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The Center for Law, Society, and Culture (http://www.law.indiana.edu/centers/lawsociety/) is sponsored by the Indiana University School of Law - Bloomington. The Center actively supports and promotes multidisciplinary understanding of law and legal problems through scholarship, teaching, and discussion. The Center is located in the School of Law on the Bloomington campus of Indiana University, but produces, presents and coordinates research conducted by more than 70 scholars from schools and departments across Indiana University. The Center's affiliated scholars hold appointments in African-American studies, business, criminal justice, journalism, history, economics, English, law, and gender studies, among others, and are dedicated to an interdisciplinary approach to the study of the role of law in society and culture. The Center supports research related to the law in a broad sense, including the cultural aspects of law expressed through political theory and scientific aspects of law expressed through technological advances in biotechnology, environmental science and information technology.


Table of Contents

Trial by Jury in Russian Military Courts

Nikolay P. Kovalev, affiliation not provided to SSRN

Political Control of Federal Prosecutions - Looking Back and Looking Forward

Daniel C. Richman, Columbia Law School

Shadow Writing and Participant Observation: A Study of Criminal Justice Social Work Around Sentencing

Simon Halliday, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow
Nicola Burns, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow - School of Law
Neil Hutton, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow - School of Law
Fergus McNeill, University of Glasgow - Department of Social Work - Jordanhill Campus
Cyrus Tata, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow

What People Think About the Management of Sex Offenders in the Community

Steven T. Brown, University of Manchester
Jo Deakin, University of Manchester - School of Social Sciences
Jonathan W. Spencer, University of Manchester - School of Social Sciences

The Violent Bear it Away: Emmett Till & the Modernization of Law Enforcement in Mississippi

Anders Walker, Saint Louis University School of Law

Pathways Through Crime: The Development of Crime and Desistance in the Accounts of Men and Women Offenders

Clare Fiona Byrne, Northern Ireland Prison Service
Karen F. Trew, Queen's University Belfast - School of Psychology


LAW & SOCIETY: PUBLIC LAW - CRIME, CRIMINAL LAW, & PUNISHMENT ABSTRACTS
Sponsored by: Indiana University School of Law - Bloomington

"Trial by Jury in Russian Military Courts" Free Download

NIKOLAY P. KOVALEV, affiliation not provided to SSRN
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One of peculiar features of the military criminal justice system in Russia is that in some cases military defendants may apply for trial by jury. Unlike the existing U.S. court-martial jury and the Russian military jury of the early 1900s (World War I period) which were comprised of the members of the armed forces, in modern Russia jurors trying military defendants are civilians. This article aims to provide a brief history of military jury in Russia and identify issues of independence and impartiality in Russian military courts with participation of lay decision-makers. In particular, the article will analyze two high-profile cases which resulted in acquittals of Russian officers accused of killing several Chechen civilians during counter-terrorist operations in Chechnya.

"Political Control of Federal Prosecutions - Looking Back and Looking Forward" Free Download
Duke Law Journal, Forthcoming

DANIEL C. RICHMAN, Columbia Law School
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This essay - written for the annual Duke Law Journal Administrative Law Symposium - explores the mechanisms of control over federal criminal enforcement activity that the Administration and Congress used or failed to use during George W. Bush's presidency. Particular attention is given to Congress, not because it played a dominant role but because it generally chose to play such a subordinate role. My fear is that the recent focus on management inadequacies or abuses within the Justice Department might lead policymakers and observers to overlook the hard questions that remain about how the federal criminal bureaucracy should be structured and guided during a period of rapidly shifting priorities, and about the role Congress should play in this process.

"Shadow Writing and Participant Observation: A Study of Criminal Justice Social Work Around Sentencing" Fee Download
Journal of Law and Society, Vol. 35, Issue 2, pp. 189-213, June 2008

SIMON HALLIDAY, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow
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NICOLA BURNS, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow - School of Law
Email:
NEIL HUTTON, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow - School of Law
Email:
FERGUS MCNEILL, University of Glasgow - Department of Social Work - Jordanhill Campus
Email:
CYRUS TATA, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow
Email:

The study of decision-making by public officials in administrative settings has been a mainstay of law and society scholarship for decades. The methodological challenges posed by this research agenda are well understood: how can socio-legal researchers get inside the heads of legal decision-makers in order to understand the uses of official discretion? This article describes an ethnographic technique the authors developed to help them penetrate the decision-making practices of criminal justice social workers in writing pre-sentence reports for the courts. This technique, called shadow writing, involved a particular form of participant observation whereby the researcher mimicked the process of report writing in parallel with the social workers. By comparing these shadow reports with the real reports in a training-like setting, the social workers revealed in detail the subtleties of their communicative strategies embedded in particular reports and their sensibilities about report writing more generally.

