The ascendancy of right-wing populism and neo-liberalism has sapped many, if not most, progressives’ optimism. Since President Donald Trump got re-elected, it appears that things are getting worse every day. The movement toward a harsher, more unequal and less secure society, however, is not confined to the United States—though its expression there may be the most extreme and glaring. What is to be done? In 2019, in response to Trump's first election, Walter DeKeseredy and Elliot Currie complied an edited volume— Progressive Justice in an Age of Repression: Strategies for Challenging the Rise of the Right —that aimed at rejuvenating progressive scholars amid bowdlerization. At the 2026 Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences conference, the authors of this article led a conversation drawing inspiration from DeKeseredy and Currie and contriving further strategies to combat the rise of authoritarianism in the United States, academia, and around the world. This piece expands that dialog to suggest bold, creative strategies to challenge the MAGA agenda and restart the movement toward a sustaining and humane world order. We hope it inspires novel research, social action, and policies that promote true justice for all.

This study examines gender differences in the emotional and coping pathways linking stalking victimization to legitimate coping strategies using a gendered general strain theory framework. Using the 2016 Supplemental Victimization Survey, stalking victimization was measured across physical and cyber domains. Forty-eight Poisson-based regression models tested direct and indirect associations of stalking with coping strategies (legal action, behavioral change, social support seeking) through negative emotions (anger, depression, fear), separately for women and men. Women showed broader emotional pathways to coping, while men's pathways were more selective, driven primarily by anger and fear. Findings support gender-responsive stalking interventions.

Mass shootings are most frequently committed by white men. Yet, these white perpetrators often do not meet the same fatal fate as Black people who have committed lesser crimes, particularly in the United States. Furthermore, Black people with mental health issues in such situations are more commonly met with lethal force. This study investigates if disparities exist in the likelihood of being apprehended, taking one’s own life, or being killed by police or others during a public mass shooting incident based on one’s race and known mental health status. Using the Violence Project data, this study aids understanding of the causes and consequences of mass violence.

Since the 1980s, feminist criminologists have highlighted the news media's interest in girls' violence and suggested sensationalistic representations of girls' violence are reflective of a moral panic. Although scholars have provided compelling anecdotal evidence of a moral panic surrounding girls' violence, no known study has empirically investigated its emergence over time. Our qualitative content analysis of 20 years of news coverage on girls' violence published in top-circulating print media in the United States identified two conceptual themes: 1) the emergence of a moral panic surrounding girls' gang membership in the early 1990s, which almost exclusively focused on girls of colour living in marginalised, low-income communities, and 2) the emergence of a moral panic surrounding girls' gratuitous violence in the early-to-mid 1990s, which was used as evidence of a widespread epidemic of girls' violence. This study adds to the scant research on media portrayals of girls' violence in the United States, highlighting a systemic construction of girls' violence that works to reinforce gendered and racialised expectations for girls' behaviour.

This study builds on previous works that ties perceptions of white "victimhood" to affiliations with extremist movements to assess the links between such feelings and online aggression. We further investigate the conditioning effects of dark triad traits, or the overlapping personality characteristics of Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy, on the associations between "victim" ideology and online aggression, generally and between white women and men. Utilizing secondary survey data, we find white "victim" ideology is significantly associated with online aggression and is conditioned by dark triad traits, though vary in gendered and nuanced ways. This study adds depth to our understanding of the complexities of white "victim" ideology. Policy and social implications are discussed.

Queer criminology is quickly growing but is often not integrated within orthodox theoretical frameworks. Moreover, many studies analyze the experiences of LGBTQ+ individuals as a monolithic experience instead of investigating the nuances between sexuality and gender identity. This study bridges these gaps by using a national sample of college students and applying an intersectional, queer criminological lens to a general strain theory framework to understand how LGBQ and trans and non-binary individuals experience and respond to strain in relation to self-harm. We find distinct variations among these groups. We discuss the implications of these findings and directions for future research.

Despite the rise of the US Latine population and the increasing growth of Latine-focused institutions (LFIs), the experiences of students from intersectional and varied backgrounds and identities, even within the Latine community, attending LFIs is basically unknown. Given this expansive gap in the literature, this study applies an intersectional lens to the varied experiences across ethnoracial identity, gender identity, and sexuality between LFIs and predominantly white institutions (PWIs). Specifically, this study assesses if students' fear of victimisation not only differs across contexts (e.g. on campus or off and during the day versus at night), but if those holding more marginalised and vulnerable identities experience fear differently, particularly between LFIs and PWIs. Results suggest extensive varied experiences and associations between groups, contexts, and institutions. The assessment of fear of victimisation is important given the cultural and political threats faced by many Latine students. As LFIs are the fastest growing minority-serving institutions in the US, it is essential research continues to explore and understand the complexities of these institutions and their students. Implications as well as suggestions for research and policy are discussed.

