Pro-poor budget analysis of Kenya's free primary education policy

This practical note outlines Concern's approach to pro-poor budget analysis using the case of the Kenya Free Primary Education (FPE) policy. Analysis conducted on the outcomes of the FPE policy for Nairobi's urban slum-based poor suggests that the policy is not being implemented evenly within the city. The reasons stem from poor allocation and planning approaches, to political interference and unwillingness of teachers to work in slum-based schools. These have the unintended effect of increasing inequities for the urban poor, the reverse of the policy intention. The note outlines the pitfalls and practicalities of conducting this type of analysis.     

Negotiation and the new world disorder

Book reviews in this article:
Negotiation and the New World Disorder James G. Blight Andrew W. Lynch     

The Cost of Majority‐Party Bias: Amending Activity under Structured Rules

All major legislation in the House necessitates a special rule from the Rules Committee before it can be brought to the chamber floor. These rules often strictly limit floor amendments to bills considered by the House. Scholars of political parties have argued that the House majority party can bias policy output away from the floor median through its usage of restrictive rules. In this article, we argue that in order to secure the passage of restrictive rules, the majority often makes concessions to centrist legislators through the amending process. We examine this theory using a newly collected data set that includes all amendments considered by the Rules Committee during the construction of structured rules in the 109th, 110th, and 111th Congresses (2005–2010). Our results are mixed, but they do suggest that moderate members of the majority party often receive concessions via amendments for their support of the majority party's agenda‐setting regime.     

Green Criminology and the Reconceptualization of School Violence: Comparing Green School Violence and Traditional Forms of School Violence for School Children

School crime and violence continue to be important topics of criminological inquiry. Forms of violence that have received much attention from criminologists include school gun violence, assaults, and bullying. What appears missing from criminological studies are analyses of different forms of violent victimization imposed on school children related to environmental injustice, pollution, and exposure to toxins. In this article, we argue for the interpretation of these harms as violent victimizations. To facilitate this, we draw upon definitions of violent victimization developed in green criminology, conceptualizing exposure to environmental toxins as violent assault, and introduce the term green school violence (GSV). Next, we draw upon the medical, environmental, and public health literature to offer a series of examples of GSV in the United States, discuss numerous environmental hazards present in American schools, and describe their scope and severity. A conservative estimate of the frequency of GSV suggests that far more school children are victimized by GSV than forms of interpersonal acts of violence.     

Understanding dynamic risk factors for violence

ABSTRACT

Recent years have seen a consensus emerge regarding the dynamic risk factors that are associated with future violence. These risk factors are now routinely assessed in structured violence risk assessment instruments. They provide a focus for treatment in structured group programmes. However, relatively little attention has been paid to risk-related theoretical issues, whether these dynamic risk factors are causally related or simply correlates of violent offending, or the extent to which they change as a consequence of treatment. More challenging is the lack of evidence to suggest that changes in these dynamic risk factors actually result in reductions in violent offending. In this paper we consider the meaning of the term dynamic risk, arguing that only those factors that, when changed, reduce the likelihood of violent recidivism, can be considered to be truly dynamic. We conclude that few of the violence risk factors commonly regarded as dynamic fulfil this requirement. There is a need to think more critically about assessment findings and treatment recommendations relating to dynamic risk, and conduct research that establishes, rather than assumes, that certain dynamic risk factors are directly related to violence. Some suggestions for advancing knowledge and practice are provided.