Evidence About Harm: Dual Status Victim Participant Testimony at the International Criminal Court and the Straitjacketing of Narratives About Suffering

Criminal Law Forum - Although victims at the International Criminal Court (ICC) are not parties, they can apply to become “victim participants” and may be authorized by an ICC Chamber...     

The Local Regulatory State: A Case of Double Standards?

Two starkly contrasting strategies are discernible in the way local authorities currently approach and go about their regulatory and enforcement responsibilities. On the one hand, a “deterrence” strategy of “pursue and punish” is robustly pursued in many local areas in relation to individuals who infringe and contravene local regulations, notably in relation to “street scene” issues of littering, waste/recycling and materials sorting/separation, smoking in public places, parking, cycling on pavements, feeding pigeons, and so on, while, on the other, a much more positive “compliance” strategy of “counsel and conduce” is widely promoted and pursued in relation to the regulation of standards in local businesses, for example, in relation to public and environmental health/hygiene, health and safety in the workplace, animal welfare, and licensing of premises.

Why do local authorities operate with such apparent double standards? Why do comparatively minor infringements by local citizens so frequently result in the summary imposition of fixed penalties (which can be quite punitive for those on low incomes) while at the same time local businesses are mostly treated to a regulatory culture which is much more sympathetic and supportive in promoting compliance with the rules? This article draws on research conducted in different local regulatory settings which illustrates the two contrasting regimes in practice. It presents five propositions which help us to understand and explain the apparent double standards and it concludes by considering the steps that might be taken to ensure a more equitable and consistent local regulatory framework for the future.     

Comparing the developmental and behavioural characteristics of female and male juveniles who present with sexually abusive behaviour

Abstract

Relatively few studies have compared female and male juveniles who sexually abuse. These studies have reported that while female juveniles with sexually abusive behaviour are more likely to have experienced childhood sexual abuse, they display similar patterns of abusive behaviour. However, to date these findings have not been replicated in a UK sample. The current study compared 22 female and 254 male juveniles, referred to a UK specialist community forensic service, in relation to family environment, maltreatment experience, psychiatric diagnoses and perpetrated abusive behaviour. Consistent with previous studies perpetrated behaviour was similar across genders, but females were significantly more likely to have been sexually victimized as children, at a younger age and by a greater number of abusers. In addition, they were more likely to have been exposed to inadequate sexual boundaries at home. These findings suggest that females and males may follow different pathways to sexually abusive behaviour.     

How Accurate is Food-for-Work Self-Targeting in the Presence of Imperfect Factor Markets? Evidence from Ethiopia

Effective targeting of transfers is a key issue in public policy to combat poverty. Much faith is presently placed in self-targeting mechanisms such as public employment schemes supported by food-for-work transfers. Where targeting errors have been observed, these are usually attributed to mismanagement of key operational details, such as the project's wage rate. Using a unique data set from rural Ethiopia, we demonstrate that targeting errors may also have structural causes in some low-income countries. We hypothesise that imperfect factor markets generate a predictable dispersion across households in reservation wage rates that breaks down the unconditionally positive relation between income and shadow wages on which the theory of self-targeting public employment programmes rests. Our results confirm that the inaccuracy of FFW targeting stems from the fact that, in rural Ethiopia, higher income households are endowed with more labour per unit of land or animal. Due to poor factor markets in land and livestock these labour-abundant households have lower marginal labour productivity on farm, thereby depressing the reservation wage rates they find acceptable for FFW participation.     

Securing Hong Kong’s identity in the colonial past: strategic essentialism and the umbrella movement

ABSTRACT

The Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong is the most radical political movement to have taken place in the former British colony since 1967 anti-colonial demonstrations. Using empirical evidence obtained from activists who participated in the Umbrella Movement, this paper explains how Hong Kong’s youth are looking simultaneously to both the past and future to secure their identity in the colonial past even as some hope to achieve ultimate secession from Mainland rule. Racism and anti-Mainland hostilities in Hong Kong are the result of nostalgia and the insurrectionary impulse akin to the millenarianism of social movements founded on suffering and loss that continually seek the recovery of pasts of which they are now deprived. We illuminate how, to young activists, the Umbrella Movement presents hope for a future embedded in the past that remains one the territory and former colony may still aspire toward.     

JFK,FBI, and CIA: playing hardball over an intelligence leak to the New York Times

On 26 July 1962, the New York Times published a front-page story by reporter Hanson Baldwin which, among many things, showed the vulnerability of Soviet land-based missiles, in the event of a first strike by the US. Drawing at least indirectly from a National Intelligence Estimate, it also showed how US intelligence had obtained that information. The story infuriated President John F. Kennedy, who believed it harmed the security of the United States. This article details an aggressive FBI investigation of who had leaked to Baldwin, as well as an initiative at the Central Intelligence Agency to conduct its own future leak investigations inside the US, both authorized by President Kennedy.     

Political and Civic Engagement and Participation: Towards an Integrative Perspective

Abstract

This article presents an overview of current understandings in the study of political and civic engagement and participation, drawing in particular on innovations which have emerged from the Processes Influencing Democratic Ownership and Participation (PIDOP) project. For the purposes of the article, ‘engagement’ is defined as having an interest in, paying attention to, or having knowledge, beliefs, opinions, attitudes, or feelings about either political or civic matters, whereas ‘participation’ is defined in terms of political and civic participatory behaviours. The different forms that political and civic engagement and participation can take are outlined, and the factors that are related to different patterns of engagement and participation are reviewed. These factors operate at different levels, and include distal macro contextual factors, demographic factors, proximal social factors, and endogenous psychological factors. An integrative model covering all four levels of factors is outlined. Some findings from the secondary analysis of existing data-sets (including the European Social Survey and the International Social Survey Programme) in the PIDOP project are also reported. These findings show that engagement and participation vary as a function of complex interactions between macro, demographic, and psychological factors. It is argued that multi-level integrative theories, such as the one proposed in the current article, are required to understand the drivers of political and civic engagement and participation, and that policies and interventions aimed at enhancing citizens' levels of engagement and participation need to take this multi-level complexity into account.