Snitching,Lies and Computer Crashes: An Experimental Investigation of Secondary Confessions

Two laboratory studies with 332 student participants investigated secondary confessions (provided by an informant instead of the suspect). Participants allegedly caused or witnessed a simulated computer crash, then were asked to give primary or secondary confessions during interrogation. Study 1 replicated the false evidence effect for primary confessions. Secondary confessions were obtained at a high rate, which was increased by false evidence in combination with incentive to confess. In Study 2 a confederate either confessed to or denied crashing the computer. Incentive increased the rate of secondary confession only in the presence of a denial; that is, incentive increased the number of false secondary confessions only. Implications for the use of incentives during informant interrogation are discussed.     

Stolen Children,Invisible Mothers and Unspeakable Stories: The Experiences of Non-Aboriginal Adoptive and Foster Mothers of Aboriginal Children

One of the measures of the cultural, if not political, success of sustained Aboriginal activism on the issue of the forced removal of children from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, leading up to the instigation of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission's inquiry into the issue and the widely disseminated publication of its findings in 1997, is that it now appears nearly impossible to tell the story of indigenous child removal in terms other than those provided by the powerful Aboriginalised tropes and narrative modes that have come to shape both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal understandings of issue. I do not wish to take issue with the long-overdue emergence of Aboriginal voices and an Aboriginal discourse on this issue. However, as the older ways of understanding the meaning of removing indigenous children from their communities ‘for their own good’ (Link-Up & Wilson 1997) have lost their provenance and are replaced by Aboriginal stories with the critically revised meanings of cultural loss, ethnocide, grief and harm, which are expressed in a wide range of discourses (see, for example, Ward 1988; Edwards & Read 1989; Roach 1990; Huggins & Huggins 1994; Smallacombe 1996; Harrison 1997), it becomes apparent that there are still more stories to be told about how Australian's high assimilationist policies of forced child removal and placement played out on the lives of the men, women and children of the nation. From a (non-Aboriginal) feminist perspective, a particular case in point is the stories of the non-Aboriginal women who, both knowingly and unknowingly, came to adopt and foster these children, raising them as their own?a task in which many have been engaged for upwards of 30 or 40 years. These women, who must on any estimate number in their thousands across the nation, remain all but invisible in both the former and now discredited accounts of indigenous child removal and placement, and in more recent Aboriginal revisions of this appalling history. This paper presents preliminary analysis of research undertaken with a small group of these women in 1997 and 1998.     

The Low‐Income Housing Tax Credit An Analysis of the First Ten Years

Abstract

The Low‐Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) has been the de facto federal rental housing production program since its creation in the Tax Reform Act of 1986. In this article, using a detailed database on 2,554 LIHTC projects, we analyze the costs of building these projects, where they are built, their financial viability, whom they serve, who finances them, and the size of the subsidies provided to them.

The LIHTC is a flexible program that has built different types of housing in various markets. While LIHTC projects serve low‐ and moderate‐income households, their rents are beyond the reach of many poor households without additional subsidy. Revenues just cover costs for many LIHTC projects. Over time, considerably more of each tax‐credit dollar has ended up in the projects, and returns to equity investors have dropped significantly, perhaps reflecting an increased understanding of project risks. We estimate that LIHTC projects developed by nonprofits are 20.3 percent more expensive than those developed by for‐profits.     

Norms Network Members Use: An Alternative Perspective for Indicating Network Success or Failure

ABSTRACT

In this article it is argued that one approach to learn more on network success is by studying the norms network members use to control their own network. The results of this study in four health care networks indicate three norms to be central: the norm of network legitimacy, the norm of activating capacity, and the norm of network climate. By comparing the four networks it was explored if and why networks differ in the accomplishment of their own norms. Explanations for the reasonable success of networks can be found in the way the networks were initiated and the legitimacy of the networks. Moreover, only if networks are initiated by the network participants themselves does the network's age positively correlate with the network's activating capacity.     

