Court Appearances Research Articles

Participation of guardianship authorities in determining the child’s place of residence

The article analyzes the norms of family legislation of Ukraine regarding the determination of the child’s place of residence in case of divorce. The purpose of the research is to study the process of decision-making by guardianship and guardianship bodies, to evaluate the effectiveness of their activities, which will contribute to ensuring the best interests of the child and equal rights of parents. Particular attention is paid to determining the role of guardianship and care authorities in this process. It has been established that their participation is possible in two forms: 1) resolution by the body of guardianship and custody of the dispute on the determination of the child’s place of residence; 2) provision of a written opinion of the body of guardianship and guardianship during the consideration of cases by the court on the determination of the child’s place of It has been proven that the role of guardianship and guardianship authorities in determining the place of residence of a child is significant, as they are involved in the event of a lack of consensus between parents regarding the residence of a minor child. The process of decision-making by guardianship and guardianship bodies is characterized. The main stages in solving the issue of determining the child’s place of residence with the participation of the guardianship and guardianship authorities are highlighted: 1. Appeal to the parents’ guardianship and guardianship authorities. 2. Conducting by guardianship and care authorities a conversation with the parents and drawing up a certificate of examination of the child’s living conditions. 3. Decision-making by guardianship and guardianship bodies is based on the analysis of conditions and consideration of the child’s opinion and is formed in the form of a conclusion. Important evaluation criteria are the parents’ attitude towards the fulfillment of parental duties, the child’s personal attachment to each parent, the child’s health and other circumstances of significant importance. The main principles that guardianship and guardianship authorities should be guided by when determining a child’s place of residence are analyzed, such as ensuring the best interests of the child and equal rights of parents. Special attention is paid to problematic aspects that arise during decision-making by guardianship and guardianship bodies, which include the establishment of the child’s true psycho-emotional state by a psychologist, ensuring the child’s appearance in court or the guardianship body and custody at a permanent pre-war place of residence.

중국 민사소송에서의 온라인 증언 방식에 관한 연구

The role of witnesses in uncovering the truth of a case is very important, and witness appearances in court hold significant meaning in civil litigation. However, witnesses often hesitate to appear due to a lack of time or the court being located far away. Additionally, fear of retaliation from the parties involved leads many witnesses to refuse to testify in court. This results in a low rate of witness appearances, which is recognized as a serious issue in Chinese civil litigation. The advancement of internet technology offers a solution to this problem. By allowing witnesses to testify online, it saves time and costs associated with testifying, and reduces direct contact between witnesses and parties, effectively protecting the safety of witnesses. Therefore, this method of online testimony provides a potential solution to increase witness court appearance rates. However, the current online testimony method has issues such as unclear nature, difficulty in accurately verifying witness identity, and challenges in ensuring the credibility of the testimony. To resolve these issues, it is first necessary to legally clarify the online testimony method as a form of court appearance testimony. Additionally, measures to strengthen the verification of witness identity should be implemented. For example, legislative measures to clearly define penalties for identity theft of witnesses, reinforcing judges' obligations to verify identities, and directly connecting online litigation platforms with systems of third-party agencies like police and administrative authorities to facilitate thorough identity verification. Such measures will prevent identity theft and accurately confirm the identity of witnesses, thus protecting the legitimate rights and interests of parties and enhancing the fairness and efficiency of litigation. Furthermore, to strengthen the credibility of testimony, the following measures can be considered: 1. Establish an online oath system for witnesses, ensuring they understand the legal consequences of false testimony. 2. Emphasize the importance of adhering to court order, ensuring that witnesses follow the same rules online as they would in an offline court. 3. Adhere to the principle of isolated examination, preventing witnesses from being influenced by other witnesses or participants. 4. Utilize the cross-examination method from common law systems to enhance the credibility of testimonies. In conclusion, the method of online testimony can be a useful tool to increase witness court appearance rates, but effective utilization requires legal, technical, and institutional improvements.

