Restoring accountability in pretrial release: the Philadelphia pretrial release supervision experiments

As drug arrests and jail overcrowding added pressure to increase pretrial release in localities during the 1980s and 1990s, the need to manage a larger and higher-risk pretrial population of defendants awaiting adjudication in the community became a high priority for justice agencies. In the late 1990s Philadelphia officials sought to discover the ingredients of a successful supervision strategy through four interlinked field experiments to provide an empirical basis for a major reform of the pretrial release system. The results of the linked randomized experiments question common assumptions about “supervision,” its impact and effectiveness, about the underlying nature of the noncompliant defendant, and deterrence implications. The study emphasizes the importance of interpreting the findings in the context of implementation of the policy reform. Findings suggest that facilitative notification strategies wield little influence on defendant behavior and that deterrent aims are undermined by the system's failure to deliver consequences for defendant noncompliance during pretrial release. The most significant contribution of the article is its illustration of a major evidence-based policy reform undertaken by a major court system.     

Proficiency testing (external quality assessment) of drug detection in oral fluid

Eighteen external quality assessment (proficiency testing) samples were prepared from client specimens collected with the Intercept^® oral fluid collection device and by spiking drug-free oral fluid. Samples were circulated in pairs at quarterly intervals to 13 UK and USA based laboratories for analysis by a panel of OraSure micro-plate Intercept^® enzyme immunoassay kits and hyphenated mass spectrophotometric techniques. During the survey, there was a single case of non-specificity in a false report for methadone. The major errors were of lack of sensitivity relative to the concentration thresholds specified for the immunoassays. The sensitivity for overall ‘present’/‘not found’ reports calculated as true positives/(true positives + false negatives) were for the amfetamine specific assay 50%, methyl-amfetamines 93%, barbiturates 64%, cannabinoids 73%, cocaine and metabolites 100%, benzodiazepines 69%, methadone 95%, opiates 79% (opiates excluding oxycodone 93%), phencyclidine 93% and human gamma-globulin 97%. A small number of the sensitivity errors were attributable to errors in chromatographic confirmation techniques.     

Garcia and the Political Safeguards of Federalism: Is There a Better Solution to the Conundrum of the Tenth Amendment?

In Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority (1985),Justice Harry Blackmun held that the Tenth Amendment does notprevent the Congress from subjecting state and local governmentsto the provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act, concludingthat the "political safeguards offederalism" are generally adequateto protect state interests on the national scene. This articleexamines the intellectual foundations of the "political safeguardsof federalism" and finds them inadequate. It then surveys thepost-Garcia scholarship to ascertain whether an alternativetheory of the Tenth Amendment has emerged. Concluding that ithas not, the author suggests the need for afresh approach inview of the hints contained in Justice Sandra Day O'Connor'sopinion in Gregory v. Ashcroft (1991) that five justices maybe ready to reexamine the central thesis of Garcia.     

New voices from the ship of fools

Conventional left accounts of Thatcherism have stressed the authoritarian nature of its political rhetoric. This paper suggests that convergences between the new conservatism and more fundamentalist moral positions, meeting on the ground of obscenity and violence in the media, are a relatively recent development, associated with renewed strategic concentration on the question of law and order. Indeed, the libertarian right, in adhering to a utilitarian laissez-faire understanding of private pleasures, has presided over a positive proliferation of erotic and other gratifications. We argue that in the United Kingdom the authentic constituency of the moral right is an increasingly socially marginal one, rendered progressively more so by the rapid development of technologies of communication and entertainment.     

Reviews

Alexander Yanov, The drama of the Soviet 1960s: a lost reform. Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1984, 141 pp. $8.50.

Karen Dawisha, The Kremlin and the Prague Spring. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984, xiv + 426 pp. £22.50.

Christer Jônsson, Superpower: Comparing American and Soviet Foreign Policy. London: Francis Pinter, 1984, viii + 248 pp. £18.50.

Joseph Nye, The Making of America's Soviet Policy. Yale University Press, 1984, £20.00.

Alexander Dallin, Black Box: KAL 007 and the superpowers. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985, xii + 130 pp. £14.25.

Alex Kozulin, Psychology in Utopia. Toward a Social History of Soviet Psychology, Cambridge Massachusetts, London: The MIT Press, 1984, xi + 179 pp. £16.65.

Timothy Edward O'Connor, The Politics of Soviet Culture. Anatolii Lunacharskii. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, and London: Bowker Publishing Company, 1984,193 pp. £35.50.

Alexander Vucinich, Empire of Knowledge. The Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1917–1970). Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1984, x + 484 pp. £23.95

Lawrence Badash, Kapitza, Rutherford, and the Kremlin. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985, xi + 129 pp. £20.00.

Mark Popovsky, The Vavilov Affair. Archon, Hamden, Connecticut, 1984, viii + 216 pp. £21.40.

Timothy Dunmore, Soviet Politics 1945–53 London: Macmillan Press Ltd., 1984, vi + 167 pp. £20.00.

George Ginsburgs, The Citizenship Law of the USSR, Law in Eastern Europe No. 25 (general editor F. J. M. Feldbrugge). The Hague, Boston, Lancaster: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1983, 406 pp. £50.00.

R. F. Miller and F. Féhér (eds.), Khrushchev and the Communist World. London and Canberra: Croom Helm and Totowa, New Jersey: Barnes and Noble Books, 1984, 243 pp. £15.95.

Michael Haynes, Nikolai Bukharin and the Transition from Capitalism to Socialism, Beckenham, Kent: Croom Helm Ltd., 1985, vii + 136 pp. £14.95.

Bernd Bonwetsch (ed.), Zeitgeschichte Osteuropas als Methoden‐ und Forschungsprob‐lem. Osteuropaforschung: Schriftenreihe der Deutschen Gesellschaft fur Osteuropa‐kunde, Band 13. Berlin: Verlag Arno Spitz, 1985, 192 pp. DM 28,00.

Marie Lavigne, Economie Internationale des pays Socialistes, Paris: Armand Colin, 1985, 255 pp.

Marcel Drach, La crise dans tes pays de l'Est, Paris: Editions La Découverte, 1984, 127 pp. FF. 31.

L. Csaba, Kelet‐Europa a Világgazdaságban. (Eastern Europe in the World Economy), Budapest: Közgazdasági és Jogi Könyvkiadö, 1984, 316 pp., bibliography but no index.

Michael Shafir, Romania: Politics, Society and Economics, London: Frances Pinter, 1985, xvii + 232 pp. h/b £18–50, p/b £6.95.

Nicholas G. Andrews, Poland 1980–81. Solidarity versus the Party, Washington: National Defense University Press, 1985, xii + 351 pp.

Peter Raina, Poland 1981. Towards Socialist Renewal, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1985, vii + 472 pp. £20.00.

Stephen D. Kertesz, Between Russia and the West: Hungary and the Illusions of Peacemaking 1945–1947, London and Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985, xix + 299 pp. £18.95.

Mårta‐Lisa Magnusson (ed.), Bogen i Sovjet. Fra forfatter til laeser, Esbjerg: Sydjysk Universitetsforlag, 1985, 106 pp. p/b, 74–75 DK Kr.

Margit Nielsen, Udenrigsøkonomi i Østeuropa—tilpasning eller krise? Esbjerg: Sydjysk Universitetsforlag, 1985, 99 pp. p/b, 65–00 DK Kr.