Sentencing Councils and Victims

This article explores the place victims have, and should have, in bodies that formulate sentencing guidelines, with particular reference to sentencing guidelines in England and Wales and the Sentencing Council's obligation under the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 to have regard to ‘the impact of sentencing decisions on victims of offences’ when devising guidelines. The issues are situated in political and penological contexts; the place of victims in sentencing commissions or advisory bodies in the USA, England and Australia is analysed and the meaning and significance of the Sentencing Council's obligation towards victims is considered, relating the specific obligation to broader issues concerning the place of victims within bodies that formulate sentencing guidelines. While incorporating victims within sentencing commissions might undermine commissions’ aims, it can play an important role in helping to boost public confidence in criminal justice, a touchstone for all western governments’ criminal justice policies.     

Relative Placement: The Best Answer for Our Foster Care System

This article briefly traces the history of the placement of children out of their homes because of parental abuse or neglect. The preference for relative placement is a recent occurrence. The advantages of relative placement instead of foster or group care are summarized as well as the disadvantages. Relative placement rates across the country are about 32%. Several jurisdictions have much higher placement rates including Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. Los Angeles, California, is experimenting with social work practices that have produced over 80% relative placement rates during the past year. How both of these jurisdictions accomplish high relative placement rates is described in detail. Judges should persuade their own social service agencies to adopt these practices.     

Documents Received

Publications Received

Documents Received     

Choices That Increase Compliance

A compliance model is developed and tested using a survey of corporate officials and the regulatory arena of equal employment opportunity. Findings support the economic model of compliance in its conclusion that probability of detection and probable level of sanctions influence compliance decisions. Results also indicate that adjustments to the model that account for bounded rationality are valid. The key outcome, however, is that although all types of investigations play some role in enhancing compliance, those that stress sanctions and thus severity rather than certainty of detection may have the greatest positive influence on compliance. Enforcement programs attempting to operate simply as investigators of small-scale complaints will have less success than those with different types of investigations or a balanced type of single investigation. The results also suggest a more complex cognitive process on the part of regulated individuals than initially theorized.     

The Liberals as Managers of the Australian-American Alliance

Only occasionally has the worth of the Australian‐American alliance been questioned in Australian politics — and then it has usually been at the expense of the detractors. More important has been the question of how the alliance has been managed. How have Australian governments of the last fifty‐four years dealt with features such as the asymmetry of the relationship, in terms of power; the potential disruptions to avoid; the growing range of policy issues and ministerial portfolios to consider; the need for good relations at officials' level; and the need to keep the alliance out of party politics as much as possible? If the Menzies Government began well in the 1950s, then involvement in the Vietnam War was a low‐point in the mid‐late 1960s, and it took until the 1990s for the Liberals to recover from this. The Howard Government's efforts since the late 1990s, however, have gone a long way towards restoring the Liberals' reputation as effective managers of the alliance.