Women's accounts of their prison experiences: A retrospective view of their subjective realities

This article examines the subjective experiences of previously imprisoned women. Their retrospective narratives of prison life reveal overt behavioral and underlying structural tensions that create an atmosphere of fear and violence. Furthermore, attitudes of indifference between inmates and correctional staff often contribute to fostering an environment of neglect. The study, based on in-depth interviews with fifty-four female subjects, describes and analyzes several aspects of the socialization process for inmates as related by women on parole. The research shows that the “pains of imprisonment” for women are suffered to a greater degree than previously acknowledged. Prison for these women is a social world filled with anxiety and, perhaps, represents a punishment well beyond what the law intended.     

What Workers Want Depends: Legal Knowledge and the Desire for Workplace Change among Day Laborers

In this article, we identify legal knowledge as a key difference between workers who desire workplace change and those who do not. Based on surveys with 121 day laborers, we find that not all day laborers are equally dissatisfied with their jobs, despite uniformly difficult working conditions. Some day laborers do not want to make any real changes to the day labor industry, while others desire a range of industry changes, from higher wages to greater government regulation and unionization. A key difference between these workers is their knowledge of employment law: Those who know the law are more likely to desire workplace change.     

Towards more digital cities? Change in technology use and perceptions across small and medium-sized US cities

ABSTRACT

There is continuous pressure on public managers to adopt information and communication technologies (ICTs) to transform the way cities work. E-government research provides insights on the institutional, organisational, and individual factors that shape technology adoption and use. Yet most studies on small and medium sized cities use cross-sectional data or rely on small samples. We lack a systematic understanding of how technology use in smaller cities has changed over time and where these cities are lagging. Drawing from a multi-year, multi-method national study of city government technology use, we describe advancements and gaps in the enactment of a range of technologies, from social media to open data portals, and explore variation across city population, department type, and manager age. Our findings show that smaller cities still lag in the adoption of key features while local government managers are more inclined to adopt and positively perceive social media than traditional ICTs.     

The economic impacts of the tobacco settlement.

Recent litigation against the major tobacco companies culminated in a master settlement agreement (MSA) under which the participating companies agreed to compensate most states for Medicaid expenses. Here the terms of the settlement are outlined and its economic implications analyzed using data from Massachusetts. The financial compensation to Massachusetts (and other states) under the MSA is substantial. However, this compensation is dwarfed by the value of the health impacts induced by the settlement. Specifically, Medicaid spending will fall, but only by a modest amount. More importantly, the value of health benefits ($65 billion through 2025 in 1999 dollars) from increased longevity is an order of magnitude greater than any other impacts or payments. The net efficiency implications of the settlement turn mainly on a comparison of the value of these health benefits relative to a valuation of the foregone pleasure of smoking. To the extent that the value of the health benefits is not offset by the value of the pleasure foregone, the economic impacts of the MSA will include a share of these health benefits.     

Mobilizing the Law in China: "Informed Disenchantment" and the Development of Legal Consciousness

This article critically examines the development of legal consciousness among legal aid plaintiffs in Shanghai. It is based on 16 months of research at a large legal aid center and in‐depth interviews with 50 plaintiffs. Chinese legal aid plaintiffs come to the legal process with high expectations about the possibility of protecting their rights; however, they also have only a vague and imprecise knowledge of legal procedure and their actual codified rights. Through this process of legal mobilization, plaintiffs' legal consciousness changes in two separate dimensions: changes in one's feelings of efficacy and competency vis‐à‐vis the law, and changes in one's perception/evaluation of the legal system. Put another way, the first dimension is “How well can I work the law?” and the second is “How well does the law work?” In this study I observe positive changes in feelings of individual efficacy and competency that are combined with more negative evaluations/perceptions of the legal system in terms of its fairness and effectiveness. The positive feelings of efficacy and voice provided by the legal process encourage labor dispute plaintiffs in the post‐dispute period to plan new lawsuits and to help friends and relatives with their legal problems. Disenchantment with the promises of the legal system does not lead to despondency, but to more critical, informed action. This study provides new evidence on the nature of China's developing legal system with a focus on the social response to the state‐led “rule of law” project.     

Theorizing Race and Imprisonment: Towards a New Penality

This article compares historical and contemporary notions of race in France, England and Wales, and the United States, in order to explain each nation's prison population. It seeks to demonstrate how the distinct interpretations and ways of documenting race in each place correspond with an over-representation of specific populations in that nation's prison system. After describing the prison population in each country, the paper analyzes the historical and cultural construction of ideas of race in France. Of particular importance is the Enlightenment and the 19th century love of taxonomy that articulated, mapped and reified Otherness and which is also considered to be the birth of prison and criminology. Thus, the genealogical approach may provide a new understanding of the conceptual and practical interdependence of race and imprisonment, which is then applied to the U.S. and England. This paper aims to help criminologists move beyond merely documenting the over-representation of minorities to critiquing the structures of race and punishment, grounded in colonialism and slavery, that serve to legitimate strategies of social control. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Affect Regulation and the Cycle of Violence Against Women: New Directions for Understanding the Process

The process of the intergenerational transmission of violence is not well understood. A risk and resilience model of criminal violence against women was investigated using secondary data. The sample was composed of adolescent male juvenile delinquents who had been physically abused by their parents, and who were followed up at ages 25 and 31. A series of structural equation models were fit to investigate whether dysregulated affect mediated the effects of attachment and family chaos on the adult perpetration of violence against women. These models support the hypothesis that affect dysregulation may act as a mediator. Results raise new ideas about the mechanisms by which violence may be transmitted across generations.