Care without coercion – mental health rights,personal recovery and trauma‐informed care

Australian mental health services continue to use involuntary measures in response to consumers' mental distress. Regardless of the intent behind these practices, the experience of being forced to receive treatment, be secluded or restrained is traumatic and can cause further distress and harm. Other parts of the health or social service system have shifted to approaches that emphasise agency, social context, prevention, and rights. Three frameworks currently used in mental health services – human rights, personal recovery, and trauma‐informed – are consistent with a shift away from the use of force. We applied these frameworks to the text of the National Standards for Mental Health Services 2010 to analyse the degree to which it reflects a shift. We also analysed the public text of speakers' notes from the Care Without Coercion Conference 2012 concerning lived experiences of force in mental health services. The analysis highlights force in many aspects of policy. The findings have implications for directions of change, including freedom from violence; support for decision making; access and choice about community and inpatient options; safety and risk management; and greater understanding of current policy frameworks through engagement with people with lived experience about the options and impact of support processes that exclude the use of force.     

进退两难:相对不起诉制度之博弈分析

相对不起诉制度是我国1996年修改后的<刑事诉讼法>对检察机关免予起诉制度废除后的产物.从10余年的司法实践过程来看,相对不起诉在检察机关应用较少,主要是体现了检察权对审判权的谦抑.从该制度最初的功能设计分析,相对不起诉是为处理刑事案件作适当分流而设计的,它应该是解决刑事案件中利益冲突的途径之一.长期的实践表明,该制度面临着许多矛盾,这些矛盾导致相对不起诉制度处于一个进退两难的境地.因此,从保护被害人权利来说,完善相对不起诉制度,使之成为刑事案件中利益冲突解决的正式途径,应该是新的刑事诉讼修改的一个重要内容.     

“平等”之道德立法原理新论

平等，是人类文明的内在道德立法原理。从蒙昧时期到野蛮阶段，自然主义平等充任着人类生活的普遍准则；国家诞生后，权力主义等级内平等充当着人类文明的内在道德立法原理；进入近代社会，等级平等原理被人人平等原理所取代，由此建立起人类中心主义的现代文明，这种文明制造了人与自然间的不平等。因此，当代人类应重建普遍平等之道德立法的价值尺度原理，这一普遍平等原理的内在本质是普遍利益权利；其存在论原则是自然平等、万物平等、生命平等；其生存论方向是人人存在人权平等和公民生存权利平等。     

Elder Abuse Among Asian Indians: Traditional versus Modern Perspectives

ABSTRACT

This article examines different perspectives of elder abuse in the context of traditional cultural values and the effects of modernization in India and acculturation among Indian immigrants to the US. Case examples illustrate general perspectives. Implications for policy, programs, and practice are discussed.     

浅析“ICESCR”第2.1款“可获得最大化资源”的内涵

现今社会越来越多的人意识到,为推进人权目标的进一步实现,如何界定可获得的资源变得尤为重要,为此,国际社会各界也进行了激烈的讨论.在界定“可获得最大化资源”的定义时,很多人将其限定在经济领域,此种理解存在不足.虽然在实现人权的过程中金融资金和财政等资源是必不可少的,但一国所拥有的自然、教育以及公权力等资源也是推进人权目标实现所必需的,因此,对于可获得资源的多元化理解能够帮助一国更好地实现人权目标.     

Local Rites and Body Politics

The growing awareness of violence against women has resulted in endorsement of various international codes and conventions relating to physical, psychological and sexual violence. Female genital mutilation is one form of violence against women that has polarized people within and across national borders. Here, I explore its popular representation, consider how activism against genital mutilation has been confounded by sex and race and how activism to eradicate the practice is understood by immigrant women in Australia. In doing this, I draw on research conducted with women immigrants to Australia from north Africa (the Sahel areas) and the Middle East, from countries where female genital mutilation is most common. These women are often frustrated by what they see as contradictions in hospital policy and practice that arise in response to their requests to be reinfibulated after childbirth. I tease out the dilemmas that emerge when refusal is contrasted with other permissible practices of the body, such as hymen reconstruction, and given the commodification of bodies and related issues of age and agency, the individual and the community. The perceived discrepancies suggest to these African women that rights discourse is discriminatory, racist and informed by sensational portrayals of traditional practices. I question the ethics, values and rights that inform public discourse about sexual and reproductive rights, when women’s rights and values are so discrepant from our own ideals.     

