KENNEDY AND CONGRESS: THE STRUGGLE FOR THE NEW FRONTIER

Abstract The article attempts to develop an interpretation of some of the more important domestic aspects of the Kennedy administration. In particular, it focuses on Kennedy's relations with Congress and on the difficulty of reconciling his reputation as a skilful politician with his legislative disappointments. Case studies of three important bills reveal a consistent, if unsuccessful, legislative strategy. The manner in which the Kennedy administration has been evaluated is considered and the article concludes by locating the source of Kennedy's legislative difficulties in the circumstances of his nomination campaign.     

SOCIAL CONTROL THEORY AND DELINQUENCY: A LONGITUDINAL TEST

Hirschi's (1969) control theory has received much empirical support and, as a consequence, has become one of the dominant theories of delinquency. Virtually all tests of the theory, however, have been conducted with cross-sectional data. This is a serious problem since there is good reason to believe that delinquency may have a causal impact on social control. This paper describes a longitudinal test of Hirschi's theory using panel data from a national sample of adolescent boys. Data indicate that the social control variables explain only 1%-2% of the variance in future delinquency, suggesting that cross-sectional studies have exaggerated the importance of Hirschi's theory. Possible reasons for the small longitudinal effect of the control variables are discussed.     

EXPENSIVE DRUG USE AND ILLEGAL INCOME: A TEST OF EXPLANATORY HYPOTHESES*

Although the empirical association of heroin use and income-generating crime is well established in past research, the magnitude of the association after control of other factors such as legal income is not known. The relationship between the use of cocaine and income-generating crime has not received adequate attention. Moreover, the explanatory basis for the expensive drug use/income-generating crime association is not well understood. This article tests the robustness of the heroin use/income-generating crime relationship and examines the same question for cocaine use. Hypotheses derived from two explanatory perspectives (the compulsion/demand and life-style models) are tested. Data were collected from more than 3,500 individuals who were interviewed at the time they entered publicly funded drug abuse treatment programs in 1979. Regression analyses show that daily use of heroin and weekly and daily use of cocaine are strongly associated with illegal income. Theoretical interpretation of the findings suggest: (1) the addiction/compulsion explanatory model is an insufficient explanation, (2) the life-style concept is useful for understanding the expensive drug use/income-generating crime relationship, and (3) the concept of addiction needs refinement and elaboration.     

Cost Effectiveness Analysis and Transportation: Practices,Problems, and Proposals

Cost effective analysis (CEA) is used frequently in health and other fields in which controlled experiments are possible. The problem is, however, that for many activities that are outsourced in infrastructure finance, we have no comparison groups, and when comparison groups are present, we have no data on quality, presenting any interested researcher or decision maker with some serious dilemmas. In this article we establish some basic guidelines for the collection and use of quality data, and associate these with our own errors in attempting CEA with a lack of an existing quality measure.     

COLLECTIVE SECURITY AND THE OWNERSHIP OF FIREARMS FOR PROTECTION

This paper examines the hypothesis that people purchase firearms for protection when confidence in collective institutions of justice and security declines. Analysis of survey data from Detroit indicates that gun ownership for protection is inversely related to confidence in the police and in the courts, and that these relationships are independent of demographic and socioeconomic variables and fear of crime.     

UNEMPLOYMENT,CRIME, AND IMPRISONMENT: A PANEL APPROACH*

Despite the widespreach acceptance of the notion that during periods of economic downturn, higher levels of unemployment lead to higher levels of crime and imprisonment, the research literature reveals very little consistent support for the existence of such a relationship. Studies that do suggest unemployment causes crime and imprisonment have used methodological techniques which, especially in over-time studies, could lead to the acceptance of spurious effects caused by trend and lag as evidence of a true relationship. Using data over a six-year period for the United States, a panel model is specified in which appropriate controls for intra-series trend and cross-series lagged effects are included. Although bivariate correlations are strongly suggestive of a relationship between unemployment and crime, results of the panel approach suggest that most of the apparent relationship is due to common trend effects. Little evidence is found for the existence of a relationship between crime/imprisonment and unemployment, regardless of the type of effect considered. In addition, results from stability tests indicate that the crime-unemployment relationship has been unstable. while the unemployment-imprisonment relationship has been relatively invariant.