America's Trajectory in the Long War1: Redirecting Our Efforts Toward Strategic Effects Versus Simply Tactical Gains

After 9/11 the United States has a significant disconnect between its strategic and tactical efforts against violent global jihadists. Some American leaders and commanders are confusing effectiveness and success, improperly associating tactical disruption of enemy elements with strategic effect. While the country has won some important tactical victories, it is not clear that they are amounting to a strategic impact, or that the gains will last. The situation is complex, with various dynamics influencing America's prosecution of the Long War and its ability to be successful in the long term. This article looks at what those factors are and provides policy makers with tangible recommendations that, if implemented, will place America's counterterrorism efforts on a more strategic trajectory and hold greater promise of lasting impact.     

Organizational Interpretations of Drug Test Results

The U.S. courts consistently have upheld the constitutionality of laws regarding mandatory drug testing policies in the workplace and schools; these policies were designed to detect individuals' drug use that could compromise public safety. Yet looking at the uses of drug test results in another setting—the justice system—reveals one aspect that goes largely unaddressed in these laws and prior research on drug testing: the organizational context surrounding the administration of drug tests that shapes how their results are understood. In response, this article uses ethnographic methods to analyze the ways that staff at a juvenile drug court in southern California interprets drug test results. The article demonstrates that the staff's understandings of drug testing results involve interactional and institutional processes, dependent upon meanings constructed and situated in local organizational contexts.     

The provincial role in the Canadian welfare state: the influence of provincial social policy initiatives on the design of the Canada Assistance Plan

Abstract. Provincial social welfare programs are often treated as provincial government responses to federal initiatives establishing shared-cost programs in the welfare field. In this paper, this traditional viewpoint is reversed, showing that the federal government's Canada Assistance Plan of 1966 was the result of provincial social welfare initiatives. Federal policy is shown to have been designed to accommodate as cost-sharable those programs in which provinces (particularly Alberta and Ontario) were already involved. The federal government had to make considerable additions to, and concessions concerning, the proposed program in order to retain provincial support for the new national welfare program.     

Stateless Crimes,Legitimacy, and International Criminal Law: The Case of Organ Trafficking

Organ trafficking and trafficking in persons for the purpose of organ transplantation are recognized as significant international problems. Yet these forms of trafficking are largely left out of international criminal law regimes and to some extent of domestic criminal law regimes as well. Trafficking of organs or persons for their organs does not come within the jurisdiction of the ICC, except in very special cases such as when conducted in a manner that conforms to the definitions of genocide or crimes against humanity. Although the United States Code characterizes trafficking as “a transnational crime with national implications,” (22 U.S.C. § 7101(b)(24) (2010)), trafficking is rarely prosecuted in domestic courts. It has thus functioned in practice largely as what might be judged a “stateless” offense, out of the purview of both international and national courts. Yet these forms of organ trafficking remain widespread—and devastating to those who are its victims. In this article, we begin by describing what is known about the extent of organ trafficking and trafficking in persons for the purpose of removal of organs. We then critically evaluate how and why such trafficking has remained largely unaddressed by both international and domestic criminal law regimes. This state of affairs, we argue, presents a missed chance for developing the legitimacy of international criminal law and an illustration of how far current international legal institutions remain from ideal justice.     

Facilitators and Impediments to Designing,Implementing, and Evaluating Risk-Based Policing Strategies Using Risk Terrain Modeling: Insights from a Multi-City Evaluation in the United States

The contemporary policing literature contains numerous examples of partnerships between academic researchers and police agencies. Such efforts have greatly contributed to evidence-based policing by increasing the knowledge base on effective strategies. However, research has demonstrated that successful collaboration between researchers and practitioners can be a challenge, with various organizational and inter-agency factors presenting difficulties at various stages of the process. Additionally, applied research can oftentimes face implementation challenges when the time comes to convert research into practice. The current study contributes to the literature by discussing researcher/practitioner partnerships and program implementation in the context of a multi-city risk-based policing project in the United States. We conceptualize police interventions as contingent on four distinct phases: 1) problem analysis, 2) project design, 3) project implementation, and 4) project evaluation. In this project, the research partners were able to successfully complete each phase in certain cities while the project experienced difficulty at one or more phases in other cities. We discuss these disparate experiences, identifying factors that facilitate or impede successful completion of each step. Policy implications and recommendations for future risk-based policing interventions are discussed.     

Islam, modernization and crime: A test of the religious ecology thesis

Using a United Nations (United Nations, 1977) cross-national data set on offender and offense rates for a variety of crimes, this article qualifies recent research into religiosity by investigating the relationship between Islamic religion, economic development, and crime rates. Considerable research has demonstrated a positive correlation between economic development (often defined as modernization) and crime. Other research has suggested that religion is an impedence to crime, although the results are a little less clear. No previous studies have examined the relationship between the Islamic religion and crime. Results suggest that, when level of economic development is held constant, Islamic countries do not differ significantly in crime rates compared to nonIslamic countries.