Texas Criminal Defense Attorneys’ Perceptions of Crime Victim Involvement in Criminal Prosecutions

The purpose of this study was to test the utility of the Victim Satisfaction Model of the criminal justice system by quantitatively assessing criminal defense attorneys’ perceptions of victims’ involvement in the charging and plea bargaining stages of the criminal process. A cross-section research design was used in this study. Self-administered questionnaires were mailed to defense attorneys who regularly practice criminal law in Texas. The results of this study support the utility of the Victim Satisfaction Model of the criminal justice system and further our understanding of victim involvement in the decision making and have important implications for the American criminal justice system.     

The Catholic contribution to democratization's ‘third wave’: altruism,hegemony or self-interest?

This article examines the contribution of the Roman Catholic Church to democratization's ‘third wave’. Whilst making no substantive claims about the centrality of religion to political transitions, it indicates several ways in which national Catholic hierarchies and the wider Catholic Church contributed to democratization. Of more interest, however, is the question of why the Catholic Church shifted from its traditional position of hostility to democracy. Three primary explanations are offered for the Catholic contribution: theological change, the pursuit of hegemony and the attempt to maintain market share. All three offer useful insights, though this article ultimately suggests that a combination of internal change and contingency is key to understanding this phenomenon.     

The Alaska Permanent Fund: Politics and Trust

Trust funds are a particular way of governing resource flows. Governments use trust funds to bind policy decisions of future actors and remove resource flows from budget competition. The state of Alaska removed a portion of its oil revenues from political competition through the creation of the Alaska Permanent Fund. A unique feature of the Fund is that it pays annual dividends to Alaskan citizens, thus creating a citizen stake in the management of the Fund. Through this framework Alaskans have successfully protected a significant stream of revenue ($21 billion) from political demands.     

NHS Inquiries and Investigations; an Exemplar in Peculiarity and Assumption

There is little research focussing on how bereaved families experience NHS inquiries and investigations. Despite this gap, there is a consistent assumption that these processes provide families with catharsis. Drawing on my personal experiences of NHS investigations over a five‐year period after the death of our son, Connor Sparrowhawk, I suggest the assumption of catharsis is misplaced and works to erase the considerable emotional ‘accountability’ labour that families undertake during these processes. I further question whether inquiries or investigations are an effective way of holding stakeholders to account. I conclude with two points: first, qualitative research is needed to better understand bereaved family experiences of inquiries and investigations and second, the ‘lessons learned’ objective underpinning inquiries should be replaced with ‘leading to demonstrable change’, which is what families typically want.     

Legislative Institutions as a Source of Party Leaders' Influence

Legislators' actions are influenced by party, constituency, and their own views, each weighted differently. Our survey of state legislators finds that legislator's own views are the strongest influence. We also find that institutions are an important source of party leaders' influence. Legislators in states where members rely more on party leaders—states without term limits, with less professional legislatures, and where the majority party controls the agenda—put more weight on leaders' preferences. Beyond direct party influence, the views of party leaders are preemptively incorporated into legislators' preferences when the rules of the legislature make party leaders more powerful.     

True and false memories in middle childhood: the relationship with cognitive functioning

This study was designed to investigate developmental changes in true and false memories and to detect links among them in middle childhood. Participants were 372 Italian children (from 6 to 11 years, 174 males) divided into two age groups. After hearing a story, children provided a free-recall and their true and false retrieved information was measured. Then children were repeatedly asked some true and misleading questions about the story and their cued-recall and interrogative suggestibility were measured. Finally, children again recalled the story to assess the post-event misinformation effect of the suggested information. Individual differences in fluid intelligence, working memory and executive functions were also assessed to investigate their relationships with true and false memories. Typical age effects were found in memory recall and interrogative suggestibility. Interesting links among true, spontaneous and suggested false memories were found. Finally, analyses did not reveal the existence of a relationship between suggestibility and cognitive functioning.     

Gangster,ideologue, martyr: the posthumous reinvention of Teungku Badruddin and the nature of the Free Aceh Movement

This paper, which is based upon the author's experiences in Aceh from 2006 to 2010, illustrates the dangers inherent in disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) policies that allow for the transfer of reintegration assets through ex-insurgent command structures. The manipulation of such transfers in Aceh, Indonesia, led to the creation of a new insurgent group, the Pasukan Peudeung, from the ‘splintering’ corpus of the Free Aceh Movement. The author argues that Aceh's DDR process, while widely heralded as a success, was inherently flawed in its execution and contained within it numerous discrete, and violent, failures; the emergence of the Pasukan Peudeung was emblematic of this. GAM's conflict-era economic activities, encompassing illegal forms of extraction and other rent-seeking behaviours, did not end with the conflict: they simply evolved, as did Pasukan Peudeung. Further, GAM was and remains in its current iterations a criminal network; its members constantly reinterpret their ideologies to suit their actions and interests, usually in reaction to crimes committed by members.