行刑方式的改革对监狱服刑人员回归社会的影响

开展社区矫正作为我国行刑方式改革的措施之一,其发展将对监狱服刑人员回归社会产生重要影响。我国监狱绝大多数服刑人员回归社会的现行方式是服刑期满释放回归社会,这一方式存在着不能合理配置行刑资源、不能克服监禁化的弊端等问题。需要对监狱服刑人员回归社会的现行方式进行改革,确立假释为监狱服刑人员回归社会主要方式之一。建立监狱服刑人员回归社会新的途径,将有助于提高服刑人员改造质量。     

War on Black Men: Arguments for the Legalization of Drugs

Abstract

The leadership of the black community is concerned with welfare, with equality, with unemployment, with discrimination, with racism, with the pay gap, and with dozens of other such traditional issues. Oh, yes, they are also apprehensive about the use of addictive drugs. But, as we speak, young male members of this community are being incarcerated at frightful rates, and, even worse, are killing each other to boot. One would think that this latter issue would occupy the interest of black leaders front and center. After all, there are few worse problems than being jailed or killed. The present paper is dedicated to making the case that the black leadership has its priorities all wrong; that if they were to exercise true leadership, they would see the jailing and murder of young black men as perhaps the greatest threat to their community; and, if so, they would fervently support the legalization of all drugs.     

从社区治理到公民治理——中国城市社区治理的应然逻辑

本文界定了公民治理的核心概念,以治理理论、多中心治理理论、公民自治理论等为基础,用六个分析指标分析了当前中国社区治理的情况,提出了公民治理的分析框架,得出了只要能够克服一些局限性,中国社区治理的发展趋向就是公民治理模式的结论。     

Science cannot fix this: the limitations of evidence-based practice

The use of evidence-based practice as a guide for correctional investment is widely lauded as a positive shift away from punitive approaches to criminal justice. The value-neutral language of science, however, supplants a more fundamental and necessary dialog about core principles of our justice system. We raise concern that the discourse of evidence-based practice serves to avoid accountability for the dominant correctional regime which remains overwhelmingly invested in the imposition of punishment. Furthermore, evidence-based practice privileges academic expertise and de-legitimizes the knowledge base within affected communities stifling grassroots innovation and creativity.     

Exploring community protection

This is an attempt to provide conceptual clarity to the community protection component of Pennsylvania’s restorative justice enterprise. After a brief background of the legislative changes to Pennsylvania’s juvenile justice system and the theoretical development of restorative justice, data from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania are utilized to define and measure what is meant by community protection.     

Prediction of institutional aggression among personality disordered forensic patients using actuarial and structured clinical risk assessment tools: prospective evaluation of the HCR-20, VRS,Static-99, and Risk Matrix 2000

A minority of men and women with intellectual disabilities at times engage in, and are suspected, or convicted, of illegal activity. Recent policy developments in England and Wales emphasise the need to respond appropriately to putative offending risk through the provision of safe and effective community management, treatment, and support services. In line with these concerns, research has focused increasingly on testing the utility of an evolving variety of risk assessment procedures. Here, the authors set out to challenge the repertoire of a number of prominent and/or recently developed risk assessment procedures and the scope of an associated research literature, on the basis that contextual risk factors are receiving insufficient attention in relation to offending among people with intellectual disabilities. Drawing on the wider criminological literature, a novel study is reported that compares key contemporary proximal social and environmental circumstances in the lives of offenders and non-offenders with intellectual disabilities. A contextual risk score is derived, providing statistical support for increased consideration of the impact of relevant social and environmental circumstances. Increased emphasis on key contextual risk factors is recommended to strengthen community service responses to offenders with intellectual disabilities.     

Building Bond Repayment Capacity in Developing Countries: A Study on Property Tax Collections and Debt Affordability in Mexico

This article uses a multinomial regression model to analyze the bond repayment capacity of issuers of municipal bonds in Mexico. The study emphasizes the role that property and land-based taxes have in the enhancement of repayment capacity, as these are highly underutilized levies with important revenue raising potential. The findings show that there is no statistically significant link between these taxes and the chosen proxy for repayment capacity. This follows from an institutional and legal framework that creates an artificial environment of fiscal solvency. The Mexican case is instructive on how not to create a subnational bond market.     

American Police Unions: A Hindrance or Help to Innovation?

In response to the crises of the 1960s, police departments in the United States embarked upon great change in their policies, operations, and programs. This literature, however, has largely neglected the duality of the role of police unions in the adoption of new programs and practices. Learning about the key actors in the innovations process, however, is crucial to understanding how organizational change emerges. This article builds upon previous research to understand the effects of police unions on the adoption of innovation. Findings indicate that police unions may actually promote rather than hinder the implementation of new innovation.     

Sinophobia as Corporate Tactic and the Response of Host Communities

China's State Council has charged that in 2009 BHP Billiton inflamed Australians' fear of “Chinese colour” in order to undermine Chinalco's (Aluminium Corporation of China) effort to increase its share of the Rio Tinto company. Though unproven, this is a serious charge and the more so because it suggests there is a risk that in the future firms challenged by Chinese competitors may emulate the alleged practice. Given this possibility, anti-racists require a sophisticated understanding of how firms might incorporate Sinophobia into their business strategies and how Chinese foreign direct investment is viewed by national and local communities. To further this response, we review the literature on the use of racism as a corporate tactic, discuss the Chinalco-BHP struggle, and provide a study of how one community reacted when offered the chance to host a large Chinese investment.     

Towards a new paradigm for pan‐African knowledge production and application in the context of the African renaissance

Abstract

The article argues that the primary purpose of education, both formal and non‐formal, is the development of interrelated and interdependent sets of human capacity to think, to know and to act by honing social consciousness or awareness, values and skills. Investing in education is therefore viewed as investment in the development of social capital that combines with material resources and other non‐material phenomena to produce goods and services, as well as a favourable spiritual environment for human sustenance and development.

Education in Africa needs a fundamental paradigm change which entails, among other things, focusing on confronting, with a view to correcting and departing from, hegemonic knowledge and knowledge systems that are predicated on racist paradigms that have deliberately and otherwise distorted, and continue to distort, the reality of who Africans really are. The article visits some of the terrains most in need of this change: contestations about the roles Africans and Africa have played in human civilisation during the four main historical periods to date: Africa's leadership as the cradle of humankind or the Naissance of Humanity; Africa's leadership in all fields of knowledge and human achievements at the beginning of modern civilisation up to about the fourteenth century AD; the fifteenth century AD to the present which marks the only period in human development when Africa and Africans have been dominated and marginalised by mainly European civilisation and its global projections; and, the emerging era of the renaissance of Africa and other marginalised peoples.

A model curriculum that requires supplementation by the specific characteristics of each country that adopts it is suggested as a step towards this paradigm change. This modest effort at constructing a model curriculum is informed by the understanding that all Africans and peoples of African descent need to possess some basic, shared common knowledge about Africa, the Diaspora and the world ‐ and to acquire critical approaches to contextualised learning.