Mothers of children removed under a care order: outcomes and experiences

ABSTRACT

Focusing on accounts by women who have children taken into care, this paper reports on a socio-legal case study in England, investigating the life experiences of nine mothers, whose children have been made subject to care orders under the Children Act 1989. In particular it considers the women’s experiences of their relationships with their own mothers and places this within the context of the mothers’ own experiences of having their children taken into care. Drawing on free association narrative interviews, the study focuses on the mothers’ accounts of long-term harm that began in their childhoods, especially their experiences of their mothers’ own difficulties and of their experiences of harm. It highlights the impact of relationship difficulties between mother and child, and questions how the legal concepts of harm and reasonable parental care are defined and deployed. In conclusion, it demonstrates a need for the legal framework to address children’s experiences of harm in a more intergenerational and intersubjective way. It highlights a new approach, suggesting consideration of harm, reasonable parental care and welfare to involve an increased concentration on the welfare of mothers and the relationship between mother and child, akin to an intersubjective and intergenerational approach to harm.     

新加坡医疗保障体系运行机制及现状评述

新加坡政府创造性的建立了储蓄型医疗保险制度,取得了较好的效果。本文通过对新加坡保健储蓄计划、健保双全计划、乐龄保健计划和保健基金运行机制分析,发现新加坡医疗保障体系具有以"个人负责"作为制度设计总理念,精细化管理,体现公平正义理念,具有服务型社会治理内涵,进行积极调节,具有激励约束机制的特点。     

No longer a civil matter? The design and use of protection orders for domestic violence in England and Wales

ABSTRACT

This paper assesses the design and use of protection orders for domestic violence in England and Wales. It draws on data from 400 police classified domestic violence incidents and 65 interviews with victims/survivors, as well as new analysis of government justice data from England and Wales, to address a gap in literature on protection orders.

The paper identifies an increasing civil-criminal ‘hybridisation’ of protection orders in England and Wales, and argues that a dual regime has developed, with orders issued by police and/or in criminal proceedings increasingly privileged (and enforced) over victim-led civil orders. Whilst protection orders are being used – as intended – flexibly to protect domestic violence victims, the way they are applied in practice risks downgrading domestic violence in criminal justice terms.

The conclusions are especially timely in light of current Government proposals to rationalise protection orders by introducing a single overarching Domestic Abuse Protection Order in England and Wales.     

论完善拒不执行判决、裁定罪

拒不执行判决、裁定罪在犯罪构成要件及罪数形态等方面均存在不完善之处,为更好地维护司法权威,应扩大犯罪主体,重新确定客观方面,澄清保护客体,并对共同犯罪等问题作实事求是的评价.     

From the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 to the Serious Crime Act 2015 - the development of the law relating to female genital mutilation in England and Wales

Female genital mutilation (FGM) is defined by the World Health Organization to include: ‘procedures that intentionally alter or cause injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons’. It is a practice that affects many females in England and Wales and as a result, specific legislation has been introduced to tackle it. This paper explores the development of the criminal and civil law relating to FGM in England and Wales. It discusses the advantages and disadvantages of the approaches adopted and considers whether they are effective. The paper concludes that the creation of a specific criminal offence has proved to be ineffectual; that the introduction of civil FGM protection orders is a more appropriate and effective means of combatting the practice and that legal measures need to be supplemented by non-legal interventions.     

关于面向基层就业的医学本科生就业能力现状的调查研究

目前社会各界一直在强调大学生要面向基层就业,医学本科生要面向基层医疗卫生机构就业,就医学本科毕业生能否很好地符合基层医疗卫生机构的用人要求、目前基层医疗卫生机构真正需要哪一类医学人才等问题,作了一系列基础调研。     

Legislative Constraints on Executive Unilateralism in Separation of Powers Systems

Can legislatures effectively check unilateral executive power? One prominent and counterintuitive finding in previous work is that executives pursue unilateralism less often under divided government. While executives see greater potential policy gains through unilateral action during divided government, we argue that their likelihood of acting unilaterally depends on an opposed legislature's ability to retaliate. When polarization is high and majorities are marginal, executives are freer to act unilaterally given the difficulties legislatures have in statutorily responding. Unilateralism is also more likely when facing opposition if legislatures lack nonstatutory means of punishment, such as regulatory review. In the largest analysis of gubernatorial executive unilateralism to date, we use a new data set of 24,232 executive orders in the 50 American states between 1993 and 2013 to evaluate this argument and find strong support for its predictions. These results provide insights into how legislative policymaking capacity can influence the functioning of separation of powers systems.     

Fifty Years After the 1967 Crime Commission Report

In the 50 years since the U.S. President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice under President Johnson issued its report, feminist activism and both feminist and mainstream research have resulted in defining domestic violence (DV) as a social problem. This awareness of the seriousness and expansiveness of DV has spurred the development of unprecedented programs and policies. Although DV policing changes have been significant, so too have been the development of and changes in safehouses, no‐drop court policies, domestic violence courts, community‐coordinated responses, and batterer intervention programs. In this article, we review the nonpolice responses to DV cases and outcomes and provide recommendations. First, research and policies need to more regularly be aimed at addressing victims’ safety and their diverse needs and experiences. Second, assessments should include addressing the processing of these cases through the impact of responses by individual community and criminal legal system actors (e.g., victim advocates, police, prosecutors, and judges) to victims and offenders.     

亲密与伤害:美国家庭暴力中受害妇女的法律保护

家庭暴力是与婚姻关系中的文化观念和权利分配不公平息息相关的。幸运的是,在妇女运动的推动下,世界开始变化。在美国,反对家庭暴力的呼声和行动日益增强,为家庭暴力的受害妇女提供救济的途径越来越多。社会各界开始关注家庭暴力问题,并给妇女权益保护运动提供了强有力的支持。政府也开始意识到家庭暴力问题的严重,通过立法的方式对施暴者严厉制裁,从而维护受害妇女的合法权益。     

Empirical Modeling of Policy Diffusion in Federal States: The Dyadic Approach

Policy diffusion is a common phenomenon in federal states: indeed, one of the normative justifications of decentralized policy making is that it permits the development and spread of best practices. Following Berry and Berry (1990), event‐history analysis has been the method of choice for the quantitative investigation of policy diffusion, but Volden (2006) has recently introduced a dyadic variant of this method in which units of analysis are not states but, instead, pairs of states. This article discusses the dyadic approach with a particular focus on the diffusion of policies in Switzerland. The goal is not to introduce a new method, but rather to provide a practical overview for researchers interested in using it. The article shows how the method has migrated from the international relations literature to the policy‐diffusion literature, describes the typical structure of a dyadic dataset in a diffusion context, and discusses several modeling issues. The usefulness of the dyadic approach is illustrated empirically with the example of health‐insurance subsidy policies in Swiss cantons.