Does the 'Personal Employment Contract' Provide a Basis for the Reunification of Employment Law?

This article considers Mark Freedland's idea, at the core ofThe Personal Employment Contract, that a unified body of employmentlaw for ‘employees’ and ‘workers’ isboth feasible and desirable. It discusses the origins of thedivision between employees and the self-employed, and considerswhether the rediscovery of the worker concept in the 1990s hasprovided the hoped-for solution to problems concerning the coverageof employment legislation. More generally, it seeks to takeup Freedland's challenge to reconceptualise the employment relationshipas a ‘personal employment contract’ covering bothemployees and the dependent self-employed.     

Counterfeiting as corporate externality: intellectual property crime and global insecurity

Corporate negative externalities occur when corporations place some of the costs of their profit-seeking activity onto society. This paper suggests that the current global problem of intellectual property crime is such an externality, and that it has not been recognised as such because corporations present product counterfeiting and piracy as crimes which reduce their revenue, rather than as predictable side effects of corporate production and merchandising, including branding activity, which have considerable socially deleterious consequences. It is argued that corporate actors are responsible for the socially harmful effects of the global counterfeiting problem in the following respects. Branding, advertising, and other corporate activities drive the market for goods which have a fashion value over and above their use value. While corporations ‘create’ this desire, they cannot prevent it being applied to the desire for fake or replica goods. Outsourcing of corporate production activities to developing countries to take advantage of cheap manufacturing and labour costs presents considerable opportunities to producers in those countries to copy and distribute the goods in an unauthorised way. Serious measures are not taken against product counterfeiters by rights-holding corporations, since market expediency dictates that the costs of counterfeiting are not so adverse to corporations to incentivise them to change their business methods. Counterfeit and pirated goods cause a range of social harms above and beyond the spuriously-costed financial damage corporate rights-holders suggest they suffer - these include the health and safety issues created by some fake goods, and the creation and maintenance of highly profitable organised crime activity in international markets for fake goods.     

“We weren't the sort that wanted intimacy every night”: Birth control and abstinence in England,c.1930–60

This article presents an exploration of qualitative evidence on the relationship between birth control and abstinence from an oral history project, which interviewed middle and working-class English men and women, who had married between the late 1920s and the early 1950s. Among the working classes the assumption that men were responsible for birth control choices and the disadvantages that contraceptive methods of all types posed, combined with the fear of pregnancy, acted as a disincentive to have sex and resulted in forms of partial abstinence. Among the middle classes, women had much more access to birth control information and as a consequence a greater range of methods was used, including more female methods. However, the reluctance of couples to discuss sexual matters, and some continued preference for male methods meant that while condoms were the most regularly used middle-class male method, both withdrawal and abstinence were also in evidence. Moreover, although partners were more likely to discuss birth control at the start of their marriages, they were less likely to agree that contraception was a male responsibility and there was greater potential for conflict over contraceptive methods, not infrequently resulting in abstinence. The evidence suggests that sexual and contraceptive practices in marriages in England at the end of the secular fertility decline do not present a picture which straightforwardly correlates with the assumptions represented by the popular thesis that this period of increased fertility control was closely associated with the rise of companionate marriage.     

Female sex offenders who abuse children whilst working in organisational contexts: offending,conviction and sentencing

To date, there has been very little research into the phenomenon of female-perpetrated institutional child sexual abuse (CSA). This study explored 71 cases of CSA perpetrated by women working with children, considered by UK police and courts between 2000 and 2016. Qualitative and quantitative content analysis was employed to examine court reports, professional regulatory body decisions, media reports and an online sentencing database in order to identify perpetrator and victim characteristics, the nature of the offending behaviour, modus operandi and criminal justice system responses. Findings indicate most women offended alone and had no previous criminal or employment records of concern. Victims were typically male and 15–16 years old. Most women received custodial sentences, typically of 2–3 years in length. Implications for policy and practice are also discussed.     

A qualitative analysis of nonoffending partners’ experiences and perceptions following a psychoeducational group intervention

The present research is a qualitative study analysing therapeutic letters written by the nonoffending partners of men who have perpetrated child sexual abuse, after completion of a psychoeducational group intervention. It sought to identify themes relating to their experiences post-intervention. Findings indicated that the intervention contributed to women having increased insight into sexual offending, and feeling more confident and empowered. In addition, they displayed an awareness of risk issues, and an intention to play a role in helping to manage their partner’s future risk. Implications for research and clinical practice are discussed.     

A decade on from the NCH Report (1992): Adolescent sexual aggression policy,practice and service delivery across the UK and Republic of Ireland

Abstract

This paper considers the issues involved in the use of manuals to guide the treatment of sexual offenders. I identify problems in the use of manuals, particularly their failure to encourage satisfactorily the implementation of therapeutic skills, the restrictions they place upon the therapist's ability to address the responsivity principle, the limits to which manuals can accommodate changes as a result of new evidence and the suppression of innovation. I offer suggestions for an alternative set of strategies to ensure the integrity of treatment delivery while at the same time overcoming the problems associated with manualization.     

Notes toward a nomad subjectivity: The poetics of Gu Cheng (1956–1993)

In this paper, Deleuze and Guattari's notions of desiring‐production and nomad subjectivity are applied to the work of the contemporary People's Republic of China poet Gu Cheng, a writer who attempted to formulate an ‘aimless’ self engaged in endless becoming. In addition, the concept of ‘Mao style’ proposed by Li Tuo is discussed with regard to Mao Zedong's Talks at the Yan'an Conference on Art Literature in order to demonstrate the repressive nature of the dominant discourse in China after 1949, and to show that its essential purpose was to trap individual desiring‐production within the restricted scope sanctioned by the Chinese Communist Party. The features of Gu Cheng's evolving model of subjectivity are discussed and evaluated in terms of their resistance to the effects of Mao style. Finally, there is a brief discussion of the reasons for Gu Cheng's failure to arrive at a positive conception of nomad subjectivity.