Assessing a moral panic relating to crime and drugs policy in the Netherlands: Towards a testable theory

Using criteria from recent work by Goode and Ben Yehuda, this article tests the hypothesis that a moral panic relating to (youth) crime has been going on in the Netherlands since 1990. Most of the criteria are met. There is concern about the problem of crime and a consensus on solutions. There are also indications that public disquiet grew out of proportion compared to trends in crime and victimization, and that the panic erupted fairly suddenly. It is not possible to identify a clearer scapegoat than a diffuse image of “the” criminal. It is unclear what caused this panic. It seems unlikely that the panic started as a reaction to public problems, but nor is it possible to state that elites started it or that it was caused by bureaucratic processes at an intermediate level. Several methodological problems connected with the testing of the criteria are discussed. It is recommended that one criterion be added: that of misdirection of reactions to a social problem. It is also recommended that future research should be comparative, either comparing several minor local panics, or comparing panics or non-panics related to equivalent social problems. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

日本与联邦德国的犯罪及其控制

<正> 一、比较犯罪学的理论与方法直到不久前,犯罪学仍然是注重犯罪人。犯罪行为的最初原因是从犯罪人反常的个性中看出的。由此人们认为,可以把罪犯安置在改造场所,通过运用教育和治疗的方法来消灭犯罪行为。今天,这种关于犯罪原因和刑事政策的认识仍然受到支持。虽然如果没有犯罪人就没有犯罪学,也没有刑事政策,但是犯罪人不是犯罪原因及其控制所应考虑的唯一因素。应该考虑的因素还包括受害人和社会环境这两个因素,它们各自都对犯罪的发展发生不同的作用,因此它们必须参加对犯罪的控制。犯罪是在社会完善和个人的学习过程中发展起来的,它也只能在这个过程中被消灭。     

Assessing sheriff’s office emergency and disaster website communications

Sheriff’s offices are an integral component of the public health emergency preparedness and response system in the USA. During a public health emergency or disaster, sheriff’s offices need to communicate with people affected by the event. Sheriff’s office websites are logical sources for information about disaster preparedness and response efforts. No prior research evaluates emergency preparedness and response resources available through sheriff’s office websites. The current research is a national study of sheriff’s office websites to assess the availability of information relating to emergency preparedness and response. A content analysis of 2590 sheriff’s office website homepages was conducted to determine the presence or absence of nine communications elements important to people seeking information during an emergency or disaster. We found that 71.9% of sheriff’s office website homepages include links to agency services and programs, but only 6.5% provide links to emergency preparedness information. The findings of the study are useful to assess emergency preparedness and the amount of response information available, as well as to identify opportunities to improve sheriff’s office website homepages.     

Can democracy induce development? A constitutional perspective

We examine the constitutional design required for democratic societies to overcome poverty traps. Restricting agenda setting by ensuring subsistence levels of consumption and applying simple majority voting as a decision rule will not enable a society to overcome poverty. We show that a combination of suitable constitutional rules can, however, overcome poverty and induce economic well-being. Besides majority voting, these rules include rotating agenda setting, agenda repetition, and tax-protection rules. We thus highlight the crucial role of democratic institutions for economic development.