Shadow Writing and Participant Observation: A Study of Criminal Justice Social Work Around Sentencing

The study of decision‐making by public officials in administrative settings has been a mainstay of law and society scholarship for decades. The methodological challenges posed by this research agenda are well understood: how can socio‐legal researchers get inside the heads of legal decision‐makers in order to understand the uses of official discretion? This article describes an ethnographic technique the authors developed to help them penetrate the decision‐making practices of criminal justice social workers in writing pre‐sentence reports for the courts. This technique, called ‘shadow writing’, involved a particular form of participant observation whereby the researcher mimicked the process of report writing in parallel with the social workers. By comparing these ‘shadow reports’ with the real reports in a training‐like setting, the social workers revealed in detail the subtleties of their communicative strategies embedded in particular reports and their sensibilities about report writing more generally.     

Understanding Contemporary Cryptography and its Wider Impact upon the General Law

As the move toward the wider regulation of cryptography, both within the United Kingdom and elsewhere, becomes increasingly irresistible, the degree of understanding afforded to cryptography at the level of policy formation remains underdeveloped, ambiguous and, at times, misleading. One corollary of such solicitude is that a number of the most important and pervasive legal issues that flow naturally from the widespread availability of cryptography remain largely unexplored. This article attempts to remedy these deficiencies. It begins by offering a brief historical perspective before progressing to consider more substantive issues such as cryptography's aims, power, limitations, effectiveness and future. Ignoring, to a large extent, issues of law enforcement, and focusing, in particular, upon both the law of data protection, and, to a lesser extent, the general law of obligations in the United Kingdom, this article argues that the decision to utilise cryptography will not simply prove a matter of choice, preference or expediency, but of legal and commercial necessity in order to avoid the potential imposition of widespread indeterminate liability.     

Reconciling Pluralism and Consensus as Political Ideals

While consensus is often taken to be the ideal way to secure political legitimacy, a more robust pluralism has many defenders too. We attempt to reconcile arguments for pluralism and consensus. Pluralism ought to be accepted and valued at the simple level of values, beliefs, and preferences. Pluralism at this level can nevertheless coexist with normative, epistemic, and/or preference meta-consensus, all of which have qualities that should attract even pluralists. However, close attention must be paid to the content of meta-consensus and the conditions of its production or discovery.     

Clustering of adolescent dating violence, peer violence, and suicidal behavior

To understand the co-occurrence of multiple types of violence, the authors developed a behavioral typology based on self-reports of suicidal behaviors, physical violence, and psychological abuse. Using a sample of dating adolescents from a high-risk school district, they identified five clusters of behaviors among the 1,653 students who reported being abusive or violent in the past year. Victimization and perpetration with same-sex peers and dating partners clustered together among the students who reported the highest levels of abusive (n = 357) or violent behavior (n = 146). These students also reported high levels of suicidal behavior. There were few significant demographic differences across clusters. The implications of the results for the need to design and evaluate efforts to prevent multiple types of violence are discussed.     

Measuring sex differences in violence victimization and perpetration within date and same-sex peer relationships

This study examines sex differences in the patterns of repeated perpetration and victimization of physical violence and psychological aggression within dating relationships and same-sex peer relationships. Data were obtained from the Youth Violence Survey: Linkages among Different Forms of Violence, conducted in 2004, and administered to all public school students enrolled in grades 7, 9, 11 and 12 (N = 4,131) in a high-risk school district. Analyses of adolescents who dated in the past year (n = 2,888) show that girls are significantly more likely than boys to report physical violence and psychological aggression perpetration within dating relationships. However, boys are significantly more likely than girls to report physically injuring a date. Boys are also significantly more likely than girls to report physical violence victimization and perpetration within same-sex peer relationships. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Dismay for directors in (yet another) baby bottle case

This complex multi-issue, multi-defendant case highlights theliability problems faced by company directors with regard tojoint tortfeasance, in particular the liability of a director.