An Exploratory Study on Attitudes Toward Persons with Disabilities Among U.S. and Japanese Social Work Students

ABSTRACT

This exploratory study was conducted to understand and compare attitudes among social work students in the United States and Japan toward people with disabilities. The Modified Issues in Disabilities Scale (MIDS), designed to measure attitudes toward people with physical disabilities, was implemented on convenient samples of 92 U.S. and 73 Japanese social work students. The findings suggest that social work students in both countries hold moderately positive attitudes. Other similarities as well as differences among the sampled students from the two countries, and their implications to social work education, will be discussed in this paper.     

A Realistic Path to Implementing China’s Budget Law

The core issue for the implementation of modern budget law is to optimize the satisfaction of society’s demand for public goods. The form of implementation mechanism that will best achieve this goal has thus become a major topic in the field of legal research. To go beyond the Anglo-Saxon budget model and construct a realistic path for the implementation of China’s budget law, this issue needs to be explored from the perspective of Chinese citizens in a way that safeguards the fundamental interests of the people and is premised on upholding and improving the People’s Congress system, so as to achieve a balance between internal and external budget allocation relationships. There are three routes to implementing China’s budget law: the political, the social, and the judicial. Under the first, citizens’ political identity interests are represented by deputies who oversee the budgetary powers of administrative bodies through the People’s Congress. Under the second, citizens individually or collectively participate, influence or even decide the allocation of public economic resources through dialogue, negotiation, reasoning and argument with the responsible budgetary agency in the course of the budget’s compilation, examination and approval, execution and supervision. Under the third, the establishment of a system for budgetary litigation allows citizens to participate in and supervise the implementation of the budget law, individually or collectively. This provides judicial security for the law’s implementation. These three realistic implementation routes represent the dialectical unity of concerted institutional effort aimed directly at effective implementation of budget law. Judicial interpretations of budget law implementation indicate the importance and urgency of promoting national governance capacity through reform of the legal systems governing finance and taxation. This explains the significant role of finance and taxation law in national governance.     

现状与当为:我国指定辩护制度的完善

指定辩护制度是以主权在民、正当程序和控辩平衡等理论为依据,其适用范围取决于权利保障与政府公共资源的平衡结果,是社会保障体系的一个组成部分。我国指定辩护制度存在缺乏对公共资源进行量变考量的法律调整、列举范围相对狭窄、指定辩护阶段滞后、对＂无力＂情形照顾不周等问题。因此,应从科学界定＂应当＂指定辩护的适用范围入手,将基于职权和基于申请而产生的指定辩护情形规范化,规定指定辩护制度适用于审查起诉阶段。     

Racialization in a ‘homogenous’ society? The case of Buraku people in Japan

This paper examines the puzzling status of Buraku people in Japan through the methodological prism of historical sociology. I develop a theoretical approach that emphasizes the concept of racialization to illuminate the historical and social construction of Buraku status. I propose this approach as a complementary alternative to prior analytic perspectives. Two major perspectives have dominated research on the status of Buraku people. First, an earlier approach that focused on the legacy of caste discrimination. The second framework focuses on Buraku people as part of the struggle for universal human rights. This article raises three basic, but interrelated questions about the historical development of Buraku status in Japan. Why did the Buraku people become subject to such overt discrimination in local community life, and through government policy? How was the state involved in the social construction of Buraku people? How did the Buraku liberation struggles challenge formalized discrimination?