The weight of history: child protection and parenting with a disability in 20th Century Iceland

ABSTRACT

This contribution focuses on four periods in Iceland, from the early twentieth century until the time of writing, in order to document and analyse the struggles of people with intellectual disabilities to marry, have a family and maintain custody of their children. Each period is linked to specific pieces of legislation that governed the bodies and lives of disabled people and reflected larger social norms concerning issues of family life and parenthood. An emphasis is placed upon the perspective of contemporary critical disability studies in analysing the historical development of this struggle, and the voices of those who experienced this struggle first-hand, drawn from a number of research projects conducted in Iceland. Our main contention is that the weight of history still comes to bear upon matters of parenting and family life, even in the most recent shift toward a human rights approach to disability. There remains a strong socio-cultural resistance toward parenting with an intellectual disability, rooted in the ideology of early twentieth-century eugenics. Our goal is to document the development of these phases throughout the twentieth century in Iceland in order to illustrate how older ideas and prejudices still inform contemporary child protection practices concerning parents with disabilities.     

The role of prosecutorial independence and prosecutorial accountability in domestic human rights trials

A prosecutorial organ is always in charge of the investigation and prosecution of crime, which makes this institution a key gatekeeper to the courts. Empowered with prosecutorial discretion, a prosecutorial organ dictates what, when, and whom to prosecute. The institutional design of the prosecutorial organ varies across time and across countries, which raises an important, yet quite understudied question: Does institutional design matter for how states respond to human rights violations and, if so, how? In this article, I develop a theoretical framework that highlights the importance of prosecutorial independence and prosecutorial accountability. I argue that understanding the factors that impact the use of prosecutorial discretion in human rights cases can potentially provide a more complete understanding of why and when states fail to investigate, to prosecute, and to punish human rights violations committed by state agents.     

A proposed methodology for assessing the economic needs of safeguard zones protecting groundwater intended for human consumption within the context of the European Water Framework Directive

This paper describes the gross domestic product and hydrological environment service method for assessing the socio-economic consequences of implementing necessary measures for safeguarding the quality of groundwater for human consumption and eliminating the risk of pollution. This method assesses the positive and negative impacts of designations of protected areas. Economic assets and social goods are the two integrated variables used in analysing the method. The first includes economic impacts on the local gross domestic product of defining protected areas, and the second considers the benefits of this designation in the conservation of water resources, assigning a monetary value to the preserved resources. In addition, tools have been incorporated, such as payment for hydrological services and generation of permissible activities, which reduce negative social impacts through positive economic impacts. These tools can only be used when compliance with conservation requirements for protected areas is demonstrated. The conclusions of this study include an application of the proposed methodology and provide essential and specific assessments that show that this methodology fulfils the requirements of the European Water Framework Directive requirements and that it is an effective tool in the implementation and development of strategies for hydrological planning processes.     

A model of local crime displacement

In this paper, we develop a two-region model of crime spatial displacement. For high crime regions, the crime rate in one locality is negatively influenced by the crime rate of the other. The magnitude of the displacement depends on the distance between the two regions and on their relative size. For given sized neighbors, a closer distance implies greater displacement. When one region is larger, relative to the other, this increases the displacement, holding distance fixed. Examples show that the displacement from the treated to the adjacent areas can be small, if the relative size of the former is small. Nonetheless, the displacement can be large for other nearby areas, provided that the treated region is relatively big. Neglecting this result can cause an upward bias at the estimated impact of a policy. We also analyze the consequences for the design of public policies.