Some reflections on Undercover: recent developments and enduring issues

She [jury member] was extremely liberal. She was a sociologist, and I don't like sociologists. They try to reason things out too much. (Florida Prosecutor [after losing case involving the undercover purchase of a 2 Live Crew album])I have no sympathy for those who are crybabies about the fact that police officers are selling to those who want to buy drugs. We use every legal means that we can. We want everybody to know that the next drug buy may be from a police officer. (Mayor Marion Barry, News Conference 1988)This paper expands on remarks delivered at the American Society of Criminology meetings, Reno, 1989. Some of these ideas were initially presented in 1988 to the qualitative methods discussion group at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, with the support of NSF grant no. BNS 8700864. I am particularly indebted to Elliot Eisner and Barry Schwartz for their critical comments and friendship.     

The feasibility of a brief evaluation of mental state at the time of the offense

If psychological evaluations of criminal defendants could be performed in the community on an outpatient basis rather than in a distant state hospital on an inpatient basis, substantial savings could result and defendants' rights to speedy trial, bail, and the least restrictive alternative would more likely be respected. The authors thus developed a protocol, the mental state at the time of the offense screening evaluation (MSE), designed to enable outpatient evaluatiors to “screen out,” in the course of a brief interview, those defendants whose alleged criminal conduct clearly was not caused by “significant mental abnormality.” They tested the validity of the MSE by having pairs of mental health professionals use the MSE to evaluate 36 criminal defendants. The professionals' conclusions were then compared with the conclusions of state hospital professionals who performed a comprehensive evaluation of each defendant. They were also compared to court adjudications of the defendant's criminal charges. They found that the MSE screened out a large proportion of defendants (sufficient to suggest an improvement in cost-efficiency) without prejudice to those defendants who might have a valid legal defense.     

Community juvenile arbitration: An alternative in judicial administration

Congestion in trial courts continues to create a dilemma in judicial administration. In Florida, an effort to address this problem in the juvenile justice system emerged with legislative authorization of community arbitration programs. Implementation came in a joint endeavor of a community and a university to develop a juvenile arbitration program. Assessment of the program in reduction of caseload, cost efficiency, recidivism, reduction of delay prior to hearing, and volunteer participation suggests that community arbitration can be a viable alternative.     

Contagion or intervention: Two views on ‘wider wars’

This article reviews methodologically and substantively the large literature on conflict expansion. It compares and contrasts the two quite different approaches that have been used. One is based on a contagion/diffusion framework that sees war involvement coming from the outside environment. The second is a Realpolitik, rational actor approach that sees involvement in ongoing wars as a result of conscious actions to achieve foreign policy goals. The contagion/ diffusion framework is rejected as fundamentally flawed but which can provide needed modifications to a more Realpolitik perspective.     

Caveat Emptor: What Do We Know about Public Administration Evidence and How Do We Know It?

This article provides an overview of a new feature in Public Administration Review called Evidence in Public Administration. This feature was created to provide a space in which scholars and practitioners of public administration can meet to engage in a dialogue about evidence in public decision making. In this feature, we will shine a light on the evidence needed to make effective decisions and examinations of the evidence that currently exists for contemporary public sector efforts. We explicitly want to create a resource for both practitioners and scholars to consult when trying to find evidence on a particular topic and to know the limitations and parameters of that evidence. This article lays out the purpose, scope, and rationale for the feature, as well as a call to engage in this endeavor.     

Law of assisted reproductive surrogacy in Malaysia: a critical overview

Both traditional and gestational surrogacy are now entering the public mind as a major public policy issue, because of concern for apparent truncation of the surrogate mother’s rights. This article sets out to investigate some key relevant rights, the policy issues as yet unresolved, and the character of the current regulatory regime. Modern medicine, specifically assisted reproductive technology, has made legislation obsolete in many jurisdictions around the world, including in Malaysia. These new medical practices present many significant legal problems, with which the courts and legislators still struggle. A proposed statute, the Assisted Reproductive Technique Services Act, aimed at regulating reproductive technologies, including surrogacy arrangements, will be introduced in the Malaysian parliament soon. The proposed Malaysian Act will address issues such as surrogacy, sperm or egg banking, and sperm donation. Malaysia is moving cautiously towards regulation on this issue and is trying to avoid becoming a ‘rent-a-womb country’. Thus, this article asks the question as to what policy considerations are in place, in the current Malaysian regulatory regime, to care for the rights of the surrogate mother? It will try to show that there is still a danger that Malaysia could become a ‘rent-a-womb country’, with its necessary implications of property rights over surrogate mothers. The article employs section-by-section synthesis to reach its conclusions. Argument will suggest that the current state of the law in Malaysia, as to both traditional and gestational surrogacy, seems to be that the regulatory regime is a combination of the general law, private ordering, registration and enforceable professional ethics. However, there is no Malaysian statutory law in place, in the contemporary social context, expressly prohibiting a term in a surrogacy contract that might imply property rights over the surrogate mother. This is a serious apparent lacuna in the law, and might suggest that the laws of transnational crime be considered, as an alternative, as applicable to the surrogacy agreement.