Accounting for the "Second Assault": Legal Organizations'Framing of Rape Victims

What organizational and community conditions influence legal officials to treat rape victims “unresponsively”? Our analysis is guided by Goffman's theory of organizational frameworks and frames of activity and March and Olsen's institutional theory of organizations. Using data from 130 m-organizations in Florida that process rape cases, we compare six types of organizations (including hospital emergency rooms and rape crisis centers) on eight criteria and review their frameworks and frames of activity relative to unresponsiveness. We use the issue of victim legitimacy to illustrate the utility of our model. Our results show that well-meaning staff in legal organizations are oriented to routinely treat victims unresponsively. Their organizations routinely orient them to be concerned with, for example, public approval, the avoidance of losing, and expediency more than with victims' needs. In our conclusion, we identify ways legal officials and rape crisis centers can promote responsive treatment of victims. We also call for research on legal organizations that are responsive to victims and for a nationwide discourse on the “politics of rape victims' needs” as a means of addressing the gender inequality issues that underlie rape crimes and laws and orient legal officials to treat victims unresponsively .     

Ellen Swallow,Lois Gibbs and Rachel Carson: Catalysts of the American environmental movement

There are none as responsible for the initiation and spirit of the American environmental movement as two scientists, Ellen Swallow and Rachel Carson, and a third woman, Lois Gibbs, a housewife and mother turned environmental activist. Ellen Swallow devised the world's first formal curriculum and scientific methods for the study of ecology. Although her science of ecology was ultimately rejected by male science and then relegated to the field of home economics, her legacy to environmental science has borne fruit nearly a century later in the phenomenon of the American housewife and mother, as exemplified in Lois Gibbs of Love Canal, New York. Gibbs, who is self-taught in the science of hazardous waste, has been the major force in the national protest against indiscriminate disposal of hazardous waste in the environment.Rachel Carson's final book. Silent Spring, was the clarion call to the American society to examine the excessive toll taken on insect, aquatic, animal, plant, and human life by the post World War II policy of increasing use of synthetic chemicals with insecticidal properties in American agriculture, forestry, and management of natural resources. As a consequence of its passionate and irrefutable arguments, the American government created the Environmental Protection Agency and promulgated some of the most rigorous environmental legislation in the world.     

Sexual assault cases in the legal system: Police,prosecutor, and victim perspectives

The purposes of this study were to assess (a) the extent of attrition in the processing of sexual assault cases in the legal systems, (b) factors associated with attrition at various stages in the process, and (c) victims' experiences in the legal system and the relations between these experiences and recovery. Our results suggest that substantial attrition continues to occur in the prosecution of rape cases, that more severe assaults are prosecuted more vigorously, that victims are generally satisfied with the police (but not with the legal system in general), and that neither attitudes nor case outcomes are associated with victims' postrape recovery. Research and policy implications are discussed.     

Comparing females acquitted by reason of insanity,convicted, and civilly committed in Florida 1977–1984

Females who had been acquitted by reason of insanity (N=41), convicted of comparable offenses (N=41), and involuntarily hospitalized without criminal involvement (N=41) were matched for age and race. The psychiatric histories of the acquitted and civilly committed women were similar, and significantly more extensive than the convicted group. The acquitted women had been arrested significantly more often than the civilly committed women but less frequently than the convicted women. Total length of stay (hospitalization or imprisonment) reflected a similar pattern, with civilly commited women hospitalized for the shortest period, acauitted women an intermediate period, and convicted women the longest. Regression-based prediction of length of stay reflected a number of common predictors for the acquitted and convicted women, with offense type one of the most powerful for both groups.     

Realism and eyewitness identification research

The importance of realism in eyewitness identification research is examined as the basis for both the credibility and utility of the information it provides. Without knowledge of how laboratory eyewitnesses behave differently from real eyewitnesses, the relevance and external validity of identification studies may be questioned. Factors differentiating these identification contexts are discussed. Witnesses in identification studies are in social decision-making contexts similar to those of real eyewitnesses when their decision to choose someone or to reject the lineup may have a significant impact on others' lives. Two studies are reported which preserve aspects of realism. Both presented witnesses with a realistic vandalism. The second maintained realism through the identification situation. The first study demonstrated effects of biased instructions on witnesses' willingness to make a lineup choice and on identification errors (with the offender present and absent). The second study showed an unexpected preference of witnesses for making an identification when the supposed consequences for the suspect were to be severe. To evaluate the generalizability and utility of laboratory studies it is important to determine whether their results and related theoretical analyses survive the transposition to more realistic contexts. Realistic studies should serve as benchmarks against which simulations are compared and their generalizability evaluated.     

Environmental reform in Brazil: advances and reversals

It is now two years since the Government of President Fernando Collor de Mello took office in Brazil. This article assesses its effectiveness in implementing its environmental policies and resolving social conflicts in the Amazon in the run-up to the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development. It examines some of the political and economic problems which have beset the new environmental programme, and gives an account of the response of Brazilian NGOs to some of the Government's main initiatives.