A Secret Police: The Lasting Impact of the 1986 FOIA Amendments

The 1986 Freedom of Information Act amendments were passed as a last-minute rider to Reagan-era War on Drugs legislation. The three pieces – a broad restructuring of Exemption 7, the law enforcement exemption; the addition of exclusions for law enforcement and intelligence requests; and introduction of a new fee structure – have had a lasting impact on FOIA implementation and contribute to the contemporary inability to affect police transparency. Review of the 1986 FOIA amendments’ legislative history documents the White House’s determination to loosen law enforcement oversight and congressional appeals to exaggerated fears of illicit drug users. The study considers the effect on judicial interpretation of Exemption 7, exploring decisions before and after the amendments, while also analyzing FOIA use and implementation patterns through a dataset of annual reports from 1975 until present. The analysis reveals a sharp increase in Exemption 7 claims and “no records” responses, both attributable to the 1986 FOIA amendments.     

Turning a Madhyamaka Trick: Reply to Huntington

Huntington (2007); argues that recent commentators (Robinson, 1957; Hayes, 1994; Tillemans, 1999; Garfield and Priest, 2002) err in attributing to Nāgārjuna and Candrakīrti a commitment to rationality and to the use of argument, and that these commentators do violence to the Madhyamaka project by using rational reconstruction in their interpretation of Nāgārjuna’s and Candrakīrti’s texts. Huntington argues instead that mādhyamikas reject reasoning, distrust logic and do not offer arguments. He also argues that interpreters ought to recuse themselves from argument in order to be faithful to these texts. I demonstrate that he is wrong in all respects: Nāgārjuna and Candrakīrti deploy arguments, take themselves to do so, and even if they did not, we would be wise to do so in commenting on their texts.     

The prevalence of violence and relation to depression and illicit drug use among incarcerated women in Recife, Brazil

PurposeTo assess the prevalence and different types of violence experienced by women prisoners in Brazil and the effects of violence on women's depression and illicit drug use.MethodsParticipants (N = 377) were incarcerated women from a state prison in a northeastern city of Brazil. Multivariate logistic regression models (adjusted for age, education, partner status, prison history, drug related offense, and sentencing status) were used to assess associations between each type of violence (physical abuse, sexual abuse, and life threats) and each outcome variable: recent depression and illicit drug use.ResultsThe majority of participants (87%) reported experiencing some type of violence in their lifetime, including physical violence (83%), sexual victimization (36%), and threats on their life (29%.) Sexual violence was significantly related to both recent depression (Odds Ratio (OR) = 2.8; 95% Confidence Interval (CI) = 1.4–5.3) and recent substance use (OR = 2.7; 95% CI = 1.6–4.4) in adjusted models. Experiences of life threats were also significantly associated with illicit drug use (OR = 2.2; 95% CI: 1.3–3.7), as was physical violence (OR = 2.4; 95% CI: 1.2–4.9); however, neither of these latter two violence variables were significantly associated with depression.ConclusionReports of lifetime violence victimization among this incarcerated sample of women were extremely prevalent and relevant to women's depression and illicit drug use. Prison efforts to address women's depression and illicit drug use may be most effective by incorporating aspects related to women's history of victimization, especially given the high rates of violence experienced by women in this sample.     

“Delinquent Boys”: Toward a New Understanding of “Deviant” and Transgressive Behavior in Gay Men

Cultural criminology suggests that crime, deviance, and transgression are often subcultural in nature. For this reason, cultural criminologists often focus on the simultaneous forces of cultural inclusion and social exclusion when explaining criminal, deviant, or transgressive behaviors. This is a particularly useful bricolage for examining contemporary gay deviance and transgression—behaviors that are perhaps closely linked to (if not directly caused by) the past isolation, marginalization and/or oppression of homosexuals by Western heteronormative societies. It is also useful for understanding behaviors that are the result of marginalization and oppression from other sources, namely, the gay community itself. Using subcultural theories of deviance—such as those favored by cultural criminologists—this article explores a perspective that can be used for exploring certain forms of gay deviance and transgression. First, some of the more ostensible criminological theories that satisfy a prima facie criminological inquiry will be presented and critiqued: labeling and stigma, and resistance to heteronormativity. To these will be added a new and potentially productive way of thinking that takes into consideration rule-breaking as a form of resistance to homonormative norms, values and rules.