Examining the Use of Disciplinary Segregation within and across Prisons

Prison officials have historically been afforded considerable discretion to administer sanctions designed to maintain order and security within a prison. Such discretion can generate disparate treatment of offender groups, but few studies have investigated whether sanction disparities exist within prisons, despite considerable research on sanctioning decisions made by other criminal justice actors. We use data collected from a nationally representative sample of inmates housed in state operated confinement facilities to examine potential influences of prison officials’ decisions to impose one type of sanction—disciplinary segregation. Multi-level analyses reveal that both legally relevant criteria such as prior misconduct history and extralegal factors such as age and holding a prison job affected whether an inmate was placed in disciplinary segregation for a rule violation. Also, prisons in which a greater proportion of the inmate population is involved in prison work and prisons with a higher density of inmates classified minimum-security use disciplinary segregation less frequently.     

Individual and Environmental Influences on Prison Officer Safety

Prison officers are exposed to violence and other safety risks at rates higher than workers in most occupations are, and indicators of workplace safety have been linked to a number of negative health and occupational outcomes among officers. Yet, few researchers have examined the sources of prison officer safety. Using data collected from over 1,800 officers working in 45 prisons, we apply a multi-level opportunity framework to examine the individual and environmental influences on objective and subjective measures of officer safety. Our analysis revealed that officer safety is affected by officers’ routines (e.g. frequency of contact with inmates) and characteristics that might reflect officers’ suitability as targets (e.g. age, race). We also observed that indicators of both micro- (e.g. coworker support) and macro-level (e.g. architectural design) guardianship influence prison officers’ safety.     

Fighting Windmills: The Coalition of Industrialists and Environmentalists in the Climate Change Issue

This paper extends the political economy idea developed by Ackerman and Hassler [Clean Coal/Dirty Air, or How the Clean Air Act became a Multibillion-Dollar Bail-out for High Sulfur Coal Producers and What Should Be Done About It. New Haven: Yale University Press], which suggested that a coalition of environmentalists and industrialists successfully lobbied the US Congress. More strict technology-based standards for new emitting sources than for existing sources was the resulting policy outcome serving the common interest of the coalition because it offered both a barrier to entry for new firms and improved environmental quality. We focus on the case of international climate negotiations and the promotion of wind-based energy. Along the lines of the Ackerman and Hassler approach, we suggest that one reason for EU eagerness to push forward ambitious reduction target levels (and thereby promote new green industries) could be a similar coalition between industrialists and environmentalists. Such a strategy can be seen in the context of the Bootleggers and Baptist theory developed by Yandle [Bootleggers and Baptists: the Education of a Regulatory Economist, Regulation, 7, 12–16], where the Baptists (in our case the environmentalists) demand changes in behaviour on moral grounds. In contrast, the Bootleggers (the producers of renewable energy), who profit from the very regulation, keep a low profile. The actual heavy subsidisation of renewable energy sources, such as wind energy, can be viewed as a successful policy outcome for the coalition of industrialists and environmentalists offering both market protection and improved environmental quality. Solving the current dead-lock in international climate negotiations may well imply fighting the strong coalition of industrialists and environmentalists. Such a political battle may turn out to be just as tough as fighting windmills and needs to be addressed in future and more rigorous empirical research. At the end of the day, transparent incentives of relevant stakeholders in the climate change issue are necessary preconditions for progress in the climate change negotiations.JEL Classification: Q28,H2, H4     

Die Schweizer Gemeinden im Wandel: Konvergenz oder Divergenz?

Switzerland is currently going through a phase of political restructuring. The numerous reform activities at the beginning of the twenty‐first century leave almost no area of political life untouched. The reforms are particularly abundant in the 2′867 municipalities, spanning from amalgamations, intermunicipal co‐operation, New Public Management, to reforms of the political systems. Accounting for the fact that there are big socio‐economic differences between the municipalities as well as their political systems, we investigate whether the municipalities are headed for divergence or convergence as a result of these reforms. The empirical results are derived from three surveys of the local authorities conducted in 1988, 1994, and 1998. The results indicate that the communes do convergence in regard to their administrative and political structure. However, the convergence appears to be limited to the single cantons and observable only among certain types of municipalities.     

Are opinion leaders better represented?

Few studies have analysed the effect of political engagement on legislators’ responsiveness. This article focuses on opinion leaders defined as citizens who regularly discuss politics and who attempt to persuade others to change their viewpoint. It investigates whether opinion leaders are better represented compared to other voters. Taking advantage of the Swiss institution of direct democracy, the article combines roll-call votes and information from popular votes to compare the voting behaviour of legislators and citizens on exactly the same policy proposals. It thus overcomes limitations pertaining to the lack of identical information on elites’ and citizens’ preferences that is common in the literature. The findings show that opinion leaders are better represented than the rest of the electorate in those instances where both sub-groups disagree, and that issue salience does not increase responsiveness to rank-and-file voters. These findings have important implications for understanding unequal representation.     

