The role of bail and pretrial detention in the reproduction of racial inequalities

The role of bail systems in the United States has been understudied within the sociology of punishment. The use of monetary bail is pervasive in the United States, contributing to a rising number of pretrial detainees and, consequently, jail populations. Since 2000, 95% of the growth in jail populations has been the result of the growing number of people held in jail pretrial. Moreover, racial and ethnic minorities account for a disproportionate number of pretrial detainees. In this review, I first summarize the empirical literature on racial and economic disparities in the use of bail and pretrial detention , arguing that race and social class are important determinants of who is ultimately detained. I also highlight the literature on the downstream outcomes associated with pretrial detention, and several recent studies which suggest that pretrial detention has a causal effect on conviction. Second, I consider how inequalities in policing and arrests, in combination with pretrial processes, lead to cumulative disadvantages. Lastly, I highlight recent debates surrounding the use of pretrial risk assessment tools and whether they serve as panacea or pariah for mitigating discrimination in criminal processing.     

Carrying American Ideas to the Unconverted : la tentative manquée du MIT d'exporter la recherche opérationnelle au sein de l'OTAN

Recent scholarship on the 'Americanization' of economic and cultural practices emphasize that the Europeans were not passive victims of this 'colonizing' project but selectively appropriated or even completely rejected aspects of it. This paper extends these insights to a scientific field. It describes the failed attempt to export to NATO a theory-based, computer-dependent model of operations research which embedded civilian scientists deeply in the military decision-making process. This conception of operations research and its related social practices was blocked by the British, who rejected a model of operations research which called for a training in advanced mathematics and computing, and who insisted that NATO maintain a strict civil/military divide. 'Americanization' was a negotiated and contested project which, while stimulating an awareness for change in Europe, did not necessarily determine its trajectory.     

International law and the detention of refugees and asylum seekers

The detention of refugees and asylum-seekers throughout the world remains a serious issue, currently affecting thousands of individuals. This article examines national concepts, powers, and practices of detention and these with individual right of refugees and asylum-seekers under international law. The general role of international law, in conjunction with the UN High Commission for Refugees, is to protect refugees. International law requires that access to detainees be granted and information given whenever refugees and asylum-seekers are detained. Detention itself is no solution, in either the remedial or the preventive sense. It is symptomatic of a variety of real problems and needs covering the broad range of movements of people, and cannot be separated from causes or from the necessity to find appropriate durable solutions. Principles of international solidarity and burden-sharing may offer a basis for the improvement of the lot of refugees and asylum-seekers.     

L’accountability à l’épreuve des incertitudes : le mandat des acheteurs d’énergie

Based on a survey of energy buyers in big industries, this article inquires into the different ways of explaining the actions they perform in situations of high, uncontrolled uncertainty. Describing energy buyers’ activities, the uncertainties and contradictions affecting them, shows how hard it is to explain them, make them visible or justify the decisions made. Energy buyers develop two forms of “accountability”: they claim to have been granted decision-making powers and ask to be evaluated on the basis of their results; or else they “socialize” their activities by involving corporate managers in decision-making. It is argued that “accountability” is stabilized in line with a collective learning process where the experience of uncertainty has a key place.     

The pains of immigrant imprisonment

The immigrant detention system in the United States is civil, rather than criminal, and therefore nonpunitive. However, in practice, detained immigrants lacking many basic constitutional protections find themselves in facilities that are often indistinguishable from prisons and jails. In this paper, we explore the crisis of immigrant imprisonment at the affective level, focusing on the painful experiences of immigrant detainees, while also emphasizing its systemic and racialized nature. Specifically, we place a review of a growing body of research that draws connections between immigrant detention and mass imprisonment alongside the findings from numerous reports issued by human rights organizations on the conditions of confinement within immigrant detention facilities. Using a “pains of imprisonment” framework, we highlight four particularly prominent “pains”: containment, exploitation, coercion, and legal violence. We suggest the infliction of such pain, especially when contextualized within a broader history of Latina/o oppression, demonstrates that immigration prisons are in fact punitive, “lawless spaces” where penal oppression is exercised. We conclude with a call for sociologists to become more attentive to this crisis, and to appreciate the similarities between immigration detention and other forms of racialized social control—namely, mass incarceration.     

Politique et expertise scientifique. La régulation européenne des médicaments

A study of the EU system for regulating medicinal products is used to show the usefulness of distinguishing between policy-making and scientific expertise when analyzing political decision-making. This approach presupposes identifying the characteristics of scientific expertise. The experts responsible for assessing drugs have to combine knowledge and action. Questions are raised about how work is shared between decision-makers and experts. In the case of medicinal products, the work of experts has absorbed decision-making. Lest we waver between explanations in terms either of science or else of politics, it is necessary to substantively identify expertise’s political dimensions. Two conceptions — the “healthy man’s” and the “sick man’s” — of the purpose of assessing medicinal products stand out in debates; but political authorities pay no heed to them.     

