Review 1 of "Forced Interactions with Sheriff Deputies Over Time and their Influence on Stigma and Self Identities among Individuals Convicted of Sex Crimes"

Vote: Publish pending minor changes

[Please explain your vote. If you voted to publish pending minor changes, specify each change, why it is needed, and, possibly, how it should/could be done.] 

·       I think there is a lot of good stuff in here, and it’s a really interesting study.

·        I feel that the basic analysis of the paper is quite solid, as are the underlying data.

·        My most pressing concerns are the ‘pitch’ and the clarity on how the ’3-5 year post-supervision’ thing is actually worked into the data/sample, and the clarity of what is actually being considered time-wise in a registrant’s life.

·        Most of the analysis seems to be focused on identity formation pre/post-conviction, with the ‘interactions with sheriff deputies over time’ only being a smaller part of the analysis that I think is not the only/main focus.

·        As a result, I think this paper is broader than the title and abstract suggest, and at times this conflict between the broadness/richness of the data, and the focus on the police interactions, is reducing the clarity of the data/interpretation/findings/etc. given the ‘pitch’ as post-supervision police interactions.

·        I would consider changing this around to involve a series of minor fixes, either to better clarify the post-release stuff, or to take that out and make it clearly broader to match the data being considered. This isn’t really changing the theoretical underpinnings, since the identity changes/impact make sense already as to their importance. 

[Additional Info:]

·        For the identity disruption section in the literature review, I think section could be a little clearer on why the reader should care about the individual types, rather than just the end outcome of how SOs see themselves. That is, set up in this section why these various paths to forming identity are important to distinguish from each other, rather than just examining the end resulting identity.

·        A major pet peeve for me: Unless it’s anonymized due to privacy issues, please mention exactly which state this is set in. This is important information for future research to consider, and ‘a Midwestern State’ is not really helpful.

·        Re: “three and five years post-correctional supervision” (p. 6): May be helpful to know the average time spent out of the community due to the conviction. That is, if these individuals are discussing pre-conviction identities, but then spent 10 years in prison, then 10 years on supervision, and this is 3-5 years after that, the identities being compared are very different just in terms of the different part of a person’s lifetime (e.g., 20-year-old vs. 45-year-old, etc.) regardless of the impact of the conviction. For example, a couple lines down, it mentioned ‘supervision ranged from 4-16 years’ for the sample. Does this ‘supervision’ count time spent incarcerated? My understanding is that this 4-16 years is the time they spend on supervision (post-release), and now this is an interview with them 3 and 5 years after the supervision period ended, and they’re now only on the registry-maintenance status.

·        P. 7: Any way to know if any of the 46 missing in the follow up were rearrested/incarcerated? If they’re registered, it shouldn’t be hard to find them on a registry, right?

·        P. 7 – “We then restricted our sample to only those who no longer had any contact with probation/parole…” Per the earlier part of this document, was it only for those who were 3-5 years after their supervision ended? If not, I’m not sure how the 3-5 years is worked into this, especially since the interviews seemed to run for 8 years (’12-’19)

·        Same sentence – why was the sample restricted to 4x/year registrants?

·        P. 7 “lack of reoffending reported by our sample…” This finding may be important to note, perhaps later, that this sample is obviously of those who have ‘survived’ without being rearrested for X years already, and thus supports research showing that those remaining offense-free for (5? 7?) years are exceptionally low risk for future reoffense, regardless of how their identities were impacted.

·        P. 7: “…The average number of contacts was 2.4 times per year between 2012 and 2019” See prior comments about the 3-5 years post release thing. Is this 3-5 years post release at the start of the follow up period (2012)?  If so, that should be more clear in the paragraph about how you cut down the sample, and why.

·        Limitations: The sample wasn’t ‘predominantly’ male and white, it was ‘entirely’.

·        On that note, please cite some example studies that had this same ‘common demographic trend’ of all male/white samples.

·        P. 9: “interviewing subjects loved ones” Since most are spouses/partners, do you know whether they knew the individuals before the conviction? Otherwise they can’t really talk about the pre-conviction identity much (vs. the current identity), right?

·        P. 10 – Scott and Jack’s examples - Compared to the earlier examples, these two examples seem to be more focused on pre-pubescent pedophile-type urges/preferences, rather than the ’underage’ issues brought up with the earlier cases (15 year old who said she was 19, random images of underage girls in a big batch of pornography). May be important to explore this? I could easily see how it would be easier to justify a 15-year-old consensual victim compared to, say, molesting ‘kids’ – see next comment

·        P. 12: “I am not some cho-mo” This distinction may need to be explored in more detail in the data. How did the views differ between rapists vs. child molesters? What about between ‘pedophiles’ and those with underaged (but post-puberty) victims? I would think these would be incredibly important in terms of impacting identity.

·        P. 12 “especially in the first-year post-conviction.” … Where does the 3-5 years post conviction stuff come in? Was the data being collected throughout this period (post conviction through post-supervision)? This is where the analysis seems much broader than just ‘how does interacting with police influence identity’

·        P. 14 “Interactions with police after year three and year five post-supervision…” The 3-5 year post-supervision stuff is confusing in terms of how it’s being worked in. Some of the examples are clearly talking about the first year or two on supervision (see quote above), but then it jumps to the (seemingly randomly-chosen) 3-5 year post-supervision timing. This seems an artificial distinction for the timeframe, without any real justification given for using 3-5 years post-release, nor consistency in focusing on that.

·        P. 14 “judgements during home visits.” … During the 3-5 year post-supervision period?

·        P. 15 “Over time, deputies seem to take the normal-smithing approach….” This is referring to the changes over time, which is super interesting. But again, it’s unclear how the three-and-five year period is being used. Is this comparing changes over the entire post-release period? The period from 3-5 years post supervision through the end of the study’s data collection?

·        P. 17: “registered citizens’ perceptions of their interactions with police…” The registrant-police interactions piece seemed to be a relatively small portion of the analysis/data, with a lot of it focused on the pre-identity and post-conviction change. I think this paper is broader than the current pitch of ‘interactions with police’ and is underselling itself.