Iwi community justice panels reduce harm from re-offending

ABSTRACT

The effect of iwi community justice panels is assessed using data from seven years of implementation. Panel participants of 1013 are compared to a control group drawn from 73,000 offenders charged with similar offences and propensity-matched by age, gender, ethnicity, offending history and location. The dependent measure is re-harm from offending calculated using the NZ Crime Harm Index. Panel participants did not reduce their rate of offending compared to matched controls. However, there is a significant reduction in harm from post-panel offending, on average by 26.9 ± 21.05 equivalised prison days. The relative reduction is 22.25% of the harm committed by matched controls. Iwi panels are an effective alternative justice resolution. Panel participants are found to re-offend with minor offences and thus any focus on rates of offending would miss the complexity of the restorative justice process that reduces the harm of re-offending.     

Child support wage withholding and father–child contact: parental bargaining and salience effects

Past research on child support finds that father–child contact increases as support payments increase. Enforcement policies such as wage withholding also may affect father–child contact even when the amount of support paid is not affected if they change bargaining power between parents or the salience of fathers’ child support obligations. I develop a model of the salience of child support obligations which predicts that introduction of automatic withholding will reduce contact between noncustodial parents and children independent of payment amount. I then examine whether paying child support via wage withholding affects fathers’ frequency of contact with their children and their provision of in-kind support using instrumental variables and bounded OLS techniques for selection on unobservables. Withholding appears to decrease father–child contact. Withholding effects do not occur when payments are made to government agencies or courts but are present when payments go directly to the mother, consistent with bargaining models. More frequent payment schedules are associated with more contact, consistent with salience effects.     

Erfolgsfaktoren effizienter Konfliktregelung durch Verhandlung im juristischen Kontext

This article deals with success factors for an efficient solving of legal conflicts using negotiations outside of trial courts. Negotiations, outside the court, provide the chance of finding a good win-win solution for all involved parties. A survey, which aims at finding the most common barriers to the resolution of conflicts outside trial courts, is presented in this article. The survey was conducted in a major international law firm. The lawyers were asked to list the most important reasons for negotiations failures. The results reveal a much higher importance of soft factors, especially communication and relationship issues over hard factors like e.g. business reasons. It is therefore concluded that communication and relationship are key success factors for dispute resolution in legal contexts. It is as well stressed that social science methodology and theories are useful tools for improving the understanding and effectiveness of legal negotiations. Two possible interventions for improving dispute resolution effectiveness in legal contexts are outlined.     

Preparing Social Work Students to Practice in Diverse Communities through Difficult Digital Dialogues

This study discusses the qualitative lessons learned from a joint social work difficult dialogue education project undertaken by students from a historically Black college and university (HBCU) and those from a predominantly White institution (PWI). The assignment utilized critical pedagogy as a guiding theory to facilitate difficult dialogues about diversity, privilege, and difference through social media and technology. Qualitative data analyzed from the project points to the usefulness and challenges of using social media and technology in facilitating difficult dialogues as well as the need to train students more purposely in the effective use of social media and technology during their education in order to prepare them for practice.     

The role of human papillomavirus (HPV)-related stigma on HPV vaccine decision-making among college males

ABSTRACT

Objective: The goals of the present study are (1) to identify sociodemographic and psychosocial predictors of human papillomavirus (HPV)-related stigma and (2) to examine the relationship between HPV-related stigma in predicting HPV vaccine decision-making among college males. Participants: Six hundred and eighty college males aged 18–26 from 3 Canadian universities were recruited from September 2013 to April 2014. Methods: Participants completed a self-report survey assessing HPV-related stigma, psychosocial predictors of HPV-related stigma, and HPV vaccine decision-making. The results were analyzed using variance analyses and linear regressions. Results: Ethnicity, province of residence, and perceived severity of HPV were found to significantly influence HPV-related stigma. In addition, HPV-related stigma was higher in those unaware of the availability of the HPV vaccine for males. Conclusions: Promotion efforts should concentrate on Asian minorities and should avoid HPV severity messaging, as these may lead to higher HPV-related stigma, which in turn may act as a barrier to vaccination.     

A test for correlation based on Kendall's tau

A consistent estimator for the variance of Kendall's tau is proposed which allows for testing the hypothesis of no correlation in a bivariate distribution. The null distribution of the test statistic is tabulated under independence, and the properties of the test are discussed.