Microfinance and women's empowerment: A lesson from India

This article describes an NGO project intended to empower scheduled caste women working in the silk-reeling industry in India through the provision of microfinance. It documents the impact that the project had on their economic and social status over a period of time and highlights the negative consequences of excluding male relatives from playing any meaningful role. It suggests ways in which the project might have been made more male inclusive while still empowering women. At the same time, it acknowledges that even if the men's hostility to the project had been overcome, the women's micro enterprises were unlikely to have been viable commercially. This is because the project insisted that the women operate as a group in what was a high-risk area of economic activity, with no clear strategy as to how their work could be sustained.     

“I Fought. I Screamed. I Bit”: The Assertion of Rights Within Historic Abuse Inquiry Transcripts

ABSTRACT

This article examines how treating historic abuse inquiry testimonies as retrospective assertions of rights can help to shed light on how this abuse was able to occur and how memories are recalled in an inquiry environment. It presents its approach as a possible framework for other historians seeking to analyse testimonies with sensitivity. It uses, as an example, a case study from the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse concerning two interrelated “homes” for girls, showing the ways in which abuse survivors can use their testimonies to assert rights denied them in the past and further the goals of public inquiries.     

The presence of feminism in the future of welfare

This article argues that the contribution of second wave feminism to new welfare practice and provision is greater than recent discussions of welfare reforms have acknowledged. Along with other new social movements and grass-roots welfare campaigns, feminist activism and its critiques provide an important moral and political case for a new welfare society. This paper proposes four principles which underpin such a case – autonomy, mutualism, inclusive diversity and voice. Aspects of these are discussed, developing, in particular, an argument for a political ethic of care.     

‘Substantial and Radical Change’: A New Dawn for Scottish Criminal Procedure?

This paper discusses the recommendations of the Carloway Review, which was established to review law and practice in criminal cases following the introduction in Scotland of a right to legal assistance during detention. A number of recommendations are made in the Review, including the introduction of stricter time limits governing the detention of suspects, the removal of the corroboration requirement, the rejection of adverse inference provisions, and a change in the manner in which the appeal court deals with cases referred to it by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission. It is argued that while some of these recommendations are to be applauded, others are poorly reasoned and some may lead to a dangerous reduction in protection against wrongful conviction.     

Book reviews

Improving the quality of public participation in council decision making continues to be a key goal of local government 'modernisation'. Different rationales for this have been advanced, including consumerist aims of service improvement, participation as an important value in itself, and participation as a survival strategy for local government. Based on surveys of, and interviews with, councillors and senior officers in Scottish local government, this article explores the ways in which concepts of 'consumerism' and 'citizenship' inform councils' approaches to public participation.     

When Should a Retrial be Permitted After a Conviction is Quashed on Appeal?

The power to permit a retrial after a conviction has been quashed on appeal is an established part of criminal procedure, with over a third of successful appeals against conviction in England and Wales now resulting in a retrial being ordered. Despite this, relatively little attention has been paid to the circumstances in which it is appropriate for such permission to be granted. This article reviews the practice of the courts, offering a rational reconstruction of the reported cases. It argues that appeal courts have improperly entered into consideration of matters which should properly be reserved to prosecutorial discretion. While retrial after a quashed conviction should only be possible with the permission of the appeal court, such permission should – where sought – always be granted unless insufficient competent evidence was led at the first trial or a second prosecution would be an abuse of process.     

Promoting strengths, prevention, empowerment, and community change through organizational development: lessons for research, theory, and practice

SPEC Learning and Changing by Doing is a three-year, action research, and organizational change project designed to ultimately promote social justice and well-being in the community. SPEC is an acronym that stands for Strengths, Prevention, Empowerment, and Community Change. The project consists of five organizations tackling internal organizational change in order to better promote justice and well-being in their respective constituencies. In this article we present a formative evaluation of this multicase study of organizational change in human services. This article contributes to the empirical and theoretical literature on organizational change in the nonprofit human service milieu.