NATIONAL VICTIM COMPENSATION: Its Cost and Coverage

In recent years, numerous states have established programs to compensate victims of violent crime, and efforts to enact a national victim compensation law continue. One of the major obstacles to positive legislative action on victim compensation programs has been the lack of reliable estimates of the potential costs of such programs. In this article, a series of compensation program models with varying eligibility criteria are examined. Data from a variety of sources—victimization surveys, the Uniform Crime Reports, and existing state compensation programs—are brought together to determine the effects of differing statutory criteria on the coverage and costs of possible national victim compensations programs. Program model recommendations are made and policy issues are discussed.     

THE ROLE CONCEPT IN JUDICIAL RESEARCH

This article addresses the state of research which uses role concepts to explain the process of making decisions in legal institutions. After identifying several important limitations of previous research, a new scale—measuring normative orientations toward discretion—is proposed. The results of administering this scale to samples of Iowa and California judges suggest that the measure is fairly reliable, and an argument is made in favor of its validity. The article concludes with some observations on the importance of measurement in research on the legal process.     

CLASSIFICATION TO HALFWAY HOUSES: A QUASI-EXPERIMENTAL EVALUATION *

Faced with prison overcrowding, institutions must seek alternatives to imprisonment. An under researched possibility is the use of halfway houses for the placement of offenders serving prison sentences. The LSI, an objective risk classification instrument, was administered to inmates from three jails. Low-scoring inmates from two of the jails were flagged for placement in correctional halfway houses, and the third jail was blind to LSI scores. The halfway house placement rate was 51 % for the jails that used LSI scores and 16% for the jail using traditional subjective classification procedures. The results suggest that subjective offender assessments run the risk of over classifying offenders whereas objective risk assessments yield more appropriate classifications.     

WHORING AROUND: Some Comments on Deviance Research in the Private Sector

The trends are explored through which criminologists and other social scientists are being pushed out of academia and finding their way into the private sector, especially in the area of “deviance research.” In this research area, within the private sector, the work of thecontract researcher is discussed. The relationship between contract researcher and client is compared to that of prostitute and john, one in which many hopes and expectations are created, but where the encounter satisfies neither. The organization of private, contract research is considered and concern for the uses of these studies is raised.     

SARS in Canada and China: Two Approaches to Emergency Health Policy

China and Canada addressed the transnational 2003 SARS outbreak within a common, multilevel network of public‐health expertise. The two countries deployed distinct public‐health strategies, and faced distinct levels of resistance. This article addresses this comparison. During this epidemic “state of exception,” both countries adopted emergency policy instruments and overall policy styles. However, Chinese emergency boundary policing corresponded better to everyday experience than did hospital‐based screening in Canada, and China's policing targeted collectivities where Canada emphasized individual case tracking. While Canadian efforts were smaller in scale and faced infrastructural deficiencies, prior campaigns to address endemic health problems formed a basis for compliant popular subject positions. Power/resistance relations and their cultivation during endemic conditions must become the center of analyzing effective approaches to emergency planning.     

Science Education Policy: A Symposium

This article introduces Science Education Policy: A Symposium. The symposium examines trends and issues from the vantage points of individuals from a variety of backgrounds who are concerned with science education in the US. Although optimistic, most of the contributors to this symposium agree that considerable research and evaluation is still needed before we can make informed policy decisions that would have a lasting impact on science education. The expected outcome of the symposium is to stimulate discussions among educators and policymakers.     

Intergovernmental Structure and Fiscal Management Strategies: A Crossnational Analysis

Does intergovernmental structure have a systematic effect on the impacts of local governments' fiscal policy responses? Using empirical data from more than 800 local governments in five countries, the article concludes that intergovernmental structure is associated with the impact attributed to various fiscal management strategies. Such strategies have generally had greater impact in local governments in federal systems than those in unitary state systems. There are similarities between federal and unitary local governments regarding the fiscal management strategies that have least impact, and both types stress the importance of productivity gains via technology. But the differences in relative importance and level of impact are more striking than the similarities. In particular, fiscal management strategies involving the relations of the local government with other governments, such as obtaining intergovernmental revenue and shifting service provision to other governments, have greater impact in significantly more federal systems than in unitary state systems. These federal local governments also experience greater impacts from increasing user charges and raising local taxes. In contrast, local governments in unitary state systems place greater reliance on the more politically expeditious strategy of across–the–board expenditure reductions and on reductions of capital spending. These findings suggest that local governments in more decentralized systems have greater flexibility to manipulate relations with other governments in order to enhance their own fiscal situation. The data also suggest that the government's level of fiscal stress is not systematically associated with the level of impact from most fiscal management strategies, especially in the unitary state systems.