Child Sex Offender Public Disclosure Scheme: The views of applicants using the English pilot disclosure scheme

Abstract

A limited Child Sexual Offender Disclosure Scheme was launched in England and Wales in 2009–10. Drawing upon data from an evaluation of the pilot scheme, this paper explores the views of applicants seeking a disclosure. In particular, the paper considers issues around the low take-up, perceptions of satisfaction and more broadly the role of the scheme in providing reassurance to the public about child sexual offenders in the community. Interestingly, while perceptions of satisfaction with the scheme were high, anxieties about child sexual offenders were not necessarily alleviated by the scheme, and in many instances were heightened.     

DEVELOPMENT ON MY TERMS: DEVELOPMENT CONSULTANTS AND KNOWLEDGE FOR DEVELOPMENT

Consultants are an integral component of development aid. Their involvement is based on an assumption of the transferability of knowledge to clients and beneficiaries. However, this role, its efficacy and the concept of knowledge transfer have all been questioned. Although research has shown interest in northern development consultants in recent years, detailed processes and practices of southern consultants' engagement with knowledge production are less analysed. Drawing on debates about knowledge, power and managing development interventions and on extensive fieldwork exploring a Bolivian consultancy company's assignments for northern development agencies, we analyse the ‘knowledge engagements’ between clients, consultants and beneficiaries. The results suggest a novel theorisation: knowledge engagements are shaped by power relations exercised through discourses and financial aid on one hand and shared and unshared lifeworlds and backgrounds of actors on the other. They are also characterised by collusive behaviour with the discourses and practices of aid on the part of consultants and beneficiaries, which in turn influences outcomes. Southern consultants, although aware of these issues, are in a difficult position to challenge these relationships. A greater recognition of the tensions could lead to a new role for consultants if collective action were to renegotiate their terms of engagement and aim for a new mutuality. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

EU Accession and the New Slovak Consensus

In May 2003, Slovakia produced the highest percentage of ‘yes’ votes ever in an EU accession referendum, although turnout was only just above the 50 per cent necessary for it to be valid. After deep political polarisation in the 1990s, a consensus had been formed on the overriding need for EU membership, which was supported by all parliamentary political parties. It was the first Slovak referendum ever where not only the answer to the question, but also the propriety of holding the referendum, were not the subject of bitter political argument. However, despite impressive civic voter participation campaigns in the two previous national elections, a low level of contestation made it hard to mobilise all pro-EU voters yet again for the referendum. Lack of leadership, and the hope that turnout would drop below 50 per cent, also encouraged the Eurosceptic minority to abstain.     

Hookworm Eradication as a Natural Experiment for Schooling and Voting in the American South

Educational attainment is robustly associated with greater political participation, yet the causal nature of this finding remains contested. To assess this relationship, I leverage a natural experiment in the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission’s (RSC) anti-hookworm campaign, which exogenously expanded primary and secondary education in the early-twentieth century American South. I evaluate two RSC hookworm interventions: exposure to the campaign and proportion treated. I use genetic matching to control for observable factors that influenced the haphazard dispensing of treatment, and implement new matching methods for continuous campaign interventions. I also use a variety of methods to assess the robustness of the results to a number of alternative accounts. Throughout, I find a consistent positive effect of education on participation, suggesting additional evidence for a causal interpretation of the ‘education effect’.     

The Bothy ballads

The Huk Rebellion: A Study of Peasant Revolt in the Philippines by Benedict J. Kerkvliet. University of California Press, 1977. Pp. xviii+305; £12.00.