SERVING FATHERS WHO LEAVE PRISON

This article describes characteristics, service experiences, and outcomes for 350 ex-offenders with minor-aged children who were served at the John Inman Work and Family Center (WFC), a multiservice program offering assistance with employment, child support, and family reconnection. Following their visit to the WFC, fathers had higher rates of employment and child support payment. They also returned to prison at lower rates than the general offender population. Although the findings suggest that parents who leave prison benefit from a collaborative facility that offers multiple services, more rigorous research over longer periods of time is needed to reliably assess the effectiveness of reentry programs.     

Who needs fact when you’ve got narrative? The case of P,C&S vs United Kingdom

Legal arguments and judgements ostensibly rely for their credibility and persuasiveness on the presentation of factual claims and determination of facts through due process. While it should follow that proceedings that are undermined by disregard for facticity and due process should not appear credible or persuasive, in practice this is not always the case. In cases where narratives are not firmly underpinned by factuality and due process a series of narrative techniques and processes can be brought into play to enhance the persuasiveness and credibility of those narratives. These processes include the reliance on a narrative trajectory, the presentation of consensus, drawing on supportive discourses, the privileging of certain narrators and the smoothing over of contradictory evidence. This paper examines these processes in the case of P,C&S vs United Kingdom in which in the absence of fact and due process a local authority and the domestic courts in the UK constructed and confirmed a narrative of a dangerous mother.     

On solow's residual with intermediate goods

Many efforts have been made to identify the sources of the ‘unexplained’ output, better known as the ‘residual’ generated in the process of growth. The paper is an attempt to show that the magnitude of the estimated residual based on Professor Solow's well‐known method actually depends on how the dependent variable in the production function is defined. Part of the computed residual is built‐in if value‐added, instead of gross production, is chosen as the dependent variable when Solow's method is applied to a disaggregated model. The paper also demonstrates how the extent of the bias is measured.     

The United Nations convention against the taking of hostages: Realistic or rhetoric?

Abstract

In an effort to circumvent the lack of international agreement on needed measures against political terrorism and impelled by the siege of their embassy in Stockholm in 1975, the West German government decided to propose a convention banning a more specific manifestation of terrorism: the taking of hostages. The author reviews the central political issues that have pervaded the debates on this item within the United Nations until its final adoption in 1979. The most crucial issue was whether the scope of the proposed convention should include actions undertaken by those movements engaged in a recognized struggle for national liberation. The resulting compromise required to ensure its adoption by the General Assembly has left the Convention with an inherent tautology which will undoubtedly hinder and may prevent its general ratification and subsequent entry into force.