Assessing the Need for Gender-Specific Explanations of Prisoner Victimization

The literature on differences in the carceral experiences of women and men underscores the relevance of both background (pre-prison) and confinement factors for shaping inmates’ experiences during incarceration, but with a heavier emphasis on linkages between background factors and problems women face during confinement. Here, we apply these ideas to an understanding of sex differences in factors influencing victimization risk during incarceration. Sex-specific models of physical assaults and property thefts were estimated for random samples of inmates from 46 prisons in Ohio and Kentucky. Background factors were more important than confinement factors for influencing assaults on women whereas both sets of factors were relevant for men. Both background and confinement factors were important for predicting theft victimizations for both groups although the magnitude of several effects varied by an inmate’s sex. Findings suggest that effective crime prevention strategies in prison may vary across facilities for women and for men.     

Dealing with the Intractable: A Possible Negotiating Position for the New British Ambassador to Berlin,Summer 1933

Foreign Office diplomats recognised the danger to British security posed by Adolph Hitler’s accession to the chancellorship of Germany in January 1933 but differed on how to meet this challenge. This article reproduces the hitherto unpublished draft instructions prepared by Owen O’Malley, a ranking official at the Foreign Office, for the newly appointed ambassador to Germany, Sir Eric Phipps, on taking up his posting in autumn 1933. Sir Robert Vansittart, the permanent under secretary, who took a sceptical but not entirely hostile view of O’Malley’s proposals, minutes O’Malley’s suggestion of a clear warning to Hitler, accompanied by the opening of negotiations with Nazi Germany recognising its enhanced position and the justice of some of its claims. Vansittart did not forward the draft memorandum to the foreign secretary, Sir John Simon, and there is, as far as I know, no copy of this in the public archives. Included is additional information on the clashes between the two men on how dictators should be treated as well as biographical information on the careers of the three men involved in this debate.     

Economic Integration,Party Polarisation and Electoral Turnout

Recent research provides evidence that economic integration has a negative effect on electoral turnout. Taking up these recent findings, this article explores the causal chain in more detail. Specifically, it argues that one way by which economic integration affects the calculus of voting is through the positioning of political parties. The expectation is that the polarisation between parties on an economic left–right scale is lower the more integrated an economy is. Consequently, electoral turnout should be lower with less polarisation in the party system. The article employs aggregate-level data from legislative elections in 24 developed democracies. Using data from the Comparative Manifestos Project, evidence is found not only that economic integration has a negative effect on party polarisation as measured on an economic left–right dimension, but also that this in turn exerts a negative effect on electoral turnout.     

Decentralisation and poverty: conceptual framework and application to Uganda

In order to shed further light on the discussion about decentralisation‐poverty linkages in developing countries, this article introduces a conceptual framework for the relationship between decentralisation and poverty. The framework takes the form of an optimal scenario and indicates potential ways for an impact of decentralisation on poverty. Three different but interrelated channels are identified. Decentralisation is considered to affect poverty through providing opportunities for previously excluded people to participate in public decision‐making, through increasing efficiency in the provision of local public services due to an informational advantage of local governments over the central government and through granting autonomy to geographically separable conflict groups and entitling local bodies to resolve local‐level conflicts. Based on the experience with decentralisation in Uganda, it is shown that these channels are often not fully realised in practice. Different reasons are singled out for the Ugandan case, among them low levels of information about local government affairs, limited human capital and financial resources, restricted local autonomy, corruption and patronage, high administrative costs related with decentralisation and low downward accountability. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The use of expensive health technologies in the era of managed care: the remarkable case of neonatal intensive care

The use of neonatal intensive care (NIC) continued to rise rapidly in the 1990s despite the concerns of observers about its cost effectiveness and its successes being mostly in facilities with high volume and capabilities. The objective of this study is to test the effects of insurance type, competition among hospitals, and market pressure from managed care plans on the supply and cost of NIC. The analysis uses logistic and linear models with techniques to avoid bias from (a) market area definitions based on actual patient flows and (b) self-selection of hospitals by patients with unmeasured risk of needing NIC. The data source contains all births in short-term hospitals in New Jersey during 1990 and 1994. Both the number of days and charges for NIC are reported. Key findings are that the decision of a hospital to offer NIC was associated with teaching status, the proportion of infants in the market area with documented high risk, and the market concentration of major competitors. The market share of managed care plans and the concentration of enrollment were not associated with either NIC being offered or with the standardized charges. Whether a particular patient was given to a NIC depended on patient risk factors and whether a NIC unit was present, but not on payer group. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that young insured parents (with the advice of their obstetricians) prefer hospitals with NIC and also are relatively profitable enrollees for health plans. In conclusion: using the results here and in other research, public and private policy makers may consider several ways to strengthen the incentives for health plans to contract for cost-effective birth-related services. The results also raise questions for a number of regulatory and payment policies and call for better public data on costs and outcomes for NIC.