Professional Skills in International Financial Surveillance: Assessing Change in IMF Policy Teams

In 2006, the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP) lauded Iceland's capacity to “withstand extreme, but plausible, shocks,” which was clearly an error in judgment. After the international financial crisis hit, IMF officials bemoaned the lack of professional market skills in FSAP teams. Importing these skills was difficult given IMF staff freezes, but postcrisis FSAP continued with heightened legitimacy inside and outside the IMF. This article provides an assessment of FSAP teams, focusing on the hiring of external experts and their professional skills. We use an Optimal Matching analysis of work roles in career histories to identify differences in policy teams and external experts' attributes. The article also draws on interviews with FSAP team members from 2008 to 2013. We demonstrate that changes in professional skills and team composition are a consequence of demands for professional insulation, institutional legitimation, and a view of professionalism as transnational organizational competence.     

Taking the stand: defendant statements in court cases of alleged sexual abuse against infants,toddlers and preschoolers

Investigating and adjudicating allegations of child sexual abuse are challenging tasks. In the present study, we examined defendant statements concerning charges of sexual abuse against young children in Swedish district court cases (87 defendants, 140 child complainants, tried between January 2010 to December 2015). A main objective was to test predictive factors for admissions of guilt using inferential statistical analyses. Furthermore, using qualitative thematical analysis, we sought to identify common patterns in the defendants’ explanations to the allegation. Approximately one-third of the defendants (31%) pleaded guilty during trial. Admissions of guilt were more likely if the defendant was young, if the child was young at the onset of abuse, if the child and perpetrator had an extrafamilial relationship, and if the defendant possessed child pornography. A conflict with the person who made the report (e.g. a custody dispute), a testimony from the child, a direct eyewitness, or an informal disclosure recipient were significantly more common in cases of denials. In the qualitative analysis, a range of alternative explanations behind the abuse allegations were identified. Legal professionals and investigators may benefit from considering these alternative hypotheses during their investigative and judicial work.     

Court evaluations of young children's testimony in child sexual abuse cases

Purpose

Prosecutors working with child sexual abuse (CSA) cases involving young children have raised concerns that reliability criteria from the Supreme Court of Sweden are holding children's testimony to impossible standards (e.g., expecting the child's testimony to be long, rich in detail and spontaneous). This study aimed to address these concerns by investigating how District Courts and Courts of Appeal employ said criteria in their testimonial assessments of young child complainants.

Methods

Court documents from District Courts (n = 100) and Courts of Appeal (n = 45) in CSA cases involving 100 children age 7 years and under were analysed with respect to the courts’ testimonial assessments.

Results

Testimonial assessments were more frequently referenced in acquitting verdicts and in cases with evidence of low corroborative value. Richness in detail was the most frequently used reliability criterion, followed by spontaneity. Most criteria were used in favour of the children's testimony. However, the length criterion was typically used against the reliability of the children's testimony.

Conclusions

Our findings confirm prosecutors’ concerns that criteria from the Supreme Court are frequently used in evaluations of young children's testimony. This is troublesome, as some criteria do not correspond to current research on young children's witness abilities. For example, compared to testimony given by older children or adults, testimony provided by a young child is typically not long or rich in detail. We encourage prosecutors to extend their own knowledge on young children's capability as witnesses and present this to the court.