SEX EDUCATION LEFT AT THE THRESHOLD OF THE SCHOOL DOOR: STRICTER REQUIREMENTS FOR PARENTAL OPT‐OUT PROVISIONS

Current state law creates the risk that, if sex education is not provided to a child in public school, no similar instruction will be given to the child. Legislatively enacted opt‐out provisions give parents broad control over their child's education by granting them the option to have their child excused from any sex education requirements within a public school's curriculum. Through public school sex education, professionals provide youth information aimed at protecting them from the dangers of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). A stricter statutory opt‐out provision should be enacted by state legislatures that only allows parents to excuse their child from sex education after a parent attends a 90‐minute STD prevention course and receives the instructional material used in the school's sex education curriculum. Parents should be provided up‐to‐date information and a structural framework designed by the school to encourage them to discuss with their child the many sexual issues addressed within a school's sex education curriculum.     

Enforcing Regulation: Robert Kagan's Contribution—And Some Questions

Robert Kagan has been at the forefront of sociolegal research into regulation for more than thirty years. His work addresses in general the extent to which law fosters or impedes economic activity, and the conditions under which people and organizations both comply with the law and sometimes fail to comply with it. This article analyzes his contributions and suggests some questions for further inquiry prompted by Kagan's work. The survey takes as its starting point Kagan's books Regulatory Encounters (ed. with Axelrad 2000) and Shades of Green (with Gunningham and Thornton 2003), before going on to consider his more recent research, which probes in some detail into the impact of enforcement and the ideas of compliance and deterrence.     

Assessing callous–unemotional traits in adolescent offenders: Validation of the Inventory of Callous–Unemotional Traits

The presence of callous–unemotional (CU) traits designates an important subgroup of antisocial youth. To improve upon existing measures, the Inventory of Callous–Unemotional Traits (ICU) was developed to provide an efficient, reliable, and valid assessment of CU traits in samples of youth. The current study tests the factor structure and correlates of the ICU scale in a sample (n = 248) of juvenile offenders (188 boys, 60 girls) between the ages of 12 and 20 (M = 15.47, SD = 1.37). Confirmatory factor analyses are consistent with the presence of three independent factors (i.e., Uncaring, Callousness, and Unemotional) that relate to a higher-order callous–unemotional dimension. Also, CU traits overall showed associations with aggression, delinquency, and both psychophysiological and self-report indices of emotional reactivity. There were some important differences across the three facets of the ICU in their associations with these key external criteria.     

'Portrait of a profession revisited'

On the walls of my private office hang the photographs of my seven distinguished predecessors as Secretary of the Cabinet. I sometimes find myself staring at them for inspiration, not always successfully I admit. A week or two ago I found myself looking at the great Lord Bridges, Secretary of the Cabinet and War Cabinet from 1938 to 1946. I wondered what he would have made of it if in the space of a week one of his predecessors had published an article in The Spectator advertised as ‘The Descent of the Civil Servant’ and another had appeared on the Frost programme to reassure the world that the Service was still in good shape. Both predecessors, Lords Butler and Armstrong, I hasten to say, were acting in the most supportive spirit and spoke from what for all of us is a deeply shared view of the role of the Civil Service. But, staring at Bridges, I could see a bubble emerging from his mouth enquiring: what precisely is happening on your watch, Sir Richard?     

Deconstructing Deliberation in the Appraisal of Medical Technologies: NICEly Does it?

Appraisals of medical technologies undertaken by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) have significant implications for the setting of priorities for health care expenditure in the NHS in England and Wales. NICE has been characterised as a deliberative body, an evaluation which reflects the recent attention paid by those working within the health policy community to the establishment of mechanisms which deliver procedural justice, in the absence of societal consensus upon the substantive values which should underpin distributive choices in health care. This article critically interrogates the assessment of NICE as deliberative in character. It also considers the relationship between legitimacy and deliberation in this policy context, in light of the claim that 'thickening proceduralisation' by establishing and enhancing deliberative structures and processes is a useful strategy for addressing regulatory problems.