A Life Sentence in Installments: A Qualitative Analysis of Repeat Offending Among Short-Sentenced Offenders

Short-sentenced (less than 12 months) offenders in the United Kingdom consistently account for the greatest number of discharges from prison and demonstrate the highest risk and rate of reoffending. Moreover, until recent changes in UK legislation in 2015, individuals serving short sentences were released into the community with little support postrelease. The present study presents an exploration of (re)offending in individuals who have already served multiple short sentences in custody and aims to understand their experiences, perceptions, and insight into their offending. Is there anything apropos short sentences specifically, or those who continually serve them, that can explain the high rates of reoffending in this population? Semistructured interviews were conducted with eight prisoners currently serving short custodial sentences. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was implemented deriving three superordinate themes from the rich dataset: (a) living short sentences, (b) “You’d do the same if you were me,” and (c) negotiating an identity.     

Why Be Accountable? Exploring Voluntary Accountability of Australian Private Ancillary Funds

The aim of this paper is to consider why Private Ancillary Funds (PAFs), endowed philanthropic foundations with no public reporting requirements, engage in accountability in its various forms. This exploratory, qualitative study reports on perspectives on accountability from 10 semi‐structured interviews with PAF managers and/or trustees from three Australian states. Through the lens of March and Olsen's (2011) logics of action and Karsten's (2015) typology of motivational forms for voluntary accountability, findings show that although logics of appropriateness and consequentiality explain many reasons why PAFs engage in voluntary accountability, some reasons do not fit comfortably within either logic. The findings challenge conceptions embedded in much non‐profit accountability literature that motivations for and purposes of accountability are linked with sustainability and survival. By examining this subset of non‐profit organisations subject to limited regulatory accountability, a clearer understanding of motivations for voluntary accountability is achieved.     

The contributions of economic factors to female involvement in economic crime

Recent assessments of the causes of female criminality have been praised as signaling a turning away from the unfounded, sexist explanations of the past. However, new interpretations of the causes of female crime are not more likely to be rooted in empirical data than the explanations that focused solely on female biology. This paper examines new trends in the explanation of female economic crime as well as empirical data on the motivations and attributes of femole, economic offenders and suggests direction for future research.     

The invisible constitution

Personal Rule in Black Africa: Prince, Autocrat, Prophet, Tyrant by Robert H. Jackson and Carl G. Rosberg

University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1982. xi plus 316 pp. including map, appendix, notes and index. R25.05 paperback.

African Politics by Pierre François Gonidec

Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Boston, and London, 1981. ix plus 367 pp. including figures, tables and indices. R33,37.     

The Complexity of Tolerance and Intolerance Judgments: A Response to Gibson

In a recent paper, we posited that tolerance and intolerance judgments are characterized by two forms of variance. First, the distinction between tolerance and intolerance is dichotomous in that individuals are or are not willing to extend the full rights of citizenship to all others without exception. Second, among those not so willing, variance exists in the breadth and depth of their intolerance. James Gibson challenges our view, arguing that we have advanced a fundamental shift in how tolerance is conceptualized, and that this shift is not warranted empirically because very few Americans are tolerant under our definition. In this response, we first outline the rationale for why our view does not constitute a significant shift in the conceptualization of tolerance, but rather is merely an effort to pull the empirical treatment of tolerance into alignment with the concept’s common definition. Second, we explain that Gibson’s finding that few Americans are tolerant gains noteworthy meaning and significance from the view of tolerance we present. Lastly, we demonstrate that new insight on the antecedents of tolerance and intolerance emerges when analyses attend to the two-part structure of tolerance judgments highlighted in our research.