Crime and punishment in Russia and the United States: 1990–1998

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, dramatic sociopolitical changes have affected the ability of the Russian criminal justice system to effectively process violent crimes. This paper compares the police and court processing of selected violent crimes in Russia and the United States during the period 1990–1998. Using data from the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs and the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, we examine the disposition of homicide, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault (i.e., serious bodily injury) cases in both countries during this period. Our findings indicate that while arrests and rates of homicide, robbery and aggravated assault decreased in the U.S. during this period, they increased in Russia. On the other hand, rape rates and arrests decreased in both countries during this period. Conviction rates as well as the percentage of defendants sentenced to prison in Russia were both higher than in the U.S. for each of the offenses studied during this period. We discuss implications of the findings and suggest additional research.     

Market coordination and the making of conventions: qualities,consumption and sustainability in the agro-food industry

Abstract

The coordination of activity across sites and spaces of production and consumption is a key concern for economic analysis. Joining a revival in the application of convention theory to agro-food scholarship, this paper considers complementary insights – related principally to ‘the economy of qualities’ – that animate different aspects of e/valuation, competition and alignment. These understandings are extended by more thoroughly acknowledging contemporary developments in consumption scholarship. The arguments are advanced through a case study of the orange juice market, linking its current high-carbon trajectory to the commercial and cultural significance of freshness. The analysis offers new insights into distributed processes of qualification as well as the mechanisms through which conventions are assembled and sustained. Finally, a more integrated approach to food production and consumption is outlined.     

Family history,identity, and public history: writing a history of The Benevolent Society in its 200th year

Abstract

Since 2011, the authors have worked together on outputs associated with the bicentenary of The Benevolent Society of New South Wales, Australia's oldest charity, established in 1813. This article focuses on one of those outputs—a project making use of family histories of clients of The Benevolent Society's Asylum, in the second half of the nineteenth century, to reveal the histories of these families in colonial New South Wales. The project also involves an exploration of the many different ways in which contemporary Australians are active agents in the creation of historical knowledge when practicing family history.     

If democracy,then human rights?

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, democracy and human rights are usually thought of as symbiotic. It follows from this that the promotion of democracy as the only legitimate form of government inevitably supports claims for universal human rights. This article discusses this claim, with particular reference to efforts to promote democracy in less developed states. It begins by identifying the central features of democracy and placing them within the critical context of globalisation. It then moves to question the symbiotic assumption, first, through a discussion on democracy and global order and, second, through a discussion of development and human rights. The conclusion to be drawn from these discussions suggests that democracy promotion has more to do with global economic interests than with delivering human rights to the poor and excluded in less developed countries.     

Terrorism and subversion of the state: Italian legal responses

Political assassinations constitute a specific form of violence intended to take someone else's life against that person's wish. The act of killing (the ‘event') is distinguished from the cultural interpretation given to that act (the ‘rhetorical device'). The essay examines the rhetorical device as a cultural artifact to construct and interpret the deliberate serious attempt(s) to kill a specific actor for political reasons having something to do with the political position (or role) of the victim, and with the symbolic‐moral universe out of which the assassin/s act(s). This universe generates the legitimacy and justifications required for the act, which are usually presented in quasi‐legal terms although the acts are typically not the result of a fair legal procedure.     

The decision to legalize gambling: a model of why states do what they do

This article compares the three major forms of legalized gambling currently being utilized by states as revenue measures. Unlike most of the previous gambling research, it focuses upon the choice of forms, rather than only the decision to adopt gambling measures. It compares forms of gambling using a variation on a previously published schema of evaluative criteria for revenue types and presents a series of models of why states choose to legalize certain types of gambling. The results suggest that iotteries and parimutuels are similar choices for revenue raising, since both are likely to be adopted in states which are liberal, which exhibit somewhat weak interest groups, and which have relatively low Protestant fundamentalist church membership. Casinos, however, appear to conform to a different decision model and are less likely to be operated in states with large numbers of older citizens and in states which do not already have other forms of gambling.