Creating a System for All Parents: Rethinking Procedural and Evidentiary Rules in Proceedings with Self-Represented Litigants

Through qualitative interviews undertaken with ten judges at the Superior Court of Québec, this study considers the procedural and evidentiary challenges faced by self-represented litigants in family law matters. Subsequently, this paper offers solutions to the problems identified. The goal of this paper is to provide legal participants with concrete techniques to facilitate proceedings with SRLs that uphold their duty of impartiality and duty of assistance. While this article will likely be useful for judges who engage with SRLs daily, it will also be of interest to those working on issues relating to access to justice, SRLs, as well as procedural and evidentiary law reform. This paper urges its readers to think critically about our legal system. Who has our legal system been created for, yet who must actually use it? Grâce à des d’entrevues qualitatives menées auprès de dix juges de la Cour supérieure du Québec, nous examinons dans le présent article les défis en matière de procédure et de preuve auxquels font face les justiciables qui ne sont pas représentés par un avocat dans les affaires de droit de la famille. Ensuite, nous proposons des solutions aux problèmes identifiés. L’objectif de cet article est de fournir aux intervenants juridiques des techniques concrètes pour faciliter les procédures avec les justiciables sans avocat tout en respectant leur devoir d’impartialité et leur devoir d’assistance. Bien que cet article soit susceptible d’être utile aux juges qui travaillent quotidiennement avec des justiciables non représentés par un avocat, il intéressera également ceux qui travaillent sur des questions liées à l’accès à la justice, aux justiciables sans avocat, ainsi qu’à la réforme du droit en matière de procédure et de preuve. Dans l’article, nous incitons les lecteurs à réfléchir de manière critique à notre système juridique. Pour qui notre système juridique a-t-il été créé, et qui doit réellement l’utiliser

The reporting experiences and support needs of victims of online fraud

Although fraud has been practiced throughout history, the advent of the internet has created new and effective avenues for targeting potential victims. Victims of online fraud experience substantial financial and other harms, resulting in annual losses in Australia of more than $2b, significant organisational disruption and devastating human suffering. Prior research in this area has generally been conducted through victim surveys and the analysis of official administrative datasets, but little research has involved speaking with victims of online fraud about their experiences. This paper presents the results of in-depth interviews conducted with a sample of 80 individuals from across Australia who lodged complaints of online fraud involving losses of$10,000 or more over the preceding four years. Their stories illustrate the financial impact of fraud and the emotional, psychological, interpersonal and physical impacts of their victimisation. They also document the barriers they faced in reporting these crimes. The paper concludes by identifying the support needs of victims of online fraud. Online fraud poses a substantial threat to the financial and overall wellbeing of Australians. An estimated $8m to$10m is sent overseas every month by Australians as a result of dishonest online invitations (Bradley 2013). The latest report of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC 2015) indicates that Australians reported the loss of almost $82m to consumer fraud in 2014; this estimate is based only on reports made to the ACCC and excludes reports made to other organisations and the many cases that are not officially reported. The Australian Institute of Criminology estimates fraud costs Australian victims in excess of$6b a year, and online fraud is responsible for a considerable proportion of this amount (Smith, Jorna, Sweeney & Fuller 2014). The present study explores the nature of these harms, victims’ experiences of reporting to authorities, how victims deal with their fraud victimisation and what support they require to do so. Fraud involves tricking a victim into providing something of value to an offender such as money, personal details, or explicit images. The technological advances of recent years have seen opportunities and mechanisms for perpetrating fraud proliferate. The internet is one of the principal tools for committing consumer or personal fraud. It provides an efficient means of contacting potential victims, a rich source of personal information and a practical way of securing payments. Consequently, online fraud has developed considerably over the past two decades. Online fraud victimisation can be defined as ‘the experience of an individual who has responded via the internet to a dishonest invitation, request, notification or offer by providing personal information or money [which] has led to the suffering of a financial or non-financial loss or impact of some kind’ (Cross, Smith & Richards 2014:1)

