I passed my comp exam! I'm ABD now! So now it's time for the dissertation. I'm trying to keep the momentum going, since I want to get my dissertation done as soon as possible. As a first step, I decided to blog about some of my various potential ideas for a dissertation. Over the next few weeks, I plan to take a couple of these ideas and write concept papers. Here's what I'm looking at.
In general, my interest for a dissertation is along the lines of desistance. In Laub and Sampson's (2004) book, they identify several common underlying factors to turning points that lead to criminal desistance: 1) a change in routine activities, 2) a "knifing off" of previous behavior, 3) monitoring coupled with support, 4) human agency, and 5) a change in identity. They find that social institutions like marriage and employment tend to serve these functions in leading to desistance. I thought about examining these factors in light of other unexamined social institutions such as education or religion, to see if the same underlying factors are there and if in the presence of these factors these new social institutions lead to criminal desistance. In other words, the dissertation would further examine the "black box" of what specifically causes age-graded informal social controls to work, and identify more social institutions which have these "black box" factors in common.
Another interesting debate is between external factors (sociological) and internal factors (psychological) in the context of desistance. What role do each play? This would in essence be another examination of the age-old nature versus nurture debate. As we now know in the area of genetic versus environmental influences, the debate is not an "either/or" debate, but instead an examination of interaction effects. So I would expect that sociological and psychological effects would interact to impact desistance. Both would be important. But it would be interesting to find out which one holds relatively more importance and in what context each is important. Many life-course theories, particularly the social control strains, tend to focus on sociological factors. Many correctional rehabilitation theories, however, tend to focus on psychological factors. Such a dissertation could help theoretical criminologists to think more about psychological factors while helping correctional professionals to think more about sociological factors.
Another interesting dissertation would be to examine the antecedents of technical parole violations. It is often implicitly assumed that the predictors of technical parole violations that are not new criminal behavior are the same predictors as those of criminal behavior. Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) would almost certainly support such a view, saying it's all self-control. But this may not be the case. Technical rule violations may have different antecedents. In that case, what are they? This is very much along the lines of teh parole violator study that I've already conducted. I could build upon this study to write this dissertation.
Here's an interesting data situation that is begging for a dissertation. As I've previously blogged, in Pennsylvania we recently encountered a parole moratorium due to a string of police shootings in Philadelphia. For nearly two months, parole releases were prohibited. In a system that paroles approximately 1,000 parolees per month, this moratorium had an impact on a sizable group of offenders. This is also a perfect "natural experiment". How can I manipulate the desirable methodological properties of this natural experiment to address a substantive issue. One possibility would be to use this natural experiment to identify the impact of the moratorium on crime in two big cities in Pennsylvania with sizable monthly parole returns: Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. How did crime rates change before, during, and after the moratorium? Of course I would have to control for changing police practices before, during, and after the moratorium if using police arrest records as my crime rate indicator. This would be an interesting study. Another suggested study would be to examine the impact of the moratorium on the institutions, as far as safety, security, overcrowding, etc. There could be other possibilities here too for a dissertation.
Finally, there are a couple of specific areas of interest to me that I could see building into a dissertation. One area of interest is the whole role of motivation in promoting desistance. Is it a necessary condition? How can motivation be built or supported? Another are of interest is criminal risk assessment. How does actuarial assessment compare to clinical judgment? What is the state of science in our current ability to predict future criminal behavior? How much further can we improve upon our current ability? What facilities better predictions? There are a number of other questions related to criminal risk assessment that would make for an interesting dissertation.
So these are some preliminary ideas. As my advisor says, many people enter the dissertation stage with a bunch of questions but no data or with a lot of data but no questions. I have both. In a sense this makes my situation more difficult. I have to find something that I can settle with and that will keep me excited over the next couple of years, without getting bogged down in trying to find the perfect dissertation that will define the rest of my career. It will be an interesting journey. More to come.
