TRACING CHARGE TRAJECTORIES: A STUDY OF THE INFLUENCE OF RACE IN CHARGE CHANGES AT CASE SCREENING,ARRAIGNMENT, AND DISPOSITION*

Although social scientists and legal scholars have made valuable headway in identifying and explaining the relationships between myriad demographic, social, and legal factors and case outcomes, a sizable gap in understanding remains with respect to how cases evolve across decision points and how charges change for different racial and ethnic groups at individual decision points and cumulatively. This gap is partially addressed in this study through the examination of charge decreases, increases, and no change at three essential decision points—case screening for prosecution, arraignment, and final disposition. The results show that, overall, screening and disposition were much more dynamic decision points than was arraignment and that one third of cases experienced a charge decrease at some point. Even though racial differences in charge reductions at case screening were not large, at arraignment and disposition, as well as cumulatively, Black and Latino defendants were less likely than White defendants to have charges decreased. Conversely, Asian defendants experienced even more favorable outcomes than White defendants as they were more likely to have charges reduced and less likely to experience an increase. These findings are framed in the context of focal concerns, cumulative disadvantage, and “charge reasonableness” arguments.     

Dance of Orientalisms and waves of catastrophes: culturalism and pragmatism in imperial approaches to Islam and the Middle East

This article focuses on a seeming contradiction between ‘Islamophobic’ and ‘Islamophilic’ approaches in contemporary Western policies and discourses on the Middle East. While Islamophobia continues to shape some domestic policies of Western states and provide ideological justification for the wars they wage abroad, ‘Islamophilic’ tendencies in foreign policy have also emerged, especially in responses to the ‘Arab Spring’. Not clearly noted in Western public discourse, this represents a historical continuation of Western support for Islamism common during the Cold War, but is also a shift from the Islamophobic discourse of the post-cold war period, especially since 9/11. While Islamophobic and Islamophilic discourses may appear to be opposites, the paper argues that they represent two sides of the Orientalist logic, continuing to reduce understanding of Middle Eastern societies and politics to a culturalist dimension. Unlike traditional Orientalism, they treat Middle Eastern people as political subjects, but approach them as defined by their culture and religion. They define ‘moderate’ Islamism as the typical (and preferred) politics of the people of the region. Focusing on specific recent developments, the paper suggests that, rather than paving the way to more peaceful relations with the region or to internal peace and stability there, the Islamophilic shift in Western policy may rather lead to new waves of catastrophes by further destabilising and fragmenting the region, threatening to evoke new waves of Islamophobia in the West.     

Rape investigation and prosecution: Stuck in the mud?

Abstract

This paper evaluates the Stern Review of rape in the context of public responses to rape, in England and Wales. The piece is based on an anti-rape feminist approach and so weighs a woman-centred approach to rape responses against the mainstream justice model. Overall, the argument made is that nothing much is really changing in public responses to rape. The work outlines problems with the Stern contention that the conviction rates for rape need to be calculated differently, and takes issue with the claim that the “policies are right”. Stern's call for greater support for women who have been raped is welcomed, but the effectiveness of the review process itself is questioned. These discussions illustrate the process of attrition as it is variously understood by feminists and by Baroness Stern. It is suggested that reviews themselves may be little more than a dampener, brought in when claims for change create a need to be seen to be doing something. A preferred alternative might be some form of ongoing body, reviewing and challenging practice and policy; however, it is recognised that this could be difficult to achieve amid the current spending cuts. The paper then turns to evaluate trends in support for survivors and notes that the more “professional” models of the Sexual Assault Referral Centre and the Independent Sexual Violence Advisers have held sway for some time. However, under the new coalition, government funding is also being directed towards women-only Rape Crisis centres, and this move is warmly welcomed here. The work concludes that much does indeed remain the same, despite positive signs in terms of respect for this survivor-centred model.     

Reinventing political subjectivities: studying critical documentaries on the war on terror

This paper casts a look on media aspects of the anti-war-on-terror struggle in western countries. A peculiar warfare, the “war on terror” that officially begun in 2001, is a low-density global warfare, fought in different internal and external fronts . Within a liberal, increasingly post-political social terrain, where social affairs are objects of expert management lacking public accountability and legitimacy, the role, status and the identity of the contemporary citizen is in decline. New media “affordances” offer critical possibilities for challenging hegemonic political discourses, and addressing political alternatives for a broad range of social problems; a re-invention of citizenship through the construct of a new (collective) political subject is central in the reinvention of democracy today. Discourse analysis, drawing reflexively on post-structuralist discourse theory and critical discourse analysis, is deployed in the study of counter-war-on-terror discourses in different documentaries critical to the “war on terror”. Analysis looks at different constructions of “us” and “them” in the context of counter-hegemonic discourses today. Identity is central in the engagement, participation and orientation of citizens today. Identity is central in organising a collective centre and in initiating subjectivity to fragmented liberal, postmodern individuals.     

