Climate change and the credibility of international commitments: What is necessary for the U.S. to deliver on such commitments?

The engagement of the United States is critical to the success of any international effort against global climate change. Although international climate efforts require long-lasting, credible commitments by participating countries, risk of failure to deliver on such commitments rises with the degree of gap that the domestic institutions permit between the executive and the legislature. The U.S. withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol indicated that the Clinton administration’s effort to bring international solutions into the domestic arena before domestic consensus was obtained was counterproductive. The congressional politics over budgetary allocation regarding the Bush administration’s technology policies showed that general preference to a technology-oriented approach to climate change alone did not ensure the credibility of international commitments. These cases revealed that the U.S. climate diplomacy was lacking in domestic institutional mechanisms that bring the executive branch’s deal at international negotiations, and the legislators’ preferences at home, closer together. For the U.S. to take leadership in international climate cooperation, domestic institutional frameworks which reconcile the interests of the two branches are necessary. This paper suggests that such domestic institutional frameworks feature two components: regular channels of communication between the two political branches; and, incentive mechanisms for the two branches to swiftly come to terms with each other.

The Impact of Distributive and Procedural Justice on Social Service Workers

The concepts of fairness and justice are embodied within the organizing principle of social justice. Although social justice is a primary focus of social work, social service workers are not always treated with fairness by their own employers. The results from a survey of 255 social service employees from a variety of agencies in Northwest Ohio indicate that distributive justice and procedural justice, two dimensions of organizational justice, are both significant predictors of job satisfaction and organizational commitment, with procedural justice having two to three times the impact of distributive justice.     

Credible Criminal Enforcement

Economic models of crime and punishment implicitly assume that the government can credibly commit to the fines, sentences, and apprehension rates it has chosen. We study the government’s problem when credibility is an issue. We find that several of the standard predictions of the economic model are altered when commitment is taken into account. Specifically, when only fines are used, commitment results in a lower apprehension rate and hence a higher crime rate. However, when jail is used (with or without fines), apprehension rates and jail terms may be higher or lower compared to the optimal static policy.JEL K14, K42     

Meeting Human Development Goals with Low Emissions : An Alternative to Emissions Caps for post-Kyoto from a Developing Country Perspective

This paper proposes a post-Kyoto scenario on commitment issues from a developing country perspective in which commitments by developing countries will be linked to human development goals as the first priority and ultimate goal, and then translated to carbon goals. Three different types of commitments are discussed with particular reference to developing country participation, including voluntary, conditional and obligatory. For low-carbon development, there should be no luxurious emissions but human development needs should not be compromised. A progressive and internationally coordinated taxation on carbon is suggested as an incentive mechanism under this approach. However, there are a few issues requiring further examination, including specification of basic needs and determination of progressive tax rates.     

Women,writing and politics in Sonallah Ibrahim's That Smell and Notes from Prison

In That Smell and Notes from Prison, Sonallah Ibrahim engages literary and feminist discourses in his political narrative against the Nasserist regime and the culture of commitment (iltizam) of the 1960s. Ibrahim's antihero is a newly released writer who is faced with the challenges of overcoming his failure to connect with women and society, and find a motivation to write. He realizes that most readers, writers and critics are not in favour of his literature of exposé, which refuses to depict or treat the ugly reality as a beautiful one. In foreshadowing the 1967 defeat and the impotence of Arabs, That Smell and Notes from Prison warns of a prolonged cultural and literary decay should political corruption override basic human and women's rights in the Arab world.     

美国精神病人强制住院治疗法律制度及其借鉴

精神病人强制住院治疗制度是美国一项重要的法律制度。该制度通过司法程序将具有危险性、无法自理的精神病人强制性地送入精神治疗机构治疗。这涉及精神病人的人身自由、名誉等基本权利,因此美国制定法和判例法中形成了强制治疗的实体标准和正当程序。该制度要求治疗机构根据实际情况对于治疗期限届满的精神病人作出合理的处理。这一制度为我国精神病人强制治疗法律制度的规范与完善提供了可资借鉴的经验。     

公安院校体改生专业承诺与学习倦怠的关系研究

为考察公安院校体改生专业承诺与学习倦怠的关系,对中国刑警学院的229名体改生进行了测评。结果表明:体改生的专业承诺及其诸附属维度与学习倦怠及其诸附属维度均存在显著的负相关;情感承诺是学习倦怠惟一有效的预测变量。可见体改生的专业承诺与学习倦怠存在密切关系,改善体改生的专业承诺水平尤其是情感承诺水平有助于降低他们学习倦怠的发生频率。     

Exploring turnover intent correlated to jail and prison officials: A Taiwanese perspective

Although a review of literature related to turnover intent in the correctional workplace has focused primarily on prison officers, jailers have frequently been overlooked. Specifically, a comparison between jail and prison officers’ perceptions in Taiwan is limited. In order to fill the gap, our study was based on three objectives: (1) surveying Taiwanese correctional officers who experienced the “get-tough-on-crime” policy during the early 2000s, (2) testing for differences in turnover intent between jail and prison officers, and (3) examining personal and workplace environmental factors in order to determine whether distinct turnover intent exists among prison and jail officers. A self-report survey administered to 799 Taiwanese correctional officers (with an adjusted response rate of 89%) demonstrated that jail and prison officers had moderately high levels of turnover intent with no significant difference. When turnover intent correlates were further examined, job dangerousness, organizational harmony, and commitment were significant predictors for both prison and jail officers, thus suggesting that environmental factors have the most robust impact. In terms of personal characteristics, tenure and position were significantly related to prison officers’ turnover intent. Conversely, age represented the significant factor among jail respondents.     

The ‘wanted’ children. Experiences of Hungarian children living with Belgian foster families during the interwar period

Transnational adoption and child migration are often regarded as recent phenomena, yet there is a long history of children travelling without their families, settling and integrating in a foreign culture and environment. In the 1920s, thousands of Hungarian children went to Belgium for a six-month holiday within the framework of a humanitarian project. Although they were supposed to return to Hungary after their vacation, some of them stayed indefinitely with their Belgian families. By analyzing oral testimonies of the now elderly ‘children’ about their migration and childhood experiences in Belgium, we explore how they construct and reconstruct concepts such as childhood, vulnerability, and loyalty commitments, and show the crucial importance of maintaining birth family ties for the future development of transnationally adopted children.     

What has worked and what has not with Minnesota sex offenders: a review of the evidence

Abstract

Since the early 1990s, many states in the USA have attempted to control sexual offending and, more narrowly, sexual recidivism by implementing longer prison sentences for sex crimes, sex offender registration and notification, residency restrictions, involuntary civil commitment and lifetime probation and parole. The early 1990s also marked the beginning of a decline in official rates of sexual offending, including sexual recidivism. This study reviews recent research conducted on Minnesota sex offenders in an effort to identify which policies, programmes and practices might have contributed to the drop in sexual recidivism rates that have been observed over the last few decades. By assessing what has, and has not, worked with Minnesota sex offenders, this study discusses how lessons learned from the Minnesota experience may apply to broader efforts within the USA and abroad to control sexual offending.