Despite the volumes that have been written on America's correctional crisis – the peerless incarceration rate, disproportionate confinement of minority group members and…
Abstract
Despite the volumes that have been written on America's correctional crisis – the peerless incarceration rate, disproportionate confinement of minority group members and democratically untenable policies of disenfranchisement of people with felony convictions – criminal justice policy has changed little within the past decade or more. An important voice has been left out of these correctional policy formulations – that of prisoners. This paper proposes convict labor unions as one way to address this issue. It utilizes the United States Supreme Court majority's arguments in Jones v. North Carolina to assess the feasibility of inmate labor unions in light of current federal, state and local institutional operations; and provides a very tentative outline of how a prisoners’ labor union could be structured and function – exploring the potential democratic ramifications of such unions for corrections and in broader social policy.
As numerous scholars have noted, the law takes a strikingly incoherent approach to adolescent reproduction. States overwhelmingly allow a teenage girl to independently consent to…
Abstract
As numerous scholars have noted, the law takes a strikingly incoherent approach to adolescent reproduction. States overwhelmingly allow a teenage girl to independently consent to pregnancy care and medical treatment for her child, and even to give up her child for adoption, all without notice to her parents, but require parental notice or consent for abortion. This chapter argues that this oft-noted contradiction in the law on teenage reproductive decision-making is in fact not as contradictory as it first appears. A closer look at the law’s apparently conflicting approaches to teenage abortion and teenage childbirth exposes common ground that scholars have overlooked. The chapter compares the full spectrum of minors’ reproductive rights and unmasks deep similarities in the law on adolescent reproduction – in particular an undercurrent of desire to punish (female) teenage sexuality, whether pregnant girls choose abortion or childbirth. It demonstrates that in practice, the law undermines adolescents’ reproductive rights, whichever path of pregnancy resolution they choose. At the same time that the law thwarts adolescents’ access to abortion care, it also fails to protect adolescents’ rights as parents. The analysis shows that these two superficially conflicting sets of rules in fact work in tandem to enforce a traditional gender script – that self-sacrificing mothers should give birth and give up their infants to better circumstances, no matter the emotional costs to themselves. This chapter also suggests novel policy solutions to the difficulties posed by adolescent reproduction by urging reforms that look to third parties other than parents or the State to better support adolescent decision-making relating to pregnancy and parenting.
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Public space has traditionally been space of and for the people, a place where the community could congregate and engage in public expression, including expression of a political…
Abstract
Public space has traditionally been space of and for the people, a place where the community could congregate and engage in public expression, including expression of a political nature. In the current environment of increasing insecurity, police departments are encouraged to join the fight against terrorism by increasing surveillance and control over ever-larger areas, including public space, and over ever-greater segments of the community. This chapter examines two recent initiatives by the New York Police Department that are changing the nature of public space in the city.
This chapter is about the modern (Western) educational regime, educational industry paradigm and schooling process, while focussing on statutorily imposed and legally enforced…
Abstract
This chapter is about the modern (Western) educational regime, educational industry paradigm and schooling process, while focussing on statutorily imposed and legally enforced schooling as the main aspect of the hidden curriculum within a globalizing world.
It is about children's productive labour through schooling, whereby children's labour power is consumed, produced and reproduced on behalf of social formations under the capitalist mode of production (CMP).
The claim that a well-educated population is essential for development so that all societies share an interest in having children participate in schooling as much as possible is the central element of the Western education industry paradigm, the global appeal of which is reflected in how compulsory schooling has been embraced almost everywhere in conjunction with being heavily promoted within the ‘international community’ and widely endorsed by researchers, scholars and similar observers.
Contrary to Bowles and Gintis's correspondence principle, the structure of schooling is not an identical to the structure of the workplace in that it entails compulsion, whereby schooling is as efficient and effective as possible in meeting the needs of the CMP.
The CMP benefits from the state having shifted confinement as a mechanism to force people to work onto schooling; or, from compulsory social enclosure, whereby schools increasingly resemble military and prison systems.
Compulsory social enclosure helps to ensure that children's productive capacity – or labour power – is enhanced to the benefit of the CMP, this being the major factor in accounting for its appeal and advance on the world stage, globally.
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Susan Greer and Patty McNicholas
The purpose of this paper is to analyse the roles of accounting within state-based agencies which interpreted the ideal of protection for the Aboriginal population as principally…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyse the roles of accounting within state-based agencies which interpreted the ideal of protection for the Aboriginal population as principally about the removal of children from the Aboriginal communities to institutions of training and places of forced indenture under government-negotiated labour contracts.
Design/methodology/approach
The study uses the original archival records of the New South Wales Aborigines Protection and Welfare Boards (1883-1950) to highlight the link between pastoral notions of moral betterment and the use of accounting technologies to organise and implement the “apprenticeship” programmes.
Findings
The analysis reveals that accounting practices and information were integral to the ability of the state to intervene and organise this domain of action and, together with a legal framework, to make the forced removal of Aboriginal children possible.
Social implications
The mentalities and practices of assimilation analysed in the paper are not unique to the era of “protection”. The study provides a history of the present that evokes the antecedents to recent welfare policy changes, which encompass a political rationality directed at the normalisation of the economic and social behaviours of both indigenous and non-indigenous welfare recipients.
Originality/value
The paper provides an historical example of how the state enlisted accounting and legal technologies to construct a crisis of “neglect” and to intervene to protect and assimilate the Aboriginal children.