Lawfulness of a randomised trial of the new community treatment order regime for England and Wales

This article debates and defends the lawfulness of a randomised controlled trial of compulsory outpatient treatment under the mental health legislation for England and Wales. The trial is designed to compare the outcomes for patients of their treatment under the new Community Treatment Order (CTO) regime with their treatment under the older leave scheme - the two main forms of compulsory care in the community now authorised by the revised Mental Health Act 1983. The methods for the trial involve the random allocation of some patients between the two schemes, when they are considered by their Responsible Clinicians to be eligible for some form of compulsory outpatient care. The main question we consider is the lawfulness of that aspect of the methods. Can a carefully selected group of patients be allocated at random between the two regimes to permit an evaluation to proceed? Or would that involve some departure from the decision-making criteria specified by law? We argue that a group of patients can be identified who meet - simultaneously - the tests for treatment under both the CTO and the leave schemes. Those patients could then be allocated lawfully to treatment under either scheme. This opens the door, we argue, to their random allocation between the two schemes for the purposes of the research. In reaching this conclusion, we explain the methods and aims of the trial and closely compare the respective features of the leave and CTO regimes.     

第三期中国妇女社会地位调查主要数据报告

以2010年12月1日为标准时点,全国妇联和国家统计局联合组织实施第三期中国妇女社会地位调查。本报告在全国数据初步分析的基础上,从10个方面描述了当前中国妇女社会地位的总体状况和5个典型群体的主要情况,提炼归纳了八大进步和6个值得关注的问题与挑战,并提出了相应的对策建议。     

‘Changing teams’: a participant perspective on citizenship ceremonies

Several European countries of immigration have recently introduced citizenship ceremonies on either a mandatory or voluntary basis. Yet, little is known about how the target group for such ceremonies experiences them, and to what extent citizenship ceremonies achieve their goals of contributing to a greater sense of belonging. In this article, we analyse interviews with more than 50 newly naturalised Norwegian citizens about their reasons to attend or to not attend the voluntary ceremony in Norway. We find little resistance to the idea of citizenship ceremonies. For some participants, the ceremony seems to have great emotional value; the majority, however, chooses not to participate.     

The Reliability of Visually Comparing Small Frontal Sinuses*

Abstract: Several studies have investigated frontal sinus comparison for personal identification. One study addressed the statistical reliability of correct identification using automated digital methods and resulted in a 96% accuracy rate. Missed matches with the digital methods generally involved small, less featured sinuses. This study investigates the hypothesis that human examiners may be able to more accurately identify correct matches than digital methods, even when the comparisons involve small frontal sinuses. Participants were provided two sets of 28 radiographs and were instructed to identify matching radiographs and list the radiographs that did not have a corresponding match. Overall, error rates were low, with correct associations identified at a rate of 0.983. No incorrect associations (“false positives”) were made. Correct association rates were highest among participants “experienced” examining radiographs. Results support previous assertions that frontal sinus radiographs are a reliable means of personal identification even when the frontal sinuses are small.     

International Prosecution and National Bureaucracy: The Contest to Define International Practices Within the Danish Prosecution Service

This article explores how international ideals and practices of law enforcement come into conflict with national bureaucracies. Drawing on original interviews, the investigation demonstrates how the competition to define the role of international prosecution impacted career strategies as well as the actual administration of criminal law within the Danish Prosecution Service (DPS). The analysis shows that this competition is embodied in two competing groups of prosecutors situated in a wider national bureaucracy—itself subject to transformations that affect the very stakes of the contest to define the international. While the institutionalists build careers closely attuned to the systemic and increasingly lean‐management‐inspired requirements of the DPS, the dissident and consequently unsettled position of the activists leads them to craft alternative career strategies closely related to the emergence of new international fields of criminal law.     

Conceptualizing the Tools of Government in Urban Network Governance

The alleged increase in new governance arrangements is often understood as a challenge, since public leaders are considered to be less able to influence and govern when government is only one out of several stakeholders. Some scholars argue that steering in such settings is fundamentally different from steering in a hierarchical context. This article aims to assess how a classic and generic analytical framework to tools of government, the NATO-scheme developed by Christopher Hood, fits in a setting where local governments attempt to influence networks. Based on in-depth studies of nine urban networks in Norway, we have assessed the toolbox and the use of different tools. The article demonstrates that the suggested generic framework makes sense in a network context. Thus, to bridge the classic literature on policy instruments and the growing discourse on meta-governance would probably be beneficial.     

Welfare Administration Reform Between Coordination and Specialization

This article identifies transboundary coordination practices and related modes of specialization in welfare administration reforms. We describe how the 2005 reform of the welfare administration in Norway started as a process of integration involving merger and partnership, but later, following the 2008 reorganization, introduced re-centralization and re-specialization. The main research questions are how we can explain this change of administrative reform? Why was the integrative administrative reform not sustainable and reorganization through re-specialization seen as a better answer to the “wicked issues” of welfare services? To answer these questions we apply a structural-instrumental perspective and a cultural-institutional perspective.     

Institutional Change and Professional Norms: A Study of Grading Behavior in Higher Education

This study investigates how an institutional exogenous change interacts with professional norms in relation to behavior in public organizations. We test how a new grading scale introduced in 2007 changed grade point averages and pass rates at two university departments. Data consist of register data on grading between 2004 and 2010. We find that the new grading scale both increased grade point averages and pass rates and halted the negative time trend in these variables. These effects are even greater for exams with an external examiner. The main conclusion is that grading systems affect grading both immediately and over time.     

Generalizability of a two-factor measure of young children's suggestibility in Norway and the USA

Abstract

We discuss the development of the Book Suggestibility Scale for Children (BSSC), a two-factor suggestibility measure developed as an alternative to the Video Suggestibility Scale for Children (VSSC; Scullin & Ceci, Personality and Individual Differences, 30, 843–856, 2001). In study 1, both the BSSC and the VSSC were administered to 60 American preschool children. Children responded affirmatively to inaccurate leading questions (Yield) and changed their answers in response to negative feedback from interviewers (Shift) in a similar manner on both scales. In study 2 we found that the BSSC was useful for studies of suggestibility in contexts other than America because 62 Norwegian preschool children responded to questions in a similar manner to an age-range and vocabulary matched group of 31 American children. Results support a two-factor model of suggestibility, although Yield appears to measure suggestibility across scales and situations more consistently than does Shift. American age-matched samples had significantly higher Shift and Yield 2 scores than the Norwegian sample.     

Moral judgement,cognitive distortions and empathy in incarcerated delinquent and community control adolescents

Abstract

Immature moral judgements, cognitive distortions and low empathy could contribute to criminal offending and are often targeted in interventions aimed at reducing risk of recidivism. We compared 58 delinquent 13–18-year-olds, incarcerated in youth homes in Sweden (29 males, 29 females) with 58 (29 males, 29 females) community control adolescents individually matched on age, gender, ethnicity and socio-economic position. Self-report questionnaires examined moral judgement, cognitive distortions, and empathy. Delinquent adolescents exhibited less mature moral judgements and more cognitive distortions than control adolescents. However, no association between delinquency status and self-reported empathy was found. In addition, girls reported more mature moral judgements, less cognitive distortions and more empathy than boys did. Moral judgement and empathy were positively correlated and both measures were negatively correlated with cognitive distortions. Our data support the idea that moral judgement and cognitive distortions are important treatment targets for juvenile delinquents, whereas empathy may be less meaningful to address directly.