A Failure of Good Intentions: An Analysis of Juvenile Justice Reform in San Francisco during the 1990s

This study examines the impact of juvenile justice on San Francisco's youth detention population during the 1990s. Because successful juvenile justice reform is measured by reductions in both detention populations and the disproportionate impact on minority youth, this study attempts to evaluate two closely related issues: (1) Did San Francisco juvenile justice reform lead to reductions in juvenile detention bookings? (2) Did San Francisco juvenile justice reform reduce disproportionate minority confinement? The results of the study demonstrated that in fact neither of these results occurred. The data clearly show that what happened instead was “net widening” whereby offenders previously excluded from the juvenile justice system were processed. This was especially the case for minority females, whose rate of detention increased more than any other group. Implications for social policies are discussed.     

Testing Explanations of Strategic Voting in Legislatures: A Reexamination of the Compromise of 1790

A difficult yet prevalent problem in legislative politics is how to assess explanations when observable actions may not represent true (and unobserved) legislator preferences. We present a method for analyzing the validity of theoretical/historical accounts that unifies theory, history, and measurement. We argue that approaches to testing accounts of legislative behavior which are theoretically and historically agnostic are not always best and present an approach which: (1) forms an explicit explanation of behavior (here a simple dynamic voting game) that yields estimable parameter constraints, and (2) tests these constraints using a customized empirical model that is as consistent as possible with the explanation. We demonstrate the method using legislative voting data from the first Congress (1789–1791). Using the idea of sophisticated equivalents from voting theory we subject the traditional account of the “Compromise of 1790” to a statistical test and find that there is reason to doubt the claim that legislators of the time believed the specified log roll was taking place. The results suggest that the capital location and assumption issues were resolved independently.     

Decentralisation of service delivery as adopted by the Central District Council in Botswana

The Central District Council (CDC) in Botswana expanded service delivery to five sub‐districts in January 2000 using a model adapted from the South Somerset District Council, UK. As little data were available on the effectiveness of decentralised service delivery, officials and councillors throughout CDC were interviewed regarding their perception of the process. They not only provided recommendations for enhanced implementation but also identified some of the tensions resulting from it. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Risky Drinking and Driving/Riding Decisions: The Role of Previous Experience

Factors related to risky drinking and driving/riding decisions were explored by presenting vignettes to 135 older adolescents, 17–24 years of age, with vignettes related to drinking and other social behaviors engaged in at a party. Analyses revealed that alcohol-related behaviors, attitudes toward the acceptability of drinking and driving, and previous drinking and driving/riding experiences were all significant predictors of decisions about driving or riding while intoxicated. Indeed, the overall model accounted for 46% of risky drinking and driving/riding decisions. As predicted, older respondents had more previous experiences with driving while intoxicated and riding with intoxicated drivers than did younger respondents, and they reported that drinking and driving was more acceptable among their peers. However, contrary to expectations, there were no differences in the number of risky decisions made by the two age groups or between males and females. The importance of previous experiences is discussed.     

Moving from national to international environmental policy

Environmental problems will increasingly spill over national boundaries. An effective and efficient response to these problems will require international solutions; relying purely on national regulatory mechanisms to address global issues will not suffice. To meet this need, better international environmental programs must be developed that maximize collective gain, enforce property rights, address the range of environmental values present in different countries, and fairly determine who should pay for global-scale pollution control.     

The Changing Property Tax and State-Local Relations

The substantial transfer of fiscal power to state government,undermining local government autonomy, characterizes the courseof state-local relations in the last quarter of the twentiethcentury in the United States. Central to this shift is diminishedlocal control of the property tax, a result of the tax limitationsadopted in most states since the 1970s. This article arguesthat control of the property tax is critical to the workingsof local representative democracy, affecting both the discretionof elected officials and participation of citizens. It presentsboth quantitative and qualitative evidence of the centralizationtrend, including changes in property-tax flows and state financesaffecting local governments, an analysis of the comparativeseverity of property-tax limitations, changes in K-12 educationfinancing, and local consequences of the tax limitations.