我国警察机构及警察权改革刍议

对暴力使用权的合法垄断是国家权力的本质特征,国家对暴力的垄断集中体现在军队和警察身上,警察的暴力垄断使用权是其对内政治表达和稳定秩序的需要。目前。我国的警察权设置过于狭隘,已不能满足社会和民众的需要。调整现在的警察机构设置和警察权的设定,成为我国行政体制改革、建设服务型政府的当务之急,也是我国警察体制改革的必由之路。同时,只有采用新的工作原则和制度安排,才能使分散化的警察机构设置产生更大的效用,发挥机构分散化带来的优势,克服分散化带来的劣势,推进警察和社会安全体系的建设。     

邮传部与清末电政利权回收

清末是我国经济发展的小黄金期,这其中,邮传部领导的、包括电政业在内的交通利权回收是不可忽视的因素.邮传部对清末电政的利权回收之推动集中体现在中俄、中日交涉及中国与德国、英国、意大利、法国等国的交涉,除此之外还进行了进口替代生产,这极有利于该领域的近代化.以往学界仅仅关注民间的利权回收运动,而对政府部门多所忽视,此乃革命史范式在作祟.     

刑事和解在审判阶段的制度构建

刑事和解系宽严相济刑事政策在诉讼中的具体体现,基于其特殊的价值,我国检察机关开始进行试点与探索,而对于具有普遍意义的刑事和解在审判阶段的应用并没有推开.自诉案件和刑附民案件程序的启动本身就决定于被害人,这类案件的和解并非普遍意义上的刑事和解.就刑事和解在审判阶段应用的价值、程序设置的主要问题进行评析,并在此基础上对程序设置的完善提出建议,以适用于审判实践.认为审判阶段进行刑事和解不仅提升了被害人的诉讼地位,同时,在一定程度上促使刑事审判的功能发生变化,与过去靠"打"来稳定社会治安的作用完全不一样,能使司法活动取得良好的社会效益,实现从有害正义到无害正义的进步,有利于社会和谐的构建.     

Crime,politics and police in the Palestinian's society in Israel

This paper offers an analysis of crime in the Palestinian society in Israel from the perspective of political relationships. It illustrates that the state of Israel is trying to define and identify crime through ideologies and narrow interests. This process is part of a mechanism of control, which intends to criminalize the daily life of the Palestinians. Discriminatory behavior against Arabs by police is more apparent and the records on crime are sometimes inaccessible, with a mania for secrecy, and view the whole Arab community as a security danger. The Israeli social control policy politicizes this community, with excess control in some areas and a lack of control in others. The paper concludes that no detailed arguments are needed in order to see the ineffectiveness of the Israeli control policy as long as the basic root of the political struggle is not answered.     

Understanding and Using Mediators and Moderators

Mediation and moderation are two theories for refining and understanding a causal relationship. Empirical investigation of mediators and moderators requires an integrated research design rather than the data analyses driven approach often seen in the literature. This paper described the conceptual foundation, research design, data analysis, as well as inferences involved in a mediation and/or moderation investigation in both experimental and non-experimental (i.e., correlational) contexts. The essential distinctions between the investigation of mediators and moderators were summarized and juxtaposed in an example of a causal relationship between test difficulty and test anxiety. In addition, the more elaborate models, moderated mediation and mediated moderation, the use of structural equation models, and the problems with model misspecification were discussed conceptually.

Protesting the police: anti-police brutality claims as a predictor of police repression of protest

Police face a unique dilemma when policing protests that explicitly target them, such as the anti-police brutality protests that have swept the United States recently. Because extant research finds that police response to protests is largely a function of the threat – and especially the threat to police – posed by a protest, police may repress these protests more than other protests, as they may constitute a challenge to their legitimacy as a profession. Other research suggests police agencies are strongly motivated by reputational concerns, suggesting they may treat these protests with special caution to avoid further public scrutiny. Using data on over 7,000 protests events in New York over a 35-year period from 1960 to 1995, I test these competing hypotheses and find that police respond to protests making anti-police brutality claims much more aggressively than other protests, after controlling for indicators of threat and weakness used in previous studies. Police are about twice as likely to show up to anti-police brutality protests compared with otherwise similar protests making other claims and, once there, they intervene (either make arrests, use force or violence against protesters, or both) at nearly half of these protests, compared to about one in three protests making other claims.     

