From coercion to deception: the changing nature of police interrogation in America

Our police, with no legal sanction whatever, employ duress, threat, bullying, a vast amount of moderate physical abuse and a certain degree of outright torture; and their inquisitions customarily begin with the demand: If you know what's good for you, you'll confess. (Ernest Jerome Hopkins, 1931)¹ Today, Ness Said, interrogation is not a matter of forcing suspects to confess but of conning them. Really, what we do is just to bullshit them (William Hart, 1981)² There is an interesting irony at work here: restrict police use of coercion, and the use of deception increases. (Gary Marx, 1988)³ In both popular discourse and academic scholarship one continually encounters references to the tradition-bound police who are resistant to change. Nothing could be further from the truth. The history of the American police over the past 100 years is the history of drastic, if not radical, change. (Samuel Walker, 1977)⁴ A longer version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Criminology in November, 1991.     

The strengths and limitations of empirical bioethics

The past two decades have been witness to an "empirical turn" in bioethics. Whereas once this field of study concerned itself purely with theoretical analysis of ethical issues emerging in the design and delivery of health care, increasingly bioethics has embraced a range of empirical research methods from the social sciences and humanities. The emergence of "empirical bioethics" has, however, been the subject of enormous debate, both in regard to its methods and its purpose. For the most part these criticisms fail to appreciate the assumptions that underpin empirical bioethics or misrepresent the claims that are made about its moral utility. This article provides a brief account of the assumptions, strengths and limitations of empirical bioethics.     

Democratizing the hospital: deliberative-democratic bioethics

The increased presence of moral consultants, or bioethicists, within hospitals and clinics in the last two decades has begun to raise questions about their sources of authority and norms of practice. Under pressure from critics in the social sciences, a number of bioethicists have recently raised the ideal of democratic deliberation to defend and reconstruct their place in the medical field. This article sheds light on these developments by placing bioethics in a historical context that shows an early tension between bioethicists as whistle-blowers and bioethicists as incremental reformers of medical practice. This article also develops a conceptual framework for analysis that indicates how such tensions have grown more complicated for contemporary bioethicists because they occupy a fluid and structurally ambiguous role in which there are multiple sources of normative expectations and little guidance for meeting these expectations. The liminality of the role and the overload of expectations have made bioethics vulnerable to methodological criticisms from social scientists. This article concludes that such methodological criticisms cannot address the more systemic problems of liminality and overload. The ideal of democratic deliberation, though imperfect, does address these systemic problems because it shows bioethicists how to gain guidance and share responsibility for moral consultation.     

The changing face of wardship

Abstract

I have been teaching Ethnic Minorities and the Law at undergraduate and Masters level for some eight years now. It is my conviction that the subject has achieved a certain maturity and that it is high time that serious notice was taken of it in legal education circles at all levels. This article presents some reflections on approaches adopted and experiences of being involved in teaching this field. In the next section some of the reactions that are likely to be encountered when working in this area are discussed briefly. In the following section the nature and extent of ethnic diversity in the UK are outlined, and some of the limits in academic and policy conceptualisations of this diversity are highlighted. There follows a critical discussion of the various paradigms within which legal knowledge has framed discussion relating to ethnic minorities in the UK. This forms a prelude to the introduction of legal‐pluralist perspectives which, it is argued, offer the most positive approach in the area of ethnic minority legal studies. Lastly, some of the practical issues that arise in teaching about ethnic minorities in law are discussed.     

The changing legal environment of the juvenile court

The American juvenile court is in a state of legal flux. From its informal beginning in English chancery law, to its formal inception in the United States in 1899, the court has been exposed to a number of diverse, competing pressures. Since the Supreme Court case of In re Gault in the mid-1960’s, the whole underpinnings of the juvenile court have been so shaken that one must now ask whether or not the last vestiges of parens patriae have been swept away. If this is indeed the case, America should now seek alternatives to the present system of juvenile adjudication —for the sake of the child and for the sake of justice.     

The nature of human aggression

Human aggression is viewed from four explanatory perspectives, derived from the ethological tradition. The first consists of its adaptive value, which can be seen throughout the animal kingdom, involving resource competition and protection of the self and offspring, which has been viewed from a cost–benefit perspective. The second concerns the phylogenetic origin of aggression, which in humans involves brain mechanisms that are associated with anger and inhibition, the emotional expression of anger, and how aggressive actions are manifest. The third concerns the origin of aggression in development and its subsequent modification through experience. An evolutionary approach to development yields conclusions that are contrary to the influential social learning perspective, notably that physical aggression occurs early in life, and its subsequent development is characterized by learned inhibition. The fourth explanation concerns the motivational mechanisms controlling aggression: approached from an evolutionary background, these mechanisms range from the inflexible reflex-like responses to those incorporating rational decision-making.     

The changing landscape of policing: the Metro-LEC approach

Profound changes are being made in the way police organize and collaborate. Many of these changes are due to economic times, as well as changes that occurred after September 11th. Small- and medium-size agencies are finding new and innovative ways to mobilize for critical events and large-scale operations. The mechanisms for collaboration vary and few studies have examined the effectiveness of these different types of interagency cooperative ventures. The Metropolitan Law Enforcement Council is a non-profit organization and pools resources from 43 law enforcement agencies. This study found the approach to be successful in accomplishing its primary mission of providing needed services to the member agencies. Lastly, this type of collaborative approach is changing the landscape of policing through the use of multijurisdictional special operational units available to respond to a host of situations from public and private requests.