地方政府有效引导网络舆论思考

网络舆论的日益发展和兴起给地方政府带来了新的挑战和考验,网络舆论引导成为地方政府面临的新课题。尽管地方政府非常重视网络舆论引导,但在重视程度和引导效果方面依然存在差距,普遍存在网络舆论引导效果不彰的问题。因此,不断增强地方政府网络舆论引导性的有效性是各级地方政府亟待解决的问题。     

论修改《环境保护法》的几个问题

贯彻"十八大"关于"大力推进生态文明建设"的精神,将1989年《环境保护法》修改成对我国今后环境资源生态保护工作具有基础指导作用、长期引导作用、全面激励作用的综合性法律、政策性法律。修改后的法律应该是将生态文明建设摆在国家"五位一体建设总布局"突出位置、具有生态法特征的综合性法律;应该申明、宣示和规定环境法的基本理念、基本原则;明确规定公民的基本环境权利和义务,公民有享用清洁、健康的环境的权利,有保护环境的义务;明确规定环境公益诉讼;明确政府的环境责任,健全政府环境责任问责制;规定基本的环境法律制度和重要的环境法律措施,规定政策环境影响评价。     

韩国犯罪被害人保护立法考察与借鉴

韩国以《宪法》、《刑事诉讼法》、特别法律和《犯罪被害人保护法》为主要内容,建构起系统而完备的犯罪被害人保护立法体系,对于切实实现犯罪被害人权益的全方位保护意义重大。我国应当借鉴韩国犯罪被害人保护立法的有益经验,确立对犯罪被害人宪法层面的观念保护、完善刑事诉讼法中被害人的权利、制定旨在实现犯罪被害人经济救助的专门法律。     

Analysing the economic justification for the reforms to social welfare and family law legal aid

The Ministry of Justice plans on saving £450 million per annum from the legal aid budget through reforms contained in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012.Over 60% of these savings will be found by removing whole areas of law and types of problem from the scope of legal aid support. One of the principal justifications for these reforms is the economic imperative; reducing legal aid expenditure is necessary to meet the Government's fiscal targets. This article examined whether these reforms will generate the substantial savings identified in the Government's impact assessment, or whether these costs will be passed on to other areas of government. Data from the Civil and Social Justice Survey were used to model the behavioural responses of people no longer eligible for legal aid under the scope changes. Economic costs were estimated for these responses where they will be incurred by the state, although many of these costs are likely to be underestimates. Many costs could not be estimated including, inter alia, the cost of increased criminality where people seek redress outside of the justice system. The analysis focused on family and social welfare law, which together represent 82% of the proposed savings from the scope reforms. Based upon this analysis, the Government is unlikely to save more than 40% of its prediction. At the same time, these minimal savings could generate inequality of access to justice and overburden an already struggling alternative advice sector. A significant uptake in funded mediation within family law is predicted.     

Cultural Policies and Local Planning Strategies: What Is the Role of Culture in Local Sustainable Development?

The authors draw a strategic framework for cultural planning at the local level. The concepts of industrial district and cluster have strengthened the role of space—in terms of external economies of localization and agglomeration—in economic development. The recent debate concerning contemporary development processes has underlined the increasing role of the cultural dimension for local development and has focused on different paths of clustering around cultural investment. The authors review the latest literature on cultural districts and illustrate some key cases around the postindustrialized world in which culture played a critical role by acting as a catalyst for major economic and social renewal. The authors present a strategic model of a progressive cultural district based on an asset-action matrix that intersects cultural policy drivers with capital resources. The authors define a new model of cultural district—the system-wide cultural district—as an emergent, self-organized model of cultural supply that displays significant strategic complementaries with other production chains with a typical, postindustrial characterization.     

