Law in Politics: Struggles over Property and Public Space on New York City's Lower East Side

This article examines politics on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City, for evidence of law at the constitutive level. We see legal relations shaping grassroots struggles over public space and housing as forums, claims, and political positions. This view challenges instrumental conceptions of law still prominent in some social-scientific approaches.     

Classroom training in sexual victimization awareness and prevention skills: An extension of the Red Flag/Green Flag people program

This study is an extension of a previous evaluation of a program (Red Flag/Green Flag) in which children, parents, and teachers were exposed to a workbook and film designed to teach personal safety strategies for preventing sexual victimization or encouraging adult assistance through disclosure of such incidents. In the current investigation, only children and their teachers received this didactic training program. Children and teachers from neighboring schools were assigned to a Training or Control group. Self-reports from children, teachers, and parents, as well as guidance counselor incident reports, were obtained to evaluate outcome. Results indicated greater gains in general knowledge and prevention skills at post-training and 6-month follow-up for trained than control children. Some improvements were made by trained teachers and parents of trained children. Child reports of personal experiences and guidance counselor incident reports were in accord with the assistance component of the program. However, the pattern of reports across sources is difficult to interpret. The findings are discussed in light of salient issues regarding the content of training, child disclosure, and methodology.     

When random assignment fails: Some lessons from the Minneapolis Spouse Abuse Experiment

In this paper, we consider what may be done when researchers anticipate that in the implementation of field experiments, random assignment to experimental and control groups is likely to be flawed. We then reanalyze data from the Minneapolis Spouse Abuse Experiment in a manner that explicitly models violations of random assignment. As anticipated, we find far larger treatment effects than previously reported. The techniques developed should be useful in a wide variety of settings when random assignment is implemented imperfectly.