Coping and Helping to Cope: Perspectives of Children of Palestinian Political Detainees

This qualitative study investigates how children of Palestinian political detainees in Israeli detention cope with their fathers' absences. Researchers conducted 16 semi‐structured interviews with children, mostly aged 15 and older in the West Bank. Three themes are discussed that emerged from the interview data: how children cope with their sadness; the children's perspectives on community support; and older children's support to siblings and parents. Practitioners can support children by providing counselling to mothers and organising interventions, which give children the opportunity to connect. It is important that the agency of the older children is taken into account and built upon.     

Gérer la qualité de l’eau : singularisation, évaluation et régime de gouvernement

The April-June 2002 issue of Sociologie du Travail opened its pages for a discussion of the question of quality. Authors highlighted two mechanisms: “identification/singularization” (a sociotechnical process of co-constructing the quality of goods and services) and evaluation (a process of building up confidence so as to do away with uncertainty about the quality of goods and services). Can these two processes be analyzed together? If so, how to understand their interactions? As the example of managing the water supply and wastewater shows, jointly analyzing these two processes helps us understand the work of “qualification/requalification”. The relation between singularization and evaluation is clarified by introducing the notion of a “regime of government”.     

Le bon,la brute et le migrant ? Le rôle négocié des acteurs religieux dans un dispositif policier d’enfermement des étrangers en Allemagne

Contrary to the French model, the German detention and deportation centre for irregular migrants that has been studied here does not allow for any third parties other than chaplains. However, their scope of action goes far beyond spiritual assistance and extends to the defence of detained aliens’ rights and political contestation of the confinement regime. The detention centre therefore brings together two professional groups, chaplains and police officers, whose goals are a priori irreconcilable. After explaining the origins of this unique juxtaposition, I will analyse here the impact of the presence of religious actors within the state confinement regime on the construction, by each group of actors, of its professional legitimacy and on the practices of assistance and control that go along with it.     

Produire l'objectivité médicale : un système expérimental réplicatif de standardisation

As seen through studies in medical sociology and though the concerns expressed by health-care professionals, standardizing medical practices is the key to the theoretical and practical thought devoted to the production of scientific objectivity. Till present, analyses have given a special place to the conditions for establishing innovative systems of medical coordination on a large scale. Recent studies have focused on constructing standards and concretely applying them to the coordination of medical practices. Under this paradigm however, maintaining standardized practices over time is taken for granted. Attention has mainly turned toward the visible aspects of standardization in a narrowly defined medical setting with, as a result, models that are based on the degree of standardization obtained instead of on the process of attaining it. Two empirical studies are used to raise questions about how to make the nascent medical/administrative objectivity last. This presentation of a “style of standardization” pleads for a pragmatic approach to the producing of standards so as to describe the various innovative forms of standardized practices without necessarily making presuppositions about the context of discovery or the properties inherent in what is to be standardized.     

L’intergouvernementalité en reconstruction : le cas du Mexique

Since the 1930s, Mexico has had a dominant party, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional; and, despite the country’s federal constitution, decision-making has been so centralized that few powers have been left to the states. Recent attempts to break with this tradition and decentralize educational, health and welfare policy from the federal level to the states and big cities are examined. Three trends might unfold in the future: the establishment of an effective, multicentered decentralization; a surface decentralization without any real impact; or the fragmentation of policies and their impact. The foreseeable consequences of these three possibilities come under discussion. — Special issue: Latin America.     

Le marché comme rencontre d’activités de régulation : initiatives et innovations dans l’approvisionnement bio et local de la restauration collective

How to apply Jean-Daniel Reynaud's theory of social regulation to market relations? When applied to the results drawn from fieldwork on the supplying of organic and local produce to catering businesses serving public institutions in France, this grid of analysis shows that organizing this supply chain involves many activities of regulation. An explanation is provided about how hard existing regulations make it to search for local produce. Two contrasting cases show the degree to which the parties involved can skirt around existing regulations and also, use certain regulations to construct new ones. The innovative regulations that enter into application are qualified as being “joint”, since they stem from the efforts of the parties in catering and in agriculture to agree about how to organize transactions, which had previously been done through the work of market middlemen. In that case, instead of reasoning in terms of a pre-existing supply and demand, we have to understand how supply and demand gradually take shape through the process of working out regulations.     

Co-Occurring Disorders Among Female Jail Detainees: Implications for Service Delivery

ABSTRACT

The increase in the numbers of women incarcerated in prisons and jails has given rise to questions about their mental health and substance abuse treatment needs. This study used DSM-IV criteria to describe both lifetime and current diagnoses for substance use disorders, major depressive disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder and generalized anxiety disorder in a sample of 198 female jail detainees. Women were asked about readiness for treatment and AODA and mental health service use. Findings underscore the view that female jail detainees have complicated diagnostic histories and that the jail setting can provide opportunities for assessment and services.     

