The Ends of Innocence: Age as a Mode of Inquiry in Sociolegal Studies

This article considers two recent books in the history of childhood, youth, and the law: Holly Brewer, By Birth or Consent and Stephen Robertson, Crimes Against Children . It argues that these works mark the emergence of age as a category of analysis in sociolegal studies. It calls for further investigations in the legal history of childhood and youth, outlines several areas of interest, and suggests that attention to age will alter how scholars look at the law by complicating key concepts such as innocence, authority, and citizenship. Studies of age and the law could benefit from cross-cultural and transnational approaches.     

Making Sense of COMPSTAT: A Theory-Based Analysis of Organizational Change in Three Police Departments

COMPSTAT, the latest innovation in American policing, has been widely heralded as a management and technological system whose elements work together to transform police organizations radically. Skeptical observers suggest that COMPSTAT merely reinforces existing structures and practices. However, in trying to assess how much COMPSTAT has altered police organizations, research has failed to provide a broader theoretical basis for explaining how COMPSTAT operates and for understanding the implications of this reform. This article compares two different perspectives on organizations—technical/rational and institutional—to COMPSTAT's adoption and operation in three municipal police departments. Based on fieldwork, our analysis suggests that relative to technical considerations for changing each organization to improve its effectiveness, all three sites adopted COMPSTAT in response to strong institutional pressures to appear progressive and successful. Furthermore, institutional theory better explained the nature of the changes we observed under COMPSTAT than the technical/rational model. The greatest collective emphasis was on those COMPSTAT elements that were most likely to confer legitimacy, and on implementing them in ways that would minimize disruption to existing organizational routines. COMPSTAT was less successful when trying to provide a basis for rigorously assessing organizational performance, and when trying to change those structures and routines widely accepted as being "appropriate." We posit that it will take profound changes in the technical and institutional environments of American police agencies for police departments to restructure in the ways anticipated by a technically efficient COMPSTAT.     

SCHOOLS AS COMMUNITIES: THE RELATIONSHIPS AMONG COMMUNAL SCHOOL ORGANIZATION,STUDENT BONDING,AND SCHOOL DISORDER*

Research has indicated that school factors such as communal school organization and student bonding are predictive of school disorder, with greater communal organization and greater student bonding leading to less delinquency and victimization. Data from a nationally representative sample of 254 public, nonalternative, secondary schools were used to examine structural equation models representing hypothesized relationships among communal school organization, student bonding, and school disorder. The hypothesis that communally organized schools would have less disorder held true for teacher victimization and student delinquency, but not for student victimization. In addition, the hypothesis that the relationship between communal school organization and school disorder would be mediated by student bonding was supported for student delinquency, but not for teacher victimization.     

理解与尊重:关于构建我国对中东研究话语体系的思考

构建我国对中东研究的话语体系,应注意一些基本要素。以中国的主流人文理念为指导:与美国和欧洲某些国家那套居高临下、盛气凌人的话语体系相比,中国平等待人的话语体系更能为中东伊斯兰国家所接受,因而也应得到我国从事中东研究的专家学者们的重视和珍惜;重视研究对象自身的文献资料:既要重视引证国外资料文献的平衡性,也得关注中国穆斯林已形成的一套有别于基督教、天主教的语汇和译名;注意符合时代精神:构建中国对中东研究的话语体系,须符合经济全球化的时代背景、和平与发展的时代主题和国际关系民主化的时代趋势等要素所形成的时代精神,在分析阐述美国与伊斯兰世界这对矛盾时,必须关注它们在时代精神这一涉及国家核心价值观的重要内涵方面的表现和分歧。探讨构建社会主义中国的中东研究话语体系,实际上也是读解"中国特色"内涵的一个组成部分。