Counterterrorism research and development

An effective de-radicalization process in prisons is intended to facilitate the renouncement of violence and terrorism by those that have carried out such offenses. A key lesson that can be drawn from Israel's de-radicalization efforts is that it is possible, indeed recommended, to treat inmates—regardless of their level of radicalization—in a dignified and humane manner. However, Israel's ability to significantly de-radicalize security prisoners is limited if it is at all existent in its current form. Security prisoners with the potential for positive change should be placed in a different, perhaps foreign setting. This article provides an overview of Israel's prison system, the challenges it faces, its efforts to de-radicalize security inmates and suggests additional courses of action.     

Situated Justice: A Contextual Analysis of Fairness and Inequality in Employment Discrimination Litigation

A substantial body of sociolegal scholarship suggests that the legitimacy of the law crucially depends on the public's perception that legal processes are fair. The bulk of this research relies on an underdeveloped account of the material and institutional contexts of litigants' perceptions of fairness. We introduce an analysis of situated justice to capture a contextualized conception of how litigants narrate fairness in their actual legal encounters. Our analysis draws on 100 in‐depth interviews with defendant's representatives, plaintiffs, and lawyers involved in employment discrimination lawsuits, selected as part of a multimethod study of 1,788 discrimination cases filed in U.S. district courts between 1988 and 2003. This article offers two key empirical findings, the first at the level of individual perceptions and the second at the level of legal institutions. First, we find that neither defendants' representatives nor plaintiffs believe discrimination law is fair. Rather than sharing a complaint, however, each side sees unfairness only in those aspects of the process that work to their disadvantage. Second, we demonstrate that the very notion of fairness can belie structural asymmetries that, overall, profoundly benefit employers in employment discrimination lawsuits. We conclude by discussing how a situated justice analysis calls for a rethinking of empirical research on fairness. Audio recordings of respondents quoted in this article are available online. ¹      

Prison gang integration and inmate violence

Purpose

Gang membership has been linked in a number of prior studies with inmate misconduct; known gang members are more prone than non-gang members to act violently behind bars. Theories of intergroup conflict suggest, however, there is reason to expect that broader within-prison gang dynamics, not just gang membership alone, are associated with the incidence of violence.

Methods

We collected data on inmates from a large southern state and estimated multilevel models of inmate-on-inmate violence. Included in our models were a variety of common individual-level correlates of violent misconduct, among them gang membership. Substantive prison-level correlates included the percentage of gang members and “gang integration,” the latter being a measure of gang heterogeneity.

Results

We found a modest association between both gang variables and inmate-on-inmate violence, with gang integration being the most significant of the two.

Conclusions

Gang membership is an important correlate of inmate violence, but attention to broader prison gang dynamics is clearly necessary. We discuss the implications of this finding for theories of inmate violence.     

ALTERNATIVE ARRANGEMENTS FOR COST EFFECTIVE POLLUTION ABATEMENT: THE NEED FOR IMPLEMENTATION ANALYSIS

After examining policies and proposals designed to achieve cost-effective pollution abatement, the authors argue that design of economically elegant solutions to pollution control problems needs implementation analysis if the policies are to be successfully carried out. They review some institutional obstacles to implementation and conclude that these impediments should not prevent adoption.