The attitudes of criminal justice workgroups toward intensive supervised probation

In spite of a growing body of literature on the attitudes of the public and selected groups toward crime and punishment, including communitybased corrections, intermediate sanctions, and intensive probation, very little is known about the attitudes of criminal justice workgroups toward intensive supervised probation. Understanding reactions to ISP by criminal justice workgroups is a requisite first step toward overcoming any obstacles or resistance to successful program implementation. This research reports on a survey of criminal justice workgroup attitudes toward ISP in Wyandotte County, Kansas.     

Book reviews

M.B. Hayne, The French Foreign Office and the Origins of the First World War 1898-1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993) £35. ISBN 019-820270-9.

Keith Hamilton, Bertie of Thame: Edwardian Ambassador (Woodbridge/Suffolk: Boydell Press 1990 (= Royal Historical Society Studies in History, No. 60)), ix + 436 pp. ISBN 0-86193-217X. £35.

Anita Inder Singh, The Limits of British Influence: South Asia and the Anglo-American Relationship, 1947-56 (Pinter, 1993) pp. 309. £45.

Robert H. Ferrell (ed.), Truman in the White House: The Diary of Eben A. Ayers (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991) $37.50. ISBN 0-8262-0790-1.

Robert Pearce (ed.), Patrick Gordon Walker: Political Diaries 1932-1971 (London: The Historians Press, 1991) £20. ISBN 1-872273-05 X.

Richard J. Aldrich (ed.), British Strategy and the Cold War, 1945-51 (London: Routledge, 1992) £40. ISBN 0-415-07851-2.

Timothy Garton Ash, In Europe's Name. Germany and the Divided Continent (London: Jonathan Cape, 1993) £25. ISBN 0-224-02054-4.     

Collective action in small-scale mushroom production in Swaziland: does organisational form matter?

While substantial literature is available on the determinants of small-scale farmers’ participation in collective action, and the welfare impacts of producing and/or marketing collectively, studies on the likely implications of organisational form on producers’ collective behaviour remain scant. This article attempts to address this knowledge gap by using an example of different forms of small-scale mushroom-producing groups in Swaziland. Given the importance of collective action in sub-Saharan Africa, the overall results of this article provide valuable insights into alternative means of coordinating commercial small-scale agricultural activities, which can improve producers’ ultimate benefits while reducing the likelihood of internal free-riding.     

Performance Funding in Federal Agencies: A Case Study of a Federal Job Training Program

Our case study highlights important details that enter into developing performance contingent budgeting schemes—details that do not emerge in more general discussions of the subject—and shows how the handling of these details can be crucial to these schemes' success. We study a federal job training program that gives state and local decision makers discretion over the program's operation, but through performance funding holds them accountable for achieving specific objectives. We find that states' modifications to the scheme's construction produced over time highly individualized performance funding schemes that likely varied in their effectiveness.