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Penologists have long emphasized the importance of studying social relationships among prisoners to understand how people adapt to confinement. While several penological traditions clearly implicate social networks as an explanatory mechanism, network methods have rarely been applied in prison research. We suspect that prison scholars have been slow to incorporate social networks into their research because of the challenges—both real and perceived—of collecting social network data in the prison setting. In this article, we argue that successfully collecting network data from prisoners can be achieved by carefully adapting methods to the peculiarities and constraints of the prison setting. We draw upon experiences from the Prison Inmate Networks Study (PINS) and its associated projects in five Pennsylvania prisons to construct a framework for understanding and overcoming the obstacles to network data collection in prisons.

This study examines developmental change across adolescence in the similarity of friends versus nonfriends. This differential in similarity is a key aspect of the organization of the peer context of development: The stronger the correlation between friends for an attribute, the more the attribute delineates clustering and divisions of friendships. We investigated change in the correlation between friends across 12 attributes covering demographics, orientations to key institutions (family, school, religion), and problem behavior, and we expected that the link between similarity and friendship would increase during adolescence for most attributes other than gender. We also predicted that the social ecological factors of school size and attribute variability would be associated with stronger correlations between friends and partially mediate developmental change. Data are from two grade cohorts of 27 small school districts, followed from sixth through 11th grades (N = 454 time-specific networks and over 65,000 person/waves of data; 84.2% White, 6.8% Hispanic/Latino, 3.2% African American, 1.3% Asian, 0.5% Native American, 3.9% other or multiple). The data analysis takes the form of a three-level random effects meta-analysis of network level correlations between friends (Moran's "I"). As expected, declining dominance of gender was offset by the emergence of moderate correlations across a broader profile of attributes. The ecological opportunity factors of grade cohort size and attribute variability significantly mediated these increases in correlations between friends, accounting for 23 to 73% of age-related change for 10 of the 11 attributes other than gender.

Personal network change is largely driven by transitions between the groups and organizations where people spend their day-to-day lives. But, how do entrants choose which relationships to pursue among the numerous possibilities a new environment offers? We expect newcomers will use the same mechanisms as longer-tenured members, although this will take time as they acclimate and form initial relationships that support future ties. Thus, our goal is to understand how the network selection processes used by new organizational members shift in importance as time in the organization grows. We focus on network selection via homophily, propinquity, formal relations, and endogenous network processes. For each mechanism, we distinguish between change in the strength of the mechanism and opportunities to enact the mechanism. We evaluate expected changes using network data from a prison-based therapeutic community (TC). This setting is ideal because the structured nature of TC entry and exit generates regular membership turnover and removes confounds present in studies of more familiar contexts (e.g., schools). Results show that the relative importance of network selection mechanisms varies over tenure, with homophily dominating early on and endogenous network processes catching up later. We discuss implications of these findings for new member socialization and broader patterns of inequality.

BackgroundThe Therapeutic Community (TC) is a common treatment modality for incarcerated individuals with substance use disorders. TCs rely on peer group processes to promote lasting behavioral and identity change, yet prior research has not adequately tested the peer influence mechanisms underlying the theoretical model. This study applied dynamic network analysis to estimate peer influence processes central to TC philosophy.MethodsA stochastic actor-oriented model (SAOM) was applied to ten months of social network data collected from prisoner surveys within a TC unit (N = 62) in a medium-security Pennsylvania prison. Respondents (N = 177, 84% of unit) completed at least one prison survey and provided network and community role model nominations.ResultsAlthough residents' levels of treatment engagement were significantly correlated with their nominated peers, estimates of peer influence for treatment engagement were non-significant in longitudinal network models. Nor were estimates of peer influence significantly greater for peers perceived as community role models. Rather, inmates connected with peers who were of similar treatment engagement as themselves (i.e., a peer selection process), and the latter primarily resulted from racial homophily in the TC social network.ConclusionsInconsistent with the desired treatment model, treatment engagement diffusion was not evident in the sampled TC. Results suggested that highly-engaged residents clustered together at the center of the TC's social structure but had little impact on less-engaged and peripheral inmates. The relatively short (i.e., four-month) program length and moderate-to-low treatment fidelity likely contributed to the lack of peer influence processes.