Indigenous Study of Psychologists as Witnesses: Ethical Considerations of Testifying in Court on Sexual Assault Issues

<p>本研究旨在探討性侵受害當事人之心理師，受法院傳喚作證時，出庭過程中的倫理考量。研究方法採紮根理論取向，透過立意與滾雪球取樣徵得九位有出庭作證經驗之受訪者，透過個別訪談蒐集資料，並進行開放編碼、主軸編碼、選繹編碼與歷程編碼之質性分析步驟。研究結果發現心理師收到法院傳喚出庭作證時，會面臨是否出庭的意願考量，在決定出庭及準備過程中，則涉及專業知能、知情同意及保密等三個主要倫理判斷議題之考量，並經歷外在法律服從及內良心掙扎的過程，出庭作證時會為自己的專業辯護並發展因應的作為，同時會衡量保持中立的客觀角色，以及覺察個案的諮商動機。研究結論指出心理師會兼顧外在客觀的法律規範與內在主觀的良心考量以出庭作證，並把持中立客觀的專業角色，作真實的事實陳述，以期能同時符合法規的期待與良心的要求。最後，本研究依研究所得提出「心理師出庭之雙元倫理考量模型」與未來研究及實務之建議。</p> <p> </p><p>This study aimed to explore the ethical considerations of psychologists who counsel sexual assault victims and are summoned by the court to testify. Judicial proceedings for sexual assault victims often challenge conviction of perpetrators because of insufficient evidence. Therefore, the court regards the professional knowledge and testimonial information of psychologists as important reinforcing evidence. Thus, they involve ethical issues of whether to disclose and the degree of disclosure. Currently, there is no training in forensic psychology or legal risks in the Taiwanese school curricula. Because psychologists are unfamiliar with judicial rules and ethics, they may be at risk of making mistakes that could affect their future professional status. The ethical aspects addressed in this study included three major ethical judgment issues: professional knowledge, informed consent, and confidentiality. The research method adopted a grounded theory orientation. Nine interviewees with experience in court testifying were recruited through conceptualization and snowball sampling. Data were collected using individual interviews and qualitatively analyzed using open, axial, selective, and process coding.</p> <p>The research results show that when psychologists are summoned by the court to testify, they are faced with whether to appear in court. The decision to appear in court and the preparation involve three major ethical judgment issues: professional knowledge, informed consent, and confidentiality. Court-summoned psychologists have to understand the implications of their role and consider the ethics of being summoned to appear. This decision is based on civic responsibility rather than personal will. It requires interprofessional competencies and the ability to respond to courts and professional assessments, including knowledge of the laws regarding sexual assault. They should consider the rights of minors’ guardians and inform individual victims as much as possible to enable them to fully understand and provide informed consent. Victims’ privileged communications should be properly used and victim information disclosed in court should be filtered. Psychologists must be loyal to the victims’ original intentions, consider their best interests, and exclude irrelevant personal privacy information. Psychologists are also reminded to seek professional assistance when facing the court, including consulting lawyers or receiving supervision and educational training, and being equipped with court knowledge related to sexual assault. Psychologists testifying in court face a process of external legal obedience and an internal conscience struggle. They defend their professionalism and develop appropriate actions. Simultaneously, psychologists measure the objective role of maintaining neutrality and being aware of clients’ motivation for counseling.</p> <p>In conclusion, psychologists have to consider external objective legal norms and their internal subjective conscience when testifying in court and maintain a neutral and objective professional role. Finally, considering the research findings, this study proposes a “Dual-ethical Consideration Model for Psychologists Appearing in Court” and suggestions for future research and practice. Psychologists should accumulate different court experiences based on the number of court appearances. We recommend discussing whether the judicial role of psychologists has various stages of development based on the accumulation of court experience. Additionally, psychologists with different testifying roles will also have different ethical awareness and judgment processes, which can also be studied in depth. In practice, we recommended strengthening education and training on testifying in court, understanding that testifying in court is a citizen’s obligation, and carefully using victims’ privileged communication. Simultaneously, practical work manuals and workshops for court appearances should be developed to assist psychologists in conducting interviews through practical guidance and exercises. They should be prepared for the stress and circumstances of going to court.</p> <p> </p>

Digital vulnerability: People-in-prison, videoconferencing and the digital criminal justice system

