Comparing females acquitted by reason of insanity,convicted, and civilly committed in Florida 1977–1984

Females who had been acquitted by reason of insanity (N=41), convicted of comparable offenses (N=41), and involuntarily hospitalized without criminal involvement (N=41) were matched for age and race. The psychiatric histories of the acquitted and civilly committed women were similar, and significantly more extensive than the convicted group. The acquitted women had been arrested significantly more often than the civilly committed women but less frequently than the convicted women. Total length of stay (hospitalization or imprisonment) reflected a similar pattern, with civilly commited women hospitalized for the shortest period, acauitted women an intermediate period, and convicted women the longest. Regression-based prediction of length of stay reflected a number of common predictors for the acquitted and convicted women, with offense type one of the most powerful for both groups.     

Realism and eyewitness identification research

The importance of realism in eyewitness identification research is examined as the basis for both the credibility and utility of the information it provides. Without knowledge of how laboratory eyewitnesses behave differently from real eyewitnesses, the relevance and external validity of identification studies may be questioned. Factors differentiating these identification contexts are discussed. Witnesses in identification studies are in social decision-making contexts similar to those of real eyewitnesses when their decision to choose someone or to reject the lineup may have a significant impact on others' lives. Two studies are reported which preserve aspects of realism. Both presented witnesses with a realistic vandalism. The second maintained realism through the identification situation. The first study demonstrated effects of biased instructions on witnesses' willingness to make a lineup choice and on identification errors (with the offender present and absent). The second study showed an unexpected preference of witnesses for making an identification when the supposed consequences for the suspect were to be severe. To evaluate the generalizability and utility of laboratory studies it is important to determine whether their results and related theoretical analyses survive the transposition to more realistic contexts. Realistic studies should serve as benchmarks against which simulations are compared and their generalizability evaluated.     

Environmental reform in Brazil: advances and reversals

It is now two years since the Government of President Fernando Collor de Mello took office in Brazil. This article assesses its effectiveness in implementing its environmental policies and resolving social conflicts in the Amazon in the run-up to the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development. It examines some of the political and economic problems which have beset the new environmental programme, and gives an account of the response of Brazilian NGOs to some of the Government's main initiatives.     

Reparations in the Long Run

This paper explores how policy-makers during the Second World War attempted to “learn the lessons” of history from the reparations settlement imposed after the First World War. It shows how these lessons were developed and articulated in the formulation of, in particular, American foreign policy, and also their consequences for foreign policy during and after the Second World War. The paper demonstrates the important role of European advisors in shaping American policy, thereby illustrating that not all American lessons of history were born in the USA. It also draws out how many of these lessons have found an echo in the historiography of German reparations that has emerged over the past fifty years. In both periods the issues of enforcement and compliance, the issues that concern us generally in this volume, dominated the debate between advisors and policy-makers.     

Chronicles of an information company

The birth and growth of a US West Coast information company is chronicled from its beginning as a part-time partnership to its status five years later as a small but profitable corporation providing information services to Government agencies as well as graduate students. Documentation Associates provides a search and retrieval service that includes brokering on-line data-base searches, and the investment required to set up and maintain this kind of operation is described. Some information-broker policies are discussed, e.g. service types, pricing methods, and the reasons for the wide disparity in data-base search prices are examined. The policies of Documentation Associates in the operation of its broker service are presented.