This study examined the association of friendships and popularity with adolescents' first-time involvement in a romantic relationship (referred to as romantic relationship debut). The aim of this article was twofold: first, to disentangle the unique effects of friendships and perceived popularity; second, to separate same- and cross-gender peer nominations. Specifically, it was tested whether same- and cross-gender friendships or same- and cross-gender popularity were more likely to increase the likelihood of romantic relationship debut. Using longitudinal data of 590 Dutch adolescents age 12 to 18 (57 % girls) from TRAILS (Tracking Adolescents' Individual Lives Survey), results are consistent with the hypothesis that cross-gender friendships and cross-gender popularity increase the chances of a romantic relationship debut. Findings indicate that peer evaluations by cross-gender peers of both friendships and popularity account for adolescents' romantic relationship debut.

The current study investigates informal social structure among prison inmates. Data come from the Prison Inmate Network Study (PINS), a project focused on a unit of a Pennsylvania medium security men's prison. We focus on 205 inmates and their “get along with” network – an approximation of friendship in other settings. We find a weak subgroup structure dominated by two groups of “old heads” and characterized by moderate (non gang-based) race/ethnic clustering. Structurally, the network resembles adolescents in schools, suggesting that prison inmates are capable of successfully building peer associations. We conclude that under the right conditions self-organizing inmate society can foster social integration reminiscent of other social settings.

Research of inmate social order is a once-vibrant area that receded just as American incarceration rates climbed and the country's carceral contexts dramatically changed. This study reengages inmate society with an abductive mixed methods investigation of informal status within a contemporary men's prison unit. The authors collect narrative and social network data from 133 male inmates housed in a unit of a Pennsylvania medium-security prison. Analyses of inmate narratives suggest that unit "old heads" provide collective goods in the form of mentoring and role modeling that foster a positive and stable peer environment. This hypothesis is then tested with Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGMs) of peer nomination data. The ERGM results complement the qualitative analysis and suggest that older inmates and those who have been on the unit longer are perceived by their peers as powerful and influential. Both analytical strategies point to the maturity of aging and the acquisition of local knowledge as important for attaining informal status in the unit. In sum, this mixed methods case study extends theoretical insights of classic prison ethnographies, adds quantifiable results capable of future replication, and points to a growing population of older inmates as important for contemporary prison social organization.

The mid-twentieth century witnessed a surge of American prison ethnographies focused on inmate society and the social structures that guide inmate life. Ironically, this literature virtually froze in the 1980s just as the country entered a period of unprecedented prison expansion, and has only recently begun to thaw. In this manuscript, we develop a rationale for returning inmate society to the forefront of criminological inquiry, and suggest that network science provides an ideal framework for achieving this end. In so doing, we show that a network perspective extends prison ethnographies by allowing quantitative assessment of prison culture and illuminating basic characteristics of prison social structure that are essential for improving inmate safety, health, and community reentry outcomes. We conclude by demonstrating the feasibility and promise of inmate network research with findings from a recent small-scale study of a maximum-security prison work unit.

AimsThe current report examined associations between romantic partner, peer and individual substance use behaviors in a sample of American adolescents.DesignThe report used two waves of data (8th and 9th grades) from the Partnerships to Enhance Resilience (PROSPER) intervention project and focused on dating couples and their friends in 54 sampled school-cohorts. Hierarchical logistic regression models examined the associations between friend, partner and friend-of-partner substance use and daters' future drinking and smoking.SettingSurveys administered in rural Pennsylvania and Iowa secondary schools.ParticipantsA total of 744 dating couples.MeasurementsStudent participants completed questionnaires that assessed substance use, background characteristics and dating and friend nominations. Friend, partner and friend-of-partner substance use were assessed at each wave directly from respective reports.FindingsConsistent with a bridging hypothesis, friends-of-partner drinking had a strong and independent association with subsequent drunkenness (b = 1.40, P  0.10).ConclusionRomantic partner and peer behaviors have substantially different associations with adolescent drinking and smoking. Intervention efforts aimed at reducing teenage smoking should be aimed at proximal peer and romantic relationships, whereas interventions of teenage drinking should also include the wider circle of indirect friends.

We tested 2 hypotheses derived from Moffitt's (1993) taxonomic theory of antisocial behavior, both of which are central to her explanation for the rise in delinquency during adolescence. We tested whether persistently delinquent individuals become more accepted by their peers during adolescence and whether individuals who abstain from delinquent behavior become less accepted. Participants were 4,359 adolescents from 14 communities in the PROSPER study, which assessed friendship networks and delinquency from 6th (M = 11.8 years) to 9th (M = 15.3 years) grade. We operationalized peer acceptance as number of nominations received (indegree centrality), attractiveness as a friend (adjusted indegree centrality), and network bridging potential (betweenness centrality) and tested the hypotheses with multilevel modeling. Contrary to Moffitt's hypothesis, persistently delinquent youths did not become more accepted between early and middle adolescence, and although abstainers were less accepted in early adolescence, they became more accepted over time. Results were similar for boys and girls; when differences occurred, they provided no support for Moffitt's hypotheses for boys and were opposite of her hypotheses for girls. Sensitivity analyses in which alternative strategies and additional data were used to identify persistently delinquent adolescents produced similar results. We explore the implications of these results for Moffitt's assertions that social mimicry of persistently antisocial adolescents leads to increases in delinquency and that social isolation leads to abstention.

