A large body of research investigates the dynamics of racial segregation in schools and neighborhoods, typically treating them as separate contexts. These studies offer insight into local patterns of demographic change but rarely consider how neighborhoods and schools evolve together. Yet, in the United States, the two are structurally intertwined: Residence-based school assignment policies mean that choosing where to live is often a choice about children's schools. We develop a framework for studying coupled changes in neighborhoods and schools that articulates how choices and opportunities in both domains imply different degrees of linkage. From this, we derive a model of coupled tipping that generates testable predictions about how demographic change begins and how neighborhood and school composition relate over time. We evaluate these predictions using original longitudinal data from 14 large US school districts from 1990-2010. Our findings support our model and deepen understanding of segregation dynamics in urban areas.
Researchers have long observed that women are generally treated more leniently than men in the criminal legal system, but the recent growth of women's incarceration in the United States suggests that this gender disparity may be changing. Drawing on over 30 years of administrative data from Texas, we examine change over time in the gender composition of the population involved with the criminal legal system and gender differences in case processing. Results show that while women are less likely than men to be punished at both the adjudicating and sentencing stages, the gender gap has widened over time in conviction and narrowed in incarceration. Furthermore, gender disparities narrow as women gain experience with the system. We situate these results in relation to the salience of gender as a key feature of stratification in other systems of inequality and call for further attention to collateral consequences of the carceral state.
How do street-level regulators cope with competing demands from labor and capital alongside limited capacity to achieve their mandates? How do their adaptive strategies contribute to institutional change? This article addresses these questions through case studies of 19th-century factory inspection departments in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Tasked with enforcing child labor and occupational safety regulations, inspectors faced a "trilemma" of high stakeholder expectations, weak state capacity, and structural dependence on capital. Using quantitative and qualitative data from newspapers, annual reports, and archives, I identify two strategies through which inspectors adapted to this trilemma: performative governance and diversion. These strategies indicated a soft form of regulatory capture (SRC). Eventually, SRC generated backlash from labor and progressives; in response, inspectorates were replaced by state labor departments still in existence today. The analysis illuminates how the regulatory welfare state functions in practice and how its inherent tensions can lead to institutional restructuring.
