System management and compensatory parenting: Educational involvement after maternal incarceration

Research has demonstrated that paternal incarceration is associated with lower levels of educational involvement among fathers and primary caregivers, but little is known regarding caregiver educational involvement when mothers have been incarcerated. In this study, we present the first analysis of variation in school- and home-based educational involvement by maternal incarceration history, pairing survey and interview data to connect macro-level group differences with micro-level narratives of mothers’ involvement in their children's education. Our survey data demonstrate that children of ever-incarcerated mothers experience increased school-based educational involvement by their primary caregivers, regardless of whether the caregiver is the mother herself. Our interview data point to compensatory parenting as a key motivating factor in educational involvement, wherein a caregiver endeavors to “make up for” the child's history of maternal incarceration. Findings add to the literature demonstrating maternal incarceration as a distinct experience from both paternal incarceration and material disadvantage alone, and they suggest the need to explore the role of schools as potential points of productive institutional involvement for mothers with an incarceration history.     

The authoritarian logic of regulatory pluralism: Understanding China's new environmental actors

Over the last decade, Chinese citizens, judges, and prosecutors have started to take action against industrial pollution, pluralizing a regulatory landscape originally occupied by administrative agencies. Regulatory pluralism here has an authoritarian logic, occurring without the retreat of party‐state control. Under such logic, the party‐state both needs and fears new actors for their positive and negative roles in controlling risk and maintaining stability. Consequently, the regime's relation to regulatory pluralism is ambivalent, shifting between support and restriction. This prevents a development of a regulatory society that could bypass the regulatory state. Theoretically, this special edition argues for a subjective definition of regulation in a context of pluralism. Moreover, it finds that regulatory pluralism need not coincide with a decentring of regulation. Finally, it highlights how entry onto the regulatory landscape affects the non‐regulatory roles of new actors, creating unintended consequences for regulatory pluralism.     

Is the Expert Admissibility Game Fixed?: Judicial Gatekeeping of Fire and Arson Evidence

Anecdotal evidence claims that in criminal cases, trial judges admit the prosecution's expert witnesses more readily than the defendants', and in civil cases the reverse is true; judges exclude plaintiffs' experts more often than civil defendants' experts. This occurs despite the fact that, with few exceptions, the same rules of admissibility apply to all parties and, in most jurisdictions, across criminal and civil cases. This article empirically tests this differential by reviewing judicial decisions to admit or exclude evidence holding the type of expert testimony constant, fire and arson evidence, across criminal and civil cases in the United States. The study examines the admissibility of fire and arson investigation experts in criminal and civil cases across all legal parties in fifty‐seven federal and state opinions in the United States. The findings offer empirical support of a bias in criminal cases and in civil cases which present expert witnesses at trial, and is less pronounced, but still evident, on appeal. Specifically, the role of the party that offers the evidence has a profound effect on whether arson evidence is admitted, even when factors around the judge's political affiliation, attorney experience, expert qualifications, and rules of evidence are taken into account.     

The Role of Perceived Deservingness in the Toleration of Human Rights Violations

Based on evidence that people have a strong need to see that individuals get what they deserve, we reasoned that people will tolerate a human rights violation to the extent that they believe the target of the violation deserves severe treatment. Thus, we expected that variables that influence the perceived deservingness of a target (i.e., “contextual cues” to deservingness) should influence toleration of a violation of the target’s rights, mediated by perceptions of the target’s deservingness. We also expected that the effect of a contextual cue to targets’ deservingness on toleration should occur even for people who support the violated right in the abstract. Across two studies, using student versus community samples, we measured participants’ abstract support for the right to humane treatment. We then presented participants with scenarios about a target who was tortured (a violation of the right to humane treatment), and manipulated a contextual cue to the targets’ deservingness for severe treatment—the moral reprehensibility of the targets’ past behavior. Participants tolerated a target’s torture more if he had engaged in highly morally reprehensible (vs. less reprehensible) behavior and, thus, was perceived to deserve more severe treatment. Participants’ abstract support for the right to humane treatment did not moderate the effect of moral reprehensibility on toleration. Our findings highlight the importance of perceived deservingness in the toleration of human rights violations and have implications for reducing such toleration. Our research also extends literature on deservingness to an important global issue.     

Rethinking Law and State Building in Sub‐Saharan Africa

Massoud, Mark Fathi. 2013 . Law's Fragile State: Colonial, Authoritarian, and Humanitarian Legacies in Sudan . Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press. Pp. x–277. ISBN: 9781107440050. Paper $34.99 This essay is a response to Mark Massoud's Law's Fragile State, and through comparative inquiry argues that highly contextualized analysis of courts is critical to gaining an understanding of judicial decision making and judicial empowerment. As Massoud demonstrates, focusing on the legal complex is a particularly worthwhile endeavor in fragile states. Although we may understand the sociology of the legal profession, we do not fully understand how professional networks, career paths, and identities truly impact the institutional pathways of the courts and the legal system as a whole.     

University students’ support to penalty enhancement for hate crime

Laws enabling penalty enhancement for crimes motivated by hostility or prejudice, i.e. hate crimes, have become common in many countries. However, laws as a measure against hate crimes have been contested, because their deterrent effect has gained none or little support in the (limited) literature, and they may be considered symbolic rather than deterrent. This study investigates attitudes towards penalty enhancement for hate crimes. Previous empirical investigations of this question are scarce. The material consists of a survey targeting nearly 3000 Swedish university students. Support for penalty enhancement for hate crime was moderate, shown by one third of the total sample. Results supported the premise that students belonging to a minority group, assumed to be at risk of hate crime victimization, agree to a higher extent of penalty enhancement than students belonging to the majority. Previous victimization experiences and worrying about being victimized were not significantly related to punitive attitudes. However, respondents who perceived the risk of victimization to be increased for minority groups in general were more likely to support penalty enhancement for hate crime. Findings should be confirmed in a nationally representative sample since the public’s perspective on the criminal justice system is important for understanding and dealing with the social problem of hate crime.     

A Nation of Immigrants or a Nation of Immigrant Cities? The Urban Context of Australian Multiculturalism, 1947–2011

The article documents the urban dimension of Australia's immigration experience that, since the 1940s, has seen the country become one of the world's most multicultural societies. The article argues that the greatest impact of immigration has been in the major cities, especially Sydney and Melbourne, which in recent decades have emerged as internationally‐significant immigrant hubs that, like similar immigrant‐receiving destinations across the globe, are increasingly demographically and culturally distinct from their host nation. Drawing on census materials, oral history interviews, local newspapers and other sources, we chart the demographic transformation of urban Australia from the 1940s to the present day and suggest that these changes have implications for how urban Australians — especially those resident in the two biggest cities — will understand and represent themselves and the nation into the future.