Landmark reforms

After more than one hundred years, the future of a unified Probation Service looks bleak in the face of current proposals by the Ministry of Justice to open up the market for rehabilitation services to new providers from the private, voluntary and community sectors.     

Taking Cantonal Variations of Integration Policy Seriously — or How to Validate International Concepts at the Subnational Comparative Level

Abstract: Subnational varieties of immigrant integration policy, which are particularly salient in federal states, remain largely neglected by migration studies. Following Lijphart, who long demanded to verify international research at the subnational level, this study aims at capturing subnational policy variations using the example of Swiss cantons. In line with international approaches, cantonal integration policies are conceptualized and measured in terms of immigrants’ ease or difficulty of access to civic, political, socio‐structural, as well as cultural and religious rights and obligations. The transfer of an international concept to the subnational level facilitates a validation of the former, which constitutes a second neglected research field. Finally, a look at the empirical evidence allows testing the construct validity of our measurement: in line with theoretical assumptions, our data reveal a clear linguistic divide, an institutionalised “Röschtigraben”, with German speaking cantons exhibiting overall more restrictive policies than Latin cantons.     

The criminal act of commercial surrogacy in Australia: a call for review

Australian surrogacy legislation punishes the pursuit of a commercial surrogacy arrangement as a criminal offence. Such legislation was first introduced in Victoria in 1986 and has since been applied in every Australian jurisdiction except for the Northern Territory. The current application of criminal law is based upon this 1980s policy which has never been subject to public debate. This article argues that the continued application of criminal penalties to commercial surrogacy requires review.     

Human Security and Managing Financial Crises: Can Human Security Be Effectively Managed?

Could the negative human security effects during the 1997 FinancialCrisis in East Asia have been mitigated? To shed light on thisquestion, we examine the reasons for the onset of the financialcrisis, the internal and external factors, and the InternationalMonetary Find's (IMF's) involvement/conditionality and how thisaffected the economies at the micro and macro level. The emphasishere is on the micro level, i.e. individuals and businesses.Our main conclusion is that one definite policy mishap was thatIMF loans were in part not available immediately when needed,and were focused on servicing debt payments. Because of this,some businesses with full order books were unable to find thenecessary working credits that could have helped them pull throughthe crisis, which in turn led to unnecessary bankruptcies.     

Geoengineering governance-by-default: an earth system governance perspective

Geoengineering—the deliberate interference in the climate system to affect global warming—could have significant global environmental and social implications. How to shape formal geoengineering governance mechanisms is an issue of debate. This paper describes and analyses the geoengineering governance landscape that has developed in the absence of explicit geoengineering regulation. An Earth System Governance perspective provides insight into the formation of norms resulting from an overlap in international treaties and from the actions of engaged non-state agents. Specifically, the paper explores the instruments and actors having effect in existing formal and informal geoengineering governance mechanisms. It finds that geoengineering is subject to a form of ‘governance-by-default’. This is due to a situation in which state actors have not resolved the tension between two legal norms: that of ‘precaution’ and that of ‘harm minimisation’. This governance-by-default is characterised by uneven regulation from existing multilateral agreements established for other purposes, an absence of regulation specifically focused on geoengineering, guidance from an international ambition to hold global average warming below 2 °C and to achieve net-zero emissions in the second half of the century, and strong normative engagement by the research community. Governance-by-default is likely to be a stopgap development until more enduring and focused governance emerges.     

Stability of drugs in stored postmortem femoral blood and vitreous humor

The stability of 46 drugs in postmortem femoral blood stored for one year at -20 degrees C was investigated. The drugs included benzodiazepines, antidepressants, analgetics and hypnotics. For seven drugs we found a significant change in the concentration between the first and second analysis. Five substances; ethanol, desmethylmianserin, 7-amino-nitrazepam, THC and zopiclone showed a decrease in the concentration whereas the concentrations of two substances; ketobemidone and thioridazine increased. However, the changes observed were not of such an order that it would affect the interpretation in normal forensic casework. We also investigated the possible influence of potassium fluoride on the concentrations of the 46 drugs in vitreous humor after storage for one year. For two substances, ethanol and zopiclone, there were significantly lower concentrations in the samples without potassium fluoride. Furthermore, we also studied the correlation between the concentrations in femoral blood and vitreous humor. For 23 substances there was a significant difference between the concentrations in the vitreous humor and femoral blood. Significant correlations between the concentrations in these two specimens were found for 23 substances, indicating that vitreous humor can be an alternative specimen when blood samples are not available, provided that such correlation exists for the particular substance. Statistical analysis also revealed a correlation between the degree of protein binding of the different drugs and percentage of vitreous/femoral blood concentrations.     

Cross-validation of the Self-Appraisal Questionnaire (SAQ): an offender risk and need assessment measure on Australian, British, Canadian, Singaporean, and American offenders

The Self-Appraisal Questionnaire (SAQ) is a 72-item self-report measure designed to predict violent and nonviolent recidivism among adult criminal offenders. The results from using samples from Australia, Canada, England, Singapore, and two samples from the United States (North Carolina and Pennsylvania) indicated that (a) the SAQ has sound psychometric properties, with acceptable reliability and concurrent validity for assessing recidivism and institutional adjustment; (b) there were no significant differences among the scores of the White, African American, Hispanic, and Aboriginal Australian offenders on the SAQ; (c) there were no significant differences among offenders who completed the SAQ for research purposes versus offenders who completed it as part of a decision-making process. Results provided support for the validity of the SAQ to be used with the culturally diverse offenders involved in this research and provided further evidence that contradicts concerns that the SAQ as a self-report measure may be susceptible to lying, and self-presentation biases.     

Potentially dangerous behavior in the mentally ill: attitudes of journalists and medical students toward compulsory admission

Compulsory admission is a critical measure that may lead to stigmatization of patients. The authors investigated what medical students and journalists consider legitimate conditions for compulsory admission. The most frequently quoted conditions in both groups were violent attempts against others. About one third of each group considered continuous neglect as a reason. Students significantly more often than journalists advocated for civil commitment in the case of suicide attempts and violent attempts. Medical students with personal contact with mentally disordered persons advocated significantly more often for coercive measures in the case of suicide attempts. Comparing journalists and medical students having personal contact with mentally disordered persons revealed that medical students significantly more often supported commitment. Journalists displayed a more liberal attitude toward the mentally ill than did medical students.