Banishment and the Post-Industrial City: Lessons from Seattle

Seattle deploys several mechanisms by which individuals’ presence in particular spaces can constitute a crime. Through a range of means, police in Seattle are given wide authority to question and arrest those who appear as human manifestations of the “disorder” that is of concern to many. Importantly, these programs accentuate the power of criminal law by mobilizing other forms of law, most notably civil law and administrative law. This legally-hybrid structure works to accentuate the police’s power notably. Yet increased police power does not actually work to reduce “disorder” to any appreciable extent. For this reason, and others, we suggest that different approaches to addressing social marginality represent more promising avenues for cities like Seattle to explore.     

Regulating Volunteering: Lessons from the Bingo Halls

This article uses charitable bingo to explore the sociolegal regulation of volunteers. Using case studies of two provincial bingo revitalization initiatives in Canada, I explore how charities and government officials manage the tension between regulating and incentivizing volunteers. I show that bingo revitalization plans in Alberta and Ontario increased surveillance of nonregularized workers and failed to protect charity service users from unpaid labor requirements. Moreover, revitalization initiatives reframe the volunteer role to focus on customer service and explaining how charities benefit the community. The potential for bingo volunteering to promote spaces of mutual aid with players will thus likely decline. I suggest that the allied power of charity and state over unpaid workers is increasing, giving charities better‐protected interests in volunteer labor and changing the tasks that volunteers do. The need for more research exploring the interests of volunteers as regulatory stakeholders in their own right is thus pressing.     

Corruption and organized crime: Lessons from history

The intention of this paper is to serve in part as a warning to the international community concerned about corruption, to keep the focus based on the critical analysis of empirically verifiable information. In ways similar to how theorists spoke about organized crime in the 1960's and 1970's, articles today attempt to refer to corruption as if there were one agreed upon definition. However, like the concept “organized crime”, the term “corruption” involves diverse processes which have different meanings within different societies. Corruption (or a focus on corruption), may be the means toward very diverse ends and each may have a different impact on the society. While in some societies corruption may correctly be seen to be the “cause” of forms of social disorganization, in other situations corruption may be the “result” of larger changes. Understanding the processes within a specific context allows one to understand the nature of the corruption. Corruption rhetoric may too easily become apolitical platform for ranking and evaluating nations as to their worth based on criteria that lose meaning when applied across jurisdictions. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Lessons from the Wolfenden Report

The article traces the recent history of homosexual law reform in the UK and the countries of the Commonwealth of Nations, using as its point of departure the Report of the Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution, 1957 (‘Wolfenden Report’). In light of the Wolfenden principle – that certain matters of private morality are not the law's business and especially not the proper business of punishment under the criminal law – the article proposes a methodology for law reform in those countries of the Commonwealth that inherited the penal offences but have not yet acted to repeal them.     

Lessons from Orgreave: Police Power and the Criminalization of Protest

In October 2016, the Home Secretary ruled out a public inquiry into the ‘Battle of Orgreave', arguing that ‘very few lessons’ could be learned from a review of practices of three decades ago. It was suggested that policing has undergone a progressive transformation since the 1984–5 miners’ strike, at political, legal, and operational levels. This article, in contrast, charts a significant expansion of state control over public protest since the strike, including a proliferation of public order offences and an extension of pre‐emptive policing powers. Whilst concerns have been raised about the impact of these developments on protest rights, there is an absence of socio‐legal research into the operation of public order powers in practice. In this article, I begin to fill this lacuna. Drawing on three empirical case‐studies of protesters’ experiences of arrest and the criminal justice process, I highlight the relevance of Orgreave for contemporary policing practice.     

The University and the Start-Up:Lessons from the Past Two Decades

This paper explores one of Edwin Mansfield's enduring interests: the interface between academia and industry. It highlights some key lessons regarding the management of university-based spin-outs, drawing on a variety of sources. I highlight the challenges that the spin-off process poses, the impracticality of directly financing firms through internal venture funds, and the ways in which universities can add value to faculty ventures.     

Defining the Arts and Cultural Universe: Lessons from the Profiles Project

This article discusses state support of artists in the United Kingdom, focusing on the Arts Council England. To understand the present—or the future—support of visual artists, one needs to understand the past. Accordingly, the article begins with a brief history of the Arts Council of Great Britain from 1946, discussing Thatcher's reforms after the 1979 election. Tony Blair's New Labour continued many of the same strategies instituted by the Conservatives. At the same time as fiscal constraints and "enterprise culture" were imposed, the mission of the Arts Council was broadened to include both geographical representation and a more populist agenda. A review of the contemporary arrangements for state support of artists in the United Kingdom shows that many of the tensions that exist within today's Arts Council were institutionalized in its early days. The article concludes with a comment on what the current situation may portend for the future.     

School exclusions: Lessons from Northern Ireland

In Northern Ireland there are many fewer permanent exclusion from school than in England and Wales. It has been suggested that this may be linked to differences in the statutory schemes which regulate exclusion. This article compares the legal framework for school exclusions in Northern Ireland and England and Wales; provides a comparative analysis of the statistical data in relation to school exclusions; assesses whether the differences in the legal framework may have an impact on the propensity to permanently exclude; and considers whether there are any other non-legal factors which may explain lower rates of school exclusions. The overall objective is to see whether the legal differences which exist have a meaningful effect on the overall rate of school exclusion and to extrapolate best practice. In particular, the analysis focuses on experience of the statutory pre-expulsion consultation procedure in Northern Ireland, which has no equivalent in England and Wales.     

Parliamentary Democracy Online: Lessons from Europe

The relationship between parliament and new information and communications technologies (ICTs), in particular the Internet, is becoming ever more complicated. By means of conclusion, we highlight the key findings from our comparative study of four parliaments, the British, European, Portuguese and Swedish Parliaments, which have all adopted the Internet as an essential element of their parliamentary communication strategy. It is clear from our research that the Internet is already having a significant impact upon the operation of parliamentary institutions. Parliamentary and parliamentarians' use of the Internet has also raised important issues that ought to be considered cautiously by policy makers, and further academic study is important to the search for solutions.