Circle sentencing in Canada: A partnership of the community and the criminal justice system

Throughout North America, there has been an increasing interest in the development of alternative forums for dispute resolution that may more effectively address the needs of victims, offenders, and the community. Concurrent with this has been an attempt to alter the adversarial framework of the criminal justice system. This has included the development and implementation of case processing strategies premised on restorative justice and attempting to secure the participation of communities as partners in the resolution of disputes. One particularly innovative initiative is circle sentencing, which has been implemented in several communities in the Yukon, Canada. The procedure by which cases are processed in circle sentencing is outlined and the involvement of the offender, the victim, the community, and the territorial court are discussed.     

Looking Back over My 45 Years of Involvement with Government Reform Efforts

This Viewpoint presents a typology of options for future government reformers to help guide the design and implementation of a reform initiative, based on the author's experiences and observations over the past 45 years. Successful reformers need to be clear up front about what they are attempting to achieve and frame their efforts in ways that maximize the success and sustainability of the effort. In this article, the author offers a series of questions and answers to help future reformers choose among various design and implementation options and to help them chart their paths.     

Present but not prevalent: identifying the organizational correlates of researcher-practitioner partnerships in U.S. Law Enforcement

ABSTRACT

Federal funding streams, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, and policing executives and scholars alike have advocated for more researcher-practitioner partnerships in American law enforcement. While a few studies have explored the growth and prevalence of research partnerships in policing, less attention has been placed on the organizational correlates of such collaborative relationships. Using a nationally representative sample of US law enforcement agencies, the current study investigated participation in what we term ‘rigorous partnerships’ – more formal, long-term relationships between researchers and practitioners with increased opportunity for interactive knowledge exchange. Policy implications and directions for future research are discussed, with a specific focus on the barriers and impediments that both parties face for successful collaborative efforts and research translation.     

Clean Air the Natural Way: A Case for Harmonizing Global Auto Emissions Standards

Across the world, governments are grappling with the effects of global warming. Rising temperatures, increases in the number of natural disasters, and elevated sea levels are just some of the risks posed by Earth's weakening ozone. And yet solutions exist. This article discusses the contribution of auto emissions to global warming and proposes ways for manufacturers to adopt a single emissions standard across their fleets all over the world. As discussed, adopting a single standard based on the most stringent one available poses advantages for manufacturers and also promises to reduce the threat of global warming.     

Tracing the Flow of Policy Ideas in Legislatures: A Text Reuse Approach

This article proposes a new approach to investigating the substance of lawmaking. Only a very small proportion of bills become law in the U.S. Congress. However, the bills that do become law often serve as vehicles for language originating in other bills. We investigate “text reuse” methods as a means for tracing the progress of policy ideas in legislation. We then show how a focus on policy ideas leads to new insights into the lawmaking process. Although our focus is on relating content found within bills, the same methods can be used to study policy substance across many research domains.     

Judicial education on ‘gender awareness’ in Australia

In Australia, as elsewhere, cultural blindness to difference based on gender can affect the impartiality of judging. It is an important aspect of the unstated assumptions on which judges act and which they need to examine. This is especially so where the assumptions are a reflection of dominant social attitudes and values. Judges are expected to apply community values, so long as they are consistent with equality before the law. Blatant examples of gender bias tend to diminish as diversity increases, both within the judiciary and within the legal profession. Stereotyping assumptions can be explored through judicial education, but Australian experience suggests that programmes will only receive a receptive audience if sensitive to concerns about judicial independence. To that end, discussion may best be located within the boundaries of the broader topic of unconscious partiality. Steps being taken in New South Wales to raise gender sensitivity are noted.