The American Presidential Election in Perspective

In 2004 President Bush was elected more decisively than in 2000, but he would have lost if Ohio had voted for John Kerry. Turnout in a polarised electorate was the highest since the 1960s. Bush saw his party increase its existing majorities in both houses of Congress - the first Republican candidate to do so since 1924. The Republicans benefited from political trends in the South, international developments and the impact of social issues. Gains by Bush at the time of the national conventions were reduced by Kerry's strong showing in the televised debates. In the end, Americans were unwilling to eject their commander-in-chief during the wars on terror and in Iraq. While the Republicans have been advancing in national politics since the 1960s, it is unclear whether 2004 was a realigning election. There was not a realignment in the classic way that it occurred in 1932.     

THE NEW PENOLOGY: NOTES ON THE EMERGING STRATEGY OF CORRECTIONS AND ITS IMPLICATIONS*

The new penology argues that an important new language of penology is emerging. This new language, which has its counterparts in other areas of the law as well, shifts focus away from the traditional concerns of the criminal law and criminology, which have focused on the individual, and redirects it to actuarial consideration of aggregates. This shift has a number of important implications: It facilitates development of a vision or model of a new type of criminal process that embraces increased reliance on imprisonment and that merges concerns for surveillance and custody, that shifts away from a concern with punishing individuals to managing aggregates of dangerous groups, and that affects the training and practice of criminologists.