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.     

The First Year of Federation

This is the text of an address given by Sir Gilbert Rennie beforethe Royal African Society and the Royal Empire Society on October7, with Sir Miles Thomas, D.F.C., in the chair. Sir Gilbertis High Commissioner for the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasalandin London. He was Governor of Northern Rhodesia from 1947 tothe time of his appointment as Federal High Commissioner onApril 1, 1954. Sir Gilbert was Chief Secretary in Kenya from1939 to 1947. He held the post of Financial Secretary for theGold Coast before that. He served in the Ceylon Civil Servicesfrom 1920 to 1937, when he took up his appointment on the GoldCoast.     

Income changes do not influence political involvement in panel data from six countries

The income gradient in political participation is a widely accepted stylized fact. Based on nine panel datasets from six countries, this research note asks whether income changes trigger short-term effects on political involvement. Irrespective of indicator, specification, and method (hybrid random effects models, fixed effects models with lags and leads, and error correction models), there are few significant short-term effects of income changes. In conjunction with earlier research, this finding suggests that the income gradient in political participation is likely to reflect stable differences between rich and poor voters emerging early in the life course.     

RAPE IN STOCKHOLM:

Sweden has a reputation for sexual liberality and sex-role equality, two items which might be presumed to correlate with a low rate of forcible rape. In truth, however, the rate of rape known to the police in Stockholm is about equivalent to that for comparably sized American jurisdictions. Neither laws nor reporting rates are believed to vary meaningfully between the United States and Sweden. We suggest that the rape in Stockholm may well be a function of a different kind of sexual behavior (though not so different as stereotypes portray), and that more sophisticated studies of rape and other crimes ought to refine sharply the gross measurements now employed to signify criminal activity.