Local government and the arts revisited

This article discusses policy developments in the arts and local government since the publication of the original article on this topic. It assesses the continued relevance of the thinking behind policy attachment in the original article for understanding and explaining policy in this sector, and indicates the direction in which the concept of policy attachment could be developed in both analytical and empirical ways.     

Breaking Bodies Into Pieces: Time,Torture and Bio-Power

This article is an attempt to comprehend the bureaucratic phenomenon of the deathwatch, the last 24 hours of a prisoner’s life, stressing the theoretical applications scholars can make to the study of docile bodies on death row. Because years of work are necessary to obtain obedience from condemned inmates, health care professionals lend more than an aura of legitimacy to the capital punishment process. As an integral part of the prison and capital punishment, they provide stability, reliability, and the means to achieve the goals of peaceful executions. The ultimate objective of utilizing health care professionals is the sanitization of penal practice and penal language to effect the complete absence of resistance from the condemned.     

Individual and situational determinants of police force: An examination of threat presentation

This study is based on previous research denoting the primary factors that influence officer decisions regarding the use of differing levels of force in police-citizen encounters. Using a totality of the circumstance approach, primary emphasis is directed toward explaining those factors that contribute to officers’ estimation of the perceived level of threat inherent in police-citizen encounters. Officers’ perceived level of threat presented by a suspect or the situational context of an encounter is important because in 1989, the Supreme Court in theGraham v. Conner decision mandated that the appropriate amount of force that can be utilized depends on the following four primary factors: the threat, offense severity, actual resistance offered, and whether the suspect is trying to escape custody. These criteria were tested and placed into a predictive model along with other indicators the literature has found to be correlated with situations in which police force is used more often. The findings suggest that while the threat presented to officers is important and related to the level of force that is deemed appropriate by the police profession, many additional elements must be taken into consideration when interpreting if an officer used force correctly.     

Comment on the recent Grokster judgment by the US Supreme Court

The Supreme Court handed down its decision in MGM v Groksteron 27 June 2005, reversing the decision of the lower courtsand holding that peer-to-peer software services may be heldliable for inducing copyright infringement.