Victim impact statements and the role of the South African criminologist

This article explores the developments in the plight of victims as well as the professional role of the South African criminologists in offering assistance to victims of crime by compiling victim impact statements on behalf of victims. The VIS has a significant contribution to make in a stage of the judicial process where acknowledgement of a victim takes place after a judgment or a guilty conviction. During the trial process a victim in legal terms does not exist. It is only at this final stage before sentencing that the court will view the complainant as a victim. It is imperative that the complainant＇s voice is heard as a victim-one who has suffered loss regardless of its shape and form. The all encompassing contribution of the VIS lies in its empowering nature due to the fact that it also can contribute to crime prevention by lowering the crime rate and reducing the cyclical nature of violence and crime.     

A Reaction to Popular Hysteria: The Titles Deprivation Act 1917

The Titles Deprivation Act represents the `other side of the coin' of King George V's decision in 1917 to divest the Royal Family of its appearance of German-ness and adopt an outwardEnglishness by renouncing the German titles of its members and adopting the surname of Windsor. The Act created a mechanism by which German holders of British royal titles and peerages could be deprived of those honours on grounds which had no precedent in earlier law and practice, this mechanism being used for the first and only time in an Order in Council of 28th March 1919 to deprive three German princes and one Austrian, two of them first cousins of George V and a third an uncle by marriage, of the British titles which they held. This paper considers, first, the background to the Act and, in particular, the reason why legislation on this highly controversial issue was introduced in Parliament only after theFirst World War had been going on for two-and-a-half years. It identifies the reason for this delay as the reluctance of the Asquith Government to involve the King as the `fountain of honour' with a course of action which he personally considered to be petty and undignified and of no importance to the war effort, and hypothesises that the Government's change of heart resulted from the trial and execution of Roger Casement for treason, with which there is an exact coincidence in time. Second, the paper considers the manner in which the Bill was drafted, identifies its distinctive features and follows its passage through Parliament. Third, it considers the manner in which the provisions of the Act were put into effect, in particular the manner in which evidence was gathered to create a case against the persons affected by it. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

A Primer on State Insurance Guaranty Associations

In the wake of our nation's financial crisis, protection against insurer insolvency is more critical than ever to the insurance-buying public. All U.S. jurisdictions provide partial statutory protection in the event of insurer insolvency through the creation of various state insurance guaranty associations that are governed by statutes primarily based on a model act promulgated by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. Guaranty associations are an integral part of each state's regulatory process for addressing insurer insolvency. Through a matrix of state-specific enabling statutes, state insurance guaranty associations levy and collect assessments from member insurers, pay statutorily defined “covered” claims, and defend against appropriate claims that are in litigation. Together with the domestic regulator of the insolvent insurer (usually the commissioner or superintendent of insurance) and the deputy liquidator (typically approved by the court presiding over the liquidation process and selected by the commissioner or superintendent of insurance as statutory liquidator), the guaranty association community (comprised of associations located in virtually each state in which a policyholder resides) functions as a unified system to manage and at least partially mitigate the impact of an insurer insolvency.     

Federal Employees’ Job Satisfaction: Does Transformational Leadership Matter? The Case of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs

Morale among U.S. federal employees has increased but remains low compared to the private sector and in certain agencies, including the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), which has experienced scandal and management challenges, including a crisis of leadership. Using data from the 2015 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, this article examines the influence of transformational leadership (TFL) on job satisfaction/commitment among VA employees. Regression analysis reveals a positive association between satisfaction/commitment and each of the four TFL dimensions, controlling for the other dimensions and sociodemographic characteristics. Employees who perceive leaders as fostering creativity, empowerment, trust/respect, and clear goals/expectations are more satisfied/committed.     

Dangerised youth: the politics of security and development in Timor-Leste

International organisations, the national government and civil society alike have identified youth as a potential threat to the stability of the young state of Timor-Leste over the last decade. In this article, I ask how these actors define the danger of youth and what reasons they identify for the potential threat of young citizens for the society and state. Guided by a theoretical framework of Critical Security and Development Studies, I argue that while political manipulation as reason for youth violence was a prominent part of the security discourse in the years after the crisis in 2006, the discourse on the danger of youth in very recent international and national documents has been depoliticised. Despite decreasing numbers of youth-related violence, the threat construction has not vanished; rather, the language on youth has been adapted to the existing international discourse on violent youth as a threat to successful development. In this way, international and national actors have sustained the image of a society in need of management.     

Wench Tactics? Openings in Conditions of Closure

Picking up the question of what FLaK might be, this editorial considers the relationship between openness and closure in feminist legal studies. How do we draw on feminist struggles for openness in common resources, from security to knowledge, as we inhabit a compromised space in commercial publishing? We think about this first in relation to the content of this issue: on image-based abuse continuums, asylum struggles, trials of protestors, customary justice, and not-so-timely reparations. Our thoughts take us through the different ways that openness and closure work in struggles against violence, cruel welcomes, and re-arrangements of code and custom. Secondly, we share some reflections on methodological openness and closure as the roundtable conversation on asylum, and the interview with Riles, remind us of #FLaK2016 and its method of scattering sources as we think about how best to mix knowledges. Thirdly, prompted by the FLaK kitchen table conversations on openness, publishing and ‘getting the word out’, we respond to Kember’s call to ‘open up open access’. We explain the different current arrangements for opening up FLS content and how green open access, the sharedit initiative, author request and publisher discretion present alternatives to gold open access. Finally drawing on Franklin and Spade, we show how there are a range of ‘wench tactics’—adapting gifts, stalling and resting—which we deploy as academic editors who are trying to have an impact on the access, use and circulation of our journal, even though we do not own the journal we edit. These wench tactics are alternatives to the more obvious or reported tactic of resignation, or withdrawing academic labour from editing and reviewing altogether. They help us think about brewing editorial time, what ambivalence over our 25th birthday might mean, and how to inhabit painful places. In this, we respond in our own impure, compromised way to da Silva’s call not to forget the native and slave as we do FLaK, and repurpose shrapnel, in our common commitments.     

Are Discrimination and Social Capital Related to Housing Instability?

Existing studies examining social capital and housing instability have overlooked structural factors such as discrimination, providing an incomplete explanation of the relationship between social capital and housing instability. This study addresses this limitation by exploring how discrimination and social capital are related to housing instability. This study is a secondary analysis of data collected during the Atlanta Neighborhood Pilot study. The sample consists of mostly African American adults who resided in the Atlanta metropolitan area in 2013 (n = 691). After controlling for sociodemographic characteristics, residential mobility, and public assistance, stepwise logistic regression identified social capital and discrimination as significant predictors of housing instability. Lower social capital and higher everyday discrimination scores were associated with increased odds for housing instability. Individuals 35 or older, those with annual incomes between $25,000 and $50,000, and those who reported receiving public assistance during their lifetime also had increased odds for housing instability. Findings identify characteristics of individuals vulnerable to housing instability and suggest that social capital development as a housing intervention warrants further exploration. These findings can be utilized by policymakers and practitioners to better target funding and to create efficient systems better equipped to deploy early homelessness prevention interventions.