why haley barbour employed and pardoned convicted murderers rather than car thieves

CNN's Anderson Cooper has devoted several recent crime and punishment reports to the pardons meted out by former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour. In several segments, Mr. Cooper seemed incredulous that convicted murderers were allowed to serve as "trustees" in the governor's mansion prior to their release. In one report, for example, he and attorney Jeffrey Toobin dismissed Governor Barbour's claim that murderers convicted of a single crime of passion were somehow better suited for such positions than inmates serving time for lesser offenses.

I will not comment here on the uses and abuses of the trustee (or "trusty") system, except to note that the practice was once widespread but waned considerably after the prisoners' rights revolution that began in the 1960s. Instead, I'm here to explain why Governour Barbour and his staff preferred employing convicted murderers rather than, say, convicted car thieves.

The chart below is taken from an excellent large-scale Bureau of Justice Statistics recidivism study (Langan and Levin 2002). Overall, 67.5 percent of prisoners were rearrested within 3 years of their release and 25.4 percent were returned to prison for committing new offenses (others were returned to prison for violating the terms of their release). If you click on the chart, you can see that people convicted of homicide have the lowest rate of recidivism as measured by rearrest -- 40.7 percent -- and the second lowest rate of return to prison for a new offense (10.8 percent). At the other end of the chart, about 79% of those convicted of motor vehicle theft were rearrested and about 31 percent were returned to prison after being convicted of a new crime.

This doesn't mean that a 20-year-old murderer is less dangerous than a 20-year-old car thief, of course. It just means that by the time we see fit to release people convicted of homicide, they are unlikely to pose a significant threat to public safety. Many have spent decades in prison and are much older than other inmates when they are finally freed. Convicted murderers make good candidates for pardons precisely because their sentences are soooo long relative to the risk that many of them pose at the tail-end of those sentences.

But aren't those convicted of killing especially likely to kill again? I mean, a 10.8 percent recidivism rate would be awful if half of those offenses turned out to be new murders. Contrary to all we've learned from Quentin Tarantino movies, however, homicide offenders tend not to specialize in killing.

The chart below uses odds ratios to represent the degree of specialization among people convicted of various crimes. Here, the 1.4 for homicide is the ratio of the odds that a homicide offender will be rearrested for another homicide (that's the numerator in the ratio) relative to the odds that prisoners released for other offenses will be arrested for a homicide (that's the denominator). You can see some evidence of specialization among those convicted of motor vehicle theft, where the odds of rearrest for a new auto theft are about 1.9 times greater than those for non-car thieves (2.9-1=1.9). There is an even greater degree of specialization for rape and other sexual offenses, with odds ratios of 4.2 and 5.9, respectively, corresponding to rates of new sex offenses that are 3-to-5 times higher than those for people convicted of non-sex crimes. For homicide, however, the odds ratio of 1.4 suggests comparatively little specialization.

I might also add that a great proportion of homicides are "cleared" by arrest, relative to the other offenses on the list, so it doesn't seem likely that rampant homicide recidivism is somehow going undetected by the system.

In short, there is much evidence that recidivism rates for people convicted of homicide tend to be particularly low. While it may be politically unpopular to pardon convicted murderers or to place them in positions of trust, they tend to do well when, at long last, they are afforded such opportunities.

impossible research

Jesse Wozniak jets off to a job interview this week, where he'll talk about his research on state reconstruction and the new Iraqi police force. Jesse is an advisee, Contexts student board member, and frequent contributor to the Office Hours podcasts. All dissertations demand sacrifice, but this one posed particular challenges.

In fact, Jesse's project calls to mind what Pierre Bourdieu called "the craft par exellence of the researcher: investing a theoretical problem of far-reaching implications in an empirical object that is well constructed and controllable with the means at hand, that is, possibly, by an isolated researcher, with no funding, limited to his[her] own labor power." Doug Hartmann loves this passage, as it simultaneously conveys both the enormity of our task and our power and capacity to get it done.

The "theoretical problem" of civilian policing and state reconstruction certainly has far-reaching implications. I couldn't be 100% sure, though, that the "empirical object" of contemporary Iraq training academies was quite so "controllable with the means at hand." And, despite a fine academic record, Jesse had a tough time securing funding for his ambitious dissertation plan -- observations at training academies, interviews with officials, surveys and interviews with recruits in training, extensive archival research, and some very costly plane tickets and living expenses.

While he put in several grant and fellowship proposals, most reviewers and funders simply viewed the project as impossible. How could a single graduate student possibly secure human subjects approval, gain clearance from the Department of State, learn a new language, live and travel extensively in a war zone, and gain repeated access to the officials and recruits he planned to interview and survey?

