Rule violations of Japanese inmates; An artifact of a low imprisonment rate

Rule violations offer insights to inmate reactions to penal confinement and to the official control system. Japanese prisons are of special significance because of the diversion of convicted offenders when feasible. American critics of community corrections have argued that heavy diversion would impose only the most intransigent criminals on prisons. By the sociocultural standards of Japan, diversion has had that consequence for its prisons. Official data provide the opportunity to examine a system of rule enforcement under those circumstances, including the relationship with inmate recidivism and the length of imprisonment.     

In the Fair Hearing Room: Resistance and Confrontation in the Welfare Bureaucracy

This article explores how welfare clients use and experience the fair hearing system, the administrative mechanism for challenging denials or reductions of aid in public welfare bureaucracies. Drawing on data from in-depth interviews with clients, it explores how old-style procedural protections like fair hearings are being used to challenge new-style welfare reforms. This research found that clients use fair hearings as a form of resistance and self-assertion, hoping that it will protect them from a bureaucracy perceived as arbitrary and capricious. Like many citizens, they are as concerned with being heard by their governmental institutions as they are with the outcome of their case and want to find within the machinery of government a forum where they can obtain recompense and respect. However, the legalistic and rule-bound nature of hearings makes it difficult for clients to present their claims, and meaningful participation is often denied them.     

Arsenic Poisoning Caused by Intentional Contamination of Coffee at a Church Gathering—An Epidemiological Approach to a Forensic Investigation

Abstract: An outbreak of apparent food‐borne illness following a church gathering was promptly reported to the Maine Bureau of Health. Gastrointestinal symptoms among church attendees were initially attributed to consumption of leftover sandwiches that had been served the previous day. However, a rapid epidemiological and laboratory assessment revealed the etiology of illness, including the death of an elderly gentleman, was not food‐borne in origin. A criminal investigation determined that deliberate arsenic contamination of the brewed coffee by one of the church members was the source of the outbreak. Public health officials and criminal investigators must be aware that intentional biologic aggression can initially present as typical unintentional disease outbreaks. Practitioners must also consider the need to properly maintain and preserve potential forensic evidence. This case demonstrates the key role public health practitioners may play in criminal investigations.     

Judging the Other: The Intersection of Race,Gender, and Class in Family Court

This critical ethnographic study of family court child maltreatment proceedings describes and illuminates the ways in which racial, gender, and class disadvantages can manifest on the ground as judges, attorneys, social service workers, and parents—joined often by gender but split by race and class—adjudicate cases. The findings suggest that intersectionality worked in ways that exponentially marginalized poor mothers of color in the courtroom. They were marginalized both through the rules of the adversarial process (which silenced their voices) and through the construction of narratives (which emphasized individual weakness) over structural obstacles as well as personal irresponsibility over expressions of maternal care and concern. Standard due process courtroom practices also communicated bias or social exclusion, especially in a courtroom split by race and class.     

Innovation in the Australian legal profession

Over the next decades, advances in technology and new business practices will challenge a traditionally conservative legal profession. With a focus on the Australian legal profession, this article explores the nature of the challenges and, in particular, considers whether the challenges pose a threat of disruptive innovation. The article aims to add to understanding of how Australian law firms are responding to the challenges by drawing on empirical data that examines the drivers and inhibitors of innovation in Australian law firms, the areas where Australian legal firms are innovating, and the outcomes of their innovation. The article concludes that there is limited evidence of incumbent displacement and that, gradually, the profession is rising to the challenges.