Globalization,the European Union,and Domestic Governance in Telecoms and Electricity

The European utilities sectors exemplify the transformation of regulatory capitalism, with far reaching changes occurring at both European Union and domestic levels. Liberalization is the dominant trend, accompanied by the emergence of regulatory regimes designed to promote competition in the imperfect markets characteristic of the utilities sectors. These general trends, however, conceal cross‐sectoral and cross‐national variations in the pace and extent of liberalization and in the composition of the emergent regulatory regimes. This article uses a stepwise comparative method to analyze regulatory change in the electricity and telecoms sectors in Germany and France. It explains the pattern of similarity and variation in terms of the interplay between globalization pressures, the policy transfer effects of EU institutions, and the domestic institutional environment.     

Expediting Permanency through Community Decision‐Making

Permanency for children has taken on a renewed urgency since passage of the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997. This article describes the process of building a community approach to using alternative dispute resolution for expediting permanency, and reports on the initiative's progress to date. Expediting Permanency through Community Decision‐Making, a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services‐funded demonstration project, is simultaneously building community collaboration around the specific issue of permanency and establishing alternative dispute resolution models as a key component of permanency planning services. Lessons learned from implementation are instructive for others embarking on a community response to the demands of ASFA.     

FEAR,TV NEWS,AND THE REALITY OF CRIME*

Data from a 1997 survey of 2, 250 Florida residents are used to assess whether and how the reality of crime influences the relationship between watching TV news and fear of crime. Local crime rates, victim experience, and perceived realism of crime news operationalize the reality of crime and are included in ordinary least squares (OLS) estimates of the TV news and fear of crime relationship. These measures of reality are also used as contexts for disaggregating the analysis. Local and national news are related to fear of crime independent of the effects of the reality of crime and other controls. Local news effects are stronger, especially for people who live in high crime places or have recent victim experience. This contextual pattern of findings is consistent with a conclusion that TV news is most influential when it resonates the experience or crime reality of respondents.     

Entering the Australian Judiciary: Gender and Court Hierarchy

There is considerable attention to increasing judicial diversity along a range of dimensions, in particular, gender. Women remain underrepresented in many courts, especially at the higher levels of the judiciary. A comprehensive socio‐legal study of the Australian judiciary compares experiences and attitudes of women who have become judicial officers at different levels of the court hierarchy. Understanding their personal and professional backgrounds and the features that attracted them to the judiciary has important implications for addressing gender disparity. Effective recruitment and selection must focus on the expectations and experiences of women in relation to particular judicial contexts.     

Magistrates, Magistrates Courts, and Social Change

Relatively little attention has been paid to lower courts' capacity to bring about social change, despite the fact that most citizens who come into contact with the judicial system will have their case considered (and most likely only considered) by these courts. Often these citizens experience a range of problems that are social in origin, including precarious employment, welfare dependence, financial hardship, and various health problems, including mental health and drug dependency. Magistrates courts must respond to social change and its human fallout and, in so doing, can contribute to progressive social change in a local, personal, and incremental way.     

ISSUES AND MISCONCEPTIONS IN PRISONER LITIGATION: A CRITICAL VIEW*

In the past quarter-century, the number of suits filed by prisoners in federal courts has substantially increased. Critics have borrowed metaphors from ballistics or pathologv to describe this increase as an “epidemic” of “legal pollution” or an “explosion.” The causes of this “hyperlexis,” or excessive litigation, are often attributed to prisoners' attempts to retry their cases once they have lost, or to some psychological attribute of plaintiffs who view litigation as a means of striking back at their keepers. This paper examines several common conceptions of prisoner litigation. National ling data from federal district courts are used to assess the merits of each. The data provide little support for many of the conceptions of and explanations for prisoner suits. It is suggested that prisoners' use of courts may be a form of social resistance to conditions for which there is no other legitimate avenue for relief:     

Participants' Attitudes in the Utah Juvenile Victim‐Offender Mediation Program

This paper describes an archival evaluation of the Juvenile Court Victim‐Offender Mediation Program (VOMP) of the Utah State Courts in Salt Lake City. From 1997 to 2000, 147 victims and 330 offenders reported their attitudes towards their experiences in VOMP. Although victims were more satisfied than offenders for some outcomes, all participants reported exceptionally high satisfaction. These promising results are consistent with other published studies on the effectiveness of VOMP and other forms of restorative justice in demonstrating the promise of mediation in criminal justice.