Since the COVID-19 pandemic forced prisons into extended lockdowns, people-in-prison have been increasingly reliant on remote access technologies such as videoconferencing to interact with the outside world from their carceral context. During the pandemic, both corrective services and criminal courts found that these communication technologies could adequately facilitate court appearances, legal conferencing, health services and visitations. Now, despite the lessening panic regarding COVID-19, there are suggestions that authorities are keen to continue, if not increase, the usage of video links meaning that people-in-prison will experience decreasing human contact. The argument is that COVID-19 “successes” are being used as an excuse to cement remote hearings and visits. This points to a future of absolute confinement uninterrupted by “inconvenient” physical court attendance or human visitors. This article will focus on the “digital vulnerability” of people-in-prison, that is, the intersection between the vulnerabilities of incarcerated people with the use of remote communication technologies such as videoconferencing or video links, and the digital inequalities that may be provoked or solved. The article will draw on qualitative research – fieldwork interviews with judicial officers, lawyers and associated criminal justice professionals – that reveal critical perspectives on the impacts of digital transformation on vulnerable people-in-prison. For instance, when asked about the vulnerabilities of people-in-prison, one defence lawyer (DL1) expressed the view that “no one cares about defendants” or their vulnerabilities, nor their abilities to engage with video links, comprehend or play any role in their own remote legal matters. We analyse our source materials through a framework of vulnerability theory and the developing concept of digital vulnerability. In this way, we seek to offer new knowledge regarding prison digital transformation, specifically the relationship between digital technologies in correctional environments and the vulnerable incarcerated population.

Evaluating the impact of public housing after prison for a sex offence

This article evaluates the impact of housing assistance on the post-release pathways of people convicted of sex offences, in terms of a range of criminal justice outcomes and associated costs. Using linked administrative data from New South Wales government agencies, it compares outcomes and costs for two groups of formerly incarcerated sex offenders – one group who received public housing tenancies at some stage after their release, the other who only received private rental assistance. We find the public housing group had better criminal justice outcomes (e.g. fewer police incidents, court appearances, proven offences, days in custody and days on community-based orders) than the non-public housing group, achieved mostly at less cost to governments. The evidence, likely applicable in other jurisdictions with similar housing systems, strongly supports the increased provision of social housing to this group of ex-prisoners and, we hope, helps disarm the controversy that affects this area of policy in Australia and internationally.

What matters to magistrates when considering diversion into mental health treatment?

The current study aimed to identify factors that influence the likelihood of mental health diversion under s.32 and s.33 of the NSW Mental Health (Forensic Procedures) Act using a sample of 2,922 individuals represented by NSW Legal Aid who sought to have their charges dismissed. Multilevel logistic regression was used to identify the factors correlated with diversion. Higher odds of s.32 diversion were found for women, non-Indigenous defendants, those with no prior court appearances and those who committed less serious offences. Higher odds of s.33 diversion were found for those who were older, those who had been previously imprisoned or those who had prior mental health dismissals. Almost 12% of the variation in s.32 dismissal decisions is attributable to the magistrate hearing the case.

The Imposition of Pretrial Conditions on Released Federal Defendants: The Overuse of Conditions Without Providing Any Measurable Benefits

In the federal system, defendants placed on pretrial release may have multiple conditions imposed on them which are aimed at ensuring court appearances and maintaining public safety. In general, little is known about the number of conditions imposed on released federal defendants, the extent to which conditions are associated with pretrial risk, and the potential of these conditions to maximize court appearances and minimize pretrial crime. This study seeks to address these issues by examining the imposition of pretrial conditions on 223,260 released federal defendants. The results show that defendants received an average of about nine conditions and that the association between conditions and a defendant’s pretrial risk classification was relatively modest. The results also show conditions having no significant relationship with reductions in the likelihood of pretrial crime or missed court appearances; however, the probability of being revoked increases with the number of conditions imposed.

Судебная практика производства по делам об условно-досрочном освобождении от наказания в отсутствие осужденного

The article investigates the procedural procedure for considering the convicted person’s petition for parole, the process of proving that the convicted person does not need to fully serve the sentence imposed by the court. It is substantiated that the existing procedure for proceedings on parole in the absence of a convicted person contradicts the provisions of article 247 of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation, which establishes that the trial must be conducted with the mandatory participation of the defendant. In the absence of the defendant, the trial is allowed for crimes of small and medium gravity, if the defendant requests it, as well as in exceptional cases in cases of serious and especially serious crimes, if the convicted person is outside of Russia and (or) evades court appearance. In addition, by holding a court session without the participation of the convicted person, the court cannot evaluate the evidence presented for their admissibility and reliability, as well as decide what additional duties should be assigned to the convicted person.

