EARLY INTERVENTION IN NEW ZEALAND FAMILY COURT CASES

In April 2010 the New Zealand Family Court introduced the National Early Intervention Process (NEIP) to diversify its previous unitary dispute resolution pathway into two tracks (standard and urgent). A “triage” model is now in use to assess and assign cases appropriately. This article outlines the key milestones in the Family Court's 30‐year history which have led to this new initiative to reduce delays and help avoid the escalation of family conflicts over the care of children into bitter and intractable disputes. NEIP represents the most overarching reform of the Family Court since the Court's inception in 1981.     

Enduring neoliberalism in Alberta's oil sands: the troubling effects of private–public partnerships for First Nation and Métis communities

Changes in federal government relations with First Nations and Métis in Canada have been described as shifting over time, from fur trade colonialism, to welfare colonialism, to neoliberal partnerships. Acknowledging changes and continuities in Aboriginal peoples–state relations over time, this article examines the effects of recent policies that emphasize private–public partnerships for economic development on Indigenous communities in northern Alberta. We argue that while the term ‘partnership’ connotes equality, cooperation, and consensus, the actual workings of partnerships are anything but equal, and the effects include fragmentation, competition, and lack of overall accountability. These outcomes work against the needs and aspirations of Indigenous communities.     

The university technology transfer revolution in Saudi Arabia

This paper explains why and how a technology transfer revolution is taking place in Saudi Arabia to meet the mandate that Saudi Arabia become globally competitive as a knowledge-based innovative economy. The paper explains and identifies the new policies and institutions that have been introduced and developed to facilitate technology transfer and knowledge spillovers from the universities for commercialization and ultimately innovative activity and economic growth. The paper finds that a technology transfer revolution in Saudi Arabia is taking place, with the goal of leapfrogging from the factor-based stage of economic development to the innovation-based stage of economic development, while bypassing the intermediary efficiency-based stage of economic development.     

Exploring gender differences in dating violence/harassment prevention programming in middle schools: results from a randomized experiment

In this study, we randomly assigned 123 sixth and seventh grade classrooms from seven middle schools in the greater Cleveland area to one of two five-session curricula addressing gender violence/sexual harassment (GV/SH) or to a no-treatment control group. A baseline survey and two follow-up surveys were administered immediately after the treatment (Wave 2) and about six months post-treatment (Wave 3). In an earlier paper, we demonstrated the effectiveness of two approaches to youth GV/SH prevention programming (a fact-based, law and justice curriculum and an interaction-based curriculum). In this paper, we explored whether these largely positive findings remain for both girls and boys, including whether girls experience higher levels of GV/SH than boys. Most of our statistical models proved to be non-statistically significant. However, in 2 of our 48 victimization/perpetration (any violence, sexual violence and non-sexual violence) models (across two post-intervention follow-up points), we observed that the interventions reduced peer (male or female, non-dating partner) sexual violence victimization and reduced peer perpetration, but another outcome model indicated that the interventions increased dating perpetration. These mixed findings will need to be explored further in future research. Regarding our primary research question, we observed no statistically significant differences for the treatment multiplied by gender interaction terms for any of the perpetration or victimization outcome models, suggesting that the treatment had similar effects on girls and boys. However, we did observe that boys are more involved in violence than girls: both as victims and perpetrators. Boys experienced significantly more of three types of victimization from peers and dating partners compared to what girls experienced at the hands of their peers and dating partners. As perpetrators, boys committed more sexual victimization against peers (immediately post-intervention only) and more sexual victimization against dating partners than girls. The implications of these results are discussed.     

Parenting without Protection: How Legal Status Ambiguity Affects Lesbian and Gay Parenthood

Through the lens of lesbian and gay parenthood we ask how individuals who experience “legal status ambiguity”—that which emerges when legal fluctuations combine with divided attitudes, ignorance of the law, and autonomous institutional gatekeepers—exercise their legal rights and responsibilities. The results from thirty‐one interviews with lesbian and gay parents in Oregon and their six adult children suggest that the state's fluctuating legal and social climates for lesbian and gay parenting between 1985 and 2013 presented significant challenges for two generations of same‐sex parents. Although both cohorts created and utilized a range of legal and social mechanisms to assert their legal rights, they found these rights to be controlled as much by gatekeeper perspectives as by legal force. After the 2015 Obergefell ruling on marriage equality, lesbian and gay parenting status remains a site of ongoing legal and social contestation, providing insight into the risks and challenges of legal status ambiguity.     

Contextual information management: An example of independent-checking in the review of laboratory-based bloodstain pattern analysis

This article describes a New Zealand forensic agency's contextual information management protocol for bloodstain pattern evidence examined in the laboratory. In an effort to create a protocol that would have minimal impact on current work-flow, while still effectively removing task-irrelevant contextual information, the protocol was designed following an in-depth consultation with management and forensic staff. The resulting design was for a protocol of independent-checking (i.e. blind peer-review) where the checker's interpretation of the evidence is conducted in the absence of case information and the original examiner's notes or interpretation(s). At the conclusion of a ten-case trial period, there was widespread agreement that the protocol had minimal impact on the number of people required, the cost, or the time to complete an item examination. The agency is now looking to adopt the protocol into standard operating procedures and in some cases the protocol has been extended to cover other laboratory-based examinations (e.g. fabric damage, shoeprint examination, and physical fits). The protocol developed during this trial provides a useful example for agencies seeking to adopt contextual information management into their workflow.     

Pampered or pariah: does animal type influence the interaction between animal attitude and empathy?

ABSTRACT

Research into the interaction between deliberate harm of animals and potential risk for human directed violence has burgeoned in the past two decades. In light of an underlying premise that attitudes are predictive of behaviour, a number of researchers have examined demographic and personality variables that affect attitudes to, and by extrapolation behaviours towards, animals. One particularly active topic of research in this area is the potential relation between human-directed empathy and attitudes to animals, with researchers consistently finding that those with higher human-directed empathy scores tend to hold more pro-animal welfare attitudes. The current study adds to this literature by evaluating the effect of different animal types (Pet, Pest or Profit) in this overall animal attitude/human-directed empathy relationship with a large (n?=?1606), community-based, Australian sample. As anticipated, attitudes towards animals in the Pet category were significantly more pro-welfare than for either Pest or Profit animals and women indicated more pro-welfare attitudes across all three than men. The strength and significance of the relation between human-directed empathy and attitudes to animals varied across Pet, Pest and Profit animal categories and affective vs cognitive empathy. The strongest correlation was found between Pet and the Empathic Concern subscale of the Davis Interpersonal Reactivity Index. The implications of these differences for the previously observed link between attitudes to animals and empathy, humane education and future research directions are discussed.