Self‐control,peer relations,and delinquency

This paper addresses gender-specific treatment in juvenile justice processing, an important topic in view of new funding opportunities to develop female-specific programs. This topic is controversial and includes many unresolved issues. To provide context, we relate this study to lessons from the initiative to address disproportionate minority confinement: that it is impossible to understand confinement without understanding the process by which youths are confined, that structural and demographic traits facilitate the process, and that benevolent interventions can have unintended negative consequences. We present empirical findings that juvenile justice cases are “gendered,” but that court treatment of those cases shows more gender similarities than differences. In contrast, interviews with officials suggest large gender gaps in opportunities for services, and indicate some gender biases. Bias and disparity also are themes among delinquent and “at-risk” girls who participated in focus groups; in addition, girls expressed preferences for treatment comparable to that given to boys. Finally, we evaluate what has been advocated as female-specific programming and recommend how best to proceed.     

Social control: analytical tool or analytical quagmire?

Conclusion In this paper we have undertaken what we regard as a preliminary critique of the concept of social control and its utility for a critical criminology in Canada. In tracing its emergence and historical development as a key concept in American sociology, we have illustrated that its ascendancy represented a victory for liberal sociology. The recent attempts by critical criminologists and sociologists to rehabilitate the concept of social control by insisting upon the essentially coercive nature of control have not resulted in an advance over traditional theorizing.By examining the women, law and social control literature, in particular the use of the formal/informal dichotomy, we have attempted to illustrate the limited utility of the concept for developing an historically and theoretically informed understanding of the complex and contradictory relationship of women to the state and law. The concept of social control is ahistorical: when coupled with law, moreover, it lends itself to instrumentalism. It is our view that the concept of social control ought to be abandoned by critical scholars in favour of one attentive to the dynamic complexity of history, struggle and change.Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association of Sociology and Anthropology, 4–7 June 1986, Winnipeg, Manitoba. Equal authorship.     

How to control interception-does the UK strike the right balance?

This Article critically analyses the regime for intercepting the content of communications under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 in the light of the recent ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in Kennedy v the UK. It looks at the safeguards for privacy protection provided such as the requirement for a warrant and the roles of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal and the Interception of Communications Commissioner and whether these safeguards are compliant with Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights.     

Protecting mental health clients' dignity — The importance of legal control

Protecting human beings' dignity is a fundamental value underlying the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as several recommendations and conventions derived from this, among them the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), a declaration that also takes precedence over Norwegian legislation. Still, clients' stories inform us that their dignity is not always protected in the mental health service systems.The aim of the study has been to investigate violations of dignity considered from the clients' points of view, and to suggest actions that may ensure that practice is brought in line with human rights values.The method used has been a qualitative content analysis of 335 client narratives.The conclusion is that mental health clients experience infringements that cannot be explained without reference to their status as clients in a system which, based on judgments from medical experts, has a legitimate right to ignore clients' voices as well as their fundamental human rights. The main focus of this discussion is the role of the ECHR and the European Court of Human Rights as instruments for protecting mental health clients' human rights. To bring about changes, recommendations and practices should be harmonized with the new UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006). Under this convention, the European Court of Human Rights has support for the application of the ECHR without exemptions for special groups of people.     

Implications of legalising euthanasia in The Netherlands: greater regulatory control?

Euthanasia has been decriminalised in The Netherlands for the last 30 years, but it was only in April 2001 that the Dutch Parliament legalised voluntary physician-assisted suicide. The legislation incorporates developments in case law, including scope for peer review, and provides common ethical principles for a clear system of control over doctors' actions in regard to patients who request euthanasia. The legalised regulatory system may prove more effective in controlling voluntary and non-voluntary euthanasia in The Netherlands than in countries where euthanasia remains illegal.     

User control of personal information concerning mobile-app: Notice and consent?

