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Article 1: Campbell, Michael C. 2007. Criminal disenfranchisement reform in California: A deviant case study. Punishment & Society9 (2): 177–99.

Abstract: 

The United States denies voting rights to ex-convicts, parolees, probationers and prisoners on a scale unmatched among democratic nations. State laws establishing voting eligibility vary markedly from no disenfranchisement in some states, to permanent disenfranchisement in others. Existing research suggests that more exclusive laws are associated with larger percentages of nonwhites in the State’s general population and in states with higher percentages of nonwhite prisoners. Little historical research exists explaining how and why certain states have retained disenfranchisement while others have revised these laws. This article adopts a deviant case analysis framework, where California is examined as a seemingly exceptional example of reform in order to refine existing explanations of disenfranchisement. Through extensive archival research and a content analysis of a key media source, this article explains how and why California changed its disenfranchisement laws in 1974, a year existing research would predict a punitive legal shift. The findings suggest that repeal of disenfranchisement may be linked to the activities and framing strategies of reformers, particularly African-American legislators, the presence of advocacy organizations and political context. This research also suggests that media coverage of criminal justice policy issues is an important factor in the political feasibility of reform.

Summary: 

This article looks at all of the factors that worked together to give convicted felons the right to vote.

Questions to Consider: 

1. What is the author talking about when using the term “deviant”
    
2. Explain criminal disenfranchisement.
    
3. How does race impact criminal disenfranchisement.
    

Article 2: Rikard, D. (2015) Masculinity and medicalization: Gender and vocabularies of motive in the narrative of a sex offender Feminism & Psychology 2015, Vol. 25(2) 199–218.

Abstract: 

This paper explores the tension between vocabularies of motive provided by a serial sex offender in his narrative construction of his nonconsensual sexual activity. Current discourses on the topic emphasize the efficacy of social control measures and behavioral and pharmacological interventions. There is a dearth of sociological literature exploring the social meanings of sexual offense. Employing a symbolic interactionist approach to a sex offender’s account of self provides an opportunity for making visible the discursive construction of social processes. Deploying broad gender stereotypes in depictions of the women against whom he offended, the case presented here also relied on three dominant therapeutic constructions of the sexual deviant, the psychosocial, the addiction/compulsion model, and the bio-psychiatric—all of which neglect the gendered aspect of his offenses. Positing himself as a “true sex offender” and voluntarily taking hormonal suppressants that rendered him impotent, he was the ideal subject of bio-psychiatric discourse. The paper analyses his narrative in terms of contrasting notions of gender and deviance, masculinity and medicalization, and explores the ways language of institutionally supported interventions are used to make meaningful both normal and deviant identities, while disengaging from gender discourses. 

Summary: 

Focused on the medicalzation of deviance, this essay discusses sex offenders and their attempts to label their behavior as a sickness.

Questions to Consider: 

1. The author uses the case study of Terry, a serial offender. After 13 convictions, why was Terry not held accountable for his offenses?
    
2. What did Terry see as the solution to his sexual offending behaviors?
    
3. When identifying sex offending as a bio-psychiatric pathology, what other factors are we failing to consider?
    

Article 3: Berkelaar, B. (2014). Cybervetting, online information, and personnel selection: New transparency expectations and the emergence of a digital social contract. Management Communication Quarterly, 28, 479-506.

Abstract: 

This study examines employers’ and workers’ sensemaking about cybervetting—employers’ use of online information for personnel selection. Analysis of 89 employer and applicant interviews suggest a shift in the social contract—the implicit expectations for how personnel selection and employment relationships should work. Results suggest an extension of new proactive transparency expectations from organizations to workers, the implicit acceptance of which points to the emergence of a digital social contract. The digital social contract prescribes normative expectations for workers’ digital visibility, thereby extending the times and contexts within which employment evaluations and career management occur. Using a communicative perspective to address research gaps on everyday ethics, practices, and technologies of personnel selection, contributions include introducing and explicating the digital social contract, documenting the extension of new transparency expectations to individuals, and explicating ethical and practical implications of new technologies and information visibility on contemporary personnel selection.

Summary: 

This article addresses how employers and workers make sense of cybervetting. The author notes how, in spite of resistance, cybervetting has become part of our social contract.

Questions to Consider:

1. Why is the perception of cybervetting so important?
    
2. Explain “digital social contract”.
    
3. What is the primary complaint of workers regarding cybervetting?