Sexual and violent recidivism by offender type and actuarial risk: reoffending rates for rapists,child molesters and mixed-victim offenders

Abstract

The current study examines sexual and violent reoffence rates for a sample of 2474 sexual offenders over an average of 15 years following release from prison. Reoffence rates are reported as a function of the offenders' victim type and level of risk as assessed by the Automated Sexual Recidivism Scale, a computer scored measure of relevant historical risk factors. Observed sexual recidivism rates for offenders with child victims, adult victims, and mixed victims were quite similar. Results indicate that offenders with exclusively female child victims not only showed a lower rate of sexual reoffending, but that the reoffence rates were relatively low across all levels of actuarial risk. In contrast, those with male child victims and adult victims showed a pronounced escalation of reoffence rates as actuarial risk increased. Results also indicated that adult victim offenders are less consistent in the victim type of their reoffences, with 37% sexually reoffending against child victims. Finally, combined rates of sexual and violent reoffending were particularly high for those with adult victim sexual offence histories. Risk assessment and public policy implications are discussed.     

Offenders' lies and truths: an evaluation of the Supreme Court of Sweden's criteria for credibility assessment

Abstract

The criteria used by Swedish courts for assessing credibility of plaintiffs' accounts were for the first time scientifically evaluated. Furthermore, unlike much previous deception detection research, we used offenders as participants instead of college students. False and truthful confessions by 30 offenders were analysed, and few significant effects were obtained. Truthful confessions were rated as having a higher degree of clarity than false confessions. Women's truthful confessions were rated as more credible than their false confessions. The offenders who were most experienced in being interviewed by the police gave a stronger impression of talking about something self-experienced in their false than in their truthful confessions; hence, it seems that offenders with more police interview experience have developed a kind of expertise in telling a convincing lie about crime. Overall, the criteria for credibility assessment used by Swedish courts had very limited usefulness in discriminating truthful and false confessions. A critique of the current status of evaluating statements in Swedish courts is provided.     

Dynamic risk factors: a theoretical dead-end?

While the quality of empirical research on risk predication, assessment and management in the sexual offending field has been of a high standard, relatively little attention has been paid to theoretical issues related to risk and its conceptualisation. In this paper, we develop alternative ways of understanding dynamic risk factors and their utility in theory construction and case formulation. We would stress that this work is of a preliminary nature but believe that it is crucial that standard clinical and research practices are critically challenged from time to time, and their underlying theoretical assumptions evaluated. Our aim is to encourage researchers and practitioners to look at the issue of dynamic risk factors from a different viewpoint; one that we hope can help move the sex offender field forward.     

Assessing dynamic risk and protective factors in the community: examining the validity of the Dynamic Risk Assessment for Offender Re-entry

Recently, there has been a growing interest in advancing the state of offender risk assessment: particularly through the development of risk instruments to assist with parole management and the incorporation of protective factors specific to re-entry. The current study's aim was to validate a measure of stable and acute dynamic risk factors and protective factors used by probation officers managing offenders in the community: the Dynamic Risk Assessment for Offender Re-Entry (DRAOR). Empirical examination of the structure of DRAOR scores soon after release from prison suggested four components, rather than the theoretically proposed three-subscale structure. Both the original three subscales and the four new subscales showed good convergent validity with other dynamic risk instruments, and reliably predicted new convictions; however, only the new stable component added significant incremental predictive power over existing static and dynamic risk instruments. These findings provide initial support for the validity of the DRAOR; suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Understanding how sexual offenders compare across psychiatric and correctional settings: examination of Canadian mentally ill sexual offenders

Abstract

Much of what is known about sexual offenders is based on correctional samples and then applied across settings based on the assumption that this group is homogeneous. In this study, 149 files were compared, including 108 cases from the forensic mental health system (FMH) and 41 cases from the correctional system (COR). Although many similarities were observed between the FMH and COR groups, the results also revealed important differences. The FMH group was characterised by more frequent hospitalisations, higher rates of major mental illness and single status. The COR group was characterised by a history of physical and sexual abuse, family history of addictions, more intrusive sexual offences and higher rates of offending. These results highlight different profiles for sexual offenders in forensic mental health and correctional settings and challenge us to consider the implications for assessment, treatment and risk management of this unique group of sexual offenders.