One of the stated objectives of the truth and reconciliation process in South Africa was the creation of a political culture respectful of human rights. Thus, part of the “reconciliation” sought by the truth process was nurturing a set of cultural values among the populace that would make the gross human rights abuses that characterized the apartheid regime difficult if not impossible to reimplement in the future. Those creating the truth and reconciliation process assumed (hoped) that knowledge of the truth about the country's apartheid past would somehow contribute to the development of such a culture.

The purpose of this article is to investigate whether a culture respectful of human rights has been created in South Africa. Based on a survey of roughly 3,700 South Africans (concluded early in 2001), I begin by conceptualizing what it means for cultures and individuals to be supportive of human rights. This conceptual approach then provides guidance for operationalizing support for human rights—and in particular support for universalism in the rule of law—within the survey context. Thus, the first objective of my article is descriptive: To what extent has a human rights culture been created in South Africa?

But this article is about far more than describing the human rights culture of South Africa. The truth and reconciliation process hypothesizes that “truth” can contribute to this culture. But does it? With measures of the degree to which individual South Africans accept the truth about the country's apartheid past, this hypothesis can be rigorously tested. In addition, I explore a variety of additional explanations of support for human rights values, ranging from experiences under apartheid to attitudes toward South Africans of a different race. I conclude that whether a South African prefers a universalistic approach to the rule of law depends upon truth acceptance, interracial attitudes, and support for strong majoritarianism. Still, even with controls, racial differences in attitudes toward the rule of law persist in contemporary South Africa. Perhaps the most important contribution of this article is its evidence that the truth—participation in a country's collective memory—can affect the values that individual citizens hold.

This research addresses affirmative and negative motivations for compliance with social and environmental regulations. Affirmative motivations emanate from good intentions and a sense of obligation to comply. Negative motivations arise from fears of the consequences of being found in violation of regulatory requirements. The relevance of these is examined for data concerning the motivations of homebuilders to comply with requirements of building codes. The findings highlight the importance of affirmative motivations for situations such as homebuilding for which regulation is better characterized as fulfillment of a social contract than solely as compliance with enforced directives.

Recent Supreme Court decisions have signaled the need for sound empirical studies of the secondary effects of adult businesses on the surrounding areas for use in conjunction with local zoning restrictions. This study seeks to determine whether a relationship exists between adult erotic dance clubs and negative secondary effects in the form of increased numbers of crimes reported in the areas surrounding the adult businesses, in Charlotte, North Carolina. For each of 20 businesses, a control site (matched on the basis of demographic characteristics related to crime risk) is compared for crime events over the period of three years (1998–2000) using data on crime incidents reported to the police. We find that the presence of an adult nightclub does not increase the number of crime incidents reported in localized areas surrounding the club (defined by circular areas of 500- and 1,000-foot radii) as compared to the number of crime incidents reported in comparable localized areas that do not contain such an adult business. Indeed, the analyses imply the opposite, namely, that the nearby areas surrounding the adult business sites have smaller numbers of reported crime incidents than do corresponding areas surrounding the three control sites studied. These findings are interpreted in terms of the business mandates of profitability and continuity of existence of the businesses.

I investigate whether the degree of intimacy between victims and defendants affects legal responses to violence and how this association has changed over time. Using data on homicides between 1974 and 1996, I examine court outcomes in more than 1,000 cases. I demonstrate that intimacy matters at three criminal justice stages: charging, mode of conviction, and sentencing. However, moving beyond the traditional conceptualization of intimacy, I show that defendants who kill intimates do not always receive the same treatment, nor are all defendants who kill nonintimates treated similarly. Finally, I show that criminal justice leniency toward intimate violence is less evident in recent years.

Restorative justice is a form of informal justice growing rapidly among criminal justice practitioners. It decenters the focus of criminal justice from the offender breaking a law of the state to the harm caused the victim and community. Resolution is said to come from offenders taking responsibility and making amends for the harm done and from communities supporting the victim and providing offenders with opportunities and skills to reintegrate as contributing members.

Restorative justice theory largely ignores the role of professionals in the criminal justice process, and yet professionals have played a dominant part in initiating many restorative justice programs. Several theoretical traditions recognize professionals as being important intermediaries between citizens and the state. The theory of democratic professionalism argues that professionals can play crucial roles in increasing and improving democratic participation in public affairs. This article examines two functioning restorative justice programs to flesh out what democratic professionalism might look like in operation—what tasks professionals perform and what citizen involvement means to the professionals. We argue that restorative justice cannot get along without professionals and that democratic professionalism may help restorative justice to avoid some of the problems associated with other approaches to informal justice by increasing true community participation but balancing it with concern for individuals' rights.