Extending the theory of Owicki and Gries with a logic of progress

This paper describes a logic of progress for concurrent programs. The logic is based on that of UNITY, molded to fit a sequential programming model. Integration of the two is achieved by using auxiliary variables in a systematic way that incorporates program counters into the program text. The rules for progress in UNITY are then modified to suit this new system. This modification is however subtle enough to allow the theory of Owicki and Gries to be used without change

Foot Soldiers for Social Justice: Realities, Relationships, and Resilience

Social justice is embraced as a central mission of social work, yet how the profession defines social justice lacks a clear and common understanding. This qualitative study explored social justice as perceived and practiced by social workers in diverse practice settings in mostly rural areas, small towns, and small cities. Their experiences illustrate ways that social workers engage and advocate for their clients with the goal of improving access to tangible and intangible resources through both conventional and unconventional means. The authors provide insight into the resilience that bolsters social workers’ efforts as they navigate between practice ideals and realities

Children, family and the state : revisiting public and private realms

The state is often viewed as part of the impersonal public sphere in opposition to the private family as a locus of warmth and intimacy. In recent years this modernist dichotomy has been challenged by theoretical and institutional trends which have altered the relationship between state and family. This paper explores changes to both elements of the dichotomy that challenge this relationship: a more fragmented family structure and more individualised and networked support for children. It will also examine two new elements that further disrupt any clear mapping between state/family and public/private dichotomies: the third party role of the child in family/state affairs and children's application of virtual technology that locates the private within new cultural and social spaces. The paper concludes by examining the rise of the 'individual child' hitherto hidden within the family/state dichotomy and the implications this has for intergenerational relations at personal and institutional levels

Who are these youths? Language in the service of policy

In the 1990s policy relating to children and young people who offend developed as a result of the interplay of political imperatives and populist demands. The ‘responsibilisation’ of young offenders and the ‘no excuses’ culture of youth justice have been ‘marketed’ through a discourse which evidences linguistic changes. This article focuses on one particular area of policy change, that relating to the prosecutorial decision, to show how particular images of children were both reflected and constructed through a changing selection of words to describe the non-adult suspect and offender. In such minutiae of discourse can be found not only the signifiers of public attitudinal and policy change but also the means by which undesirable policy developments can be challenged

Excavating youth justice reform: historical mapping and speculative prospects

This article analytically excavates youth justice reform (in England and Wales) by situating it in historical context, critically reviewing the competing rationales that underpin it and exploring the overarching social, economic, and political conditions within which it is framed. It advances an argument that the foundations of a recognisably modern youth justice system had been laid by the opening decade of the 20th Century and that youth justice reform in the post‐Second World War period has broadly been structured over four key phases. The core contention is that historical mapping facilitates an understanding of the unreconciled rationales and incoherent nature of youth justice reform to date, while also providing a speculative sense of future prospects

Blame and culpability in children's narratives of child sexual abuse

Though child sexual abuse (CSA) is a global problem, victims are treated differently across the world. In the UK, there is a dominant assumption that victims are passive, which risks further marginalising those who do not identify themselves in line with prominent understanding of ‘vulnerability’. Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork and in‐depth interviews, this paper shares the perspectives of girls who were placed in secure accommodation for their own protection, owing to professional concerns of CSA. Despite their experiences being reported almost identically in their files, this sensitive research shows that girls understood and narrated their journeys in strikingly different ways. Each shared complex relationships with their abuser and admitted to absconding with them on multiple occasions. Despite disparate narratives, the girls unanimously rejected being labelled as ‘vulnerable’ and instead felt that they were responsible for the abuse that they had endured. I argue that limited understanding of CSA problematises girls who claim sexual agency, meaning that they are consequently forced to shoulder responsibility for their own exploitation. By sharing the voices of those who are usually unheard, this paper concludes by calling for a radical reframing of the way that victims are treated, both by professionals working with them and by policies written about them

Professional Perspectives of Youth Justice Policy Implementation:Contextual and Coalface Challenges

© 2020 The Authors. The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice published by Howard League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd This article offers a multilayered analysis of the subjective perspectives and experiences of key youth justice stakeholders; exploring the inherent dynamism, contradiction, non-linearity, and contentiousness of youth justice policy implementation. We interrogate how professionals make sense and meaning of policy in the real world and how professional perspectives drive and shape their contributions to policy implementation nationally and locally. Contemporaneously, these analyses enable us to critically examine the caricatures, stereotypes, and assumptions that can (mis)inform common constructions, representations, and understandings of youth justice policy trajectories, including those relating to contextual stability, conceptual clarity, robust evidence bases, and purported foundations in stakeholder consensus

Governing Young People: coherence and contradiction in contemporary youth justice

This article explores the burgeoning literature on modes and layers of governance and applies it to the complex of contemporary youth justice reform. Globalized neo-liberal processes of responsibilization and risk management coupled with traditional neo-conservative authoritarian strategies have dominated the political landscape. However, they also have to work alongside or within ‘new’ conceptions of social inclusion, partnership, restoration and moralization. These apparently contradictory strategies open up the possibility of multiple localized translations rather than an often assumed dominance of a uniform ‘culture of control’. The ensuing hybridity also suggests that any coherence within contemporary youth justice relies on continual negotiations between opposing, yet overlapping, discursive practices

Absence of Bacteria Permits Fungal Gut-To-Brain Translocation and Invasion in Germfree Mice but Ageing Alone Does Not Drive Pathobiont Expansion in Conventionally Raised Mice

Age-associated changes in the structure of the intestinal microbiome and in its interaction with the brain via the gut-brain axis are increasingly being implicated in neurological and neurodegenerative diseases. Intestinal microbial dysbiosis and translocation of microbes and microbial products including fungal species into the brain have been implicated in the development of dementias such as Alzheimer’s disease. Using germ-free mice, we investigated if the fungal gut commensal, Candida albicans, an opportunistic pathogen in humans, can traverse the gastrointestinal barrier and disseminate to brain tissue and whether ageing impacts on the gut mycobiome as a pre-disposing factor in fungal brain infection. C. albicans was detected in different regions of the brain of colonised germ-free mice in both yeast and hyphal cell forms, often in close association with activated (Iba-1+) microglial cells. Using high-throughput ITS1 amplicon sequencing to characterise the faecal gut fungal composition of aged and young SPF mice, we identified several putative gut commensal fungal species with pathobiont potential although their abundance was not significantly different between young and aged mice. Collectively, these results suggest that although some fungal species can travel from the gut to brain where they can induce an inflammatory response, ageing alone is not correlated with significant changes in gut mycobiota composition which could predispose to these events. These results are consistent with a scenario in which significant disruptions to the gut microbiota or intestinal barrier, beyond those which occur with natural ageing, are required to allow fungal escape and brain infection