The Council for the Administration of Criminal Justice and Protection of Juveniles

The Council for the Administration of Criminal Justice and Protection of Juveniles (Raad voor Strafrechtstoepassing en Jeugdbescherming) is an independent advisory, supervisory and judiciary board to the Netherlands Minister of Justice on matters relating to the prison system, the hospital order detention system, the probation system and the youth incarceration system. Members are recruited from a variety of backgrounds, such as magistracy, science, medicine, psychiatry and social work. As a rule, they have a full-time job in society. They are recruited by virtue of their expertise, competence and professional experience in relevant fields. Nowadays, there are about 60 members. The combination of the Council’s three tasks has been criticised. The argument is that the advisory and supervisory tasks of the Council could interfere with the independent and impartial nature of its judicial task. The supposed incompatibility of the three tasks has been one of the arguments of the Minister of Justice in defending his decision to set up an Inspectorate for the whole field of the administration of justice. This Inspectorate would overlap the Council’s supervisory task. So, legislation has been prepared in order to prevent overlap by taking away this task from the Council. The resistance to these plans was an important reason for the Dutch government to ask the Verwey-Jonker Institute to evaluate the performance of the Council. The Council performed very well in this evaluation. Its performance could not, therefore, really be used as an argument for curtailing its tasks. The independent nature of an Inspection Board is open to question, as it is functioning under the responsibility of the Minister of Justice. However, the Minister of Justice has not been convinced by this and other arguments, so there is a big chance that the Council will loose its supervisory task.

Identity Orientation, Voice, and Judgments of Procedural Justice During Late Adolescence

This study focused on the relationship between voice and judgments of procedural justice in a sample of older adolescents and examined potential moderating and mediating influences of identity orientation (personal, social, and collective) and negative emotional response. Participants read 1 of 2 different family conflict scenarios (voice and no voice) asking them to imagine themselves in a disagreement with their parents over grades and financial support. In the voice condition, parents were described as making their decision after listening to the participant’s input. In the no voice condition, parents were described as making their decision without listening to the participant’s input. The adolescents then judged the fairness of the parental decisions and responded to questions concerning their identity orientation. Findings indicate that in addition to replicating the effect of voice in a novel context, the present investigation found moderating effects of personal identity orientation on procedural fairness judgments. Additionally, negative emotional response partially mediated the relationship between voice and global judgments of procedural fairness.Mark R. Fondacaro is an Associate Professor of Psychology and Associate Director of the Levin College of Law Center on Children and Families at the University of Florida. He received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Indiana University and his J.D. from Columbia University School of Law. His major research interests are ecological jurisprudence and the conceptualization and assessment of procedural justice in legal and extra-legal contexts including the family and the juvenile justice and health care systems.Eve M. Brank is an Assistant Professor of Criminology, Law & Society at the University of Florida. She received her Ph.D. in social psychology and her J.D. from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Her major research interests are parental responsibility laws and juvenile law issues.Jennifer Stuart is a graduate student in counseling psychology at the University of Florida. Her major research interests are adolescent development and delinquency prevention.Sara Villanueva-Abraham received her Ph.D. in developmental psychology from the University of Florida. Her major research interests are adolescent development and parent-child relationships.Jennifer Luescher is a Forensic Psychology Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She received her Ph.D. in counseling psychology from the University of Florida. Her major research interests are in the areas of procedural justice, risk assessment and risk management, and mental health and juvenile justice policy.Penny S. McNatt is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of North Florida. She received her Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Florida. Her major research interests are in the area of intergroup relations.     

The gender gap in pro-environmental political participation among older adults

Citizens are increasingly concerned with environmental issues and some of them take contentious political actions or adapt their lifestyles to reduce their environmental footprint. Research finds that there is an eco-gender gap in everyday environmental behaviours, with women more active than men. However, studies of the eco-gender gap have infrequently looked at other forms of pro-environmental political behaviours and focused mostly on young people. We contribute to the literature by examining to what extent older women and men differ in a range of pro-environmental political behaviours, using a unique dataset based on a survey of individuals 64 years and older. We find strong evidence of a gender gap in everyday behaviours and political consumerism, but not in relation to contentious forms of political participation. This gender gap in relation to everyday behaviours and political consumerism diminishes with age.     

