Getting by or getting rich? The formal, informal and criminal economy in a globalized world

The informal economy includes all those forms of economic and social relationships which escape state regulation. The book explores how people make choices and practice informality according to the available opportunities. Using empirical work, authors from across Europe look at different illegal or informal activities. They include legal and illegal markets, such as the selling of counterfeited goods and drugs, fruit picking, infrastructure construction, illegal wildlife and the illegal tropical timber trade, work in the hotel and catering sector, prostitution, stripping and street vending. The book aims to create a nuanced and empirically based approach, in which the authors undertake critical analyses on the several ways informality operates within different societies and countries. It includes both economic analyses and detailed consideration of the social circumstances in different cities and countries. It shows how formal and informal work, legal and illegal trading, more often than not, overlap and are undistinguishable. It explores what the benefits (and disadvantages) are for workers in the informal economy – do they prosper, or is this survival work? This emphasis on topical empirical foundations matters in rapidly changing economic times, with new challenges for workers. In fact, it is in moments like these that the old certainties of those who are likely to choose what path to follow, become less clear. It is also then that the dividing lines between formal, informal and criminal start to become less visible in organisations and companies. Does a time of economic turmoil make it easier to slip from one to the other? Does the economic crisis ‘force’ people to make other choices than before? And what is the impact on individuals, organisations and regulators? Topics covered in this book are informal economy, choice of work, economic crisis, income portfolio, empirical research, European outlook, phenomena: street vending, prostitution, stripping, fruit picking, hotel, restaurant and catering sector, social fraud, illegal wildlife, illegal tropical timber trade

Punitive restoration and restorative justice.

Criminal justice policy faces the twin challenges of improving our crime reduction efforts while increasing public confidence. These challenges are exacerbated by the fact that at least some measures popular with the public are counterproductive to greater crime reduction. How to achieve greater crime reduction without sacrificing public confidence? While restorative justice approaches offer a promising alternative to traditional sentencing with the potential to achieve these goals, they suffer from several serious obstacles, not least their relatively limited applicability, flexibility, and public support. Punitive restoration is a new and distinctive idea about restorative justice modeled on an important principle of stakeholding, which states that those who have a stake in penal outcomes should have a say about them. Punitive restoration is restorative insofar as it aims to achieve the restoration of rights infringed or threatened by criminal offences. Punitive restoration is punitive insofar as the available options for this agreement are more punitive than found in most restorative justice approaches, such as the option of some form of hard treatment. Punitive restoration sheds new light on how we may meet the twin challenges of improving our efforts to reduce reoffending without sacrificing public confidence, demonstrating how restorative practices can be embedded deeper within the criminal justice system

The genetic architecture of the human cerebral cortex

The cerebral cortex underlies our complex cognitive capabilities, yet little is known about the specific genetic loci that influence human cortical structure. To identify genetic variants that affect cortical structure, we conducted a genome-wide association meta-analysis of brain magnetic resonance imaging data from 51,665 individuals. We analyzed the surface area and average thickness of the whole cortex and 34 regions with known functional specializations. We identified 199 significant loci and found significant enrichment for loci influencing total surface area within regulatory elements that are active during prenatal cortical development, supporting the radial unit hypothesis. Loci that affect regional surface area cluster near genes in Wnt signaling pathways, which influence progenitor expansion and areal identity. Variation in cortical structure is genetically correlated with cognitive function, Parkinson's disease, insomnia, depression, neuroticism, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

