PRISON BEHAVIOR AND RELEASE PERFORMANCE

It is argued widely that an inmate's behavior while in prison is not related to his or her behavior after release. This putative lack of a relation is a point set forth in debates about discretionary release from prison by parole boards. This article reviews the empirical status of the prison behavior and release performance controversy and offers new data from the federal jurisdiction. The results indicate that there is some relation between officially recorded institutional infractions and post-release infractions, once controls for a priori risk are established. The fact that some post-sentencing information may be related to behavior after prison raises difficult policy issues that are not addressed by the common assertion of no relationship. Among these issues are the propriety and fairness of predictive judgments per se, the proper locus of authority for release decision making, and alternative uses of predictive information in corrections. The findings here suggest that more intensive study of the relation between prison behavior and release performance is required.     

VERTICAL STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT AND PUBLIC SERVICE PERFORMANCE

We report the results of a study examining the effects of vertical strategic alignment (that is, the degree to which strategic stances are consistent across different organizational levels) on public service performance. Longitudinal multivariate analysis is undertaken on a panel of public organizations over four years. We find that alignment on a prospecting strategy leads to better performance, but that no such effect is observed for a defending strategy. We also find that high levels of prospecting alignment produce stronger positive performance effects in centralized organizations and when environmental uncertainty is high. The implications of these findings for research and practice are considered in the conclusion.     

Protestant Hermeneutics and the Rule of Law: Gadamer and Dworkin

Abstract. The rule of law demands that the state's coercive power be used only according to settled general laws, applied impersonally. But an individualist theory of legal inter pretation cannot provide the shared understanding required. Gadamer appeals to the practical wisdom of judges and lawyers, who will agree on how to apply law to new cases. But this account is adequate only for very cohesive societies. Dworkin's account rests on propositional knowledge of a supposed best interpretation of an entire legal system. But even if such a best interpretation is possible in theory, this possibility does not provide shared understandings in the social world.     

Public Participation in Environmental Regulatory Conflicts: Treading Through the Possibilities and Pitfalls*

Based on two years of qualitative field work, this paper examines public participation in environmental regulatory disputes. Drawing on political economy critiques of environmentalism, we argue that regulation is both a political arena and a legal process that is about responsivity, competition, and bargaining. A combination of case study and Boolean algebra techniques are used to refine and apply the conceptualization. Five primary factors are identified which mediate citizens' participation: (I) information networks, (2) social resources, (3) cooperative linkages, (4) the ability to sustain linkages and levels of resource mobilization over time, and (5) agendas which fit within the narrow constitutive norms of a particular regulatory community.