Police chiefs’ and students’ attitudes about the Miranda warnings

Several studies had concluded that the police subculture holds values and attitudes that are distinct from the rest of the population. Among these values is a focus on law and order. While researchers agree that police tend to hold different values, they disagree on the source of the attitudes. Some had argued that the attitudes reflected differences regarding who was recruited for law enforcement careers while others said that the differences reflected changes that occurred to individuals after becoming officers. This study examined whether police officers and students enrolled in criminal justice/sociology classes held similar or different attitudes towards the Miranda warnings. The findings suggested that in some ways, the two groups perceived the warnings in dramatically different ways, while in other ways their differences were simply a matter of degree. Implications are provided.     

A New Use for Practitioners in Teaching Negotiation

This article examines the role that practitioners as guest lecturers have traditionally played in the teaching of negotiation. The authors argue that, as seen from the perspective of student learning, this traditional role has not utilized the practitioner's expertise and experience to an optimal degree. Because of this, they have redesigned the role of the practitioner as guest lecturer in their negotiation course. They describe this new role in some detail. Their goal is to encourage students to understand how and why integrative negotiation techniques can work beyond the classroom in what students call the "real world."     

A NEW LOOK AT AN OLD ISSUE:

In 1997, the Office of Child Support Enforcement initiated the State Child Access and Visitation (AV) Grant Program, which involves annual awards of $10 million to states to promote the development of programs to alleviate access problems. Telephone interviews with 970 parents who used mediation, parent education, and supervised visitation programs funded by AV grants in nine states revealed that the programs are reaching diverse groups of parents including many low-income, non-White, and unmarried parents who receive no other type of access assistance. The programs also appear to be achieving the major objectives posited for them by the federal government. One-third to one-half of noncustodial parents in every program type reported that parent–child contact increased following program participation, with supervised visitation users who typically had the lowest levels of parent–child contact reporting a significant increase in the number of days of contact. A review of child support records for 173 program users in three states revealed that child support payments increased among participants following program participation, especially for never-married parents who paid a significantly higher proportion of what they owed. These findings are similar to results reported in a five-state study of mediation programs funded by AV grants that was conducted by the Office of the Inspector General. However, both studies have some serious limitations, including low response rates and the absence of a nontreatment comparison group.     

An Analysis of the Joint Board or County Model as the Structural Basis for Effective Australian Local Governance

Australian policy‐makers continue to rely on municipal amalgamation as the main engine of structural reform in local government, despite strong evidence that it diminishes participation and representation without improving service efficiency. Several promising, but neglected alternative models of structural reform have been developed, including ad hoc resource sharing models, Regional Organisations of Councils, virtual local government, and agency models. In an encouraging response to the recent policy of enforced council amalgamations in NSW, the Shires Association of NSW (2004) has recently proposed a ‘Joint Board model’ of local governance and invited comment on this model. This article takes up this challenge and seeks to place the Joint Board model in conceptual context and evaluate its characteristics and simulated cost savings.     

On Punishing Emotions

This paper challenges recent influential arguments which would encourage legislators and courts to give weight to an assessment of the "evaluative judgements" expressed by the emotions which motivate crimes. While accepting the claim of Kahan and Nussbaum and others that emotions, other than moods, have intentional objects ("the cognitive conception"), and are not mere impulses which bypass cognition ("the mechanistic conception"), it suggests the following criticisms of their analysis. First, the concept of an emotional "evaluative judgement" tends to elide the distinction between (misleadingly named) "judgements" that are merely the sense of an emotion, and do not have the character of acts, and deliberative emotional judgements that do resemble acts and so properly fall within the corrective scope of the law. Second, intentional emotions are empowered by pre–intentional psychological resources which are less amenable than intentional states to the agent's conscious supervision: The traditional recognition of "infirmity" in mitigation of crimes uncharacteristic of the criminal's overall conduct towards others is justified by the unpredictable action of these pre–intentional elements and can survive the abandonment of the mechanistic conception of emotion.