PROBATION AND PAROLE: PUBLIC RISK AND THE FUTURE OF INCARCERATION ALTERNATIVES*

Jail and prison populations in the United States have continued to grow unabated during the past two decades but crime rates have not declined. Partly in response to the pressures caused by burgeoning correctional populations, the use of alternatives to incarceration has expanded. An ongoing debate centers on the effectiveness of these alternatives. Many criminal justice professionals and some researchers question whether such alternatives seriously restrict the criminal justice system 's ability to incapacitate the active offender. This study deals specifically with two alternatives to incarceration: probation and parole. We examine offender recidivism for a sample of probationers and parolees active in New Orleans, Louisiana, and offer a new approach to addressing the effectiveness issue. Past research has evaluated the effectiveness of alternatives by examining failure rates of diverted offenders. High failure rates, we argue, do not necessarily imply a significant loss of the incapacitative effects of imprisonment. We suggest that a more appropriate measure of the loss of incapacitative effect is the proportion of all offenses committed by persons on probation or parole. Our results suggest that such losses are surprisingly low. The policy implications of our findings are discussed.     

Dog Whistles and Democratic Mandates

Manipulative mixed messages from candidates to voters affect what governments are entitled to do in office. A party that wins an election gains a 'mandate to rule'. But there is a second type of mandate: a 'policy mandate' to enact specific policy proposals central to the winning party's campaign. Mixed-message politics in general can undermine policy mandates, and the use of 'dog whistle politics' - telling one group of voters one thing, while allowing or encouraging another group to believe another - makes the inferring of policy mandates especially problematic. Referendums provide only a partial remedy to dog whistle politics. Winning a clear policy mandate means forgoing dog whistle politics, despite the short term electoral advantage they may deliver.     

Red Star Ascending,Flagging Union Jack: Soviet Views on the Handover of Hong Kong

On 22 September 1982, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher met the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in Beijing, where they discussed the future of Hong Kong. The meeting did not go well. Deng made it clear that, with or without British cooperation, China would resume full sovereignty and administration over the tiny colony when the lease on Hong Kong expired on 30 June 1997. This article is based on two recently released documents from the Russian Foreign Ministry Archive (AVP RF) and reveals the hitherto unknown Soviet attitude toward these talks and the handover itself. Soviet leaders were very concerned that the Chinese should not consider Soviet control over vast territories in the Far East as based on unequal, hence illegitimate, nineteenth century treaties, as they did British control over Hong Kong. If those Russian treaties were unequal, then Soviet rule would be in grave danger. The Soviets sought to distinguish their treaties from the British ones. Seeking normal relations, the Chinese agreed not to challenge this interpretation.     

IDENTITY POLITICS IN CENTRAL ASIA

Michael Denison read Modern History at Keble College, Oxford University, where he was the Royal Historical Society's Frampton Prize scholar. He completed an MA at the University of Leeds in European Security Studies and is now writing his PhD at Leeds on the domestic and international dynamics of personal rule. He spent the summers of 2001 and 2002 in Central Asia conducting fieldwork. He has recently returned from Turkmenistan where he participated in a conference hosted by the Turkmen Ministry of Foreign Affairs.     

Towards a management renewal of the United Nations — Part II

In the first part of this article, the authors examined the historical and structural factors constraining the effectiveness of the Organization's capacity to carry out increasingly critical global mandates. In a second, concluding part of the article, the authors will suggest a strategy for UN reform and a process for carrying forward a ‘renewal exercise’ to equip the Organization for its role beyond the year 2000. Effective UN administrative reform, unlike so many previous attempts that were characterized by tinkering with its structure or taking isolated measures to improve performance, will require a comprehensive overhaul of, inter alia, the following: the professional management environment and culture, personnel, financial and supportive information management and technologies, the establishment of an effective oversight function and the development of operational management capabilities. The proposed post-50th anniversary ‘renewal exercise’ brings together the governmental, senior management and staff levels of the Organization, along with outside experts, to develop a long-term strategy and an integrated and practically implementable action plan for facilitating UN administrative reform. The exercise would also be guided by global experience and look to its success in charting the future by involving both member states and UN staff. Only such an approach will ensure that accountability for results is effectively in-built.