Ok, here goes...my second annual list of top 20 published articles in the field of criminology:
1. "The Dead Sea Scrolls and Criminological Knowledge: 2008 Presidential Address to the American Society of Criminology" by Robert Bursik in Criminology (47, 1)
2. "Does Dropping Out of School Mean Dropping Into Delinquency" by Gary Sweeten, Shawn Bushway, and Ray Paternoster in Criminology (47, 1)
3. "Redemption In The Presence of Widespread Criminal Background Checks" by Alfred Blumstein and Kiminori Nakamura in Criminology (47, 2)
4. "Estimating a Dose-Response Relationship Between Length of Stay and Future Recidivism In Serious Juvenile Offenders" by Tom Loughran, Ed Mulvey, Carol Schubert, Jeff Fagan, Alex Piquero, and Sandra Losoya in Criminology (47, 3)
5. "Crime, Cash, and Limited Options: Explaining the Prison Boom" by William Spelman in Criminology & Public Policy (8, 1)
6. "Rational Choice Agency, and Thoughtfully Reflective Decision Making: The Short and Long Term Consequences of Making Good Choices" by Ray Paternoster and Greg Pogarsky in Journal of Quantitative Criminology (25, 2)
7. "Marriage and Desistance from Crime in the Netherlands: Do Gender and Socio-Historical Context Matter" by Bianca Bersani, John Laub, and Paul Nieuwbeerta in Journal of Quantitative Criminology (25, 1)
8. "Do Returning Parolees Affect Neighborhood Crime? A Case Study of Sacramento" by John Hipp and Daniel Yates in Criminology (47, 3)
9. "Measuring Long Term Individual Trajectories of Offending Using Multiple Methods" by Shawn Bushway, Gary Sweeten, and Paul Nieuwbeerta in Journal of Quantitative Criminology (25, 3)
10. "Predicting Trajectories of Offending Over the Life Course: Findings from a Dutch Conviction Cohort" by Bianca Bersani, Paul Nieuwbeerta, and John Laub in Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency (46, 4)
11. "Imprisonment and Reoffending" by Daniel Nagin, Francis Cullen, and Cheryl Lero Jonson in Crime & Justice: A Review of Research (vol. 38)
12. ***shameless self-promotion*** "But Some of Them Don't Come Back (to Prison!): Resource Deprivation and Thinking Errors as Determinants of Parole Success and Failure" by Kristofer Bret Bucklen and Gary Zajac in The Prison Journal (89, 3)
13. A Life-Course Theory and Long-Term Project on Trajectories of Crime" by Robert Sampson and John Laub in Journal of Criminology and Penal Reform
14. "Understanding the Relationship Between Onset Age and Subsequent Offending During Adolescence" by Sarah Bacon, Ray Paternoster, and Robert Brame in Journal of Youth and Adolescence (38, 3)
15. "Forecasting Murder Within a Population of Probationers and Parolees: A High Stakes Application of Statistical Learning" by Richard Berk, Lawrance Sherman, Geoffrey Barnes, Ellen Kurtz, and Lindsay Ahlman in Journal of the Royal Statistical Society (Series A)
16. "Effects of Getting Married on Offending: Results from a Prospective Longitudinal Survey of Males" by Delphine Theobald and David Farrington in European Journal of Criminology (6, 6)
17. "Work, Family, and Criminal Desistance: Adult Social Bonds in a Nordic Welfare State" by Jukka Savolainen in British Journal of Criminology (49, 3)
18. "Detecting Specialization in Offending: Comparing Analytic Approaches" by Christopher Sullivan, Jean McGloin, James Ray, and Michael Caudy in Journal of Quantitative Criminology (25, 4)
19. "Racial Discrimination and Hirschi's Criminological Classic: A Chapter in the Sociology of Knowledge" by James Unnever, Francis Cullen, Scot Mathers, Timothy McClure, and Maris Allison in Justice Quarterly (26, 3)
20. "Rediscovering Quetelet, Again: The "Aging" Offender and the Prediction of Reoffending in a Sample of Adult Sex Offenders" by Patrick Lussier and Jay Healey in Justice Quarterly (26, 4)
In addition, there was a special issue of Criminal Justice and Behavior on the topic of "Biological Criminology" which I thought I had several interesting pieces. And finally, hands down the best book of the year was Mark Kleiman's "When Brute Force Fails". It's ingenious in that the concepts in the book are nothing new (indeed the deterrence principles of certainty and swiftness of punishment are among the oldest ideas in criminology, dating back to at least the 1700s), but Kleiman does such a nice job of bringing new research together with old concepts in order to make them policy relevant for revamping community corrections. Keep an eye out for this book. My prediction is that this is a Hindelang Book Award winner at ASC next year...you heard it here first.
