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.     

From Catch-all Politics to Cartelisation: The Political Economy of the Cartel Party

Adaptations to coordination problems endogenous to political parties have established the cartel party as the emerging equilibrium type in modern Western democracies. However, these factors alone are insufficient to maintain such an equilibrium given the threat of defection. That threat is mitigated by three factors: historical changes in party form, systemic changes in the global economy and changed ideas about governments. Together, these changes produce both a cartel of parties and the cartel party organisational form, without requiring overt conspiracy. These speculations are mapped onto actual experiences of the UK, the US and Sweden. The theory of the cartel party is advanced by emphasis on the 'cost of production' of policies and the constriction of the policy-space over which parties compete. We also explain why a cartel of parties might be stable, notwithstanding the temptation to defection often attributed to cartels as multi-player prisoners' dilemmas.     

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.     

Explaining accommodation and resistance in Kentucky

A primary tenet of critical theory is that capitalism and economicinequality produces crimes of resistance and crimes of accommodation andthus excessive social control. Although most tests of this paradigm focus onthe urban poor or people of color as oppressed groups, this paper addressesKentucky counties as aggregate groups suffering from industrial exploitation,economic oppression and excessive social control. We hypothesize that thecapitalist exploitation and colonization of the region's natural resources willlead to crimes of resistance, or marijuana cultivation, and crimes ofaccommodation, or child maltreatment. Findings reveal that exploitativeeconomic conditions within Kentucky counties increase marijuanaproduction while only physical exploitation of the labor force affects childmaltreatment.     

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.