EXAMINING THE CONNECTION BETWEEN CHILD ACCESS AND CHILD SUPPORT

This article examines the connection between fathers' access to children and their maintaining child support. Also examined are various approaches to obtaining compliance with support orders. The effect of various factors on payment of support, such as frequency of contact, remarriage, and the length of time since the separation, is analyzed.     

MEDIATION AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

This article summarizes policies and procedures used by various courts in the United States in responding to domestic violence. Over 200 courts and services were contacted under a grant from the State Justice Institute in developing this survey. The article covers the profile of mediation services, mediator training regarding domestic violence, screening for domestic violence and protocols used.     

Is Public Management Neglecting the State?

Public management is a domain of research that is now roughly three decades old. Researchers in this area have made important advances in understanding about the performance of public organizations. But questions have been raised about the scope and methods of public management research (PMR). Does it neglect important questions about the development of major institutions of the modern state? Has it focused unduly on problems of the advanced democracies? Has it made itself irrelevant to public debates about the role and design of government, and the capacity of public institutions to deal with emerging challenges? This set of eight short essays were prepared for a roundtable held at the research conference of the PMR Association at the University of Aarhus in June 2016. Contributors were asked to consider the question: Is PMR neglecting the state?     

Recent Developments

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

Enhancing Information Sharing in Family Drug Courts: A Lean Six Sigma Case Study

Given the variety of stakeholders involved in cases within family drug courts, efficient communication and information sharing, which are needed to support decision‐making, can be quite challenging. Through a case study in one family drug court system, this research employed an action research approach to improve the information sharing process following the Lean Six Sigma methodology. The solutions implemented through this study contributed to improving the quality of the services provided by this court system and its overall productivity. In addition, this research extends our knowledge about methods for improving court systems from which others can learn to guide future improvement efforts.