Transition programs used to bridge incoming ninth grade at-risk students

The purpose of this study was to investigate transitional programs effectiveness for increasing incoming ninth grade student's academics, behavior, and grade promotion in light of effective transitional program components. This study used literature from three programs to identify successful components of transitional programs. The researcher then assessed their level of effectiveness through an analysis of 15 transitional programs. Moreover, the results showed that a successful transition program may or may not use all of the best practices named from literature. However it is clear that the most effective programs pay attention on to activities that increase academic skills, work to improve student behavior, and focus on student's promotion from grade to grade

Black Durham Residents' Fight to Regain their Power through Rejecting the Trickery of the Blue Devil

In the late 19th century, a group of Black newly freedmen purchased a plot of land in Durham, North Carolina that would be later known as the Hayti District. Influential Black leaders identified this community as the nation's Black Mecca and soon became the home of thousands of Black residents and 300 Black owned-businesses (Brown, 2008). Unfortunately, in the 1950s, the `Black Mecca' experienced a sudden transformation when federal and state governments financed initiatives that ironically destroyed the Black community. In essence, Durham Blacks were victims of the mythological creature, the Blue Devil; a spirit that was known to possess their ancestors hundreds of years earlier. From the first slave ship exiting the African coast, to the last, there were many reports of Africans who caught the Blue Devil in route to the New World. During the Atlanta slave trade, captains, ship crewmembers and missionaries characterized the Blue Devil as a mythological creature that forced African slaves into a depressed state and thus persuaded them to commit suicide. Unfortunately, it took the spoken words from former slaves to uncover that the Blue Devil was, in reality, the reaction to being ripped away from their homeland and traveling to an uncertain future. The purpose of this study is to present the argument that over a hundred years later there is a re-emergence of the essence of the Blue Devil in Durham's Black community due, in part, to urban renewal and school desegregation. Using qualitative methods, the study presented the voices of Black working and elite/middle class Durham residents, to understand to what extent they interpret the reasons behind the destruction of the Hayti District as another reemergence of the Blue Devil. This study also examines the participant's perceptions on present and future standings of Durham's Black youth. The study also revealed how participants viewed school desegregation and Hayti's urban renewal project differently based on their social class. In contrast, both working and elite/middle class participants articulated the downfall of the Hayti District and school desegregation as another reemergence of the mythological creature, the Blue Devil. In addition to, all participants agreed that Durham's Black youth were the current victims of the Blue Devil. However, when asked how these students could escape the mythological creature, it was only the participants from the elite class who could articulate a process. Implications suggest that individuals from different social classes may have varied perspectives. In relation to pedagogy, these multiple perspectives need to be taken into account when teaching students from an array of social class backgrounds. In order equally support students; educators will need to implement elements of critical reality pedagogy.Doctor of Philosoph

The natural setting of Caution Bay: climate, landforms, biota, and environmental zones

In this chapter, we review the present and past environment of Caution Bay set in a broader geographical context, including both terrestrial and marine habitats. Our primary objective is to sketch the general canvas upon which the past 6,000 or so years of local human presence, as represented by the Caution Bay archaeological record, played out. A secondary objective is to document the range of contemporary landforms and explore the spatial distribution and ecological dynamics of the various plant and animal communities that still occupy the present landscape, or did so at the time when Europeans first arrived in the 1870s. Knowledge of the contemporary landscape and its resources represents the starting point for inferring continuities and changes in ways of life for the region's past inhabitants as these are tracked back from the present to the mid-Holocene, and ultimately for understanding the choices people made as they balanced various primary extractive and commercial activities to maintain cultural practices, adopt and develop new ones, survive and prosper. Relationships between people and locales at Caution Bay were, and continue to be, dynamic, with people playing a major role in shaping both the physical and biological landscape, just as the landscape and its resources have influenced the course of human history in this area

