Crime clearance rates in Canadian municipalities: A test of Donald Black's theory of law

Donald Black's theory of law has been considered an important theory in the sociology of law. However, while the theory views law as a quantity variable, there has been limited empirical support from quantitative studies. This study offers a quantitative test of Black's theory using data from 579 Canadian municipalities. The results show that the quantity of law, in terms of crime clearance rates, varies positively with stratification, morphology, culture, and organization just as Black's theory has predicted. In addition, population size, population density, the property and violent crime rates, and policing resources also affect the clearance rates. These findings support the general notion that there is more law for certain groups and under certain social conditions. Also, most of the findings are consistent with Black's theory, thus supporting its viability as a sociological theory. In addition, two seemingly contradictory explanations, the resource explanation and the need/dependency explanation, are proposed to interpret the findings. These contradictory and yet complementary explanations perhaps reflect the reality of law in society.     

How Chinese e-public feel and think about corruption: A case study of Audit Storm (Shenji fengbao – 审计风暴 – Part II)

Corruption is pervasive, rampant, enduring, and above all else a tolerated and taken for granted social problem in China. Still, corruption is a major concern for the political leaders, general public and foreign observers. Foreigners complained about the corruption cost of doing business in China. Students took to the street and peasants staged violent protest against government corruption. The consensus is that corruption challenges CPC's legitimacy and threatens China's stability.A systematic review of the literature uncovers no investigation on the Chinese people's reception and reaction to the corruption, on the internet. This is a first attempt to do so.This is a research into the “feelings” and “thinking” of Chinese internet users (e-public) on (anti)corruption in China. Specially, it tries to document and analyze the comments–reaction of the e-public to news articles on various aspects of “Audit Storm” in June–July 2004.     

An Incomplete Victory: The Implications of QT v Director of Immigration for the Protection of Gay Rights in Hong Kong

QT v Director of Immigration is the most important decision on gay rights in Hong Kong since the unequal ages of consent between heterosexuals and homosexuals were held to be unconstitutional 10 years ago. The Court of Appeal of Hong Kong affirmed the right of same‐sex couples married or in a civil partnership overseas to be treated on an equal basis with married heterosexual couples. This note considers the strengths and shortcomings of the Court of Appeal's reasoning, in terms of its potential significance both to the rights of sexual minorities and to the wider protection of human rights by means of the common law.     

Childhood Abuse,Intrapersonal Strength,and Suicide Resilience in African American Females who Attempted Suicide

There is a significant association between childhood abuse and suicidal behavior in low-income African American women with a recent suicide attempt. Increasingly, empirical focus is shifting toward including suicide resilience, which mitigates against suicidal behavior. This cross-sectional study examines childhood abuse, intrapersonal strengths, and suicide resilience in 121 African American women, average age of 36.07 years (SD?=?11.03) with recent exposure to intimate partner violence and a suicide attempt. To address the hypothesis that childhood abuse will be negatively related to suicide resilience and that this effect will be mediated by intrapersonal strengths that serve as protective factors, structural equation modeling examined the relations among three latent variables: childhood abuse (measured via physical, sexual, and emotional abuse), intrapersonal strengths (assessed by self-efficacy and spiritual well-being), and suicide resilience (operationalized via the three components of suicide resilience—internal protective, external protective, and emotional stability). The initial measurement model and the structural model both indicated excellent fit. Results indicated that childhood abuse was negatively associated with intrapersonal strengths and suicide resilience, intrapersonal strengths were positively associated with suicide resilience, and intrapersonal strengths fully mediated the association between childhood abuse and suicide resilience. Thus, the results suggest a positive and protective influence of intrapersonal strengths on suicide resilience in the face of childhood abuse in suicidal African American women. The clinical implications and directions for future research that emerge from these findings are discussed.     

Agenda-Setting in Greenpeace and Amnesty: The Limits of Centralisation in International NGOs

While international nongovernmental organisations (INGOs) have been heavily studied for their role in transnational advocacy, most research has ignored their internal organisation and the relationships between international and grassroots offices. Intuition suggests that INGOs should face structural imperatives to balance maintaining global brands while simultaneously mobilising disparate publics in local contexts. However, this intuition has not yet been systematically studied. We address this with a paired comparison of Amnesty International and Greenpeace. Using case studies and an original dataset of website attributes, we show that campaigns promoted by international offices and their national counterparts reflect a balance between local diversity and global unity, revealing organisational structures that combine centralised agenda-setting with decentralised agenda implementation. Our research identifies a “measurement gap” with implications for understanding INGO accountability and effectiveness, and indicates that a more complete research programme on INGOs must include attention to internal organisation and structural diversity.     

Oral fluid drug tests: Effects of adulterants and foodstuffs

An on-site oral fluid drug screen, Oratect^®, was used to investigate the effects of adulterants and foodstuffs on oral fluid test results. Common foods, beverages, food ingredients, cosmetics and hygienic products were demonstrated not to cause false positive results when tested 30 min after their consumption. Evaluations of two commercial oral fluid adulterants, “Clear Choice^® Fizzy Flush™” and “Test’in™ Spit n Kleen Mouthwash” suggest their mechanism of action is the clearing of residual drugs of abuse compounds through rinsing of the oral cavity. They do not directly destroy the drug compounds or change the pH of the oral fluid. It is also suggested that a common mouthwash would perform similar action.     

Law of assembly in China: People''s Republic of China vs. Republic of China

This paper is a comparative study of law of assembly between the People's Republic of China (PRC) vs. the Republic of China (Taiwan) (ROC). The comparison is achieved by looking at how these two societies regulate and police assembly, procession, and demonstration (hereinafter “public assembly”). Particularly it looks at the constitutional mandate and legal limitations on police powers in managing such public gatherings, e.g. what are the role and functions, and powers and limitation of the police in dealing with public assembly application and conduct.This comparative project is conducted with a view to understand the relative development in police powers in the two Chinese societies, once linked by history and culture and now divided by geography and ideology. It is assumed that in order to achieve a political “unification” of the two societies under a “one country two systems” formula,or any other viable political settlement, some understanding of how the two legal systems work is important in breaching their differences.In a still larger context, this research rides the tide of comparative policing in exposing and explicating how police in these two closed societies, ROC (Confucianism) and PRC (Socialism), come to terms with social protests and political challenges; more broadly how they balance the forces of reform and control with the use of law.     

Going 'Back' and Staying 'Out': Articulating the postcolonial Hong Kong subjects in the development of China

In examining the Hong Kongers' participation in the social development of China, I suggest that China-development provides an important local site for the study of Chinese postcoloniality. Not only does it disclose the multiple and contradicting effects of colonial power, it also embodies the conflicting visions of modern China between the official Grand Narrative of modern Chinese nationhood and the local narratives of modern Chineseness. It became a site that created discursive possibilities for individual Hong Kongers to negotiate their ambivalent identification with and resistance to China. In this paper, I show how Hong Kongers were constructed as 'free subjects' under the British colonial discourse of liberalism which in turn shaped the Hong Kong discourse of China-development. Circulating in China-development was the image of China as the oppressive and corrupt 'inside' and Hong Kong as a free 'outside' space of accountability and equality of opportunities. Vacillating between East and West, Hong Kongers came to represent themselves as modern Chinese towards which they worked to develop their mainland compatriots.