Public opinion, party messages, and responsibility for the financial crisis in Britain

The political consequences of the crisis in world financial markets are only beginning to be understood. In this article, we take up one of these many repercussions by examining public beliefs of who’s to blame for a complex and unparalleled set of events. Analyses of survey data from Britain find that while most assign responsibility for the crisis to market actors, the likelihood of blaming governments, as opposed to blaming banks and investors, is greater among low sophisticates and Conservative Party identifiers. We further show how elite messages from competing political elites evolved over-time and were reflected in mass beliefs about the crisis. Results highlight the centrality of partisan cues and, in particular, of political sophistication in understanding the dynamics of responsibility attributions. Lastly, we estimate the consequences of blaming the government for the crisis for voter choice.     

Significance of additional RFLP single locus probes analysis after STR based determination of sibship

Autosomal STR typing alone seems to be no sufficient tool for resolving deficiency cases (e.g. cases of questioned paternity or half-sibships). Therefore, we investigated whether the additional analysis of RFLP single locus probes can improve the solution of such complicated kinship cases. We analyzed 207 children and men from 101 families using the AmpFlSTRIdentifiler multiplex PCR kit and three RFLP single locus probes. A comparison between each child and all unrelated men resulted in 11,023 man / child pairs. Less than three excluding STRs were found in 125 child / unrelated man pairs (1.13%). Additional analysis of RFLP results reduced the number of ambiguous cases to 35. Half-sibling pairs were simulated using STR results from 20 cases with high paternity probabilities (group 1) and relatively low paternity probabilities (group 2). Using a commercially available computer program we calculated probabilities for 778 half-sibling pairs. In 35 pairs (4.49%) half-sibling probabilities over 90.0% could be calculated. Additional investigation of RFLP single locus probes did not lead to a more reliable evaluation of these results. The combined investigation of autosomal STRs and RFLP single locus probes can satisfactorily solve deficient paternities but does not contribute to the solution of questioned half-sibships.     

Characteristic Features of Severe Child Physical Abuse—A Multi-informant Approach

Minor child physical abuse has decreased in Sweden since 1979, when a law banning corporal punishment of children was passed, but more serious forms have not decreased. The aim of this study was to examine risk and background factors in cases of severe child abuse reported to the police. Files from different agencies (e.g., Social services, Adult and Child psychiatry and Pediatric clinic) for 20 children and 34 caretakers were studied. An accumulation of risk factors was found. It is concluded that when the following four factors are present, there is a risk for severe child abuse: 1) a person with a tendency to use violence in conflict situations; 2) a strong level of stress on the perpetrator and the family; 3) an insufficient social network that does not manage to protect the child; 4) a child that does not manage to protect him or herself. Thus, multiple sources of information must be used when investigating child abuse.     

Parents’ Perspectives on Family‐centered Care in Juvenile Justice Institutions

Family‐centered care during adolescent detention aims to increase parental participation in an attempt to optimize treatment outcomes. However, little is known about parents’ needs in family‐centered care. To fill this gap, we interviewed 19 purposefully selected parents of detained adolescents using a semi‐structured topic list. Although needs differed between parents, they were generally interested in activities that included spending time with their child. It is important for parents to receive timely information about their child's condition and treatment, detention procedures, and activities in the facility. The outcomes demonstrated that parents expected a two‐way communication based on respect and reliability.     

Public Sector Reforms: New Public Management without Marketization? The Danish Case

Is it possible to imagine New Public Management without marketization? In Denmark the present liberal-conservative Government has, throughout its 10 years in power, designed and implemented more than 15 major management reforms in the public sector. Although most of the reforms are rhetorically firmly rooted in neo-liberal ideologies they have, in practice, promoted tools and mechanisms of the “traditional,” or Old, Public Management. Based on an empirical study of the reforms, we suggest that the notion of “pragmatic” New Public Management is introduced to enhance the current understanding of New Public Management in the Western industrialized societies.     

Garment, or Upper-Garment? A Matter of Interpretation?

In an adversarial common law courtroom, where one party tries to defeat the other by using words as weapons, polysemous words more often than not pose a problem to the court interpreter. Unlike in dyadic communication, where ambiguity can be easily clarified with the speaker by the hearer, court interpreters’ freedom to clarify with speakers is to a large extent restricted by their code of ethics. Interpreters therefore can only rely on the context for disambiguating polysemous words. This study illustrates the problem of polysemy in an interpreter-mediated rape trial. It exemplifies how the interpreter’s goal to avoid contradictions by making her interpretation of a polysemous word consistent with the preceding context runs counter to that of the bilingual cross-examiner, whose primary goal is to identify inconsistencies in the hostile witness’s testimony in order to discredit him. This study also manifests a denial of the interpreter’s latitude in the interpretation of contextual clues and her loss of power in a courtroom with the presence of other bilinguals.     

Gender differences in violent offending: results from a multicentre comparison study in Dutch forensic psychiatry

ABSTRACT

The past two decades, a disproportionate growth of females entering the criminal justice system and forensic mental health services has been observed worldwide. However, there is a lack of knowledge on the background of women who are convicted for violent offenses. What is their criminal history, what are their motives for offending and in which way do they differ from men convicted for violent offenses? In this study, criminal histories and the offenses for which they were admitted to forensic care were analyzed of 218 women and 218 men who have been treated between 1984 and 2014 with a mandatory treatment order in one of four Dutch forensic psychiatric settings admitting both men and women. It is concluded that there are important differences in violent offending between male and female patients. Most importantly, female violence was more often directed towards their close environment, like their children, and driven by relational frustration. Furthermore, female patients received lower punishments compared to male patients and were more often considered to be diminished accountable for their offenses due to a mental illness.     

Semiotics of corruption: ideological complexes in Mexican politics

ABSTRACT

This article analyses a complex text and event to examine the role of ramifying contradictions in strategic social semiotics analysis. The focus was a paradoxical intervention into corruption by then-Mexican President Peña, who responded to an unprecedented wave of popular criticisms of corruption by simultaneously launching an Anticorruption System and apologizing for his own corruption. We asked: how did this contradiction work, in this conjuncture, with what effects, and how analyse them? We combined the concepts of the Ideological Complex and Wittgenstein’s “duck-rabbit” to explain unstable contradictions in a multiscalar, multimodal analysis of a diachronic corpus, to expose discursive strategies and identify points of vulnerability.