Well, now he has done the impossible and returned with data in hand. When he didn't get funding, this "isolated researcher" was undaunted – he simply took on extra teaching and all manner of additional work so that he could self-fund the project. The proof, of course, will be in the pudding that Jesse is still preparing. Having seen the materials he brought back from Iraq, however, I'm confident that the hard work and fearlessness will pay off in a terrific dissertation and book.

In some ways, we're fortunate to work in a field where isolated researchers can still learn so much by the sweat of their brows. And while a couple years of cushy dissertation funding would have made Jesse's life a whole lot easier, I'm guessing that something real and true has been gained in the struggle.

* The quote is from page 156 of Pierre Bourdieu's 1988 "Program for a Sociology of Sport" in the Sociology of Sport Journal 5:153-161.
** The photo is from Ben Brears' photostream, licensed as Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) under creative commons.

Stale Records

Criminologists Al Blumstein and Kiminori Nakamura offer a powerful New York Times op-ed this week, arguing that "stale criminal records" should expire when they can no longer distinguish criminals from non-criminals.

But this isn't just a couple of bleeding heart academics advocating on behalf of a stigmatized group -- there's a solid research foundation supporting the argument. Several smart and creative studies have now followed people arrested or convicted of crimes to watch how long it takes before a criminal's risk of a new offense drops to the point that it is indistinguishable from those with no record of past crimes.

Several teams of social scientists have designed really elegant studies to answer this important question. Most use some variant of event history or survival analysis -- a semi-fancy but straightforward set of statistical tools. Based on their own research, Blumstein and Nakamura now conservatively estimate the “redemption time” at 10 to 13 years. Megan Kurlychek, Bobby Brame, and Shawn Bushway came up with about a 6-year window using somewhat different data and methodology in 2006.

While the specific "time-to-no-crime" varies across studies, the best evidence is now calling into question standard "lifetime" bans on employment, voting, and other rights and privileges. This doesn't mean that the laws will be changed or even that they should be changed. But it does show how good social science can challenge old assumptions and inject much-needed evidence into public debates. And, for those of us who like to put our semi-fancy statistics to good purpose, the op-ed and the research beneath it offer a fine example of public scholarship.

teaching the 1 in 100

I'm always impressed with teachers who blend established knowledge with shifting social currents, bringing it together in ways that students can understand and appreciate. My pubcrim colleague Michelle Inderbitzin seems to do this every year in her classes at both Oregon State University and Oregon State Penitentiary.

This fall, her Inside-Out Prison Exchange students combined a social fact (that 1 of every 100 American adults is incarcerated) with a new social movement (the We are the 99 Percent cry of the Occupy movement) , photographing prisoners and the people around them holding signs that shared their stories. The result is We are the 1 in 100, a class project and tumblr site that shows an important side of the American incarceration story.

As someone who works and teaches in this area, I rarely come across materials that render the lived everyday reality of prisons in such a clear, human, and intimate way. You can read Michelle's account on pubcrim or visit and add to the archive with your own photos and stories. It takes courage and trust -- and an impressive amount of work, in a 10-week class -- to bring these private moments and messages to light.

the pastiness of the long-distance runner / maroon and gold shoes

Even in the most diverse cities, marathoners see mostly white legs and faces at the starting line. At Citings and Sightings, Suzy and Hollie point to a new Runner's World piece, which asks "Why is Running so White?"

This issue also arose at a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation meeting this year, when James Jackson noted that African American neighborhoods often provide few safe places to run, but ample  outlets for fast food and alcohol. While both running and junk food can relieve stress in the short-term, their long-run health effects will differ dramatically. There are other reasons for race differences in running, of course, and the Jay Jennings article touches on everything from hair to role models.

In running, as in other sports, strong stereotypes persist about race and athletic ability. I once shared a starting line laugh with a fellow middle-aged, middle-of-the-pack runner ... who happened to be from Kenya. He said he was a slooooow runner but people seemed to make the assumption that all Kenyans must be faster than all Americans. Some were so convinced of his abilities they'd invite him to join the elite runners at the start of the race -- which, when you think about it, is actually a pretty horrifying prospect for middle-of-the-pack runners like us.

Speaking of running, I was resplendent in Minnesota colors at this year's marathon. This brought a few inquiries about exactly where one buys maroon shoes with gold swooshes and aglets. I fibbed that I had them specially commissioned, but these are really just "Nike Livestrong Air Pegasus +28," which can still be had for about $69 online. Fair warning, though: the kicks make for controversial office attire. Ann Meier, our Director of Graduate Studies, told me that they were not acceptable -- and most definitely not acceptable when one is bedecked in a maroon sweater and gold shirt.

i hope she brought enough for the whole class

Food is important in every social setting, but it is especially salient for prisoners deprived of so many other comforts. For prisoners in disciplinary units, a meatloaf-like concoction known as Nutraloaf is often the only meal. Nutraloaf (sometimes called a "special management meal") is intended to meet the basic nutritional requirements in a "meal" that requires no utensils and minimal time to prepare or distribute. Nutriloaf -- and the whole concept of "disciplinary food" -- is so unpopular that prisoners have challenged its constitutionality in a number of jurisdictions.

