Sir/St. Thomas More on the US Constitution: ‘More Perfect’ is not Utopian

Sir Thomas More was a politician, statesman, visionary humanist, and a friend of Erasmus, Colet, and Henry VIII. His most famous literary work is Utopia, a word coined based on the Greek for ‘no place’. Its influence has been enormous, inspiring social thinkers as diverse as Rousseau and B. F. Skinner. Using the principles More seemed to advocate, this article addresses the question: ‘What would he have thought of the Constitution of the United States had he lived to read it and experience life under its aegis?’ Much of what the Americans have done he would appreciate, much he would deplore. He would appreciate the federal nature of government, the elective nature of the legislature, and the freedom granted to citizens. He would have deplored slavery based on race and applauded the 13th Amendment. He would have looked askance at the role of the president and the necessity for a military. In sum, if we can believe that what he wrote in Utopia reflects his attitudes correctly, Thomas More’s would be a mixed verdict on American republicanism.     

Perceptions and experiences of intrusive behavior and stalking within a culture

ABSTRACT

Previous studies have compared perceptions and experiences of intrusive activity and stalking between countries and the present work compares subcultures within a single country. Singaporean women (89 Chinese, 69 Indian and 68 Malay) with similar age profiles completed a modified version of the ‘Stalking: International perceptions and prevalence’ questionnaire (SIPPQ). This contained measures of individual perceptions and experiences of a range of 47 intrusive behaviors, and a measure of stalking. Between the three ethnic groups, few differences were found in terms of how unacceptable the 47 intrusive acts were judged to be. The small number of differences identified related to courtship behaviors. Women across ethnicities reported largely the same experiences of intrusive behaviors, differing on just two of the 47 behaviors. This suggests that overarching national attitudes towards women are better determinants of the types of intrusive behaviors they are likely to experience, as opposed to their subculture. Finally, no differences were found in stalking rates between the three ethnic groups, but the overall stalking rate within the sample was high at 54.9%. This finding may provide impetus to increase awareness of stalking in Singapore, given that it was only recently criminalized in the sovereign city–state.     

Medieval Security in the Modern State

Abstract. The size of the private security industry has increased substantially in recent decades. While previous research has focused on the industry's growth trajectory, less emphasis has been placed on explaining the nature and diversity of private security services. This article investigates the possibility of studying private security with the feudal model. Feudalism is introduced as an ideal type and the paper explains why it is necessary for understanding the independent control of violent force—termed here as ‘private coercion’—in contemporary society. The feudal model provides a unique historical lens through which to re-examine previous studies on this subject. In many ways, private coercion is incongruent with the traditional vision of liberal, capitalist society. The feudal model reveals these inconsistencies as it identifies private coercion as a means of creating wealth that violates the state's monopoly on violence, challenges the public sphere of governance and redefines the boundaries between public and private space. This article suggests that any explanation of modern modes of securing life and property is incomplete without the feudal model.     

Social isolation and inmate behavior: A conceptual framework for theorizing prison visitation and guiding and assessing research

Purpose

Scholarship suggests that prison visitation is important because it allows inmates access to social ties that, in turn, can offset social isolation and help inmates cope with the transition back into society upon release. Only a small number of empirical assessments of visitation exist, however, and existing studies have typically overlooked how the heterogeneity inherent in visitation may influence whether visitation is beneficial, harmful, or has no effect. The goal of this paper is to develop a conceptual framework for theorizing this heterogeneity and its impacts, evaluating visitation research, and guiding future research aimed at estimating visitation effects.

Methods

The paper reviews theory and research on inmate visitation. In so doing, it systematically examines heterogeneity in visitation and the implications of this heterogeneity.

Results

The paper identifies five dimensions—visitation timing, longitudinal patterns in visitation, visitor type, visitation experiences, and inmate characteristics—that can be used to characterize visitation events or patterns that, themselves, may have varied effects on in-prison outcomes and reentry outcomes.

Conclusions

More nuanced theories of, and empirical research on, inmate visitation are needed both to understand better the implications of visitation, and inmate social ties more broadly, and to advance theory, research, and policy.     

Exporting and importing criminality: Incarceration of the Foreign Born

Since previous studies have found that crime rates vary by immigrant group there is a need to dis‐aggregate immigrants by country of birth in order to obtain a more accurate representation of the relationship between migrants and crime. This study examines data from six countries (Australia, Canada, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and the U.S.A.) on the country of birth of their inmate populations. The following observations are reasonable conclusions from the data available. First, the percentages of each home country's inmate population that is foreign‐born varies remarkably. Second, in general foreign‐born inmates tend to come from regions outside the region within which the host country was located, though in most cases from regions that were proximate. Third, given the small number of countries reporting, it is intriguing that just a small number of countries and regions can account for such a high proportion of a home country's inmate population if one includes the numbers of a country's citizens who are housed in foreign prisons as part of that original country's inmate population. The paper concludes with a discussion of a number of policy implications that flow from these findings.     

Surveying American State Police Agencies About Terrorism Threats,Terrorism Sources,and Terrorism Definitions

This study presents American state police agencies' perceptions about three significant terrorism and public safety issues. First, we asked about the threat posed by specified extremist groups nationally and to their state. We asked about the number of such groups and their supporters, and the number of activities each group participates in during a typical year in their state. We also asked about the number of criminal incidents each group commits and the number of their supporters arrested in a typical year. Second, we asked the agencies to rate the usefulness of fifteen specified terrorism sources. Third, we queried the agencies about their views of eight terrorism definitions. These data were collected by surveying the fifty state police agencies in the United States. We discovered widespread concern about the criminal activities of various extremist groups, with a particular concern about the threat of Islamic jihadists. Interestingly, although the top rated threat was Islamic jihadists, the respondents indicated that other types of groups were much more criminally active. Further, respondents indicated that various open and non-open sources were valuable terrorism sources. Finally, most respondents reacted more favorably to official terrorism definitions—especially the FBI's—as opposed to academic definitions. We conclude with a discussion of the policy implications of our findings and we outline directions for future research.     

Deficits,Democracy, and Demographics: Europe’s Three Crises

This article argues that the EU and, above all, the eurozone are facing not one crisis – an economic and fiscal one – but three: an economic crisis, a crisis of institutions, and a crisis of demography. These crises are not simultaneous; they are overlapping and self-reinforcing, and there is a high degree of feedback across all three crises. Economically, the euro inflated economic growth and government revenue in the peripheral economies, giving those member states a false sense of their economic prospects. Institutionally, mechanisms were too weak at the EU level to prevent a dangerous escalation of asset (above all house) prices and too fragmented to confront the crisis through an immediate and decisive plan that would provide calm to the markets. Demographically, Europe’s economic and fiscal problems are and will increasingly be exacerbated by the continent’s demographic situation and its projected development, especially in southern Europe.     

To Know You is Not Necessarily to Love You: The Partisan Mediators of Intergroup Contact

We propose the contact–cue interaction approach to studying political contact—that cues from trusted political elites can moderate the effect of contact on the formation of public policy opinions. Allport’s initial formulation of the contact effect noted that it relies on authority support. In a highly polarized political era, authoritative voices for individuals vary based on party identification. Social experiences may affect public policy, but they must also be considered in light of partisan filters. Using data from the 2006 CCES, we examine the manner in which straight respondents with gay family members, friends, co-workers and acquaintances view same-sex marriage policy, finding a strong contact effect among Democrats, but no contact effect among the strongest Republican identifiers. Our data and analyses strongly support the perspective that social interactions (and their effect on policy) are understood through the lens of partisanship and elite cues.