Who Will Pay for Better Care?

In launching its review of adult social care in May 2008, the Government acknowledged that this is one of the biggest challenges for the 21^st century. With our ageing population and the increasing expectations of baby boomers, the current system simply isn't fit for the future. But what kind of care system do we want for this and future generations and critically how are we going to pay for it? There are no easy answers but what is certain is that we will all have to pay more for better care. In this article Stephen Burke examines the care crunch     

Application of three dental methods of adult age estimation from intact single rooted teeth to a Peruvian sample

Methods of estimating adult age at death from such dental features as root translucency, root length, and the extent of periodontosis in intact single rooted teeth have proven useful in studies of modern individuals, especially in estimating age in older adults. Questions remain however, concerning the impact of regional and population variation on accuracy. To examine this issue, three approaches to age estimation were applied to a diverse sample of 100 individuals from Peru. Mean errors of estimation for all three approaches were similar to those originally reported, suggesting minimal impact of population variation of the features measured. A new regression equation, specifically for Peruvian samples, is provided.     

Are older deafblind people being left behind? A narrative review of literature on deafblindness through the lens of the United Nations Principles for Older People

Underpinned by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRDP), Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is the international goal to ‘leave no one behind’. However, the World Federation of the Deafblind have argued that deafblind people have been excluded from international welfare and disability development programmes. Despite making up the majority of the deafblind population, it appears that older deafblind people are particularly invisible. The paper builds on the earlier work of others, which translated the UN Principles for Older Persons into the language of older visually impaired adults, by using them here as the lens for a narrative review of the literature on older deafblind people. It argues that existing research demonstrates that older deafblind people are not only being ‘left behind’ in benefitting from implementation of the UN Principles, but also that the focus of the UN Principles themselves risks maintaining or enhancing their exclusion. Further research and policy development with older deafblind people is required to ensure that international and national social welfare policies and provision are not nugatory to the older deafblind population.     

Demanding Their Rights? Collective Identity and the Tactics of Older Persons’ Organisations at the UN

ABSTRACT

Recent scholarship in International Relations focuses on the tactics of international non-government organisations and transnational advocacy networks, with scholars mostly explaining the diverse and dynamic tactics of organisations working on similar issues. Based on multiple qualitative data sources, this article explores why the members of a transnational advocacy network, comprising organisations of, and representing, older persons, that are calling for a UN Convention on the Rights of Older Persons adopt tactics that are static, uniform and surprisingly softly-softly, despite their modest gains since the issue was put on the UN’s agenda nine years ago. The article demonstrates many of the existing explanations for tactical choices, but it extends what we know by importing the concept of collective identity from social movement studies. It argues that the older persons’ network has a weak collective identity that is conservative in nature, which influences the tactics deployed at the UN.     

Healthcare,Policy Implementation,and Culture: What Cultural Values Influence Unpaid Primary Caregivers to Provide Care to Older Adults?

This research examines home healthcare programs implemented in Puerto Rico and Indiana. Puerto Rico is primarily a Hispanic territory of the United States, while Indiana is a culturally Anglo Midwestern state. This study explores the cultural values that influence unpaid care of older adults in these two settings. I hypothesize that dissimilar cultural values will influence care of unpaid primary caregivers (UPCs) in both jurisdictions. Results supported the hypothesis: UPCs emphasized different cultural values in caregiving. The study recommends that the federal government support families with essential services to enable them render badly-needed care to their elderly family members.     

Spending the Golden Years Behind Bars: Predictors of Mental Health Issues Among Geriatric Prisoners

Mental illness in older inmates remains an underexplored topic of interest for prison research. The present study addresses gaps in extant literature, using a nationally representative sample of 1,907 male and female geriatric inmates in the United States (age range 50–84 years; M = 56) to analyze the association between mental health and predictors, such as gender, victimization, physical illnesses, and protective/ameliorative factors. The authors discuss their findings in relation to a theoretical framework that integrates the importation and deprivation models, as well as provide discourse on policy implications and future directions for research on older prison inmates.