Maintaining the Legal Status of People with Intellectual Disabilities as Parents: The ADA and the CRPD

People with intellectual disabilities face proceedings to terminate their parental rights with disturbing regularity, with protecting the interests of offspring the primary justification. Although protecting children from harm is surely critical, these termination proceedings involve problematic assumptions about how fitness to parent is understood, how parenting is legally constructed, and what nondiscrimination requires for parents with intellectual disabilities. Using Article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities as a model, it suggests two alternatives to the all‐or‐nothing termination processes in place today that might better realize the enjoyment of legal capacity as parents on an equal basis with others for people with intellectual disabilities: limited terminations analogous to limited guardianships and supported parenting along the lines of supported decision making proposed in the CRPD.     

Evaluation of a restorative justice-based,community-based program for people who have offended sexually: participant impact

Community Justice Initiatives, Kitchener, Canada, offers a Restorative Justice program called Revive to people impacted by sexual harm, including men who have offended sexually. This volunteer-led program treats participants with compassion while holding them accountable for sexual harm perpetrated. Program goals include reducing isolation, promoting self-awareness, and fostering healing. Based on restorative justice principles, positive community reintegration and reduction of further sexual offending are the ultimate goals of the program.

We evaluated information from a questionnaire administered at intake, after the 7-week phase, and again after participation in the peer-support group. Participants responded quantitatively about the impact of Revive on six sexual offense-related outcomes statements (e.g., gaining understanding of their triggers, understanding why they sexually offended). They also indicated the impact of Revive on psychosocial dimensions such as stigma perception and social support. Qualitative questions further elucidated the experience of Revive participation. Findings suggest that Revive has an impact on self-understanding of why they sexually offended, victim empathy, as well as stress reduction and increased self-esteem. We conclude that the restorative justice framework is a very hopeful, positive one and that the Revive program is effective at enacting restorative justice-based principles.     

Good guys, bad guys: transnational corporations, rational choice theory and power crime

While its scope and scale can be exaggerated, the power transnational corporations (TNCs) exert in the contemporary world is considerable. This is often at the expense of states, or at least is exercised in a way that can undermine states. Some interactions between corporations and states or their officers constitute prime examples of power crime. A blatant form is where corporations either offer or else agree to pay bribes to state officials in order to secure a major contract. This capacity to corrupt state officials via large scale bribes gives corporations significant potential power. This article begins by citing allegations of active corruption of state officials by TNCs, as well as counter-examples (i.e. where TNCs have taken a stand against rent-seeking officials). It then argues that active corruption by corporations constitutes a major dimension of power crime, and seeks to explain apparently contradictory behaviours by TNCs, relating these to rational choice theories and neo-liberalism. It is argued that recent changes in corporate governance and behaviour have made rational-choice models and simplistic neo-liberalism either questionable or redundant. Bu at the same time, globalisation and its stable mate neo-liberalism encourage improper behaviour–various forms of power crime-by corporations.     

Prosecuting war criminals: the case for decentralisation

Michelle Sieff is a Senior Research Associate on African Affairs at the Eurasia Group, a consulting company in New York City. Leslie Vinjamuri is a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for International Studies, London School of Economics and Political Science, and an Assistant Professor at Georgetown University, Washington, DC.¹     

Is thin a feminist issue?

Anorexia nervosa and similar disorders preponderate in women and therefore seem particularly suited to feminist models of understanding. Boskind-Lodahl (1976) and Orbach (1979, 1982) have put forward similar views on the subject, and their work is well known.This article explores the assumptions behind the Boskind-Lodahl/Orbach hypothesis, and argues that the most fundamental of these lies in a problematic distinction between the concepts of nature and culture. Some implications of the hypothesis are discussed with emphasis on the extent to which these authors normalize anorectic behaviour. The question is raised as to whether this normalizing approach may be read as legitimating symptoms. Feminist, anthropological, and other writing is used to examine the potential for alternative models of understanding anorexia nervosa which do not rely on a nature/culture split and which address the issue of the social function of anorectic symptoms. These models point towards a more general concern in feminist theory with the relationship between culture and psychological disorder.