Surviving the political consequences of neoliberal policies

In many countries in Latin America and also western Europe, leftist parties have succeeded in winning repeated re-election even though they have implemented neoliberal economic policies when in government. According to the existing literature, these parties should suffer electoral punishment since they are diverging from their traditional policy course and their electoral promises, and their neoliberal policies are potentially costly for their core support groups. Analysing the cases of left-of-centre parties in Spain and Costa Rica, this article argues that policy implementation strategies, together with strategic use of institutional rules, help to obfuscate the policies' impact, deflect blame, and make re-election possible. The reform of welfare and the way we live now: a critique of Giddens and the Third Way     

Length variation in HV2 of the human mitochondrial DNA control region.

Hair samples were typed from three individuals who exhibited length heteroplasmy in the homopolymeric cytosine stretches (C-stretch) in hypervariable region 2 (HV2). The study demonstrated that for different hairs within an individual, the HV2 C-stretch region can vary with respect to the number of cytosines and/or proportion of C-stretch length variants. Length heteroplasmy may occur regardless of the prominent length variant present in this region. Differences in the number of cytosines at the C-stretch region, or a variation in the relative amounts of heteroplasmic length variants, cannot be used to support an interpretation of exclusion.     

The impact of police reform on communities of Trinidad and Tobago

Objectives  

Reforms were implemented at five selected police stations in Trinidad and Tobago. The reforms were designed to improve the services delivered by police stations, to reduce crime, and to increase public confidence in the police. The intervention involved improving police facilities, vehicles, and equipment, and enhancing station staffing, training, and technical assistance to improve basic police work and station management/supervision. It introduced service-oriented, problem-solving approaches to replace the traditional colonial and post-colonial models of policing.     

Challenging the ‘urban myth’ of psychopathy untreatability: the High-Risk Personality Programme

Psychopathy has long been framed as a special challenge in criminal justice contexts, in part due to the supposedly untreatable nature of psychopathic offenders. Indeed, previous failed attempts to ‘treat’ this particular group have resulted in a widespread pessimism about treatment efficacy amongst correctional professionals. This pessimism has focused on the inherent unchangeable nature of psychopathic traits, especially those associated with Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) Factor 1 items and the challenge of developing an effective therapeutic alliance with hostile, manipulative offenders. It is argued that this negative stance is neither unanimous nor justified because of poor consistency of population definition and methodological problems with structural and functional attributes of traditional treatment approaches. This article describes an experimental intervention – the High-Risk Personality Programme (HRPP) – a New Zealand prison-based group intensive treatment programme designed to reduce violence with a psychopathic group, and create opportunities to devise rehabilitative solutions with a challenging group.     

‘You're Just Treating Us as Informants!’ Roles,Responsibilities and Relationships in the Production of Children's Services Directories

Local authorities in England are required to make directories of services available to practitioners working with children and young people. This is against a background of continuing reforms intended to ensure that services are joined-up around the needs and choices of children, young people and their families. There are high expectations that more of these services will be delivered by organisations from theVoluntary and Community Sector (VCS), especially services for groups or communities that public sector agencies find hard to engage. This article reports and comments upon a regional study focusing on the production of children's service directories involving service providers and commissioners, as well as the producers of directories, in a series of facilitated workshop activities. The study highlights tensions between local authorities and service providers around how information about services is controlled, edited and accessed. We argue that current approaches to the provision ofdirectories are unlikely to have the transformational effects predicted by policy makers. This is partly because local authorities' traditional position (supported by the prevailing technologies) has meant that they have tended to monopolise the roles and responsibilities which in turn maintains their control of directory content. They do so in the face of increasing dissent from new and established providers. Moreover, current models of service directories fail to meet the emerging information needs of a range ofstakeholders including service providers, service commissioners and service users. Inconclusion we propose some questions to improve visibility and governance in the creation and maintenance of service directories.     

The three dimensions of online child pornography offending

Abstract

The internet has opened up opportunities for non-contact sex offending, such as the viewing of child pornography. This paper proposes a model for the classification of child pornography offenders as an aid for their assessment and treatment, deducted from empirical studies and existing typologies for child pornography offenders. Different subgroups of child pornography offenders may be described according to three dimensions: (1) type of offending, (2) the motivation behind child pornography offending and (3) the situational and social engagement in the offending behaviour. Distinct pathways of child pornography offending can be identified, related to differing criminogenic needs, severity of offending, and appropriate assessment and treatment strategies for the offenders.     

Is it ‘Fake News’? Intelligence Community expertise and news dissemination as measurements for media reliability

Self-communication platforms have generated a myriad of outlets and news producers that represent a challenge for modern societies. Therefore, it is relevant to explore new measurements that can help understand whether a specific outlet disseminating news could be considered reliable or not. This study is based on the expertise from the U.S. Intelligence Community to offer a statistical model that replicates the reliability measurements based on intelligence expertise. The results suggest that a classification algorithm could be useful to measure news media reliability. Additionally, different variables were identified to predict perceptions of media reliability.