The onset and escalation of alcohol consumption and romantic relationships are hallmarks of adolescence. Yet only recently have these domains jointly been the focus of sociological inquiry. We extend this literature by connecting alcohol use, dating, and peers to understand the diffusion of drinking behavior in school-based friendship networks. Drawing on Granovette's classic concept of weak ties, we argue that adolescent romantic partners are likely to be network bridges, or liaisons, connecting daters to new peer contexts that, in turn, promote changes in individual drinking behaviors and allow these behaviors to spread across peer networks. Using longitudinal data of 449 couples from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we estimate Actor-Partner Interdependence Models and identify unique contributions of partners' drinking, friends' drinking, and friends-of-partners' drinking to daters' own future binge drinking and drinking frequency. Findings support the liaison hypothesis and suggest that friends-of-partners' drinking have net associations with adolescent drinking patterns. Moreover, the coefficient for friends-of-partners' drinking is larger than the coefficient for one's own peers and generally immune to prior selection. Our findings suggest that romantic relationships are important mechanisms for understanding the diffusion of emergent problem behaviors in adolescent peer networks. (Contains 15 notes, 6 tables, and 2 figures.)

The belief that women and men are held to different standards of sexual conduct is pervasive in contemporary American society. According to the sexual double standard, boys and men are rewarded and praised for heterosexual sexual contacts, whereas girls and women are derogated and stigmatized for similar behaviors. Although widely held by the general public, research findings on the sexual double standard remain equivocal, with qualitative studies and early attitudinal surveys generally finding evidence of the double standard and more recent experimental vignette designs often failing to find similar results. In this study, we extend prior research by directly measuring the social status of sexually permissive youth. We use data collected from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to relate adolescents' self-reported numbers of sexual partners to a network measure of peer acceptance. Results suggest that the association between lifetime sexual partnerships and peer status varies significantly by gender, such that greater numbers of sexual partners are positively correlated with boys' peer acceptance, but negatively correlated with girls' peer acceptance. Moreover, the relationship between boys' sexual behaviors and peer acceptance is moderated by socioeconomic origins; sexually permissive boys from disadvantaged backgrounds are predicted to have more friendships than permissive boys from more advantaged backgrounds. Our results thus support the existence of an adolescent sexual double standard and suggest that sexual norms vary by both gender and socioeconomic origins. (Contains 2 figures, 4 tables and 8 footnotes.)

Assimilation theorists have long viewed inter-group romantic partnerships as indicators of racial equality. Although the past half-century has witnessed the erosion of anti-miscegenation laws and subsequent increases in the frequency of interracial marriages, these unions remain relatively infrequent. Low intermarriage rates may be partially explained by the informal sanctions leveled at young interracial romances. This study tests whether adolescents who interracially date are at greater risks of peer difficulties than intra-racially dating youth. Results demonstrate a positive relationship between adolescent interracial dating and peer trouble at school. As hypothesized from ethnographic research and theories of inter-group relations, results suggest that interracial romances activate peer sanctions and that these reactions are strongest when romances involve black students. (Contains 4 tables, 2 figures and 8 notes.)

This article examines the extent to which participation in high school interscholastic sports contributes to male violence. Deriving competing hypotheses from social control, social learning, and masculinity theories, I use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to test if (1) type of sport and (2) peer athletic participation, contribute to the risks of male serious fighting. Contrary to social control expectations, analyses suggest that athletic involvement fails to inhibit male violence. Moreover, there is a strong relationship between contact sports and violence. Football players and wrestlers, as opposed to baseball, basketball, tennis, and other athletes, are significantly more likely than nonathletic males to be involved in a serious fight. Additionally, the direct effect of football is explained by the football participation of individuals' peers. Males whose friends play football are more likely to fight than other males, supporting perspectives that emphasize peer contexts as important mediators. Overall, findings are consistent with the expectations of social learning and masculinity arguments. The theoretical and policy implications of these results are discussed. (Contains 8 footnotes, 2 tables, and 3 figures.)