Violence in and around Entertainment Districts: A Longitudinal Analysis of the Impact of Late‐Night Lockout Legislation

Violence in entertainment districts is a major problem across urban landscapes throughout the world. Research shows that licensed premises are the third most common location for homicides and serious assaults, accounting for one in ten fatal and nonfatal assaults. One class of interventions that aims to reduce violence in entertainment districts involves the use of civil remedies: a group of strategies that use civil or regulatory measures as legal “levers” to reduce problem behavior. One specific civil remedy used to reduce problematic behavior in entertainment districts involves manipulation of licensed premise trading hours. This article uses generalized linear models to analyze the impact of lockout legislation on recorded violent offences in two entertainment districts in the Australian state of Queensland. Our research shows that 3 a.m. lockout legislation led to a direct and significant reduction in the number of violent incidents inside licensed premises. Indeed, the lockouts cut the level of violent crime inside licensed premises by half. Despite these impressive results for the control of violence inside licensed premises, we found no evidence that the lockout had any impact on violence on streets and footpaths outside licensed premises that were the site for more than 80 percent of entertainment district violence. Overall, however, our analysis suggests that lockouts are an important mechanism that helps to control the level of violence inside licensed premises but that finely grained contextual responses to alcohol‐related problems are needed rather than one‐size‐fits‐all solutions.     

The G‐2: Are America and China Headed for Divorce?

Thanks to the draining effects of the Iraq war and the financial meltdown emanating from Wall Street, a powershift away from American dominance is taking place. Caught between a rising China and an America in relative decline, the new leadership in Japan is recalibrating its post-World War II relationships. The G-20 has usurped the role once played by the G-8 as the governing committee of globalization. And the symbiotic coupling of "Chimerica", born out of the credit bubble built up over the past two decades, is being put to the test.
In this section, the new prime minister of Japan, the president of the European Union, the president of Brazil and a leading economic historian assess these shifts.     

Legislators and Administrators: Complex Relationships Complicated by Term Limits

State legislators' relationships with administrators have received scant attention in the literature despite the importance of these relationships for delivery of public services. We explored whether or not the legislator‐administrator relationship in one professional state legislature resembles Congress's oversight of federal agencies. We also assessed whether or not term limits changed this relationship. Our findings indicate that monitoring state agencies was a low priority for this legislature, and it dropped even lower after term limits were implemented. More specifically, we found some institutional roles to be associated with legislators placing a higher priority on monitoring, especially before term limits, whereas some individual motives were associated with a lower priority, especially after term limits. Legislators exhibited more confusion about the process of monitoring after term limits.     

This Time Europe Really is on the Brink

Because they have failed to address the fundamental economic imbalances within Europe obscured by the single currency, each effort by European leaders so far to resolve the euro crisis has only deepened it. Without a decisive move toward fiscal and political union, accompanied by policies that push productivity and competitiveness toward convergence while closing the democratic deficit, the Eurozone will disintegrate. To discuss the way forward, the Nicolas Berggruen Institute's Council on the Future of Europe met in Rome on May 28 with Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti. In this section we publish the contributions from that meeting by the former European leaders, scholars and Nobel laureates who are members of the Council.     

VOICES FROM THE BARRIO: CHICANO/A GANGS,FAMILIES, AND COMMUNITIES*

Based on in‐depth interviews with 33 youth gang members and 20 adult neighborhood leaders and youth service providers, we explore the complicated relationships among gang members, their families, and other residents of poor Chicano/a and Mexicano/a barrios in Phoenix. Listening to the multiple voices of community members allows for a multifaceted understanding of the complexities and contradictions of gang life, both for the youths and for the larger community. We draw on a community ecology approach to help explain the tensions that develop, especially when community members vary in their desires and abilities to control gang‐related activities. In this exploratory study, we point to some of the ways in which gender, age, education, traditionalism, and level of acculturation may help explain variation in the type and strength of private, parochial, and public social control within a community.     

“YOUTH IS ENMESHED IN A HIGHLY DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILY SYSTEM”: EXPLORING THE RELATIONSHIP AMONG DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILIES,PARENTAL INCARCERATION,AND JUVENILE COURT DECISION MAKING*

Although prior work has substantiated the role of external attributes in juvenile court decision making, no study to date has examined how family situational factors as well as maternal and paternal incarceration affect juvenile court officials' responses to troubled youth. Using quantitative and qualitative juvenile court data from a large urban county in the southwest, this study draws on attribution theory to examine how family structure, perceptions of family dysfunction, and parental incarceration influence out‐of‐home placement decisions. Findings reveal that juvenile court officials' perceptions of good and bad families inform their decision making. This study emphasizes the need to unravel the intricate effects of maternal and paternal incarceration and officials' attributions about families and family structure on juvenile court decision making.     

Race, Ethnicity, and Determinate Sentencing

A study of 4729 sentences handed out during the first year of determinate sentencing in California shows subtle differences in the sentencing of Whites, Blacks, and Chicanos. As expected, main effects of race/ethnicity are not found. However, the type of offense, mode of disposition, and the defendant's prior record do affect sentencing differently, even with determinate sentencing, depending on the defendant's race/ethnicity. The detrimental effect of a prior record for Chicanos is especially interesting as it can be invoked legally as a sentence enhancement. The findings reported here demonstrate that Chicanos constitute a separate group, distinct from both Blacks and Whites, and must be treated accordingly in criminological research. So doing clarifies many of the inconsistencies in prior sentencing research.