ESCALATION AND DESISTANCE OF WIFE ASSAULT IN MARRIAGE*

This article examines two widely held beliefs concerning the nature of “careers” of wife assault. Most researchers and members of the public believe that assaultive behavior in marriage, once begun, tends to continue for the life of the marriage. It is also commonly believed that minor violence (e.g., slapping, shoving, throwing things at a spouse) is unrelated to severe assaults (e.g., punching, kicking, using a weapon). These beliefs are based on the most severe cases of wife battering, as described by the media and by women in shelters. Despite these beliefs, we suggest that wife assault is similar to other forms of deviance and crime, in that desistance is common and engaging in minor forms of deviance is a risk factor for engaging in major forms of deviance and crime. The article reports a study using data on a sample of 380 married respondents who reported some violence in their marriage in 1985 and were reinterviewed in 1986. The findings indicate that most marital violence is transient, but even minor violence by a wife poses a risk of escalation to more dangerous assaults by a husband. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

Partition by Degrees: Routine Exceptions in Border and Immigration Practice between the UK and Ireland, 1921–1972

Using archival materials, we reflect on the legal process of creating (and mitigating) a border in Ireland after partition in 1922 and interactions between those laws and the people whom they affected. After 1922, superficially durable exceptions developed to the territorial state's distinctions between citizens and foreign nationals under the aegis of the Common Travel Area. They survived the 1930s UK–Ireland ‘Economic War’, were sustained (if in a restricted form) during the Second World War and were rebuilt in its aftermath. These arrangements proved beneficial for both countries, providing an outlet for surplus labour for Ireland and a resource for the UK economy. We nonetheless explore how far practice reflected this overarching cooperative framework, particularly given the complications introduced by the policies of Northern Ireland's institutions.     

Reviewing Directors’ Business Judgements: Views from the Field

Directors take decisions that can have significant impacts on others, as illustrated by the global financial crisis and the collapse of Thomas Cook Group plc. Yet many academics argue that courts should not review or impose liability on directors for poor business judgements. These arguments often rely on untested empirical assumptions about directors’ behaviour and attitudes. Through semi-structured interviews and focus groups, we explored the responses of directors, legal practitioners, company secretaries, and board headhunters to the prospect of judicial review of directors’ business judgements. Our findings challenge orthodox thinking: many directors supported some form of review and the impact of review may not be as great as the literature predicts, nor necessarily detrimental. The debate about whether courts should review directors’ business judgements should therefore move away from reliance on negative empirical assumptions about the impact of review, to clearly articulating, and engaging with, normative positions that underpin opposition to, and support for, review.     

Inequality,the Crash and the Ongoing Crisis

The rise in inequality across many rich nations, but especially in the United Kingdom and the United States, was meant to lead to a bigger economic pie from which all would benefit. In fact, the increased concentration of income over the last three decades has led to more fragile and unstable economies making it a key cause of the 2008 Crash and today's lack of recovery. The evidence of the last 100 years is that models of capitalism that fail to share the proceeds of growth more evenly will eventually self‐destruct. More equal societies have softer business cycles. In contrast, more unequal economies are associated with more extreme cycles—they have exaggerated booms, deeper falls and extended troughs. The scale of inequality is not just an issue about fairness and proportionality, it is therefore integral to economic health.     

GENERATIVE EXPLANATIONS OF CRIME: USING SIMULATION TO TEST CRIMINOLOGICAL THEORY*

This study demonstrates that computational modeling and, in particular, agent‐based modeling (ABM) offers a viable compatriot to traditional experimental methodologies for criminology scholars. ABM can be used as a means to operationalize and test hypothetical mechanisms that offer a potential explanation for commonly observed criminological phenomena. This study tests whether the hypothesized mechanisms of environmental criminology are sufficient to produce several commonly observed characteristics of crime. We present an ABM of residential burglary, simulating a world inhabited by potential targets and offenders who behave according to the theoretical propositions of environmental criminology. A series of simulated experiments examining the impact of these mechanisms on patterns of offending are performed. The outputs of these simulations then are compared with several well‐established findings derived from empirical studies of residential burglary, including the spatial concentration of crime, repeat victimization, and the journey to crime curve. The results from this research demonstrate that the propositions of the routine activity approach, rational choice perspective, and crime pattern theory provide a viable generative explanation for several independent characteristics of crime.     

SOUTH AFRICAN LAND REFORM: CASE-STUDIES IN 'DEMAND' AND 'PARTICIPATION' IN THE FREE STATE

This article offers an ethnographic cross-section in one provinceof South Africa's new land reform programme. ‘Demand’and ‘participation’ are the rhetorical keywordsof the programme. Demand for land redistribution, however, cannotbe understood in abstraction from the political and economicconditions of its supply. Similarly, ‘participation’is a managed process involving many institutional intermediaries.A series of illustrative case-studies is presented, relatingto the allocation of state-owned land; state-facilitated ‘market’access to privately-owned land; the reconstruction and partialprivatization of a para-statal development agency, which havebrought into question the viability of a ‘community conservation’project and also exposed the agency to political cross-fire;and, finally, some intricacies of the possibility of land restitutionto people dispossessed under apartheid, which raises the questionof whether the concept of indirect racial discrimination maybe applied in the South African context. Several contradictionsof the process of land redistribution are analysed: for example,the massive financial costs, direct and indirect, of bringingprojects to fruition in the short term, without resolution ofthe need for long-term support; the divergence between nominaland actual beneficiaries; political and institutional conflicts,both inside and outside the state; and routine incompatibilitybetween the diverse aspirations of beneficiaries and the ‘businessplans’ required by bureaucrats and suppliers of credit.