The use of telepsychiatry within forensic practice: a literature review on the use of videolink – a ten-year follow-up

In the last decade, telepsychiatry – the use of telecommunications technologies to deliver psychiatric services from a distance – has been increasingly utilised in many areas of mental health care. Since the review by Khalifa and colleagues in 2007 the body of literature relevant to the forensic applications of telepsychiatry has grown substantially, albeit not by much in the United Kingdom. In the current review, we aim to provide an update summary of the literature published since 2007 to determine the effectiveness and feasibility of increasing telepsychiatry utilisation in forensic practice. The literature reviewed provides some encouraging evidence that telepsychiatry is a reliable, effective and highly acceptable method for delivering mental health care in forensic settings. There are also a number of papers that indicate the use of telepsychiatry may be cost effective for health providers in the longer term. Further research is required to consider the potential legal and ethical implications of using telepsychiatry in forensic settings.     

Pflegschaftsgerichtliche Genehmigung für Leistungen an die Eltern des minderjährigen Gläubigers?

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Bindende Wirkung des Versteigerungsedikts für die Zubehöreigenschaft im Liegenschaftsexekutionsverfahren

Mit Rechtskraft des Versteigerungsedikts wird für das Exekutionsverfahren mit bindender Wirkung und unter Ausschluss des Rechtswegs über die Zubeh?reigenschaft entschieden. Danach kommt eine Ausscheidung der dort als Zubeh?r festgestellten Sachen durch den Exekutionsrichter mit der Begründung, es fehle die Zubeh?reigenschaft, nicht mehr in Betracht. Die übergabe der als Zubeh?r mitversteigerten Sachen (hier: Gew?chsh?user auf fremder Liegenschaft) an den Ersteher ist nach § 349 EO zu vollziehen. Anderes gilt nur, wenn Dritte diese Zubeh?rsachen im Besitz h?tten: Dann n?mlich h?tte sich das Exekutionsgericht in die Beurteilung des Umfangs ihrer Rechte nicht einzulassen; dem Ersteher bliebe es überlassen, seine Ansprüche im Rechtsweg durchzusetzen. Ob der Verpflichtete Eigentümer der Zubeh?rstücke war, verneinendenfalls, ob der Ersteher gutgl?ubig Eigentum an diesen erworben hat, ist im streitigen Rechtsweg zu kl?ren.     

Beschattungsverbot und Überhangrecht

Dass unzumutbarer Entzug von Licht und Luft durch Pflanzen auf fremdem Grund – also eine "negative" Immission – nunmehr nach § 364 Abs 3 ABGB untersagt werden kann, veranlasst den 4. Senat des OGH in der E 4 Ob 196/07p, zur Vermeidung von Wertungswidersprüchen dem Nachbarn auch einen Unterlassungsanspruch gegen unzumutbare Auswirkungen überh?ngender Pflanzen zu gew?hren. Aus der Sicht des Autors sollte eine derart einschneidende ?nderung der überhangregeln des § 422 ABGB dagegen dem Gesetzgeber vorbehalten bleiben. Die Entscheidung signalisiert aber, dass die Reform des Nachbarrechts nicht in allen ihren Auswirkungen auf das nachbarrechtliche Gesamtsystem hinl?nglich durchdacht wurde; zur Harmonisierung k?nnte es weiterer ?nderungen oder aber einer (teilweisen) Rücknahme der Neuregelung bedürfen.     

Reactions to Crime as a Hierarchy Regulating Strategy: The Moderating Role of Social Dominance Orientation

Across two studies, we demonstrated that support for group-based hierarchies differentially affects evaluation of ingroup and outgroup criminal offenders and that this effect generalizes to overall evaluations of their respective groups. Drawing on social dominance theory, our results show that differential judgments of national ingroup and immigrant outgroup offenders reflect hierarchy regulating strategies. Study 1 (N = 94) revealed that egalitarians (low on SDO) were more lenient toward outgroup offenders and their ethnic group (Arab immigrants) when compared to ingroup offenders and their national group (Swiss citizens). The opposite was true for social dominators (high on SDO). Study 2 (N = 88) replicated the results of Study 1 and further demonstrated that the socio-economic status of the perpetrator did not affect perpetrator group evaluations suggesting that the arbitrary sets of ethnicity or nationality, not education level and employment status, were the important cues for hierarchy-regulating judgments of criminal offenders.     

Structures,values, and interaction in field-level partnerships: the case of UNHCR and NGOs

This article discusses the process of transforming partnership from a conceptual framework into a practical, operational framework for field-level interaction among humanitarian organisations. The authors approach this transformation from the perspective of the core values of the partnership concept and the ability of field workers to behave in ways that are consistent with these core values, illustrated by an empirical study of the relationships between the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and NGOs in a refugee-assistance programme in northern Uganda. The authors connect inter-organisational structures with the role of people charged with making partnership work, concluding that the structures and context in which individuals operate make it impossible for them to ‘act out’ the core values of partnership. By identifying the major challenges to creating field-level, operational partnerships, the authors offer lessons for current and future partnership-building initiatives, such as the Global Humanitarian Platform.     

A General Empirical Law of Public Budgets: A Comparative Analysis

We examine regularities and differences in public budgeting in comparative perspective. Budgets quantify collective political decisions made in response to incoming information, the preferences of decision makers, and the institutions that structure how decisions are made. We first establish that the distribution of budget changes in many Western democracies follows a non-Gaussian distribution, the power function. This implies that budgets are highly incremental, yet occasionally are punctuated by large changes. This pattern holds regardless of the type of political system—parliamentary or presidential—and for level of government. By studying the power function's exponents we find systematic differences for budgetary increases versus decreases (the former are more punctuated) in most systems, and for levels of government (local governments are less punctuated). Finally, we show that differences among countries in the coefficients of the general budget law correspond to differences in formal institutional structures. While the general form of the law is probably dictated by the fundamental operations of human and organizational information processing, differences in the magnitudes of the law's basic parameters are country- and institution-specific .     

Inequality,Economic Development,and Democratization

Although multiple theories suggest that economic development and inequality somehow affect democratization, these claims have received only limited empirical support. I contend that much of the confusion stems from the implicit assumption held by the literature that development and inequality affect democratization independently of one another. In this paper, I argue that the effect of income distribution on democratization is in fact contingent on the income level: in middle-income countries inequality fosters democratization; in rich countries, however, it harms democratization. Using a data set covering almost all autocracies between 1960 and 2007, I find evidence consistent with my hypothesis.