Minimizing the social cost of drug abuse: An economic analysis of alternatives for policy

The use of heroin, with its concomitant social problems, is facilitated by an illicit market process which functions similarly to economic markets in general. The analysis of this process, incorporated in a model embodying the interacting relationships of crime generation and control, permits evaluation of three fundamentally different strategies for social control. These are controlling supply through law enforcement and other strategies, controlling demand by detaining addicts, or reducing illicit market activitity by introducing an effective substitute for the services of that market. When all the social costs of addiction are taken into account and when minimizing the total of those costs is taken to be the objective, the authors conclude that the best solution will lie with the establishment of a drug maintenance program. Properly administered, such a program would undermine the illicit market by reducing demand. Furthermore, it can be expected to reduce levels of drug related crimes and to moderate factors encouraging addiction.The authors wish to acknowledge the helpful comments of Perry Shapiro and an unnamed referee and the support of the Russell Sage Foundation during the writing of this analysis.     

Northern Ireland's Abortion Law: The Morality of Silence and the Censure of Agency

This article explores the context within which abortion law and discourse in Northern Ireland must be situated and understood, relying in part on post-modern insights into the wider and long-term implications of feminists engaging law and by examining the strategies employed in Northern Ireland around the issue of abortion. In 2001,the Family Planning Association (Northern Ireland) took legal action to force the devolved government to defend at a procedural level the unequal and uncertain form of common law abortion regulation for Northern Ireland. The authors examine the strategy of this review as well as the response of the High Court, suggesting that while it may begin to challenge the legitimacy of abortion law, feminists and pro-choice advocates must prepare for challenges beyond that, the greatest being the cultural challenge. The courts, legislators and other public and political institutions(including the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition) consistently explain the law's lack of provision for women with reference to the `pro-life' majority views of Northern Irish people. The authors question the legitimacy of this claim in a cultural climate of intimidation against the expression of alternative views. Women will continue to be marginalised and devalued in this debate if the silencing of the pro-choice community and bodies responsible for protecting human rights is not redressed. A case is therefore made for a reconceptualisation of the abortion debate from the perspective of women's agency, which, alongside litigation and other strategies, is necessary to overcome the cultural censure that currently prevents meaningful dialogue. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

U.S. Power and the Politics of Economic Governance in the Americas

This article examines the nature of the emerging regional economic regime in the Americas and argues that the dominant approach to economic governance is one defined by the assertion of U.S. power in the region and oriented toward distinctively U.S. interests and preferences. This has been clearly evident in the evolution of the Free Trade Area of the Americas but also, with the deceleration and fragmentation of that process during 2002 and 2003, in the growing prioritization of bilateralism. The leverage afforded by the bilateral negotiation of trade agreements acts to situate primary influence in shaping the rules that constitute the regional economic regime, and the primary functions associated with governing in this context, firmly within the agencies of the U.S. state. This essay therefore explores how the hegemonic power of the United States manifests itself in the substance of the hemispheric project and the shape of the economic regime associated with it.     

Influences shaping members' decision making: Congressional voting on the Persian Gulf War

In this paper I examine what influences members viewed as shaping their voting decisions on U.S. strategy in the Persian Gulf in January 1991. Rather than focusing on predictors of votes and the outcomes of members' decision-making processes (the yea or nay votes as in roll-call analyses), I focus on the predominant considerations that members perceived as swaying voting choices. More specifically, drawing on data gathered from interviews with 365 congressional staff people, I show that three influences in particular stand out as significant in the decision-making process on this crisis policy: members' own policy views, supportive constituents, and (for certain groups of members) the president. Thus, while the analysis confirms, in part, the conventional view of legislators' personal policy assessments as the critical influence on foreign and defense policy votes, it also underscores that this influence does not operate in a vacuum.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1993 meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association.     

Military Socialization: A Motivating Factor for Seeking Treatment in a Veterans’ Treatment Court

The veterans’ treatment court movement is just beyond the nascent period, and given the rapid proliferation of these courts in recent years it is imperative that the scientific community understand their operational procedures and assess whether they are meeting a unique need beyond those addressed by other problem-solving courts. This paper provides an in-depth examination of veteran culture and how it helps to distinguish veterans’ treatment courts from other courts that focus on similar populations (e.g., drug, DWI, and mental health courts). Using in-depth semi-structured interviews and focus group data collected from veteran participants, veteran mentors, and court team members in Pennsylvania, we employ content analysis to explore the veteran culture as a motivator for participants to enroll in a veterans’ treatment court and engage with others throughout participation in treatment. The results of this exploratory study suggest that a shared culture serves to motivate justice-involved veterans to seek out the veterans’ treatment court over other treatment options and remain engaged in this problem-solving court, while inspiring a sense of obligation to do well in treatment for them and their fellow veterans. The shared experiences of military service and across-the-board support for fellow service members suggest that the veterans’ treatment court creates a unique environment for pursuing treatment.     

