An administrative dilemma: Sexual harassment and liability

Conservative estimates suggest that 40% of working women and 15% of their male counterparts have experienced some form of sexual harassment; and law enforcement personnel are no exception. Police officers are expected to adhere to the highest ethical standards and are subjected to greater public scrutiny than civilians. With criminal and civil remedies readily available to deter police misconduct, police agencies should be establishing policies that take a strong, pro-active stance against sexual harassment in the workplace. Surprisingly, though, 34% of police agencies in this country are still without formal policies regulating such behavior. This article is a guide to the legislation and case law that regulates those behaviours. Recommendations for policy formulation and implementation also are included. sexual harassment in the workplace presents a clear and present danger to law enforcement agencies. A recent survey found that thirty-four percent of law enforcement agencies in the United States have yet to formulate a written sexual harassment policy.     

Book reviews

How Nuclear Weapons Spread By F. Barnaby. Routledge, London, 1993, Hbk. £30.00.

Germany and the Approach of War in 1914 By V.R. Berghahn. Macmillan, London, second edition 1993 (first edition 1973), Hbk. £35.00, Pbk £10.99.

The Age of Migration’, International Population Movements in the Modern World By Stephan Castles and Mark Miller. Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1993, Hbk. £35.00, Pbk. £10.99.

Ideas and Foreign Policy, Beliefs, Institutions and Political Change Edited By Judith Goldstein and Robert O. Keohane. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1993, Hbk. S41.25, Pbk. S16.45.

European Monetary Union: Lessons from the Classical Gold Standard By Milivoje Panic. St. Martin's Press, New York, 1993.

In Defense of Naval Supremacy: Finance, Technology and British Naval Policy, 1889–1914 By Jon Tetsuro Sumida. Routledge, London, 1993, Pbk. £12.99.     

Satanism: Myth and reality in a contemporary moral panic

In the last decade, there have been many allegations about the prevalence of occult or Satanic criminality, which is believed to be involved in many offenses ranging from vandalism to child abuse and serial murder. Some have advocated the creation of specialized police units to combat the supposed threat. On the other hand, most of the alleged evils are very poorly substantiated, and highly questionable statements have been widely circulated. In fact, the current concern about the occult appears to have all the hallmarks of a classic moral panic, where a peripheral issue is suddenly perceived as a major social menace. This paper discusses the limited foundation of truth underlying the present crime-wave; and suggests that the panic reflects the moral and political agenda of extremists from the fundamentalist religious Right. *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** AW502017 00005     

Pursuing justice,respecting the law

Conclusion In the 1980s, despite the rise of terrorist attacks worldwide, the international community failed to respond cooperatively. When U.S. citizens were the focus of attacks, even friendly countries had little incentive to risk the safety of their citizens or the tenets of their foreign policy to prosecute terrorists. In response, the United States passed statutes providing for extraterritorial jurisdiction over acts committed abroad against U.S. citizens and then engaged in a series of dramatic seizures to enforce these measures. Unfortunately, these abductions were generally not defensible under international law and, in any event, could not be used when a terrorist was located within the territory of a major friendly country. In large part unexpectedly, however, the statutes have rendered such extraordinary measures unnecessary while still remedying what was a visible failure of international criminal cooperation.Even without threatening international abductions, the United States can use the Hostage Taking Act and the Terrorist Prosecution Act to demand extradition and to undertake independent investigations of violations of federal laws. These efforts put pressure on governments that have custody over terrorists. The international and the diplomatic consequences of neither extraditing nor prosecuting have proven sufficient to encourage U.S. allies to prosecute terrorists themselves. Surprisingly, therefore, the statutes have turned out to be effective because they encourage prosecutions of terrorists abroad, thereby remedying a failure in international cooperation and helping to ensure a consistent, strong, international response to acts of terrorism despite the continued inability of the United States to obtain custody of those attacking its citizens.This is a revised version of a paper presented at an international workshop on Principles and Procedures for a New Transnational Criminal Law, organized jointly by the Society for the Reform of Criminal Law and the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law, Freiburg, Germany, May 21–25, 1991.Class of 1993, Harvard Law School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A.