Can text messages reduce incarceration in rural and vulnerable populations?

AbstractReducing failures to appear (FTA) in court is a top priority for criminal justice practitioners and advocates. However, existing work on reducing FTAs through text message reminders focuses on large urban jurisdictions and defendants who are housed. Using a field study in Shasta County, California, we evaluate whether text message outreach can increase court appearances for housed and unhoused populations. We find housed defendants randomly assigned to the treatment group were 10% less likely to miss their next scheduled court date than defendants in the control group. We find no statistical difference in the FTA rate of unhoused individuals assigned to treatment or control groups, and cannot rule out large positive or negative effects. We find that improving the quality of contact information in court records could lead to large reductions in FTAs. Partnering with local social service providers may not, but more research is needed.

The Confusion and Correction of the Technical Investigator System

State Intellectual Property Office of China (SIPOC) issued the Provisions on the Participation of Technical Investigation Officers in Administrative Decisions on Patent and IC Layout Design Infringement Disputes (Provisional) in 2021, which is a further improvement of the refined technical investigation officer system, but the “multiple selective” type of service and the “one-person court appearance” model are obvious drawbacks. The disadvantages of the “multi-selective” mode of service and “one person in court” are obvious, and the mode of service of the technical investigator is worth exploring. Should optimize the number of technical investigators in court and the establishment of “full-time driven by part-time” with the mechanism, change the full confidentiality and objectivity of the technical investigation opinions for moderate disclosure, limiting the participation of expert jurors in the first trial of difficult technical facts, with the conflict of rank rules, refining the new rules to identify the problem of difficult cases of opinion attributes.

Wrestling with Job: Defiant Faith in the Face of Suffering. By Bill Kynes and Will Kynes

This volume emerged from Bill Kynes’ 10-week Lenten sermon series, which was shaped significantly by weekly exchange with his son Will. The conversational genesis of this book is conveyed through its very format: the pastoral voice of Bill opens chapters with a deft, accessible exposition of Joban material and its contemporary significance, and the scholarly voice of Will contributes afterwards with expansions of salient interpretative issues for those who wish to ‘dig deeper’. How pleasantly apropos this dialogical writing strategy is for the book of Job—though undoubtedly Bill and Will represent a far more symbiotic relationship and fruitful exchange than do the Joban interlocutors! Discussion questions for each chapter included at the end of the book fittingly beckon the reader to enter into the conversation with both text and community. The first chapter addresses challenges of the book of Job in its sheer length, theological complexity, and preoccupation with suffering. Pointing to the symmetry between Joban form and content, Bill advocates a patient, persevering reading of a biblical book which is itself intended to cultivate persevering faith amid the inevitable buffeting of life’s suffering, after the model of protesting Job. The remaining nine chapters of Wrestling with Job provide a coherent reading of the book of Job while progressing through its literary segments: in the prologue (Job 1–2), the cynical Satan assails the genuineness of Job’s faith and God’s intrinsic worthiness to be feared (ch. 2). Job’s pivot from humble submissiveness in the prologue to bold protest in his lament (Job 3) and ensuing dialogue with the friends (Job 4–27) showcases the tenacity of Job’s faith and validates his integrity as he refuses the escapism of compromising either God’s sovereign justice or his own innocence; meanwhile, the accusatory friends fail to comfort Job owing to their simplistic view of divine retributive justice misapplied to Job (chs. 3–5). The poem of Job 28 serves as a ‘dramatic aside’ (p. 110) on the relational nature of biblical wisdom, positioned after the friends’ faltering attempts to furnish wisdom and within Job’s continuing wisdom quest (ch. 6). After Job’s ‘closing argument’ (p. 131) brazenly bewails his predicament and demands God’s appearance in court (Job 29–31; ch. 7), Elihu interrupts with a presumptuous, verbose tirade (Job 32–7), even as the only solution for Job will be personal encounter with God himself (ch. 8). When at last God answers (Job 38–41), his speeches graciously dignify Job and relate to his situation without furnishing the sort of explanation Job had sought; the result for Job is deepened faith and readiness to move past mourning (Job 42:1–6; ch. 9). In the epilogue (Job 42:7–17), Job’s faith is further vindicated through his intercession for the friends, and God’s subsequent restoration of Job’s blessing serves as an apt (but not strictly necessary) conclusion in view of God’s essential goodness and generosity (ch. 10). Joban tour complete, Wrestling with Job closes with an epilogue of its own, unfolding how the character of Job gestures towards Jesus as the ultimate ground of faith and hope in the midst of a broken world.

