Courting Compliance: Case Managers as “Double Agents” in the Mental Health Court

An ethnographic study of four Midwest mental health courts was focused on how case managers influence the judicial response to offender noncompliance. Mental health courts, which bear little resemblance to traditional work group models, are staffed by teams of legal and social service professionals working collaboratively toward reducing recidivism and community reintegration for high‐risk offenders. Few studies, however, have explored how treatment providers practice their trade in this new court organization. I investigate how case management professionals, working at the intersections of the social welfare and criminal justice systems, leverage courtroom decision making that results in greater leniency or enhanced punishment. The findings suggest that mental‐health‐court case managers act as boundary spanners in terms of their strategic use of resources to facilitate treatment goals. I conclude that case managers act as “double agents” challenging the state to advocate for clemency while enforcing client rules to uphold the integrity of the court.     

Local government decision‐making—citizen participation and local accountability: some evidence from Kenya and Uganda

The current fashion for decentralisation is built on the assumption that it will result in decisions that reflect local needs and priorities. Yet representative democracy, through periodic elections, is a crude mechanism for establishing these needs and priorities. Most local government systems offer few other opportunities for citizens to participate, particularly for the poor, and few mechanisms of accountability. This article reviews the literature relating local level decision‐making, citizen participation and accountability. It then presents the findings of a study of decision‐making about the use of resources in a sample of municipal governments in Kenya and Uganda. Local governments in Kenya have traditionally offered minimal scope for citizen participation or accountability, but this is beginning to change, mainly as a result of performance conditions applied through the recently introduced Local Authorities Transfer Fund (LATF), together with an increasingly active civil society. In Uganda, which has undergone a radical decentralisation, there is much greater scope for citizen participation at the local level but there are still many of the same problems of local accountability as in Kenya. The article reviews some of the examples of, and reasons for, good (and bad) practice. It concludes that factors like committed local leadership, central monitoring of performance, articulate civil society organisations and the availability of information are critical. But even with these, there is no guarantee that decentralised decision‐making will be inclusive of the poor. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Die gegenseitige Anerkennung von vermögensrechtlichen Sanktionen innerhalb der EU und ihre Umsetzung im österreichischen Justizstrafrecht

Am 1. 7. 2007 trat das EU-JZG-?ndG 2007 in Kraft, mit dem der justizielle Teil des Rahmenbeschlusses des Rates der EU über die Anwendung des Grundsatzes der gegenseitigen Anerkennung auf Geldstrafen und Geldbu?en und der Rahmenbeschluss des Rates über die Anwendung des Grundsatzes der gegenseitigen Anerkennung auf Einziehungsentscheidungen innerstaatlich umgesetzt wurden. Damit wird der mit dem Europ?ischen Haftbefehl von der EU eingeschlagene Weg in einem weiteren Rechtshilfebereich, n?mlich dem der Vollstreckung von in einem Mitgliedstaat verh?ngten Geldsanktionen und verm?gensrechtlichen Anordnungen durch einen anderen Mitgliedstaat, fortgesetzt, indem einerseits traditionelle materielle Rechtshilfehindernisse eingeschr?nkt und anderseits auf die Einbeziehung einer politischen Beh?rde in das Vollstreckungsverfahren verzichtet wird. Der folgende Beitrag untersucht, wie sich die materiellen Voraussetzungen für die Vollstreckung von in einem Mitgliedstaat verh?ngten Geldsanktionen und verm?gensrechtlichen Anordnungen im ?sterr Justizstrafrecht nunmehr darstellen und welche Auslegungsprobleme sich bei einigen von ihnen ergeben.     

School-based Stress Management Training for Adolescents: Longitudinal Results from an Experimental Study

This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of a school-based universal preventive stress management training program for early and middle adolescents in comparison with a no-treatment control group. The study examined the intervention effects of age (early versus middle adolescents) and gender on perceived stress, interpersonal coping, and self-efficacy prior, immediately after as well as 3 months after the intervention. Three hundred and twenty adolescents (ages 10–14 years) participated in the study. Whereas both experimental conditions did not differ substantially in baseline scores, the experimental group scored higher on perceived self-efficacy compared to the control group at the follow-up assessment. Additionally, the experimental group showed less perceived stress and more adaptive coping at the post and follow-up assessment. Age-dependent intervention effects suggested that early adolescents primarily benefited from the treatment. Although the effects must be replicated using a randomized design, the current findings reveal that the program does strengthen important protective factors for the psychosocial development of adolescents.

