Opening Pandora's Box: Protecting Children Against Torture or Cruel,Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment*

Children are rarely perceived as torture victims, although they may be easier targets. International inertia is compounded as not only torture, but also ‘other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment’ is prohibited. Some of these occur in the private sphere, which traditionalists erroneously assume outside of international human rights law. Children may also be unprotected because they suffer from trauma in different ways from adults. Jurisprudence of human rights fora based principally on adult victims, despite some dicta to the contrary, risks international standards being inappropriately applied to child victims. This promotes an analysis which fails to address the particular vulnerabilities of children and their role as social actors.     

Pathways from Traumatic Child Victimization to Delinquency: Implications for Juvenile and Permanency Court Proceedings and Decisions

Research studies and observations by mental health and judicial professionals suggest that childhood traumatic victimization may contribute to the development of juvenile delinquency. Based on this evidence, we describe a chronological pathway that runs from: (a) early childhood victimization, to (b) escalating dysregulation of emotion and social information processing (“survival coping,” which takes the form of depression, anxiety, social isolation, peer rejection, and conflicted relationships), to (c) severe and persistent problems with oppositional‐defiance and overt or covert aggression compounded by post‐traumatic reactivity and hypervigilance (“victim coping”). A case vignette is provided, and implications for judicial review and decisions are discussed.     

LOCATING THE VANGUARD IN RISING AND FALLING HOMICIDE RATES ACROSS U.S. CITIES*

This research examines trends in U.S. homicide rates at the city level during the so‐called homicide epidemic in the latter decades of the 20th century. Using spline regression techniques to locate structural breaks in city‐level time series, we model the true trends of homicide rates to identify those cities that exhibited a meaningful boom and bust cycle. We then use Tobit regressions for all cities at risk of experiencing a cycle to estimate unbiased effects of theoretically important predictors on the timing of the phase changes. Our findings reveal that larger cities were more likely to experience an epidemic‐like pattern, and that densely populated cities characterized by high levels of deprivation tended to exhibit the rise and fall in homicide rates earlier than other cities.     

Agenda Control,Majority Party Power,and the House Committee on Rules, 1937–52

The role of the U.S. House Rules Committee is consequential for theories of congressional parties, yet its role during the “conservative coalition” era is not well understood. We systematically analyzed the politics surrounding all special rules considered in Democratic Congresses from 1937 to 1952. We found that Rules repeatedly used its agenda power to push to the floor conservative initiatives that were opposed by the Democratic administration, the Rules Committee chair, and most northern Democrats, especially in Congresses that followed Republican election gains. The 44 conservative initiatives we identified include many of the most important policy issues considered during the period. Our findings challenge the idea that the majority party has consistently enjoyed a veto over which initiatives reach the floor, and they underscore the limits of roll‐call‐vote analysis in assessments of agenda control.     

The Denial of Visitation Rights: A Preliminary Look at its Incidence, Correlates, Antecedents and Consequences

The issue of visitation denial has inspired considerable debate and legislative activity. This article presents empirical evidence on the scope of the problem and the relationship between visitation and child support payment behaviors. Visitation denial is shown to be a problem, although reported levels of denial fall below both levels of non-contact by absent parents and non-payment of child support noted in previous research. Visitation difficulties appear to become established fairly early on in the separation/divorce process and fail to deviate over time. Although non-payment of child support cases do not always involve a visitation problem, the two phenomena are related with visitation problem cases being more likely to involve non-payment of child support. The data do not permit a deciphering of causal order in cases that involve both types of non-compliance. However, both phenomena appear to stem from conflict patterns between the parents which are detectable at early stages of the divorce process. These findings inspire several recommendations, including interventions with divorcing parents aimed at enhancing their communication skills and reducing levels of anger and hostility and the need to develop mechanisms in which visitation and child support grievances can be jointly aired.     

THE PARLIAMENTARY OMBUDSMAN AFTER TWENTY-FIVE YEARS

Twenty-five years after it was established in 1967 the Parliamentary Commissioner scheme is now criticized not so much on the grounds that it lacks teeth; the problem rather is that the system could be used with advantage a good deal more extensively than it is. The parliamentary Ombudsman has been under-used largely because it has generated only bounded enthusiasm among MPS, the 'gatekeepers' and potential 'magnets' for the office. Survey evidence suggests that MPS' attitudes are related mainly to their dissatisfaction with the limitations on the ombudsman's 'spatial' jurisdiction and the length of time taken by the office to investigate complaints. MPs' disapproval of these aspects of the scheme, however, may be symptomatic of a divergence between members' desire for 'quick-fix' solutions to constituents' problems and the emphasis placed on the 'audit role' of the office by successive commisioners. Greater awareness of the functions of the office by both the general public and among MPS; an extension of the Commissioner's jurisdictional remit; a faster average 'throughput' time for investigations; and possibly the introduction of a two track procedure for inquiries are all arguably required if the full potential of the Parliamentary Commissioner scheme is to be realized.