Years In Jail Research Articles

Unlicensed Broadcasting and the Federal Radio Commission: The 1930 George W. Fellowes Challenge

An unlicensed station in St. Louis, Missouri, that rebroadcast material from other, licensed, stations soon came to the attention of the Federal Radio Commission, and owner George W. Fellowes found himself forced to challenge the right of the state to control the air. Fellowes' court-appointed attorney argued the government should not restrict the right of citizens to use airwaves; a U.S. District Court found differently, based on the Radio Act of 1927. Fellowes was given the choice of a year in jail—a stiff sentence to set an example—or deportation. He choose deportation. The argument of free citizen access to airwaves surfaces from time to time, but never for long.

Poems of a Prisoner of Conscience

The two greatest dangers to religious liberty in the twentieth century have been sectarian violence and state repression. If the death toll from sectarian violence runs into the millions, the number of those who have died under state repression runs into tens of millions. It is our immense privilege to have with us Irina Ratushinskaya. A fine poet and a women of great courage, Irina was sentenced to seven years in jail as a prisoner of conscience, first writing those poems with match sticks on bars of soap and then smuggling the poems out to her husband through fellow prisoners who learned them by heart as messages of truth and hope. Ladies and gentlemen, with Kathleen Kennedy Townsend to help her read the poems in English, Irina Ratushinskaya.

Gefälligkeitsvasektomie - nach wie vor ein umstrittenes Thema

In the Federal Republic of Germany, 35.000-40.000 individuals undergo sterilization annually for family planning. A great amount of legal uncertainty surround penal, civil, and tort law (damage and liability of doctor) accountability because of conflicting statutes and interpretations of laws. The penal code on sterilization and abortion has been recently rewritten. Some of the indications for vasectomy are medical, medical-criminological, medical-social, and eugenic. Vasectomies are also performed on request of the patient; this is defined in different ways. A 1871 penal law pronounced the making of a person infertile a bodily injury punishable by 10 years in jail, but if the doctor could adduce special circumstances justifying it, the act was exonerated. Voluntary choice was not acceptable, only medical indication was valid. In 1933, the legal justification of voluntary choice of sterilization was confirmed, and even severe bodily injury was justifiable as long as it was accepted by the affected person, except if the act conflicted with accepted standards of habit, custom, and morals. Medical, eugenic and criminological-sexual medical reasons for sterilization were allowed, other reasons were punishable. In 1943, sterilization by radiation and hormone treatment also became punishable, except in the above allowances. In 1946, the penal code was annulled to extirpate Nazi thinking. The law that replaced it was put out of force in 1955, thus restoring the formed edict about moral conflict in voluntary choice. In 1963, a doctor was punished for 140 voluntary sterilizations, but the 1933 law reduced his sentence to 6 months instead of several years. After that, voluntary sterilization was no longer punished by a German court, but, in 1976, the controversial issue of legal justification of sterilization under free will was tackled in a verdict of the Bundesgerichtshof or Federal Court (BGH) under civil law. A 34-year old mother of 3 children was sterilized in the course of the delivery of the third child. She demanded compensation for pain, but the courts rejected her request on grounds of voluntary choice of procedure. Since, in 1970 and 1976, the Convention of German Doctors endorsed only medical-genetical and severe social reasons for sterilization, the BGH decision was also meant to indicate that the free choice of sterilization was not without limits. The doctor had to make sure that his act was legally acceptable by observing the rules of medical law: exact clarification of the type of treatment, disclosure of attendant consequences, side effects, risks and complications, the danger of failure of sterilization, and education about alternative methods. On demand vasectomy should be undertaken with restraint, since there is no recourse against the doctor; thus, unpleasant consequences could be avoided.

