What harm,whose justice?: excavating the restorative movement

The city of Hull in the northeast of England gave itself the ambitious task of becoming the world’s first restorative city. The aim of this strategy was to create a more socially and emotionally confident youth population which in turn would encourage a more entrepreneurial and aspirational outlook across the City. Based on a two-year National Lottery-funded project exploring peoples’ experiences of restorative approaches and a Knowledge Transfer Project to help develop restorative skills, the development of restorative justice is analysed. How does a restorative classroom, workplace, or family really behave? Is there a common objective within, and across, all restorative initiatives and if so, what is it? The answer to these questions is that communication breakdown can be understood as the common harm within, and across the restorative movement. This raises some interesting questions and challenges for zemiology where both restorative justice and social harm perspectives contain quite different notions of harm suggesting that neither has yet developed a clear or solid foundation upon which to build an alternative focus to criminal harms.     

Hearing But Not Listening: The Local Government Review Process

This article presents a study of the local government review process in West Sussex. As in any local government reorganization the career and status concerns of individuals and broader positions of coalitions dominant in different organizations provide the dynamic to a 'play of power' which is in turn conditioned by external events and contextual factors. Underlying the analysis is a concern to assess whether in particular the presence of an independent commission facilitated the application of an element of policy analysis and learning into the process. It is concluded that little in the way of a reflective and deliberative process occurred. Equally it is noted that to achieve such qualities in public decision-making is a challenging and daunting task when major organizational interests are at stake.     

Connecting the dots…: information sharing by post-secondary educational institutions under the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)

Misunderstanding of privacy laws and regulations impedes appropriate information sharing by post-secondary educational institutions under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (‘FERPA’). Post-Virginia Tech regulatory amendments allow institutions to ‘connect the dots’ regarding a student's behavior and to be proactive in problem resolution. The article encourages university officials to re-examine FERPA, to eliminate restrictive information sharing barriers not required by the law or regulations, to educate faculty and staff on the scope of student information dissemination and offers a clear and concise policy and process to help fill this crucial gap in campus crisis action planning documents.     

Prisonization and accounts of gun carrying

This study examined inmate perceptions about the reasons other people carry guns. The sample consisted of seventy-three inmates who were incarcerated for gun-related violent crimes in Colorado. While most inmates said that people carry guns for self-protection and/or power, their accounts varied according to the number of years incarcerated. Both qualitative and quantitative analyses suggest that inmates incarcerated for long periods of time are likely to believe that others carry guns to feel powerful. In contrast, the results also indicate that inmates incarcerated for short periods of time are likely to believe that others carry guns for protection. These findings are consistent with theories about prison socialization. As inmates become immersed in the prison culture, they are also likely to change their perceptions about why others carry guns.     

英国地方政府治理的新发展

从20世纪70年代以来,英国地方政府治理经历了如“过山车”般的变化。这首先表现为旨在提高地方政府政治领导力的改革,目前市长制政府的模式比领导—内阁制等政府模式得到更多的肯定。其次,工党政府通过推行“最佳价值”制度、全面绩效评估制度等使英国的服务管理和供给有了较大的改善。使英国的服务管理和供给有了较大的改善。第三,“地方战略伙伴关系”和“地区协议”等的建立,使得地方层面上的联合经营与伙伴关系有了新的发展。2006年秋天英国中央政府发表的新白皮书阐述了其地方政府政策的未来走向。     

Preference votes without preference? Institutional effects on preference voting: an experiment

A classical question of political science is to what extent electoral systems influence voting behaviour. Yet, many of these studies examine how different electoral systems affect the election results in terms of vote distribution across parties. Instead, we investigate how electoral rules affect intra party preference voting. Given the importance of the debate on the personalization of politics, insight into how electoral rules shape intra-party choice is a valuable contribution to the literature. In our study, we focus on the effect of two specific rules: the option to cast a list vote and on a single versus multiple preference votes. The results of experiments conducted in Belgium and the Netherlands show that electoral rules indeed influence voting behaviour with regard to intra party preference voting, although differences exist between the Netherlands and Belgium. Moreover, we find that the option to cast a list vote equally affects votes for the first candidate on the list, as well as lower positioned candidates. This suggests that preference votes might be less preferential than has often been assumed.