This study examines fear of victimization (FOV) among lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer (LGBQ), and (T)ransgender college and university students across the US. We expand the FOV literature by examining the relationship between fear and both gender and sexual identities across racial and ethnic lines among college and university students in the US. We find that being a transgender or non-binary (NB) student is significantly associated with FOV, as well as being an LGBQ student. In addition, Black trans/NB students and Black LGBQ non-trans students are both roughly 11 times more likely than their counterparts to report FOV. Being trans/NB matters; it is an independent identity from one's sexuality, and it operates differently across race and ethnicity.

Gratuitous Angst in White America presents a new criminological theory that explains the racialized experiences of white people. Unlike orthodox traditions that assume whiteness as normative or progressive traditions that center the experiences of the marginalized and oppressed, the theory of whiteness and crime flips those perspectives and turns a lens toward white people's lived experiences and the ideologies of whiteness. The theory of whiteness and crime answers two overarching questions: How does being white impact one's likelihood of engaging in deviant, criminal, and/or violent behaviors? And, why are white people treated differently than other racial and ethnic groups by the criminal legal system? Through the application of a critical whiteness perspective to criminology, the theory of whiteness and crime is an intersectional and integrated framework that explains within (and between) group differences in negative behaviors and entanglements with the criminal legal system. This book examines the racialized history of America to contextualize the current racial strife in society and inform a more nuanced theoretical approach to explaining disparities. The reader will gain a socio-historical understanding of the depths of the current divides and insight into how such are perpetuated and potentially dismantled. Students will see connections between various theoretical traditions and an application of theory to current social conditions. Researchers will acquire a new theoretical foundation and propositions to ground empirical work that will fill extensive gaps in the criminological literature. And policy makers will see how oversights in understanding the depths of historical significance perpetuate and increase disparities and disadvantages, which are counter to a pursuit of justice. Written in a compelling and direct way, this book will appeal to those in criminology, sociology, race and ethnic studies, gender and sexuality studies, political science, cultural studies, psychology, criminal justice, law, and beyond. Gratuitous Angst in White America is essential for those seeking a more complete understanding of the associations between race and crime and those who want to remedy those disparities. In the end, it is more than a new theory of crime, it is a call to action for all willing to hear.

that the U.S. 2020 election was fair and free, or even lose 10 stubborn pounds after going on an ice cream fast for six months, we can, perhaps, change how we feel about it all, if we just manufacture the ‘‘right’’ mindset of confidence. As Organ and Gill note, confidence is an affective technology of self, operating through emotions, feelings, and desires. It works by diverting people’s attention from institutional problems that are hard to solve to individual ones that we think we might be able to influence. For example, if after scrolling through a social media platform replete with fit influencers, we feel dumpy and ugly, messages that say ‘‘confidence is the new sexy,’’ ‘‘love your body,’’ and ‘‘feel confident in your own skin’’ sound right. Who doesn’t want to ‘‘feel comfortable’’ with oneself? But in addition to the fact that the path toward actually feeling better about oneself is not well articulated (how do I feel confident when I don’t feel confident?), these admonitions do nothing to change the root of the problem, which is that most media bodies are unnaturally thin and doctored. Similarly, each chapter carefully explores confidence messaging in a particular sphere: body image, at work, in sex and relationships, in mothering, and in a transnational context. Threaded throughout Confidence Culture are observations about the gendered quality of confidence messaging. In particular, the authors note how confidence messaging appropriates and then waters down feminist goals into something less political and thus less threatening to patriarchy. For example, it devolves equality and liberation to empowerment, sisterhood to friendship, and rage into passion. The authors conclude Confidence Culture by exploring a path ‘‘beyond confidence,’’ and especially the role of social justice in such an endeavor. They reiterate the main paradox of confidence messaging: that no matter how warm, loving, and encouraging it sounds, the foundational assumption of confidence culture is that people, particularly women, are to blame for their problems. The authors note, ‘‘the confidence cult redirects attention from the brutal effects of patriarchal capitalism to women’s ‘selfinflicted wounds’ and their responsibility for healing them . . . . women’s individual ‘toxic baggage’ is treated as self-generated and unconnected to a culture of normalized pathologization, objectification, surveillance, blame, and hate speech directed at women’’ (p. 144). Original and well argued, Confidence Culture is an essential intervention in feminist media scholarship by illuminating a new form of domination politics. To reiterate, contemporary exhortations to confidence are problematic not because the authors (or anyone) believe confidence is bad, but because they encourage individual solutions to social problems. By making visible the manipulations of confidence messaging, the authors have done much to clear some of the confusion it generates and help steer westerners away from platitudes that distract from social change. I highly recommend Confidence Culture to scholars of media, communications, new technologies, feminist and intersectional theory, and to instructors teaching a range of courses in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, especially Women and Media.

Since the initial articulation of general strain theory (GST), Agnew has suggested strains may function differently—in type, response, and impact—for different groups. We build upon Pérez and colleagues’ foundational arguments for a Latinx GST by investigating the role of the ethnically specific strains they propose in addition to other strains argued to disproportionately impact people of Color. Furthermore, we examine the protective role of positive ethnic identity against the negative effects of strainful experiences for Latinxs. Using a sample of Latinx youth from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, we highlight not only the unique strains faced by Latinxs in America, but how they distinctly experience and respond to criminogenic strains.