Using Cost Analysis to Examine Variability in Replications of an Efficacious Child Neglect Prevention Program

This article reports on a program- and case-level cost analysis of five replication sites of an efficacious child neglect prevention program. Approximately one-third of all sites' total labor hours were expended on direct family services and casework support for a specific family, with the remainder spent on indirect implementation support and program administration activities. Including non-personnel costs, the all-site mean total cost per family was $6,276, ranging across sites from $2,245 to $10,260. Costs varied greatly among individual families within sites. More research is needed to understand factors associated with differences in cost.     

Strengthening Public-Private Partnerships in State Child Welfare Systems: Results of a Multi-State Strategic Planning Process

Dramatic growth in health and human service contracting over the past two decades has increased the need for managerial competency in the development and sustainment of effective cross-sector partnerships. Although the quality of relations between partnering agencies can affect client outcomes, few macro-level interventions for strengthening cross-sector partnerships have been described or tested in the literature. This article describes a facilitated, strategic planning process implemented in five different states and presents pre-post test results of its effect on different factors known to affect partnership success. Implications for child welfare administrative practice and research are discussed.     

当前我国受贿犯罪的特点、原因及对策

近年来,我国在打击受贿犯罪方面做着积极的努力。2005年10月27日,我国立法机关以全票批准加入《联合国反腐败公约》。2007年9月13日,我国正式成立国家预防腐败局。但是,这些仍未能遏制住我国受贿犯罪的发展势头。据NGO"透明国际"2012年12月5日发布的2012年度全球清廉指数排名,在176个国家和地区中,中国列第80位。这样的位次反映出我国的腐败问题仍较严重。因而,我们有必要从受贿犯罪的特点入手,对受贿犯罪频发的原因进行分析,并在此基础上探讨应对之策。     

Implementing Developmental Screening Programs for Infants and Toddlers in the Child Welfare System

In 2003, revisions to the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act required states to develop plans to refer children younger than 3 years of age with a substantiated case of abuse and neglect for developmental screening. A decade after legislation was passed, its implementation varies considerably across states. This article explains how research informs the need for careful developmental monitoring of young children, especially those experiencing trauma or living under stressful conditions. Finally, this article presents how one community used colocation to increase developmental screenings for young abused and neglected children.     

Actively Cultivating Policy Similarity. A Regional Strategy in Education Policy in France and Germany

Regionalization processes across Western Europe have triggered analyses of regional policy divergence. Yet, in a number of cases, regional governments appear to have deliberately strived to achieve policy conformity. Previous research tends to emphasize exogenous explanations of regional policy convergence. In contrast, this paper addresses the issue of regional policy convergence by focusing on endogenous explanatory factors. Its objective is to carry out an investigation of when, how, and with what effect a ‘desire for conformity’ arises, and contends that regional governments may actively cultivate policy similarity as a strategy to develop or secure their policy capacity. Specifically, the paper argues that the adoption of this strategy is contingent upon two requirements that may or may not be met, and that its outcome is the convergence on targeted dimensions of regional policies. The two requirements are: (i) a countrywide public preference for policy uniformity in the policy area of concern, and (ii) the presence of a threat posed to regional policy capacity by various political entrepreneurs, including the central state, who blame regions for providing divergent policies on particular dimensions. This paper is based on the comparison of two case studies where regional governments deliberately pursued policy conformity on targeted dimensions of their education policy: school-building policy in France and curricula policy in Germany. The two case studies also present dissimilar features that make it possible to investigate the effects of institutional setting and policy distribution on the adoption and operation of the active-cultivation-of-policy-similarity strategy.     

Migrant workers and migrant entrepreneurs: changing established/outsider relations across society and space?

Drawing on Elias and Scotson's theory of established/outsider relations, in this paper we argue that migrants can be outsiders in one spatial context and established in another simultaneously. Our empirical focus is the situations and experiences of migrant workers from Central and Eastern Europe in four towns across Wales. While their position as outsiders is reinforced in the occupational spaces of meat-processing factories, outside the workplace a small but growing number of migrants are engaging in entrepreneurial activities that create new spaces of cultural diversity. We argue that this is having a wider affective impact on established/outsider relations.     

Cross-border metropolitan governance: the multi-faceted state power

Metropolitan regions have become one of the most appropriate scales to define efficient governance networks for economic and territorial development. The state still is the key actor of these partnerships. Yet the question remains whether cross-border metropolitan regions represent a new point of reference that puts state power in question or whether they only reorganize it. The centrality of state power will be examined by looking at two networks of actors (public transport and territorial marketing) working at the Eurometropolis Lille–Kortrijk–Tournai. The results reveal that a triple-faceted state power has emerged to define and organize cross-border metropolitan management.     

(Im)possible citizens: Canada's ‘citizenship bonanza’ and its boundaries

This article discusses a recent amendment to the Canadian Citizenship Act, which retroactively restores or gives Canadian citizenship to ‘hundreds of thousands of unsuspecting foreigners, most of them Americans’ (P. Dvorak, 2009. Canada issues a wake-up call: you may be a citizen. The Wall Street Journal, 17 April. Available from: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123993183347727843.html) while also restricting the inheritance of Canadian citizenship to the first-generation born abroad. Aiming to redress past discriminations based on gender, marital status and dual citizenship while simultaneously curtailing modern citizenship's dubious ius sanguinis provision, the new law might be interpreted as perpetuating Canada's reputation as a world leader in interethnic relations and human rights. A contextual analysis of the new law, by contrast, shows that the opposite is the case: the boundaries that are being drawn by Canada's new citizenship regime follow the now common trend of re-ethnicization and securitization. Specifically, they conflate kinship and Whiteness, thereby leading, on the one hand, to the construction of possible citizens whose authenticity and loyalty to the nation are unquestioned. On the other hand, within the logic of the new laws and their surrounding discourses, non-White, non-Christian ‘impossible citizens’ emerge, whose lack of loyalty and instrumental use of their Canadian passport are said to be eroding the value of citizenship from within.     

实践与科学中的监狱学理论研究——读《监狱学导论》

监狱学是刑罚执行研究领域的一个重要组成部分。一段时间以来,我国监狱学研究出现了低谷,却不能因此而说明监狱学研究之花已凋谢。吴宗宪教授的《监狱学导论》一书即是一个例证。该书以其特有的研究风格、知识体系为我国当代监狱学研究与监狱学知识的整体构造树立了一个典范,同时也昭示着监狱学研究将会得到持续发展与开拓。     

检察机关在民事公益诉讼中的角色分析

民事公益诉讼所保护的公共利益与刑事公诉中检察机关保护的国家利益是不同的,并且检察机关不能很好地兼顾个人利益,因此检察机关不能提起民事公益诉讼。这并不代表检察机关无所作为。基于既判力扩张所造成的利益扩散,民事公益诉讼迫切需要检察机关进入。同时"放射状"诉讼结构之下复杂利益格局更是需要检察机关做好检察监督,而立法上关于检察监督的规定过于概括,需要予以细化。