From Accountability to Assurance – Stakeholder Perspectives in Local Government

This article reports on research which sought to explore the understanding of accountability for performance amongst constituents of local government in Western Australia. Recent trends to increase the public accountability and financial reporting requirements for local governments underline the need to understand the value and use made of this performance information by local government constituents.     

The Effect of Previous Traumatic Injury on Homicide Risk

Research has reported that a strong risk factor for traumatic injury is having a previous injury (i.e., recidivism). To date, the only study examining the relationship between recidivism and homicide reported strong associations, but was limited by possible selection bias. The current matched case–control study utilized coroner's data from 2004 to 2008. Subjects were linked to trauma registry data to determine whether the person had a previous traumatic injury. Conditional logistic regression was used to estimate odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) for the association between homicide and recidivism. Homicide risk was increased for those having a previous traumatic injury (OR 1.81, 95% CI 1.09–2.99) or a previous intentional injury (OR 2.53, 95% CI 1.24–5.17). These results suggest an association between homicide and injury recidivism, and that trauma centers may be an effective setting for screening individuals for secondary prevention efforts of homicide through violence prevention programs.     

Shattering crystals: The role of ‘dream time’ in extreme right-wing political violence

This article prepares the conceptual ground for a new heuristic approach to understanding acts of political violence that consciously incur the risk of death to their perpetrators. It focuses on the deep-seated human drive to escape the futility and emptiness induced by clock-time (chronos), and the way a sense of being ‘chosen’ for a mission of destruction can precipitate the experience of being reborn in a new supraindividual dimension (‘dream time’). At this point the etymological connotations of ‘self-sacrifice’ and ‘fanatic’ acquire a new significance, since the personal palingenesis experienced by the soldier or terrorist confronting death may rehearse archetypal patterns of mystic purification and immortality. This ‘chrono-ethological’ perspective on extreme political violence is elaborated by considering the devastating impact that Western modernity has had on the access to states of ‘self-transcendence’ available in traditional religious culture. It is then applied to examples of inter-war fascist paramilitarism and contemporary ‘lone-wolf’ terrorism.     

Depictions of correctional officers in newspaper media: an ethnographic content analysis

The public relies on the media for most of its information about the criminal justice system. Unfortunately, media depictions of justice actors are not always accurate which, in turn, can lead to distorted images about the system and its operations. Using ethnographic content analysis to analyze 489 articles from major newspapers across the United States, this study seeks to discern how correctional officers and the jobs that they perform are portrayed in print media. The results suggest that correctional officers are overwhelmingly portrayed negatively, with 79.6% of the articles in the research sample presenting one of six distinct negative themes. A typology of these themes is explored in detail, along with its implications for societal support for corrections and correctional officers, especially with regard to the media’s potential contributions to officers’ job stress, burnout, and job dissatisfaction.     

Introduction: Conflict in Cambodia, 1945-2002

Since the advent of Deng Xiaoping's policies of reform and opening in the late 1970s, most observers have agreed that China is likely to recover its rightful place in the world as a great power in the twenty-first century. Disagreements have arisen principally over whether China will join the world as a normal nation state or will instead seek to restore its traditional hegemony in East Asia and even attempt to extend that predominance to the entire world. This article challenges both of these positions by examining the uses of history –and the way in which the past uses those who use it – in several Chinese books published at the turn of the century and in a set of essays critiquing those books. The authors argue that China is likely to eschew both the national imperialism characteristic of Western superpowers and Japan and the over-expansion attempted by earlier Chinese states such as the Qin and the Yuan. Instead China is likely to pursue the minimal goal of avoiding political disunion and cultural crisis similar to its policies in earlier ages and the maximal goal of restoring political unity and cultural centrality associated with such earlier polities as the Zhou, Han, Tang, Ming, and Qing.     

“Worth It If It Saves Just One Life”? Ethical Reservations Regarding AMBER Alert

This article provides an exploratory ethical critique of the AMBER Alert system. Using illustrative examples of actual AMBER Alerts and the public discourse regarding them, it notes potentially problematic impacts on victims and/or offenders, and investigation of child abduction cases, as well as the public discourse about the system in particular and threats to children in general. None of these issues have been adequately addressed either by system operators in their public portrayals of the system or rigorous research as to their practical impacts, or in the suggestion of possible remedies. At the heart of the open and unresolved ethical quandaries confronting the AMBER Alert system lies a failure on the part of system operators and supporters to acknowledge apparent limits to the system's effectiveness, and an exaggeration of its capacities in the absence of adequate evidence, which should be sought in earnest through rigorous research. The article argues that system operators should discuss AMBER Alert more candidly and downplay expectations to avert at least some of the problems its facile portrayal can engender. The article also provides directions for future research on the system—research which could either show some of the ethical reservations that are cited to be moot, or reveal ways they could be resolved.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Random Activities Theory</Emphasis>: The Case for ‘Black Swan’ Criminology

In the United States, infamous crimes against innocent victims—especially children—have repeatedly been regarded as justice system “failures” and resulted in reactionary legislation enacted without regard to prospective negative consequences. This pattern in part results when ‘memorial crime control’ advocates implicitly but inappropriately apply the tenets of routine activities theory, wherein crime prevention is presumed to be achievable by hardening likely targets, increasing the costs associated with crime commission, and removing criminal opportunity. In response, the authors argue that academic and public policy discourse will benefit from the inclusion of a new criminological perspective called random activities theory, in which tragic crimes are framed as rare but statistically inevitable ‘Black Swans’ instead of justice system failures. Potential objections and implications for public policy are discussed at length.     

The Failure of Defamation Law to Safeguard against SLAPPs in Ontario

The authors examine the failure of the law of defamation in Canada to reflect changed realities with respect to public participation in decision-making processes and the impact that this has had on Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs) in the Ontario context. They examine the enhancement of the public's substantive and procedural rights to participate in environmental decision-making processes reflected in legislation at the international, federal and provincial levels. They argue that SLAPPs threaten to reverse these shifts in norms in the development of public policy. The authors review anti-SLAPP legislation as well as the evolution of defamation law in Canada and other jurisdictions and conclude by offering some law reform recommendations for Ontario.     

Bringing the State into Constitutional Theory: Public Authority and the Constitution

This article brings the state into constitutional theory by presenting a theory of the development of the American state from the late 19th century to the present. The focus of the theory is the ability of the national state to exercise sovereignty or public authority over civil society. The main thesis is that the Constitution did not establish a government with a level of public authority adequate to the requirements of a modem democratic state. The result was a mismatch between the demands of civil society and the competence of state institutions, causing a reorganization of the political institutions of civil society in the early 20th century and a crisis of public authority in the 1960s. The United States continues to experience the consequences of an imbalance between the state institutions established by an 18th-century constitution and 20th-century democratic politics.