Participation patterns at the 1998–2003 Southern Criminal Justice Association annual meetings

This paper examines the distance participants were willing to travel to attend the 1998–2003 Southern Criminal Justice Association annual meeting sites. The authors evaluate whether holding the conference at various locations throughout the region impacts individual participation, membership, and institutional representation. The findings reveal that conference sites that require greater travel have lower attendance and do not capture new members. However, the strength of offerings and tourist attractions can offset the negative impact of greater travel. The analysis also identifies a core group of members who show up at the meetings no matter where they are held. Finally, the conferences do not attract much local interest. Recommendations that would enhance attendance at regional meetings are advanced.     

adventurers,foreign women and masculinity in the Colombian Wars of Independence

This paper examines changing conceptions of honour and masculinity during the Colombian Wars of Independence in the early 19th century. It explores the position of the foreign women who accompanied British and Irish expeditions to join the war against Spanish rule, and shows how colonial, imperial and republican conceptions of masculinity were affected by the role that women played in these volunteer expeditions and in the wars in general. The paper considers women's experiences during war and peace, and examines their experiences in the light of changing conceptions of masculinity at home, in the British empire and in Hispanic America in the early nineteenth century. The social mobility of the Wars of Independence shifted the ground on which these concepts rested for all groups involved. The participation of foreign women alongside male adventurers was a further ingredient in this disorientating period.     

class and feminine excess: the strange case of Anna Nicole Smith

Cultural concerns about race, class and beauty often intersect with mass-mediated depictions of the female body. Drawing on Foucault's theories about disciplining the public body, this article examines the changing public perception of Anna Nicole Smith from an ideal beauty to a white trash stereotype. This analysis argues that Smith's very public weight gains, her outrageous behaviour and her legal battle for her late husband's fortune is presented in the media as an example of inappropriate conduct for a white beauty ideal and thus is repositioned as white trash culture. Central to this repositioning is the constant tabloid depiction of Smith as an ‘out of control’ grotesque. This article argues that contrary to the optimistic understanding of female grotesques as effective agents of cultural criticism and social change, Smith represents the female grotesque as an agent of cultural control that instructs middle-class women on how to avoid committing classed, racial and gendered transgressions. The article concludes that the case of Anna Nicole Smith functions as a cautionary tale that reinforces cultural standards of normalization.     

Investing in Individuals for Independence

Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) are tax‐protected, matched savings accounts designed to help those with low incomes and few assets buy a home, capitalize a business, or fund higher education. Originally authorized through the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), IDAs are designed, implemented, and evaluated through public‐private partnerships. In January 2003 over 500 IDA programs had been created, with more than 10,000 low‐income individuals making contributions. This paper outlines the rationale for IDA as an asset building strategy for the poor, describes the design and operation of IDAs, and provides results of early program evaluations. It concludes by arguing that IDAs are a smart practice that can and should be expanded.     

Elections with contribution-maximizing candidates

Analyses of campaign contributions usually follow the Downsian model to suppose that candidates seek contributions to win elections. This paper takes the opposite approach, by assuming that each candidate aims to maximize the contributions he collects. A citizen contributes to a candidate with the aim of increasing that candidate’s chances of winning. These assumptions generate several results: in equilibrium citizens make campaign contributions; the positions the candidates adopt differ; because the rich are willing to make larger contributions than the poor, the candidates adopt positions the rich prefer. A cap on political contributions reduces spending by voters and reduces the distance between the positions adopted by the candidates; public funding of campaign contributions causes aggregate spending to increase.     

The Body Politic as Spatial Metaphor

As part of a special issue on the geographies of citizenship, this paper considers the longstanding and popular metaphor of “the body politic” for a polity. The metaphor's comparative power is successful because it imports key geographic assumptions about how polities are best organized. It makes claims about society and space (premises about location, spatial organization), nature–society relations (how the two spheres do and do not connect) and cartographic representation (the human body is the optimal representation of spatial and natural relations in a polity). We describe three ways in which geographical imaginations are constructed: organic, mechanical, and posthuman bodies politic. Our goal is twofold: first is to consider the ways the deployment of the metaphor of the body is used in political theory to convey a normative conception of citizenship; second is to bridge the gap between political theory and geography by paying special attention to the ways the body is a space. The metaphor of the body politic is a political geography that links citizenship to particular geographical and normative relationships.     

Managing Public Service Contracts: Aligning Values, Institutions, and Markets

The contracting of public services has been an integral part of public managers’ work for a long time, and it is here to stay. This essay sums up current research on the topic for busy practitioners and scholars. Where are we today with respect to the problems and pitfalls of contracting out, from balancing equity with efficiency to confronting the frequent problem of imperfect markets?     

Democracy and Deceit: Regulating Appearances of Corruption

While corruption has long been recognized as an appropriate object of regulation, concern with appearances of corruption is of recent origin, coinciding with declining trust in government in the mid- to late-1960s. The reasoning that would support regulations of appearances, however, remains flawed, as it depends upon a "public trust" model of public service that is incomplete and often misplaced when applied to political representatives. The justification for regulating appearances is unambiguous, however, from the perspective of democratic theory. Democratic institutions of representation depend upon the integrity of appearances, not simply because they are an indication of whether political representatives are upholding their public trust, but because they provide the means through which citizens can judge whether, in particular instances, their trust is warranted. Representatives, institutions, and ethics that fail to support public confidence in appearances disempower citizens by denying them the means for inclusion in public judgments. These failures amount to a corruption of democratic processes.     

Central nervous system consequences of an unusual body disposal strategy: case report and brief experimental investigation

The body of a 73-year-old man was dismembered by his female companion for the purpose of covert disposal. The method employed included skillful separation of body parts with hacksaw and knife, piecemeal disposal of fragments, and prolonged boiling of the decapitated head. The latter treatment resulted in marked shrinkage of cranial dura mater, separation of dura mater from skull, and extrusion of brain fragments into the resultant enlarged epidural space through a dural defect due to the disproportionately greater shrinkage of dura mater compared to brain parenchyma. This resulted in curd-like brain fragments filling an enlarged epidural space and overlying a shrunken, leathery dura mater. The cranial dura mater, still adherent to the skull base, resembled a "shrunken brain" in contour but contained only the remnants of brain tissue not already extruded through the dural defect. This unusual thermal artifact is rarely illustrated or mentioned in forensic literature. The development of this postmortem artifact likely requires the presence of a specific combination of conditions which must be, but apparently rarely are, simultaneously present.