Exploring the criminal histories of stranger sexual killers

Although sexual homicide is receiving increasing research attention, few studies have examined the criminal histories of sexual killers in any detail. This study examined the criminal histories of 81 British stranger sexual killers to determine whether they were generalist, specialists or both and whether their criminal histories reflected violent, sexual, marginality and over control pathways. Results found most stranger sexual killers were generalist offenders and sexual homicide was part of a varied criminal repertoire and non-sexual crimes predominate. This ‘antisocial orientation’ means future offending may not be limited to sexual violence. Criminal histories reflected the violent, sexual, marginality and over control pathways, but offenders in the violent pathway were more criminally orientated. The clinical and investigative implications of these findings were considered as they suggest knowledge of the criminal histories of stranger sexual killers is an important consideration for criminal justice professionals.     

The centrality of labor time in South African gold mining since 1886

Labor time, as a dimension of South African mining labor history, has been ignored, both conceptually and historically. This article remedies this yawning gap by presenting primary and secondary evidence which demonstrates the centrality of labor time in South African gold mines since the discovery of gold in 1886. To this end, labor time is traced in two ways. Part I tracks industrial working time by tracing the length of the working day and week. Part II tracks the ever-increasing length of the African migrant labor contract. While industrial working hours remain remarkably stable for almost a century, the migrant labor contract systematically increases over a similar period. These two measures of labor time eventually coincide when the migrant labor system dissolves and black African workers take annual leave together with their compatriots across the racial divide. The explanation for the mining industry’s long struggle to both maintain relatively long working hours and increasingly maximize the length of the migrant labor contract is construed as completing the received wisdom of Harold Wolpe's much celebrated and criticized `cheap- labor' thesis. (Wolpe, “Capitalism and Cheap Labor Power.”)     

Workers’ Compensation and Moral Hazard in Tunisia

Moral hazard is a problem of asymmetric information that plays a central role in numerous contractual relationships and may lead to suboptimal resource allocation. Both ex ante and ex post moral hazard problems in workers’ compensation (WC) have been extensively analysed in developed countries. The main objective of this paper is to test the presence of ex post moral hazard in the Tunisian context. To our knowledge, this is the first analysis on this topic in a developing country, Tunisia. It is particularly important to study moral hazard problems in developing countries, since the negative impacts of such problems could be exacerbated in the developing world. Dionne and St-Michel (1991) have developed a methodology for testing for the presence of ex post moral hazard in the context of a more generous WC regime in Quebec. The Tunisian institutional context that we study is similar to that prevailing in Quebec; that is, in 1995, there was a significant increase in the generosity of the WC regime. Applying a more general econometric technique than that used by Dionne and St-Michel, we find that this increase in the generosity of WC led to longer periods out of work for recovery. This increase is more pronounced in the case of difficult-to-diagnose injuries.     

The Political Economy of Competitiveness and Continuous Adjustment in EU Meta-Governance

This article asserts that attempts to resolve the crisis through recent changes in European meta-governance are just the latest phase in a project to secure “continual adjustment” in European societies to the systemic demands of competitiveness. The structural pressures experienced at the scale of European societies are located in the process and scale of world market integration. This New Materialist scalar-relational approach sees adjustment to the systemic demands of competitiveness as likely to continue into the future and suggests that the scope for alternative more Keynesian programs of reform through EU meta-governance is highly constrained.