Reconciliation and Political Legitimacy: The Old Australia and the New South Africa

In both Australia and South Africa a state-sponsored discourse of reconciliation has been deployed as a tool of national integration and state building. This usage has tended to encourage a politics of selective memory that runs contrary to the spirit of reconciliation as recognition of different views of the nation. This article seeks to recover (and promote) a more positive concept of reconciliation by treating it as a discursive, democratic space in which different versions of the national story can be acknowledged and negotiated. The cases of Australia and South Africa are used in a mutually illuminating way to explore what "telling the truth" about the past might mean and how such "truth-telling" might help restore legitimacy to liberal states confronted with a "broken moral order".     

Routine activities and social control in the aftermath of a natural catastrophe

The first two being from the University of Miami, the latter two from the University of Florida.     

Controlling School Crime: An Examination of Interorganizational Relations of School and Juvenile Justice Professionals

Abstract Crime in and around schools creates a climate of fear among students and teachers, and disrupts the learning environment. Effective control of school crime demands the cooperative efforts of school and juvenile justice officials. This paper examines the interorganizational relations between school principals, teachers, and juvenile probation officers by comparing survey results from three cities. Findings reveal significant differences onmethods for controlling school crime; and on due process and sharing of school and court records. School and court officials do cooperate in working with students who are under probation supervision; but the extent of their interaction is characterized by a low level of interorganizational relations.     

Immigration and the emergence of right-wing violence in unified Germany

The articles that make up this special issue were all derived from presentations at a conference that took place at the Pennsylvania State University in the Fall of 1993. This paper presents an overview of the themes and issues discussed at that conference. While the conference was broadly international, co-sponsored by Penn State University and the Max-Planck-Institut and supported financially by the DAAD, the articles included in this special issue focus principally on the nature and amount of hate crimes and xenophobia in Germany. This article describes the international and comparative nature of the conference and explains the decision to focus on the German situation.     

Just punishments: Guideline sentences and normative consensus

The federal sentencing guidelines prescribe ranges of sentences to be given to persons convicted of felonies in the federal criminal courts. The U.S. Sentencing Commission wrote the guidelines attempting to make sentences conform to community views of appropriate punishments, along with several other criteria. Employing data from a 1994 national sample of adult Americans, designed as a factorial survey, the degree of correspondence is shown between guidelines sentences and those desired by the American public. Although at the individual level only a modest degree of concordance was found, the central tendencies of public opinion (median sentences) were found to correspond quite closely to the guidelines sentences. The major points of disagreement centered around drug trafficking crimes: the guidelines prescribed very long sentences for those crimes and distinguished sharply among trafficking in heroin, powder cocaine, and crack, whereas median sentences desired by the public were much lower and did not distinguish sharply among trafficking in those drugs. We interpret the findings as indicating that the guidelines sentences conform reasonably closely to American normative consensus concerning the sentencing of federal felons.The research reported in this article was commissioned by the U.S. Sentencing Commission. The views expressed in this article are not necessarily endorsed by the Commission. Full expositions of the findings from the national survey used are given by Rossi and Berk (1995, 1997).     

USING A JURY SIMULATION AS A CLASSROOM EXERCISE

The authors' empirical research project considers the effects of differences in actual legal rules on jury decisions and, concurrently, gives business students the opportunity to participate in a realistic jury experience. The project uses actual trial evidence to produce a videotaped simulated trial presentation thereby insuring that the testimony, legal arguments, jury instructions and facts are realistic. To date, approximately 2,000 business students have participated in the simulation, under the supervision of 13 different Academy members at 11 different universities. This article describes the project and its curricular benefits within the context of an introductory course in law.