The Use of Incarceration in the United States

The past two decades have produceda profound increase in imprisonment in theUnited States, resulting in a prison populationof two million and expenditures of over $35billion annually on corrections, while otherimportant government services are underfunded. Imprisonment is highest for minority maleslargely because of the War on Drugs, which hasalso dramatically increased the incarcerationof women and created nearly 1.5 millionchildren having a parent incarcerated. Inresponse to this trend, the American Society ofCriminology (ASC) directed the ASC NationalPolicy Committee (NPC) to draft a policy paperon the incarceration issue. This articleexplains the main ideas, themes, andrecommendations of the full policy paper. Itanalyzes the sources and effects of theincreased use of imprisonment, drawingattention to the negative effects of excessiveincarceration. The paper and itsrecommendations reflect a concern that the ASCneeds to set a research agenda that isindependent of the federal government andconventional wisdom. The NPC hopes this paperwill stimulate a healthy and much overduedebate on the role of the ASC in public policyin general, and the merits of widespreadincarceration in particular.     

Legal aid for coroners' inquests

Inquests held into deaths perform important functions, not only in determining the facts relevant to the death, but also in investigating and making recommendations on matters of public safety. Coronial legislation allows a number of parties to appear at inquests but a right of appearance without the possibility of legal representation is an illusory right. There are persuasive arguments for allocating funding for grants of legal aid to persons appearing at inquests and particularly to families. However, the demands on public legal aid funds are overwhelming and there are many competing needs. Historically, legal aid has not been available at inquests. Justifications for this are considered and whether government legal aid funding for advice and representation should be available to individuals involved in coroners' inquests and in what circumstances. The nature of the inquest process, indications of need for legal assistance, the level of assistance currently provided, defining what is the "public interest" for legal aid purposes in an inquest and the detriment suffered by individuals or the community if assistance is not available, are examined.     

Governing the multicultural city‐region

Abstract: This article reports on a study that identified the challenges posed by large immigrant populations for the governments of eleven Greater Toronto Area municipalities and the way those challenges were being addressed by municipal agencies that provided nine local services: government‐assisted housing, land‐use planning, policing, public education, public health, public libraries, public recreation, public transit, and social services. Many of the agencies were trying to accommodate their multicultural clienteles in a variety of ways. There were large differences in agency responses, however, not only among municipalities but also among agencies providing different services within the same municipality, and even among district offices of the same municipal agencies. Moreover, municipal agencies often found it difficult or impossible to adapt to new clienteles, even when they were seriously committed to doing so, in the face of provincial government indifference, cuts in provincial and local funding, and community ambivalence or antagonism. The study concluded that municipal agencies are unlikely to devote many resources to helping the immigrant settlement process without financial and legislative support from central governments. Sommaire: Le présent article porte sur une étude qui a cerné les défis que posent d'importantes populations d'immigrants aux gouvemements de ome municipalités de la Région du Grand Toronto, et sur la manière dont ces défis ont été relevés par des organismes municipaux assurant neuf services locaux: logement subventionné par le gouvernement, aménagement du territoire, services de police, enseignement public, santé publique, bibliothèques publiques, loisirs publics, transport en com‐mun et services sociaux. Un grand nombre de ces organismes ont essayé de répondre aux besoins de leurs clientèles multiculturelles par différents moyens. Cependant, les écarts étaient grands dans la manière d'y parvenir, non seulement parmi les municipalités mais également parmi les organismes foumissant différents services au sein de la même municipalité, et même parmi les bureaux de districts des mêmes organimes municipaux. En outre, les organismes municipaux trouvent souvent qu'il est difficile, voire même impossible, de s'adapter à de nouvelles clientèles, même lorsqu'ils se sont sérieusement engagés à le faire, face à l'indifférence du gouvemement provincial, aux compressions budgétaires à I'échelle provinciale et locale, et face à I'ambivalence ou à I'antagonisme de la colledivité. L'étude a conclu qu'il y avait de fortes chances que les organismes municipaux ne consacrent pas d'énormes ressources à I'aide au processus d'établissement des immigrants s'ils ne reçoivent pas un appui financier et législatif des gouvernements centraux.     

