|
Faculty > Andrew L. Spivak
Dr. Spivak is Assistant Professor of
Sociology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He previously taught at the
University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University-Oklahoma City, and was principal
researcher for a two-year American Heart Association grant to study tobacco control
policy. Prior to academic life, he spent a decade in corrections, serving as a statistical
analyst at the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, where he had begun as a correctional
officer and later worked as a prison case manager. He currently teaches criminology, penology,
social deviance, and research methods. His peer-reviewed articles have been published
in Suicide
and Life-Threatening Behavior, Problems of Post-Communism,
Justice Research and Policy, Crime and Delinquency,
and Politics and Policy.
His current research relates to
topics including prison recidivism, violent offending and victimology, deterrence theory,
tobacco control, and residential segregation.
Recent Courses Taught
 Soc 101– Principles of Sociology
Soc 497 –
Prisons and Society
Soc 431 –
Crime and Criminal Behavior
Soc 403 –
Techniques of Social Research
Contact Dr. Spivak:
Office location: CBC-B 241
Email: andrew.spivak@unlv.edu
|
 |
Current
Research Projects
Prison Misconduct and Recidivism
Using more than a decade of prison misconduct data from the Oklahoma
correctional population, I attempt to predict the extent to which rule-violation among
inmates predicts post-release performance, as well as why sentence-length and length-of-stay
predict prison misconduct even after controlling for age. The latter question has bearing on
post-classical vs. life-course criminological explanations for the age-crime curve.
Feminist vs. Evolutionary Theories of Sexual Violence
Following my dissertation work, I attempt to explain the victim-age
distribution for adolescent and adult female sexual assault victims. Particularly, I use the
National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) and the National Incident Based Reporting System
(NIBRS) to try to explain why the age distribution of rape victims diverges from the age
distribution of non-sexual violent crimes. Feminist and Evolutionary theorists have engaged
in a bitter debate over the issue of offenders' motives, and I attempt to bridge this
theoretical gap with a criminological perspective.
Religiosity, Social Deterrence, and Projected Delinquency
Expanding on the work of one of my mentors in Criminology
(Harold Grasmick), I and colleagues at the University of Illinois-Urbana, Cleveland State
University, and the University of Oklahoma are using measures of religiosity and
religious fundamentalism to predict the likelihood of college students' projected
violation of a campus alcohol ban. We consider social deterrence measures, such as
the anticipation of shame and embarrassment, as intervening variables that mediate
the relationship between religion and social conformity.
|