Disability and support relationships: What role does policy play?

Very little is known about how relationships between people with disabilities and their paid support workers are positioned in policy. With the policy shift toward choice of provider, individualised approaches, person centredness and self‐directed funding, the nature of their relationship assumes a more prominent role in the quality of support practice. The policy analysis in this article explores the extent to which current disability policy acknowledges, promotes, or diminishes the relationships between people with disabilities and workers, in their organisational context. It uses Honneth's conditions for recognition—love (cared for), rights (respected) and solidarity or social esteem (valued)—to understand how policy positions mutuality in the relationship. The policy review applied a three‐stage process: categorisation of policies, textual analysis and content analysis to policy documents at four levels—international, Australian federal, state and organisational in two case studies. The analysis revealed that while a rights framework is explicit in most policies, the emphases on the conditions for recognition within a relationship between people with disabilities and workers are compromised in instructional policies that attempt to manage the tension between choice and risk, particularly at the organisational level.     

Reciprocal policy diffusion: the regulation of executive compensation in the UK and the US

Because of popular and political pressure, governments have been compelled to regulate ‘excessive’ executive compensation and search both a policy and political solution. In this paper, I seek to establish the mechanisms of policy learning, competition, and emulation by examining American and British regulatory policies of executive compensation that show evidence of reciprocal diffusion, i.e. from the US to the UK and vice versa. The evidence suggests that during the past two decades, the extent of reciprocal policy diffusion varied and was primarily driven by policy learning. Using published government reports, press releases, public hearings, newspaper articles, and interviews, I demonstrate that reciprocal learning occurred because one country's policymakers and practitioners explicitly discussed and/or referred to the practices in the other country when deciding to adopt a specific policy solution to the problem of excessive executive pay. I discuss the implications for the literature on diffusion and point out avenues for future research. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Sex determination from os sacrum by postmortem CT

Sex determination in forensic practice is performed mostly on sexually dimorphic bones, including pelvic bones such as the os sacrum. Postmortem CT scan provides an easy and fast method for depicting and measuring bone structures prior to elaborate autopsy preparations. To develop a simple and objective method for sex determination in postmortem CT, metric data were evaluated from CT images of the pelvic-associated os sacrum of 95 corpses (49 men and 46 women) from the Canton of Bern, Switzerland. Discriminant function analysis of the data showed that the best accuracy in determining sex was 76.8% and 78.9% with two different observers. It is concluded that measuring the os sacrumin postmortem CT for sex determination has moderate accuracy and should only be applied in combination with other methods.     

Baring it all for Activism: The 1985 Naked Protest in Mexico

This article analyses the 1985 naked protest carried out by silver miners of Pachuca, Mexico. This singular form of resistance, the first in Mexican labour history and organised by a dissident group within the miners' union called Liberación Minera (Miners Liberation), forced management to recognise and temporarily solve some of the miners' grievances. The naked protest unveiled the shady practices of the miners' employer, the state-owned Compañía Real del Monte y Pachuca, which refused to provide work clothes and safety equipment to miners. It also pointed to the miners' union leadership's complicity in the deterioration of labour conditions. Part of the miners' naked protest success had to do with the support that they gained from members of the left-wing press who used the protest to offer an early critique of Mexico's neoliberal policies. The 1985 naked protest occurred during one of Mexico's most severe economic crises and only four years before the company became privatised. This protest is one of the last examples of organised labour resistance before industries closed down and fired thousands of workers.     

A Consequentialist Framework for Prevention

Law and Philosophy - Douglas Husak contends that both criminalization and punishment can serve preventive goals, so long as they respect retributive culpability constraints. This Essay draws on...     

