Beyond the Gaze and Well Beyond Wolfenden: The Practices and Rationalities of Regulating and Policing Sex Work in the Digital Age

Drawing on the largest study of the United Kingdom online market in sexual labour to date, this article examines the legal and regulatory consequences as aspects of sex work increasingly take place within an online environment. Our research shows that while governmental policy has not kept abreast of these changes, the application of current laws (which have, since the 1950s, focused on public nuisance and, more recently, trafficking and modern slavery) are pernicious to sex workers and unsuited to recognizing and responding to the abuses and exploitation in online markets in sexual labour. These injustices are likely to be exacerbated if policies and policing do not better align with the realities of these markets in the twenty‐first century. This demands a more nuanced regulatory approach which recognizes that people may engage in sex work of their own volition, but which also addresses conditions of labour and criminal exploitation.     

Assessment of public attitudes towards sex offenders in an Australian population

Public attitudes towards sex offenders are believed to play a key role in the development of legislation and public policy designed to manage the risks posed by known sex offenders who live in the community. There have, however, been few previous attempts to validate methods by which public attitudes can be measured. The current study aims to address this issue by establishing the factor structure of the Community Attitudes Towards Sex Offenders (CATSO) scale with an Australian community sample and examine the extent to which demographic variables and support for sex offender management policies influence these attitudes. A sample of 552 participants recruited through online social media sites completed the CATSO as well as a number of items developed by the researchers designed to assess individuals' support for specific sex offender policies. Results of an exploratory factor analysis suggested the presence of four distinct factors which were labelled ‘social tendencies’, ‘treatment and punishment’, ‘crime characteristics’ and ‘sexual behaviour’. Individuals with higher levels of educational attainment rated sex offenders less negatively than those with lower educational attainment, while those who reported being supportive of community notification reported more negative attitudes towards sex offenders.     

When (Some) Prostitution is Legal: The Impact of Law Reform on Sex Work in Australia

In Australia, prostitution regulation has taken a very different path from many other countries. Law reform has led to the opening of some significant new spaces for legal sex work, including the (very different) regulatory regimes established in two Australian states – Queensland (brothels legal if their owners are licensed) and New South Wales (most commercial sex businesses and some street prostitution decriminalized; no licensing regime). The main research question is: how has regulation impacted on the positive rights of sex workers? I argue that law reform has engaged a mix of neo-liberal and other approaches – not to increase personal or corporate freedom but as part of a practical strategy designed to control a range of social problems, such as police corruption and organized crime. Neo-liberal regulation of prostitution in Australia has always been deployed in tandem with other modes of regulation – including new criminal law and policing strategies, planning law, health regulations, and (of course) moral regulation.     

Social Policy and Sexual Offenders: Contrasting United States' and European Policies

This article contrasts US and European social policies with regard to sexual offending. The three waves of social policy which are discernible in the United States' history (sexual psychopath laws, the focus on the domestic sex crimes under the influence of feminism, and a renewed attention towards sexual predators) are first described. The most significant policy trend at present concerning sex offences focuses on government controls after release. The broad overview of European countries' solutions to the same problems, concentrates on the contrasts and similarities between Europe and the United States. At present, the United States and parts of Europe are both focused on ways to increase public protection from sex offenders, particularly in ways outside the context of the criminal law. The harm caused by sex offences, in combination with the persistent nature of some patterns of sex offending, has caused citizens and governments to push for specialised remedies and powers.     

Cultural Criminology and Sex Work: Resisting Regulation through Radical Democracy and Participatory Action Research (PAR)

Taking a feminist cultural criminological analysis to the regulation of sex work in the United Kingdom, this paper argues against the dominant deviancy and the increasingly abolitionist criminal justice model for regulating sex work. The paper begins by offering a critique of the dominant regulatory regimes which have operated since the Victorian era, amended in part in the 1950s with Wolfenden, and currently being reinscribed with the Home Office strategy on prostitution and various pieces of legislation. The focus is specifically upon research with female sex workers and the usefulness of using Participatory Action research methodologies (PAR) with sex workers, agencies, and policy makers in order to foreground the diverse voices and experiences of sex workers, challenge the current focus on abolitionist criminal justice regimes and outcomes, and offer an alternative framework for a cultural materialist analysis of sex work, drawing upon the work of Nancy Fraser.     

Regulating to ensure patient safety in hospitals: towards a comprehensive framework

This article critically examines the successes and failures of the current internal and external regulatory regimes for ensuring the delivery of patient safety in public hospitals. It argues that governments should develop a holistic approach to regulation through the enhancement of existing compliance mechanisms in conjunction with some formal regulation to ensure that public hospital systems-deliver high standards of service with minimal patient harm. It recommends that a Patient Safety Authority be established in order to assist with the monitoring of incidents and the enforcement of compliance with patient safety standards.     

