PRISONERS' ATTITUDES TOWARD COMPONENTS OF THE LEGAL AND JUDICIAL SYSTEMS

Prisoners' attitudes toward components of the legal and judicial systems are reviewed and analyzed with data collected from prisoners in their first several days of incarceration. These data are analyzed within subgroups of the prison population. In general, attitudes toward the police are negative, attitudes toward the law and the judicial system are mixed, and attitudes toward lawyers are positive. However, preprison and prison status factors influence the attitudes held by prisoners, and these different patterns of influence are discussed.     

PRISON GUARDS' ATTITUDES TOWARD COMPONENTS OF THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

Only recently has there been very much interest in prison guards, their behavior, or their attitudes. Although prisons and their prisoners have been the subject of many investigations, the keepers have been overlooked. This article reports guards’attitudes toward the criminal justice system and suggests what these attitudes may mean.     

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE THATCHER GOVERNMENT'S 'GRAND STRATEGY' FOR THE CIVIL SERVICE: A PUBLIC POLICY PERSPECTIVE

Since the Thatcher Government came to office, the policies which it has pursued towards the civil service have been characterized by its determination to emphasize political control over the work of government departments and to'de-privilege' the civil service. The paper traces and evaluates the development of the Conservative Government's'grand strategy' for the civil service which was eventually given the form of the financial management initiative in 1982, an attempt to universalize MINIS and institutionalize Raynerism. Among other things, this policy study considers the cuts in civil service numbers and the changes in its hierarchy, the dismantling of the Priestley pay system, the civil service strike of 1981, and the disbanding of the Civil Service Department, involving as it did the dismissal of the Head of the Home Civil Service.     

Political generations in Northern Ireland

Since the late 1980s, Northern Ireland has seen a radical electoral shift away from the historically dominant parties in the Catholic and Protestant blocs – the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) and Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), respectively – towards the traditionally more ‘extreme’ parties – Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). This change in aggregate support has been accompanied by increasing differences between generations as older cohorts of UUP and SDLP supporters have been replaced by newer cohorts of DUP and Sinn Fein partisans. This is not a result of increased polarisation in values and attitudes (whether overtly political or simply communal intolerance) among younger cohorts who are, if anything, slightly more moderate than their forbears. Rather, this results from the changing political context in which new generations have been socialised – in particular the expanded choice sets facing voters as they have reached voting age. This in turn has positive implications for the consolidation of devolved democratic governance.