In the pit

A short story On 3 March, the Reuter correspondent in Belgrade reported: ‘The Yugoslav literary newspaper Knjizevne Novine has published a short story by Milovan Djilas … His first work published at home for 34 years, it was printed so that readers could ‘judge him on his literary merits’. Mr Djilas (76), once a close lieutenant of Tito, fell into disgrace in 1954, serving nine years in jail and being expelled from the party for criticising Tito's policies. He is widely known for his political books and essays, not so much for literary fiction. We acknowledge the publication of his short story in Knjizevne Novine as a step in the right direction; when the same story was printed some time ago in Encounter and Tempo Presente, both periodicals were banned in Yugoslavia. We are proud to present another short story by Milovan Djilas; in sending the manuscript, Mr Djilas was the first writer to respond to our invitation to contribute to this 100th issue of Index on Censorship.

Politics & Punk

Members of the Coitus Punk Group were sentenced to two years in jail when their songs and behaviour — which included tearing apart a live chicken — were held to be ‘incitement to disaffection’. A Hungarian dissident considers the grounds for this charge and concludes that in an ideal world he would ban the glorification of brutality.

Poems

Jorge Valls Arango was released from prison in Cuba in June 1984 after more than 20 years in jail there. He visited Europe to receive the Rotterdam Poetry Festival prize which had been awarded to him in 1983. He also came briefly to London, where the English Centre of International PEN has recently published a bilingual edition of some of his poetry, Where I am there is no light and it is barred. Jorge Valls gave many interviews, including one to Index, from which the following account was taken.

A Criminal Activities Checklist

In an attempt to make certain sociological aspects of criminology more relevant to my students, a 30-item checklist is administered on which students gauge their own involvement in criminal activity that has not come to the attention of the police. Each of the 30 items is a statement referring to some action that violates a section of the state criminal code. After the checklist is administered, the student (using the same list) can figure the number of years in jail or prison he or she owes the state for these violations.

The Politics of History-Writing in Czechoslovakia

The post1968 'normalisation' of Czechoslovakia was also a period of reestablishment of tight party and state control over all spheres of cultural life. Historiography became one of the first victims. While official historiography reverted to a highly ideological orthodoxy, an independent historiography, faithful to the libertarian spirit of 1968 (while moving far beyond the letter of the 1968 political legacy) developed its own attempt to 'treat the present as a problem of history' (Lukacs). Over the last decade historians have become perhaps the single most persecuted category of the intelligentsia. Some of them, for example, J. Tesar and M. Huebl, spent several years in jail in the 1970s and as a 'professional' group historians are heavily represented within the Charter 77 movement. The prime reason why they became one of the first targets of the 'normalisation' was their crucial role in shaping the intellectual background to the Prague Spring and, more particularly, in investigating the causes and the mechanisms of the stalinist purges of the late 1940s and 1950s as well as striving for the rehabilitation of the victims of the show trials. Obviously, to show that the party leadership still in power had been responsible for the deaths and persecution of innocent people had immediate political repercussions. Thus, throughout the 1960s there developed a close relationship between historical revisionism, the judicial revision of the stalinist purge trials and political revisionism (an admittedly inadequate term to represent the broad coalition of forces pressing for a complete overhaul of the political system). The two first revisionisms (historical and judicial) helped to discredit the Novotny leadership, which resisted any kind of 'destalinisation' after 1956 while, by freeing the victims of the purges, they also contributed to the emergence of an alternative political leadership. The events of 1968 showed the considerable impact of this phenomenon, though the case of the present leader, Gustav Husak, also reveals its limits. Sentenced as a Slovak 'bourgeois nationalist' in the 1950s, he was freed in 1960 and rehabilitated in 1963 thanks to the help of historians such as Milan Huebl, who also helped his comeback into Czechoslovak politics. The historical irony was that Husak fulfilled his ambition only as the ruthless successor to Alexander Dubcek. He eventually sent his friend Huebl to jail for five years. Huebl is today a signatory of the Charter 77 and one of the contributors to the historical samizdat. In 1975 historians attending the International Congress of Historians in San Francisco were presented with a small brochure entitled Acta Persecutionis listing the cases of 145 historians expelled from their research institutes during the massive purge that followed the Soviet invasion. In contrast the volume presented at a similar Congress last August in Bucharest was entitled Acta Creationis. Not that persecution had disappeared: in fact Vilem Precan, the editor of the volume, makes the depressing