The impact of race and extra-legal factors in charging defendants with serious sexual assault: Findings from a five-year study of one Pennsylvania court jurisdiction

Research on sexual assault case processing remains mixed regarding how extra-legal factors such as the racial-ethnic composition of the defendant-victim dyad may impact prosecutorial decision-making. We use data from 2006–2010 in a Pennsylvania county court jurisdiction to examine the victim- and defendant-related factors that influence charging decisions. We also explore how the demographic and offense characteristics influence decisions to prosecute offenders for more serious types of sexual assault. Our findings indicate that the racial composition of the defendant-victim dyad contributed to the prosecutorial decision to charge an offender with a more serious sexual assault, while victim characteristics and use of violence during the offense were not related to seriousness of the charge.     

Learning from Experience? Ottawa as a Cautionary Tale of Reforming Urban Government

This article examines the saga of local government restructuring in Canada's capital city. Specifically, it analyzes the interplay between provincial and local agendas for local government reform over many years, which culminated in provincial legislation and a one-year transition process to establish one municipality for the Ottawa city region. In doing so, the article addresses the extent to which the Ottawa transition demonstrates learning from other major urban restructuring efforts and the extent to which the Ottawa case provides new insights for future local government reform efforts. Key conclusions are that the key motivation for provincially initiated reform—cost saving through simplification of the local government structure in Ottawa—does not fully coincide with local needs and interests. Furthermore, the promise of financial savings has proven difficult to realize as a result of the local politics surrounding existing municipal debt and unresolved human resource management costs. Instead, future benefits from the amalgamation may lie in improved capacity to manage physical development, environmental sustainability, and cultural diversity.     

Locarno in the limelight

International IP treaties and conventions cover those that arehigh-profile, politically sensitive documents to those thatscarcely register on the consciousness of the average practitioner.The epitome of the former is TRIPs—the Agreement on Trade-RelatedIP Rights—which is rarely off the IP agenda. At the otherend of the scale can be found such rare creatures as the StresaConvention of 1953 on the use of names and designations of originsof     

Disunited in ethnicity: the racialization of Chinese Mainlanders in Hong Kong

In the current climate of increasing antagonisms and populist discontents surrounding the visible presence of mainland mobilities in postcolonial Hong Kong, there is an acute need to understand how those from Mainland China are racialized. Lowe and Tsang's article provides an examination of the campaign against Mainlanders prevalent in Hong Kong society. The emergent conflicts between Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese migrants overlap with the duality of time or differing time-inflected cultural habits of Mainlanders and Hong Kongers. As Hong Kong's citizenry and Mainlanders contest the status of the former colony and claim rights over it in ways aberrant to both factions' national consciousness, discrimination increases as Mainlanders are castigated by Hong Kongers for grazing their territory with mannerisms deemed unsettling to Hong Kong's everyday notions of time and space. Hong Kongers' sense of collective identity is shored-up as they reject the People's Republic of China’s favoured concept of pan-Chinese ethnicity by constructing Mainlanders as the inverse of themselves.     

Debating Same-Sex Marriage: Lessons from <Emphasis Type="Italic">Loving</Emphasis>, <Emphasis Type="Italic">Roe</Emphasis>, and <Emphasis Type="Italic">Reynolds</Emphasis>

The United States Supreme Court, in its 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision, declared a constitutional right to same-sex marriage (SSM). With Republicans now controlling the Congress and presidency, and with value-traditionalists and ‘strict’ constitutionalists influencing the party’s legislative agenda and judicial nominees, Obergefell’s future and the contours of SSM rights are uncertain. Proponents assume the decision will delegitimate opponents, just as Loving v. Virginia (1967) accelerated the delegitimation of racial segregationists. SSM opponents counter with the Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling and argue that, like Roe, Obergefell undermines the democratic process, which is better suited to resolve a highly-charged moral dispute. Like Roe, Obergefell will not resolve the debate but, instead, trigger a durable opposition. We add a third possible path, drawing on the evolving public discourse on polygamy since the Supreme Court upheld prohibitions in Reynolds v. United States (1878). The politics of polygamy shows that, if SSM opponents are delegitimated, they may reemerge as legitimate participants in the public sphere. These paths offer insights into uncertainties, contingencies, and predictions regarding the durability of SSM resistance and other oppositional movements. They also lead to revisionist interpretations of the effect on public discourse flowing from these three seminal court decisions. The politics of interracial marriage (after Loving) shunned the losing political faction from the public forum, while those of abortion (after Roe), and, recently, polygamy, illustrate a more vibrant, pluralist model of deliberation. Whether SSM opponents will mimic a Roe model, or follow the trajectory of Loving or Reynolds, is now the question.