A Revisionist History of Intermediate Treatment

Correspondence to John Pratt, Department of Social Policy and Social Work, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zeland. Summary This paper examines and challenges the view that intermediatetreatment for young offenders in England and Wales has alwaysbeen intended as an alternative to custody provision. It arguesthat its origin and subsequent development have to be understoodwithin what was the prevailing welfare discourse at the timeof the 1969 Children and Young Persons Act. It traces some ofthe processes involved in the change that has since taken place,characterized by a move from ‘welfare’ to ‘justice’talk, and suggests that it was only then that the conceptualspace for intermediate treatment to operate as an alternativeto custody was established. Finally, it examines some of thecritical issues raised by these changes in policy and discourse.     

THE EFFICACY OF STATE MANDATED MINIMUM QUALITY CERTIFICATION: THE CASE OF USED VEHICLES

This paper investigates whether the quality certification required by certain state used vehicle disclosure laws has been effective. Metzger concluded from a theoretical investigation of non-market responses to the lemons problem, that such laws may or may not be effective. We have been unable to find evidence that the currently mandated disclosure requirements in Wisconsin (known defects provision) and Iowa (safety certification) are effective in increasing the number of good quality vehicles traded in those used markets. These disclosure requirements do not seem to decrease a prospective buyer's risk of purchasing a lemon.     

Stress and Opportunity in the Role of the Prison Welfare Officer

Summary The role of social workers within the penal system has beenthe subject of much discussion and heart-searching by probationofficers and others since the probation service took on responsibilityfor rilling prison welfare posts in 1966. Many officers havebeen reluctant to undertake secondment as Prison Welfare Officersbecause of the difficulties of applying their social work trainingand experience in a penal setting and their fears of absorptioninto a punishment-oriented culture. This article explores thenature of the stresses involved in the practice of social workin this setting, and argues the case for the positive contributionthat social workers can make, at present often ignored in discussingthe stress and conflict inherent in the situation. Stress, itis argued, may be a necessary function of effective work inthis context, and the attempt to reduce it by giving the PWOa more detailed role definition and a clearer position withinthe prison hierarchy is premature. The role is best definedas it emerges from the experience of good practitioners withinthe setting, a concept which has implications for the choiceof probation officers for this type of work and for their approach.They should be able to see and utilize the opportunities foreffective social work, and incorporate available research ina flexible and imaginative methodology     

Juvenile Justice, Social Work and Social Control. The Need for Positive Thinking

Summary This paper has a two-fold purpose. Firstly, it suggests thatan examination of current trends in the juvenile justice systemof England and Wales sustains the viewpoint that there has been,during the last decade, a considerable increase in the degreeof surveillance and coercion of large sections of the youthpopulation. Secondly, it attempts to outline a positive rolefor social work professionals working in the juvenile justicesystem which may help to counter these tendencies and reconceptualisegeneral thinking on problems of youth crime and juvenile justicepenology.     

Sending Granny to Chiang Mai: debating global outsourcing of care for the elderly

This article ties in with existing discussions on global care chains, family separation and the devaluation of social‐reproductive work. We explore the new trend of outsourcing care for the elderly to countries with lower wages. We base our analysis on the debate in the German press and supplement it with insights from ethnographic field observations in two care homes in Thailand. We identify a discourse of abandonment, which shows how outsourcing the care of the elderly unsettles the privilege of sedentarism that is often taken for granted in the Global North. Furthermore, the newspaper articles tend to villainize people who seek care for their loved ones abroad. We argue that both discourses foster a neoliberal rationale of individualized responsibility and obfuscate the deep systemic roots of the care crisis in the Global North. However, by extending the discussion on outsourcing care for the elderly beyond the dominant media discourses, we envisage a rich potential for provoking political debate on the revaluation of care.     

Increasing Risk: Some Direct Constructions

This article extends the classic RothschildNStiglitz characterization of comparative risk ("increasing risk") in two directions. By adopting a more general definition of "mean preserving spread" (MPS), it provides a direct construction of a sequence of MPS's linking any pair of distributions that are ranked in terms of comparative risk. It also provides a direct, explicit construction of a zero-conditional-mean "noise" variable for any such pair of distributions. Both results are extended to the case of second order stochastic dominance.