Slavery and Modes of Production in Brazil

No other problem so obsesses Brazilian Marxists working in the social sciences nowadays as the characterization and analysis of modes of production. The problem is doubly important. On the one hand, it represents the Brazilian equivalent of what Marx studied in Capital, the evolution of a mode of production, the central historical process, to which all other historical phenomena relate in a more or less dependent way. On the other hand, one's perspective on the problem can have direct consequences for political action: if capitalism arrived only belatedly in Brazil if precapitalist or noncapitalist work relations still predominate in many rural areas then alliances with progressive sectors of the national bourgeoisie should be taken more seriously, and alliances with semifeudal peasants should recognize that the peasants' basic interests may differ from those of the urban proletariat. The books by Gorender and Souza Martins represent two serious efforts to understand modes of production in Brazil. Gorender, a member of the Brazilian Communist Party or Partido Comunista Brasileiro (PCB) since the 1950s, helped found the Partido Comunista Brasileiro Revolucionario (PCBR) in the mid-1960s; this latter party supported urban guerrilla actions, and Gorender spent over a year in jail. He has since written a long book based on hundreds of published sources in which he defends the idea that throughout the period and up until final abolition in 1888, Brazil's dominant mode of production was neither feudalism nor capitalism, but colonial slavery. Gorender devotes a large part of his book to an explanation of five laws of the slavery mode of production those characteristics which differentiate it from other modes of production, and hence justify his thesis. First, the law of monetary income: all the slave's labor, beyond that needed to keep him alive (if not for very long), was converted into monetary income. This distinguished slavery from ancient slavery and also from feudalism, where only a very small portion of the surplus product was commercialized. Because the slave himself earned no money, the slave society had a very

Oregon Marijuana Decriminalization the Moral Question

Not so long ago, while still Oregon's Governor, Tom McCall spent time travelling across the United States telling folks the “Oregon Story.” Featured in his many messages was Oregon's enlightened approach to the problem of roadside litter, the now-famous “Oregon bottle bill.” Following close on his heels, Lane County prosecutor, district attorney J. Pat Horton, has broadcast another bit of modern Oregana, the equally famous “Oregon marijuana bill.” Although some natives have expressed misgivings about any national advertisement of Oregon virtue, most have welcomed these contributions. And whatever position one takes on these matters, no Oregonian will deny that Oregon's place in America is made unique by its bottle and marijuana laws. Where, but in Oregon, is it possible to threaten a supermarket store manager with a $1,000 fine and a year in jail if he dares sell even one bottle of beer without that bottle having a refund value of at least two cents but, at the same time, to threaten a hippie hitchhiker with only a $100 fine if he carries his “pot” in small amounts. In this article I sketch the origin of both of these laws in past Oregon legislatures and then I note the present impact that each law has had in the state. In a final section, I present the moral questions linking the future of the Oregon bottle and marijuana laws.

Classroom Uses of a Criminal Activities Checklist

When teaching sociology the instructor often finds himself I presented with the problem of discussing a concept or situation which the students have difficulty relating to personal experience. In an attempt to overcome such a problem in my initial lectures on criminology, I have developed a Activities Checklist which I believe aids in exemplifying several important points. Using the basic structure of a questionnaire developed by Wallerstein and Wyle (1947), I distribute to each student a form (see Appendix A) and request that they respond to the instructions accordingly. The four digit number following each statement refers to the particular section of the Criminal Code of Georgia which this activity violates. The number following the colon refers to the maximum number of years in jail or prison which one could receive for committing the act.' The students are not told the meaning of the number until they have completed the checklist.

Murder and the control of aggression.