Racial bias as a multi‐stage, multi‐actor problem: An analysis of pretrial detention

AbstractAfter arrest, criminal defendants are often detained before trial to mitigate potential risks to public safety. There is widespread concern, however, that detention decisions are biased against racial minorities. When assessing potential racial discrimination in pretrial detention, past studies have typically worked to quantify the extent to which the ultimate judicial decision is conditioned on the defendant's race. Although often useful, this approach suffers from three important limitations. First, it ignores the multi‐stage nature of the pretrial process, in which decisions and recommendations are made over multiple court appearances that influence the final judgment. Second, it does not consider the multiple actors involved, including prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges, each of whom have different responsibilities and incentives. Finally, a narrow focus on disparate treatment fails to consider potential disparate impact arising from facially neutral policies and practices. Addressing these limitations, here we present a framework for quantifying disparate impact in multi‐stage, multi‐actor settings, illustrating our approach using 10 years of data on pretrial decisions from a federal district court. We find that Hispanic defendants are released at lower rates than white defendants of similar safety and nonappearance risk. We trace these disparities to decisions of assistant US attorneys at the initial hearings, decisions driven in part by a statutory mandate that lowers the procedural bar for moving for detention of defendants in certain types of cases. We also find that the Pretrial Services Agency recommends detention of Black defendants at higher rates than white defendants of similar risk, though we do not find evidence that these recommendations translate to disparities in actual release rates. Finally, we find that traditional disparate treatment analyses yield more modest evidence of discrimination in pretrial detention outcomes, highlighting the value of our more expansive analysis for identifying, and ultimately remediating, unjust disparities in the pretrial process. We conclude with a discussion of how risk‐based threshold release policies could help to mitigate observed disparities, and the estimated impact of various policies on violation rates in the partner jurisdiction.

THE PROBLEMS AND PECULIARITIES OF THE USE OF VIDEO CONFERENCE IN CIVIL PROCEEDING OF UKRAINE

The article is devoted to the problems and features of the use of video conferencing in the civil proceedings of Ukraine. The use of modern video communication technologies in court proceedings allows solving the problem of territorial remoteness, saving the time of par­ticipants in court proceedings and reducing court costs. In conditions of quarantine, transport restrictions and forced self-isolation, and later - in conditions of war, change of territorial juris­diction and evacuation of a significant number of the population from their places of permanent residence, access to justice becomes difficult. In conditions where direct appearance in court is complicated by territorial or security factors, video conferencing guarantees the right of a person to participate in court sessions. At the same time, the institution of videoconferencing in the civil justice system of Ukraine is relatively new, which causes potential and real practical problems in its functioning. This makes the study of its features and problems relevant. The article defines the sectoral and national peculiarities of the use of video conferencing in the civil proceedings of Ukraine. The following problems have been identified in the use of video conferencing in civil proceedings: 1) unsettled issue of the procedure for initiating participation in the court session in the mode of video conference of other participants in the court process: witnesses, experts, legal experts, specialists, translators; 2) lack of an exhaustive list of reasons for refusing to grant an application (petition) to participate in a court session in videoconference mode; 3) the uncertainty of the question of whether it will be allowed to participate in a video conference outside the court premises after the end of the quarantine; 4) excessive formalism when establishing the requirement to send a copy of the applica­tion for participation in the court session to other participants in the court session via video conference outside the court premises; 5) the requirement to submit an application (petition) for participation in a court session in video conference mode for each court session separately; 6) disproportionate risk distribution of the technical impossibility of participating in a video conference outside the court premises; 7) depriving the participant of the case of the opportunity to indicate several courts in the application for participation in the court session in the mode of video conference; 8) the requirement to pay a court fee for access to the audio and video recording of a video conference, which is not provided for by law, but is provided for by a bylaw act; 9) the possibility of conducting a case hearing in the absence of a participant who appeared at another court to participate in a video conference, but was unable to participate in it for rea­sons beyond his control.