Walking a tightrope: reflections on police gatekeeping roles in suicide research in Ghana

Engaging non-conventional gatekeepers such as the police presents both promises and perils. Although studies have relied on police data for researching suicide and other sensitive topics in Africa, there is a paucity of literature that explores or reflects on police gatekeeping and its research implications. This paper presents authors’ reflections on police gatekeeping in a qualitative suicide study in Accra, Ghana. The main observation is that the process was double-edged. On the one hand, it led to field delays and costs, (mis)apprehensions and positionality problems, and trust building challenges. On the other hand, it vouched for research(er) credibility, provided therapeutic openings, and facilitated the viability of research with the suicide bereaved. Sensitivity to research context, sensitising the police, and reinforcing ‘therapeutic-research discourse’ with participants, are recommended means for aligning participants’ goals to research goals and for achieving therapeutic disclosures.     

“Why I Can't Stand Out in Front of My House?”: Street‐Identified Black Youth and Young Adult's Negative Encounters With Police

This street participatory action research (Street PAR) study organized 15 residents to document street‐identified Black youth and adult's negative experiences with police in Wilmington, Delaware. Data were collected on mostly street‐identified Black men and women aged 18–35 in the forms of (1) 520 surveys, (2) 24 individual interviews, (3) four dual interviews, (4) three group interviews, and (5) extensive field observations. Forty‐two percent of survey participants reported being stopped by police in the last year. However, with the exception of being “stopped,” participants overall reported little negative contact with police at least within the past year. Chi‐square and ANOVA analyses suggest an interactional relationship exists between race, gender, and age on experiences with police. Younger Black men (18–21) were found to have the most negative contact with police. Analysis suggests a smaller, more hardened mostly male variant of the larger street community has had repeated contact with police. Qualitative analysis reveals at least two major themes: (1) disrespect and disdain for residents and (2) low motivation for working with police. Street PAR methodology was also found to be instrumental in working with local residents and the Wilmington Police Department to improve conditions between residents and police.     

Cost analysis of global road traffic death prevention: Forecasts to 2050

Road traffic safety initiatives are gaining momentum worldwide as more governments and international organizations recognize the implications of traffic accidents on economic and human development. In 2015, as part of its Sustainable Development Goals, the United Nations Development Programme set a global target (3.6) to halve the number of traffic deaths and injuries by 2020. This article uses the International Futures integrated forecasting system to explore the plausibility of achieving that goal and the potential forward linkages of such an intervention. We find that halving annual deaths caused by road traffic accidents is likely to be overly ambitious, and examine more reasonable road traffic death‐rate targets using an approach derived from road traffic death rates relative to income level.     

Southern knowledge online? Climate change research discoverability and communication practices

The networked age promises global digital cultures with flattened power relations, given the affordances of information and communication technologies to collapse distance, enable easier cross-country collaborations and create new opportunities for knowledge production and sharing. In the academic domains, indications are that knowledge patterns continue to reflect physically based geopolitical realities – where knowledge from the South is still peripheral while knowledge from the North still dominates in terms of all the conventional metrics. This study explores the potential role of digital affordances to challenge structural Northern bias and generates questions about knowledge production and dissemination in the climate change knowledge domain. It is framed by the field of scholarly communication within an African setting and by the emergent field of climate change which is fraught with debates and contestations, particularly regarding mitigation and adaptation. It draws on Southern theory which interrogates the global dynamics of knowledge production and dissemination. It explores the intersection of the discoverability and visibility of local climate change research methodologically from the outside in, through an experiment of searches for ‘climate change/South Africa’ and from the inside out by reviewing the online presence of one climate change group in a top-ranked African university.