History Reverses Itself in Student Exchange Programs

AFTER decades of bumpy China-U.S.relations,America is set to expand the 100,000 Strong Initiative,sending more American students and teachers to China to gain real-world experience,learn about China and bridge the gap between two of the world’s largest and most influential countries.? The tale of China-U.S.relations is one with many twists and turns.The U.S.slams China on human rights while China criticizes the U.S.on its intervention in sovereign nations.Trade disputes between the two countries continue to cause concern and there are fundamental differences in world views as represented by the majority of citizens in each of these two vastly different countries.     

STRUCTURAL INEQUALITY AND HOMICIDE: AN ASSESSMENT OF THE BLACK‐WHITE GAP IN KILLINGS*

This paper examines the relationship between race and violent crime by directly modeling the racial gap in homicide offending for large central cities for 1990. We evaluate the role of black‐white differences in aspects of both disadvantage and resources in explaining which places have wider racial disparities in lethal violence. The results show that where residential segregation is higher, and where whites' levels of homeownership, median income, college graduation, and professional workers exceed those for blacks to a greater degree, African Americans have much higher levels of homicide offending than whites. Based on these results, we conclude that the racial homicide gap is better explained by the greater resources that exist among whites than by the higher levels of disadvantage among blacks.     

The Emerging Threat? South Africa's Extreme Right

In the run-up to South Africa's first non-racial election in 1994, extremist right-wing organizations, and their sympathizers in the state security forces, posed a real danger to the country's future democratic order. After 1994, violent, right-wing extremist activities virtually dissipated. However, during a single night in late 2002, eight bomb blasts rocked Soweto, South Africa's largest black township. An unknown organization, Boeremag (Boer force/power), claimed responsibility for the bombings. Some two dozen alleged Boeremag members, including serving military officers, were subsequently arrested and charged with terrorism-related offenses. The Boeremag makes an interesting case study of how the extreme white right in South Africa mixes politics and religion, and seeks to exploit popular grievances to garner support for the creation of a secessionist Afrikaner state. The South African white right does not have the resources, capacity, or support to successfully execute a coup d'état. The Boeremag serves as a reminder, however, that the extreme right can create instability and destruction on a significant scale in South Africa.     

Problems in applying counterterrorism to prevent terrorism: Two decades of violence in Northern Ireland reconsidered

The terrorism of 9/11 elicited a range of different reactions from around the world, including the sentiment that 9/11 was just deserts for America's presence abroad as an unwelcome, overweening world policeman. To help determine the prevalence of this perspective, the authors surveyed a sample of 335 well-educated, English speaking Sri Lankans. Most respondents (73%) thought that the United States brought the 9/11 attack on itself. Reasons for this view included the United States's unilateralism as the only superpower, its involvement in other countries' affairs for its own benefit, and its support for Jews in Israel at the expense of Muslims. Yet the sample's overwhelming sympathy for the U.S. after 9/11 (83%) and to a lesser extent, its anger (52%), as well as agreement regarding the need to punish those who planned and carried out the attack (91%) indicate ambivalence towards the U.S. Implications for how the U.S. should address anti-American attitudes are discussed.‐     

Using Reasonable Efforts Determinations to Improve Systems and Case Practice in Cases Involving Family Violence and Child Maltreatment

The Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) of 1997 reinforced that the safety, permanency, and well‐being of the child should be the primary concerns when making decisions about child protection interventions, child placement, and efforts at reunification. The court's role in oversight of agency practice in individual cases through the requirement of specific judicial findings as a condition of receipt of certain funding was also maintained and strengthened by ASFA. Based on the recognition of the number of cases where there is a co‐occurrence of domestic violence and child maltreatment, there is a need for communities and agencies to set reasonable expectations of good practice for responding to the issues raised. As the community sets the expectations of good practice through agency policy, training, and service delivery, the judiciary, through the findings regarding “continuation in the home” or “reasonable efforts” in each individual case, provides the oversight of practice required by ASFA. This article will explore the current applications of reasonable efforts, discuss ways that courts and communities are defining the concept, and examine the need for the development of a reasonable efforts protocol.     

