The Evolving Structure of the Environmental Justice Movement in the United States: New Models for Democratic Decision-Making

Over the last two decades in the United States, mainstream environmental organizations have reduced, rather than increased, democratic participation by citizens in environmental problem-solving. The environmental justice movement, on the other hand, has served to enlarge the constituency of the environmental movement by incorporating poorer communities and oppressed people of color into environmental decision making process; build community capacity by developing campaigns and projects that address the common links between various social and environmental problems; and facilitate community empowerment by emphasizing grassroots organizing over advocacy. This paper outlines the different components in the environmental justice movement. It is our contention that if researchers and policymakers continue to conceive of the ecological crisis as a collection of unrelated problems, then it is possible that some combination of regulations, incentives, and technical innovations can keep pollution and resource destruction at tolerable levels for more affluent socioeconomic populations. However, poor working class communities and people of color which lack the political–economic resources to defend themselves will continue to suffer the worst abuses. However, if the interdependency of issues is emphasized as advocated by the environmental justice movement, then a transformative environmental politics can be invented.     

Managing Carrots and Sticks: Changes in State Administrators' Perceptions of Cooperative and Coercive Federalism During the 1990s

The so-called devolution revolution was a significant themein American federalism in the 1990s. Opinions on the issue varywidely. Some suggest that "major changes" occurred in intergovernmentalrelations. Others were pessimistic about the occurrence of anydevolution during the decade. We investigated changes in intergovernmentalrelations between the national and state governments in the1990s on the basis of Elazar's approach to American federalisminvolving: (1) administration, (2) cooperation and coercion,and (3) regulation. We used American State Administrator's Project(ASAP) data collected in 1994 and 1998 to access state administrators'perceptions of national fiscal and regulatory impacts on stateagencies. We conclude that state administrators' perceptionof national fiscal and regulatory impacts changed only moderatelyfrom 1994 to 1998, and that evolution rather than revolutiondescribes better the character of state-national intergovernmentalchanges during the 1990s.     

A comparative evaluation of a new generation jail

This study reports findings from an evaluation of a new generation jail in a large southwestern state. The jail is one component of a complex containing a traditional jail, an indirect supervision facility (barracks), and the new generation jail. Using survey and operational data, we compare the new generation jail to the other two facilities. The findings provide generally positive support for the effectiveness of the new generation jail. Inmates and staff were much more satisfied with the physical facilities. Staff perceived it as more secure, though they reported only limited advantages in safety and security. Violence and disciplinary problems were substantially lower. However, no savings in staffing levels were noted, nor were there differences in job satisfaction for staff in the new generation jail. We discuss the implications of the findings and suggest additional directions for jail evaluations.     

The relation between the ethics of personal conscience—social responsibility and principled moral reasoning

Three samples of college students were tested on Hogan's Survey of Ethical Attitudes (SEA) and Rest's Defining Issues Test (DIT), a test of moral reasoning ability in the Kohlbergian tradition. In addition, one of the samples took Collins's revision of Rotter's Internal-External Scale (I-E) while another sample took Snyder's Self-Monitoring Scale. There was a small but reliable tendency for subjects who endorsed the ethics of personal conscience, as measured by the SEA, to show greater maturity in moral reasoning, as assessed by the DIT. This result was seen as raising some interesting questions about the relation between liberalism-conservatism and moral maturity. The subjects who advocated the ethics of social responsibility tended to show more internal locus of control as measured by the I-E scale. There also was a tendency for subjects who preferred the morality of conventional role-conformity, as measured by the DIT, to have high scores on the Self-Monitoring Scale. The correlations between personal conscience and mature moral reasoning, while significant, were small enough to make it seem that people of various social and political attitudes are likely to achieve maturity in moral reasoning.Received his Ph.D. from Michigan State University in 1973. Current research interests include moral judgment, family interaction, and alcoholism.Received his Ph.D. from Temple University in 1972. Research interests include attribution theory, social comparison theory, moral judgment, and the relation between personality and cardiac health.     

Parental influences on the development of adolescent autonomy and identity

Two studies were undertaken to examine parental influences on autonomy and identity development. In Study 1, 262 adolescents in seventh and eleventh grades were given Kurtines's autonomy measure, Simmons's identity measure, and Elder's questions regarding the adolescents' perceptions of their parents' autocratic, democratic, or permissive parenting styles. Study 2 was a replication with 168 subjects. Across both studies it was found that sex-role socialization is more influential for automony development than is either level of parental power or age. Both age and father's use of democracy were the most influential variables on identity development.Received Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. Major interests are adolescent social cognition and social development.Major interests are adolescent social cognition and social development.Major interests are adolescent social cognition and social development.Received Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati. Major interests are cognitive development and theories of personality.     

Examining Space–Time Interaction in City-Level Homicide Data: Crack Markets and the Diffusion of Guns Among Youth

This paper examines the linkage between crack market activity and gunhomicide suggested by Blumstein (1995), who argues that the arrival ofcrack stimulated an increased availability of guns among juveniles. Thisgreater availability of guns, the argument continues, is responsible for thesharp upswing in juvenile homicide experienced in the United States in themid-1980s. Using city-level data on crack arrests and gun-related juvenilehomicide, we fit a change-point version of the Bass (1969) model ofinnovation diffusion. We find that, in most large American cities, thediffusion process for crack cocaine experienced an onset of dramatic growththat was followed by a similar, slightly slower growth in gun homicidescommitted by juveniles. We further use cluster analysis to find that thespatial patterning of the two processes is similar, starting on the East andWest Coasts and working their way toward other regions of the nation. Gunuse in homicide among slightly older offenders (ages 18–24) alsoexperienced a change at roughly the same time as the juveniles, but the rateof diffusion was considerably milder than for the younger group; offendersages 25 or older generally show no growth in gun-related homicide whatsoever. In addition, there is no detectable surge in juvenile nongun homicide activity. Based on these findings, we conclude that the crack cocaine markets–gun availability linkage is highly plausible, and we suggest directions for future research in clarifying the dynamics of the late-1980s surge in juvenile homicide.