Judicial Myth and Reality

We use the term “legitimacy” here in a special way: legitimacy is the willingness of people, for a variety of reasons, to defer to the decisions of judges—even if they lose. People may so defer (grant legitimacy) because they feel that the law in their case was fair and impartial, or, if they do not like the law, because the judge appeared to exercise his discretion to look out for their interests. They may defer because the law in point is politically determined and amenable to change, or because in its application the judge applied generous measures of common sense. In short, the citizen may grant legitimacy to the court for substantive reasons (he wins, he likes the outcome, he feels the law protects his interests), or for procedural reasons (decisions are made honestly, by good men, who arrive at their decisions in widely agreed-upon ways). What follows is an examination of these foundations of legitimacy, of the reasoning employed by legal scholars to explain the wide and powerful support that our courts have enjoyed, and in particular the notion of a “judicial myth” which underpins a procedural foundation for legitimacy

Prospects for Reform? The Collapse of Community Policing in Chicago

In an era of renewed enthusiasm for police reform, it could be instructive to examine how reforms—even successful reforms—fail. In the 1990s and 2000s, Chicago’s community-policing initiative was widely recognized as one of the most impressive in the country. In short order, it then collapsed. Community policing’s accomplishments were numerous, but it fell victim to issues commonly facing reform: money—especially the impact of economic downturns; leadership turnover and policy preferences; changes in the social, political, and crime environments; and the emergence of new technologies for responding to community concerns

Community Policing: Broken Windows, Community Building, and Satisfaction with the Police

The concept of community policing dominates the law enforcement profession today. One would be hard pressed to find an advertisement for a police chief’s position that does not require a thorough understanding of this method of policing. Like the Kansas City preventive patrol experiment and the Rand report on the criminal investigation process, the call for community policing has led to dramatic changes in the way that police carry out their responsibilities. In spite of its popularity, there have been a number of challenges to community policing from social scientists who are particularly concerned about the ‘broken windows’ model of policing. These challenges have not been received well by the law enforcement community, which argues that sociologists are wedded to the idea that crime is caused by the structural features of capitalist society, including economic injustice, racism, and poverty. The purpose of this article is to bridge the gap between these two positions. Yes, there is a place for community policing, and, yes, social problems do contribute to crime. The article starts by reviewing the development of community policing in the United States. An analysis of the theoretical constructs that support community policing then follows. Finally, we argue that there is sound theoretical evidence to support community policing, particularly those programmes that improve citizen satisfaction with the manner in which police carry out their responsibilities

Focused Deterrence and the Prevention of Violent Gun Injuries: Practice, Theoretical Principles, and Scientific Evidence

Focused deterrence strategies are a relatively new addition to a growing portfolio of evidence-based violent gun injury prevention practices available to policy makers and practitioners. These strategies seek to change offender behavior by understanding the underlying violence-producing dynamics and conditions that sustain recurring violent gun injury problems and by implementing a blended strategy of law enforcement, community mobilization, and social service actions. Consistent with documented public health practice, the focused deterrence approach identifies underlying risk factors and causes of recurring violent gun injury problems, develops tailored responses to these underlying conditions, and measures the impact of implemented interventions. This article reviews the practice, theoretical principles, and evaluation evidence on focused deterrence strategies. Although more rigorous randomized studies are needed, the available empirical evidence suggests that these strategies generate noteworthy gun violence reduction impacts and should be part of a broader portfolio of violence prevention strategies available to policy makers and practitioners

A view through a window: Social relations, material objects and locality

In this article the authors ask what it would mean to think sociologically about the window as a specific material and symbolic object. Drawing on qualitative analysis of a series of comparative interviews with residents in three different streets in a diverse local area of Glasgow, they explore what the use and experience of windows tells us about their respondents’ very different relationships to the places where they live. On the one hand, the window, as a material feature of the home, helps us grasp the lived reality of class inequality and how such inequality shapes people’s day-to-day experience. On the other hand, windows are symbolically charged objects, existing at the border of the domestic and public world. For this reason, they feature in important ways in local debates over the appearance, ownership and conservation of the built environment. The article explores these struggles, and shows what they reveal about the construction of belonging in the neighbourhood, a process which is both classed and racialised at one and the same time.ESR

О становлении трансплантологии в Украине: юридические аспекты

Рассмотрены основные аспекты развития трансплантологии, их положительное и отрицательное влияние на прогресс пересадки органов в странах с различным уровнем развития демократических принципов. Показано значение юридических проблем в развитии клинической и экспериментальной трансплантологии.Main aspects of transplantology development, their favorable and unfavorable influence on the process of organ transplantation in the countries with different level of democracy are featured. Significance of legal problems in clinical and experimental transplantology is shown