Regulating Global Financial Markets

This paper discusses the role of regulation in the emergence of a global system of linked financial markets. It traces the origins of the internationalization of financial markets to the emergence of new competitive pressures, rooted in changes in the social structures of savings and investment, breaking down both national systems of financial control and international arrangements for monetary and financial co-ordination. These changes have been accompanied and facilitated by a process of international re-regulation, through informal specialist networks. Although these have facilitated the international diffusion of regulatory standards and practices, and attempted to co-ordinate them, they are greatly hampered by espousing the perspectives of the various markets and firms which it is their task to supervise. Together with their minimalist view of the aims of public legitimation and oversight of financial markets, they have proved inadequate to prevent the destabilizing effects of the new global finance on the world economy.     

Values and Purpose in Government: Central-local Relations in Regulatory Perspective

This paper explores the relationship between theories of regulation and governmentality, showing how a synthesis of the two approaches may be used in the analysis of central-local relations. The basis of the current trend towards greater partnership and cooperation in the regulation of local by central government is argued to lie in the linking of increasingly selective imperium and dominium controls with 'responsibilization' strategies involving techniques of accounting, audit, and contracting. Following Nonet and Selznick, the substantive and purposive nature of state action is placed at the centre of the analysis. In this perspective, the ideal of responsive regulation implies not just technical effectiveness, but the harnessing of regulatory forces and 'governmental' resources in endeavours to achieve legitimate regulatory objectives. While New Labour's regulatory style is more likely to prove effective than that of the Conservatives, it may be criticized for a similar failure to implement fundamental values of openness and participation in the determination of regulatory purposes.     

Regulation and Social Solidarity

Justifications for regulation are commonly based on the identification of market failures. This is however inadequate to account for much regulation, and sees regulation as inherently second best to market allocations. This article argues that, although some regulation will be based on market failure, other justifications can be found in the protection of rights and in the maintenance of social solidarity. Theoretical support for this last rationale can be found in the work of Durkheim and Duguit and the concept of public service. To accept this rationale for regulation has important implications both for regulatory policies and regulatory instruments.     

Regulatory beneficiaries and informal agency policymaking

Administrative agencies frequently use guidance documents to set policy broadly and prospectively in areas ranging from Department of Education Title IX enforcement to Food and Drug Administration regulation of direct-to- consumer pharmaceutical advertising. In form, these guidances often closely resemble the policies agencies issue in ordinary notice-and-comment rulemaking. However, guidances are generally developed with little public participation and are often immune from judicial review. Nonetheless, guidances can prompt significant changes in behavior from those the agencies regulate. A number of commentators have guardedly defended the current state of affairs. Though guidances lack some important procedural safeguards, they can help agencies supervise low-level employees and supply valuable information to regulated entities regarding how an agency will implement a program. Thus far, however, the debate has largely ignored the distinct and substantial interests of regulatory beneficiaries--those who expect to benefit from government regulation of others. Regulatory beneficiaries include, among others, pharmaceutical consumers, environmental users, and workers seeking safe workplaces. When agencies make policy informally, regulatory beneficiaries suffer distinctive losses to their ability to participate in the agency's decision and to invoke judicial review. This Article argues that considering the interests of regulatory beneficiaries strengthens the case for procedural reform. The Article then assesses some possible solutions.     

Drugs, markets and criminal justice in Poland

Since 1989 drug situation in Poland has changed considerably. First, Polandhas become a major European producer of synthetic drugs. Second, it has becomea major transit country for smuggling drugs. Third, while its drug markets arenot yet fully developed, they offer now a much broader selection of drugs thanthe pre-1989 staple drug, the home-made ``Polish heroin'. Despite some alarmabout a growing drug problem, Polish drug policies remained for many years primarily public health oriented. The recent drug law reforms may signify, however, a shift towards a more punitive approach. This paper explores theconditions surrounding the emergence of both new markets and new controlstrategies.     

The determinants of time off work after childbirth

Relatively little is known about the role that leave policies--family, parental, or maternity-leave policies--play in facilitating time off work after childbirth. Yet time off is a critical element of leave policies, as it facilitates the mother's recovery from childbirth and promotes maternal-infant attachment. Using data from Minnesota, the state with the highest rate of female labor force participation, we examine the extent to which policies, relative to personal, job, and workplace characteristics, determine the duration of women's childbirth-related leaves from work. A random sample of women identified from vital statistics records is used to estimate the relationship between leave policies and time off work after childbirth. Of our sample 85 percent had access to some paid leave benefits, although only 46 percent had paid maternity leave benefits. The difference in duration of leave between women with and without paid leave policies was approximately four weeks, a substantial difference for most women and their infants. Paid leave policies and spousal earnings as primary determinants of maternal time off work, suggest problems in the use of unpaid leave for economically vulnerable women.     