I mention all this because Jesse Wozniak passed along this class project from Micaela Magsamen, a student in his policing class this semester. Hearing Jesse's mention of Nutraloaf in lecture, Ms. Magsamen decided to prepare and taste-test one recipe for the loaf (which includes both tomato paste and applesauce), photographing and powerpointing the results. While I didn't taste-test this version myself, I'd imagine that such an exercise might change one's view on the whole constitutionality issue.

what manner of bacchanalia?

Because our department always seems to be celebrating something, Dean Jim Parente often asks, "What manner of Bacchanalia goes on in Sociology this week?" Well, it wasn't exactly bacchanalia (that's Izze's sparkling clementine juice, I'll have you know), but the denizens of the society pages enjoyed a fine party Wednesday at Wing Young Huie's supercool gallery, The Third Place. It was the perfect space and moment to thank our friends, commemorate our final Minnesota issue of Contexts magazine, and to begin turning the (society) page.

We were honored to feature a sampling of Wing's photographs in our final issue, which nicely punctuates a line tracing the sociological imagination of great artists, social entrepreneurs, and cultural observers -- Sebastião Salgado’s photography; the art of Anne Taintor and Harvey Pekar; and, the wit and wisdom of rock critic Chuck Klosterman, humorist Dylan Brody, and magazine entrepreneur Eric Utne. Editing Contexts was always intellectually stimulating, but it was positively thrilling to engage such work with the sociological enterprise.

As for the party, we had a great turnout, tons of fun, and a fitting tribute to a project that brought together so many good people in so many capacities the past few years.* Doug, Letta, and I feel humbled and grateful to have worked with so many brilliant contributors and colleagues at Contexts, the American Sociological Association, and around the world. We only wish we had the budget to fly you to beautiful Minnesota for an enjoyably brisk winter's night. As you can probably guess, though, it won't be too long at all before we'll have another big announcement, celebration, and (yes) some measure of bacchanalia to share with the new TSP crew. Just drop us a line if you'd like an invite.


*If you squint real hard you can see folks like Linda Henneman of ThinkDesign (who did amazing work putting our pages together); national board members and contributors like Monte Bute and Andrew Lindner; undergrad students like Sweet Al Casey; grad board alums such as Wes Longhofer, Hollie Nyseth, Suzy McElrath, Jesse Wozniak, Sarah Shannon, Kyle Green, and Kia Heise; good university friends like Elizabeth Boyle, Rachel Schurman, Michael Goldman, Teresa Swartz, Ann Miller, Alex Rothman, Ann Meier, and Mary Drew; and, plenty of family and friends, including Harper Inea, 2051-2054 Contexts editor.

best winter songs - 2011 update

When I put up a list of winter songs in 2007, I really just wanted to spread a li'l love for flexible flyers and skyways. But so many folks are googling "best winter songs" that I try to patch up the links, update the list, and work in a few suggestions every year. Maybe I'm just paying more attention today, but I'm sensing a wintersong resurgence -- I added 5 songs for 2010, but could easily have added 5 more.

Almost everyone loves a good summer song, but what about winter songs? I'm not talking about played-out Christmas carols here, but other songs of the season.

Winter themes sometimes evoke bleak landscapes and chilled emotions. As a Minnesotan, however, I also associate winter with feelings of love, warmth, and safety. So, there's a duality in this list that is less apparent in summer music. There's also more cabin-fever inspired oddities than one might find on a summer list.

Here are links to a few personal favorites (and a few less-than-favorites), organized chronologically. I'd love to see your additions, since i'm guessing there's an iceberg of undiscovered wintersongs just beneath the surface. Stay warm...

