Research in Social Problems and Public Policy (RSPPP) is a peer-reviewed series devoted to the sharpening and reshaping of scientific discourse involving the intersection of social problems and public policy. In particular, it is interested in the analysis of the potential failure of public institutions to fulfil their obligations to the broader society. Multidisciplinary in nature, Research in Social Problems and Public Policy presents important themes of: social/crime problems and their treatment; criminal justice; law and public policy; crime, deviance and social control;...

From the de-institutionalization of psychiatric hospitals to the privatization of prisons, the dramatic public policy changes of the last three decades have been, to a large extent, changes in organization. The chapters in this volume examine these organizational changes. We learn how organizations shift strategies, create alliances, cross boundaries and react to incentives as they respond to changing environmental pressures. We learn about the complex relationships between organizations and their clients and how these relations can be altered in response to environmental change. Chapters in...

Environmental risks are among the most serious challenges of today's societies. Virtually all environmental risks are anthropogenic. The consequences of past decisions made by individuals, business, and governments have already devastated many of the earth's ecological systems and there is an ongoing discussion about the potential effects of environmental change and whether the earth will still provide a livable environment for future generations. environmental issues. However, this literature has been dominated by the natural sciences and research focuses on obtaining more accurate...

This volume ponders the cultures that generated the bulk of our global contamination legacy. Insight is sought into its creation and an understanding of differences in how it is being addressed. Hopefully the illumination of the problem will contribute to a better understanding of the constraining conditions and will help guide us in meeting the twin challenges created by the legacy of contamination: how to stop it and how to address what we already have done.

Section one focuses on the psycho-social dynamics of chemical contamination. Section two deals with nuclear events,...

This is the sixth volume in the series on research in social problems and public policy.

For a long time in industrialized countries the state occupied a comfortable and unquestioned position in dealing with environmental problems. Since the 1960s we have witnessed the rather smooth institutionalization of environmental tasks in state policies and politics, leading to the emergence of the "environmental state." In the 1980s, the ideologies of deregulation and privatization formed the start of the debate on the environmental state and the 1990s left the debate facing new challenges. First, the debate became broader and more sophisticated, moving away from simple deregulation and...

Even today, many people think of 'social problems' as involving poor and powerless individuals in society. "Research in Social Problems and Public Policy" seeks to improve the balance by adding a focus on important and powerful institutions. Such organizations often play key roles in managing, and mismanaging, the ways in which some of today's most important social problems are handled by the public policy system. The book series are compiled and written by the most highly regarded authors in their fields and are selected from across the globe. The papers discuss policy sciences, public...

This volume examines diverse developments in the evolution of public policy institutions for remedying social problems. The collected chapters address the transformation of social problems, social problems work, and social problems solutions in the context of criminal justice, mental health, and community institutions (schools) in contemporary society. These diverse settings and institutions collectively reflect a trend toward the use of various 'treatment' initiatives within formal disciplinary systems and as part of legalistic social control strategies. Although all of the remedial...

Government secrecy (GS) is a significant social, political, and policy issue and often presents as a barrier to civic participation, public right-to-know, historical understanding, and institutional accountability. This volume examines GS in a variety of contexts, including comparative examination of government control of information, new definitions, categories, censorship, ethics, and secrecy's relationship with freedom of information and transparency. It investigates GS in terms of its current theoretical descriptions as power over and concealment of information (Bok 1983), a 'tampering of...

Around the time of the first 'Earth Day', on April 22, 1970, the academic world joined in a virtual explosion of societal interest in a topic that inherently lies in the confluence between 'social problems' and 'public policy' - the ways in which humans use and abuse the natural environment. In the worlds of social movement organizations and policy, that newfound interest showed up in dramatic growth of environmental organizations and a stream of powerful new environmental laws. In the academic world, echoes of the explosion showed up in equally dramatic growth of interdisciplinary...