Law and criminal labels: The case of the French Métis in Western Canada

This paper examines the conflicts engaged in by the French Metis of Western Canada with the imperial state during the 19th century. More specifically, it is argued that the application of criminal labels corresponded to the level of struggle between the two parties. In the case of the conflict between the Metis and the H.B.C, “economic” forms of crime appeared at the top of the legal agenda. At a later conjuncture, when the legitimacy of imperial apparatuses was threatened, “political” crimes were paramount. Finally, with the ideological, institutional and economic hegemony of the Dominion state, the Metis were designated as “social” criminals. In each of these periods, legal struggles involving the Metis may be understood as surface manifestations of conflicts over political and economic power. This paper has benefited considerably from the comments and substantive work of Ron Bourgeault, from the critique of two anonymous reviewers and from the editorial work of Elizabeth Comack. Further, none of this work would have been undertaken but for the hospitality and comradeship of the faculty and graduate students at the Centre of Criminology, University of Toronto.     

Entrepreneurship and University Technology Transfer

This paper argues that it is important to devote greater attention to the study of entrepreneurship in technology transfer in the light of greater government attention, the growth in the phenomenon, the need to identify how wealth can be created from spin-outs, changes in the cultures of universities and differences with technological entrepreneurship in general. The paper summarizes the contributions made by the papers presented in the special issue in terms of their levels of analysis. At the spin-out level, issues are raised concerning identification of typologies of spin-out firms, the evolution of spin-outs and external resources. At the university level, issues concerning policies, internal resources and processes are discussed. An agenda for further research is elaborated which relates to the need to examine further levels of analysis: the academic entrepreneurs themselves and how they recognize opportunities and shape their ideas to meet the market; the nature of internal university environments, processes and resources; and the nature of the scientific discipline which may have implications for the process of creation and development of spin-out ventures.     

Employee buy-outs and privatization: Issues and implications for LDCs and post-communist countries of UK experience

Privatization has become an international phenomenon. Most attention has been devoted to privatization by stock market flotation or by sales to third parties. Management and employee buy-outs present a third main possibility for transferring assets from the public to the private sector. This paper discusses the scope for privatization buy-outs in LDCs and ‘post-communist’ economies in the light of conceptual issues and UK experience. The positive aspects of privatization by management and employee buy-outs concern: ownership incentives; the introduction of control mechanisms by institutional investors and various types of financing instruments; indigenous ownership, decentralized privatization; greater incentives in firms where specific skills are involved; the ability to improve trading relationships between a privatized supplier (the buy-out) and its former parent, which remains in the public sector where the supplier is heavily dependent on its former parent; and the general contribution of buy-outs to a redrawing of a state firm's spread of activities to create a more viable entity. The potential problems with buy-outs concern such issues as: absence of entrepreneurial skills; the scope of their applicability; the potentially restrictive effects of debt and debt-like finance; the need to deal with investment requirements of firms; the lack of personal wealth; the use of inside information by managers to purchase a firm at a price which is to the detriment of the public interest; and the possibility of social and political problems if individuals are perceived to enhance their personal wealth significantly as an accident of where they work. There are means by which many of these potential problems can be dealt with and the paper addresses these.     

Modelling public confidence of the police: how perceptions of the police differ between neighborhoods in a city

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a survey evaluating the views of 1322 residents of York, UK around their perceptions and attitudes towards crime, their local area, and the police with the aim of understanding the main factors affecting public confidence within the city. The study uses Structural Equation Modelling to develop several models which are evaluated to examine whether differences in public confidence in the police exist across disparate local communities with varying degrees of neighbourhood perceptions. The results indicate that even in a relatively small city such as York, the factors which most affect an individual’s views of the police can vary wildly depending on an individual’s perceptions regarding their local area. The results suggest that policing strategies aimed at improving public confidence must be altered depending on the views residents hold regarding their local communities.