THE CITIZEN AND THE ADMINISTRATION IN FRANCE — THE CONSEIL DETAT VERSUS OMBUDSMAN DEBATE REVISITED

The purpose of this article is to reappraise, in the light of recent French experience with the 'Ombudsman', the prevailing orthodoxy, shared by élite opinion in both France and Britain in the 1960s' that the Ombudsman and a system of administrative courts applying 'droit administratif' (a body of autonomous rules separate from private law), were mutually exclusive modes of securing redress for citizens aggrieved by administrative action. The thesis is advanced that in the contemporary welfare state, irrespective of particular political, administrative and legal traditions, a system of administrative law and an Ombudsman are complementary not competitive institutions.     

PLANS AS PROMISES: WHAT DOES ‘CORPORATE PLANNING’ MEAN IN A PUBLICLY-OWNED CORPORATION?

Some planning activities of organizations operate happily; others are muddled or ritualistic. A review of the activities which operate happily suggests a useful distinction between the performative sense of planning as doing something (plans as promises) and the indicative sense of planning as describing something (e.g. plans as forecasts). This distinction is important in the context of the management of public enterprises, where an inaccurate view of what'corporate planning' can achieve has distracted attention from unresolved problems of gaining commitment to agreed targets.     

LABELING EFFECTS OF FIRST JUVENILE ARRESTS: SECONDARY DEVIANCE AND SECONDARY SANCTIONING

A growing literature suggests that juvenile arrests perpetuate offending and increase the likelihood of future arrests. The effect on subsequent arrests is generally regarded as a product of the perpetuation of criminal offending. However, increased rearrest also may reflect differential law enforcement behavior. Using longitudinal data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) together with official arrest records, the current study estimates the effects of first arrests on both reoffending and rearrest. Propensity score methods were used to control differences between arrestees and nonarrestees and to minimize selection bias. Among 1,249 PHDCN youths, 58 individuals were first arrested during the study period; 43 of these arrestees were successfully matched to 126 control cases that were equivalent on a broad set of individual, family, peer, and neighborhood factors. We find that first arrests increased the likelihood of both subsequent offending and subsequent arrest, through separate processes. The effects on rearrest are substantially greater and are largely independent of the effects on reoffending, which suggests that labels trigger “secondary sanctioning” processes distinct from secondary deviance processes. Attempts to ameliorate deleterious labeling effects should include efforts to dampen their escalating punitive effects on societal responses.     

Media Logic and Political Communication

Abstract

The election of 1952 saw the beginning of the age of telepolitics. In that year the medium of television played a decisive role in the nomination by the Republican Party of Dwight D. Eisenhower since it exposed convention proceedings to a national audience and gave that national audience, as well as representatives of the media, major influence over convention events. In the post‐convention period, Eisenhower's public relations advisors used television to soften the General's military image, reach Democrats and Independents, and increase the pro‐Eisenhower voter turnout. Whereas Stevenson never fully mastered the demands of television, Eisenhower was adept and skillful at using the medium as a major new campaign vehicle.     

Criminal Justice in Soviet Russia

Compared to American criminal justice, the fabric of Russia's system is a tightly woven structure operating under centralized co-ordination. During recent history, the goals of Russia's criminal justice system have shifted from repression by terrorism to crime prevention through education and an emphasis on individual duty in peace-keeping matters.

The militia (police), created in 1917, has been mandated to prevent crime through intelligence activities, direct intervention, and citizen education. In 1966, it was given the responsibility for the supervision of offenders newly released from correctional institutions. Peoples Volunteer Brigades and the DRUZHINNIKS aid the militia in crime prevention.

The courts also make use of non-professionals in the persons of lay assessors to insure that the accused is judged by his “peers.” The court system itself is inquisitorial in nature as opposed to the American accusational model. As the accused person moves through pre-trial and trial procedures, one can see how his “rights” may be legally abridged at every step.

Russian courts have a variety of sentences from which to choose, ranging in harshness from public censure to death by shooting. Deprivation of liberty may be applied by degree from “education” to compulsory labor to strict incarceration. The Soviets are attempting an organized plan of diversionary sentencing, in order to reduce prison populations to all but the most dangerous offenders.

Correctional facilities depend on inmate commissions to keep order and motivate good behavior through group influence and peer pressure. Inmates as well as civilians have “a national duty to mind other people's business.”

In the United States, justice is fragmented into a variety of jurisdictions: municipal, county, state, and federal, each with its own law enforcement agencies, courts, and correctional agencies. Further, there is only limited coordination among the various segments of the system. There is little argument to the proposition that the American “system” of criminal justice is inefficient.

Unlike America's disjointed system, the Russian Criminal justice system is unified; militia (police), procurators (prosecutors), courts, and correctional facilities operate under a centralized coordinating body. This body is characterized by a unity of purpose and a high degree of systemic integration (Juviler, 1979, p. 1).     

STRESS,GENES, AND GENERALIZABILITY ACROSS GENDER: EFFECTS OF MAOA AND STRESS SENSITIVITY ON CRIME AND DELINQUENCY*

In the current study, we extend the gene‐by‐environment interaction (cGxE) literature by examining how a widely studied polymorphism, the MAOA upstream variable number tandem repeat (MAOA‐uVNTR) interacts with distal and proximal stressors to explain variation in crime and delinquency. Prior research findings have revealed that MAOA‐uVNTR interacts with single indicators of environmental adversity to explain criminal behavior in general‐population and incarcerated samples. Nevertheless, the genetically moderated stress sensitivity hypothesis suggests that increased risk for criminal behavior associated with variation in the MAOA‐uVNTR can be best understood in the context of both distal stress during childhood and proximal stress in adulthood. Therefore, we employed Tobit regression analyses to examine a gene–distal–proximal environment (CGxExE) interaction across gender in a sample of university students (n = 267) and with data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health; n = 1,294). The results across both sets of analyses demonstrate that variation in the MAOA‐uVNTR interacts with distal and proximal stress to lead to increased risk for criminal behavior in males. Although proximal life stress is associated with an increase in crime and delinquency, this effect is more pronounced among MAOA‐L allele carriers that have experienced distal stress.     

CELEBRATING ADVERSITY: INTER‐ORGANIZATIONAL DEPENDENCE AND PUBLIC SECTOR PERFORMANCE REPORTING IN THE AUSTRALIAN FEDERAL POLICE

Many aspects of public policy delivery involve complex networks rather than independent agencies. Yet little work has been done to understand the nature of performance measurements in settings where the performance of one agency is heavily dependent on the activities of other agencies. The issue of dependence has implications for operational and reputational risks. Our case study is focused on performance reporting by the Australian Federal Police (AFP). Our findings indicate that performance reporting remains heavily focused on input and process measures with relatively few output or outcome measures. Contrary to expectation, the AFP did not claim credit for success and attribute poor performance to other stakeholders. However, a higher than expected proportion of the dependent performance measures were positively framed.