Restoring the social: offender reintegration in a risky world

How to manage and reintegrate offenders released from prison is a vexing problem for governments. The challenge of reintegration has forced a pendulum shift in corrections toward a more social-psychological understanding of the nature of offender release, after decades of purely psychological paradigm dominance. This article explains how reentry problems and practice encompass the shift in a context of a risk-centric and averse public. New reentry models such as Circles of Support and Accountability demonstrate an approach to reentry that draws upon the tenets of restorative justice and desistance theories. Using qualitative data on reintegration within New Zealand, this article contributes to our understanding of the problems for correctional departments to facilitate reintegration in the context of risk managerialism, and theorizes about the dimensions and implications of “restorative reentry.”     

Financial Advice,Differentiated Consumers,and the Regulation of Equity‐release Transactions

In an asset‐based welfare context, which encourages the drawdown of housing equity to meet financial needs in later life, it is anticipated that the use of equity‐release products will become increasingly prevalent. In the last decade, and reflecting the strategic significance and high risk associated with this section of the home finance market, targeted equity‐release products (lifetime mortgages and home reversion plans) have come under the regulatory remit of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). The FCA's approach to equity release is geared around professional financial and legal advice. Drawing on findings from a new qualitative study, purposively sampled according to socioeconomic circumstances at the time of the transaction, this article explores the role of financial advice within the factors that shape equity‐release decision making, and considers the implications of the FCA's regulatory commitment to the ‘advice paradigm’ in meeting (or not) the needs of a differentiated consumer population.     

International research collaboration among women engineers: frequency and perceived barriers,by regions

International research collaboration is on the rise—and at the same time, women face potential barriers. Based on responses to surveys conducted among groups of women engineers, this article addresses (1) women’s frequency of international research collaboration; (2) the barriers to collaboration reported for both self and for other women; and (3) the patterns among women students as well as professionals, by national regions. Findings of this study have implications for policies to broaden participation in the increasingly important arena of international research collaboration, based on women in engineering, the scientific field in which women are most underrepresented. This makes the case focal for the study of women, science, and policy.     

Parentage of Hydatidiform Moles

We were presented with the STR (short tandem repeat) profiles from two separate paternity trios. Each trio consisted of a mother, an alleged father, and products of conception (POC) that contained a hydatidiform mole but no visible fetus. In both cases , antecedent pregnancies had followed alleged sexual assaults. Mole classification and pathogenesis are described in order to explain the analyses and statistical reasoning used in each case. One mole exhibited several loci with two different paternal alleles, indicating it was a dispermic (heterozygous) mole. Maternal decidua contaminated the POC, preventing the identification of paternal obligate alleles (POAs) at some loci. The other mole exhibited only one paternal allele/locus at all loci and no maternal alleles, indicating it was a diandric and diploid (homozygous) mole. In each case, traditional calculations were used to determine paternity indices (PIs) at loci that exhibited one paternal allele/locus. PIs at mole loci with two different paternal alleles/locus were calculated from formulas first used for child chimeras that are always dispermic. Combined paternity indices in both mole cases strongly supported the paternity of each suspect.     

Entering the Arena? Gender and the Decision to Run for Office

A critical void in the research on women's underrepresentation in elective office is an analysis of the initial decision to run for office. Based on data from our Citizen Political Ambition Study, the first large-scale national survey of potential candidates, we examine the process by which women and men emerge as candidates for public office. We find that women who share the same personal characteristics and professional credentials as men express significantly lower levels of political ambition to hold elective office. Two factors explain this gender gap: first, women are far less likely than men to be encouraged to run for office; second, women are significantly less likely than men to view themselves as qualified to run. Our findings call into question the leading theoretical explanations for women's numeric underrepresentation and indicate that, because of vestiges of traditional sex-role socialization, prospects for gender parity in U.S. political institutions are less promising than conventional explanations suggest .     

The Race Among the States in Welfare Benefits: A Comment

One error in research on the welfare-magnet thesis is its focuson the poor rather than on the well-endowed and mobile economicactors who influence state policymakers. Another error is theassumption that poor people are mobile participants in the gameof locational advantage. Yet, unlike well-endowed economic actorswho move funds and goods, the poor must move themselves andtheir own bodies, rather than resources. Hence, it is unlikelythat poor people are playing much of a role in any race to thebottom in welfare policymaking.     

Unmasking the subaltern,or salamis without themistocles

The rubber tree is native to the humid tropics and has traditionally been cropped in the equatorial zone between 10°N and 10°S; in mainland Southeast Asia this includes portions of southern Thailand, southeastern Vietnam, and southern Myanmar. In the early 1950s, the Chinese government began to invest in growing rubber in environments perceived to be ecologically marginal and eventually established state rubber plantations in areas that lie as far north as 22° north latitude. China's success in growing rubber in these ‘non-traditional’ environments expanded the habitat in which rubber could be planted and pushed it further north. Today entrepreneurs from China, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Thailand are investing in rubber plantations in areas of Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar, northwest Vietnam, northeast Thailand, and Yunnan, China. The impact of rubber on smallholders, however, is not yet clear. Experiences in Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, China and northeast Thailand clearly show that smallholder rubber production is a viable and effective proposition in moving households and communities out of poverty. By contrast in countries such as Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar many farmers are struggling to maintain their lands and forests in the face of growing pressures from investors and government institutions to impose concession arrangements.