When Deterrence and Death Mitigation Fall Short: Fantasy and Fetishes as Gap‐Fillers in Border Regulation

Drawing on fieldwork and political theory with Lacanian psychoanalytic influences, this article analyzes how fantasy and fetishes help sustain strategies shown to be no solution to U.S. border control problems. More than a decade after the official launch of the border control paradigm of “prevention through deterrence,” predicated on the assumption that ramping up walls, barriers, policing, and the human costs of border crossing would deter, there has been scant evidence of deterrence and much evidence of diversion of migrants to more dangerous crossing points where death rates have soared. Attempts to mitigate the cost to life have also proved ineffective but have persisted alongside the policy of diversion. The article is based on research in a region where the reality of diversion and death instead of deterrence was lived but where people still pursue projects of barrier‐building and death mitigation that they know to be ineffective. The article analyzes how fantasy fuels action despite knowledge and occludes a traumatic element around which the symbolic order of border law is structured: the foundation of “good life” with its bounty of rights, privileges, and opportunity on the exclusion of basic life denuded of the entitlements that make the good life sweet. The article also examines how fetishes are used to cope with unrealized hopes and to diffuse the impact of the traumatic knowledge that good life is undergirded by the exclusion and even death of basic life.     

School violence prevention measures: School officials' attitudes about various strategies

Concern about school violence has been escalating in recent years. A variety of strategies are used in efforts to prevent violence in schools. These remedies can be classified as legal, interactionist, and physical remedies. Legal remedies refer to laws, like the reasonable suspicion to search strategy that allows school officials to search and seize contraband. Interactionist remedies refer to practices that encourage students and other school officials to communicate more openly with school officials about possible cases of violence. Physical remedies refer to strategies that involve altering the school environment in an effort to prevent violence. This study considered the way that 138 school officials from the Commonwealth of Virginia defined the usefulness of these strategies. Attention was also given to whether certain factors contribute to the officials' assessments of the efficacy of each prevention strategy. Results of the study showed that the interactionist, and then legal remedies are believed to be the most useful, while physical remedies are perceived as the least useful strategies. The study uncovered differences of opinion based on racial lines. As an example, more Blacks than Whites were more likely to describe metal detectors as a very useful strategy. Implications of the study are provided.     

The Wanderers

Dr. Jeffreys writes to say that he would be interested to hearof any other tribe whose name is a sobriquet for "wanderer"or "stranger". He has not dealt with Southern Africa, and wewould therefore suggest Angoni. Any reader who can add to thelist may care to get into touch with the writer of this articleat Bamenda, British Cameroons.     

Left realist criminology: Strengths,weaknesses and the feminist critique

Although there is an already large British literature both supporting and attacking left realism, and a growing North American interest on the subject among criminologists, there has been surprisingly little written which attempts to locate both the strengths and weaknesses of the left realist position on crime control. Perhaps the place where the left realists may be weakest is in response to a feminist critique. Actually, it is not only left realism but the socialist left in general which has been unsuccessful in providing adequate responses to the issues brought forth by feminists. This paper attempts to locate the position of left realism within the left criminology debate, and to find its strong and weak points. Further, it attempts to explicate the feminist critique, and to suggest responses critical criminologists might explore, such as those proposed by peacemaking criminology. *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** AW502012 00004     

Reaching for the Philosopher's Stone: Contingent Coordination and the Military's Response to Hurricane Katrina

When Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Mississippi Gulf Coast in August 2005, it immediately overwhelmed the abilities of local and state emergency management officials to respond to the ensuing disaster. Although the U.S. Coast Guard and some military units were on scene shortly after the passage of the storm, there seemed to be interminable delays before the military forces began to arrive in numbers to both provide humanitarian relief and secure the affected areas. This article analyzes the response of the National Guard, active-duty military, and Coast Guard forces through the lens of coordination. We find evidence of the successful use of both traditional hierarchical and network-based coordination; we also find support for Donald Kettl's idea of "contingent coordination."     

PROSTITUTION,IV DRUG USE,AND SEXFOR-CRACK EXCHANGES AMONG SERIOUS DELINQUENTS: RISKS FOR HIV INFECTION*

There is mounting evidence that HIV infection among adolescents is increasing, particularly among minorities and inner-city youths involved in certain high-risk activities, such as multiple sex partners and intravenous drug use. Interviews conducted “on the street” with 611 seriously delinquent male and female adolescents (ages 12–17) included questions about their involvement in prostitution, intravenous drug use, and sex-for-crack exchanges. Findings included high percentages of youths engaged in these HIV-risk activities and a consistent association between all of them and greater illicit drug use. This would suggest that these risk behaviors may be surprisingly prevalent among some inner-city adolescent groups. Special AIDS prevention/intervention targeting these groups is warranted and urgently needed. Drug treatment should be a central focus of such programs.     

Application of a simple extraction procedure using aqueous ammonia to the analysis of basic drugs in blood by gas chromatography

A simple and reliable previously reported extraction procedure has been extended to the analysis of a wide range of basic and neutral drugs in postmortem blood and other tissues. The method employs 200 microliters of blood treated with water and ammonia and extracted with diethyl ether. The concentrated extract is generally sufficiently clean for direct analysis by gas chromatography and high pressure liquid chromatography. Recovery, precision and linearity data are presented for selected drugs.