Assessing the Impact of the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI): Predictors of Secure Detention and Length of Stay Before and After JDAI

The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI) seeks to reduce the reliance on pre-dispositional detention. While anecdotal evidence indicates that the program has enjoyed some success in reducing detention populations, no controlled study has assessed the efficacy of the program. The current study investigated the impact of JDAI following its adoption in one Virginia juvenile court. Specifically, using data on all juveniles referred to intake over a seven-year period, the research analyzed predictors of detention and length of stay before and after JDAI. Results indicate that after the implementation of JDAI, greater emphasis was placed on legal factors including offense seriousness and prior record, though the increased emphasis was greater for non-whites than for white youth. Additionally, results suggest that after JDAI’s adoption, older non-white youth were more likely to receive secure detention while non-white females received some degree of leniency compared to non-white males.     

CONFLICT AND CO‐PARENTING: THE CONSTRUCTS OF NONRESIDENT FATHERS*

Scots law constructs a co‐parental role for nonresident fathers without clarifying how this should operate in practice. Personal Construct Theory (PCT) offers a useful approach to understanding such fathers’ distinct and changing conceptions of their role. Findings are presented from a study of 17 nonresident Scottish fathers maintaining contact with nonresident children. Idiographic analysis of data from repertory grid interviews administered three times over the course of a year shows that participants perceive family situations in terms of paternal involvement, impact, emotion, or antagonism. Changes in construing following family events support the PCT understanding of hostility; implications for family services are discussed.     

Contact Disputes: Narrative Constructions of `Good' Parents

This paper explores contact disputes in England and Wales. We discuss the legal background as well as separating parents' experiences of contact disputes. Contact has been high on the agenda since the U.K. Government report, Making Contact Work, (2002) examined various means for facilitating contact between non-resident parents and their children. More recently, the issue has featured prominently in the headlines, largely as a result of the campaigning efforts of fathers' rights groups who complain of injustice and demand changes in the law. The idea that contact is necessary for children's well-being seems to have acquired the status of uncontestable truth. This paper examines the ways in which these ideas about children's interests have become embodied in adominant welfare discourse that is embedded in law and informs policy thinking. Family law has long abhorred parental conflict, particularly that which involves the children. It is frequently assumed that conflict can be reduced if parents could be persuaded to accept the premises of the welfare discourse. In this paper, we consider how parents themselves, in talking about their experiences of contact disputes, makes sense of family law. We found that parents regularly invoke the welfare discourse in their talk, but they interpret it in unexpected ways. Often these interpretations fuel conflict rather than reducing it.     

Determinants of e-government maturity： Do organizational specific factors matter？

E-government is said to be an efficient and effective way of delivering government services to its customers. Web information accessibility and online transactional services increase transparency, openness of bureaucratic institutions and reduce cost of transactions. Global e-government surveys which portray the trend in countries＇ e-government readiness and stage of e-government maturity rank developing countries at the bottom. Based on the benefits reaped from e-government and the fact that some countries can progress than others; it is evident that e-government has become a development phenomenon to researchers and policy makers. Accordingly, the basic empirical question to researchers has been on what determines e-government maturity？ To answer this question, it is important first to distinguish between e-readiness and e-government maturity in order to understand the intuition behind this question. E-readiness comprises of all prerequisite necessary to implement e-government while e-government maturity refers to the actual level of e-government progress a country has attained based on websites assessment. While macro factors such as level of Gross Domestic Product, human capital and ICT （information and communication technology） infrastructure are important in determining e-government maturity at the national level; they may not necessarily explain differences of e-government maturity among government agencies within the same country. In other words, why there are differences in e-government maturity among governmental agencies even in those countries which are ranked at the top. In this paper authors argue that organizational specific factors play a vital role in determining the stage of organizational e-government maturity. To accentuate the argument, authors provide one of the possible frameworks and respective propositions to indicate the influence of organizational specific characteristics on e-government maturity.     

