Discounting Women: Context Matters in Risk and Need Assessment

Widely used risk/need assessment instruments assume that female offender risks for recidivism are essentially equivalent to those of male offenders. A look at the lives of female and male offenders reveals that there are important differences in the context of both offending and re-offending. This research draws on both quantitative and qualitative data to explore the effectiveness of a well known risk instrument to both predict recidivism and potentially direct intervention efforts. The results, particularly the in-depth interviews with offenders (both male and female) serving time on parole or felony probation reveal differences not detected by most contemporary risk and need assessment instruments. Ultimately, the gendered links among physical and sexual abuse, drugs, and crime are missed in risk and need assessments, thereby placing female offenders at risk for neglect and criminalization in an otherwise seemingly objective method of assessment.     

Age spots: Gender sensitivity and the Hutchins Commission

The language of the Hutchins Commission report, A Free and Responsible Press, written in 1947, is sexist. The language flaws the report, but certainly does not destroy its value. Language must be separated from content, such as in Plato's and Kant's writings. Although the Hutchins Commission uses unfortunate language, its message goes beyond mere toleration to a supererogatory duty: The ideal of the marketplace of ideas shall be made concrete. Just as Plato's vision of women ruling in equal numbers has yet to become reality and just as Kant's ethical vision of every human's liberation from mistreatment has yet to be realized, the Hutchins Commission's call for a chorus of voices remains unfilled. The call has been echoed and in some case intensified, such as in Carol Gilligan's work on the voices of women. But the goals remain undiminished beacons that remind us—educators as well as the media—that we still have much work ahead in order to achieve inclusiveness.     

A local perspective: the women’s movement and citizenship,Croydon 1890s–1939

ABSTRACT

This article will explore the lives of women active in local politics and associational life in Croydon County Borough between the 1890s and 1939. It will argue that a local perspective can reveal the personal, social and political networks that facilitated women’s more expansive public roles. It will note the circumstances which enabled them to assert their citizenship rights and duties and consider how women’s activism developed in the Borough after 1918. It will argue for the importance of context, spatial and chronological, in the formation of political identities and the on-going resonance of these influences in shaping the local women’s movement.     

Risk assessment: Identifying patterns of risk in young offenders with the Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory

Effective case management of juvenile offenders requires differential treatment of juveniles that is based on clearly established patterns of need and risk ascertained by valid risk prediction tools. This study was the first attempt to determine whether profiles of offenders would provide valid and useful information beyond simple risk level (high, medium, and low). Using cluster analytic techniques, this study identified five risk profiles using juvenile court intake and probation samples (n = 301 and n = 372, respectively). The two samples were selected to represent youth entering the juvenile justice system and those already under the jurisdiction of the court. The results indicated that statistically dependable profiles could be identified which may provide more detailed information than risk level alone. Further, it appears that risk profile may provide a more useful method of categorizing offenders and their needs.     

Political choice and the child labor statute of 1938: Public interest or interest group legislation?

Federal regulation of child labor (unlike that passed in early nineteenth century England) did not materialize until the New Deal of the 1930s. The present paper examines, using anecdotal and empirical evidence, the motives underlying the passage of depression-based child labor legislation embodied in the Senate vote on the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Our study, which utilizes both dichotomous and trichotomous probit models of the vote, finds evidence that there were critical and dominantprivate as opposed to public interests behind the restrictions that the FLSA placed on child labor and the exemptions that it established.     

will the real sex slave please stand up?

This paper critically explores the way in which ‘trafficking’ has been framed as a problem involving organized criminals and ‘sex slaves’, noting that this approach obscures both the relationship between migration policy and ‘trafficking’, and that between prostitution policy and forced labour in the sex sector. Focusing on the UK, it argues that far from representing a step forward in terms of securing rights and protections for those who are subject to exploitative employment relations and poor working conditions in the sex trade, the current policy emphasis on sex slaves and ‘victims of trafficking’ limits the state's obligations towards them.