• ol' hank, cold, cold heart (1951) and norah (2002) [via sarah]
• chet baker, grey december (1955)
• dean martin, baby it's cold outside (1959)
• albert iceman collins, frosty (1962)
• ian and sylvia, four strong winds (1963) [via travis]
• bob dylan, girl of the north country (1964)
• mamas and the papas, california dreaming (1965)
• simon and garfinkel, hazy shade of winter (1967) & bangles (1987)
• gordon lightfoot, song for a winter's night (1967) & sara mclachlan (1996)
• grateful dead, cold rain and snow (1967) [via @createsociology]
• doors, wintertime love (1968)
• ann murray, snowbird (1969) [see also elvis (1970) sufjan (2006)]
• nico, frozen warnings (1969)
• plastic ono band, listen the snow is falling (1969) & galaxie 500 (1992)
• bob dylan, winterlude (1970)
• neil young, helpless (1970)
• mountain, nantucket sleighride (1971)
• nick drake, northern sky (1971)
• black sabbath, snowblind (1971)
• rolling stones, winter (1973)
• edgar winter group, frankenstein (1973) with johnny winter (1992)
• gil scott-heron, winter in america (1974)
• reo speedwagon, ridin' the storm out (1974)
• frank zappa, don't eat the yellow snow (1974)
• steely dan, charlie freak (1974)
• rush, by-tor and the snow dog (1975)
• tommy bolin, sweet burgundy (1976)
• neil young, winterlong (1977) and pixies (1989)
• steve miller band, winter time (1977)
• jerry "snowman" reed, west bound and down (1977) & breakdown
• the cure, winter (1979)
• squeeze, up the junction (1979) and if i didn't love you (1980)
• joy division, love will tear us apart (1980)
• klaus nomi, the cold song (1982)
• peter auty, walking in the air (the snowman) (1982)
• aztec camera, walk out to winter (1983)
• stevie ray vaughan, cold shot (1984)
• husker du, flexible flyer (1985)
• replacements, here comes a regular (1985)
• dream academy, life in a northern town (1985)
• replacements, skyway (1987) & jeremy messersmith (2009)
• husker du, ice cold ice (1987)
• the pogues, fairytale of new york (1988)
• jane siberry, hockey (1989) [via kieran]
• vanilla ice, ice ice baby (1990)
• guy, let's chill (1990)
• tori amos, winter (1991)
• albert collins, iceman (1991)
• screaming trees, winter song (1992)
• social distortion, cold feelings (1992)
• xtc, always winter never christmas (1992)
• radiohead, fake plastic trees (1995)
• hoven droven, okynnesvals (1996)
• mazzy star, flowers in december (1997)
• hedningarna, hoglorfen (1997)
• svala björgvinsdóttir, once upon a december (1997)
• eagle eye cherry, save tonight (1998)
• madonna, frozen (1998)
• sigur rós, svefn g englar (1999)
• aim, cold water music (1999)
• glay, winter again (1999)
• nick cave, fifteen feet of pure white snow (2001)
• low, last snowstorm of the year (2002)
• nada surf, blizzard of '77 (2002)
• white stripes, cold, cold, night (2003)
• fountains of wayne, valley winter song (2003)
• animal collective, winter's love (2004)
• the caesars, the winter song (2005)
• afi, love like winter (2006)
• joshua radin, winter (2006)
• red hot chili peppers, snow (2006)
• iron and wine, wolves (songs of the shepherd's dog) (2007)
• elliott smith, angel in the snow (2007)
• gwen stefani, early winter (2007)
• bon iver, skinny love & flume (2008)
• fleet foxes, white winter hymnal (2008)
• glasvegas, S.A.D. light (2008)
• the avett brothers, january wedding (2009)
• sleigh bells, ring ring/rill rill (2010)
• MGMT, siberian breaks (2010)
• the coral, walking in the winter (2010)
• vampire weekend, horchata (2010)
• the kissing party, winter in the pub (2010)
• the decemberists, january hymn (2011)

me and the board

The last Minnesota-grown issue of Contexts has now officially mailed, ending my 4-year hitch as a magazine editor. The section editors and authors were amazing and I learned a ton working with co-editor Doug Hartmann, Letta Page, Jon Smajda, and the good folks at the American Sociological Association. Truth be told, however, I found the most joy in working with our graduate student board. Stop by my office sometime to take in the wall display at left, showing the student board in all their creative glory.

As we write in our last "From the Editors" column (below), Contexts now rests in the good and capable hands of new editors Jodi O’Brien and Arlene Stein -- I hope they have as much fun with it as we did. We haven't broken up the band, though, so you can still check us out at thesocietypages.org.

In the meantime, here are a few last words:

Naked Dreams

We’ve all had some variant of the “naked dream”—you’re waiting in line at Starbucks or checking the copy machine at work when it dawns on you: you’re completely undressed. Here at Contexts, our authors have that dream all the time.

Writing a 3,000 word feature for a public audience, our contributors must dispense with the everyday apparel of scholarly publication. The layers of conceptual abstraction, the high-end designer methods and statistics, and the foundational undergarments of literature reviews—all gone. With all that stripped away, there’s no way to conceal vulnerabilities and authors can feel pretty exposed. As in naked dreams, though, when we first begin writing for a public audience, we tend to exaggerate the risks while underplaying the liberation and exhilaration that comes from breaking new ground. But that doesn’t mean the risks aren’t real.

