The Potential of the Human Rights-Based Approach for the Evolution of the United Nations as a System

The United Nations (UN), facing increasingly intense challenges in the fulfillment of its mission, also harbors the potential for enhanced effectiveness, relevance, and legitimacy in the form of the human rights-based approach. The human rights-based approach (HRBA) is one model for translating the organization??s values into a more adaptive, inclusive, dynamic, and responsive system of processes and outcomes. In the arena of politics, its meeting with a meaningful degree of receptiveness could signal a growing acceptance of the validity of structural approaches to development and other issues despite traditional defensive positions on human rights. Application of the HRBA in programming is leading to greater appreciation for addressing core disparities and promoting empowerment for sustainable outcomes. It is also cultivating new qualities in development practitioners, advancing creativity, openness and responsiveness in organizational culture. In feeding its evolution in this way, the UN as a system has the potential for deeper, longer-term mission fulfillment and thus ensuring its viability.     

Physical restraint in a therapeutic setting; a necessary evil?

Physical restraint of people experiencing mental health problems is a coercive and traumatic procedure which is only legally permitted if it is proportionate to the risk presented. This study sought to examine the decision-making processes used by mental health staff involved in a series of restraint episodes in an acute care setting. Thirty nurses were interviewed either individually or in focus groups to elicit their views on restraint and experience in specific incidents. Four factors which influenced the decision to restrain were identified: contextual demands; lack of alternatives; the escalatory effects of restraint itself; and perceptions of risk. While some of these factors are amenable to change through improvements in practice, training and organisational culture, nurses viewed restraint as a necessary evil, justified on the basis of the unpredictable nature of mental illness and the environment in which they worked.     

Psychological factors influencing religious congregation members’ reporting of alleged sexual abuse

ABSTRACT

The sexual abuse of children within religious institutions has become a topic of increasing public concern in recent decades. However, to date there has been little in the way of psychological analyses of the processes by which congregation members judge the credibility of alleged abuses, or whether they would intend to report such allegations to the police. In this study, we examined the roles of ingroup identity, moral foundations, and social dominance orientation on reporting intentions and allegation credibility assessments among Church of England congregation members (n?=?454) and non-religious controls (n?=?457). While there were few predictors of reporting intentions, we found that churchgoers were consistently more sceptical of allegations of abuse, with these trends being differentially moderated by ingroup identification, the endorsement of various moral impulses, and anti-egalitarianism. We discuss our data in light of ongoing attempts to improve reporting procedures within the Church.     

A Detailed Cost Evaluation of a Juvenile Drug Court that Follows the Juvenile Drug Court Model (16 Strategies)

Although juvenile drug courts (JDCs) have now been in operation for 17 years, there is still no definitive appraisal as to this model's cost effectiveness and in particular, no detailed cost analysis of a JDC program following the 16 strategies until this one. The cost data presented in this paper build on the process and outcome evaluations performed on the Clackamas County Juvenile Drug Court (CCJDC). The criminal justice costs incurred by participants in drug court are compared with the costs incurred by eligible non‐participants. CCJDC participants had far more positive outcomes than those who did not participate in the program. In the two years after drug court entry, CCJDC participants cost the taxpayers $961 less per participant than similar individuals who did not attend the drug court program.     

Patterns of Young Adult Social Roles Transitions Across 24 Months and Subsequent Substance Use and Mental Health

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Young adults experience social role transitions across multiple life domains, and a deeper understanding of the ways in which these simultaneous transition...     

The Role of Management and Representation in Improving Performance of Disadvantaged Students: An Application of Bum Phillips's “Don Shula Rule”1

Scholars and practitioners within the U.S. education system have focused considerable attention on developing new programs aimed at raising educational achievement for disadvantaged students. New programs are only one way to improve student performance, however; recent work in public administration suggests that public management and implementation practices might also have a large impact on student performance. Existing research shows that managerial networking, managerial quality, and effective personnel management can significantly improve the quality of the education received by disadvantaged students. Additional work highlights the contribution of representative bureaucracy. Because these research agendas have targeted the public administration literature rather than the education policy literature, this article seeks to bring this research back to education policy. Using data from several hundred Texas public school districts, spanning 1995 to 2002, and focusing on disadvantaged student performance (Latinos, blacks, and low‐income students), this article illustrates how both management and processes to enhance the representativeness of teaching faculty produce benefits for disadvantaged students.     

Australian Governments and Automotive Manufacturing, 1919-1939

In recent years the progressive lowering of tariff barriers in Australia has produced a predictable backlash from those who are directly affected. The reaction, however, extends to academics and others who have no pecuniary interest in the outcome, and who have argued that the tariff represented a policy consciously designed to promote the economic development and defence capacity of this country. On the basis of experience in the motor vehicle industry, we argue that these factors had very little to do with interwar tariff policy. Rather, it was the outcome of an interplay between the Commonwealth government's need for revenue, the activities of "the lobby" in seeking rents, and the practices of the Customs bureaucracy.     

Legal Certainty and the Role of the Financial Markets Law Committee

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. Key points

• The role of the Financial Markets Law Committee (‘FMLC’)is to provide specialist assistance to those who must meet thechallenges of reforming, modernizing and applying financiallaw by identifying issues of legal uncertainty that may facethe wholesale financial markets and by working to resolve them,if possible, before they give rise to any material risk.
• Itis the author's view that the FMLC is uniquely positioned toserve rule of law values such as legal certainty and legal stability.
• Thisarticle suggests that, in the light of the challenges facingthe financial markets today, the rapid emergence of new markets,the accelerating rate of financial products ‘innovation’,the impact of recent international and European initiativesto harmonize financial markets law and the prospect of law reforminitiatives not yet even underway, the FMLC has an importantrole to play for the future.

  Much is said and . . . [Full Text of this Article]