This research uses status characteristics theory to expand our knowledge of the effects of status variables (e.g., race, education) and emotional displays on the antecedents of sentencingevaluations of offender dangerousness and offense seriousness. We present a theoretical formulation that combines three areas of status characteristics research -reward expectations, individual evaluative settings and valued personal characteristics. The result is a quantitative measure that aggregates relative differences in demographic and emotional characteristics between offenders and their victims. The significance of this expectation advantage measure (e) in predicting evaluations of offender dangerousness and offense severity is tested using data from a vignette study. We find empirical support that expectation advantage significantly predicts these sentencing antecedents but not sentencing outcomes directly. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for future status and criminological research.

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Ray Oldenburg (1989) developed the concept of third places as environments that offer friendship and a sense of community. However, the idealized image of the coffee house may need revision. In recent decades coffee houses have transformed from small-scale businesses to corporate-owned franchises, and with the advent of personal electronic devices many people now use them to work rather than to socialize. Using unobtrusive observation data from three independently-owned and three chain-based coffee houses in the Boston area, this research examines the ways in which modern coffee houses live up to or defy Oldenburg's social expectations of a third place. Two key findings reveal that: 1) people increasingly use coffee houses as both a social sphere and a private zone to work, read, and use electronic devices; and 2) chain coffee houses, though often criticized for their sanitized lack of character, may better meet customers' new third place needs by providing a wider variety of amenities (e.g., types of seating, food, and media) and free services that are in high demand (e.g., Wi-Fi).

Work/life satisfaction policies are seen as key to recruiting, retaining, and advancing high quality faculty. This article explores the work/life policies prevalent at NSF ADVANCE institutions (PAID, Catalyst, and IT). We systematically review ADVANCE university websites (N = 124) and rank 9 categories of work/life policy including dual career support, tenure clock extension, and tuition remission. Our rankings show that for most policies, ADVANCE institutions are highly progressive. For example, protections for birth mothers tend to be generous and more than half of the universities surveyed go beyond the ACA regarding lactation. However, tuition remission and dual-career policies are lagging.