Russian Terror/ism and Revisionist Historiography

Interest in the violence of the Soviet regime has been a concern primarily of more conservative historians, while those on the Left have either been discomforted by the excessive brutality of the Russian Civil War and Stalinism or have looked for rationalizations for the necessity of violence. One tendency in the historiography has been to see violence as deeply embedded in the Bolshevik project, part of the Marxist or Leninist effort to transform the world or perfect the human being. Revolutionary and Stalinist violence are seen as similar or intimately linked, and differences between them have been largely effaced. This essay argues that the violence and terror of the Civil War years is best understood as part of wartime exigencies as well as choices made by the Bolsheviks and their enemies, while Stalinist violence was much more the product of the will of Stalin and his closest collaborators in their consolidation of autocratic power, and was far more gratuitous and irrational than the violence of the fledgling Soviet regime.     

Metropolitan Planning Organizations and the New Regionalism: The Case of Louisville

This article outlines the new regionalism movement and its metropolitanagenda, reviews federal efforts to promote new regionalism underISTEA and TEA–21, considers how the new federal policieschanged the role of metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs)in transportation planning by examining the MPO for the Louisvillemetropolis, and assesses the MPO process in Louisville. Thelocal decision of whether to build a new bridge across the OhioRiver was a major test of the enhanced MPO process. Federaltransportation policies enhanced regional coordination and cooperationin transportation planning in the Louisville metropolis resultingin a consensus plan to build two bridges across the Ohio River.However, the MPO process did not lead to the development ofa metropolitan-wide interest or perspective. Moreover, the newregionalist agenda was not advanced because sprawl was not afactor in the decision on whether and where to build the bridges.     

The incidence of alleged sexual abuse in 603 family court cases

The conflict and animosity that sometimes accompanies child custody disputes can give rise to the propagation of allegations of child sexual abuse. To characterize the magnitude of the problem, the present study attempted to determine whether and to what extent child sexual abuse allegations predominate in family court litigation. The entire one-year caseload of a county family court docket was systematically reviewed and coded. Methodical evaluation of 603 family court files yielded base rates of pertinent allegations and other information profiling the cases. The findings did not support the contention that sexual abuse allegations are commonplace in child custody disputes. Sexual abuse allegations were made in 2% of cases in which custody or access was contested and in only 0.8% of the cases overal. Implications of the findings for future research were discussed.The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the Honorable William R. Campbell and Barbara Scott, Clerk of Court for the South Carolina Fifth Judicial Circuit, as well as the contributions of Angie Newton, Frank Robinson, and Kimberly Ellis in the data collection process.     

The age of death: Appraising public opinion of juvenile capital punishment

Despite its original purpose to protect and rehabilitate wayward children, the juvenile system has grown more punitive and has embraced the use of harsher punishments, including execution, for juvenile offenders. Relatively little is known, however, about public attitudes toward the use of capital punishment for juveniles. This research explored the determinants of death penalty opinion, identified the minimum age at which respondents were willing to allow a juvenile to be put to death and examined the willingness of respondents to support an alternative sentence of life without the possibility of parole (LWOP). The results suggested that, while one-quarter of the sample was willing to execute juveniles who were fifteen and under at the time of the crime, there was less support for the execution of juveniles than of adults. In addition, of those who supported the use of the death penalty for juveniles, almost one-half would support LWOP as an alternative to the death penalty.     

The effect of authority and social influence on eyewitness suggestibility and person recognition

This study investigated the influence of an authority figure on eyewitness identification. Participants watched a staged crime and then were administered a photo lineup by either an authority (policeman) or non-authority figure (civilian). Participants in the authority condition were more likely to choose a lineup member than those in the non-authority condition. There was no effect of authority, however, on the accuracy of the identification decisions. The lack of a deleterious effect suggests that the presence of a police officer during identification procedures does not create an unduly suggestive situation or have undesirable effects on eyewitness identification decisions. Although witnesses' choosing behaviors did not increase the rate of identification errors, the effect of the administrator's authority on choosing was reduced when unbiased instructions (vs. biased instructions) were presented to the witnesses. Thus, support was found for the use of neutral instructions during eyewitness identification procedures.     

Defining risk

Risk is the focal topic in the management of many activities and technologies. For that management to be successful, an explicit and accepted definition of the term risk is essential. Creation of that definition is a political act, expressing the definers' values regarding the relative importance of different possible adverse consequences for a particular decision. Those values, and with them the definition of risk, can change with changes in the decisionmaker, the technologies considered, or the decision problem. After a review of the sources of controversy in defining risk, a general framework is developed, showing how these value issues can be systematically addressed. As an example, the approach is applied to characterizing the risks of six competing energy technologies, the relative riskeness of which depends upon the particular definition used.