Feminism & Bioethics: Beyond Reproduction

Susan M. Wolf, ed., Feminism & Bioethics: Beyond Reproduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996): 398 pp., ISBN 0-19-508568-x (cloth), $50.00. To order call 1-800-451-7556.     

The effectiveness of service work: An analysis of recidivism

The Israeli “service work” law of 1987 enables a court to commute prison sentences of up to 6 months to service work in the community. This paper examines the correctional effectiveness of this new sanction by comparing the rate of recidivism (over a period of 14 months) among 407 offenders sentenced to service work to that of 950 comparable offenders sentenced to imprisonment. As the research design is quasi-experimental, an adjustment for confounders is carried out using the propensity score (PS) methodology. The estimation of the odds ratio of recidivism with respect to sanction comprises two steps: (a) the PS, which is the conditional probability of assignment to a particular sanction given a set of confounders, is estimated by a logistic model; and (b) the conditional probability of recidivism, given the PS and other covariates, is estimated by a second model. The findings indicate that before an adjustment for the systematic differences between the two sanctions was carried out, the odds for recidivism among prisoners were 2.4 times higher than the odds for service workers. After the adjustment, the odds ratio was reduced to 1.7. This estimate indicates that the service work sanction has a considerable correctional effect. The need to address additional criteria for the effectiveness of service work (e.g., net-widening) is emphasized.     

In Pursuit of the Re-Engineering Agenda in Public Administration

The article examines the findings from longitudinal case study work conducted in the 1992-96 period in two organizations in the United Kingdom health care and post office sectors. The study highlights the many cultural, political and technical issues that emerge in the strategy and implementation of IT-enabled re-engineering projects. The radical re-engineering perspective and model for change presented by Hammer and Champy (1993) are compared against empirical findings. These suggest that the Hammer and Champy advice contains many limitations. The cases show the specific circumstances in which radical re-engineering can be effective, in managerial terms, but also point to conditions under which a unitary perspective on the organization often cannot address adequately many critical political and cultural issues. Moreover, the case histories point to the dangers of an over reliance on a methodological holism that can rarely be delivered in complex large-scale organizations, given the scale of change envisaged; and the difficulties engendered by over-emphasizing the need for transformation, and 'starting again', and downplaying the role of history and continuity in both the study and management of organizational change.     

Free Zones,Development and the New International Division of Labour

Investing in Free Export Processing Zones. By Antoine Basile and Dimitri Germidis. Paris: Development Centre of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, 1985, Pp. 68. £5.50. ISBN 92 64 12634 1.     

Relations of production,productive forces and the mass line in the formation of the rural people's communes in China∗

The structure, pace and uneven progress of the collectivisation of Chinese agriculture can be explained in terms of contradictions that persisited between relations of production and productive forces in the countryside and the ways in which these contradictions could be confronted through the application of the principle of the mass line. The formation and subsequent re‐organisation of the Rural People's Communes is interpreted as a necessary response to the fact that collectivisation was not predicated on prior modernisation of agriculture, but rather that Chinese political economy predicated the modernisation of agriculture on the success of the communes.     

Affairs of the Heart: Hate Crime and the Politics of Crime Control

Various scholars have noted the priority given to law in the politics of hate violence; violence is the problem and law, more specifically the criminal law, the solution at the ‘heart’ of society. This article seeks to explore some of the gaps and silences in the existing literature and politics that mobilize these ideas and associations. It is the gap sand silences associated with demands for and expectations of criminal justice that will be the particular concern of this article. The demand for law is examined by way of David Garland's recent work on the culture of crime control. His work offers an analysis of the contemporary place of crime control in Anglo-American liberal democracies. A distinctive feature of his analysis is to be found in the way it maps an important paradox of contemporary crime control; its political centrality and an increasing recognition of its limitations. Garland's ‘criminology of the self’ and the ‘criminology of the other’ raise some important challenges for those who advocate resort to crime control. My particular concern is to consider the significance of Garland's work for a contemporary sexual politics that puts violence and criminal justice at the heart of that politics. Feminist, gay and lesbian scholarship first on criminal justice and second, on violence and law will be used to develop a critical dialogue with Garland's analysis and to reflect upon the challenges raised by his insights into contemporary crime control. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.