Intergenerational Contact as Intergroup Communication

Abstract

This Epilogue highlights important progress in the area of intergenerational contact research and identifies some important operational and empirical lacunae. The diverse array of intergenerational programs is discussed as are the potential consequences of program contact for older adults, children and youth. We highlight for researchers and program planners the likelihood that pre-existing stereotypes can affect program experiences (and the communicative patterns within them) as well as the need to articulate program goals more clearly. The paper's main thrust is in drawing attention to several theoretical models that can usefully guide future research. A theoretical framework based on intergroup communication is outlined that explores the motivations and communicative behaviors likely during intergenerational exchange. Researchers should investigate communicative strategies that promote successful intergenerational contact.     

兼氧-好氧生物接触氧化-混凝沉淀工艺处理屠宰废水

采用兼氧—生物接触氧化—混凝沉淀工艺处理屠宰废水,当进水CODCr为2 500mg/L时,经该工艺处理后出水各项指标可达到国家《肉类加工工业污染物排放标准》(GB13457—1992)三级标准.     

Getting tough on mothers: regulating contact and residence

This article critically examines the relationship between shared residence and contact after the breakdown of the parents’ relationship. It examines the background to the government’s main emphasis on methods of monitoring, facilitating and enforcing contact as the most efficacious method of proceeding in respect of the law reform agenda, focussing particularly on the potential impact of punitive enforcement measures on primary carers, usually mothers. The article sets the discussion within its wider cultural context in respect of fathers’ rights claims that family law currently favours mothers, and shows how recent legal developments constitute part of a package to manage post-separation relationships between parent and children. It also examines some of the emerging case law to show how the judiciary is using shared residence orders and transfer of residence to deal with protracted and very difficult contact disputes, and in ways which were not anticipated when shared residence orders were first introduced. Drawing on feminist legal commentaries the argument will be made that the use of transfer of residence and shared residence orders in these disputes is extremely worrying, especially in light of the growing body of empirical research which heralds caution. The article will conclude by suggesting that far from favouring mothers, both the law reforms and the case law effectively construct mothers as integral to the problem of contact. They are treated as the site of and solution to the ‚problem’ of contact, and the means of dealing with the problem is by increasingly punitive measures which are inappropriate in a family law context. At the same time non-residential fathers who do not uphold contact escape legal sanctions.     

和谐社会构建中的检察权运行研究

检察权的运行,在和谐社会的构建中发挥着不可或缺的作用。但当前检察权的运行存在宽严失度、违法和不规范现象,还存在具体权能运行不均衡、运行错误的防范与救济不足、地方化倾向及行政化色彩过浓等诸多问题,与构建和谐社会价值目标不相适应。为此,应通过贯彻宽严相济的刑事政策、强化司法监督力度、完善检察权运行的内外部制约监督机制,确保检察权的有效运行。     

闽南与琉球

在交通不发达的古代,闽南与琉球地缘相近,顺风顺水,很早就有了接触。到了明清之季,由于政治,经济发展的需要,两地交往更为密切。在开发琉球历史上做出巨大贡献的“闽人三十六姓”中就有善于驾舟航海的闽南人。随着中琉封贡关系的发展,两地通过互救飘风难民,护送贡使进京,发展商品贸易,派遣闽南册使,交流情报信息等途径,增进了了解。现今,我们仍处处可见闽南文化对琉球的深远影响。     

Updating,subtyping, and perceptions of the police: Implications of police contact for youths’ perceptions of procedural justice

Individuals enter police encounters with expectations about how these interactions will unfold. These expectations are often rooted in racialized personal, vicarious, and collective experiences with the police. Bayesian updating posits that the way youth perceive treatment by the police during stops and arrests combines with prior expectations and perceptions to shape current views of the law, whereas subtyping suggests this process differs by race. This study examines intra- and interracial variability in these processes using longitudinal survey data from 3,085 Black and White youth. Regardless of race, youth who indicate they were treated with disrespect during police encounters had lower perceptions of procedural justice than did those with no contact, whereas contact perceived as respectful had no significant effects. For White but not Black youth, police encounters rated as “neutral” are associated with more negative views of the police. Other forms of legal socialization are also racialized, including messages conveyed in the media and by parents. Limited evidence exists that prior views of the police moderate the effect of police encounters on procedural justice or that these conditioning effects vary by race. Findings support updating, but race differences do not neatly align with findings expected with updating or subtyping theory.