The Mujahideen in Bosnia: the foreign fighter as cosmopolitan citizen and/or terrorist

This article explores the idea of the Mujahideen in Bosnia as ‘cosmopolitan citizens’. During the Balkan War in the early 1990s, these foreign fighters flocked to Bosnia in order to take up arms alongside those whom they understood to be their besieged Muslim brethren. Although this act of transborder mobilization can be framed as an act of cosmopolitan citizenship, the subsequent ‘problem’ of the Mujahideen in a post-9/11 context destabilized their original cosmopolitan act through a re-enactment of borders and the revocation of their (literal) citizenship. Within the larger post-9/11 narrative, where the Mujahideen must necessarily be understood as terrorists/potential terrorists, they are an interesting point of study in an examination of what can be seen as the sinister side of transnational citizenship, and they expose what Appadurai (A. Appadurai, 2006. Fear of small numbers: an essay on the geography of anger. Durham: Duke University Press.) calls our ‘fear of small numbers’. Particularly compelling is that the post-9/11 Mujahid is an unsympathetic figure, and is always already a questionable candidate for ‘citizenship’ as it is commonly understood. Furthermore, his (sic) original ‘cosmopolitan’ act suggests that, although the ‘cosmopolitan ideal’ is the achievement of a citizenship that transcends or escapes borders, the cosmopolitical must nevertheless be assigned value in order to be ethically intelligible.     

Terrorism,anti-terrorism and the normative boundaries of the US polity: The spatiality of politics after 11 September 2001

Both terrorism and governmental anti-terrorist actions affect spatial structures and their boundaries, such as the state and the distinction between public and private spaces. Those spatial structures also articulate the normative dimensions of human life, which include the ethical principles and constitutional rights that orient behaviour and thought. By affecting the spaces, places and scales of life, (anti-)terrorism potentially can generate a new normativity. A new normativity would be manifested in changes to spatial structures and thereby would indicate that the content of political rights like personal freedom had been changed in practice. This paper addresses the possible emergence of a new normativity via an examination of how spatial structures are affected—specifically, their permeability and plasticity—by terrorist and anti-terrorist activities within a US context.     

论审查起诉阶段刑事和解模式的构建

2013年1月1日生效的新《刑事诉讼法》在特殊程序一章中,首次确立了当事人和解的公诉案件诉讼程序,这标志着运行多年的刑事和解制度在立法上获得了确认。审查起诉阶段的刑事和解是刑事和解制度的重要组成部分,也是检察权运行的重要载体。基于对该阶段检察机关作用的实践考察,刑事和解实践模式可分为检察机关参与模式和主导模式。通过对这两种实践模式的理论分析,指出未来审查起诉阶段刑事和解应当以能动监督模式作为发展方向。     

Ukrainianization,terror and famine: coverage in Lviv's Dilo and the nationalist press of the 1930s

This article looks at the press coverage of Ukrainianization, the Soviet terror, and the famine (Holodomor), particularly in the years 1932–33, focusing on the largest Ukrainian daily outside Soviet Ukraine, the Lviv Dilo. It compares this coverage to the reporting in the press of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). It argues that these two years were a turning point in political attitudes. Galician Ukrainians turned away from the Communist Party of Ukraine and support for the OUN began to grow. Ironically, the OUN had not led protests against the famine, but benefited from the lack of a strong response from European governments and international bodies. The article draws on a reading of the Ukrainian press of the 1930s, and on recent research by Polish and Ukrainian scholars.     

The recovery of radical Islam in the wake of the defeat of the Taliban11Many of the websites cited in this article have either been suppressed or have moved from address to address. When this is the case I have placed an asterix in brackets (∗) at the end of the URL.

This article analyses the intellectual and religious processes through which radical Islam has had to confront its defeat in Afghanistan and rebuild during the period since that time, including paradigms of battle, dreams and martyrologies and apocalyptic readings of history and current events.     

Political Violence and Terrorism in Turkey, 1976–80: A Retrospective Analysis

During the late 1970s, Turkey experienced a major campaign of political terrorism that was waged by a multiplicity of leftist, ultranationalist, and separatist groups. Between 1976 and 1980, more than 5000 people lost their lives in hundreds of terrorist incidents. The steady escalation of violence amidst a major political and economic crisis undermined the country's fragile democratic system and paved the way for a military coup in September 1980. This study examines the origins and growth of the terrorist movement in Turkey, the main characteristics of political violence, and the causes of the dramatic escalation of terrorism in the late 1970s. The study suggests that although state-sponsored terrorism against Turkey facilitated the rapid proliferation of leftist, rightist, and separatist armed extremist groups, the drift into total terrorism was largely the product of domestic political and social developments.