During 1995, there was a major shift in the United Kingdom in the debate of whether it is right for nurses to strike. The Royal College of Nursing, the former advocate of a non-industrial action policy, moved towards the UNISON position that industrial action is ethical in some circumstances, as well as the necessary thing to do. The authors, both nurses and UNISON officials, look at the reasons for this change and why UNISON’s historical position sees industrial action as an (...) effective weapon in defending services, as well as wages and jobs. It can be right to strike. (shrink)

The growth of penal population through the last decades of the twentieth century reshaped the institutional landscape of American poverty and inequality. The effects of rising incarceration rates have been especially large for young minority men with little schooling. This paper charts the extent of incarceration among young disadvantaged men and describes the effects of the prison boom on American economic inequality.In this paper I will argue that we are currently living in an era of "mass imprisonment." Under mass imprisonment, (...) the experience of incarceration is so pervasive among some social groups as to be a defining feature of their collective experience_incarceration characterizes the group and influences their life chances. I provide evidence for this claim with estimates of incarceration rates and lifetime risks of imprisonment for recent birth cohorts of white and black men at different levels of schooling. These statistics show that young black men with little schooling became pervasively involved with the criminal justice system by the late 1990s.This historically novel and highly concentrated rate of incarceration has two profound effects on American economic inequality. First, mass imprisonment generates invisible inequality. Our official statistics and data sources that measure the economic well_being of the population do not count those who are institutionalized. The large labor force surveys that measure the unemployment rate, for example, are drawn from samples of households. Be cause prison inmates are not included in these surveys, employment rates are significantly over_stated among people most likely to go to prison. Once we factor in the effects of invisible inequality through the late 1990s, we see that the economic expansion did very little to improve the economic status of young black men with no college education.In addition to invisible inequality, incarceration reduces the life chances of ex_inmates after they are released. Through the stigma of a criminal conviction, the diminished human capital from time out of the labor force, and the weakened social connections to legitimate employment opportunities, incarceration reduces the wages and employment of those serving time in prison. Not only does incarceration reduce pay and employment, it also limits the kinds of jobs that are available to formerly_incarcerated workers. Career jobs requiring a high level of trust, skill, credentials, or well_placed social connections are largely out of reach for those with prison records. As a result, incarceration channels ex_inmates into the secondary labor market in which employment is precarious and there are few prospects for mobility. In this way, the growth of the American penal system has hardened the lines of social disadvantage. We usually study prisons and jails in the context of their effects on crime. By calculating the scope of mass imprisonment, the penal system becomes important not chiefly for its effects on crime, but for its effects on social inequality. (shrink)

During 1995, there was a major shift in the United Kingdom in the debate of whether it is right for nurses to strike. The Royal College of Nursing, the former advocate of a non-industrial action policy, moved towards the UNISON position that industrial action is ethical in some circumstances, as well as the necessary thing to do. The authors, both nurses and UNISON officials, look at the reasons for this change and why UNISON’s historical position sees industrial action as an (...) effective weapon in defending services, as well as wages and jobs. It can be right to strike. (shrink)

David Garland's The Culture of Control provides a powerful analysis of trends in crime and criminal justice policy over the last 30 years. This note re?examines two parts of the Garland thesis. First, it argues that punitive criminal justice policy is rooted in an authoritarian neoconservative politics that shares little with free?market ideology. Second, research on the collateral consequences of incarceration suggests that the penal system, at least in America, has become a significant influence on, rather than just a product (...) of, the social structure of late modernity. (shrink)

La construcci n de la naci n nasserista tiene varios niveles de explicaci n. La autora otorga especial importancia a la construcci n del poder y al uso de la reflexi n hist rica como medios para cambiarla. Los ejes elegidos son la selecci n cuidadosa del pasado para formular el futuro y para desautorizar las resistencias y oposiciones, el ejercicio meton mico de la revoluci nnaci n, las pol ticas concretas de identidad y la constituci n de los sujetos (...) en diferentes planos de la vida p blica como instancias de regulaci n de las conductas sociopol ticas. La naci n egipcia poscolonial se utiliza en este libro como prisma para examinar un conjunto de problemas relacionados con la modernidad, la descolonizaci n y las caracter sticas de los reg menes poscoloniales. (shrink)