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Welfare State Regimes & Youth Incarceration : A Comparison of Germany, Sweden, and the United States
(2015)
Despite international consensus among researchers that incarcerating youth is an ineffective and inefficient response to crime, this practice persists—to widely varying degrees—in every country. What are the differences in youth incarceration in disparate welfare state regimes? To answer this question, this paper develops a youth incarceration typology by comparing three cases: that of Sweden, Germany, and the United States. The first multi-¬‐dimensional typology specific to youth incarceration, this tool encompasses four key domains central to the type of system operated in a nation. These include the purpose and extent of incarceration use, compliance with international human rights, and privatization receptiveness. A fifth domain, disproportionate minority incarceration, was considered but results indicate the need for further research on this issue. Three youth incarceration types, aligned with welfare state regimes, are developed from a mixed methods research design comparing the countries of interest. With juvenile justice systems situated within justice departments and a central aim of punishment, liberal regimes, such as the United States, demonstrate low compliance with human rights, and the highest rates of prison privatization. Conservative regimes, based on data from Germany, exhibit a central goal of rehabilitation, low privatization receptiveness, and ratification of human rights resolutions. Social democratic regimes, such as Sweden, have a youth rights centered system, with no privatization and full adoption of human rights resolutions. When accounting for diversity in each country’s population, Sweden was found to have the highest levels of disproportionate minority incarceration and the United States the lowest, with Germany between the two. Regarding this domain, further research is required to determine if this finding is characteristic of social democratic and liberal nations. After comparing the countries of interest, the relationship between welfare state regime types and juvenile justice systems is examined. This paper concludes with recommendations for the research, policy, and practitioner communities to advance analysis and reforms to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of juvenile justice systems internationally.
This paper presents an analysis of the underlying policy and legal mechanisms contributing to the deaths of migrants attempting to reach the EU by crossing the Mediterranean. It is structured into three sections, outlining, firstly, the deficits of the current Common European Asylum System, especially its extraterritorial dimension. It is argued that the reasons for the shortcomings of the current system are linked to the traditional state-centred paradigm still pre-dominant in EU law and policy. Secondly, human rights are presented as the conceptually adequate instrument to fill these gaps and to extend effective protection of migrants’ human rights beyond the shores of Europe. The European Convention of Human Rights is singled out as the most promising system for doing so. Thirdly, analysing the role of the two major European Courts in extending human rights protection extraterritorially, it further outlines the prospects and limits of such an approach. The importance of the Courts in clarifying and also extending the reach of human rights protection is demonstrated and the paper concludes with an outlook on future challenges facing the two Courts and the human rights system within the European region.
Almost 25 years on from the landmark Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody Indigenous imprisonment in Australia continues to rise at an alarming rate, leading to further over representation in the criminal justice system. A number of academics have applied the theory of ‘governing through crime’ in the context of Indigenous imprisonment to argue that the strategic use of crime has led to a targeting of Indigenous offenders in an increasingly punitive and risk based system. If correct this would imply a disconnection between rising imprisonment and actual levels of crime and safety in the community — a finding which could have significant policy implication s. However, evidence to support this claim is currently limited, a gap which this thesis seeks to address through a case study of the Northern Territory. Inquiry is conducted at two levels: firstly by asking what criminal justice law and policy changes could have contributed to rising Indigenous imprisonment and secondly by asking why these changes could have disproportionately impacted Indigenous persons. A mixed methods approach is used, combining a review of academic literature, a review of legislation and policy and analysis of quantitative data sources. Long term crime rates have been trending downwards for most offence categories in the Northern Territory in recent years. Comparison of these trends to the prison population supports the contention that increased imprisonment cannot be adequately explained by increased offending and broader system changes may be playing an important role. The past decade has been one of rapid changes to legislation and policy governing various aspects of the criminal justice system. Significant changes which have potentially impacted on Indigenous imprisonment were enacted in the areas of sentencing, bail, non - custodial sentencing options, alcohol regulation, domestic violence, parole and police powers. From analysis of these changes a number of key trends emerge that support the governing through crime hypothesis. These are: a heightened focus on protection of the community through the use of broad categories of risk; placement of seriousness of the crime as the iii central consideration in decision making to the exclusion of individual offender circumstances; intensified surveillance and enforcement; and encroachment of the criminal justice system into areas traditionally the domain of social policy. Analysis of available data, as well consideration of the contextual circumstances in which these changes apply, suggest s a heavy imp act of many of the changes on the Indigenous population. A typical explanation for this heavy impact relies on high levels of offending among the Indigenous population and a tendency for many of the types of crimes and offenders targeted by changes to correlate with Indigeneity. However, adding another layer to this explanation by looking at the historical context for Indigenous disadvantage and the political context in which law and policy changes are made suggests that this explanation is overly simplistic. By examining these contextual factors it is argued that heavy impacts on Indigenous persons are not merely an unfortunate co incidence but at least in part product of a political process that views crime through a radicalized lens and targets Indigenous persons accordingly. This concerning as it implies that policy makers are being driven by popular fears and conceptions of crime and race rather than rational evidence. As a result many of the changes implemented are directly contrary to a growing evidence base as to what works in both reducing Indigenous d is advantage and reducing crime. Overall support is found for the hypothesis that an increasingly punitive criminal justice system and a shift towards governing through crime is contributing to rising Indigenous imprisonment in the Northern Territory. This finding is qualified by an acknowledgement that this is not a comprehensive explanation and a range of complex factors are at play in Indigenous over representation. Nevertheless, it does highlight the importance of criminal justice law and policy settings in Indigenous over representation and point towards a nee d for structural changes which place impacts on Indigenous persons at the center of the decision making process. Approaches such as racial impact statements are promising in this regard and deserving of further research.
Fostering sustainability in Brazilian agrarian reform : insights from assentamentos and ecovillages
(2015)
We conducted a constructivist qualitative research project, designed as an instrumental collective case study, in order to discover potential ways to foster sustainability in agrarian - reform settlements (assentamentos) in Brazil. We visited twelve communities — six assentamentos and six ecovillages — in May October 2014 and gathered data through interviews, observations and documents produced by other sources. Inspired by the so - called “Gioia Method” and grounded theory, we followed a research strategy characterized by a constant process of interaction with the data, involving the use of qualitative data analysis (QDA) software. In the process, one broad research question — ‘how can sustainability in assentamentos be fostered?’ — was broken down into two:‘ which are salient challenges to fostering sustainability in assentamentos?’ and ‘ which insights for addressing those challenges may be obtained from existing assentamentos and ecovillages?’ . The synthesized results were three clusters of challenges — moving towards sustainable production, building infrastructure for sustainability and creating attractive conditions for the youth; two elements for the design of potential solutions — improving access, use and dissemination of sustainability know - how and enabling cooperative collective dynamics; and four insights that can serve as input in the design of policies and governance arrangements to foster sustainability in agrarian reform: (i) the power of example can be an effective means for the transition to more sustainable pract ices; (ii) building a common vision among assentados can support the maintenance of cooperative collective dynamics; (iii) more room for experimentation can strengthen sustainability know - how; and (iv) collective initiatives can prevent isolation in rural communities by acting as touchpoints with the external world and bringing exchange opportunities for assentados.