The effect of sexual stratification by race on arrest in sexual battery cases

LaFree finds that in most respects officials react more seriously to black assailants who assault white victims than other suspects. Yet paradoxically black assailants who assault white victims are not more likely to be arrested. He explains this apparent inconsistency by proposing that place of incarceration or length of sentence have to do with the seriousness of the offense, whereas arrest has to do with whether the assailant is guilty or innocent. This paper rejects that distinction, arguing that both involve judgments that reflect the influence of similar factors. Several such factors are examined in an analysis of 347 offense reports on sexual battery in Tallahassee over a recent five-year period. The data show that exceptionally cleared cases are the rule in black assailant-black victim (BB) rapes where victims and assailants are mostly acquainted, whereas cases pending predominate in black assailant-white victim (BW) rapes where victims and assailants are mostly strangers. When victims and assailants are acquainted, proportionately more arrests are made in BW rapes than in BB rapes. These findings are consistant with conflict theory’s position that powerful groups enforce sexual-property rules by the differential application of criminal law and punitive sanctions.     

State Fiscal Responses to Welfare Reform during Recessions: Lessons for the Future

The 1996 welfare reform transformed open-ended matching grants to states to fixed block grants. This article considers whether, given the new regime, states will be able and willing to meet the need for public assistance during recessions. The accumulation of large balances of unspent federal welfare funds helped states weather the first year or so of the current recession without having to cut programs for needy families. While new fiscal rules promoted positive reform during a period of economic prosperity, they may be leaving states and their most vulnerable citizens at serious risk as the economic and fiscal slowdown continues.     

The Nature of Declining Party Membership in Denmark: Causes and Consequences

Declining party membership in Denmark is analysed in light of the general development of political participation in the 1970s and 1980s. It is demonstrated that the decline in party membership had nothing to do with a general decline in participation. The decline is rather the result of three different processes: (1) the declining number of farmers, (2) the weakening of the organization of the workers, and (3) the political mobilization of the new middle class and women. It is argued, therefore, that the causes of the decline are primarily demographic and socio-economic. It is furthermore argued that the declining membership threatens the traditional mobilizing and socializing functions of the parties and thereby may increase political inequality in the Danish society.     

Foreign policy planning and coordination in Canada: the Policy Planning Staff at External Affairs

Abstract: This paper considers policy planning from the perspective of practitioners. It examines the evolution of policy planning in comparison with planning staffs' original objectives. It contrasts the practice of policy planning at External Affairs with policy planning theory, and argues that policy planners' contribution to the policy process lies less in forecasting or futurology and more in policy integration, challenging existing policy, developing new initiatives, and serving the department's policy-making machinery. Sommaire: Dans cet exposé, la planification des politiques est envisagée du point de vue des praticiens. On y examine l'évolution de cette planification en la comparant aux objectifs d'origine du personnel de planification. On y compare la planification des politiques, telle que pratiquée au ministère des Affaires extérieures, à la théorie de la planification des politiques. L'exposé soutient qu'en ce qui concerne Ie processus d'élaboration de cellcs-ci, la contribution des planificateurs réside moins dans la prévision ou la futurologic que dans l'intégration des politiques, la mise en question des politiques existantes, l'élaboration de nouvelles initiatives et dans le maintien du bon fonctionnement des mécanismes mettant au point les politiques du ministère.     

The self-image of adolescents: A study of four cultures

This paper describes the utilization of the Offer Self-Image Questionnaire (OSIQ) for research purposes on a variety of adolescent populations and demonstrates the OSIQ's effectiveness in meaningfully separating normal, juvenile delinquent, and emotionally disturbed adolescents; older and younger teenagers; males and females. It also considers the utilization of the OSIQ in four different cultures (United States, Ireland, Australia, and Israel) and concentrates on the results obtained when the OSIQ is given adolescents in these four cultures. It discusses the findings and points to some of the methodological problems which are inherent in doing cross-cultural research.Presented at the American Educational Research Association meeting in San Francisco, California, April 20, 1976.Received his M.D. from the University of Chicago. He interned at the University of Illinois and took his psychiatric residency at Michael Reese Hospital and University of Chicago. He is a graduate of the Institute for Psychoanalysis in Chicago. Major interests have been concept of mental health and the developmental psychology of adolescence.Received his Ph.D. in human development from the University of Chicago. Research interests are adolescence and delinquency.Received his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Chicago. Major interests are psychotherapy research and adolescence.     

Racial Vote Dilution: Impact of the Reagan DOJ and the Burger Court on the Voting Rights Act

Since passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) and the subsequentregistration of millions of minority voters, racially basedvoting discrimination has shifted from a strategy of vote denialto one of vote dilution. The VRA, especially Section 2 and 5,is the dramatic congressional effort to eliminate strategiesthat deny effective political participation to millions of citizens.However, the VRA has to be aggressively implemented by the U.S.Department of Justice (DOJ), and it has to be broadly validated,in concrete cases and controversies in federal courts, if itis to blunt the vote discrimination/dilution strategy. Whilethe Warren Court saw Section 5 as a radical but legitimate toolto end the perpetuation of voting discrimination, the BurgerCourt has seen Section 5 in less sweeping terms. And while theCarter administration DOJ aggressively supported minority plaintiffsin federal voting rights litigation brought under Sections 2and 5, the Reagan administration has redirected civil rightspolicy, including the methodology of implementing Sections 2and 5 of the VRA.     

Comments and Reviews

Book reviewed in this article:
An extended review of Leif Lewin, Ideologi och strategi: Svensk politik under 100 àr (Ideology and Strategy: Swedish Politics through 100 Years), Stockholm: Norstedt, 1984.     

“She's not really a woman, she's half a man”: Gendered discourses of embodiment in a French farming community

This paper is about constructions of embodiment in farming families in a community of the Aveyron region in Southern France. More particularly, it explores how the discursive representation of women's bodies both reproduces and legitimates unequal gender relations between women and men on the farm and in the local community. It is argued here that gender is constituted through the ways in which individuals live and construct their bodies within a particular social, cultural, and economic context. But because what is constructed as masculine is valued over what is constructed as feminine, women's bodies and abilities are inferiorised and devalued. In the farming context discussed in this paper, farm women are never seen as having bodies which enable them to farm in the same terms as men. Women's work on the farm is seen as only secondary and complementary to that of farmers in the same way that women's bodies are seen to be lacking in masculine attributes which are defined as central to farming. So that even when women show that they can run farms by themselves and do work which is usually defined as masculine, they are either represented as only being able to do so because they have male help, or because their bodies and attributes do not conform to culturally constructed heterosexual norms of femininity.