Crimes and the need for Sanction Capacity in the Netherlands: Trends and Backgrounds

This article presents recent trends in, and forecasts of, the need for sanction capacity in the Netherlands. Different types of crime show different trends at the moment. The need for prison capacity is still growing but at a smaller rate than before. The Jukebox-1 model, which is used for (a part of) the forecasts, is described. It relates the trends in the capacity needed for prisons and task-sanctions for adults to trends in crime and law enforcement activities. Trends in crime are in turn related to demographic and socio-economic factors and law enforcement performance indicators. Some policy simulations with the model are sketched.     

The other side of the Anne Frank story: The Dutch role in the persecution of the Jews in World War Two

Contrary to their historical reputation there were only a few Dutch citizens who rescued Jews during World War II by providing their homes as a shelter. Of all the West European countries occupied by the Germans, the number of Jewish casualties was the highest in The Netherlands. Before the occupation there were approximately 140,000 Jews living in The Netherlands, and of that total at least 109,000 were murdered. When the war was over many war criminals and Nazi collaborators were punished. This did not include, however, Dutch civil servants and many of the police and train conductors who were all part of the Holocaust machine. They were recruited from the large middle-ground of a population of mainly bystanders. In addition, Dutch criminology has been conspicuously silent about the Holocaust. Therefore, I shall discuss the following issues as contributory to the Holocaust: (1) the denunciation process; (2) the attitude of The Netherlands' bureaucracy in general; and, (3) the negative impact of the actions of officials in positions of the highest power such as the Queen (who fled to Britain), members of the Supreme Court and Chiefs of Police.     

When two become one: sexuality studies and critical studies of men and masculinities

Men think about sex … a lot. Is this a problem or is this a site for reformation? In this paper, we set out to think actively, deeply, about the question of sexuality, to penetrate the limits of men and masculinity studies, and to tease at a range of questions that it seems the field is not attending to for any number of reasons. When men’s studies scholars speak of sex, we often speak of rape culture, violent sex, ideas of entitlement to sex, sex workers and pornography. Many of these approaches would be framed and understood by many as ‘sex negative.’ This paper sets out to think about what a ‘sex positive’ vision of men’s studies might look like – and also to ask if a sex positive vision of the field is even possible, desirable or necessary. In this paper, we braid together sex positive feminist theory, queer theory and men’s studies to complicate the matter of sexuality, both as an actual site of the kinds of things we do, and as a site of psychic and affective possibility.     

Doing Harm While Doing Good: The Child Protection Paradox

Every Australian citizen expects state and territory governments to protect children from child abuse and neglect. Protecting children from harm is seen as good. This however is not a simple matter. The ultimate act in protecting children is to remove them from parental care. This causes trauma for the child and pain and distress for parents no matter how inadequately they may have been caring for their children. In that respect removing a child from parental care does harm to parents and children. This article explores the paradox of doing harm while doing good. The article has an Australian focus but the authors think that this issue affects child protection services in many countries.     

Growth of money economy and some questions of transition in late pre‐colonial India

One of the more remarkable but neglected features of the growth of commercial capitalism on an international scale from the sixteenth century consists of widespread processes of monetization affecting a number of Asian societies, and especially India. This was in turn connected with commercialization of both agrarian and urban economy, and the development of markets and manufactures. By the middle of the eighteenth century, this development had become distorted through increasing European intervention in both trade and manufacture; in this respect colonial occupation was both a culmination of earlier processes, and the means (through political monopoly, use of violence, control over the taxation system) for the East India Company to destroy competition and drive prices downwards in an increasingly competitive world. The corollary was that up until the mid‐nineteenth century at least India's integration into a colonial empire was marked by a broad‐based process of under development of which deindustrialization was merely part, and including a process of relative demonetization.¹ This article begins by presenting the problem in terms of the unprecedented international flow and sub‐continental use of monetary media which took place between the sixteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The author then considers the implications of these phenomena for an understanding of the development of commercial capitalism during this crucial period, firstly within India itself, and secondly within a broader international context. Finally, he ends with some statements concerning the implications of this hypothesis for an understanding of the early colonial period. The result is to place India firmly on the map of developments affecting the world more generally, long before colonialism.     