Le marché a dit. Intermédiaires financiers et managers dans le secteur électrique

The role played in the electricity industry by finance analysts, consultants and rating agencies has received too little attention in research on the liberalization of technical networks. Three arguments are brought forward. First of all, despite any rational argumentation, these intermediaries must be seen as ordinary actors with their interests, drawbacks and cognitive limits. Secondly, they have played an important part in transforming what used to be a tightly regulated industry. Their power mainly derives from their ability to influence the definition of the “right” policies and the production of information prior to decision-making. It takes the concrete form of an oligopoly power over two basic links in the information flow: big operations in the capital market and the ability to make comparisons between firms, sectors and countries and thus recommend the “right” allocation of resources. Thirdly, this quite real power does not have mechanical effects since it reflects a state of equilibrium within the firm, as the case of Suez proves. The relation between markets and firms is more interactive that it seems at first glance.     

Effets pervers des déréglementations européennes : le cas du transport routier de marchandises

The transportation of freight by truck has been fully deregulated and opened to competition in the European Union, without any quotas or restrictions since 1July 1998. This deregulation has caused problems, mainly due to the delay in adopting common fiscal and social measures, road checks and sanctions for firms that commit offenses. Unscrupulous companies have used this legal vacuum in the EU to factitiously “outsource” activities and dodge national rules and regulations about taxes, labor relations and welfare. As a result, working conditions have worsened as barriers have been lifted. By definition, turnover is high among wage-earners. Truck drivers, semi-skilled, have become interchangeable on the EU marketplace. They can be profitably replaced with drivers from eastern Europe (Poland, Romania, Bulgaria), who are much cheaper and less protected. The spread of such practices is a cause of concern for labor organizations in Europe. Shipping by truck is a textbook case for analyzing how the EU is trying to counter the devious effects arising out of the deregulation of a branch of the economy.     

L’erreur est humaine mais non professionnelle : le bûcheron et l’accident

Conscious of exercising a dangerous trade, lumberjacks in France pay special attention to training new recruits. The ability to notice dangerous work situations is a way to shelter themselves from accusations of occupational misconduct. But exercising control does not suffice to protect from the risks inherent in this job. Lumberjacks are sometimes exposed to dangers that, regardless of their skills, are unforeseeable. Strongly marked by a sense of responsibility, their discourse about the risks related to their line of work forms a system of protection — a defensive trade ideology — that enables them to work while accepting conditions rife with uncertainty. This system and the environment where it takes shape are examined herein.     

Un atelier d’écriture internationale : l’OCDE au travail. Éléments de sociologie de la forme « rapport »

The writing of a “transversal” report on employment at the OECD is examined by focusing not on the finished product but, instead, on the drafting of the report. This approach allows for exploring the dynamics of power at work inside the OECD. It opens toward broader considerations about how this type of international organization produces knowledge in economics and weaves relations, throughout the long process of drafting the report, with those who requested it. This article analyzes how economic issues are assembled through a succession of intermediate studies and reshaped through an asymmetrical competition between services. By making visible the process of constructing the position of “institutional author”, this analysis repositions on new grounds the problem of “influence”, which usually arises in organizations of this sort.     

« Adieu les artistes, here are the managers » : les réformes managériales au sein de la DG Développement de la Commission européenne

The managerial reform of the European Commission's DG Development-formerly DG8-started in the 1990s. Placed in a historical perspective, this reform is seen as the temporary outcome of a long process for bureaucratizing an institution marked, since its origins, by the pervasiveness of patronage. The sociology of the principal parties involved in the DG8 and their changing coalitions are linked to the powers and instruments successively used to establish this institution's authority and legitimacy and to professionalize its procedures for allocating aid to countries in Africa, the Caribbean Basin and the Pacific. Light is shed on this incomplete bureaucratization, punctuated by successive expansions of the EU, as new member-states have sought to rationalize the DG's operations in order to better control it.     

L’Europe sociale : créativité institutionnelle communautaire et réalités nationales

“Social Europe” has been constructed following 50 years of EEC and EU policy-making, which has gradually extricated social questions from a pure rationale of economic integration in order to turn it into a lever for European political integration. The theoretical and disciplinary viewpoints are presented that, together, help us better understand the processes at work. Attention is drawn to three of them. First of all, the evolutionary process of building the EU accounts both for the differences between social Europe and national welfare systems, and for an ongoing process of institutional creation through an accumulation of EU legal achievements (acquis). Secondly, the expansion of the EU to twelve new member states lacking robust labor relation systems, along with globalization, represents a challenge for the future of the “European social model”. Finally, social Europe has not yet undergone an assessment. Problems arise owing to the short shrift given by treaties to questions of social legislation or redistribution, but the “Europeanization of national policies” apparently opens a way toward overcoming these obstacles.