Jennifer Schwartz
James F. Short Distinguished Professor
Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University, 2003
Areas
Criminology, Stratification/Inequalities, Communities, Drugs/Health
Research Interests
My research examines crime and punishment across various groups, places, and times to gain insight about how people come to engage in anti-social behavior and what can be done to justly encourage behavior for the common good. Also important to me is further understanding the implications of social control, including definitions and enforcement of criminal behavior, for varied groups, places, and time periods in history.
“The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.” ~Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance
Projects and Areas of Expertise include:
Patterns, causes, and trends in crime and punishment, with a focus on similarities and differences by gender, age, race-ethnicity, across place, and over time
- Steffensmeier, Darrell, Jennifer Schwartz, Hua Zhong, and Jeff Ackerman. 2005. “An assessment of recent trends in girls’ violence using diverse longitudinal sources: Is the gender gap closing?” Criminology 43(2): 355-406.
- Schwartz, Jennifer, Darrell Steffensmeier, and Benjamin Feldmeyer. 2009. “Assessing trends in women’s violence via data triangulation: Arrests, convictions, incarcerations & victim reports.” Social Problems 56(3): 494-525.
- Schwartz, Jennifer and Ardavan Davaran. 2013. “Enforcement of DUI law following 0.08% BAC law change: Sex-specific consequences of changing arrest practices?” Addictive Behaviors 38: 2506-2512.
- Schwartz, Jennifer and Darrell J. Steffensmeier. 2017. “Gendered opportunities and risk preferences for offending across the Life-Course.” Journal of Developmental and Life Course Criminology. (3):126-150.
Communities, rural and urban, as contexts of crime and social control
- Schwartz, Jennifer and Arina Gertseva. 2010. “Stability and change in female and male violence across rural and urban counties, 1981-2006.” Rural Sociology 75(3):388- 425.
- Schwartz, Jennifer. 2006. “Effects of diverse forms of family structure on women’s and men’s homicide.” Journal of Marriage and Family 68:1292-1313.
- Schwartz, Jennifer. 2009. “Murder in a Comparative Context.” (Pp. 276-299) in Violent Crime: Clinical and Social Implications, edited by Christopher J. Ferguson. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Substance use, abuse, and regulation
- Schwartz, Jennifer. 2008. “Gender differences in drunk driving prevalence rates and trends: A 20-year assessment using multiple sources of evidence.” Addictive Behaviors 33(9): 1217-1222.
- Schwartz, Jennifer and Bryan Rookey. 2008. “The narrowing gender gap in arrests: Assessing competing explanations using self-report, traffic fatality, and official data on drunk driving, 1980-2005.” Criminology 46(3):637-671.
- Zhong, Hua and Jennifer Schwartz. 2010. “Exploring gender-specific trends in underage drinking across adolescent age groups and measures of drinking: Is girls’ drinking catching up with boys’?” Journal of Youth and Adolescence 39(8): 911-926.
- Schwartz, Jennifer and Lindsey Beltz. 2018. “Trends in female and male drunken driving prevalence over thirty years: Triangulating diverse sources of evidence (1985-2015). Addictive Behaviors 84:7-12.
- Beltz, Lindsey (PI), Jennifer Schwartz (Co-PI), and Clayton Mosher (Co-PI). 2018-2019. “Assessing perceived effects of I-502: A survey of recreational cannabis in Washington State.” National Institute of Justice.
Group and Organizational Contexts that Encourage Criminality
- Steffensmeier, Darrell, Jennifer Schwartz, and Mike Roche. 2013. “Gender and 21st century
- corporate crime: Female involvement and gender gap in Enron-era corporate frauds.” American Sociological Review 78: 448-476.
- Schwartz, Jennifer, Meredith Williams, and Katie Clemons. 2015. “Thirty years of sex stratification in violent crime partnerships and groups.” Feminist Criminology. 10(1): 60-91.
- Schwartz, Jennifer and Darrell Steffensmeier. 2018. “Profile of top-executives in fraudulent firms compared to non-violator CEOs” presented March 2018 at the symposium Toward a life-course criminology of corporate crime, sponsored by European Society of Criminology’s Working Groups on Organizational and Corporate Crime and on Development and Life-course Criminology, Leiden, Netherlands.
- Schwartz, Jennifer and Erik W. Johnson. 2018. “Women’s and men’s participation in business-related crimes against the environment: Sex-stratification in the criminal enterprise,” invited presentation at Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
- Steffensmeier, Darrell (PI) and Jennifer Schwartz (Co-PI). 2014-2019. “21st Century Corporate Financial Crime: Statistical Profile, Firm- and Executive Risk- Factors, and Rich Database.” National Institute of Justice.
Selected Publications
- Schwartz, Jennifer, Meredith Williams, and Katie Clemons. 2014.“Thirty years of sex stratification in violent crime partnerships and groups.” Feminist Criminology. Advance online publication: doi: 10.1177/1557085114536765.
- Schwartz, Jennifer. 2013. “A ‘New’ Female Offender or Increasing Social Control of Women’s Behavior? Cross-national Evidence.” Feminist Studies 39(3):790-821.
- Schwartz, Jennifer and Ardavan Davaran. 2013. “Enforcement of DUI law following 0.08% BAC law change: Sex-specific consequences of changing arrest practices?” Addictive Behaviors 38: 2506-2512.
- Steffensmeier, Darrell, Jennifer Schwartz, and Mike Roche. 2013. “Gender and 21st Century Corporate Crime: Female Involvement and Gender Gap in Enron-Era Corporate Frauds.” American Sociological Review 78: 448-476.
