Corruption and organized crime: Lessons from history

The intention of this paper is to serve in part as a warning to the international community concerned about corruption, to keep the focus based on the critical analysis of empirically verifiable information. In ways similar to how theorists spoke about organized crime in the 1960's and 1970's, articles today attempt to refer to corruption as if there were one agreed upon definition. However, like the concept “organized crime”, the term “corruption” involves diverse processes which have different meanings within different societies. Corruption (or a focus on corruption), may be the means toward very diverse ends and each may have a different impact on the society. While in some societies corruption may correctly be seen to be the “cause” of forms of social disorganization, in other situations corruption may be the “result” of larger changes. Understanding the processes within a specific context allows one to understand the nature of the corruption. Corruption rhetoric may too easily become apolitical platform for ranking and evaluating nations as to their worth based on criteria that lose meaning when applied across jurisdictions. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

INNOVATION IN DISPUTE RESOLUTION

This article reports on a study of the case settlement process used in the Connecticut Superior Court Family Division to resolve child protection and placement disputes. Key elements of the formally titled Case Status Conference are presented and evaluated for their effectiveness and efficiency through interviews with legal and judicial professionals familiar with the conferencing procedure.     

The uneasy alliance of feminism and academia

The authors argue that some integrationists are seriously underestimating the degree to which the university is embedded in the overall social structure, a role which has not developed accidentally, and which is not likely to change without concurrent major changes in other institutions. Although it is understandable why integrationist strategies have developed and why some projects may be useful, it is also important to think about how they may undermine the radical goals of feminist scholarship and our ties to the community.     

Two models of formal social control

In recent years there has been an increasing concern with the link between judicial decisions and the socio-political attributes of the environment in which courts function. Little attention has been paid to the link between attorneys' advice and that same court environment. This study fills the gap.In this paper two models of formal social control are developed—a legalist and a decentralized model. The effect of this environmental factor on attorneys' forum advice is examined.Forum advice data were collected on 143 attorneys in Maryland, Louisiana, and Texas. The data were analyzed using analysis of variance for repeated measures. It was found that a state's adopted model of formal social control does affect attorneys' judge-jury advice. Attorneys in legalist states are more likely to advise the judge trial than are attorneys in decentralized states. This effect was mediated, however, by the race of the client, the racial composition of the community in which the case was to be heard, and the seriousness of the offense. With increasing levels of legalism, attorneys representing blacks based their judge-jury advice on both the seriousness of the offense and the racial composition of the community in which the case is to be heard. With increasing levels of legalism, attorneys of white clients based their forum advice solely on the seriousness of the offense.     

Family structure,family attributes,and delinquency in a sample of low-income,minority males and females

A popular thesis in criminology links broken homes to juvenile delinquency. This thesis has been invoked to explain higher rates of delinquency among youth from low-income, minority families than among youth from mainstream backgrounds. The study reported here employs data collected at two points in time to assess the thesis that family structure is significantly associated with self-reported delinquency within a sample of black males and females from low-income families. The relationships between an array of family variables, including family structure, and each of four types of self-reported delinquency are examined in analysis conducted separately for males and females. Findings indicate that few family factors are significant for delinquency and family structure is of minimal importance for the types of delinquency examined. The results differ for males and females. These findings raise serious questions about the cogency of the broken-home thesis of delinquency to explain delinquency among nonmainstream groups in our society.Research reported here was supported in part by NIMH Grant 1 RPI MH33488-01A1 and conducted in part under the auspices of the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation, Ypsilanti, Michigan. Views expressed by the author do not represent official positions of those agencies.The author received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Georgia in 1981. Her research interests at present include the effects of social stratification processes on delinquency and crime, particularly the effects of such social correlates of crime as race, sex, and social class.