Criminal Justice in Soviet Russia

Compared to American criminal justice, the fabric of Russia's system is a tightly woven structure operating under centralized co-ordination. During recent history, the goals of Russia's criminal justice system have shifted from repression by terrorism to crime prevention through education and an emphasis on individual duty in peace-keeping matters.

The militia (police), created in 1917, has been mandated to prevent crime through intelligence activities, direct intervention, and citizen education. In 1966, it was given the responsibility for the supervision of offenders newly released from correctional institutions. Peoples Volunteer Brigades and the DRUZHINNIKS aid the militia in crime prevention.

The courts also make use of non-professionals in the persons of lay assessors to insure that the accused is judged by his “peers.” The court system itself is inquisitorial in nature as opposed to the American accusational model. As the accused person moves through pre-trial and trial procedures, one can see how his “rights” may be legally abridged at every step.

Russian courts have a variety of sentences from which to choose, ranging in harshness from public censure to death by shooting. Deprivation of liberty may be applied by degree from “education” to compulsory labor to strict incarceration. The Soviets are attempting an organized plan of diversionary sentencing, in order to reduce prison populations to all but the most dangerous offenders.

Correctional facilities depend on inmate commissions to keep order and motivate good behavior through group influence and peer pressure. Inmates as well as civilians have “a national duty to mind other people's business.”

In the United States, justice is fragmented into a variety of jurisdictions: municipal, county, state, and federal, each with its own law enforcement agencies, courts, and correctional agencies. Further, there is only limited coordination among the various segments of the system. There is little argument to the proposition that the American “system” of criminal justice is inefficient.

Unlike America's disjointed system, the Russian Criminal justice system is unified; militia (police), procurators (prosecutors), courts, and correctional facilities operate under a centralized coordinating body. This body is characterized by a unity of purpose and a high degree of systemic integration (Juviler, 1979, p. 1).     

GIRLS,BOYS, AND SCHOOLS: GENDER DIFFERENCES IN THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN SCHOOL‐RELATED FACTORS AND STUDENT DEVIANCE*

Research has identified several student and school characteristics that might be altered to reduce student deviance. Most of this research, however, fails to address whether gender moderates these relationships; that is, most studies do not distinguish between the effect of school‐related factors on boys' and girls' delinquency and drug use. In the current study, data from a nationally representative sample of 13,450 students in 253 public, nonalternative, secondary schools are used to examine hierarchical linear models of the relationships between student bonding, communal school organization, and male and female delinquency and drug use. Gender differences in the overall model of relationships are found as are differences in the relationships between student bonding elements and delinquency. Gender differences are not found in the relationships between student bonding elements and drug use, nor in the relationships between communal school organization elements and delinquency and drug use. Implications for theory and prevention are discussed.     

Blowback: Investor–State Dispute Mechanisms in International Trade Agreements

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) gave unprecedented rights to private investors. These provisions quickly became entrenched in policy and practice, appearing in most multilateral and bilateral trade agreements in the 1990s as American investors began to bring Canada and Mexico to arbitration. However, the Australia–U.S. Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA) of 2004 contained no such provisions. The purpose of this article is to explain why enthusiasm for NAFTA‐style protections waned so dramatically after a decade of entrenched practice. We argue that the reason lies in the “blowback,” the unintended and negative consequences created by NAFTA’s Chapter 11, and conclude that the abandonment of NAFTA‐style protections in the AUSFTA sets important precedents for the future of international free trade agreements.     

“EXPERIENCE OF THE EXPECTED?” RACE AND ETHNICITY DIFFERENCES IN THE EFFECTS OF POLICE CONTACT ON YOUTH*

Proponents of police reform have called for changes in the way police interact with citizens, particularly with people of color. The rationale, in part, is that when people have more favorable perceptions of their police encounters, they view the police as more just and are more willing to cooperate and comply with the law. To assess whether perceptions of police‐initiated encounters shape law‐related outcomes, we examine how satisfaction with treatment during prior police contact affects procedural injustice, reporting intentions, norms supporting the use of violence, and delinquency. We also explore whether these relationships vary among Blacks, Whites, and Latinos. Our results indicate that youth who have been stopped or arrested fare worse than their counterparts with no police‐initiated contact; however, the potentially negative ramifications of these encounters on all outcomes except violence norms are generally mitigated when youth are satisfied with their treatment. The effects of contact are mostly invariant across racial/ethnic groups when a robust set of control variables are included. We conclude that changing the perceptions of youth regarding how they are treated by the police may mitigate some of the harms of being stopped or arrested, but we caution that these perceptions are shaped by factors aside from police behavior during encounters.     

Prosecuting Juveniles as Adults

In Minnesota, the 1980 legislature statutorily defined a class of juvenile offenders presumed on the basis of age, alleged offense, and record of prior felony offenses to be unfit for treatment in the juvenile court. In this article we evaluate the effect of Minnesota's revised waiver statute by comparing cases in which waiver proceedings were initiated and in which transfer occurred for two time periods, before and after adoption of the legislatively defined presumptive criteria. Our findings suggest that the objective criteria adopted by the Minnesota legislature are not, in themselves, an adequate means for selecting juveniles for transfer to adult court. The criteria identify many juveniles whose records on close examination do not appear to be very serious and fail to identify many juveniles whose records are characterized by violent, frequent, and persistent delinquent activity.     

Unravelling Equality: The Impact of the United Kingdom's Spending Cuts on Women

This article examines a report on the likely impact of the spending cuts on women. The report, Unravelling Equality: A Human Rights and Equality Impact Assessment of the Spending Cuts on Women in Coventry, concludes that the public spending cuts will increase inequality between women and men. For some women the cuts may have serious negative effects on their human rights. The article argues that this report provides a blueprint for the kind of analysis which should be carried out all over the country to ensure that the impact of spending cuts on women is better understood and acted upon.     

Misrepresentation and Omission—An Analysis of the Review of the Public Sector Equality Duty

Many of the claims made in the Independent Review of the Public Sector Equality Duty are not supported by the evidence submitted to the review. In addition the report fails to reflect key barriers to the successful implementation of the PSED which are raised in the same submissions. This raises questions about the legitimacy of the review process, which has resulted in recommendations which may damage the working of the PSED.