THE LANGUAGE OF STIGMATIZATION AND THE MARK OF VIOLENCE: EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE ON THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION AND USE OF CRIMINAL RECORD STIGMA

After years of stagnation, labeling theory has recently gained new empirical support. Simultaneously, new policy initiatives have attempted to restructure criminal record stigma to reduce reintegration barriers, and subsequent recidivism, driven by labeling. For example, in a recent Department of Justice (DOJ) language policy, person‐first terms (e.g., “person with a conviction”) were substituted for crime‐first terms (e.g., “offender”). The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has also issued guidelines to structure how decision‐makers use criminal records. Unfortunately, little is currently known about the social construction and use of criminal record stigma or the potential effects of such policy changes. In the current study, we provide two unique empirical tests. In study 1, we examine the social construction of stigma by testing DOJ's language policy with experimental data from a nationally representative sample of American adults (N = 996). In study 2, we use a separate nationwide experiment (N = 1,540) to examine how the contextualization of criminal records influences social exclusion decisions. Across both studies, we find consistent evidence of a “mark of violence.” The public perceives that individuals with violent convictions are the most likely to commit future crimes, and it is more supportive of excluding these individuals from employment. Crime‐first terms exacerbate perceived recidivism risk for individuals with violent convictions.     

Beyond 5 Percent: Optimal Municipal Slack Resources and Credit Ratings

Local governments tend to keep large amounts of slack financial resources to hedge against risk and uncertainty. To date, there has been little empirical research on whether those slack holdings are inadequate, adequate, or perhaps excessive relative to those risks and uncertainties. I address this gap in current research by using credit quality as a criterion to consider “optimal” slack resource levels. I find that for a national sample of local governments, slack resources’ effect on credit quality is statistically but not substantively significant. Having some rather than no slack increases, the likelihood of receiving a more desirable rating by 5–9 percent, but large slack holdings have little if any additional effect. These findings have implications for future work on slack resources, and for debt management broadly.     

THE NEW GOVERNANCE ARRANGEMENTS FOR NHS FOUNDATION TRUST HOSPITALS: REFRAMING GOVERNORS AS META‐REGULATORS

New governance arrangements for NHS Foundation Trusts (FTs) aimed to replace centralized state ownership of acute English hospitals with a new form of social ownership. Under this, trusts would exist as independent public interest organizations on the model of mutuals and co‐operative societies. Assessing the impact of the new arrangements on the management structure of four acute hospitals, we demonstrate that FTs have failed to deliver social ownership and local accountability on this model. We suggest that policy‐makers should re‐frame the governance apparatus associated with mutualism and social ownership in terms of the concept of meta‐regulation. By re‐framing governors as meta‐regulators, regulatory institutions would acquire new powers to steer FTs towards sustainable forms of compliance via non‐coercive, non‐intrusive means.     

Money Matters: The Financing of the Conservative Party

The article examines the financing of the Conservative Party in the aftermath of the 2001 general election. An examination of the party's income and expenditure shows that pre-2001 patterns remain - the Conservatives are the poorer of the two main parties but continue to be the principal recipient of corporate and in-kind donations. However, the article also demonstrates that income rose sharply in the aftermath of the change of leadership in 2003, suggesting that this change may have stimulated donations. Also, as for other parties, questions of probity continue to arise following larger donations but, like Labour, the Conservatives oppose any caps on political giving.     

Much Ado about Nothing? The Size and Credit Quality Implications of Municipal Other Postemployment Benefit Liabilities

This paper presents estimates of the size and scope of other postemployment benefit (OPEB) liabilities among municipal governments. The findings indicate these liabilities vary substantially, ranging from less than a dollar per capita to more than $2,000 per capita. Those liabilities were then incorporated into separate models of credit ratings and borrowing costs. Results suggest OPEB liabilities do not directly affect credit quality, but the interaction between an issuer's fiscal capacity to address its liability does have a notable effect.     

TOWARD A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF POLITICIZED POLICING ATTITUDES: CONFLICTED CONSERVATISM AND SUPPORT FOR POLICE USE OF FORCE

America is in the midst of an extraordinary public debate about police policy. “Conflicted conservatives,” who are symbolically conservative but operationally liberal, may have a disproportionate influence on policy making. Specifically, conflicted conservatives may be more likely to vote across party lines because they attend more to utilitarian concerns about social conditions and government performance than to symbolic issues. Prior criminological research, however, typically has treated conservatives as a homogenous group. We use data from the General Social Survey to explore the extent and correlates of global and situational support for police use of force among conflicted conservatives and other political groups. The findings from logistic regression models estimated with two analytic samples (N = 11,119 and 2,069) indicate that conflicted conservatives’ attitudes about police use of force are distinct from those of “consistent conservatives” who are both symbolically and operationally conservative, but do not reflect a unique consideration of utilitarian concerns over symbolic beliefs. Two other notable findings emerged: 1) Racial attitudes predicted support for police use of excessive force invariably across political groups and 2) public support for excessive force increased substantially during the first decade of the twenty‐first century, sharply contrasting trends in general punitive sentiment.