A dynamic test of the marginality hypothesis

The marginality hypothesis is an attempt to relate the voting margins of members of Congress to their subsequent legislative behavior. A major corollary of the hypothesis is that members of Congress with small victory margins will be more responsive to constituents than those with large victory margins. This has been assumed to mean that electorally secure representatives can afford to be more loyal to their congressional parties, since they have less cause to worry about their chances for reelection. Previous empirical studies have produced mixed results. We ask the question in a different way: Do changes in marginality affect party voting within Congress? If so, major shifts in the electorate potentially can have a fundamental impact on the behavior of Congress itself. We find that this is not true. Electoral margin is simply not related to party loyalty.     

Training prison inmates as paralegals: An experimental project

A program to train inmates as paralegals was established at a large state prison in the Midwest. Qualified inmates were randomly assigned to the training or to a control condition. Both groups were administered measures assessing legal knowledge, the use of legal knowledge, attitudes about the criminal justice system, and self-perceptions before and after training. The trainee group showed a significant increase in its amount of legal knowledge after training. Members of the trainee group also reported a significant increase in the number of other inmates requesting aid from them on legal problems. In addition, interviews were conducted with two random samples of the general inmate population, before and after the paralegal training program. These interviews revealed strong support for the training program, and this support increased over the period of the program. Limited data on longer-term effectiveness of the paralegal's performance in the prison legal aid clinic and in paralegal jobs following parole supported the positive, shorter-term results.     

The dragon breathes fire: Chinese organized crime in New York City

Although it is widely acknowledged that Chinese businesses are victims of extortion by Asian youth gangs, there is no reliable information to examine the patterns and social processes of the problem. This paper explores the structure of extortion and other forms of victimization based on surveys of (N=603) Chinese-owned businesses in three Chinatown neighborhoods in New York City. It focuses on the nature of Chinese crime groups, social contexts of gang extortion, social processes of victimization, and merchants' compliance or resistance to gang demands. Finally, the paper discusses the problems and prospects of Chinese criminality in America.Support for this research was provided by Grant 89-IJ-CX-0021 from the National Institute of Justice. The opinions are those of the authors and do not reflect the policies or views of the U.S. Department of Justice.