Content and Access Agreements: An Analysis of Some of the Legal Issues Arising from Linking and Framing

This paper examines the subject of content and access agreements with a detailed analysis of the legal issues that arise from linking and framing. The law is examined from a UK perspective with a detailed study of significant developments in the USA. The main focus of the discussion is on copyright and contract, but the subject of trespass is also considered to cover those situations where contract and copyright remedies may not be available. The copyright analysis reveals uncertainty in the extent of the protection offered and this has had the effect of encouraging the use of contractual licences. Detailed consideration is given to the use and enforceability of such contractual licences and to the actual and potential problems of their increasing use. The paper shows that there are advantages and disadvantages associated with both copyright and contract and certain conceptual difficulties in the use of trespass are discussed. Nevertheless the factors identified and the expected continuation of existing trends show that the use of licences and formal agreements relating to linking and access will increase, especially where commercial actors have perceived strong interests to protect.     

Keeping the ‘Lady’ Safe: The Regulation of Femininity through Crime Prevention Literature

Rape and the fear of rape have been understood by numerous feminists as an ideological weapon used by men to subordinate women. This paper argues that this analysis of power is overly reductive. The omnipresent threat of rape for women encourages them to engage in multiple ‘safe-keeping’ acts which have come to be a performative condition of normative femininity. These restrictive bodily acts (not dressing in certain ways, avoiding certain public locales) promoted through some strands of rape prevention literature, are not merely a reaction to the reality of rape, rather, these advisory narratives unwittingly operate to install rape as a fixed reality. Rape prevention literature (re)produces gendered bodies – the vulnerable/indefensible feminine and the potent/unstoppable masculine – which does not disrupt the possibility of rape, more exactly, it makes rape seem evermore inevitable and unstoppable.     

The lynching of William Parker: The criminal justice system at work in 19th century North Carolina

An examination of primary sources of a nineteenth century lynching reveals that in some parts of the south the criminal justice system often involved non-official citizen involvement rather than official agencies of law enforcement in the investigation of crimes.     

Examining the Consequences of the “Prevalent Life Events” of Arrest and Incarceration among an Urban African-American Cohort

The life course perspective has traditionally examined prevalent adult life events, such as marriage and employment, and their potential to redirect offending trajectories. However, for African-Americans, the life events of arrest and incarceration are becoming equally prevalent in young adulthood. Therefore, it is critical to understand how these “standard” criminal justice practices, which are designed to deter as well as punish, affect deviance among this population. This study evaluates the long-term consequences of criminal justice intervention on substance use and offending into midlife among an African-American community cohort using propensity score matching and multivariate regression analyses. The results largely point to a criminogenic effect of criminal justice intervention on midlife deviance with a particularly strong effect of young adult arrest on rates of violent and property arrest counts into midlife. The theoretical and policy implications of the findings are discussed.     

The differential predictive validity of the Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory: the role of gender

Most criminogenic risk assessments are developed and empirically validated on samples of boys or samples comprised of mostly boys, and subsequently applied to girls. Using a sample of male (n = 1,267) and female (n = 453) probationers, the purpose of the current study was to examine the potentially differential performance of the Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory (YLS/CMI) and the instrument’s eight domains for female juvenile offenders. Findings revealed gender differences in the predictive validity of the YLS/CMI in which girls scored significantly higher on the risk assessment, but recidivated at significantly lower rates than boys two years following the administration of the assessment. The predictive validity of the instrument was impacted by these gender differences in which the YLS/CMI total score was a better predictor of recidivism for boys (area under the curve (AUC) = .623) than girls (AUC = .565). The only subscales that significantly predicted recidivism for girls were the family (AUC = .607) and personality (AUC = .572) domains, whereas all of the subscales significantly predicted recidivism for boys. Directions for future research as well as gender-responsive assessment, programming, and policy implications are discussed.