We saw a bit of this in the kerfuffle over the American Sociological Association’s award for “Excellence in the Reporting of Social Issues,” which went this year to New York Times columnist David Brooks. When sociologists protested, in part due to Brooks’s conservative politics, the knee-jerk opposition seemed to undermine calls for broad-based public relevance and engaged scholarship—or, at least, to recast those calls as more narrowly partisan projects. While we might disagree with how Mr. Brooks uses our work, we defend his right to read, interpret, and mobilize sociological research and appreciate his high-profile efforts to do so. (Indeed, you may remember that we learned a lot about the challenges of disseminating sociology from Brooks in an interview published in one of our first issues.) We’ve actually heard similar professional resistance to popularizers like Malcolm Gladwell who distill and market social science for audiences a thousand times larger than that of our flagship journals. Even when members of our own tribe cross over and achieve a modicum of popular success, critics seem to burst from the woodwork to call into question their seriousness.

We’ve always tried to come from the other side at Contexts, putting our editorial energies into celebrating and effectively conveying good social science with real public relevance. Our graduate and national boards, web and section editors, and managing editors Letta Page and Amy Johnson have made heroic efforts in support of this mission. Our final issue features some terrific examples, with pieces on innovation, adoption, recreation, and closure. Sociologists have something important to say about such irreducibly social phenomena, and it has been our joy and pleasure to help tell their stories.

We couldn’t do any of this, of course, without your indefatigable energy as readers and supporters. Rest assured that new editors Jodi O’Brien and Arlene Stein will bring a fresh perspective that takes Contexts in exciting new directions. We’re cooking up some new ideas as well, developing and expanding our web-based project at thesocietypages.org, which will continue to host contexts.org. While such transitions might leave us feeling a bit exposed, we’re even more exhilarated about finding new ways to bring social science to broader publics.

google scholar and high-impact publication

Academics feel narcissistic or anti-intellectual when we check citations to our work, but it isn't just an ego thing. Citations tell us who is using our research and who we should be reading -- a big help in making intellectual connections. If we really want people to read the work we spend so much time writing, then we need to figure out why some articles rise and others (ahem) drop from cite. Analysis can also reveal correctable mistakes. We may have written the right paper for the wrong audience or used a title or abstract that all but guaranteed our work would never be read or referenced.

I ran the numbers, but never looked much at citation indexes until seeing Google Scholar, which tends to be more inclusive and useful than other indexes. Editing thesocietypages.org, though, I'm starting to think we need new ways of measuring both scholarly and public impact. For example, I'm convinced that Lisa Wade and Gwen Sharp are having an enormous impact at sociological images, but it isn't (yet) counted in ways that make sense to the Social Science Citation Index or Google Scholar. I'm not just talking about hit counts -- increasingly, students and other scholars are adopting the site's sensibility and and its application to the visual social world.

For now, though, Google Scholar represents a huge advance over the sort of citation trackers we had just a few years ago. Seeing Philip Cohen's google scholar profile this morning, I made my own. A few observations:

1. Scale. Before constructing such a profile, you should know that some people and papers get cited a lot, but it takes most of us a few years to develop an audience. Nobody cited my stuff at all as an assistant professor, but folks began excavating the nuggets once a few pieces got a little attention. In Google, as elsewhere, try not to compare yourself against the standard set by the top senior scholars in your field (a.k.a. "Sampson Envy").

2. Inclusiveness. Google scholar is indeed more inclusive than other sources. For me, at least, it includes three times the citations and twice the number of writings than SSCI (2,578 citations in Google to 84 "things" (articles, chapters, grant reports, committee documents) and 767 citations in SSCI to 35 journal articles)). Some may find it overinclusive, but Google seems far more effective in bringing to light intriguing intellectual connections. For instance, I learned that a Swedish economist found use for one of my papers in a presentation on the "entrepreneurial life course of men and women" -- which jazzed up my own thinking about a project on entrepreneurship and prisoner reentry.

3. Bias? For me, at least, the Social Sciences Citation Index seems to give a pretty misleading picture of scholarly impact. Since SSCI doesn't count books or book chapters, it misses a couple more-cited pieces -- a book with Jeff Manza and a popular chapter in an edited volume. [Junior scholars are often told to avoid writing book chapters, but some of them seem to find a pretty good audience.] Also, when I rank the articles by citation count, Google seems to have better face validity -- it does a better job picking up the contributions that people ask me about than SSCI. As chair in a department that values both books and articles, the omission of books in any index is really problematic. I haven't done a careful analysis, but my sense is that Google Scholar is also better than SSCI at tracking my criminological and interdisciplinary work.

