Book review essay

Prior research into the effects of racial diversity on workplace relationships has demonstrated that white workers prefer to work in and with groups which are also composed of white workers. Using structural equation models, we tested whether higher levels of racial diversity, measured as social distance from coworkers and inmates, were associated with lower evaluations of organizational commitment, teamwork among coworkers, and efficacy in dealing with inmates. We found the expected negative effects of racial diversity on white male correctional workers for organizational commitment, but not for teamwork and efficacy. For minority male correctional workers, racial diversity did not affect organizational commitment, teamwork, or efficacy.     

Movie review essay

While Paul McCold’s intent to clarify the compatibility of restorative justice and community justice conceptual frameworks is laudable, his effort provides as much confusion as clarity (McCold, 2004 McCold, P. (2004). Paradigm muddle: The threat to restorative justice posed by its merger with community justice. Contemporary Justice Review, 7: 13–35. [Taylor &; Francis Online] , [Google Scholar], this issue). This piece identifies some of the conflicts inherent in the roots of the development and growth of restorative justice. It also raises concerns regarding how restorative justice theoreticians and practitioners consider community, the role of strangers, empowerment, prevention, and punishment within restorative frameworks. The authors of this piece conclude that, while it remains important to safeguard the underlying principles of restorative justice, it is also necessary to remain open to new possibilities and to new ideas.     

Book review essay

This article examines changes in organizational priorities related to the three core functions of American policing—crime control, the maintenance of order, and the provision of services—during the era of community-oriented policing (COP). The change in priorities is analyzed using panel data from three national surveys of more than 200 municipal police departments conducted in 1993, 1996, and 2000. The primary finding is that police core-function priorities remained largely unchanged during this period. However, the systematic implementation of COP programs reflects an all-out effort to address all three core functions of policing at a higher level of achievement.     

Crimes of the powerful and beyond: An essay review

Conclusion I have argued that the problems withCrimes of the Powerful are instances of the inherent limitation of a criminology of the powerful and thus are not specific to a particular text, but refer centrally to a particular enterprise. These problems result from the contradictions entailed in the conjunction of criminology and political economy and the formal use of concepts derived from the latter as an explanation of, or gloss on, problems generated by the former. The formal introduction of the concepts of political economy does not, of itself, entail a break with the criminological agenda and, as a result, the analysis produced is inadequate to its object — the powerful. It is the position of this article that if one is to theorize upon either corporate crime or anti-trust law then political economy must assume priority — or else one simply establishes, as does Pearce, the criminality of big business. It is not the case that crime and law are irrelevant areas for political economy and, more especially Marxism, but rather that a proper understanding of the theoretical requirements necessary for an adequate analysis of corporate crime and anti-trust law must, of necessity, be founded in political economy, not criminology. Hitherto these requirements have not been met by criminology. This can be witnessed by the way in which criminology has addressed political economy, ie. in a purely arbitrary fashion in which concepts are simply adopted as if they were given — concepts which are effectively riddled with contradictions. Until these theoretical requirements are met, or built upon, then criminology is doomed to receive into itself a simple multiplication of texts likeCrimes of the Powerful together with all the consequent inadequacies associated with such texts. In such a context the powerful remains an ever elusive object