Jennifer Schwartz

Associate Professor

Ph.D., Penn State, 2003

Areas of Research Interest:

Criminology, Stratification, Communities/Urban Sociology

Current Research Interests:

The unifying theme of my research is understanding how stratification and inequality impact level of crime and social control efforts. My research interests focus on identifying how position in the social structure (e.g., gender and race/ethnicity) interacts with structural features of communities (e.g., inequality, unemployment) to engender varying levels of crime and social control across place. I also have an interest in trends in crime and community sociology. My most current work examines how cross-community differences in family structure impact female and male levels of violence and also how changes in family structure have influenced trends in female and male violence.

Selected Publications:

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, Darrell Steffensmeier, Hua Zhong, and Jeff Ackerman. 2009.
Trends in the gender gap in violence: Re-evaluating NCVS and other evidence.
Criminology 47:401-425. http://cooley.libarts.wsu.edu/schwartj/crim09.htm

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.

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. 2006. Effects of diverse forms of family structure on women’s and men’s homicide. Journal of Marriage and Family 68:1292-1313.

Jennifer Schwartz