Revived and Discouraged: Evaluating Employment Barriers for Section 3 Residents With Criminal Records

Section 3 was established in the Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Act of 1968 to provide employment for public housing residents in distressed communities while rebuilding underserved neighborhoods. As a provision that recipients of HUD funding must comply with, Section 3 reporting agencies are having trouble securing employment for ex-offenders. This is problematic since low-income ex-offenders unable to secure stable employment are more likely to recidivate. Research evaluating the specific barriers to employment for Section 3 residents with criminal records and policy recommendations are sparse although the problem is prevalent in communities nationwide. This study uses San Antonio, Texas as an example for conducting a policy review to identify the barriers to employment for Section 3 ex-offenders. The results of the qualitative analysis indicate that at the national level, HUD and the Section 3 provision do not create barriers to employment but state and local policies and practices do.     

Addressing the Affordable Housing Crisis for Vulnerable Renters: Insights From Broward County on an Affordable Housing Acquisition Tool

South Florida is experiencing an affordable rental crisis that is especially burdensome on those most vulnerable in society, low-income households. Rapid urbanization has resulted in inequitable land-use patterns that are a barrier to housing for the poor. As a solution to the crisis, local housing agencies seek to expand their affordable housing stock for vulnerable renters in opportunity-rich neighborhoods, but there is no standard framework for identifying properties for acquisition. Broward County serves as a case study to develop a housing acquisition tool. Using a combination of spatial statistics and principal components analysis, neighborhoods in which housing agencies may consider acquiring property are identified through the creation of an affordability surface in ArcGIS. Affordability is overlain by an opportunity surface derived from neighborhood quality and accessibility rankings. The results identify neighborhoods in Broward County that are both affordable and opportunity-rich, to better serve the county's most vulnerable renters.     

The Spreading of Innovation: State Adoptions of Energy and Climate Change Policy

The American states are engaged in a variety of policy efforts to mitigate climate change and alter energy usage. While a number of studies have considered the reasons for adoption of renewable energy and climate change policies, they typically consider only one policy in isolation. This study examines policy adoption of 14 energy and climate change programs in a pooled event history analysis. Our primary research questions consider average effects of horizontal policy diffusion, while also identifying factors that vary across policy type. We offer a method of testing whether predictors vary across policies and use this test to incorporate interactions by policy in the statistical analysis. Our results indicate that many of the primary drivers of adoption are political in nature, including state ideology, environmental interest group membership, and diffusion via ideologically similar neighbors. In addition, we find that given policy heterogeneity, a number of determinants vary by policy type, though differences are in magnitude rather than direction.     

The Institution of a Standardized Investigation Protocol for Sudden Infant Death in the Eastern Metropole,Cape Town,South Africa,,

The rate for the sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) in Cape Town, South Africa, is estimated to be among the highest in the world (3.41/1000 live births). In several of these areas, including those of extreme poverty, only sporadic, nonstandardized infant autopsy, and death scene investigation (DSI) occurred. In this report, we detail a feasibility project comprising 18 autopsied infants with sudden and unexpected death whose causes of death were adjudicated according to the 1991 NICHD definitions (SIDS, n = 7; known cause of death, n = 7; and unclassified, n = 4). We instituted a standardized autopsy and infant DSI through a collaborative effort of local forensic pathology officers and clinical providers. The high standard of forensic investigation met international standards, identified preventable disease, and allowed for incorporation of research. We conclude that an effective infant autopsy and DSI protocol can be established in areas with both high sudden unexpected infant death, and elsewhere. (SUID)/SIDS risk and infrastructure challenges.     

Tripping over thresholds: a reflection on legal andragogy

This lecture was delivered as the 2015 Annual Lord Upjohn Association of Law Teachers lecture. It explored the nature of law as a learned discipline, using the process of leading the review group responsible for writing the 2015 QAA Law Subject Benchmark Statement, but within a broader framework of threshold concepts. It considered how the process of learning the law can irreversibly transform the learner, and included a examination of liminal spaces (troublesome places in learning) in law and the teacher’s role in promoting the students’ transformation and in facilitating (nudging) their successful crossing of the legal learning threshold and meeting a learning outcome. The lecture set legal learning primarily in the undergraduate context in England and Wales, but it also included references to graduateness (in law and more widely) and commented on the place of an undergraduate law degree in the legal regulatory landscape.     

Balancing Between Human Rights Assumptions and Actual Fundamental Human Rights Safeguards in Building an Area of Freedom,Security and Justice: a Cosmopolitan Perspective

Rhetoric often claims that the European Union (EU), in issues related to Justice and Home Affairs, has to be united in its diversity. As such, the asylum and judicial systems of the Member States are initially perceived as equally good. By applying the cosmopolitan theory on two fields of interstate cooperation, asylum and judicial cooperation in criminal matters, the article explores how cosmopolitan the EU is in these fields, with a specific focus on material detention conditions. For cosmopolitanism to work, it has to be grounded in commonly shared norms, which enable the EU to regulate its dealings with the otherness of the Member States. The crucial role of the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union in placing boundaries on the equal goodness of the Member States’ asylum and judicial systems is analysed. This judicial reality in which cosmopolitan norms are established and protected is discussed, together with the political realities dominating policy debates in order to build an Area of Freedom, Security and Justice.     

Intensive psychological treatment of high-risk violent offenders: Outcomes and pre-release mechanisms

Research on correlates of intervention programmes that reduce expected reconviction rates (‘what works’ literature, Risk–Need–Responsivity model) has been highly influential in criminal justice systems throughout much of the western world. But while this psychological research has been acquiring widespread recognition, a deeper understanding of how programmes work and of mechanisms for desistance more generally, has still to develop. This research reports results of a quasi-experimental recidivism outcome study for a series of prison units that provide intensive psychological treatment to high-risk, persistently violent prisoners. Four outcomes were examined over the first 12 months following release on parole: parole violations, new convictions, new convictions for violence, and imprisonment sentences resulting from new convictions. Alongside these results, we conducted preliminary analyses of two potential pre-release mechanisms for surviving the first 12 months on parole without reconviction: lower dynamic risk for violence, and greater release readiness. We found that dynamic violence risk fully accounted for differences between treatment completers and comparison prisoners in proportions reconvicted for violence. However, in all other cases, the proposed mechanisms did not significantly explain treatment-related differences. We close by considering possible explanations for these unexpected results, and reiterating the importance to our field of more sophisticated treatment outcome research.     

Hidden corporate profits in the U.S. prison system: the unorthodox policy-making of the American Legislative Exchange Council

Using a leaked document trove containing 800 model bills, we analyze the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) hidden corporate profit making in the prison–industrial complex. We find that ALEC seeks to expand the private prison industry in three ways: (1) promoting greater use of private prisons, goods, and services, (2) promoting greater use of prison labor, and (3) increasing the size of the prison population. ALEC’s efforts to increase the prison population by expanding definitions of existing crime, creating new crimes, enhancing enforcement of existing crimes, amending the trial process to increase the likelihood of incarceration, and lengthening prison sentences for crimes pose a threat to civil liberties. ALEC’s unorthodox policy approach exemplifies John Gaventa’s theory that powerful interests maintain their power by creating conditions in which citizens are not able to identify and advocate on behalf of their interests.