4. Flagships. But still .... articles in the so-called sociology flagships get cited way more often than articles in other journals or book chapters. By either index, my 3 most-cited pieces (and 6 of the top 16) appeared in American Sociological Review or American Journal of Sociology.

5. Future. I expect that people will always want to assess the scholarly and public impact of academic work, and that these tools will evolve rapidly. Google Scholar offers a great set of tools already, but I suspect we'll soon be able to run much more sophisticated searches that allow us to track impact across a broader spectrum of outlets. People are sure to debate "what counts" as a citation, but the really big honkin' question concerns "what counts" as scholarly publication. My sense is that journal impact will remain important, but we'll soon have the tools to identify and assess a more robust and varied set of impacts.

fresh crim at ASC meetings

I arrived late and left early at this year's criminology meetings, but the two days in Washington, DC were terrific. I'm always inspired by forward-looking talks that put a big issue on the table, especially those that could spark public discussion and, perhaps, intervention.

The paper that really turned my head this year was Bob Agnew's general strain model of the impact of climate change on crime. Professor Agnew made a convincing and nicely documented case that climate change will "increase strain, reduce social control, weaken social support, foster beliefs favorable to crime, contribute to traits conducive to crime, increase opportunities for crime, and create social conflict." After 15 minutes, he had me convinced that climate change could become a driving force of crime rates over the next century.

Sara Wakefield and Simon Cole offered a similarly future-directed and provocative talk on racial disparities in DNA databases. Every state is now collecting DNA -- in many cases for arrestees, as well as those convicted of crimes. While acknowledging potential gains to public safety, the paper raised large and timely issues about how such data collection affects surveillance and inequality. We heard evidence about what the databases look like now, but everyone in the room expected them to grow dramatically in coming years.

I've worked a lot with Sara, of course, so I'm not exactly unbiased about her work -- or that of other Minnesota grads at the meeting (including the program co-chair, Ryan King). This year, I gave talks with current grad students Suzy McElrath (above), Jessica Molina, and Heather McLaughlin (all attending their first ASC meeting), as well as Brianna Remster of Penn State. I mostly sat in the background scribbling (as above), while my collaborators did the heavy lifting.

My only solo presentation came at Madam's Organ Blues Bar's Thursday night Karaoke. Like the two papers above, my rendering of Sinatra could spark public discussion and, perhaps, intervention.

laundering honoraria

I love visiting friends and giving talks, so I jump on invitations whenever my teaching schedule permits. When my host asks, "will $500 be sufficient for your honorarium?" I reply, "Gosh, I'd love to visit you guys, but I can't afford to pay that much."

Cheeseheads and hardball fans will recognize this riff on Bob Uecker's first contract: "I signed with the Milwaukee Braves for three thousand dollars. That bothered my dad at the the time because he didn't have that kind of dough. But he eventually scraped it up."

Like Mr. Uecker, I rarely turn down a free dinner, though I'm often backed up for a year or more on such commitments. It is lovely to get paid and I sincerely appreciate it, but the real reward is in the intellectual exchange -- and, let's be honest, the rush of validation you feel when people are right there in front of you, engaging the ideas and work you've been casting into the ether from some lonely academic bunker (a/k/a the collosal ego trip).

As I recently mentioned to a friend on facebook, I charge a sliding scale. With the Deluxe Package, I'll give a presentation in exchange for airfare and a nice dinner. With my Budget Package, I'll sometimes pop for the airfare, but you have to give me a plaque of some sort and say nice things about me at the dinner. The plaque is key.

In keeping with my honoraria post five years ago, I try to redirect the bulk of the money to organizations providing direct services to people leaving prison and non-profits that conduct justice-related research. The need is great and I'm already paid pretty well to study the hard times of others. That said, it is usually a hassle for universities to redirect an honorarium to such organizations -- it is much cleaner for the staff when they can simply cut a check. The problem with cashing the check and sending it elsewhere, of course, is that it looks like income to the IRS and a good chunk is lost to taxes before it can be passed along.

These days, I'm laundering my honoraria through the Minnversity's annual community fund drive (open now through 10/31). I just cash and spend the check myself (and report it to the IRS), but use payroll deduction to direct a corresponding amount to organizations doing reentry programming and research. I'll identify the local orgs offline if any Minnversity friends are interested -- there are several available for check-off but you can also write-in your own. In truth, I haven't been redirecting the full amount of the honoraria I've received, using some of the funds to cushion unreimbursable out-of-pocket expenses (related to my editorial, advising, research, and chair duties) and to purchase certain performance-enhancing research stimulants (such as 5-pound buckets of black licorice). Still, I'm hoping this sort of model might work for others -- it is deducted painlessly from pre-tax earnings, can be spread evenly throughout the year, and shows up clearly on one's paycheck at tax time.

