Conduct unbecoming: The dilemma of a school's responsibility in respect of teacher misconduct towards pupils

It was recently remarked that if the infamous schoolmaster, Wackford Squeers, in Charles Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby , was around today his pupils would probably accuse him of assault and the police would be paying a visit to his school, Dotheboys Hall. Though a casual comment, a great deal of truth lies therein. In the 'rights culture' of today, the manner in which adults may exercise authority over children is markedly different to that of even 20 years ago. The majority of teachers act in a professional manner and carry out their duties, often under great pressure, with the best interests of their students uppermost in their minds. However, this is not always the case. With reasonable frequency, there are reports of teachers behaving towards their students in ways which range from inappropriate to culpable. In the worst scenario the accusations are of sexual abuse, but there are also those of physical or verbal bullying. There is nowadays an increased recognition of the harmful and lasting effects of different forms of abuse, and the responsibility of those in authority to prevent it happening. In recent years New Zealand school administrators have been faced with dealing appropriately with allegations of a teacher's misconduct in a variety of different ways towards their students. A school board of trustees has a dilemma in that it must discharge dual responsibilities, in respect of its students and its staff. This article examines the legal implications of those responsibilities. It also considers the responsibility of a school in a wider context — to other schools and to the community at large.     

Alternative visions of security in Northeast Asia

Although no security structure exists yet in Northeast Asia comparable to Europe’s NATO, there is movement toward new arrangements as the century ends. Unresolved cold war disputes on the Korean Peninsula and between China and Taiwan as well as controversy over an appropriate Japanese role in the twenty-first century combine to sustain general regional support for a continued American force presence in Japan and Korea. Nevertheless, two potential developments could erode that presence over time: (1) the unification of Korea, after which U.S. troops on the peninsula might be unacceptable and (2) a change in American budgetary priorities that could significantly draw down forward deployments in the western Pacific. In anticipation of these changes, Northeast Asian states are beginning regional security dialogues.     

Psychiatric correlates of medical care costs among veterans receiving mental health care

Research on increased medical care costs associated with posttraumatic sequelae has focused on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, the provisional diagnosis of Disorders of Extreme Stress Not Otherwise Specified (DESNOS) encompasses broader trauma-related difficulties and may be uniquely related to medical costs. We investigated whether DESNOS severity was associated with greater nonmental health medical care costs in veterans receiving mental health care. Participants were 106 men and 105 women receiving VA outpatient mental health treatment. A standardized interview assessed DESNOS severity. The dependent variables consisted of primary and specialty medical treatment costs. Sequential zero-inflated negative binomial regression was used to evaluate the variance in medical costs accounted for by DESNOS severity, controlling for PTSD severity and established predisposing, enabling, and need-based health care factors. Contrary to our hypothesis, in fully adjusted models, DESNOS severity independently added a significant amount of variance to lower specialty medical care costs, whereas PTSD did not consistently account for significant variance in medical care costs. Greater DESNOS severity appears to be associated with lower specialty medical care costs but not primary care costs. These findings may indicate that patients with DESNOS symptoms are at risk for being underreferred for specialty care.     

Villains,Victims and Aspiring Proprietors: framing ‘land-losing villagers’ in China's strategies of accumulation

This paper examines how debates in the media are providing the discursive conditions for, and thereby giving impetus to, diverse strategies of ‘so-called primitive accumulation’ in China. Taking as its empirical referent Chinese news and journal articles on land enclosure, the paper analyzes three frames in which policy entrepreneurs craft varying class positions for land-losing villagers. Grounded in different ontological premises, problem diagnoses and recommendations centering on the adoption of either a statist, neo-collective or liberal rural land regime, and backed up by evaluations of local policy experiments, the frames illustrate the diversity of ideational, political and institutional configurations that could facilitate the separation of peasant producers from the land, place land-losing villagers in different relationships with the state and capital, and sustain accumulation. In foregrounding these debates over land-losing villagers' future class positioning, the paper aims to offer a corrective to the historical determinism implicit in contemporary analyses that characterize enclosure in China as simply one national manifestation of homogenous, global neo-liberal projects of ‘accumulation by dispossession’ or ‘gangster capitalism’.     

Historical and contemporary views of social control,race, crime,and justice

This volume is a special issue commemorating Black History Month in the United States. The five papers contained in the volume address a wide variety of issues in the area of race, crime, and justice.