Building on the identification by Megargee, et al. ( 1967) of cwo kinds of murderers (overcontrolled and undercontrolled), it was predicted that ( a ) from a psychoanalytic point of view, overcontrolled murderers should be more depressed and suicidal than undercontrolled murderers and ( b ) from Eysenck's theory of crime (1964), overcontrolled murderers should be more introverted than undercontrolled murderers. To test these predictions, 35 male murderers from a state penitentiary were given the Zung (1765) self-rating depression scale, the Maudsley Personality Inventory (Jensen, 1958), and the Megargee, et nl. hostility concrol scale (which he devised to assess the dimension of over versus undercontrol of hostile impulses). Neither prediction was confirmed: control of hostility scores were not related to depression scores (product-moment r = -0.23), extraversion scores (product-moment r = -0.10), or to prior suicidal behavior (point biserial r -0.29). In addition, scores on the hostility concrol scale were not related co age (product-moment r = -0.04), IQ (product-moment r = 0.01), years in jail (product-momenc r = 0.03), neuroticism scores (product-moment r = -0.1 1 ) , Lie scale scores (product-moment 7 = 0.02), race (point biserial r = 0.19), or to prior felony convictions (poinc biserial r = -0.08). When Ss whose Lie scores were less than three (out of a possible score of 20) were considered separately, the resulrs remained essentially unchanged. The results of the present study indicated that overcontrolled murderers did noc differ from the undercontrolled murderers in the predicted manner. Megargee's notion char murderers are extreme in their concrol of hostilicy was noc borne out by these data: the range of scores was unimodal racher than bimodal, [hereby casting doubt upon the basic notion or upon Megargee's operational measure of hostility control.

Seeking Justice for Physical and Sexual Violence against Women in Lebanese Society

Violence against women has no definition in Lebanese law. Domestic violence, defined as violence happening within a household and between members of a family, is ruled by the general articles of the Lebanese Penal Code. The Lebanese Penal Code has only a very few articles punishing acts of violence that cause bodily harm or injury (Articles 554-559 - Legislative Decree 340/NI dated March 1, 1943). These articles address physical violence that can occur between any individuals, strangers or relatives, at any place, whether in the street, in a bar or anywhere else. Penalty categories for injuries range from six months to ten years in jail if the injury leads to disfigurement or mutilation. In the first category, the penalties are not applicable if the charges are dropped by the victim. Indeed, the absence of a special law prohibiting domestic violence in Lebanon makes this crime almost beyond punishment.

Crime, Alcoholism, and the Symptoms of Disease

THE great social changes of the 1960's — the war on poverty, the re-examination of criminal law and procedure and the surge of political force in minority groups – find another expression in the ruling of a high federal court that a patient with chronic alcoholism cannot be punished criminally for public drunkenness. In the case, Driver v. Hinnant,1 the defendant, Joe B. Driver, was a typical, skid-row alcoholic. He had been sentenced in a North Carolina State Court to two years in jail as a more than three-times repeater. Actually, he had been convicted of public intoxication over . . .

Gusii Sex Offenses: A Study in Social Control1

The social factors responsible for the extremely high incidence of rape in the Gusii tribe of Kenya which is a major social problem are discussed and general questions about social control of sexual behavior are raised. The Gusii have a history of sexual intercourse being associated with protest and pain because there are strict taboos against marriage within the clan and brides all come from enemy clans. There are strict formal restrictions on sexual relations with girls of ones own clan and the high brideprice often delays marriage until the late 20s. Previously rape resulted in blood feuds. However the British colonial government outlawed such feuds and now rape of a girl from an enemy clan merely results in a sexual assault charge with a maximum penalty of $70 or 1 year in jail and only 1/3 of all cases are even prosecuted. Meanwhile the social controls against sexual relations within the clan are still strong. In many societies either physical or social barriers prevent premarital intercourse. When as with the Gusii structural barriers are removed without being replaced by other barriers of equal effectiveness socialized inhibitions of individuals are severely tested. If both sexes are highly inhibited little premarital activity may occur. If the males are uninhibited but the females inhibited rape is likely. If both are low on inhibition promiscuity will result.