While my schedule is pretty full for 2011-2012, I'll keep giving talks next year and for as long as people will have me. To quote Mr. Uecker, "Anybody with ability can play in the big leagues. But to be able to trick people year in and year out the way I did, I think that was a much greater feat."

blissitude and blisteration

I like to write a personal blissed-out marathon post a few hours after the event, but it took a bit of work to attain full blissitude today. Last year it was a smooth and happy 3:43. The 2011 twin cities race was just a hair faster, but considerably more ... jagged. There was a little pain, including hoof blisteration, acute foreleg crampage, and the Andy Bernard-level nippular excoriation shown at right, which just made a mess of my favorite Minnversity singlet. 

But it was a perfect fall day in Minnesota to cruise through the cities and see wonderful friends and family -- I was surely feeling the love from Dad, Letta, Sarah (and boys), Gabrielle, Liz and Matt, Nicole, Emily, and other good friends along the way. And, this was the first time I'd ever shared a race with a (co-)advisee (and proud finisher), Suzy Maves McElrath.

Closed-circuit to running geeks: Yeah, I pushed too hard again at the start (23:36 at 5k (I was gonna dominate that 5k), 47:50 at 10k (I was gonna dominate that 10k), and 1:41:52 at 13.1 (I was gonna dominate that half). Then I was completely dominated by the 6 miles of piddling but relentless grade on ol' Summit Hill -- while accosted, I firmly believe, by an invisible marauder who somehow severed my hamstrings on the steeper bits. I suspect he used a laser.

So I'll either have to slow down at the start or do some actual training if I'd like to keep up the pace. A helpful young runner from Nebraska suggested that her hometown marathon might be a li'l flatter (yes, flatter than Minnesota) and, hence, more amenable to my fixin'-to-pop hammies. She also promised a good bit less writhing in the final three miles.

A few other marathon posts:

2005: Battling T-Paw

2006: Hot n' Heavy and Too Beautiful

2007: Marathon Convergence and Steamy and Cool

2008: My Left Foot and Sweet

2010: Men of a Certain Age

jail guitar doors

My colleague Josh Page's The Toughest Beat (2011, Oxford) is getting much-deserved good press from many quarters. Today's props come from Wayne Kramer, the MC5 guitarist now writing at Jail Guitar Doors. Mr. Kramer calls The Toughest Beat a "well researched history of how the prison guards union grew from a minor municipal association into the second most powerful political lobby in California. It’s a fascinating journey into power politics."

So how do legendary guitar players end up reviewing cutting-edge scholarship in the sociology of punishment? The name Jail Guitar Doors comes from a fine old Clash song that name-drops Mr. Kramer, who once served time in Lexington Federal Prison for a drug offense. His work with the MC5 once earned him 92nd place on Rolling Stone's all-time top-100 guitarist list. Today, he's working with Jail Guitar Doors, an organization that Billy Bragg and friends put together to provide prisoners with musical equipment in the United Kingdom and, now, the United States.

I can't cite rigorous evaluation data to show the positive effects of such programs, but it doesn't take a top-100 guitarist to grasp the group's vision: We believe prisoners provided with the musical tools to create songs of their own can achieve a positive change of attitude that can initiate the work necessary to successfully return to life outside prison walls. Creating music, along with other educational and vocational programs, can be a profound force for positive change in a prisoner’s life.

If the idea hits you like Wayne Kramer power chord -- or if you've ever just found a little peace and focus while plunking away at an instrument -- you might consider a donation.

our mauer, ourselves

For a guy being paid $21 million to play baseball, Joe Mauer has sure had a tough season. Mr. Mauer only participated in about half of the Minnesota Twins' games this year, and only about one-third of them at his customary catcher position. His performance in these games was respectable in absolute terms, but far below the high bar he established in previous seasons.

According to SI.com, Mr. Mauer missed games for myriad maladies, including bilateral leg weakness, viral infections, undisclosed soreness, general soreness, stiff neck, upper respiratory infection, and, finally, mild pneumonia. Since General Soreness is not the sort of injury that typically knocks a superstar from the lineup, rumors and speculation have arisen to explain the real story behind his absences.

As regards a Minnesota icon like Mr. Mauer, such gossip occurs in a wide range of social settings. As Gary Alan Fine and Nicholas DiFonzo note in their new Contexts article, rumor is "knowledge filtered through social process," depending on local networks for verification. This means that the rumors swirling around Mr. Mauer -- as well as those not swirling around him -- say as much about the hometown as they do about the hometown hero. I've heard four basic categories of rumors and will speculate about a fifth.

