Child protection under the Children Act 1989: Prevention rather than care?

I owe a debt of gratitude to Professors Hugh Bevan and Michael Freeman for reading and commenting helpfully on earlier drafts. The usualcaveat applies.     

Birchall and Benwell. Murder in a Canadian swamp

On 21 February 1890, two woodsmen working in densely wooded Blenheim Swamp in southern Ontario, Canada, stumbled upon the dead body of a young Englishman who had been killed by two gunshot wounds to the head. He was identified as Frederick Benwell by a married couple, the Birchalls, who had traveled with him and another man, Pelly, from England to New York City by ship about 1 week before. The Birchalls lied regarding Benwell's subsequent movements. Questioning Pelly revealed to Detective John Murray that both Pelly and Benwell had replied separately to Birchall's advertisement for young men of means to become partners with him in a large Canadian farm, a deposit first being required. Birchall had been observed taking Benwell from Buffalo, New York, to Blenheim Swamp, for in reality there was no farm. There he had shot Benwell, leaving the body partially exposed. He then tried unsuccessfully to lure Pelly to his death in Niagara Falls. The Birchalls were arrested. Reginald Birchall was tried, convicted, and hanged. His attempt, including murder, to turn the so-called farm pupil colonization scheme to his own benefit had been frustrated by the dogged work of the master Canadian detective Murray.     

‘Brightening their leisure hours’? The experiment of BBC Women's Hour, 1923–1925

ABSTRACT

On 2 May 1923, the newly established BBC, launched Women's Hour, a daily bespoke programme aimed at its female audience produced by Ella Fitzgerald, a former Fleet Street journalist. In December 1923 a Women's Advisory Committee (WAC) was established to represent women's interests at the BBC with eminent members who included the Chairman of the National Federation of Women's’ Institutes, Lady Denman; the actress Dorothea Baird and the physician Elizabeth Sloan Chesser. The WAC, working with Fitzgerald and other BBC officials, introduced into Women's Hour an innovative range of programme ideas. It also prompted a debate about the premise of the programme, whether it should be about domesticity or provide escapism from the ‘common task’ of housework. In addition the WAC challenged the Women's Hour name. Through a consideration of the programme and the WAC, both of which were short-lived, this article explores how the BBC sought to address its female audience in the early 1920s.     

Irish civil society: rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic? A case study of fighting Irish social security retrenchment

Examining the politics of Irish responses to crisis-related social security cuts gives insight into Irish agency and how crisis has shaped the contours of Irish civil society. Despite assertions of lack of protest, Irish retrenchment was resisted and sometimes partially defeated. Using political sociology frameworks to explore interactions between institutional, ideological and interest variables in three case studies of defending cuts enables analysis of resistance strategies. There are tensions when short-term defensive resistance strategies undermine or limit offensive political coalition-building that might offer greater long-term solidarity and more sustainable resistance to intensification of the neoliberal Irish welfare state.     

Turning defiance into compliance with procedural justice: Understanding reactions to regulatory encounters through motivational posturing

This paper uses Braithwaite's motivational posturing framework to explain how individuals react to encounters with regulatory authorities. Of interest is whether procedural justice can reduce defiance and improve self‐reported compliance among individuals who are either resistant or dismissive of regulatory authority. Using longitudinal survey data collected from tax offenders (Study 1), and individuals who had a recent police‐citizen interaction (Study 2), it will be shown that procedural justice can promote compliance behavior. Procedural justice is also found to be effective for reducing resistant forms of defiance over time, but not dismissive defiance. Further, the results reveal that neither resistant defiance nor dismissive defiance moderate the effect of procedural justice on compliance, suggesting procedural justice works equally well for both low and high resisters and low and high disengagers. Finally, an unexpected result reveals that resistance, but not dismissive defiance, mediates the effect of procedural justice on self‐reported compliance behavior. The findings have implications for procedural justice research and for the regulation of defiance.