Safeguarding Children's Welfare in Non‐Contentious Divorce: Towards a New Conception of the Legal Process?

This article considers the working of the current procedure intended to ensure the welfare of children when their parents divorce but are not seeking any orders relating to them. It shows that the process is ineffective in safeguarding children's welfare and is not geared to ensuring that their wishes and feelings are taken into account. It argues that the focus of policy should shift away from assuming that the legal system can handle the problems of divorce, towards using the legal process as a point of contact through which families can be offered the full range of services they may need during relationship breakdown.     

Vicarious Annihilation: The Effect of Mortality Salience on Perceptions of Hate Crimes

Previous research has found that reminding participants of their mortality creates a need for individuals to maintain and defend subjective cultural worldviews. As a result, mortality salient participants typically strive to uphold legal sanctions and also react negatively to individuals who espouse alternative worldview beliefs, exhibiting behaviors toward those targets ranging from verbal derogation to physical aggression. This paper extends this line of research by examining perceptions of hate crimes. Hate crimes represent a unique class of crime where both the perpetrator and victim may be viewed as worldview violators. Study 1 revealed that mortality salient participants were more supportive of hate crime legislation than were control participants when hate crimes were described in abstract terms and no specific victim was mentioned. In Study 2, a specific victim who posed a potential worldview threat was identified. In this case, mortality salient participants were less punitive toward offenders who attacked these specific worldview-threatening victims.     

The perceived employability of ex-prisoners and offenders

A large-scale study was conducted to examine the perceived employability of ex-prisoners and offenders. Four participant groups comprising 596 (50.4%) employers, 234 (19.8%) employment service workers, 176 (14.9%) corrections workers, and 175 (14.8%) prisoners and offenders completed a questionnaire assessing the likelihood of a hypothetical job seeker's both obtaining and maintaining employment; the importance of specific skills and characteristics to employability; and the likelihood that ex-prisoners, offenders, and the general workforce exhibit these skills and characteristics. Apart from people with an intellectual or psychiatric disability, those with a criminal background were rated as being less likely than other disadvantaged groups to obtain and maintain employment. In addition, ex-prisoners were rated as being less likely than offenders and the general workforce to exhibit the skills and characteristics relevant to employability. Implications for the preparation and support of ex-prisoners and offenders into employment are discussed, together with broader community-wide initiatives to promote reintegration.     

Good News! You may be out of a job reflections on the past and future 50: Years for Northern NGOs

After 50 years of spectacularly successful work (particularly in raising the equity stakes, improving the quality of overseas development aid, fostering Southern NGO work at the international level and organising quick and effective humanitarian assistance), Northern development NGOs have come to a crossroads. The author argues that the history of the NGO 'occupational category', coupled with a changing political and economic environment (the end of the Cold War, rising international investment, declining overseas development aid, and vastly heightened Southern NGO capacity), means that most Northern NGOs should close up shop. Instead, a kaleidoscopic rebirth is envisaged, where four key functions remain for Northerners--as humanitarian agents, economic policy watchers, North-South brokers, and corporate responsibility advocates. This change of job is heralded as good news: evidence that the project of global social justice has moved dramatically forwards.     

Criminal network vulnerabilities and adaptations

The current paper aimed to investigate the effectiveness of five law enforcement interventions in disrupting and dismantling criminal networks. We tested three law enforcement interventions that targeted social capital in criminal networks (betweenness, degree and cut-set) and two interventions that targeted human capital (actors who possess money and those who possess precursor chemicals). These five interventions are compared with each other and with random (opportunistic) removal of actors in two settings: (i) with network adaptation incorporated into the simulations and (ii) without network adaptation. Results illustrate that the removal of actors based on betweenness centrality was the most efficient strategy, leading to network disruption in the least number of steps and was relatively consistent across replications. Targeting actors who possessed money was the second most effective overall and was also relatively consistent in its disruptive effect.