Objectives: We examine how news media portrays the causes of mass shootings for shooters of different races. Specifically, we explore whether White men are disproportionately framed as mentally ill, and what narratives media tend to invoke when covering mass shootings through the lens of mental illness as opposed to other explanatory frames. Methods: The study examines a unique data set of 433 news documents covering 219 mass shootings between January 1, 2013, and December 31, 2015. It analyzes the data using a mixed methods approach, combining logistic regression with content analysis. Results: Quantitative findings show that Whites and Latinos are more likely to have their crime attributed to mental illness than Blacks. Qualitative findings show that rhetoric within these discussions frame White men as sympathetic characters, while Black and Latino men

Although employment is central to successful reentry, formerly incarcerated people struggle to find work because of criminal stigma, poor education, and sparse work histories. Prison credentials are proposed as one solution to alleviate these challenges by signaling criminal desistance and employability. Evidence regarding their efficacy, however, is inconsistent. In this article, I develop a novel explanation—the prison credential dilemma—highlighting the numerous and contradictory ways employers may interpret prison credentials as positive and negative signals. Drawing on 50 qualitative interviews with formerly incarcerated men in Franklin County, Ohio, I examine how the prison credential dilemma and the uncertainty it produces shape their job search strategies and pathways to employment. I find that participants concealed or obscured institutional affiliations of prison credentials on job applications to signal employability rather than their criminal records. In job interviews, however, prison credentials were used to divert conversations away from their criminal record toward skills and criminal desistance via the use of redemptive narratives. Participants also attempted to acquire credentials outside of prison and/or pursued temporary, precarious jobs, aspiring for such physically strenuous and poorly paid work to materialize into stable employment. This study has implications for prison programming as well as policies and practices aiming to improve reentry outcomes.

Drug policy has shifted from intense criminalization toward reforms that prioritize decarceration and treatment. Despite this shift, little is known about whether support for recent treatment-oriented drug policy is equitable by users’ race and the drug type. Using the opiate and crack cocaine crises as cases, we analyze 400 articles from the New York Times and Washington Post to assess the degree to which the two crises were racialized, criminalized, and medicalized. We find that media coverage medicalized and humanized White people who use opiates, while coverage of crack cocaine focused on criminalization, vilifying Black people who use drugs. We then conduct two vignette experiments (N=308; N=630) to examine whether these racialized frames shape public support for treatment or criminalization. We find the public more likely to support criminalization for Black people, while supporting drug treatment for White people. Respondents are more likely to support drug treatment for heroin use than for crack cocaine. Our findings suggest that support for medicalized approaches to drug use is more likely to occur for White people and drugs linked to White people, while Black people and drugs associated with Black people continue to be perceived as largely amenable to punitive options.

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