Creating a State‐Academic Partnership to Advance a Forensic Teaching Service: Benefits and Barriers

In Washington State, like many states, there is a shortage of forensically trained mental health clinicians to work with criminal justice‐involved individuals. At the direction of the state legislature, a collaborative project was undertaken by the University of Washington, the state Department of Social and Health Services, and a state psychiatric hospital to develop a proposal for a jointly sponsored forensic teaching service. The authors reviewed the literature, surveyed and interviewed forensic psychiatry and psychology training directors, and conducted site visits of selected training programs that offer multidisciplinary training or have affiliations with state hospitals. The authors conducted focus groups of additional stakeholders, including clinicians and patients in forensic settings, to better understand the needs in Washington. The authors report on several common benefits and barriers to establishing forensic teaching services. Other states and forensic programs may find this article useful in identifying common considerations for forensic mental health teaching services.     

Disrupting civility: amateur intellectuals,international lawyers and TWAIL as praxis

Abstract

This paper is a reflection on the role of intellectuals in engaging with Palestinian solidarity movements and liberation discourses, and on the place of international lawyers specifically within that context. The paper considers ‘the question of Palestine’ as a rigorous test for intellectuals in the Global North today, and examines particular debates over free speech, civility and balance that unfolded in the wake of Israel’s 2014 war on Gaza. It considers the interventions of international lawyers in these debates with reference to Edward Said’s ‘amateur’ and ‘professional’ intellectuals, and explores ways in which anti-colonial international lawyers (as amateur intellectuals) can transcend prevailing professional orthodoxies to deploy language, arguments or tactics that rupture liberal legal processes and narratives on Palestine.     

Attitudes toward Consent-Based and Non-Consent-Based International Law in a Regional Power Context

International legal scholars have identified and argued for and against new forms of non-consent-based international law. We study variation in Brazilian public opinion about adherence to international law created in three different ways: through a consent-based multilateral treaty, by the U.N. Security Council with the participation of Brazil, and by the U.N. Security Council without the participation of Brazil. Information that Brazil has participated in creating the international legal obligation through a multilateral treaty or membership on the Security Council yields levels of support for adherence to the legal obligation that are similar to those found when the origins of the legal obligation are generic. Information that the international legal obligation was created without Brazil’s participation, on the other hand, results in reduced support for compliance. This difference, which is particularly concentrated among highly educated respondents, is not driven by reduced concerns about reputational consequences or sanctions. Our results suggest that the increased use of non-consent-based forms of international law might be challenged by a lack of public support for compliance.     

Policy science: A conceptual and methodological analysis

In the first section policy science is differentiated from policy analysis, the notion of policy is defined, and an analysis of the concept of policy science is offered which gives emphasis to what is unique in this intellectual endeavor when it is conceived as a general method of problem solving. Section II provides a discussion of the criteria of rationality for the conduct of policy science. Attention is focused upon the methodological differences between science and policy science and upon certain methodological difficulties which are peculiar to policy science. The third section gives consideration to one important relationship between facts and values in the policy science process. While it is generally well recognized that values enter into policy science in a way they do not enter into science, it is also widely held that they do not operate in such a way as to frustrate the central objective of the policy scientist (i.e., the solution or alleviation of a policy problem). It is argued that the relation between values and facts in policy science is frequently such as to have this undesired frustrative effect.     

Ethical Considerations in the Conduct of Electronic Surveillance Research

The extant clinical literature indicates profound problems in the assessment, monitoring, and documentation of care in long-term care facilities. The lack of adequate resources to accommodate higher staff-to-resident ratios adds additional urgency to the goal of identifying more cost-effective mechanisms to provide care oversight. The ever expanding array of electronic monitoring technologies in the clinical research arena demands a conceptual and pragmatic framework for the resolution of ethical tensions inherent in the use of such innovative tools. CareMedia is a project that explores the utility of video, audio and sensor technologies as a continuous real-time assessment and outcomes measurement tool. In this paper, the authors describe the seminal ethical challenges encountered during the implementation phase of this project, namely privacy and confidentiality protection, and the strategies employed to resolve the ethical tensions by applying principles of the interest theory of rights.