Being Judged,Being Assessed: Young People’s Perspective of Assessment in Youth Justice and Education

Research from the Economic and Social Research Council programme on Pathways Into and Out of Crime prioritised young people’s ‘voices’ in exploring experiences of crime and a range of intervention services. Drawing on data from interviews with 110 young people, this paper explores their perspectives of professional assessment. Embedded within neo‐liberal youth welfare policies are a number of contradictions. Policies encourage ‘individualisation’, ‘responsiblisation’ and ‘self‐realisation’ while also needing to maintain control and regulation of ‘risky’ populations. This paper explores the implication of these contradictions through examining the experiences of young people being assessed in youth justice and education. The impact on their identities as neo‐liberal citizens is discussed in the conclusion.     

REPEATED LOBBYING BY COMMERCIAL LOBBYISTS AND SPECIAL INTERESTS

Developing a lobbying model of repeated agency, we explain previously unexplained features of the real‐world lobbying industry. Lobbying is divided between direct representation by special interests to policymakers, and indirect representation where special interests employ professional intermediaries called commercial lobbyists to lobby policymakers on their behalf. Our analytical structure allows us to explain several trends in lobbying. For example, using the observation that in the United States over the last 20 years, policymakers have spent an increasing amount of their time fundraising as opposed to legislating, we are able to explain why the share of commercial lobbyist activity in total lobbying has risen dramatically and now constitutes over 60% of the total. The key scarce resource in our analysis is policymakers' time. Policymakers allocate this resource via implicit repeated agency contracts that are used to incent special interests and commercial lobbyists to provide a mix of financial contributions and information on policy proposals. These implicit agency contracts solve both an information problem in the presence of unverifiable policy information and a contracting problem in the absence of legal enforcement. These repeated relationships, that are often described using the pejorative term “cronyism” in the popular press, may in certain circumstances be welfare improving. (JEL D72, D82, H1, P16)     

Direct Payments and Social Work Practice: The Significance of 'Street-Level Bureaucracy' in Determining Eligibility

Sponsored both by governments intent upon fiscal restraint anduser movements keen to extend choice and control, ‘cash-for-care’schemes are replacing direct services across mature welfarestates. Recent legislation on direct payments, which has enactedthe UK version of cash-for-care, has attracted considerableresearch interest in the UK. Previous studies point to a numberof tensions for social workers in the implementation processwhich give rise, in turn, to considerable uncertainty, evenhostility, on the part of front line staff. This article, whichdiscusses the findings of a study of assessment and care managementpractice in one English council, seeks to make sense of socialworkers’ approach to the allocation of direct paymentsby reference to Lipsky’s (1980) theory of ‘street-levelbureaucracy’. The author concludes that despite ten yearsof managerialism, in the course of which professional practicehas been routinized and regulated, Lipsky’s work is stilluseful in analysing front line behaviour around direct payments.     

The proximity filter: the effect of distance on media coverage of the Christchurch mosque attacks

ABSTRACT

The intense media coverage in New Zealand and Australia of the Christchurch mosque attacks exhibited significant disparity in editorial decision-making between the two countries. This research interrogates the different approaches taken in newsrooms and how these differences were manifested in broadcasts and publications. New Zealand media were focused largely on empathetic coverage of victims and resisted the alleged gunman's attempts to publicise his cause while their Australian counterparts showed no such reluctance and ran extended coverage of the alleged perpetrator, along with material ruled objectionable in New Zealand. It finds the editorial focus in each case exhibits the effect of proximity, identified in literature on empirical ethical decision-making as a factor in applied ethicality. The authors conclude that a proximity filter was used by New Zealand media who identified the victims as part of their own community, but the events of 15 March 2019 were seen as ‘foreign’ by Australian journalists who used perceived distance as justification for extremely graphic content.     

The dimensions of poverty

The nature of ‘poverty’ is examined in relation to a model of causes affecting the welfare of a community. It is suggested that one can operationally distinguish four major dimensions of poverty, namely economic, social, political and legal poverty; and that one might in addition be able to characterise three further aspects, namely psychological, ideological and conceptual poverty. It is proposed that at least the first four aspects should be distinguished and explicitly named, thereby specifically characterising these different dimensions of ‘poverty’; and that this would serve a useful purpose in clarifying the nature of the problems faced by the community considered.     

The Treatment of Sexual Disturbance

The thesis of this paper is that the highly competent marriage and family therapist had better have good understanding of both general disturbance and sexual disturbance. A case illustration of an individual with a sexual disturbance is given. Editor.     

Household organization and the interregional variation of out-migration rates

Regional out-migration rates may depend on localized conditions, but the range of possibilities for migration decision making in multi person households includes processes in which the response to variations in localized conditions depends on household size. Analyses of migration rates for households indicate that larger households exhibit more extreme responses to variations in localized conditions and that this is an important source of variation in regional out-migration rates.