Assessing the instrumental and symbolic elements in attitudes toward the death penalty using a sample of Puerto Rican students

Theoretical explanations for the support or opposition to the death penalty have often been dichotomized into the instrumental and the symbolic perspectives. The instrumental perspective sees support for the death penalty as utilitarian, that it is a means to a desired end, which is often to lower crime rates. The symbolic perspective sees support for the death penalty as emanating from individuals’ political and social ideologies, no matter its utilitarian value. Both perspectives have often been examined individually, and seldom juxtaposed as competing explanations in a singular model. This paper examines both perspectives in a singular model, using a sample of Puerto Rican students.     

Soviet Repatriation Efforts among “Displaced Persons” Resettled in Australia, 1950–53

In the early 1950s, the Soviet Union made great efforts to persuade its former citizens among the “displaced persons” (DPs) resettled in Australia after the war to repatriate. They sent two undercover military intelligence men to Canberra to identify DPs who might be interested in returning, offer them free passages, and organize the repatriation. The result was a paltry dozen repatriations, out of the estimated 50,000 eligible DPs resettled in Australia. This strange story — hitherto completely unknown and reconstructed on the basis of recently opened Soviet classified material in the State Archive of the Russian Federation and ASIO files in the National Archives of Australia — adds a new angle to our understanding of Soviet‐Australian (and, in general, Soviet‐Western) relations at the height of the Cold War.