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.

Globalisierung und die Nachfrage nach sozialer Sicherheit. Eine kritische Analyse des „domestic demand“-Ansatzes

Comparative research on the impact of globalization and international competition underlined that public policies were strikingly stable, contrary to the expected cutbacks in social expenditures. This resilience of the welfare state is explained by voters’ demands for social protection which can be related to new uncertainties connected to economic openness. The domestic demand approach conceives the welfare state as a means to compensate for the employment risks resulting from a globalized economy, and as a means to foster the acceptance of an open economy. This paper analyzes the link between globalization, insecurity and domestic demand. It considers the class specific effects of economic openness. The domestic demand approach is subjected to a test based on data from the International Social Survey Programme (waves 1990, 1996 and 2006) and additional country-level features. The results show that unemployment makes citizen’s preferences for social security expand, while economic openness has a negative effect: the more open the economy of a country the lower social security demand of citizens. Contrary to the expectations, the more people perceive job security to be threatened the lower is support for social security. Obviously, citizens on the average are skeptical against rising unemployment protection since they fear higher burdens by social expenditures without directly benefitting from them. Those still employed do not vote for more expenditure. However, the lowest social class increasingly demands social security in the context of open economies. Over time, social security demand gets more mired at the low end of the social spectrum. The hypothesis that economic openness spreads economic risks and feelings of insecurity over broad social strata is rejected. The results support the debate on dualization processes.     

Die Demokratie und ihre Gegenbewegungen: eine kritische (Selbst‑)Reflexion zu Begriffen und Referenzrahmen in der Rechtsextremismusforschung

So far, research on right-wing extremism has been able to provide wide-ranging insights into political parties and right-wing movements as well as their embedding in terms of the history of ideas. The reference framework of that research is democracy. However, there is no analysis of ideological criticism of the reality of democracies. Therefore, it has been impossible to identify the potential risks of radical and extreme right phenomena for established and young democracies yet. Additionally, researchers have not been able so far to obtain information on what these phenomena say about the state of democracies. The plea is to align studies on right-wing extremism with research on democracies and ideology critique. The aim is a “reflexive” research on right-wing extremism.     

The revenue implications of the Uganda and Tanzania plans 1

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