3D documentation of footwear impressions and tyre tracks in snow with high resolution optical surface scanning

The three-dimensional documentation of footwear and tyre impressions in snow offers an opportunity to capture additional fine detail for the identification as present photographs. For this approach, up to now, different casting methods have been used. Casting of footwear impressions in snow has always been a difficult assignment. This work demonstrates that for the three-dimensional documentation of impressions in snow the non-destructive method of 3D optical surface scanning is suitable. The new method delivers more detailed results of higher accuracy than the conventional casting techniques. The results of this easy to use and mobile 3D optical surface scanner were very satisfactory in different meteorological and snow conditions. The method is also suitable for impressions in soil, sand or other materials. In addition to the side by side comparison, the automatic comparison of the 3D models and the computation of deviations and accuracy of the data simplify the examination and delivers objective and secure results. The results can be visualized efficiently. Data exchange between investigating authorities at a national or an international level can be achieved easily with electronic data carriers.     

Application of 3D documentation and geometric reconstruction methods in traffic accident analysis: with high resolution surface scanning, radiological MSCT/MRI scanning and real data based animation

The examination of traffic accidents is daily routine in forensic medicine. An important question in the analysis of the victims of traffic accidents, for example in collisions between motor vehicles and pedestrians or cyclists, is the situation of the impact. Apart from forensic medical examinations (external examination and autopsy), three-dimensional technologies and methods are gaining importance in forensic investigations. Besides the post-mortem multi-slice computed tomography (MSCT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for the documentation and analysis of internal findings, highly precise 3D surface scanning is employed for the documentation of the external body findings and of injury-inflicting instruments. The correlation of injuries of the body to the injury-inflicting object and the accident mechanism are of great importance. The applied methods include documentation of the external and internal body and the involved vehicles and inflicting tools as well as the analysis of the acquired data. The body surface and the accident vehicles with their damages were digitized by 3D surface scanning. For the internal findings of the body, post-mortem MSCT and MRI were used. The analysis included the processing of the obtained data to 3D models, determination of the driving direction of the vehicle, correlation of injuries to the vehicle damages, geometric determination of the impact situation and evaluation of further findings of the accident. In the following article, the benefits of the 3D documentation and computer-assisted, drawn-to-scale 3D comparisons of the relevant injuries with the damages to the vehicle in the analysis of the course of accidents, especially with regard to the impact situation, are shown on two examined cases.     

‘Hand in hand with the women,forward we will go’: welsh nationalism and feminism in the 1890s

This article explores the history of women's liberalism in Wales in the 1880s and 1890s, during the period of the Liberal nationalist movement known as Cymru Fydd or Young Wales. The Welsh Union of Women's Liberal Associations (WUWLA) was founded in 1892 to provide an important bloc of votes for the Progressive (Suffragist) faction in the Women's Liberal Federation, but its aims combined Liberal, Nationalist and feminist objectives. This article argues that briefly, and uniquely, in the 1890s, the WUWLA was able to bring together feminism and nationalism in British party politics, despite some opposition from its own nationalist members. The active intervention of women ensured that the masculinist language of nationalism shifted to an emphasis on equality of the sexes. In 1895, Cymru Fydd, embodied in the Welsh National Federation, espoused women's suffrage among its objects, and gave women's organisations special representation in its structures. This change is explored both through the writings and the events – a series of meetings and conferences – which led to the formation of both the WUWLA and the Welsh National Federation. But the weakness of liberalism at the end of the 1890s, together with divisions within Wales, meant that the new politics was short lived. The decline of women's national organisation after this period, though not fully explored here, can be linked to those problems, but also to the rifts created between Liberals, women and men, over the issue of women's suffrage in the Edwardian period.