Emerging out of Lapita at Caution Bay

[Extract] The discovery in 2010 of stratified Lapita assemblages at Caution Bay near Port Moresby, south coast of mainland Papua New Guinea (PNG) (David et al. 2011; McNiven et al. 2011), brought to the fore a series of important questions (Richards et al. 2016), many of which also apply to other parts of Island Melanesia where Lapita sites have been known for many decades. Unlike other parts of Melanesia, however, at Caution Bay some of the Lapita sites also have pre-Lapita horizons. A number are culturally very rich. At Caution Bay, where the oldest confirmed Lapita finds date to no earlier than c. 2900 cal BP (McNiven et al. 2012a), the major questions do not concern the earliest expressions of Lapita around 3300–3400 cal BP. Rather, here we are concerned more with identifying how assemblages associated with the Lapita cultural complex arrived and transformed along the south coast, after a presence in coastal and island regions to the northeast over the previous 400 years. These concerns contain both spatial and temporal elements: how and when, as a prelude to why, particular cultural traits continued and changed across Caution Bay. Tanamu 1 is the first of 122 archaeological sites excavated in Caution Bay upon which we will report. As a site, it represents the ideal entry point, as being a coastal site which contains pre-Lapita, Lapita and post-Lapita horizons it encapsulates many of the signatures, trends and transformations seen across the >5000 year Caution Bay sequence at large. Of special note in the wider context of Lapita archaeology, the presence of rich pre-Lapita horizons is what makes Caution Bay so important both in and of itself and for the Lapita story

Perceptions about prenatal care: views of urban vulnerable groups

BACKGROUND: In the United States, infant mortality rates remain more than twice as high for African Americans as compared to other racial groups. Lack of adherence to prenatal care schedules in vulnerable, hard to reach, urban, poor women is associated with high infant mortality, particularly for women who abuse substances, are homeless, or live in communities having high poverty and high infant mortality. This issue is of concern to the women, their partners, and members of their communities. Because they are not part of the system, these womens' views are often not included in other studies. METHODS: This qualitative study used focus groups with four distinct categories of people, to collect observations about prenatal care from various perspectives. The 169 subjects included homeless women; women with current or history of substance abuse; significant others of homeless women; and residents of a community with high infant mortality and poverty indices, and low incidence of adequate prenatal care. A process of coding and recoding using Ethnograph and counting ensured reliability and validity of the process of theme identification. RESULTS: Barriers and motivators to prenatal care were identified in focus groups. Pervasive issues identified were drug lifestyle, negative attitudes of health care providers and staff, and non-inclusion of male partners in the prenatal experience. CONCLUSIONS: Designing prenatal care relevant to vulnerable women in urban communities takes creativity, thoughtfulness, and sensitivity. System changes recommended include increased attention to substance abuse treatment/prenatal care interaction, focus on provider/staff attitudes, and commitment to inclusion of male partners

Tanamu 1: A 5000 year sequence from Caution Bay

[Extract] Archaeological sites across Caution Bay often contain distinctive artefactual horizons of varying ages, making it possible to investigate cultural trends at a range of spatial and temporal scales over extended periods of time. Tanamu 1 is a site of particular interest because of its three distinct major occupation horizons that start with the pre-ceramic, followed by Lapita, and end with post-Lapita. The aim of this chapter is to report details of the site, focusing on its chronostratigraphy, so that its various cultural materials (reported in detail in Chapters 3–7) can be examined in context

A Holocene record of savanna vegetation dynamics in southern lowland Papua New Guinea

The southern lowlands of Papua New Guinea (PNG) are biogeographically distinct. Vast tracts of savanna vegetation occur there and yet most palaeoecological studies have focused on highlands and/or forest environments. Greater focus on long-term lowland environments provides a rare opportunity to understand and promote the significance of local and regional savannas, ultimately allowing non-forested and forested ecosystem dynamics to be compared. This paper examines palaeoecological and archaeological data from a lowland open savanna site situated on the south-central PNG coastline. The methods used incorporate pollen and micro-charcoal analyses, artefact recovery and sediment descriptions. We conclude with an environmental model of sedimentation and vegetation change for the past c. 5,800 years, revealing a mid to late Holocene savanna interchange between herbaceous and woody plant growth, with fluctuating fire occurrence increasing toward the present day. Increased silt deposition and modified regional hydrology are also recorded. Environmental changes correspond in timing with the start of permanent settlements and human use of fire. In particular, landscape burning for hunting and gardens for agriculture have helped create the open ecosystem still evident today