This paper discusses the practical value of the traditional privacy protection measure “notice and consent” in the mobile context. It analyses the weakness of this approach in the mobile context through a user survey and subsequent analysis. This paper will demonstrate, in the context of mobile commerce, the simple ‘notice and consent’ measure may not be a very useful measure to enhance control; moreover, shifting the burden of privacy protection to data subjects' self-control may not be sufficient for meaningful privacy protection in the era of Big Data. Given this reality, some new solutions, such as providing meaningful alternatives, use of more effective privacy protection software, and better design of warnings and nudges are suggested.     

A control group study of incubators’ impact to promote firm survival

It is widely unclear as to whether start-up firms supported by publicly-initiated incubator initiatives have higher survival rates than comparable start-up firms that have not received support by such initiatives. This paper contributes to the underlying discussion by performing a large-scale matched-pairs analysis of the long-term survival of 371 incubator firms (after their graduation) from five German incubators and a control group of 371 comparable non-incubated firms. The analysis covers a 10-year time span. To account for the problem of selection bias, a non-parametric matching approach is applied to identify an appropriate control group. For neither of the five incubator locations, we find statistically significant higher survival probabilities for firms located in incubators compared to firms located outside those incubator organizations. For three incubator locations the analysis reveals statistically significant lower chances of survival for those start-ups receiving support by an incubator. The empirical results, therefore, raise some doubts regarding the impacts of incubation on long-term firm survival.     

The limits of individual control? Perceived officer power and probationer compliance

Interactions between correctional agents and the offenders they supervise are assumed to be highly contingent upon latent power dynamics. Yet, currently there is little research that differentiates the bases of power used by correctional personnel. The present study drew on a classic typology to examine the role of power in probation supervision. Perceptions of power and their impact on probationers' compliance were examined using data collected from self-report surveys and case files of 376 misdemeanor probationers. Although the results for perceived power were similar to those of prior research, the current study's findings largely did not support the expected relationship between bases of power and compliance with the conditions of probation. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.     

Domestic servants and diffusion of fertility control in Flanders, 1830–1930

This article uses a mixed method approach to analyse whether urban domestic service functioned as a diffusion channel in the fertility decline. The central hypothesis is that nineteenth century female, rural-born domestic servants were influenced by the reproductive habits of their middle and upper-class employers, who were vanguards in the adoption of family size limitation within marriage. This happened via a process of social learning, a mechanism of social influence in heterogeneous social networks. Female domestic servants are an excellent research population to study reproductive ideas and behaviour because they were large in number and had a particular social position in between the working and upper classes and in between rural and urban environments. This paper is unique in its use of qualitative information to analyse social fertility diffusion and in the incorporation of geographical mobility in the statistical part.     

Inside or outside control of banks? Evidence from the composition of supervisory boards

This paper examines the composition of supervisory boards of 41 large German banks in 1999–2010. We find that the supervisory board structure reflects both outside control by major shareholders and inside control by other stakeholders. The largest group among non-employee board members is made up of bank managers. The high proportion of former executives and German board representation indicates significant inside control. The chairpersons of banks controlled by banks are less likely to be former executives of the same bank than are the chairpersons of banks controlled by non-banks. Over time, representation of industrial and insurance companies on banks’ supervisory boards has decreased and the representation of banks and foreign shareholders has increased.     

‘Whiteness,’ criminality,and the double standards of deviance/social control

White criminality is increasingly defined and controlled via the medical model. This is made possible by the white racial frame, which constructs ‘whiteness’ as normative and white deviance as individual aberration or mental illness. Conversely, the white racial frame constructs Blackness as synonymous with criminality. Media depictions of crime and criminals play a central role in furthering this framing, which provides the underlying legitimation for disparities in social control. The result is double standards of definition and control which medicalize whiteness and criminalize Blackness. This differential framing of whiteness and Blackness provides the foundation for the expansion of both the medical and prison industrial complexes, which are characterized by real racial differences despite comparable patterns of deviance across racial lines.