In the public interest? The role of executive discretion in the release of restricted patients.

This thesis is a sociological analysis of the role of executive discretion in decisions about the release of restricted patients. Located in England and Wales, the thesis is an empirical study of the decision-making process, based on fieldwork conducted from 2005-2006 at the Mental Health Unit of the Home Office, and with non-government actors in the system including legal and clinical practitioners, and mental health and victim organisations Studying the intersection of mental health and criminal justice at the site of the restricted patient system, the mechanisms for preventive detention within mental health policy have implications for the increasing effort to control dangerousness within criminal justice. Using key areas of literature from criminology, sociology and socio-legal studies, the conceptual tools of analysis include contemporary analyses of penal policy, particularly concerns to control risk; legal decision-making: and constructions of public opinion and their effects on criminal justice policy. The thesis argues that, while the role of executive discretion was originally intended to meet the public protection agenda, much of the protection offered is symbolic, based largely on reassurance of public fears. The notion of 'the public' is constructed in opposition to the interests of patients, and through particular groups constitutive of the public, including victims of patients. The dominant conception in how the executive understands the public is as people fearful and at risk. This is a reflection of contemporary criminal justice policy which is increasingly looking for frameworks to control dangerousness in ways that the criminal law, because of its traditional reliance upon conviction and consequent sentencing, cannot offer; and whose objects are not only offenders, but other so-called risky individuals whose perceived threat to the public justifies an increasing range of mechanisms for containment

How do advisory groups contribute to healthy public policy research?

Objectives: This paper reflects on experiences of Australian public health researchers and members of research policy advisory groups (PAGs) in working with PAGs. It considers their benefits and challenges for building researcher and policy actor collaboration and ensuring policy relevance of research. Methods: Four research projects conducted between 2015 and 2020 were selected for analysis. 68 PAG members from Australian federal, state and local governments, NGOs and academics participated in providing feedback. Thematic analysis of participant feedback and researchers’ critical reflections on the effectiveness and capacity of PAGs to support research translation was undertaken. Results: PAGs benefit the research process and can facilitate knowledge translation. PAG membership changes, differing researcher and policy actor agendas, and researchers’ need to balance policy relevance and research independence are challenges when working with PAGs. Strategies to improve the function of health policy research PAGs are identified. Conclusions: The paper suggests a broader adapted approach for gaining the benefits and addressing the challenges of working with PAGs. It opens theoretical and practical discussion of PAGs’ role and how they can increase research translation into policy

