No abstract

No abstract

The article analyses the accounts of incarcerated females in Israel, examining the extent to which they were active, rational agents making choices regarding their criminality. The theoretical framework underlying this analysis views the criminal decision-making process with the agency/structure nexus. It indicates that the women were actively seeking normative means to satisfy their feelings of belonging, to gain economic benefits and feel safe, and to fulfil normative social expectations. They turned to the major social institutions that are considered the agencies for providing the means to realize these desires. Their discovery of the limited opportunities available to them led them to choose to engage in crime, and to select the location, timing and nature of the offence and the victim of the crime.

This article analyses the formulation and implementation of a relatively new statutory programme of care services for dependent elderly people in Israel, which has as a basic characteristic the supply of services by non-state agencies. The analysis serves as a basis for an exploration of the effects of privatisation and the emergence of quasi-markets upon the functioning of the welfare state both as a benefits provider and as a major employer. In contrast to the perspectives that consider privatisation as leading to the weakening of the state in the welfare domain, we argue that through the transfer of services supplied by non-state agencies the state protects itself from demands and pressures from clients, while maintaining its control and regulation capabilities. This process decreases the state's accountability towards its citizens, enhancing in turn its autonomy. Privatisation policies do not imply, therefore, the dissolution of the welfare state, but rather the emergence of a new mode of state intervention.

No abstract