"What People Think About the Management of Sex Offenders in the Community" Fee Download
The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, Vol. 47, Issue 3, pp. 259-274, July 2008

STEVEN T. BROWN, University of Manchester
Email:
JO DEAKIN, University of Manchester - School of Social Sciences
Email:
JONATHAN W. SPENCER, University of Manchester - School of Social Sciences
Email:

The research on which this article is based examines public attitudes towards the reintegration of sex offenders into the community. Data were gathered using a variety of methods: an online, predominantly qualitative questionnaire, a postal questionnaire, predominantly quantitative, and meetings with community groups, such as residents' associations. The postal questionnaire was sent to employers (for distribution to staff) and mailed to 5,000 households in the north-west of England; a total of 979 people responded to both the online and postal questionnaires. This study is one of the largest surveys in the UK on what people think about the reintegration of sex offenders into the community post-conviction. The research findings indicate that people are not as punitive towards sex offenders as is assumed. However, feelings of insecurity in terms of the way sex offenders are managed in the community were expressed with a belief in the veracity of community notification strategies. Concern was also expressed in relation to how the community reintegration of sex offenders takes place.

"The Violent Bear it Away: Emmett Till & the Modernization of Law Enforcement in Mississippi" Free Download
San Diego Law Review, Forthcoming
Saint Louis U. Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2008-09

ANDERS WALKER, Saint Louis University School of Law
Email:

Few racially motivated crimes have left a more lasting imprint on American memory than the death of Emmett Till. Yet, even as Till's murder in Mississippi in 1955 has come to be remembered as a catalyst for the civil rights movement, it contributed to something else as well. Precisely because it came on the heels of the Supreme Court's 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, Till's death convinced Mississippi Governor James P. Coleman that certain aspects of the state's handling of racial matters had to change. Afraid that popular outrage over racial violence might encourage federal intervention in the region, Coleman removed power from local sheriffs, expanded state police, and modernized the state's criminal justice apparatus in order to reduce the chance of further racial violence in the state. Though his results proved mixed, many of Coleman's reforms lived on, contributing to the end of public torture and lynching as an accepted mode of punishment in the state. This article discusses those changes, suggesting that they not only influenced the fight for civil rights, but encouraged the modernization of criminal justice in the South.

"Pathways Through Crime: The Development of Crime and Desistance in the Accounts of Men and Women Offenders" Fee Download
The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, Vol. 47, Issue 3, pp. 238-258, July 2008

CLARE FIONA BYRNE, Northern Ireland Prison Service
KAREN F. TREW, Queen's University Belfast - School of Psychology
Email:

Findings are presented of a qualitative exploration of offenders' accounts of themselves, their lives and their offending behaviour. Participants were nine male and nine female offenders, aged 19 to 50 years. A model of crime as described by these individuals was developed. Gendered meanings were explored in both men's and women's accounts. Pathways into crime described by the participants were shaped by a range of personal and social background influences and by processes related to negative social relations, positive evaluations of crime, and crime orientation. Changes in the same influences and processes, with a greater emphasis on the personal level, were apparent in participants' descriptions of their pathways out of crime.

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Solicitation of Abstracts

LAW & SOCIETY: PUBLIC LAW - CRIME, CRIMINAL LAW, & PUNISHMENT, edited by Joseph Hoffmann, is dedicated to the distribution of empirical or theoretical scholarship on topics related to crime, criminal law, and criminal punishment (including the death penalty), from any disciplinary perspective. Covered topics include victims' rights, criminal sentencing rules, criminal sentencing procedures, criminal punishment, theories of criminal punishment, alternatives to traditional criminal punishment, criminal law doctrine, and administration of criminal justice.

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Advisory Board

Law & Society: Public Law - Crime, Criminal Law, & Punishment

ALFRED C. AMAN
Director, Center for Advanced Studies, Roscoe C. O'Byrne Professor of Law, Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington, Dean Alfred C. Aman, Jr., Suffolk University Law School

JEANNINE BELL
Professor of Law, Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington

PETER CARSTENSEN
George H. Young-Bascom Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin Law School

KENNETH GLENN DAU-SCHMIDT
Co-Director, Center for Law, Society and Culture, Willard and Margaret Carr Professor of Labor and Employment Law, Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington

LAUREN B. EDELMAN
Director, Center for the Study of Law and Society, Agnes Roddy Robb Professor of Law and Professor of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley - Jurisprudence & Social Policy Program and Center for the Study of Law and Society

HOWARD S. ERLANGER
Voss-Bascom Professor of Law, Professor of Sociology, President, Law and Society Association, Review Section Editor - Law & Social Inquiry, Director - Institute for Legal Studies, University of Wisconsin Law School

LUIS E. FUENTES-ROHWER
Associate Professor of Law, Adjunct Professor of Latino Studies, Adjunct Professor of Political Science, Indiana University School of Law - Bloomington

MARC GALANTER
John & Rylla Bosshard Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin Law School, Madison

MICHAEL GROSSBERG
Co-Director, Center for Law, Society and Culture, Professor of History & Law, Indiana University School of Law - Bloomington

WILLIAM D. HENDERSON
Associate Professor of Law, Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington

ANNA-MARIA MARSHALL
Editorial Advisory Board, Law and Society Review, Assistant Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - Department of Sociology

LYNN MATHER
Director - The Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy; Professor of Law and Political Science, University at Buffalo Law School, SUNY

SALLY ENGLE MERRY
Marion Butler McLean Professor in the History of Ideas, Wellesley College - Department of Anthropology

JOYCE STERLING
Professor of Law, University of Denver - Sturm College of Law