刑事拘留条件质疑

刑事拘留是公安机关、人民检察院在刑事诉讼中经常采用的一种剥夺人身自由的审前羁押措施 ,其条件、程序和期限都应该有严格的法律限制。我国现行刑事诉讼法规定的刑事拘留 ,存在条件上的不合理性 ,成为了对任何犯罪嫌疑人都可适用的强制措施 ,导致刑事拘留在实践中的大量滥用。应进一步修改以完善刑事拘留条件。     

The Development of a Reduced-Item Structured Inventory of Malingered Symptomatology (SIMS)

Effort assessment is a relevant area in neuropsychological assessment. There are well-established self-report measures, such as the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) FBS Symptom Validity Scale (FBS; Lees-Haley, English & Glenn, Psychological Reports 68: 203-210, 1991) and MMPI-2 Response Bias Scale (RBS; Gervais, Ben-Porath, Wygant & Green, Assessment 14: 196, 2007). However, there is also a need for brief measures of symptom exaggeration. The Structured Inventory of Malingered Symptomatology (SIMS) appears to be a promising self-report measure of symptom validity (e.g., Smith & Burger, Academy of Psychiatry and the Law 25: 183-189, 1997). In order to understand the psychometric properties of the SIMS, a comprehensive item analysis was performed with the questionnaire. Items were removed due to invariable response or lack of relationship with the total SIMS. Receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve analyses were completed using RBS and FBS Symptom Validity Scale (FBS) of the MMPI-2 with items grouping from the SIMS indices. The results found that limiting the number of items did not affect overall utility. The abbreviated indices on the SIMS had excellent discrimination with the neurologic impairment (NI) and affective disorder (AF) scales and good discrimination with psychosis (P) and amnesic disorder (AM) scales of the SIMS. The briefer measure allows for less time required to administer the measure, while still maintaining the integrity of the SIMS.     

The persisting challenge of age-for-grade non-compliance in post-free primary education in Kenya

This article examines the prevalence of non-compliance on the age-for-grade policy in the post-free primary education system in Kenya. We utilised data from the 2009 cohort of enrolled primary schoolchildren. The analysis revealed non-compliance to be a persisting concern in the school system, characterised by both under-age and over-age enrolment at the age-for-grade level of analysis in spite of the introduction of free primary education in 2003. Irrespective of the nature of non-compliance, overcrowding in the lower grades is more prevalent, with potential for adverse compromises in quality of learning and the attendant added dimension of the mismatched grade-for-age curricula.     

Domestic and International Politics during an EU Intergovernmental Conference: Bridging the Gap between Negotiation Theory and Practice

This article describes selective results of a large-scale study of within-governmental coordination processes and international negotiations. We examined a European Union intergovernmental conference (IGC), the so-called IGC 1996, which led to the Amsterdam Treaty, from a quantitative negotiation analysis perspective. Our focus of attention has been the embeddedness of international negotiations within formal governmental organizations and within informal communication networks. We have identified the relative impact on negotiation dynamics and on negotiation performance of each of the parties by using various statistical techniques. We argue that such insights can be used for a research-based consulting in which social scientists respond to practitioners'"what-if" questions with evidence-based simulations and scenarios.