Why Progressives Should be Pro‐Family

For egalitarians, families are part of the problem. By bringing together advantages and passing on to their children, families redouble and (literally) reproduce inequalities. And, by cordoning off a private sphere into which government cannot roam, the family marks the limits of any progressive agenda. But defending families should be part of any answer to social injustice. Family relationships should be seen as a primary good: we need close, caring committed relationships no matter what else we want in life. Families are also increasingly important to one's chances in life. The gulf is widening between those rich and those poor in family life. This should worry egalitarians because lacking good, stable family relationships is a major disadvantage, and one that holds back progress towards other aspects of social justice.     

PUBLIC VALUE AND POLITICAL ASTUTENESS IN THE WORK OF PUBLIC MANAGERS: THE ART OF THE POSSIBLE

The public value framework, with its call for more entrepreneurial activities by public managers, has attracted concern and criticism about its implicit breaching of the politics/administration dichotomy. This article explores the role of political astuteness not only in discerning and creating public value, but also in enabling public managers to be sensitive to the dichotomy. We employ a conceptual framework to identify the skills of political astuteness, and then articulate these in relation to identifying and generating public value. Drawing on a survey of 1,012 public managers in Australia, New Zealand, and the UK, and in‐depth interviews with 42 of them, we examine the perceptions and capabilities of public managers in producing value for the public while traversing the line (or zone) between politics and administration. We conclude that political astuteness is essential to both creating value and maintaining allegiance to democratic principles.     

DOES PRESCHOOL HELP PREVENT DELINQUENCY IN BOYS WITH A HISTORY OF PERINATAL COMPLICATIONS?*

We examined whether a preschool intervention program moderates the effects of perinatal complications with a sample of boys from the most disadvantaged areas of Montreal (Canada). Some boys experienced the preschool program and some did not, which allowed us to test whether the program had any effects on the boys' risk for early adolescent delinquency given their perinatal histories. We hypothesized that perinatal complications would place boys at significantly greater risk for antisocial behavior during early adolescence and that participation in a preventive preschool program might circumvent this risk. Independent of maternal sociodemographic characteristics, boys with a history of perinatal complications showed no greater risk of reporting delinquency during early adolescence than their same-sex peers without a history of perinatal complications. Surprisingly, the program showed a beneficial effect on boys with no history of serious perinatal complications. Such boys were less at risk for delinquency. In the presence of a serious medical condition after birth, the benefits of the program decreased significantly to the point that it placed the boys at risk.     

DO RETURNING PAROLEES AFFECT NEIGHBORHOOD CRIME? A CASE STUDY OF SACRAMENTO*

This study used a unique data set that combines information on parolees in the city of Sacramento, CA, over the 2003–2006 time period with information on monthly crime rates in Sacramento census tracts over this same period, providing us a fine‐grained temporal and geographical view of the relationship between the change in parolees in a census tract and the change in the crime rate. We find that an increase in the number of tract parolees in a month results in an increase in the crime rate. We find that more violent parolees have a particularly strong effect on murder and burglary rates. We find that the social capital of the neighborhood can moderate the effect of parolees on crime rates: Neighborhoods with greater residential stability dampen the effect of parolees on robbery rates, whereas neighborhoods with greater numbers of voluntary organizations dampen the effect of parolees on burglary and aggravated assault rates. Furthermore, this protective effect of voluntary organizations seems strongest for those organizations that provide services for youth. We show that the effect of single‐parent households in a neighborhood is moderated by the return of parolees, which suggests that these reunited families may increase the social control ability of the neighborhood.     

GHETTOS,THRESHOLDS, AND CRIME: DOES CONCENTRATED POVERTY REALLY HAVE AN ACCELERATING INCREASING EFFECT ON CRIME?*

Theories make varying predictions regarding the functional form of the relationship between neighborhood poverty and crime rates, ranging from a diminishing positive effect, to a linear positive effect, to an exponentially increasing or even threshold effect. Nonetheless, surprisingly little empirical evidence exists testing this functional form. This study estimates the functional form of the relationship between poverty and various types of serious crime in a sample of census tracts for 25 cities, and it finds that a diminishing positive effect most appropriately characterizes this relationship whether estimating the models nonparametrically or parametrically. Only for the crime of murder does some evidence exist of an accelerating effect, although this occurs in the range of 20 to 40 percent in poverty, with a leveling effect on crime beyond this point of very high poverty. Thus, no evidence is found here in support of the postulate of scholars extending William Julius Wilson's (1987) insight that neighborhoods with very high levels of poverty will experience an exponentially higher rate of crime compared with other neighborhoods.