Gendering Justice in Humanitarian Spaces: Opportunity and (Dis)empowerment Through Gender‐Based Legal Development Outreach in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo

Why have women in eastern DR Congo increasingly turned to domestic courts in the aftermath of sexual violence, despite the fact that the state has consistently failed to provide basic goods and services to its citizens? Moreover, how do victims of violence interpret their first encounters with state law in an environment characterized by institutional fragility and humanitarian governance? This article analyzes the experiences and reflections of 50 self‐reported victims of sexual violence in eastern DR Congo. We find that human rights NGOs have served as critical mediators in persuading victims of violence to pursue legal remedy for sexual crimes. However, rather than being socialized to prioritize formal accountability mechanisms in precisely the ways that the architects of legal outreach programs intended, we find that victims of violence have turned to the law for a combination of material and ideational factors. Some appear to have internalized emerging norms of punitive criminal justice, while others have adopted the language of law instrumentally, in order to access crucial socio‐material benefits. We identify a paradox of opportunity and disempowerment, therefore, that characterizes our interviewees' experiences with the law.     

Parental Effects on the Exchange of Sex for Drugs or Money in Adolescents

Research has examined risk factors related to involvement in prostitution and sex trafficking using samples of adult prostitutes, runaway and homeless youth, and youth involved in the juvenile system. There is scant research that includes adolescents who cannot be categorized into these groups. Additionally, research is limited related to how parents affect the decision for adolescents to engage in sex for drugs or money. We examine risk factors concerning the exchange of sex for drugs or money from a nationally representative sample of adolescents. The data are structured where responses can be compared to a group of adolescents who indicated never exchanging sex for drugs or money. We used a negative binomial regression analysis to examine how the effects of parental and individual factors influence the exchange of sex for drugs or money among adolescents. Analyses revealed that individual factors were significant while parental factors were not significant; however, parental effects were significant when dimensions of parental involvement were examined.     

A Fresh Look at Stock Market Short‐termism

In this article, we develop a novel understanding of stock market short‐termism as a social phenomenon. Contrary to formerly popular academic belief, short‐termism is a problem that is highly unlikely to be structurally self‐correcting. An important driver of short‐termism typically elided within standard legal‐academic analyses is the informational centricity of modern stock markets, and resulting pressure on corporate managers to generate fresh ‘news’ indicative of perceived business ‘progress’. We highlight the growing enthusiasm of policy‐makers for a discriminatory ‘two‐tiered’ approach to public company investor relations. Accordingly, long‐term and committed investors are expected to be brought into the company's governance ‘inner circle’, while other investors are implicitly relegated to lowertier ‘outsider’ status. We argue that this supports a discriminatory approach to the allocation of voting entitlements in newly listing companies, enabling committed investors to develop cooperative and sustained governance relations with management unencumbered by ‘outside’ stock market pressures for short‐term financial‐performance outcomes.     

The Likelihood of Arrest: A Routine Activity Theory Approach

Routine activities theory (RAT) is traditionally drawn upon to highlight the role of offender motivation, target suitability, and effective guardianship in explaining victimization patterns. While an extensive literature base supports RAT, prior studies have neglected to examine the impact of offender motivation, target suitability, and guardianship on diverse outcomes of violent crimes. The current study extends prior research grounded in RAT by exploring the role of indicators of the central elements highlighted by the theory in understanding the likelihood that an offender will be arrested. As such, this study adds to the growing body of literature on RAT by exploring its relevance to a more diverse set of outcomes. To do this, we draw on the wealth of data on offender, victim, and incident characteristics available in the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS). Results from the analysis offer a moderate to strong level of support for extending RAT to understanding variation in the likelihood that an offender will be arrested. The insights gained from a RAT framework were further discussed in relation to our findings.     

Time poverty,gender and well-being: lessons from the Kyrgyz Swiss Swedish Health Programme

Time poverty methodologies are a response to the failure of income-based measures of poverty to reflect gendered aspects of well-being. However, national time use surveys normally fail to examine issues around women and men's qualitative evaluation of their time uses, or the extent of their control over their own time. The result could be distorted policy responses which lose sight of the original intentions of time poverty as a tool to reveal gendered elements of well-being. This paper draws on the findings of a qualitative survey to asses a rural health promotion programme in Kyrgyzstan to demonstrate this point.

La pauvreté en temps, le sexe et le bien-être: les enseignements du programme kirghiz suisse suédois

Les méthodologies liées à la pauvreté en temps constituent une réponse à l’échec des mesures de la pauvreté basées sur le revenu pour traduire les aspects du bien-être liés au genre. Cependant, les études nationales sur l'utilisation du temps n'examinent pas en général les questions concernant l’évaluation qualitative par les femmes et les hommes des manières dont ils utilisent leur temps, ni la mesure du contrôle qu'ils exercent sur leur propre temps. Le résultat pourrait être des ripostes politiques déformées qui perdent de vue les intentions initiales de la pauvreté en temps comme outil visant à mettre à jour les aspects du bien-être liés au genre. Afin de démontrer cette observation, cet article s'inspire des conclusions d'une enquête qualitative menée pour évaluer un programme de promotion de la santé rurale au Kirghizistan.