Public Participation in Environmental Regulatory Conflicts: Treading Through the Possibilities and Pitfalls*

Based on two years of qualitative field work, this paper examines public participation in environmental regulatory disputes. Drawing on political economy critiques of environmentalism, we argue that regulation is both a political arena and a legal process that is about responsivity, competition, and bargaining. A combination of case study and Boolean algebra techniques are used to refine and apply the conceptualization. Five primary factors are identified which mediate citizens' participation: (I) information networks, (2) social resources, (3) cooperative linkages, (4) the ability to sustain linkages and levels of resource mobilization over time, and (5) agendas which fit within the narrow constitutive norms of a particular regulatory community.     

行政规范性文件绩效评估中的公众参与

行政规范性文件绩效评估是政府绩效评估中的一种专项评估,公众参与其中既是民主行政的需要,也是评估活动取得应有实效的必然要求。在当前的行政规范性文件绩效评估中,无论是评估的动议还是评估标准的确定抑或是评估过程都缺乏公众的参与,因此,应当采取各种方式扩大公众的参与范围,既要让公众直接参与评估,也要采取公众满意度、民主监督等方式便于公众的间接参与。     

Control Modes in the Age of Transnational Governance

The article starts with the observation that there are overlaps in, so far, largely unrelated research programs concerned with the legalization in international relations, on the one hand, and transnational regulation and governance, on the other. The analysis of the literature at the interface between the "fourth strata of the geology of international law" and the "governance in the age of regulation" literatures reveals a substantial common interest in structures of transnational regulatory governance. At the same time, the theoretical toolkit of both strands of literature does not match the task of coping analytically with structures and processes in the overlapping realm. To sharpen the analytical edge, the article elaborates hierarchy, market, community, and design as four ideal types of control modes in transnational regulatory spaces. The application of this model to the empirical analysis of a number of regimes underpins the observation that control frequently occurs in hybrid regulatory constellations involving public and private actors across national and international levels. A key example concerns the prominence of domestic regulatory regimes in underpinning transnational governance processes, where national rules achieve extraterritorial effect as much through competitive as through hierarchical mechanisms.     

University student beliefs about sexual violence in prison: rape myth acceptance,punitiveness, and empathy

Abstract

The public desires more punitive sentencing for sex offenders; however, treatment has been shown to be most effective in increasing public safety. It has been suggested that public education about the benefits of sex offender treatment could influence public policy. The purpose of this study was to determine if a brief psychoeducational intervention could influence individuals’ attitudes towards the treatment of sex offenders. Overall, findings showed that a psychoeducational intervention can affect subsequent attitudes; furthermore, the nature of the intervention will be significant in determining the level of attitude change.     

Introduction: Public Participation and Involvement in the Criminal Justice System in Asia

In this introduction to this special issue of the Asian Journal of Criminology, we pay special attention to public participation and involvement in the criminal justice system in Asia. Public support, participation, and involvement in various forms are crucial to normal functioning and effectiveness of the criminal justice system. Given the centralized and often non-democratic nature of the legal system in many Asian nations, studies in this field have lagged behind their Western counterparts. Based on empirical and theoretical studies from China, India, Japan, Macao, and South Korea, papers in this special issue address several key aspects of public participation and involvement in these Asian nations and regions, including the public’s role in crime reduction and prevention, the public’s fear of crime, the public’s involvement with the police in dealing with juvenile delinquencies, the police’s perception of civilian oversight of police work, public opinion on criminal trial procedures, and a comprehensive crime prevention strategy.     

Law and Precariousness in an Authoritarian State: The Case of Illegal House Construction in Vietnam

While sociolegal research in authoritarian regimes has examined the cultural and regulatory factors accounting for why and how people bypass, manipulate, or resist the law, little attention has been paid to an important double-edged effect of law in legitimating and sanctioning subversive or illegal behavior. Through an examination of illegal house construction in peri-urban Vietnam, this study fills this gap by drawing attention to the relationship between law and precariousness. Precariousness influences individuals’ perceptions of and behavior toward the law; at the same time, however, law creates and reinforces precariousness, a condition of vulnerability and uncertainty subject to the local state's discretion and compassion.     

Private Regulation of the Public Sector: A Neglected Facet of Contemporary Governance

The centrality of regulation among the tools deployed by governments is well established in the social science literature. Regulation of public sector bodies by non-state organizations is an important but neglected aspect of contemporary governance arrangements. Some private regulators derive both authority and power from a legal mandate for their activities. Statutory powers are exercised by private regulators where they are delegated or contracted out. Contractual powers take collective (for example, self-regulatory) and individuated forms. But a further important group of private regulators, operating both nationally and internationally, lack a legal mandate and yet have the capacity to exercise considerable power in constraining governments and public agencies. In a number of cases private regulators operate more complete regulatory regimes (in the sense of controlling standard setting, monitoring, and enforcement elements) than is true of public regulators. While private regulators may enhance the scrutiny given to public bodies (and thus enhance regimes of control and accountability), their existence suggests a need to identify the conditions under which such private power is legitimately held and used. One such condition is the existence of appropriate mechanisms for controlling or checking power. Such controls may take the classic form of public oversight, but may equally be identified in the checks exercised by participation in communities or markets.