Victims of Irish Republican Paramilitary Violence—The Case of “The Disappeared”

Throughout the history of Northern Ireland's (NI) “Troubles,” over 3,800 individuals were killed, with between 40,000 to 100,000 individuals injured, leaving many families and communities struggling with the aftermath. In recent times a particular category of victims and survivors has been politically active and thus featured prominently in the media: “The Disappeared.” This label has come to represent the victims of paramilitary groups whose remains were secretly disposed of. Through a long public and political battle the families of the Disappeared have achieved a measure of political success resulting in the establishment of the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims' Remains (ICLVR). Achieving political voice is not the only or perhaps the most significant difficulty encountered by these families. Their experiences in fact epitomise the complexity of the conflict and divisions in NI society and reflect the dominant issues of loyalty, identity, and importantly—silence. Throughout The Troubles, this silence and related notions of loyalty permeated all levels of society: at a community level which included the response of the church; at a statutory level including the response from social services and police; and, at a political level including local political processes but also departments within the British and Irish governments. This article examines the experiences of the families of the Disappeared through a multilevel analysis of their public campaign seeking the return of the remains of their family members. Using data collected from the families, members of the ICLVR, and support workers, the experience of the families of the Disappeared are analysed through accessing the social dynamics of silence (and loyalty), in-group affiliations, notions of sacrifice, and the attribution of blame; political successes both national and international will also serve to frame the analysis.     

Assessing student group work: is there a right way to do it?

Many law courses include at least some elements of group work within compulsory or optional modules. The benefits of group work include at least four of the seven “Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education”.¹ In addition, employers consistently ask for good team-working skills, evidence of which is often provided by reference to group projects at university. Previous research by the authors² confirms other reports in the literature that many students find group work difficult, and particularly resent other students “freeloading” from their work.³ They also experience frustration at non-participation by other students and not being able to choose their team mates. This resentment can be exacerbated if all students receive the same mark for the finished project regardless of input. In this article, the authors reflect upon our experiences of setting and grading group work in our own courses and institutions. We will consider different assessment approaches, including peer assessment,⁴ lecturer assessment, student participation – enhancing student understanding of assessment criteria,⁵ a mixture of peer and lecturer assessment, assessment of group work as part of a portfolio,⁶ and non-assessed group work feeding into individual assessments.     

Wanted and Unwanted Sexual Experiences and Family Dysfunction During Adolescence

The goal of this study was to examine the relationship between family dysfunction and wanted, unwanted, and illegal sexual experiences that occurred during childhood and adolescence. Three hundred fifty-three subjects from a sexual abuse clinic, a family practice clinic, and a family planning clinic anonymously completed a survey on childhood sexual experiences and physical violence, family substance abuse, violence toward others, and family quality. Overall, 50% had had unwanted (USE) and wanted sexual experiences (WSE) before they turned 18. Subjects in the sexual abuse clinic had the highest percentage (90%) of unwanted or illegal sexual experiences, followed by the family planning subjects (40%) and the family practice subjects (30%). Both USE and WSE were related to family dysfunction scores, even when they were controlled for demographic influences. Family dysfunction scores were highest for those who reported USE and legal WSE and were lowest for those who reported no USE or WSE.     

Simultaneous separation of different types of amphetamine and piperazine designer drugs by capillary electrophoresis with a chiral selector

The recent emergence of a new class of piperazine-type compounds has brought about the need for laboratory screening methods for both seized drugs and toxicological samples. These piperazine compounds, which include 1-benzylpiperazine (BZP) and 1-(3-trifluoromethylphenyl)piperazine (TFMPP), exhibit comparable physiological effects and can be substituted for the classic amphetamine-type drugs. We have optimized a chiral capillary electrophoresis (CE) separation that detects a set of 6 piperazine and 4 chiral amphetamine compounds in under 23 min using a 200 mM phosphate buffer at a pH = 2.8 with 20 mM hydroxypropyl- beta-cyclodextrin (HPbeta3CD). In addition to the above compounds, a series of "clandestine" BZP diHCl samples were also analyzed using this method to assess the ruggedness of the procedure. The novel CE separation was tailored to simultaneously detect these piperzine compounds in addition to amphetamine-type drugs. Distinct migration time and UV-spectral data were obtained for all compounds of interest.