Innovation traditions,energy conditions,and state energy policy adoption

From 1974 to 1980, many conservation and renewable energy policies were adopted at the state level in the United States. Some states were particularly active in enacting such policies while others were totally inactive. The variation in state policy activity is only modestly related to the states' past policy innovation traditions and conservation/renewable energy opportunities. Differences in energy vulnerability, and the relative hardship imposed by the energy crisis, have apparently had even less impact on the adoption pattern. These weak or insignificant relationships are typical of other efforts to explain state energy policy variations and are attributed to six qualitative factors: Federal preemption and inconsistency, ambivalent public opinion, conflicting values, lack of information on state energy conditions, and ignorance of the impacts of renewable energy and conservation policies. The findings identify several actions to increase sensitivity toward state energy conditions in policymaking.     

Mutual engagement: Criminology and the sociology of law

How are conceptions of crime as abnormal sustained in the face ofpersistent sociological evidence that crime is normal? While ostensiblyexpressing different images of crime, together the accounts of crime asepisodic ruptures of the social fabric and as a normal feature of healthysocieties sustain the possibility of the sociality necessary for collective life.This paper explores the contradictory relationships between law and crimeas a normal feature of social life and crime as a rupture in the social web.Decades of research in crime, law and deviance have documented howcrime is a constituent and normal feature of any legal system: theorized asan aspect of law; professionally managed through law andinterpreted on the basis of the normal and conventionalcharacter of events and relationships; organized as a reflection andreproduction the encompassing social structure; experienced as familiar,ordinary and frequent. Crime is a normal and expected feature of any legalsystem whose anticipation is a resource for the production of law. Yet inpopular culture, rather than professional sociology, crime is experienced asbizarre, abnormal, a distinct rupture of what is conventionally portrayedas a seamless web of normative conformity. Conceptions of law'sabnormality helps to maintain normal appearances, to sustain the illusionof society, to individualize the event as one person's pathology, to containits threat, and to turn it into an economically and professionally managedproject. The contradictory cultural representations and experiences helpsustain a hegemonic reality in which crime is both a usual feature ofordinary social life to be understood and managed like any other mundanematter, and an episodic event that need not challenge confidence in whatis in effect a reified conception of society.     

Unintended consequences: Regulating the quality of subsidized day care

Advocates for the poor frequently support uniform, high federal standards for subsidized social services. While such standards may improve the quality of services for those who qualify, they can also have unintended but important side effects. Stringent regulations may actually curtail the supply of services, promote segregation, and expand the role of large subsidized for-profit firms. All these possibilities are illustrated by the history of federal regulation in subsidizing child day care. The federal government's retreat from regulation in 1980 and 1981 may have had results that—even if unintended—were in many ways salutary.     

Intensive probation: An examination of recidivism and social adjustment

Intensive supervision was began as an extension of regular probation for those offenders who needed closer surveillance. However, in the last decade, Intensive Supervision has been used increasingly as an alternative to incarceration in order to help alleviate the problem of overcrowding in our prisons. In the eight-year period from 1977 to 1985, the prison population of this country has increased 68 percent. In view of this, many states are using intensive supervision as one alternative to reduce commitment rates. This study examines the effectiveness of one such program called the Intensive Treatment Supervision Program which operates out of the Montgomery County Adult Probation Department, Dayton, Ohio. The performances of probationers on intensive supervision are compared to a group of probationers on regular supervision to determine whether intensive supervision, through improved service delivery, can have an impact on high risk probationers and serve as a basis for a program to divert offenders from overcrowded facilities.