Caught between the urgent and the comprehensible: professionals’ understanding of violent extremism

The present article focuses on how 13 professionals in key organisations in Sweden – all commissioned to design social and pedagogical efforts to prevent recruitment to terror groups that commit violence in the name of Islam – understand and reason regarding the root causes of recruitment and possible measures to counteract it. The 13 informants’ reasoning is analysed through critical discourse analysis, the aim being to investigate discursive practices that influence the construction of a Swedish discourse on the “prevention of violent extremism”. The analysis shows that in the informants’ reasoning, a conflict can be found between security-driven doctrines that strive to individualise the issue of “violent extremism”, and their understanding that segregation is the primary, though indirect, factor sparking “radicalisation”. This conflict seems to impair the use of a professional language to describe and talk about the practical methodology that the informants are developing.     

Preventing School Shootings: The Effectiveness of Safety Measures

ABSTRACT

The tragedies at Columbine High School, Virginia Tech, and Sandy Hook Elementary School catapulted concern about school shootings into the national spotlight. Calls for something to be done to protect our students, faculty, and staff became a salient concern for school administrators, with many schools hiring armed security officers, restricting access to campus buildings, installing metal detectors, and training individuals how to respond when a shooter enters school grounds. However, many of these security measures were implemented with little to no consultation of the empirical literature. This failure to enact evidence-based responses has had fiscal and latent consequences that are only now being discovered. This essay seeks to fill that void by examining the empirical evidence surrounding common security measures enacted in response to well-publicized school shootings and calling for the use of an evidence-based approach to school safety.     

Electoral violence prevention: what works?

Elections are in theory democratic means of resolving disputes and making collective decisions, yet too often force is employed to distort the electoral process. The post-Cold War increase in the number of electoral authoritarian and hybrid states has brought this problem into relief. In recent years the prevention of electoral violence has played an increasingly large role in the democratic assistance activities undertaken by international agencies, following increased awareness within the international community of the specific security challenges that elections entail. However, there has to date been little systematic evaluation of the success of different electoral violence prevention (EVP) strategies in reforming electoral institutions so as to enable them to maintain the peace during the electoral period. This article assesses the effectiveness of two common types of international EVP activity. Using a new global dataset of EVP strategies between 2003 and 2015, this article finds evidence that capacity-building strategies reduce violence by non-state actors, whereas attitude-transforming strategies are associated with a reduction in violence by state actors and their allies. The findings are relevant both for understanding the dynamics of electoral violence, and also for policymakers and electoral assistance providers in the international community who have responsibility for the design of democratic assistance projects in states at risk of electoral violence.     

Using Private Information to Predict Homelessness Entries: Evidence and Prospects

Do people at risk of homelessness have private information—information that social service agencies cannot credibly obtain—that helps predict whether they will become homeless? This article asserts that the answer to this question is yes: homeless people and people at risk of homelessness know important things about their future. Data from Journeys Home (JH), a pathbreaking longitudinal study of people experiencing homelessness and people at risk of homelessness in Australia, are used in this article. In many cases, the private information that participants have predicts entries better than the public information that agencies can obtain. Ways in which this private information can be used to improve service delivery are suggested.     

Getting away with foul play? The importance of formal and informal oversight institutions for electoral integrity

Electoral integrity is increasingly being recognised as an important component of democracy, yet scholars still have limited understanding of the circumstances under which elections are most likely to be free, fair and genuine. This article posits that effective oversight institutions play a key role in scrutinising the electoral process and holding those with an interest in the electoral outcome to account. The main insight is that deficiencies in formal electoral management can be effectively compensated for via one or more other institutional checks: an active and independent judiciary; an active and independent media; and/or an active and independent civil society. Flawed elections are most likely to take place when all four checks on electoral conduct fail in key ways. These hypotheses are tested and supported on a cross‐national time‐series dataset of 1,047 national‐level elections held in 156 electoral regimes between 1990 and 2012.     

集资诈骗罪的法理分析

对集资诈骗罪的犯罪客体,主体和行为方式进行分析.     

制定《河南省艾滋病防治条例》的设想(上)

河南全省日益严峻的艾滋病形势要求必须尽快制定艾滋病防治条例。条例主要内容应包括立法目的、范围与主管部门、预防与控制、监测与疫情报告、治疗与救助、权利与义务、法律责任等。在制定条例时,应注意突出地方特色和提高立法质量。     

论信息不对称下信用证欺诈的防范

作为结算支付工具,信用证在国际贸易中具有举足轻重的地位."独立抽象"交易原则使之具有快捷、经济和便利的优点,但同时也为信用证欺诈提供了滋生的温床.在信息不对称条件下,本文从信用与信息本质关系的角度来探寻信用欺诈的成因,并提出通过构建信用激励与约束机制来防范欺诈风险.     

电子党务与预防职务犯罪

在信息化时代,职务犯罪呈现出了智能化、隐蔽化、多元化、集团化的倾向,当前传统的职务犯罪预防手段已经难于达到有效的控制.如何把反腐倡廉工作与现代信息技术有机地结合起来,有效地遏制和预防职务犯罪,推行电子党务建设,已经成为当前各级党委和反腐败机构面临的一个亟待研究解决的重要课题.