Culture, Milieu, Phenotype: Articulating Race in Judicial Sense-making Practices

In this contribution, I trace the ways practicing judges articulate, as well as challenge, race. Drawing on an ethnography of everyday practices of adjudication and sentencing in a Dutch, lower Criminal Court, and working with Stuart Hall’s conception of articulation, I show how judges draw on three articulations of race – that of culture, the social milieu, and the phenotype – to make sense of individual cases. Emphasizing how and where these articulations of race serve local, pragmatic goals – of individualized sentencing, or of identification of the suspect – I also pay attention to their local impracticalities, that is, where these registers are challenged or resisted. In so doing, I do not only understand race as multiple but also situate race as a pragmatic and local accomplishment with its own uses and instabilities

Ways of case-making

This book is a testament to a journey through social-scientific and judicial case-making practices. It concentrates, first, on the truths and facts sociologists have produced about legal practices. That is, it is interested in the question of how sociologists have sought to _make their case_ about these judicial practices. It is concerned with the questions of what these social-scientific observers have seen when they cast their eyes on these practices; _how_ they have seen what they have seen, and which _realities_ they have enacted in their approaches. Second, this book concentrates on the ways judges, clerks, administrative personnel and case files in a Dutch criminal court become instrumental in judicial ways of finding out ‘what really happened’ and ways of qualifying these events legally. As such this book is also an attempt to describe these _judicial ways of case-making_. Third, it also aims to account for and reflect on the ways this case - the book you are holding in your hands - is made, and an attempt to work through the necessary methodological and conceptual challenges that accompany the making of such a case. Taken together, these questions produce an account of a close encounter with the ingredients of judicial case-making practices - case files, clerks, judges, courtrooms, routines, and procedures - as well as a story about sociology and the Law, knowledge and judgment, more generally

A brief, patient- and proxy-reported outcome measure in advanced illness: Validity, reliability and responsiveness of the Integrated Palliative care Outcome Scale (IPOS)

Background:Few measures capture the complex symptoms and concerns of those receiving palliative care.Aim:To validate the Integrated Palliative care Outcome Scale, a measure underpinned by extensive psychometric development, by evaluating its validity, reliability and responsiveness to change.Design:Concurrent, cross-cultural validation study of the Integrated Palliative care Outcome Scale – both (1) patient self-report and (2) staff proxy-report versions. We tested construct validity (factor analysis, known-group comparisons, and correlational analysis), reliability (internal consistency, agreement, and test–retest reliability), and responsiveness (through longitudinal evaluation of change).Setting/participants:In all, 376 adults receiving palliative care, and 161 clinicians, from a range of settings in the United Kingdom and GermanyResults:We confirm a three-factor structure (Physical Symptoms, Emotional Symptoms and Communication/Practical Issues). Integrated Palliative care Outcome Scale shows strong ability to distinguish between clinically relevant groups; total Integrated Palliative care Outcome Scale and Integrated Palliative care Outcome Scale subscale scores were higher – reflecting more problems – in those patients with ‘unstable’ or ‘deteriorating’ versus ‘stable’ Phase of Illness (F = 15.1, p  0.60). Longitudinal validity in form of responsiveness to change is good.Conclusion:The Integrated Palliative care Outcome Scale is a valid and reliable outcome measure, both in patient self-report and staff proxy-report versions. It can assess and monitor symptoms and concerns in advanced illness, determine the impact of healthcare interventions, and demonstrate quality of care. This represents a major step forward internationally for palliative care outcome measurement

Remorse in Context(s)

The presence or absence of ‘signs of remorse’ is often understood to have consequences for judges’ sentencing decisions. However, these findings raise the questions, first, how ‘remorse’ is communicated and demonstrated by defendants within court settings, and second, whether remorse plays a uniform role across and between various offence and offender types. Drawing on ethnographic data gathered in a Dutch criminal court, we contextualize remorse to answer these questions. First, we demonstrate that the performance of remorse has to strike a fine balance between potentially competing legal and moral narrative demands. Second, we identify three different typified ‘whole-case narratives’, within which defendants’ performances of remorse assume differential levels of importance. In doing so, we seek to complicate binary portrayals of the role and consequences of remorse, arguing for a more holistic and narrative understanding of sentencing practices