Children are unbeatable

The European Court on Human Rights has recently held that the law in the United Kingdom, which allows reasonable corporal punishment to be administered by parents, gives insufficient protection to children. Is the answer to distinguish between inhuman or degrading punishment (for example, with an implement) and ordinary safe smacks or is it to outlaw corporal chastisement by parents altogether? The author argues for the latter which he shows is in line with developments in European jurisprudence. It is also argued that the United Kingdom law is in breach of a number of international law norms, including the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. And, far from this proposal leading to greater intervention into the family, it is argued that the removal of the parental right to smack will lead to less abuse and therefore less interference with parental autonomy. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mainstream and Marginal Newspaper Coverage of the 1995 Quebec Referendum: An Inquiry into the Functioning of the Canadian Public Sphere*

Cet article applique le concept habermassien de la sphère publique à l'examen des relations entre les journaux ethniques et grand public présents à Toronto. En particulier, cette étude analyse les éditoriaux parus au cours de l'année précédant le référendum de 1995 sur la souveraineté du Québec et en explique la couverture médiatique sur la base d'entretiens avec les rédacteurs en chef des journaux concernés. Pendant cette période, tous les journaux, sauf un, étaient antiséparatistes. Cependant, contrairement aux journaux grand public, les journaux ethniques se sont particulièrement attachés à des questions de survivance culturelle. Les approches des éditeurs sur la question de la souveraineté suggèrent qu'on ne peut ni parler de sphère publique unifiée ni de publics multiples et atomisés. Il y a plutôt des sphères publiques multiples - inscrites dans des tempo-ralités socio-économiques spécifiques - qui se recouvrent et se complètent. This article employs Habermas's concept of the public sphere in examining the relationship between ethnic and mainstream Toronto newspapers. In particular, the study analyses editorials in the year leading up to the 1995 Quebec referendum on sovereignty, and draws upon interviews with the newspaper editors in explaining the patterns of coverage. During the specified time period, all but one newspaper was anti-separatist. Unlike the mainstream papers, however, the ethnic presses stressed issues of cultural survival. The editors' approaches to the sovereignty question suggests that there is neither a single unified public sphere nor multiple discrete publics. Instead, there are multiple overlapping public spheres—embedded in particular socio-economic historical moments—that complement one another.     

The spousal SROK revisited: A comparison of Chicago and Houston intimate partner homicide ratios

Based on the work of Wilson and Daly (1992) and Gauthier and Bankston (1997), the major objective of the present study was to determine how the spousal sex ratios of killing (SROKs)—the number of female perpetrators for every 100 male perpetrators—compare between two geographically disparate, major U.S. cities—Chicago and Houston. The results of the analysis reported add to our general understanding of the problem of intimate partner violence, in that the relative proportions of females and males killing intimate partners were similar along at least three important dimensions. The SROKs in both cities were only high for the killing of spouses and children; we did not observe a convergence of SROKs in the killing of other blood relatives, nor acquaintances or strangers. Our analysis also strongly indicates that men’s relative risk of intimate partner homicide victimization in both cities decreases dramatically when the two parties are estranged in some way. Another major finding is that large SROKs observed in the present analysis of Chicago and Houston are primarily a Black phenomenon. The lowest SROKs were found for Hispanics, followed by non-Hispanic Whites. The article concludes with suggestions for further research in this area. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual symposium of the Homicide Research Working Group in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His research interests include homicide, the role of the media in violent crime, crime mapping and policing. His work appears in Policing and Society. Her research interests are in the areas of interpersonal violence and health-related issues of incarcerated women. Her work appears in journals including Criminal Justice Policy Review, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency and Violence against Women.     

Decline and fall: Unemployment among Britain's non-white ethnic communities 1960–1999

The declining employment fortunes of Britain's non-white communities, relative to whites, are explained. To achieve this comparison, some historical official sources of unemployment data are reviewed. The earliest known official time series on unemployment of non-whites dates back to 1960. This historical context is explored, especially the reluctance to make the early data more widely known. An unemployment series for non-white males and females from 1970 to 1999 is derived in two separate ways by splicing together official sources. These series are compared with unemployment of whites to demonstrate a relative increase in unemployment of non-whites.     

Palliative medicine in Britain

In Britain, Palliative Medicine was recognized as a subspecialty of Internal Medicine exactly 20 years after Cicely Saunders founded St Christopher's, at exactly the same time that government was at last recognizing the worth and the needs of general practice. Both had far-reaching effects and implications for patients, doctors, and the future of medicine. For Palliative Medicine it meant units wishing to train specialists going through a rigorous selection process; the development of an equally rigorous training program for the doctors who had already gained a higher qualification before starting Palliative Medicine, demonstrating the need for and benefits of palliative medicine to the sceptics in the profession and, now, continuing to recruit the staff for the steadily increasing number of new services. Today there are more Palliative Medicine consultants/specialists than there are oncologists and neurologists combined, with Hospital Palliative Care Teams in every major hospital and cancer center. With nine Chairs in Palliative Medicine, there is now a drive for research and professional education. The specialty faces major challenges, however, ranging from training to care for patients with non-malignant disease to enabling patients to die in the place of their choice-something that rarely happens today; from defining what is distinctive or unique about palliative medicine to clarifying the respective place of general practice and the specialty. Most would agree that the biggest challenge for the young, thriving specialty is how to share its principles with other doctors wherever they work.     

Faces Behind the Figures: Interviews with Children Excluded from Primary School

This article presents a viewpoint on school exclusion from 22 primary-age children excluded from 20 different schools in two English local education authorities, (a county council and an inner London borough) during the 1993–94 academic year. Some of the methodological and ethical issues about researching children are outlined and considered. The approach and methods used in the research are explained. Interviews with children showed exclusion to be a significant but negative event for them, yet they were optimistic about a return to school. Children showed an awareness of what was considered to be appropriate or inappropriate behaviour in their school. They frequently referred to incidents of physical aggression as the reason for their exclusion. It is concluded that this awareness of appropriate behaviour as well as their optimism must be recognised and harnessed when young children are reintegrated into school following a period of exclusion.     

The analysis and interpretation of interactions

In many individual experiments, and especially when combining results from several experiments, interactions are observed. Various models have been proposed for the analysis of interactions, and product models are often useful. Work in this area is reviewed, starting with the 1920's and going on to recent studies, including some in Australia and Poland.