Home Is Where Mother Is: Ideals and Realities in Australian Family Houses of the 1950s

Following the austerity of war, Australians in the 1950s were keen to pursue their inter-related ambitions of building families and homes. Architectural design was heavily influenced by modernism and focused particularly on the perceived needs of mothers and children, imagined to be ever-present in the home. Architects recommended modernising and centralising the kitchen so that the mother could efficiently complete chores while supervising her children. They advised designing children’s bedrooms to provide privacy and stimulate creativity, as well as incorporating indoor and outdoor play areas. While these ideals were promoted in housing magazines, analysis of other sources reveals that the reality of 1950s housing was more complex. Many Australians lived in dwellings representing the design conventions of previous eras. For those building new houses in the 1950s, postwar shortages and personal finances often constrained aspirations. Others disliked the fact that modernism challenged traditional spatial and social precepts. Even for that minority residing in newly constructed, architecturally designed housing, families did not always inhabit domestic spaces in the manner anticipated by architects. Attention to a range of historical sources allows a fuller understanding of the broad spectrum of postwar housing and the diverse ways in which 1950s Australian families dwelt in their homes.     

Alleged Biological Father Incest: A Forensic Approach

Paternal incest is one of the most serious forms of intrafamilial sexual abuse with clinical, social, and legal relevance. A retrospective study was performed, based on forensic reports and judicial decisions of alleged cases of biological paternal incest of victims under 18 years old (n = 215) from 2003 to 2008. Results highlight that in a relevant number of cases: victims were female; the abuse begun at an early age with reiteration; the alleged perpetrator presented a history of sexual crimes against children; sexual practices were physically poorly intrusive, which associated with a forensic medical evaluation performed more than 72 h after the abuse, explain partially the absence of physical injuries or other evidence—these last aspects are different from extrafamilial cases. In conclusion, observations about paternal incest are likely to exacerbate the psychosocial consequences of the abuse and may explain the difficulty and delay in detect and disclose these cases. Few cases were legally prosecuted and convicted.     

Multi-stakeholder public policy and governance in China: an analysis

In this article, public policy is put into a multi-stakeholder rather than adversarial perspective: we argue that there is a role for multi-stakeholder involvement in both the development and implementation of public policy; these are separate processes that can involve different patterns of stakeholder involvement (stakeholders have different skills and levels of interest in public policy) in either one or both the development and implementation phases. We need new models, approaches and examples of such multi-stakeholder public policy, and in this Special Issue, we focus on China, where such research is only slowly emerging. We present and analyse six papers that fall naturally into three categories: (1) corporate social responsiveness and societal relationships; (2) public affairs (particularly reputation management) and citizen involvement; and (3) public-management-oriented, data-based analyses. These articles, taken together, increase our understanding of multi-stakeholder research and practice, but equally as important, they give us insights into how Chinese public policy academics research and report public policy. This window into academic research and thinking offers us an opportunity to expand and deepen our understanding of public policy and its implications for public affairs in China. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An evaluation of <Emphasis Type="Underline">Payton v. New York</Emphasis>

The Supreme Court decision in Payton v. New York (1980) is evaluated. In this cose, the. Court remanded to the trial level tribunal a case in which an arrest was made and evidence was seized without a warrant. The author discusses the case thoroughly and compares the decision to other cases which dealt with the warrantless arrest and seizure of evidence. The author questions if the Court is becoming “too technical” in its interpretation of the 4th Amendment and poses once again the perennial question; “Where is the line drawn between protecting the nights of society from criminals and protecting the rights of criminals from judicial interpretation?”     

Obstacles to desegregating public housing: Lessons learned from implementing eight consent decrees

Between 1992 and 1996 the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) settled a number of legal cases involving housing authorities and agreed to take remedial action as part of court‐enforced consent decrees entered into with plaintiffs. These housing authorities faced significant obstacles that impaired their ability to comply swiftly and fully with all of the elements in the desegregation consent decrees. The obstacles fell into two broad categories: contextual obstacles (racial composition of waiting lists and resident populations, lack of affordable rental housing, and inadequate public transportation), and capacity and coordination obstacles (conflict among implementing agencies and ineffective monitoring by HUD). Findings presented here highlight the sizable potential delay between the time a legal remedy is imposed and when plaintiffs in public housing segregation disputes realize any benefits. They also reinforce the argument that implementation problems will be legion when policies impose a significant scope of required changes on a large number of actors who must collaborate, yet are not uniformly capable or sympathetic to the goals being promoted. © 2003 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Equilibrium in fiscal choices: Evidence from a budget game

This is an applied study about the stability of collective decision-making in fiscal matters and the features of individual preferences which are sufficient to reach a social ordering. It is based on data about citizens' preferences collected through a budget game played by a sample of voters in Turin, a large Italian city. By simulating a series of individual choices, a social ordering of the municipal budget items is arrived at. The role played by restricted (i.e., single-peaked, single-caved etc.) preferences to avoid cycles in choice simulations is then assessed.