The Impact of Post-Enactment Review on Anti-Terrorism Laws: Four Jurisdictions Compared

This paper examines a significant legislative challenge in many jurisdictions around the world a decade on from the events of 11 September 2001. Using Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom as case studies, it aims to assess the relative effectiveness of regular and extraordinary review mechanisms at the national level in leading to the improvement of anti-terrorism laws. That such mechanisms often appear to meet with only muted success says something about their institutional weakness and also the tension that inheres in legislatures as simultaneously legal and political institutions. Further, it reflects the authority and legitimacy to which national security law quickly lays claim in a political culture. This makes it resistant to reform, even when aspects of it can be said to be part of the terrorist problem rather than its solution.     

Corporate environmental violence and racism

Drawing upon a social justice framework, this analysis expands and integrates issues relating to corporate violence and environmental justice to investigate the spatial distribution of chemical accidents across census tracts in Hillsborough County, Florida. To test the hypothesis that corporate environmental violence (CEV) is more likely to impact blacks and Hispanics, data from the 1990 census was combined with chemical accident data obtained from the U.S. EPA under the Accidental Release Information Program (ARIP). The results of our bivariate analysis suggest that blacks and Hispanics reside closer to chemical facilities reporting accidents than their white counterparts. A multivariate analysis of the problem reveals that racial sub-populations are much more likely to be proximate to these accidents even when facility location and urbanization are controlled. We discuss the implications of our findings and point out that any solutions to the unequal distribution of CEV must lie outside the traditional criminal justice response. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The extraction of surplus value,crime and punishment: A preliminary examination

Crime, Law and Social Change -     

Mock Juror Gender Biases and Perceptions of Self-Defense Claims in Intimate Partner Homicide

Findings are reported from an experiment that examined mock jurors’ gender biases regarding intimate homicide case adjudications. Mock jurors were more likely to convict a man than a woman who had killed an abusive partner, which was partially mediated by sympathy toward both the victim and defendant. Analyses revealed an abuser height and abuser gender interaction such that conviction rates for women defendants were higher when her abuser was taller compared to when he was shorter than she; abuser height did not influence conviction rates for men. Findings also suggested that when given information about a child being present, mock jurors perceived the killing of the abusive partner as an act to protect that child. The results are discussed in relation to how extra-legal factors impact juror perceptions of domestic violence cases in the courtroom.     

Focally Concerned About Focal Concerns: A Conceptual and Methodological Critique of Sentencing Disparities Research

Abstract

“Focal concerns” is the predominant theoretical framework in criminology for explaining disparities in sentencing outcomes. While the framework has generated a large body of empirical scholarship, its postulates remain inadequately tested in the criminological literature. In this paper, I offer a conceptual and methodological critique of focal concerns as it is being deployed in a large body of sentencing research. I first trace the genealogy of the “focal concerns” concept and detail its current articulation. I then describe the body of work that has reduced “focal concerns” to a commonsense psychological construct, and illustrate the fallacies of logic and paucity of direct theory development and testing that weaken the explanatory value of the framework. I conclude by building on Ulmer’s recent call to treat criminal courts as “inhabited institutions” to assess approaches that are more social scientifically robust and empirically testable for understanding how sentencing disparity is produced.