Colleague or Viral Vector? The Legal Construction of the HIV-Positive Worker*

Many people affected by HIV suffer discrimination in the workplace, both in seeking jobs and at the hands of their employers and colleagues, this article considers critically the way in which the law can and does protect people affected in this way. It begins with an overview of the legal provisions in both statute and common law in England and Wales which may be applied to cases of discrimination on the basis of HIV infection. The practical implications of those provisions are then considered with reference to five cases of workplace discrimination related to the author by people so affected. The article ends with a consideration of the future possibilities for effective laws to combat HIV discrimination.     

WEAPON EFFECTS AND INDIVIDUAL INTENT TO DO HARM: INFLUENCES ON THE ESCALATION OF VIOLENCE*

In order to assess the roles of weapons and offender intentions in the outcomes of potentially violent events, we analyze more than 2,000 incidents described by offenders. We advance the study of weapons effects through a within‐person analysis that lets us control for all time‐stable characteristics of the offenders. Thus, we address the concern that relationships between type of weapon and incident outcome may be spurious because individuals with a greater propensity to do harm are more likely to use guns. Findings indicate that weapons have independent effects that differ across the stages of an event.     

PLANNING: LESSONS FROM THE PORTS

The National Ports Council, created in 1964 and abolished in 1982, was engaged in one of the rare sustained attempts at planning in Britain. This article explains the Council's decision not to carry out full-scale planning because of the difficulties of collecting information, assessing technological and economic changes, and reconciling rational economic planning with short term political pressures.     

NARCOTIC ADDICTION AND CRIME

Arrest rates and self-reported criminal behavior are examined as a function of frequency of narcatic use during the addiction careers first daily narcatic use to last daily use) of a sample of 690 admissions to the California Civil Addict Program. Thirty-five percent of the addiction career non-incarcerated time involved less-than-daily or no narcatic use. During these periods. arrest rates for property crimes and self-reported criminal behavior were substantially lower than for periods of daily use. This approach to examining the relationship between crime and narcatic addiction avoids several of the methodological problems encountered in pre- and pastaddiction and pre- and pasttreatment studies.     

DISTRICT ATTORNEYS AND CORPORATE CRIME: SURVEYING THE PROSECUTORIAL GATEKEEPERS

A mail survey of California district attorneys regarding corporate crime focused on the recent experiences of the prosecutors with such crimes and on factors that limit the likelihood of their prosecuting corporate offenders. A significant majority of the district attorneys had prosecuted a variety of corporate crimes, and a sizable minority anticipated devoting more resources to corporate crime prosecutions in the future. There was a strong consensus among the district attorneys that the primary obstacle to corporate crime prosecutions is not political but practical and inheres in the level of resources available to them. Prosecutors in small districts were more constrained by the potential impact that a corporate prosecution might have on the local economy than their counterparts in large districts. This finding suggests that community context may influence social control responses to corporate lawbreakers.     

RESPONDING TO THE "CALL FOR PAPERS": Participation at A.S.C. Annual Meetings

The purpose of this study is to examine the participation of criminology and criminal justice graduate departments at the 1977-1979 American Society of Criminology meetings. Results show that institutional prestige. not productivity, is the leading predictor of meeting participation. In addition, meeting participation does not appear to be influenced by meeting site. Finally, it is suggested that criminologists focus more attention upon professional activities in order to facilitate our understanding of criminology as a science.