THE DEMISE OF THE DISPARATE IMPACT THEORY

Books reviewed in this article: Book Reviewed in this article: Shortly after this article was completed and accepted for publication, Congress passed the 1991 Civil Rights Act. In order to understand and appreciate the significant implications of the new legislation, it is first necessary to review the legislative and litigation history of disparate impact discussed here. Immediately following is a legislative update entitled “The Resurrection of the Disparate Impact Theory?”     

SPECIALIZATION IN VIOLENCE: EVIDENCE OF A CRIMINAL SUBGROUP*

This study examines the criminal arrest records of a Danish birth cohort of 28,884 men to test the hypothesis that specialization exists for violent offending. Property offending is included for comparison. Specialization in violence is found to exist for offenders with more than three arrests, and specialization in property offending, for offenders with fewer than four arrests. Knowledge of past violent offending is discussed as a potentially valuable part of the predictive equation of future violence.     

Intergovernmental Innovation and the Administrative State in Canada

Canadian federalism has experienced considerable pressure for change and innovation in recent years. There have been calls for more collaborative federalism and demands for public sector reforms consistent with the precepts of New Public Management. This article examines the hypothesis that these pressures might be expected to have resulted in some intergovernmental institutional innovation in the arena of federal–provincial–territorial relations. Using a conceptual distinction between federalism, intergovernmental relations, and intergovernmental management (IGM) as the basis of analyzing institutional innovation at six levels in the Canadian intergovernmental administrative state, the authors find a differentiated impact with more institutional innovation evident at the micro levels of IGM and innovation more constrained at the macro levels of the administrative state by the traditional institutional infrastructure of executive federalism.     

Guidelines for Collecting and Recording the Race and Ethnicity of Juveniles in Conjunction with Juvenile Delinquency Disposition Reporting to the Juvenile Court Judges' Commission

One of the most compelling reasons for accurate racial coding of juveniles involved in the juvenile justice system is to ensure that all youth are treated fairly, regardless of race or ethnicity. Pennsylvania juvenile courts and probation departments now have instructions and guidelines for collecting and recording race and ethnicity in compliance with Federal standards. These guidelines can be easily adopted by other states and jurisdictions.     

Advancing Accountability: Moving Toward Victim Restoration

One of the goals of Pennsylvania's juvenile justice system is the “imposition of accountability” for offenses committed. This White Paper, originally published in 2006, takes the position that true accountability requires juvenile offenders to repair the harm caused by their offending behavior and to understand and acknowledge the wrongfulness of their actions, their responsibility for causing harm, and the impact of the crime on the crime victim and community. It identifies system responsibilities, restorative practices, and outcomes relative to accountability. This White Paper was the result of debate among focus group participants under the auspices of the State Advisory Group.     

REINVENTING THE AMERICAN FEDERAL GOVERNMENT: REFORM REDUX OR REAL CHANGE?

Reinventing government in the United States is the most recent of several efforts to reform public organizations and management. A cornerstone of the Clinton Administration's agenda for change, reinvention is proceeding on several levels. One is that of political symbolism and rhetoric: reduce waste, eliminate unnecessary programmes, and improve efficiency. Another level is found in the reinvention laboratories created throughout the federal government. Here the focus is on quality, customer service, streamlining processes and procedures, and eliminating unnecessary rules and regulations. A third level is found in policy and system changes; here the emphasis is on examining broad functions, decentralizing major activities, and providing legislative support for necessary changes.
Implementation of reinvention activities has been decentralized and loosely monitored. Many of the initiatives in the reinvention laboratories are difficult to track and analyse; changes at this level do appear, however, to be extensive and diverse. Broader legislative changes have not been so extensive and the Clinton Administration has been slow to introduce key legislative packages. The role of Congress is unclear.
Despite uneven progress and failure to ask key policy and implementation questions, reinvention is creating significant change in the federal government. The outcome of those changes and the long-term future of reinvention depend on the continued commitment of the members of the public service, as well as much clearer political support and will.     

PROTECTIVE SERVICES FOR THE ELDERLY: Do We Deal Competently with Incompetence?

Protective services are conceptualized as legal safeguards for aged individuals who are incapable of prudent financial or personal self-determination. Despite this protective intent, conservatorship, personal guardianship, and involuntary hospitalization may in fact work against elders' best interests as a result of their limitation of avenues for expressing autonomy and self-worth. In this article, psychological theories of effectance or control are applied to analyzing the effects of protective legal intervention upon older persons. The rationale of parens patriae is examined in terms of its conceptual appropriateness for application to the aged; social and legal sources of bias in protective philosophy are enumerated and discussed. Statutes and procedural conventions governing competency and commitment cases are similarly evaluated, and found from an effectance-theoretical perspective to pose substantial threats to older individuals' psychological and physical well-being. Although recommended statutory and procedural revisions would be helpful in ameliorating these negative effects, they are not sufficient to eradicate them. A conceptual reanalysis not only of the courts' responsibility and role in caring for the infirm, but of social policy in general as it is presently applied to the elderly, is therefore recommended.     

THE IMPACT OF FAMILY STRUCTURE AND QUALITY ON DELINQUENCY: A COMPARATIVE ASSESSMENT OF STRUCTURAL AND FUNCTIONAL FACTORS*

Despite the plethora of studies of broken homes, multivariate studies comparing the effects of the broken home and other theoretically relevant measures of the quality of family life are rare. This study examines the family structure versus family function issue by testing the comparative effects on self-reported delinquency of family structure and jive measures of family function. Five types of delinquency are considered. The data were obtained from a 1980 survey of 152 high school students in a small midwestern town. Item analysis and data reduction techniques were employed to construct six family quality indices and jive delinquency indices. Two types of family structure were examined: presence of both biological parents in the home v. other and single- v. two-parent homes. Multivariate analyses controlled for the effects of age and gender. Bivariate tests of the relationships between broken homes and delinquency were not significant, except for a moderate relationship between broken homes and status offenses. In addition, a bivariate relation between single-parent homes and delinquency was observed for status offenses only. Other forms of family dysfunction all were significantly related to overall delinquency and to status offenses. Moreover, several measures of family quality evidenced significant bivariate relationships to property offenses. violent offenses, and drug offenses. The importance of the broken home was further diminished when the direct effects of broken homes and home quality were examined in multivariate tests. Regression equations showed home quality and gender, rather than family structure, to be the more important determinants of delinquency. The family structure coefficient was significant in only 1 of 10 tests, a regression of broken home and home quality on status offenses. Efforts to expand the analysis to identify specific areas of family dysfunction were unenlightening.