US intelligence and communist plots in postwar France

In 1946, as the cold war deepened and American officials grew alarmed by the prospect of a communist-dominated France, US intelligence analysts began to report rumors of mysterious ‘parachutages’ of unidentified containers over the French countryside. Alongside equally sensational stories about the resurrection of international brigades and discoveries of hidden arms caches, these reports seemed to provide definitive evidence for widely held beliefs about communist intentions to seize power. This article investigates these claims and reveals the influence of a transnational network of informants hoping to stoke fears of revolutionary activity in order to encourage US involvement in postwar France.     

Policy Design and Achieving Social Outcomes: A Comparative Analysis of Social Enterprise Policy

This article compares American, British, and Korean social enterprise policies to explore how government policy design shapes social enterprises and how “social benefit” and “public value” are defined. A social enterprise is defined as the legally structured organizational pursuit of blending social purpose and economic profit through business activities, and examples from each country are presented. Applying Bozeman's publicness theory, the authors demonstrate the wide range of roles that governments play in shaping social enterprises' ownership, funding, and control across the three countries using regulations, subsidies, and procurement policies. These roles may affect the impact of social enterprises in society. The case studies show that the U.S. approach to social enterprise policy is heavily market oriented, while the United Kingdom is in the middle of the market-to-publicness continuum, and South Korea is much closer to the publicness (government-dominated) end of the continuum.     

After the storm comes the sun: A rhetorical analysis of Melbourne Storm's advertising campaigns after the 2010 salary cap scandal

One of the most common motifs surrounding sports, sports teams, and sports stars is “the scandal.” One typifying feature of mediated scandals is the ease with which they can be presented as, or massaged into, an unfolding narrative. Although some research has been conducted into the initial stages of these narratives, there is significantly less that focusses on the ways in which the “transgressor” can be rehabilitated in a separate but linked part of that overarching story. This article addresses that gap by analysing two television commercials that significantly assisted the Melbourne Storm rugby league franchise in encouraging and maintaining identification and, coterminously, overcoming disidentification with its membership. Furthermore, we contend that the Melbourne Storm purposively used rhetorical strategies to emphasise the socially desirable aspects of its identity to repair damage done to its organisational image. Using rhetorical analysis, the article explicates the various techniques through which this was accomplished.     

The Check Is in the Mail: Interdistrict Funding Flows in Congressional Elections

This article analyzes the financial ties between congressional candidates and individual donors residing outside those candidates' districts. Congressional campaigns today rely more heavily on nonresidents than in the past, with contests in the typical district drawing more than two-thirds of individual donations from nonresidents. Empirical results reveal that nonresident contributions are primarily partisan and strategic in nature, rather than access-oriented or expressive/identity-based. Funds are efficiently redistributed from a small number of highly educated, wealthy congressional districts to competitive districts anywhere in the country. Big donors direct funds where they can make a difference for party control of seats, even if those investments are hundreds, or even thousands, of miles away.     

Feminism,peace, and civil liberties: Women's role in the origins of the World War I civil liberties movement

Historians of the women's movement in the World War I era tend, understandably, to concentrate on the final heroic chapter of the suffrage campaign. Since the majority of suffragists followed their leader, Carrie Chapman Catt, into the war effort after April 6, 1917, suffragist‐feminist patriotism is a dominant theme. Recently historians have begun to chronicle women's pre‐war and wartime peace work, particularly through the aegis of the Woman's Peace Party, founded in early 1915.¹ Women's civil liberties activism during the war and in the Red Scare aftermath is still uncharted terrain. There is, to date, little appreciation of the way the World War I era experience in the United States influenced a small but determined and articulate number of left‐wing feminists to become civil‐libertarian activists. In this article I examine women's involvement in several important civil liberties organizations and argue that the convictions and activities of women not only helped to shape the agenda of the burgeoning civil liberties movement but also to influence federal public policy, particularly with respect to treatment of conscientious objectors, political prisoners, and “enemy aliens.” I also suggest that some feminists involved in both antiwar and civil liberties work during the war era came to see how militarism, war, and misogyny are related in western society, an insight which informed the thought and activities of the post‐war women's peace movement.