The Penalisation of Poverty and the rise of Neo-Liberalism

This article explicates and extends the analyses put forth by the author in his book, Prisons of Poverty, which argues that the generalised increase of carceral populations in advanced societies is due to the growing use of the penal system as an instrument for managing social insecurity and containing the social disorders created at the bottom of the class structure by neo-liberal policies of economic deregulation and social-welfare retrenchment. It retraces the steps whereby this neo-liberal penality was elaborated in the United States and then diffused throughout the world, but contends that European countries are not blindly following the American road to mass imprisonment: Europe's path to the penal state entails the conjoint intensification of both social and penal treatments of poverty and the activation of the policing functions of welfare services leading to a form of social panoptism. Only the building of a Europe-wide social state can check the spread of the penalisation of poverty and its deleterious social consequences.     

中国20世纪二三十年代审美主义思潮论

"审美主义"是一种以审美活动取代其它生命活动的价值取向,"生命艺术化"是其思想核心,它要藉审美之途来安顿此岸的生存.从这种新的视角出发,审视中国美学20世纪二三十年代的断代史,立足于中西文化-美学比较角度,考察审美主义在中国的系统化形成,探寻审美主义在中国的接受机制、建构特质和发展理路,将会对理解整个20世纪中国美学有特殊的启示意义.     

The Fates of Challengers in U.S. House Elections: The Role of Extended Party Networks in Supporting Candidates and Shaping Electoral Outcomes

Extended party network (EPN) theory characterizes political parties in the United States as dynamic networks of interest groups that collaboratively support favored candidates for office. Electoral predictions derived from EPN theory have yet to be tested on a large sample of races. We operationalize EPNs in the context of organized interest contributions to U.S. House campaigns. We deduce that support by a partisan community of interests signals the ideological credibility and appeal of a candidate. EPN integration overcomes voter ambiguity surrounding challengers’ ideological preferences, and resources provided by these coordinating interest groups promote a consistent message about the candidate. Using data from the 1994–2010 cycles, we apply network analysis to detect EPN support of challengers and find that EPN integration substantially improves the electoral prospects of challengers. The effect of EPN integration is distinct from that of campaign resources. The findings provide support for EPN theory, as applied to congressional elections.     

The Organization of Space and the Character of the Urban Experience

The growth and spread of the city in the United States had revolutionaryconsequences for the everyday lives of Americans. Spatial arrangementschanged dramatically. In the process, not only was the organizationof the community altered in both scope and variety, but individualliberty was enhanced by increasing individual self-awarenessand choice. This article details the spatial changes to communityand domestic design that resulted from the American urban revolution.After these changes are outlined, a formal model of choice isdeveloped. The consequences for choice of various local densityand segregation patterns are discussed as well.     

The Impact of Unpunished Hate Crimes: When Derogating the Victim Extends into Derogating the Group

Just world research has shown that observers derogate victims more for their misfortunes if the perpetrator is not harshly punished (Lerner in J Personal Soc Psychol 1(4):355–360, 1980). However, few studies have investigated minority group derogation as a just world preservation strategy after instances of intergroup harm-doing. This study is among the first to demonstrate the derogation of both individual victims and of the victim’s minority group experimentally, using the context of a racist hate crime in Australia. In the present experiment, participants (N = 110) read a news article describing a hate crime against an Aboriginal Australian teenager and were informed that the perpetrator was harshly or leniently punished (secure vs. justice threat condition). Our results show that in the justice threat condition, participants not only derogated the individual Aboriginal Australian victim more after his death, they also expressed greater racism toward the victim’s group. An indirect effect of the justice threat condition on modern racism via individual victim derogation was observed, along with moderating effects of individual differences in belief in a just world. These findings provide support for the alarming hypothesis that racist hate crimes are not only the manifestation of a racist society, but may also bolster racial prejudices if leniently treated. The results highlight the important role of political and judicial authorities, whose response or non-response to a hate crime can exacerbate or ameliorate existing prejudices.     

Effects of pretrial juror bias,strength of evidence and deliberation process on juror decisions: new validity evidence of the Juror Bias Scale scores

This study examines the validity of the Juror Bias Scale scores in relation to the mock juror decisions reached in two real life homicide cases before and after the deliberation process. The judicial cases used varied in terms of the ambiguity of the evidence presented at both trials. The WLS methodology for statistical modelling of categorical data was used to analyse data. The findings indicated that the Juror Bias Scale scores successfully predict the verdicts and other related questions before and after deliberations in the case with ambiguous evidence. Furthermore, deliberations caused a generalisation effect on the pretrial juror bias in such a case, and enhanced the differences between defense-biased and prosecution-biased jurors in the verdicts delivered after deliberations. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the use of pretrial juror bias questionnaires in jury selection.     

Cost and benefit of a new instruction for the cognitive interview: the open depth instruction

The quality and the quantity of information recalled by eyewitnesses during a criminal investigation is of crucial importance. To increase the volume of details recalled during an interview, the cognitive interview recommends using various retrieval strategies to enhance recall. We tested a new retrieval instruction, the open depth (OD) instruction. The efficacy of this new instruction was assessed with the number of unit of information and the accuracy rate. We also assessed the cost-and-benefit of this new instruction with measures of repetition. Students watched a video of a simulated robbery and participated later in face-to-face interviews. In Study 1 (N=60), the cognitive interview using the OD instruction increased recall compared to the interview using the change of perspective (CP) instruction, without affecting the accuracy rate. The redundancy rate was higher with the OD instruction than with the CP instruction. In Study 2 (N=40), the OD instruction generated more new information without affecting the accuracy rate than the interview using motivated recall (MR) instruction. The repeated information to new information ratio was lower with the OD instruction than with the MR instruction. The advantages of the OD instruction for investigative interviewing purposes are discussed.     

The European Convention: Bargaining in the Shadow of Rhetoric

The European Convention on the Future of Europe was initially presented as a turning point in the history of European integration. This article argues that, although its composition was broader, its process more transparent and its rules more flexible than classic intergovernmental conferences, the Convention was not Europe's Philadelphia. Since it took place under the shadow of the IGC and under a leadership especially sensitive to the positions of big member states, the Convention reproduced, by extension, the logic of intergovernmental bargains. Nevertheless, some of the Convention's outcome – the most formal aspects of its draft treaty with less predictable distributional consequences – can be explained by the ‘social norm’ of constitutional deliberation conveyed by its president and supported by a majority of its members.