The impact of anti-stalking training on front line service providers: using the anti-stalking training evaluation protocol (ASTEP)

The Anti-Stalking Training Evaluation Protocol (ASTEP) was developed to provide Safe Horizon, a large victim service provider, with an opportunity to evaluate and improve its anti-stalking training program. This report presents the results of this effort to measure Safe Horizon staff's knowledge and general perceptions about stalking, and to assess the impact of anti-stalking training on knowledge about the anti-stalking law, and stalking in general. Although these trainees appeared familiar with stalking issues, they were able to benefit from information about different types of stalkers and stalking, and about the legal options available to victims. The implication of the findings is that, if relatively well-informed staff members of a large victim services agency can benefit from training about stalking behavior, anti-stalking legislation and the needs of stalking victims, there is almost certainly a need for such training among a wider population of victim service providers, law enforcement professionals, and the general public.     

Municipal Support for Social Entrepreneurship

This study examines how cities help social entrepreneurship—the activity of private individuals and organizations taking initiative to address social challenges in their communities. Based on a national survey and in-depth interviews among jurisdictions with populations over 50,000, the authors find that municipalities help social entrepreneurs by increasing awareness of social problems, and by helping them to acquire resources, coordinate with other organizations, and implement programs. Nearly three-quarters of cities provide active or moderate support, which is positively associated with the perceived effectiveness of nonprofit organizations in their communities.     

Into Hybrid Marshlands? Thirdspatial Notes on Postcolonial Theory and Feminist Legal Theory

International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique -     

Sweating it out: NGO campaigns and trade union empowerment

In the context of globalisation, transnational social regulation is increasingly the product of NGOs intervening in the sphere of global trade. Drawing on empirical research in SE Asia, the author contends that what matters as much as codes of conduct are spillover effects whose force extends beyond building walls into the broader society of the host country. The basis for effective labour law lies within states, and activism must focus on improving legal, political, and social conditions for workers in the host countries, rather than on trying to affect corporate behaviour through consumer pressure.     

Claims of amnesia for criminal offenses: psychopathology, substance abuse, and malingering

The forensic psychiatric examiner often encounters defendants who deny memory for their offense. Past research proposes a variety of factors to account for offense amnesia. To date there have been few systematic studies of offense amnesia in relation to psychiatric diagnosis, either alone or in combination with other known factors such as substance use and malingering. We studied 53 pretrial felony defendants who had been referred for psychiatric examination; 40% claimed amnesia for their offense. Examinees with psychotic disorders in general, and schizophrenia in particular, were relatively less likely to claim amnesia than were examinees with other diagnoses. Substance use at the time of the offense and associated substance use disorder diagnoses were positively associated with offense amnesia. Malingering diagnosed by general clinical criteria was a poor predictor of amnesia claims. These data suggests that two prominent reasons for referral for forensic psychiatric evaluation include the presence of psychotic symptoms and claims of amnesia for the offense.     

Compleat Contemplators and Pertinacious Schismaticks: Speculations on the Clash of Two Imaginary Sovereignties at Dale Farm and Meriden (UK)

In this essay two photographs taken during the events (2011) at Dale Farm and at Meriden—both involving issues of gypsy and traveller settlement in rural areas—are analysed and interpreted in some depth. Use is thereby made of Izaak Walton’s The Compleat Angler (1653). This book, as is argued in this contribution, includes, in embryonic form, a whole imaginary of forms of sovereignty which, it could be said, is still to a significant extent structuring conflicts between gypsy and traveller communities on the one hand, and rural residents on the other. The exploration of Walton’s imaginary in which supposed compleat contemplators are pitched against intransigent, dogmatic, pertinacious schismaticks, enables us to tease out images of nomadism and sovereignty and allows us to argue how the clash of imaginary sovereignties both at Dale Farm and at Meriden is, at the core, a clash of irreconcilable forms of life which, each, rest upon what existentialists would call an original, radical choice. We conclude with some notes on the need to acknowledge but also to interrogate, in and during conflicts between gypsies and travellers and rural residents, the radical nature of the existential choices that underpin such conflicts. Without any such acknowledgement, and without any meta-communicative interrogation of the choices that underpin imaginary forms of life, one may not hope to be able bridge the chasm between radically chosen, diametrically opposed forms of life.