End of Consensus? The European Leadership Discourse of the Second Merkel Government during the Eurozone Crisis and Its Contestation in Debates of the Bundestag (2009−13)

This article investigates the political discourse on the resolution of the Eurozone of the second Merkel government and its political contestation in plenary debates of the Bundestag. The empirical part demonstrates the high relevance of normative arguments in the debate, both for the case made by the government parties for a Stability Union and related concepts of austerity and economic reform, and for the competing discourse by the opposition parties for investment and debt mutualisation in the Eurozone. Moreover, the analysis reveals that a strong value- and identity-based commitment to European integration continues to be supported by all political parties in the Bundestag. To conclude, the final section discusses party political and institutional factors to explain why the political contestation of the European leadership by the Merkel government in the Bundestag played only a very limited role at the federal election in September 2013.     

A General Empirical Law of Public Budgets: A Comparative Analysis

We examine regularities and differences in public budgeting in comparative perspective. Budgets quantify collective political decisions made in response to incoming information, the preferences of decision makers, and the institutions that structure how decisions are made. We first establish that the distribution of budget changes in many Western democracies follows a non-Gaussian distribution, the power function. This implies that budgets are highly incremental, yet occasionally are punctuated by large changes. This pattern holds regardless of the type of political system—parliamentary or presidential—and for level of government. By studying the power function's exponents we find systematic differences for budgetary increases versus decreases (the former are more punctuated) in most systems, and for levels of government (local governments are less punctuated). Finally, we show that differences among countries in the coefficients of the general budget law correspond to differences in formal institutional structures. While the general form of the law is probably dictated by the fundamental operations of human and organizational information processing, differences in the magnitudes of the law's basic parameters are country- and institution-specific .     

Federalism by Waiver: MEDICAID and the Transformation of Long-term Care

In recent years, many states in the U.S. have substantiallyreinvented their Medicaid programs through the unprecedenteduse of federal waivers. This article focuses on 1915c programwaivers, which gave states the opportunity to overcome Medicaid'sinstitutional bias by offering more home and community-basedservices. The use of this tool has fueled deinstitutionalizationand other program changes. It reflects the rise of executivefederalism—the growing tendency for major program decisionsto shift from the legislative arena to the executive branchof the national and state governments. By functioning as licenses,the 1915c waivers take devolution via the administrative processto new levels. The proliferation of these waivers suggests aneed to revise prior conceptions of federal–state relations,such as picket fence federalism.     

Reducing Adolescents’ Perceived Barriers to Treatment and Increasing Help-seeking Intentions: Effects of Classroom Presentations by General Practitioners

The Building Bridges to General Practice (BBGP) program is an outreach initiative. It aims to reduce young peoples’ perceived knowledge- and belief-based barriers to engaging in treatment and to increase their behavioral intentions to consult a general medical practitioner (GP) for physical and psychological problems. By increasing intentions, the BBGP program aims to increase actual consultations with a GP for both types of problem. A quasi-experimental nested design was used to evaluate the effect of the intervention in three Australian high schools. A Treatment group (n = 173, M = 16 years) and Comparison group (n = 118, M = 15 years) completed questionnaires of perceived barriers, intentions and self-reported consultations with a GP. Questionnaires were completed 1 week before the intervention, 5 then 10 weeks post-intervention. The Treatment group, but not the Comparison group, showed reductions in perceived barriers over time, increased intentions to consult a GP for psychological problems and a significant correlation between intentions and subsequent GP consultations. Results support the utility of the intervention for improving adolescents’ beliefs, intentions and behavior related to consulting a GP for physical and psychological problems.