Parental Representations in the Play of Preschool Aged Witnesses of Marital Violence

The play of young children has long been used clinically to understand children’s experiences and inner feelings. More recently, children’s play has been examined quantitatively to understand differences due to varying backgrounds, family relationships, etc. Forty preschool children (21 girls and 19 boys) aged 27 to 71 months from families with histories of domestic violence were observed using a play interview, The MacArthur Story Stem Battery, to determine if severity of violence, frequency of visitation with their previously violent fathers, and mother-child relationship functioning impacted how parents were represented in play. Overall, girls represented their parents more positively regardless of other family circumstances. Boys, especially those who did not visit regularly with their fathers, had negative representations of their mothers. Severity of violence did not predict negative parental representations in the sample.     

Re-visiting Mr. Nice. On organized crime as conversational interaction

Studies of organized crime often seem to have focus almost exclusively on its functionality and rationality. Many researchers tend to construct organized crime as an object, and then to find relations between ‘it’ and its environment. The focus then is on organized crime as a goal-driven object. This view holds that success in crime depends on the roles and tasks people assume. It equates success in crime with functional secrecy and obedience, and therefore with stability. Researchers are seldom interested in everyday, informal elements and events such as coincidental encounters that may occur in everyday life, or personal relationships which have no direct connection with criminal activities. Inspired by the work of Watts and Strogatz [84] and Stuart Kauffman [38, 39], this paper attempts to suggest a complementary perspective on organized crime. The focus here is on the messiness and unpredictability of everyday relations and interactions. This paper illustrates the usefulness of this alternative perspective through a re-reading of Howard Marks’ ego-document which was analysed earlier by Carlo Morselli in his work on network dynamics and criminal career opportunities.     

Offshore IT Outsourcing and the 8th Data Protection Principle - legal and regulatory requirements - with reference to Financial Services

In the global sourcing world, particularly in financial services,offshore outsourcing and associated data transfers are commonplaceand increasing, searching out lower cost third countries, whichmay have even fewer data protections. In such an environment,the1998 Data Protection Act’s 8^th Principle and associated7^th Principle security provisions become critical protectionsfor UK data subjects. Yet the few statistics that exist indicate that unrestrictedtransfers appear to occur from several EEA countries. Furthercriticisms are that the UK 1998 Act does not fully align withthe EEA Directive, the Schedule 4 exceptions are overly wide,the country assessment process can be ignored with the InformationCommissioner’s ‘blessing’ and his powers andresources are limited. Financial Services may be a contrasting exception, where theindustry regulator, the FSA, ‘incidentally’ enforcesmany of the data protection requirements of overseas data transfers,has significant direct enforcement powers and a model ADR approachthrough the Financial Ombudsman. Although the UK banking lawand regulation meets many privacy requirements, it falls shortof the full data protection requirements, clearly illustratingthe value that data protection legislation brings. The alternative self regulatory approach exemplified by theUS Safe Harbor illustrates the weaknesses of pure self regulation,recognized by the US financial services which are moving towardscentralized data privacy supervision with the Gramm-Leach-BlileyAct, reinforcing the worldwide trend towards a more EEA-stylesupervised personal data protection world. In short, seven years after the 1998 Act was passed, we areready for an appropriate mid-course correction, with the 8thPrinciple (& 7^th Principle) needed more than ever in thegrowing outsourced world.     

'Cheese for Thought' for the European Court of First Instance

The name ‘grana’ is not generic and the existenceof the protected designation of origin (PDO) for the ‘GranaPadano’ cheese precludes the registration of the trademark GRANA BIRAGHI for related products.