Regulating Dismissal from Employment: Administrative and Judicial Procedures in the Netherlands

In Dutch law unilateral termination of labour contracts usually is only possible with the prior permission of the Director of the District Labour Office. The functions of this administrative procedure have shifted considerably over time: originally an instrument of labour market policy, it is now predominantly oriented to prevention of dismissal without reasonable grounds. Some critics claim that this shift urges for abolishing this administrative procedure and leaving the matter to the judiciary competent in civil law disputes. Constitutionally sound as this position may be, its consequences would severely threaten realisation of the principle of 'no dismissal but on reasonable grounds'.
Results of empirical research into the Labour Office procedure and into the Lower Court procedure of "dissolution for important reasons" are presented to found this evaluative conclusion. Attention is paid to the discretion of dismissal officers and to the informal way of handling cases in the Lower Court. As a preliminary dispute processing institution, the Labour Office procedure is in tune with the comparatively large contribution of informal procedures to Dutch justice.     

IS JUSTICE “COLLAR-BLIND”?: PUNISHING MEDICAID PROVIDER FRAUD*

The question of punishment of white-collar criminals is addressed in this paper through an examination of sanctions imposed on health care providers convicted of defrauding California's Medicaid “Medi-Cal” system. Quantitative data were collected from Medi-Cal case files and, for comparative purposes, from a statewide data base maintained by the California Bureau of Criminal Statistics for grand theft arrestees. Qualitative data comprising interviews with Medi-Cal enforcement personnel supplement the analysis. The analysis of criminal sanctions reveals greater leniency in the punishment of Medi-Cal offenders than in the punishment of similarly charged non-white-collar offenders. The findings are related to recent debates regarding the severity of punishment for white-collar offenders.     

EXPLORING THE INTERSEXUAL NATURE OF VIOLENT CRIMES*

Data on criminal homicides (from the Uniform Crime Reports) and aggravated assaults and simple assaults (from the National Crime Surveys) are analyzed to determine the extent to which violent crimes occur within or between sexes. The routine activities approach is used to develop hypotheses, and those hypotheses are tested using models that estimate the proportion of ingroup and outgroup crimes “expected.” With the exception of homicides, in which women murder men more often than expected, each of these violent crimes occurs within sexes more often than expected. There is a strong relationship between the type of violence (simple assault, aggravated assault, and homicide) and the extent to which the target of female aggression is a male.     

PARENTAL MANAGEMENT: MEDIATOR OF THE EFFECT OF SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS ON EARLY DELINQUENCY *

This study used structural equation modeling with longitudinal data from the Oregon Youth Study to test the hypothesis that the effect of socioeconomic status (SES) on delinquency in early adolescence would be mediated entirely by parental management skills. SES was measured by parental education and occupation when the son was in the fourth grade, parental management skills during the sixth grade, and delinquency during the seventh grade. The hypothesis was supported: The direct effect of SES on delinquency was not significant after controlling for parental management, which was modeled as a second-order factor consisting of parental monitoring and discipline. Implications are discussed for theories of delinquency and for delinquency prevention and treatment.     

Seats, Votes, and Gerrymandering: Estimating Representation and Bias in State Legislative Redistricting

The Davis V. Bandemer case focused much attention on the problem of using statistical evidence to demonstrate the existence of political gerrymandering. In this paper, we evaluate the uses and limitations of measures of the seat-votes relationship in the Bandemer case. We outline a statistical method we have developed that can be used to estimate bias and the form of representation in legislative redistricting. We apply this method to Indiana state House and Senate elections for the period 1972 to 1984 and demonstrate a maximum bias of 6.2% toward the Republicans in the House and a 2.8% bias in the Senate.     

IN THEIR OWN VOICES: WOMEN COUNCILLORS IN NORTHERN IRELAND

Based largely on in-depth interviews with the majority of women local councillors in Northern Ireland, this article addresses two substantive issues: the reasons for the numerical underrepresentation of women and the issue of gender difference. The authors illustrate and explore these questions within the context of both the councillors' own responses and that supplied by a concurrent survey of the general population. While the councillors and the general population favour the increased representation of women in public office, evidence of a gender cleavage - while present - is perceived to be more potential than actual, given the dominance of the mutually reinforcing cleavages of nationality and religion.
This research was financed primarily by a grant from the Nuffield Foundation and secondarily by one from the Lockheed Foundation, administered by Queen's University, Belfast. The results cited from the wider probability survey are derived from an ESRC-funded project ('The Political Participation, Interests and Attitudes of Women in Northern Ireland' - R0O0 23 2726) currently being undertaken by the authors.
The authors benefitted from the comments of members of the 'Gender and Power' workshop at the 1992 session of the European Consortium for Political Research held at the University of herick, at which an earlier version of the paper was first presented, and from the comments of two referees.     

DETERMINISM,INDETERMINISM, AND CRIME: AN EMPIRICAL EXPLORATION*

Most individual-level research in criminology is based on a deterministic model: the factors that constrain individuals to crime or conformity are listed, and those factors are used to predict differences in the level of crime between individuals or groups of similar individuals. This paper explores an empirical model derived from recent work on sop determinism and indeterminism. Behaviors are said to vary in the extent to which they are determined, with behavior being fully determined at one end of the continuum and largely free (indetermined) at the other end. There is a discussion of those factors that influence the extent to which behavior is determined. And it is hypothesized that crime will be more variable and less predictable when conditions favor indeterminism. The empirical model in this paper, then, focuses on those factors believed to foster freedom of action and choice, and it uses those factors to predict differences in the amount of variation (unpredictability) in crime between individuals or groups of similar individuals. Data from two national surveys of adolescents provide tentative support for the hypothesis.     

AN ERRORS-IN-VARIABLE MODEL OF THE EFFECT OF POVERTY ON URBAN HOMICIDE RATES

Inconsistent findings on the relationship between poverty and violent crime have led some authors to question the presence of a structural relationship. There is reason, however, to believe that many of the existing estimates are biased because measures of poverty contain errors which are confounded with disturbances in the estimated models. In this paper we specify and estimate a model which accommodates the measurement error and provides an instrumental variable estimate of the effects of poverty on homicide rates in the 49 largest cities in the U.S. Compared to similar OLS estimates, the instrumental variable estimates are much larger and fit a model in which poverty increases the homicide rate. The results are similar when homicides are divided into four types: family homicides, other primary homicides, robbery homicides, and other-felony homicides