ACOSS Budget analysis 2015-16

Summary: The impacts of this Budget must be assessed in light of the previous Budget, which casts a long shadow. While the 2015-16 Budget delivered welcome new investment in early childhood education and care and charted a fairer path on pension reform, the combined effect of the two budgets is to leave people on low incomes to once again bear the burden of Budget restraint. ACOSS estimates that, combined, the two budgets strip approximately $15 billion over four years from basic services and supports affecting low and middle income households, with total projected cuts of$80 billion from health and schools funding to the states over the next decade. Disappointingly, the 2015-16 Budget retains severe cuts to payments and programs from the 2014-15 Budget, in some cases linking savings measures from 2014-15 to new spending measures, and delivers new cuts to child dental and community health programs. At the same time, despite some modest action towards revenue repair, the Budget failed to deliver the structural reform needed to ensure Budget sustainability into the future. The experience of the 2014-15 Budget shows that the alternative approach of eroding the social safety net through cuts to services and supports will not be accepted by the community or the Parliament. Despite a $5.5 billion package for small businesses, the Budget it unlikely to stimulate the kind of productive economic activity necessary to deliver significant jobs growth and fails to invest in skills. However, the investment in new youth transitions and mentoring programs is welcome and will partly address the gap left by the discontinuation of the previous Youth Connections program. Steps to consolidate existing wage subsidy programs to improve program flexibility are also welcome. Regrettably, instead of reversing last year\u27s proposal to make young unemployed people wait six months for income support, the waiting period is reduced to one month and applied to a younger cohort (under 25 years). There is no justification for this measure. The ‘families package’ includes necessary and overdue investment in early childhood education and care and effects structural reform to the current complex payment system. Yet key features leave it unbalanced and unfair, relying on cuts to family payments for low- income families, and providing generous subsidies to families on high incomes. Combined, the two budgets represent a$9 billion reduction in spending on family payments over the forward estimates of which approximately $6 billion in savings will adversely affect low-income households. Our analysis suggests that low-income and disadvantaged families will be significantly worse off if the 2014-15 and 15-16 Budget measures pass, notwithstanding the boost the child care investment discussed below. The impacts of payment rate freezes will be felt over time. In 2015-16, the impacts of restricting the Part B payment to families with children under 6 years will mean that a single parent with one 8 year old child stands to lose$48.50 per week and a single parent with one 12 year old child stands to lose $62.50 per week due to the loss of FTB Part B and end of year supplements. Many children in low-income families will also lose 12 hours a week of early childhood education that helps improve their life chances. Further, the changes to the Paid Parental Leave scheme announced two days before the Budget will leave many families worse off and further behind their overseas counterparts and the 26 week minimum leave period recommended to support maternal-child bonding and breastfeeding. The reforms to the pension assets and income tests present a welcome change in direction and a fairer approach to securing the future of the retirement incomes system. We now need a similar approach to superannuation reform, which is even more important in building a strong and durable retirement income system. The 2015-16 Budget failed to reverse the funding cuts to vital policy, advocacy and service delivery across social services, health and legal assistance and in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Disappointingly, it delivered new cuts to child dental health programs, community health programs and remote housing as well as a further round of cuts to the public service, with ‘Smaller Government’ measures across departments. This raises concerns about the capacity of the bureaucracy to provide an adequate standard of service to members of the community, especially where there is a direct interface with the community, and its capacity to provide sound policy advice to the Government. Finally and perhaps most importantly is the story of what was missing from the 2015-16 Budget. Three days before the Budget was delivered, the Councils of Social Service (COSS) Network released a report showing that 83% of people relying on the Newstart payment or Youth Allowance do not consider it to be enough to live on with nearly half of those surveyed having unsustainable levels of personal debt, and more than a third forced to skip dental and medical appointments or forego treatments as they cannot afford to pay for them. Nearly one in five reported missing meals in an effort to make ends meet. The Budget failed to take steps to invest in affordable housing programs or to address serious gaps in the social safety net including: the low rate of allowance payments; the inadequate indexation of allowances and family payments (which are still indexed to the CPI only); and the low rate of Commonwealth Rent Assistance, which has failed to keep pace with rent inflation. This Budget should have begun the work to safeguard the social safety net into the future, by trimming unfair tax concessions for superannuation and reforming negative gearing and capital gains tax breaks. Tax reform must be the next priority for responsible, fair and measured action

Ms. Apple is Missing!

Ms. Apple is Missing: The Case of the Chocolate Pudding Catastrophe! When your and the res of the students arrive to school, you find out that your teacher is missing! You, along with the rest of the students, need to try to figure out where Ms. Apple is. Make sure to make the right choices or your teacher will never be found!https://digitalcommons.snc.edu/snc_kids_books/1004/thumbnail.jp

Disability at the periphery: legal theory, disability and criminal law

© 2015 Griffith University. This special issue of the Griffith Law Review is dedicated to an examination of the relationships and intersections between disability, criminal law and legal theory. Despite the centrality of disability to the doctrines, operation and reform of criminal law, disability continues to inhabit a marginal location in legal theoretical engagement with criminal law. This special issue proceeds from a contestation of disability as an individual, medical condition and instead explores disability's social, political and cultural contexts. This kind of approach directs critical attention to questioning many aspects of the relationships between disability and criminal law which have otherwise been taken for granted or overlooked in legal scholarship. These aspects include the differential treatment of people with disability by criminal law, the impact of core legal concepts such as capacity on criminal legal treatment of people with disability, and the role of disability in ordering and legitimising criminal law. It is hoped that the special issue will contribute to the shifting of disability from its peripheral location in legal theoretical scholarship much more to the centre of critical and political engagement with criminal law