NEIGHBORHOOD AND DELINQUENCY: AN ASSESSMENT OF CONTEXTUAL EFFECTS*

The sociological perspectives which helped formulate the study of delinquency and continue to underlie more specific conceptual frameworks—Social Disorganization, Subculture, and Labeling—point to the importance of contextual effects in the dynamics explaining delinquent and criminal behavior. Yet, systematic examination of such effects has been all but neglected. This paper delineates and empirically assesses neighborhood characteristics postulated to represent contextual factors affecting individual delinquency and criminality. Data were collected from a stratified random sample of adolescent males drawn from 12 New York City neighborhoods. The initial model, designed to refine hypotheses specifying community contextual effects, exhibits a highly satisfactory fit to the data. The framework underscores the importance of considering distinct community contextual effects as well as individual-level effects. Two neighborhood-level factors, the effects of which are quite distinct, are important: the community's level of organizational participation and the extent of disorder and criminal subculture. The indirect and direct effects of these factors are elaborated in relation to three measures of de1inquency—namely, self-reported, officially recorded, and severe self-reported delinquency.     

The President as Institution Builder: The Reagan Case

Every president bestows upon his successors a "legacy" that will have an impact on both policy issues and institutional operations. Although attention is commonly focused on the president's role as a policymaker, he serves as an institution builder, as well, leaving a legacy that is manifested in long-term developments, in technical details of managing the job, and in patterns of interaction with other actors in the political environment. Reagan's institutional legacy has been the subject of intense debate and is addressed here in relation to five vantage points as they were employed during his eight years in office: personnel, structure, standard operating procedures, modes of exercising influence, and norms. These dimensions are examined in relation to the presidency, the bureaucracy, Congress, and the judiciary.
Reagan's departures in the selection and management of executive and judicial branch personnel were the most distinctive features of his legacy. Important changes were also made in the regulatory review and budgetary processes. Politicization and centralization, two long-term developments in the presidential office, gained renewed vigor, and Reagan elaborated a judicial strategy for achieving policy goals while refining the administrative strategy pioneered earlier by Nixon. Serious damage may well have been done to the norms of public service and justice under the rule of law. The framework introduced here promises to help scholars deal more systematically with the institutional impacts of both past and future presidents.     

Mosca revisited

Abstract. The paper offers a favourable re-assessment of the thought of Gaetano Mosca, a most unfashionable thinker. Three elements of his thought are examined: (1) his 'historical method', (2) his 'unmasking' of the democratic ideal, and (3) his critique of Marxian socialism. It is argued that his model of an objective political science, based on empirical observation, was essentially sound, though he himself did not live up to its rigorous requirements. Whatever the flaws in his methodology, however, his analysis of the parliamentary system seems convincing enough. As for his complaints against marxism and socialism, these cannot be dismissed as the fulminations of a reactionary, for the simple reason that most of them have been echoed, in one form or another, by Marxists and socialists themselves. It is concluded that social critics could learn much from Mosca, in spite of his conservative leanings.     

The Revitalization of Islamic Penal Law: An Examination of Its Opponents

There is an increasing interest today in reestablishing Islamic Penal Law in most Middle East countries. The majority of the population apparently favors this change. There are, however, a minority opposed to such changes. This paper examines how those opposed to reinstituting Islamic Penal Law differ from others based on data gathered from 600 respondents in Kuwait. The findings indicate that those most opposed to such a change are the upper or upper middle class. They apparently are opposed not only to reestablishing Islamic Penal Law but also are less orthodox Muslems. They have had considerable more contact with the Western world but are a small but important minority in their society.     

REEVALUATING THE CUSTODY-THERAPY CONFLICT PARADIGM IN CORRECTIONAL MENTAL HEALTH SETTINGS*

It has become almost axiomatic in sociological analyses of interactions between mental health and criminal justice personnel that their respective ideologies are inherently contradictory and produce conflict within organizations in which both groups are working. Because key components of the mental health system have changed dramatically since the seminal research in this area was conducted and because these concepts were never tested in certain criminal justice organizations, many commonly accepted generalizations about custody-therapy conflicts warrant new examination. Interview and questionnaire data from a national sample of 43 county jails with mental health programs were analyzed. In contrast to earlier research, fundamental conflicts between mental health and correctional staff were not frequent. Rather, Pondy's concept of frictional Conflicts, which are not fundamental to either individual interactions or organizational operations, were more typical. Jails, as short-term people-processing organizations, cannot be assumed to fit organizational research results generated from state prisons.