Striving for a good life: The good lives model applied to released child molesters

Abstract

The good lives model (GLM) is a strengths-based approach to offender rehabilitation in which treatment aims to equip offenders with the skills and resources necessary to satisfy primary goods, or basic human values, in personally meaningful and socially acceptable ways. The aim of the present research was to explore the practical utility of the GLM with a sample of released child molesters, and investigate the relationship between primary goods attainment and overall re-entry conditions (in terms of accommodation, social support and employment). Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 16 child molesters at one, three and six months following their release from prison. As expected, participants endorsed the majority of GLM primary goods with high importance, and positive re-entry experiences were associated with increased goods attainment. Implications for clinicians, policy makers and society as a whole are discussed.     

Strategic Commissioning in the UK: Service Improvement Cycle or Just Going Round in Circles?

This article explores the drivers of the development of strategic commissioning over the last two decades, its limitations, and the implications of its rapid spread. It suggests that the differences between government departments have allowed scope for local variations, which have been exploited by local government, leaving room for more innovation than would have been possible under an entirely ‘joined-up’ government agenda. The forms taken by this new approach to strategic commissioning were consistent with continual pressure from central government to find ways of promoting externalisation of public services. Although this underlying drive was often resisted, particularly at local level, but always re-emerged. The article ends by exploring the implications of this analysis for public services in the era of fiscal austerity under the new UK Coalition government.     

International Sanitation Management and Performance Measurement: Taking Out the Trash

Internationally, sanitation management has been a critical area of contention, especially in recent years with tightening budgets and resource reductions to public services. Our article reviews the management strategies, actions, and developments that have led to sanitation incidents of piling trash and public health concerns. These incidents will be reviewed from a public management perspective underscoring the role of performance measurement and management. The key influences associated with the varying cases are discussed. Both the negative and positive factors of international cases of sanitation management are reviewed.     

Experts, Juries, and Witch-hunts: From Fitzjames Stephen to Angela Cannings

Angela Cannings's successful appeal against her convictions for murder has revived an old controversy about the competence of juries to evaluate expert evidence. In response to criticisms of the jury system in the wake of a series of controversial poisoning trials, the Victorian jurist J.F. Stephen argued that juries were well equipped to decide on behalf of the community which experts should be treated as authorities, whose opinions the lay public could accept for practical purposes as 'beyond reasonable doubt'. Such practical decisions did not, Stephen argued, require that juries fully understand the experts' reasons for their conclusions. This article draws on recent work in social epistemology to argue that Stephen's view of the jury remains tenable, and that his authoritarian arguments can be recast in more democratic terms. It also concurs in Stephen's blunt recognition that the courts' need to make decisions despite the uncertainties of science renders some convictions of the innocent inevitable.     

Editorial

The changes to the UK tax rules on residence and domicile havebeen well publicized. Amongst other things, the new legislationremoves the shelter from capital gains tax which was previouslyprovided to UK non-domiciled individuals who benefited froman offshore trust. Some of the harsher (and more retrospective) aspects of thedraft legislation published in January have since been tempered.Offshore trusts will still have a role in planning for non-domiciliaries,not least because significant inheritance tax advantages remain.However, the way in which the process has been managed by theGovernment and HM Revenue & Customs leaves trustees andadvisers (still getting to grips with the 2006 changes to thetaxation of trusts) with little confidence that     

Social Construction of National Reality: Tibet and Taiwan

This paper uses the theory of social construction of reality deriving from the writings of Max Weber, Alfred Schutz, Thomas Luckmann and Peter Berger to explain the origin of national identity and hence the emergence of a nation. It argues that social construction of national reality originates from everyday life experience taken for granted during the process of socialization. Individuals make sense out of the external world. Experiences taken for granted become actor’s stock of knowledge. A common scheme of knowledge shared by the community serves to differentiate in-group (nationals) and out-group (foreigners). Collective consciousness thus defines national identity and hence a nation. Unless people (both in-group and out-group) interact with and learn from each other, different stocks of knowledge taken for granted will create political tension. This theory will be applied to understand the tensions in Tibet and along the Taiwan Strait. The paper further argues that Taiwan can hardly separate from mainland China in the future, while strong Tibetan consciousness continues to defy against powerful Chineseness, resulting in endless upheavals in the region.     

Understanding China and Its Role in the World

Mr. President, Ambassador, everyone, ladies and gentlemen,it is a great pleasure to be with you here at Shanghai Institutes for International Studies. Thank you, Mr. President for such