Court date reminders reduce court nonappearance: A meta‐analysis

AbstractResearch summaryWe conducted a systematic review and meta‐analysis of studies that examined whether providing people with a postcard, phone call, or text message reminder of their court date reduces their likelihood of failing to appear in court. We included 12 studies (N = 79,255) that compared court appearance rates between groups of people who received a reminder to groups who did not receive a reminder. Results showed that reminders significantly reduce the odds of failure to appear in court. Further, charge type moderated reminder effectiveness; court reminders had a slightly larger effect in studies that did not include people with felony charges. However, the difference in effect size as a function of charge type was small and reminders significantly reduced the odds of failure to appear in both studies that did and did not include people with felony charges. In contrast, there was no evidence that retaining people who could not be contacted in a reminder treatment group (versus excluding them from the study or intentionally assigning them to the nonreminded control group) moderated reminder effectiveness. Finally, a narrative synthesis of studies revealed that studies using more rigorous designs generally produced smaller effects compared to studies with less rigorous designs and that effects did not differ systematically as a function of reminder formats (e.g., postcard, phone call) or frequencies (e.g., one reminder or multiple).Policy implicationsCourt date reminders effectively reduce failures to appear across studies, so they are an inexpensive tool for jurisdictions seeking to implement pretrial reform efforts. However, reminders offer only a modest reduction in failures to appear because they only address failures to appear that result from missing or forgetting information. Thus, reminders are not a panacea to court nonappearance. Jurisdictions should consider other programs and interventions as well. Courts could address low‐barrier nonappearances with reminders and then efficiently focus more involved resources to help more people get to court.

Interjurisdictional differences in Australian imprisonment rates: Sentencing or arrest rates?

There are stark and enduring differences between the Australian States and Territories in their rates of imprisonment. The Australian Capital Territory, for example, has an imprisonment rate of 113/100,000 population. The Northern Territory imprisonment rate is more than 8 times the Australian Capital Territory rate, and 41% higher than the imprisonment rate in Louisiana; the US state with the highest imprisonment rate in that country. The disparity is not limited to the Australian Territories. The imprisonment rates of Western Australia, Queensland, South Australia, and New South Wales are between 1.5 and 2.4 times higher than the Victoria rate. The aim of the present article is to determine whether the lower rate of entry into Victorian prisons is due to less frequent use of imprisonment or a lower arrest/court appearance rate. We find that the principal reason is a lower court appearance rate, particularly in relation to traffic and vehicle regulatory offences, justice procedure and related offences, burglary/break and enter, and illicit drug offences.

Legal Incentives and Constraints on Innovation: Keeping the Balance

The COVID-19 pandemic forced civil society and business to face a new reality where much greater reliance needed to be placed on networked devices and internet distributed communications, including the provision of services ranging from medical advice to food, entertainment and even the facility to interact with family. The ability to meet in-person with family, friends, colleagues, business associates or customers was severely restricted leaving internationalisation as a utopian dream as borders were closed, students were denied access to a physical classrooms and businesses had to rapidly “pivot” or fail. These alternatives to real life have seemed less appealing to many, with every aspect of life “going online”, whether virtual lectures, exams, meetings, mediations, court appearances, job interviews, shopping for a piece of cheese or starting a new trade relationship.
 Much innovation over the last two years has been around deploying online business models. There has also been a wider use of artificial intelligence to support “efficient” operations partly stimulated by the falling staffing levels due to the pandemic directly through sickness or forced isolations, or indirectly by a growing sense of the futility of working for a business, known as the Great Resignation (“Over the 12 months ending in January 2022, hires totalled 76.4 million and separations totalled 70.0 million…” indicating a huge refocusing on jobs in the USA) 
 This paper looks at the challenge for legal systems to pivot around the growing trends in deployments of online innovation. Some businesses are now widely deploying software-based analysis systems, such as Airbnb, which is using them to “verify the identity and trustworthiness of a user of an online system” and flag potential guests who may be problematic. Although Airbnb is a multibillion-dollar business, it is a good example of how through using publicly available data, user supplied information, and smart software (artificial intelligence) a business can make predictions on the behaviour of its potential customers. Other AI resources have been creating new gaming scenarios, reporting on the news, and even creating new artworks and music. These kinds of use of AI in the marketplace have challenged the legal frameworks that support individual privacy and also ideas around human creativity.