Arkansas Legislative Reforms Provide Framework for Change While Supporting Parens Patriae Philosophy of Juvenile Court

Changes in Arkansas's juvenile laws resulting from the school shootings in Jonesboro impacted two separate issues of the juvenile court process. The first law changed aspects of transfer provisions for processing juveniles as adults. Secondly, the law created new provisions allowing blended sentencing for juveniles who commit certain enumerated offenses. Both provisions are examined in this article. The authors examine the impact those changes had on the types and numbers of cases handled by the court and argue that the framework provided by Arkansas's Extended Juvenile Jurisdiction law illustrates a legislative response to juvenile violence that supports the concept of parens patriae and promotes the original purpose for which juvenile courts were created while balancing concerns for public safety.     

Legal Ambiguity and the Politics of Compliance: Affirmative Action Officers' Dilemma

Equal employment opportunity and affirmative action mandates, like many other laws regulating organizations, do not clearly define what constitutes compliance. Thus compliance depends largely on the initiative and agenda of those persons within organizations who are charged with managing the compliance effort: in the case of civil rights, "affirmative action officers." This paper draws on case studies of affirmative action officers to suggest that the political climate within which affirmative action officers work, together with the officers' interpretations of the law, their role conceptions, and their professional aspirations have important implications for the nature and extent of organizational compliance with law. We conclude that compliance should be understood as a process that evolves over time rather than as a discrete event or non-event.     

HOW THE U.S. PRISON BOOM HAS CHANGED THE AGE DISTRIBUTION OF THE PRISON POPULATION

This article provides a demographic exposition of the changes in the U.S prison population during the period of mass incarceration that began in the late twentieth century. By drawing on data from the Survey of Inmates in State Correctional Facilities (1974–2004) for inmates 17–72 years of age (N = 336), we show that the age distribution shifted upward dramatically: Only 16 percent of the state prison population was 40 years old or older in 1974; by 2004, this percentage had doubled to 33 percent with the median age of prisoners rising from 27 to 34 years old. By using an estimable function approach, we find that the change in the age distribution of the prison population is primarily a cohort effect that is driven by the “enhanced” penal careers of the cohorts who hit young adulthood—the prime age of both crime and incarceration—when substance use was at its peak. Period‐specific factors (e.g., proclivity for punishment and incidence of offense) do matter, but they seem to play out more across the life cycles of persons most affected in young adulthood (cohort effects) than across all age groups at one point in time (period effects).     

Knowing and doing: an integrated approach to education and training in South Africa

The Postgraduate Diploma in Management at the Graduate School of Public & Development Management (P&DM), University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, arises from our enthusiasm for a paradigm shift in the education of entry level public sector managers in South Africa; this is an approach that has developed out of moves towards a new public service that is development friendly and customer-oriented. The move away from traditional lecture-based classroom activities to interactive learning methods has given rise to much reflection on teaching, learning and appropriate assessment at P&DM. This has resulted in an appreciation for continuous learning as we pursue our quest to improve our facilitation in line with the needs of a student group that will graduate to face the immense challenges of making institutions work in a newly democratic polity. Our graduates are tasked with transformation in a rapidly moving environment. For them, a commitment to life-long learning is the most important attitude they can develop and for us it is the most important outlook we can nurture. This article focuses on three integrated areas: the Administrative Skills Course, which aims at establishing underlying skills on which students should build throughout the year; the Case Study Programme, which provides a simulation of real problems and issues faced by managers in the public sector; and the Internship Programme, which provides the opportunity for the integration of classroom learning and workplace practice. We focus primarily on the teaching methods and the integrative nature of these courses and programmes, highlighting aspects that have worked well and those that have not. The ongoing development of these programmes has been informed by relatively informal evaluations. We feel that the time has come for more rigorous investigation into the effectiveness of our teaching and both have research in progress. The design and findings of research in progress will be published at a later date.