The Element Concept in Psychology and Education

IN HUMAN history, whenever a man strays from the beaten path to begin to develop a new point of view, he is, at first, regardedas crazy by his more conservative contemporaries. Columbus had to risk his life to prove the world is round when everyone else was sure it was flat. Galileo spent many years in jail because he tried to prove Copernicus was right when he said the earth moved around the sun. His contemp oraries were convinced by their experiences that the earth is rigidly stable and immovable, and of course any sane man could see that the sun moves. Dozens of similar illustrations might be given. A young physician, a friend of mine, has recently accepted a posi tion as surgeon in a mission hospital on an Indian reservation in A r i zona. He was much astonished to discover that his patients believed the world is flat, and much more astonished to find his attempts to teach them the truth were of no avail. His patients just thought he was crazy, following the primitive pattern of psychological response to new ideas that are strange. My first educational test was given in 1907. It was only a few years before I realized, from a study of my own test results and published lit erature on educational measurement, that William James was right way back in 1892 when he said psychology was:

A Letter from Anne Braden

As most MR readers know, Carl Braden, Louisville newspaperman, was recently sentenced to 15 years in jail and a fine of $5,000, allegedly for sedition but actually for the crime of helping a Negro buy a house in a white neighborhood. Latest developments in the case are set forth in the following letter from Anne Braden, Carl Braden's wife, which was received just as we were about to go to press. We take this opportunity to underline Mrs. Braden's appeal for financial assistance: we are convinced that there is no more important civil liberties case before the American courts today. Contributions should be sent to Anne Braden, P. O. Box 1302, Louisville, Kentucky. —The EditorsThis article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

The Imprisonment of the Archpriest

All histories of Spanish literature, however much they may vary on other points, are agreed on one: Juan Ruiz, the Archpriest of Hita, spent a number of years in jail.* From 1790, when Sanchez put it into currency, this alleged fact has been parroted by every historian of Spanish literature, as well as by critics writing specialized works on Juan Ruiz. Various attempts have been made to explain why he might have been imprisoned and to determine the number of years he must have been there, but no one has ever given thought to sifting the evidence to ascertain if it is probable that he actually ever was in prison. The statement that he was imprisoned has been accepted with no critical evaluation of the evidence, and such is the purpose of this paper. In the words of Felix Lecoy, the best critic of the Archpriest: To all these questions [concerning the life and works of Juan Ruiz] up to now we have been given only replies which are rapid, little studied, most of the time superficial, often contradictory.' In his thoroughly critical, sound, and scholarly study of Juan Ruiz, written in 1938, Lecoy is chiefly concerned with the literary composition and sources of the Libro de Buen Amor, but these involve necessarily some biographical inferences, and his work has been of inestimable value in the preparation of this paper.

Psychiatry and the Prevention of Sex Crimes

During the past few years the country has been stirred by a considerable number of reported criminal cases in which children or young women have been attacked. It is safe to say that in certain quarters public indignation has reached almost a mass hysteria which has affected not only the public but also official authorities. A sheriff in New York recommended shooting every child attacker on the spot. Even from medical sources plans have come that seem impractical and would affect the whole role of the medical profession in the community. But it is both possible and expedient to look at these matters soberly. A constructive outlook cannot come from heated discussions about what should be done with this or that individual, or from hasty generalizations advocating pet causes or pet remedies. In the discussions that have grown from the public interest in the subject, two extreme points of view stand out. On the one hand it is stated that this is a purely legal and criminological problem. The advocates of this point of view say: Round up all the major and minor offenders, keep them under permanent police supervision, give the convicted delinquents the sternest punishment and the longest jail terms possible, introduce new laws making their punishment even severer and prolonging their years in jail, tighten the parole laws, exclude the so-called mollycoddling attempts at human understanding-punish, restrict, deter! To this category belong the diehard opponents of the parole system, who raise a hue and cry after every startling crime and want to make us believe that if every criminal would serve every day of his full sentence all would be well. The other point of view is equally extreme. It claims that most, if not all, of these delinquents belong to the province of psychiatry. The whole question of sex crimes, according to the very recent statement of a distinguished member of the Bar, is one which should be laid squarely at the feet of the medical profession. It is