monthly featured selection. It ended up being a great decision. This was my first introduction to Black Sabbath and the experience changed my musical taste forever. While the appeal of Black Sabbath has always been Tony Iommi’s riveting guitar riff’s, the vocals were unlike anything I had listened to prior to that time. Of course, many of you must assume I am talking about Ozzy Osbourne. Nope. In 1980 Ozzy was a solo act, having been fired by Iommi a year before. The lead singer of my Black Sabbath was Ronnie James Dio. Continue reading →

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Posted in Pop Culture, Richard Fording, Uncategorized

Politics and state punitiveness …

Posted on June 11, 2010 by | Comments Off

Since Richard is guest blogging this summer, I thought it might be a good time to highlight some of our co-authored work. Below is the abstract of an article we wrote a while back; you can download the article here. We plan to do some follow up research on this topic in the near future.

Politics and State Punitiveness in Black and White

Abstract:
Recent findings from the literature on imprisonment policy suggest that in addition to traditional social and economic variables, imprisonment rates are also strongly related to changes in the state political environment. In this study, we extend this literature by testing a theory of state punitiveness which posits that (1) the political environment of states influences the degree to which they incarcerate their citizens, and (2) the political determinants of state punitiveness may be conditional upon the racial sub-population being incarcerated. Our results suggest that increases in state political conservatism in recent decades have contributed to increases in both the growth in black imprisonment rates and black imprisonment disparity (relative to whites), but that these effects are, to a degree, tempered by countervailing political conditions.

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Posted in Academia, Data, Jeff, Law, Policy, politics, Richard Fording, War on Drugs

Why American Idol Producers Should Take a Political Science Course

Posted on June 10, 2010 by | 2 Comments

Even if you don’t watch American Idol (I admit I do), you can’t help but be aware that it is the most popular show on television. For contestants, winning the contest can transform an otherwise unknown amateur into an international celebrity. The rules are simple. Contestants perform and viewers vote for their favorite performer by texting their vote after the show. Each week the contestant with the lowest vote total is booted off the show. The process continues until there is winner – the new American Idol. 

The legitimacy of the new “American Idol” seems justified. After all, the winner is America’s choice, right? Perhaps not, according to some research on this question. Continue reading →

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Posted in Pop Culture, Richard Fording

Gaining the Upper (White) Hand on Craigslist

Posted on June 3, 2010 by | Comments Off

In 1978, one of my favorite social scientists – William J. Wilson – published “The Declining Significance of Race” in which he argued that class barriers had become a more important obstacle to black progress than intentional racial discrimination. Perhaps this is true, but thirty years later, well-designed social science studies continue to report evidence of racial discrimination in various dimensions of social and economic life.

The latest evidence comes from a clever study by Jennifer Doleac and Luke Stein of Stanford, who investigated whether including photos of white, black or tattooed hands holding new iPod Nanos in online classified ads on Craigslist has an effect on the offers that prospective buyers make. The short answer: yes.

Read this very interesting story on AOL News (with a link to the original study)

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Posted in Policy, Richard Fording