Behaviour and personality in delinquent children

The thesis is concerned with aspects of personality that may distinguish those children from a high delinquency area who become delinquent from those who do not. In Chapter 1 the limitations this approach places on the selection of the area and the sample to be studied are discussed. The two main methods of measuring criminality, convictions and self-report delinquency, are compared as to their usefulness for the study. The theoretical background for the choice of the personality variables to be considered is given. Two of these, susceptibility to reward and susceptibility to punishment, derive from operant conditioning tasks in which the subject presses a lever to obtain reward. Tests possibly measuring susceptibility to reward were stimulus generalization (from an intradimensional discrimination) and performance under differential reinforcement of low rates of response. In children, tests of susceptibility to punishment must be tests of susceptibility to frustrative nonreward (considered equivalent to punishment in its behavioural effects). In the present study the ones used were behavioural contrast on both extradimensional and intradimensional discriminations and a measure of peak shift. Questionnaire measures of extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism were also used. The main hypothesis of the present study is that delinquents should be more susceptible to reward and less susceptible to punishment than nondelinquents. This may be tested in three ways: The first is to administer tests of susceptibility to reward and to purishment (the behavioural measures), and tests of delinquency (self-report delinquency) and to correlate the results of the two. The second is to correlate the scores of the children on tests of susceptibility to reward and to punishment and on personality questionnaires. The prediction (from Gray, 1973) is that susceptibility to reward should be correlated with extraversion and neuroticism and susceptibility to punishment with introversion and neuroticism. The third is to correlate delinquency scores with personality questionnaire scores, with the prediction that delinquents should be more extravert but not more neurotic than nondelinquents. All three ways are used in the present study. The total sample of the present study consisted of 54 school boys aged 11.1 to 12.9 years at the time of first testing, from a working-class housing estate. They were first given the personality questionnaires and delinquency tests (test administration). 31 boys (the behavioural sample) were selected from the total sample so that a full range of delinquency scores was obtained and given the behavioural tests of susceptibility to reward and to punishment. After this, the total sample was then given the personality questionnaires and delinquency tests again (retest administration). A study performed by Dr. J.P. Eushton on younger children aged 7 to 11 years was designed to run parallel with the present study. Comparisons are made with this study and with the previous work of Nicholson (1972) and de Wit (unpublished: described in Appendix C) throughout the thesis. Chapter 2 is concerned with the description of the personality questionnaires used and their reliability and intercorrelations. The questionnaires used were the Junior Eysenck Personality Inventory (JEPI), the High School Personality Questionnaire (HSPQ), the Junior Personality Questionnaire (JPQ) and a Teacher's Rating Scale (TRS: Nicholson, 1972), in which the form teachers of the boys rated the boys in their year. These give measures of extraversion, neuroticism, psychoticism and tendency to fake. Chapter 3 is concerned with the measurement of delinquency by the self-report method. A review of the rationale "behind the method and the various methodological problems encountered is given. It is also shown that delinquency is heterogeneous so that it is necessary to measure participation in various aspects of crime, for example, group versus solitary crime. The self-report interview used in the present study is described. This produces a measure of number of different types of crime committed and measures of involvement in group crime, solitary crime, self-suggested crime and other-suggested crime. The interview was shown to have high test-retest reliability and internal consistency. Principle components analysis produced a large first component, loading on all the delinquency items. Inconsistent responders between the test and retest administration of the interview were identified and inconsistent responding shown to relate positively to the JPQ, lie scale and negatively to number of crimes admitted. The third way of testing the main hypothesis, the correlations between personality and crime, is examined in Chapter 4. A review of the studies used to test Eysenck's theory of the relationship between personality and crime is given. Significant positive correlations of number of delinquent acts admitted with both extraversion and psychoticism were found. No such correlations were found with neuroticism. The hypotheses of Eysenck (1974) and Burgess (1972a) that the extravert neurotic quadrant should contain more criminals than other quadrants in the Eysenckian two-dimensional space was not supported. The behavioural measures and their correlations with the personality questionnaire scores and crime scores (the first and second ways of testing the main hypothesis) are discussed in Chapters 5 to 8. Chapter 5 deals with the phenomenon of behavioural contrast and its use to measure susceptibility to frustrative nonreward. A review of the animal and human literature is given, in which it is concluded that the frustration theory of behavioural contrast is the best currently available. The extra-dimensional and intradimensional discriminations of the present study are then described, together with possible controls for the behavioural contrast shown. Measures of the time taken to reach the baseline criterion, the time taken to be able to describe the discrimination conditions and the time then required to perform the discrimination to criterion were also used. The correlations with introversion and neuroticism found by Nicholson (1972) were not replicated with all the personality measures used in the present study. Chapter 6 discusses the phenomena occumng in the generalization test given after the intradimensional discrimination; peak shift, mean shift and stimulus generalization. A review of the animal and human literature on these phenomena is given. Mean shift, although shown by 18 out of 24 boys tested, was not found to be correlated with either introversion or neuroticism as found by Nicholson (1972). Stimulus generalization, however, did show some correlations with extraversion and neuroticism. Chapter 7 is concerned with the differential reinforcement of low rates of response tasks. A review of these tasks in am'mis and humans with regard to the use of a series of progressively more difficult tasks in measuring susceptibility to reward is given. The results of the present studies tend to indicate that the first task in the series correlates with developmental measures such as age, whereas the second and third tasks correlate more with the personality measures, notably extraversion and neuroticism. The third task (and, in the present study, the second task) may hence be used as a measure of susceptibility to reward. Chapter 8 discusses the correlations between all the measures taken. The two measures of susceptibility to reward show some moderate positive correlations. There is independence for the most part between the measures of susceptibility to reward and susceptibility to frustrative nonreward, but the measures of susceptibility to frustrative nonreward, contrary to the hypothesis of Terrace (1966a) are also independent of each other. It is, however, suggested that the measures of frustrative nonreward reflect different aspects of frustration i.e. the directive and energizing aspects. The main hypothesis is considered to be very much more complex than originally specified, both with regard to the definition of criminality and that of susceptibility to reward and to frustrative nonreward.</p

Victims at court: necessary accessories or centre stage?

An examination into the progress made by victims of crime in achieving legal and cultural recognition in the criminal trial setting of English court

Herstelbemiddeling in twee gevangenissen: postitieve effecten op stoppen met misdaad?

Herstelrecht wordt op vele manieren in verschillende landen toegepast en wordt mede hierom wel een ‘parapluconcept’ genoemd (Shapland, Robinson & Sorsby, 2011). In dit artikel richten we ons op herstelbemiddeling of slachtoffer-dader‐ bemiddeling waarbij slachtoffer, dader en hun respectievelijke ondersteunende derden met elkaar communiceren, in een gezamenlijk gesprek of via de bemidde- laar