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same: The Obdurate Nature of Pandemic Bail Practices

In an unprecedented move, the criminal courts in Ontario closed on March 20th, 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Bail appearances, however, could not be suspended, resulting in the rapid move to virtual appearances. Despite the dramatic change in the modality of court appearances, remarkably little changed in how the bail court operated or processed bail matters. Observations from 80 days of virtual bail court reveal the obdurate nature of well know issues with the bail process, including the culture of adjournment, reliance on surety supervision, and numerous conditions of release. Problematically, the courts are closed to the public and the accused are rendered invisible in the virtual space, leaving them even more dependent on counsel and the court. Differences in access to technology and private space create additional barriers for the most marginalized. Consistent with Feeley’s assessment that ‘the process is the punishment,’ the virtual model has layered new punitive elements onto an already punishing experience.

Children in out of home care in the youth justice system – understanding when they may be more vulnerable to further offending.

ObjectivesBy linking external data to that already held in SAIL Databank, a fuller picture of the sometimes-chaotic lives of those in the youth justice system has been compiled. By looking at the impact of changes in circumstances on the likelihood of offending, opportunities for intervention have been identified.
 ApproachData from two Welsh youth justice services are used to model how the probability of further offending changes over time for different groups. By linking data from the risk assessment process previously used across England & Wales, to children’s’ social services, education and health records within SAIL Databank, we can for the first-time model their needs and circumstances, and establish temporal precedence in relation to offending. These linked records create an original longitudinal dataset to undertake within- and between- group analysis with a particular focus on understanding the complex relationship between risk and protective factors, and offending for minority groups.
 ResultsAdopting an intersectional approach, multi-level modelling has been undertaken to ascertain how the likelihood of further offending changes in response to changes in circumstances (e.g., change of school/placement, starting or finishing treatment for substance misuse or mental health issues) and in response to events linked to the administration of justice (breaches, court appearances and time in custody/remand). In seeking to understand the drivers of recidivism and desistence for different groups of young people, a range of advanced statistical techniques are adopted to most effectively leverage these novel data. Key findings from this research support the need for take up of approaches tailored to the needs and circumstances of the individual.
 ConclusionOur ongoing research, in collaboration with key stakeholders, will help improve the outcomes of those young people who have come into conflict with the law. Such research will identify where there is need for timely, appropriate multi-agency support tailored to the needs and circumstances of the individual.

THE MANY LIVES OF CONSTANCE BAKER MOTLEY

THE MANY LIVES OF CONSTANCE BAKER MOTLEY

Examining the health and criminal justice characteristics for young people on compulsory community treatment orders: An Australian birth cohort and data linkage study

BackgroundMost studies on the predictors and effectiveness of community treatment orders (CTOs) are restricted to health-related variables and do not consider forensic contacts as established by criminal justice databases or predictors from birth. We used linked administrative health and criminal justice data for a birth cohort in Queensland, Australia to investigate the characteristics and outcomes of people placed on CTOs. MethodsCTOs were identified from administrative data for hospital admissions and community mental health service contacts for a population cohort of 45,141 individuals born in Queensland in 1990. These data were linked with administrative court records, with individuals followed up to age 23/24 years. Logistic regression analyses were used to examine characteristics associated with CTO placement and Tobit regression analyses to examine factors predicting health and criminal justice outcomes in the following year. ResultsThere were 211 CTO cases by age 23/24 years, for whom it was possible to identify 413 controls on voluntary treatment. Non-affective psychoses [F20-F29] were the strongest predictors of CTO placement (ORadj = 4.07, 2.77–5.99) followed by a court appearance (ORadj = 1.99, 1.28–3.09). CTOs were associated with greater, not lower, subsequent psychiatric hospital admissions, inpatient bed-days and community mental health service contacts, although on sensitivity analyses psychiatric hospital admissions were the same as voluntary controls. CTOs were not associated with more subsequent court appearances despite higher rates of offending before CTO placement. ConclusionsBoth clinical and forensic variables can determine CTO placement and, on adjustment for these covariates, CTOs were not associated with reductions in psychiatric hospital admission, time spent as an inpatient, or subsequent court appearances. The latter finding might mean that CTOs reduce the risk of offending to that of voluntary controls.