Tiempo-pobreza, el género y el bienestar: lecciones del programa de Kirguistán Suiza Sueco

Las metodologías tiempo-pobreza constituyen una alternativa ante lo insuficientes que resultan las medidas de pobreza basadas en el ingreso cuando se considera el aspecto de género en el bienestar. En general, las encuestas nacionales de uso de tiempo no abordan las evaluaciones cualitativas realizadas por mujeres y hombres en relación a su uso del tiempo, así como tampoco valoran el alcance del control que tienen sobre su tiempo. Por ello, los resultados obtenidos en estos casos podrían dar pie a la elaboración de políticas equivocadas, que ignoren la intención original de las medidas tiempo-pobreza, en cuanto medidas que evidencian el factor de género en el bienestar. Este artículo se basa en las conclusiones de un estudio cualitativo, realizado con el objetivo de evaluar un programa de promoción de la salud rural en Kirguistán, el cual fue llevado a cabo para demostrar la validez de lo anterior.

Pobreza de tempo, gênero e bem-estar: lições do programa do Quirguistão Suíça Sueca

As metodologias de pobreza do tempo são uma resposta ao fracasso de medidas da pobreza baseadas na renda em refletir aspectos do bem-estar relativos a gênero. Porém, as avaliações nacionais do uso do tempo normalmente deixam de examinar questões relacionadas à avaliação qualitativa do uso do tempo por parte de mulheres e homens ou a extensão de seu controle sobre seu próprio tempo. O resultado poderia ser o de respostas de política distorcidas que perdem de vista as intenções originais da pobreza do tempo como ferramenta para revelar elementos de bem-estar relativos a gênero. Este artigo baseia-se nos resultados de uma pesquisa qualitativa para avaliar um programa de promoção da saúde rural em Kyrgyzstan a fim de demonstrar esse ponto.     

Personnel Constraints in Public Organizations: The Impact of Reward and Punishment on Organizational Performance

In recent years, many public sector reforms have attempted to loosen personnel constraints on the assumption that more managerial flexibility will increase organizational performance. The authors mount an empirical study to test this assumption using data taken from English local government authorities. Personnel constraints are operationalized using Rainey's long‐standing measures of the concept. Statistical results from multiple regression analyses indicate that “difficulty in removing poor managers” is harmful to organizational performance, but “difficulty in rewarding good managers” has no effect. The authors delve inside the organizational hierarchy and find that attitudes toward personnel constraints vary by organizational level and managerial rank: for example, frontline managers feel more constrained overall, while senior managers’ perceptions of constraints are more closely linked to organizational performance but in some unexpected ways. The implications of these findings, including the fact that personnel constraints have varying impacts on organizational performance, are considered.     

Federal homeless information needs and local practice

Abstract

What would be required to produce a national homeless needs assessment? Information on the size and characteristics of the homeless population, evaluations of the effectiveness of interventions, and evaluations of the program and financial resources available nationwide would play pivotal roles in developing a comprehensive assessment. Estimates of the size of the homeless population are far less useful than evaluations of treatment and program delivery. There is no reason to focus attention on counts of the homeless nationwide.

Much more needs to be done to evaluate the capacity of the nation's program delivery system and to estimate the level and type of financial resources that flow into this sector. These same considerations apply to possible changes in what information the federal government will require of localities if the McKinney Act is shifted to a block grant. Evaluative assessments, including assessments of the barriers to serving the homeless, would prove to be of greater value at the local and federal levels than an emphasis on counts. Nevertheless, there is an argument for requiring a periodic local reporting of numbers and characteristics among the sheltered population under a new block grant.     

Measuring the impact of community development block grant spending on urban neighborhoods

Abstract

Regression analysis of Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) spending in 17 large cities reveals strong statistical associations between spending from 1994 to 1996 and changes in three indicators of neighborhood conditions: the home purchase mortgage approval rate, the median amount of the home purchase loans originated, and the number of businesses. However, there is no consistent association between spending and indicators of subsequent neighborhood change unless CDBG spending is sufficiently spatially targeted that it exceeds a threshold of the sample mean expenditure and is measured relative to the number of poor residents. In addition, associations vary according to neighborhood trajectories before investment and changes in the local economy.

Nevertheless, even in the least hospitable contexts—highly concentrated neighborhood poverty, preexisting declines in home values, weak city job growth—our estimates are consistent with the hypothesis that above‐threshold CDBG spending produces significant neighborhood improvements. We discuss the implications for such spatially targeted spending and connections between our work and the emerging literature on the dynamics of poor neighborhoods.