The Process is the Punishment: Criminal Libel and Political Speech in Canada

The number of U.S. states with criminal libel laws has been steadily declining since the 1960s, and the offense has been struck down in the United Kingdom and several former British colonies. In Canada, however, criminal libel not only continues to exist, but appears to be enjoying a resurgence, albeit one that has flown beneath the radar of Canadian lawyers, judges, and journalists, who frequently assert that criminal libel prosecutions are rare. The research reported in this article found more than 400 prosecutions since the beginning of the twenty-first century. While many of these cases were brought against people who disseminated sexual slurs against former romantic partners, in a substantial number of cases criminal libel law was used to punish citizens’ political speech, particularly speech critical of police or other justice system officials, a use wholly inconsistent with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.     

Older adults in secure mental health care: health,social wellbeing and security needs measured with HoNOS-secure across different age groups

The number of older offenders is rapidly increasing in the United Kingdom and some older adults with mental health issues are referred to secure care services. It is therefore important to understand their unique characteristics in order to develop services based on their individual needs rather than chronological age. This study explored wellbeing and security needs of younger and older patients admitted to a secure psychiatric hospital. HoNOS-secure assessment at admission and discharge was extracted and used to build an anonymous data-set. Group comparison and score change during admission were conducted for six age groups: 18–24, 25–34, 35–44, 45–54, 55–64 and 65+. Younger patients improved on most measures whereas older patients aged 55–65+ showed little improvement or deterioration over time. This finding suggests that the subscales are sensitive to age difference although the needs measured by HoNOS-secure are less likely to inform the decision to discharge.     

‘An error is feedback’: the experience of communication error management in crisis negotiations

A range of studies have examined what should be said and done in crisis negotiations. Yet, no study to date has considered what happens when an error is made, how to respond to an error, and what the consequences of errors and responses might be on the negotiation process itself. To develop our understanding of errors, we conducted 11 semi-structured interviews with police crisis negotiators in the Netherlands. Negotiators reported making errors of three types: factual, judgment, or contextual. They also reported making use of four types of response strategy: accept, apologize, attribute, and contradict. Critically, the negotiators did not perceive errors as solely detrimental, but as an opportunity for feedback. They advocated for an error management approach, which focused on what could be learned from another person’s errors when looking back at them. Suggestions for improvement of the communication error management experience in crisis negotiations are discussed.     

Inaction,under-reaction action and incapacity: communication breakdown in Italy’s vaccination governance

This article explores why governments do not respond to public compliance problems in a timely manner with appropriate instruments, and the consequences of their failure to do so. Utilising a case study of Italian vaccination policy, the article considers counterfactuals and the challenges of governing health policy in an age of disinformation. It counterposes two methods of governing vaccination compliance: discipline, which uses public institutions to inculcate the population with favourable attitudes and practices, and modulation, which uses access to public institutions as a form of control. The Italian government ineffectively employed discipline for a number of years. Epistemological and organisational constraints stymied its efforts to tackle a significant childhood vaccination compliance problem. With a loss of control over the information environment, vaccinations were not served well by exogenous crises, the sensationalism of the news cycle and online misinformation. Hampered by austerity, lack of capacity and epistemic shortcomings, the Italian government did not protect the public legitimacy of the vaccination programme. Instead of employing communications to reassure a hesitant population, they focused on systemic and delivery issues, until it was too late to do anything except make vaccinations mandatory (using modulation). The apparent short-term success of this measure in generating population compliance does not foreclose the need for ongoing governance of vaccine confidence through effective discipline. This is evident for the COVID-19 vaccination campaign, with many Italians still indicating that they would not accept a vaccine despite the devastation that the disease has wrought throughout their country.

     

Reflections on a course on ‘women and literature’

The authors outline the place of their course in a Polytechnic Humanities Degree and show how, concentrating primarily upon the novel and a line of women novelists from Jane Austen to Doris Lessing, new perspectives upon literary criticism and literary history in relation to society and culture are opened up. Teaching methods and attitudes are discussed in relation to the re-evaluation of the role of women as readers and critics, as well as authors. The success of the course, in terms of the interest it has aroused among students in women authors and feminist criticism is discussed, together with the effects of open recognition of differences of emphasis and point of view between the two tutors responsible for it. The authors express their confidence in the course as undermining a harmful acceptance of the idea of a single established literary tradition, which ‘happens’ to be dominated by white, male authors and critics, thus opening the way for students to appreciate how, as Adrienne Rich puts it, ‘there is another story to be told’.     

The Welsh Office and Welsh Autonomy

This article examines the claim that, by the late 1980s, the Welsh Office possessed sufficient autonomy to implement policies that diverged from those of the functional Whitehall ministries. Two case studies, housing and education, are examined as these are areas where institutional autonomy and distinctive needs might be expected to be most apparent in Wales. The conclusion of this article is that the claims of Welsh exceptionalism (certainly in terms of policies) have been much exaggerated and that the 'centre', Westminster and Whitehall, was able to impose its preferred policies in Wales, whatever appearances to the contrary.