First, when the team remained in contention a few months ago, one heard that the Twins were intentionally concealing a more serious injury that would have provided a strategic advantage to opposing teams. If he had a "bad wing," as a neighbor suggested at my community center this summer, opposing baserunners would steal more aggressively against the Twins. Such interpretations seem credible and rational, given the game's competitive nature and high stakes. Moreover, the guy was coming off knee surgery and he has a history of (unquestioned and legitimized) injuries in the recent past.

Second, I heard rumors of career-threatening (and, in some cases, life-threatening) physical health problems. These rumors ranged from Lyme disease, to rheumatoid arthritis, to multiple sclerosis, to ALS. Some of these appeared in print, I think, but most came from people claiming inside knowledge -- "a guy who knows a guy" within the Twins organization or the Mauer family. Some were repeated by Patrick Reusse and others on talk radio, though the local media have been guarded about making such attributions. Nevertheless, these rumors were considered plausible, in part, because of the local setting: Lyme disease is quite prevalent in Minnesota and familiar to Mr. Mauer's fans, while ALS is literally synonymous with another baseball great struck down in his prime -- Lou Gehrig.

Third, as the team's fortunes sank and their highest-paid player remained out of commission, some fans began grumbling about Mr. Mauer going "soft" -- that he was spoiled by the big contract or, worse, that he was a "cake-eater" all along, who lacked the toughness needed to play with pain. These are fighting words for athletes, of course, but such interpretations seemed plausible for those suspicious of the team's new big-money approach and expensive new stadium, funded in part with taxpayer dollars.

To the extent he is cast in the "sick role," Mr. Mauer is exempted from responsibility for his conditions and from the normal role obligations and responsibilities of his profession. But if he's just soft, he's judged against all manner of personal and professional gendered role expectations. Today, there's a passionate local debate between those who view Mr. Mauer sympathetically and attribute his absences to physical health problems and those who view him unsympathetically and vilify him for weakness and moral failure.

A fifth category of non-rumor is conspicuous by its absence, however: the possibility that Mr. Mauer might be wrestling with some unseen and unsharable mental health or chemical health problems. Given his status as a white St. Paul native with middle-class origins (like me, I suppose, though a generation removed), it is especially easy for many of his fans to identify with Mr. Mauer and, perhaps, correspondingly difficult for them to imagine him in a more stigmatized role.

Of course, mental illness and substance use problems are managed and treated just as effectively as those physical ailments that more typically put players on the disabled list. And, just to be clear, I am not suggesting that Mr. Mauer has ever had any problems with substance use or mental illness. I'd just hate to think that fear of adverse public reaction would keep a public figure from seeking help, especially here in the land of 10,000 treatment centers (in 2011, no less). It just strikes me that it might still be difficult -- if not unimaginable -- for Minnesotans to accept our native son as mentally ill or "addicted." Somehow, despite much evidence to the contrary, the community may simply be more comfortable imagining the twenty-eight-year-old athlete as terminally ill or incurably lazy. While the latter rumors have been much discussed, the former have scarcely been mentioned.

For my part, I'm attributing the rumors to what professors Fine and DiFonzo call a "shared commitment to sense-making" in the absence of clear information. As for the vague injury reports, I'll chalk them up to the local context as well. For the team's baffling public relations work and passive-aggressive motivational strategies seem as Minnesotan as walleyes and honeycrisp apples.

identity work and personas

The savvy Sarah Lageson sends word of Personas, an MIT project created by Aaron Zinman. Personas uses sophisticated natural language processing to create a data portrait of one's aggregated online identity. The idea is to show folks how the internet takes them apart and reassembles them -- sort of a critique of data mining embedded within a cool data mining project. Simply stop by the site, launch personas, and let the digit counters fall. Then reflect or recoil as your online world flashes before you (cranking vintage Kraftwerk at volume may enhance the effect). Sarah sent me the personalized screenshot below, but personas is really more about process than product.

new contexts reader

The second edition of the the contexts reader is officially o-u-t OUT with WW Norton -- signed, sealed, and delivered in time to raise our root beer glasses at the annual board meeting in Las Vegas.

The reader pulls together about 60 articles from the magazine, with minimal front-end bloviating by Uggen and Hartmann. Big thanks are due to Karl Bakeman of Norton and all 6,500 employees of Contexts Worldwide, especially Letta Page and Sweet Al Casey of the Scranton office, Jon Smajda from the Kansas City set-top box manufacturing facility, and Kia Heise, Hollie Nyseth, and our rippin' good graduate student board in Minneapolis.