Long-term success in mediation

This article reports the results of a study of the antecedents of long-term success in community mediation. Seventy-three mediation sessions were recorded and content analyzed. The participants were interviewed at two points: immediately after mediation and 4 to 8 months later. No relationship was found between the quality of the agreements—i.e., the extent to which they solved immediate problems- and long-term success as measured by compliance, improved relations between the parties, and the absence of new problems. On the other hand, joint problem solving by the disputants was related to complainant perceptions of improved relations with the other party. Also respondent perceptions that the mediation had been fair and that all the problems had come out were related to all aspects of long-term success in the eyes of the complainant. The latter results support a procedural justice analysis of mediation and underline the importance of mediator attention to the respondent.     

Senator Opposition to Supreme Court Nominations: Reference Dependence on the Departing Justice

Research indicates that senators evaluate U.S. Supreme Court nominations on two ideological dimensions: the distance between themselves and the nominee, and the potential effect confirmation would have on the Court median. My analysis of nominations from 1968 to 2006 provides evidence that senators are also influenced by the ideological contrast between the nominee and the departing justice.     

West African Voices

A new literary programme has been started in the West AfricanService of the B.B.C., and this article is a reprint of oneof the talks. The Ibo speaker was formerly in the Customs, andqualified as a barrister last November: he is also the authorof numerous poems in English, and of a novel, The Prince ofUtete. The other two are schoolmasters working as Assistantsat the School of Oriental and African Studies. For technicalreasons, the orthography is not quite complete.     

Reducing lockup crowding with expedited initial processing of minor offenders

This article assesses the effects of one jurisdiction's attempt to control its lockup population through creation of a separate processing center designed to expedite initial processing of individuals charged with misdemeanors and minor felonies. In the new center, cases were screened and initial hearings held around-the-clock, seven days per week. “Before” and “after” samples of arrestees are compared on prosecutorial screening time, time to court, and time in custody. The results show significant reductions in case screening and length of time to initial court hearing. Individuals released on recognizance and those with no charges filed spent significantly less time in custody and saved considerable bed space for the jurisdiction. Individuals with bond set experienced no reductions in length of custody. Collateral consequences of the new facility included improved procedural justice, expanded detention capacity in the county, and an end to part of the federal litigation.     

Differentiating among racial/ethnic groups and its implications for understanding juvenile justice decision making

Both theory and research have been refined to gain a better understanding of when race and ethnicity matter in justice proceedings. In the present research, this line of inquiry was continued by differentiating among minority youth to assess the extent being African American, Native American, and Asian American influenced juvenile justice decision making and how these effects compared to one another and Whites. Utilizing an interpretation of the symbolic threat thesis that emphasizes stereotyping, the authors anticipated Native Americans to be responded to more severely than African Americans, followed by Asian Americans who were anticipated to be responded to more like Whites. The results indicated partial support for these expectations.     

Reassessing the family-delinquency association: Do family type, family processes, and economic factors make a difference?

The present study drew on four competing theoretical perspectives to examine the relationship between family structure and juvenile delinquency. Using data from the Add Health Study, the authors examined nonserious and serious delinquent behavior across youth from different types of households and also considered how the association between family structure and delinquency might be conditioned by family processes and economic factors. Results from negative binomial regression analyses indicated that, in general, type of household was not a significant predictor of nonserious or serious delinquency. Rather, maternal attachment emerged as the most important determinant of delinquent behavior among youth from all family types. The results are discussed within the context of Hirschi's original interpretation of social control theory and future directions for research are suggested.     

Reinvigorating publicly funded medicare in Ontario: new public policy and public administration techniques

Abstract: In the increasingly complex and “horizontal” environment of Canadian governmental decision‐making, the ability of governments to advance a major new policy initiative can be compromised or impeded by the often cumbersome systems evolved to ensure both due diligence and a comprehensive approach. In Ontario, the urgent and multi‐faceted health care reform agenda has been implemented using a new set of policy‐development and program‐implementation techniques. This paper summarizes those reforms. In doing so, it outlines the degree to which the reform agenda has been implemented using techniques and processes that have been grafted onto or even short circuited existing decision‐making systems. The paper also draws conclusions about the potential utility of the Ontario experience both for health care reform and for developing new mechanisms to implement challenging, time‐limited reform agendas within parliamentary systems of government with politically neutral civil services. Sommaire: Dans le contexte de plus en plus complexe et “horizontal” de la prise de décisions gouvernementale au Canada, l'aptitude des gouvernements à promouvoir une nouvelle initiative politique majeure peut être compromise ou entravée par la lourdeur des systèmes élaborés pour assurer une diligence raisonnable et une approche exhaustive. En Ontario, le programme de réforme des soins de santé, urgent et polyvalent, a été mis en œuvre grâce à un nouvel ensemble de techniques d‘élaboration de politiques et de mise en œuvre de programmes. Le présent article résume ces réformes. Ce faisant, il souligne comment le programme de réforme a été mis en œuvre grâce à des techniques et processus qui ont été greffés, ou qui ont même court‐circuité les systèmes de prise de décisions existants. L'article tire aussi des conclusions sur l'utilité possible de l'expérience de l'Ontario en ce qui concerne la réforme des soins de santé mais aussi la mise au point de nouveaux mécanismes pour exécuter des programmes de réforme difficiles, à délai déterminé, au sein de systèmes parlementaires de gouvernement avec des fonctions civiles politiquement neutres.     

The use of the laser for determining the direction of the shots and the position of the victim's body in gunshot wounds

In this article a practical case is described when gunshot directions and position of a victim's body at the moment of each shot were determined by natural simulation using an LG-78 laser (made in the form of a gun).