Parliamentary enclosure,common rights and social change: Evidence from the parts of Lindsey in Lincolnshire

Parliamentary enclosure is considered between the mid‐eighteenth and the mid‐nineteenth centuries. Three motives for enclosure are identified: to change the structure of rural society, to secure profit, and to promote social stability. Enclosure laid the basis for the final destruction of the English peasantry. Those who gained were, essentially, large landlords and large capitalist tenants. Those who lost were all other members of rural society who relied on their rights of commons: and especially independent owners of small acreages, cottagers with no holdings in the common fields and squatters on the commons. The article seeks to establish (1) the importance and value of commons and rights of common and (2) what happened at enclosure when rights of common were abolished; with evidence almost entirely from the Parts of Lindsey in North Lincolnshire. From c.1790 onwards (until well after 1870, in fact) there was a prolonged attack on all aspects of rural popular culture and parliamentary enclosure was one important element in that attack.     

‘Unhomely moments’: Civilising domestic worlds in colonial Australia

This article explores the multiple connections between the colonisation of Australia in the nineteenth century and the formation of domestic worlds as the site for ‘civilising’ children. The affective bonds of family were often regarded as an indispensable element in the nurture and training of children, but where the bonds of ‘natural affection’ seemed to pose an obstacle to the civilising project, they were ruthlessly severed.     

The racial inequality hypothesis

Reviews and critiques the racial inequality hypothesis. Following a review of theory, empirical findings, and underlying premises, the value of racial inequality as a measure of economic inequality is assessed. An alternative measure of racial inequality is presented, one that attempts to measure this concept as independent from economic inequality.The author would like to thank the editors, the anonymous peer reviewers, and Colin Loftin for their incisive comments.     

Liability and criminal justice management: Resolving dilemmas and meeting future challenges

To reduce liability, police executives rely heavily on hierarchically imposed rule adherence to control subordinates’ discretion. This management approach runs counter to current advice on how to “best manage” a public entity. This article develops an innovative approach to police management that reduces liability exposure while improving the management of the organization in keeping with contemporary notions of human resource development.     

Do Harsher Prison Conditions Reduce Recidivism? A Discontinuity-based Approach

We estimate the causal effect of prison conditions on recidivismrates by exploiting a discontinuity in the assignment of federalprisoners to security levels. Inmates housed in higher securitylevels are no less likely to recidivate than those housed inminimum security; if anything, our estimates suggest that harsherprison conditions lead to more post-release crime. Though smallsample sizes limit the precision of our estimates, we arguethat our findings may have important implications for prisonpolicy, and that our methodology is likely to be applicablebeyond the particular context we study.     

Rent-seeking and market structure: Comment

If the firms in an industry are to be successful in raising money to influence government, two conditions must be met: (1) there must be sufficient rents available from government decisions regarding that industry to make such expenditures worthwhile, and (2) the industry must be sufficiently concentrated to avoid a free-rider problem in fund-raising. This argument, though seemingly intuitively appealing, has been under recent empirical attack; this paper seeks to restore the parapets.