Justice Organizations Research Articles

Impacto da epidemia de COVID-19 na mortalidade em prisões

Abstract Purpose: to assess the impact of COVID-19 on the mortality of people deprived of their liberty (PDL) in the state of Rio de Janeiro and compare the rates observed with those of the general population. Method: quantitative, retrospective study combining the analysis of the 2016-2021 time series of annual mortality rates, cross-sectional study comparing 2016-2017 vs. 2020-2021 and analysis of individual data obtained from primary and secondary sources of information. The standardized mortality ratio between PDL and the general population was estimated for the cause of death categories. Results: historical series showed an annual drop (13%) in mortality from 2016 to 2019, a trend that was inverted in 2020 due to COVID-19, which was responsible for 20% of all deaths. Of the COVID-19 deaths, 54.8% were elderly and/or had co-morbidities. Mortality from COVID-19 was similar between PDL and the general population, but mortality from tuberculosis and HIV remained much higher among PDL. Conclusion: the pandemic was probably a determinant of the downward trend reversal in mortality between 2016 and 2019. Using mortality as an indicator of health and human rights in prisons by health, justice and civil society organizations implies the improvement of information about PDL in the SIM.

Viva Texas Rivers!: Adventure, Misadventures, and Glimpses of Nirvana along Our Storied Waterways ed. by Steven L. Davis and Sam L. Pfiester

Reviewed by: Viva Texas Rivers!: Adventure, Misadventures, and Glimpses of Nirvana along Our Storied Waterways ed. by Steven L. Davis and Sam L. Pfiester Chaney Hill Steven L. Davis and Sam L. Pfiester, eds., Viva Texas Rivers!: Adventure, Misadventures, and Glimpses of Nirvana along Our Storied Waterways. College Station: Texas A&M UP, 2021. 316 pp. Hardcover, $29.95. As Clayton Maxwell in “The Lower Guadalupe River: A Return to the River” reminds us, it’s “good to take into account where you are from,” and the narratives in Steven L. Davis and Sam L. Pfiester’s collection Viva Texas Rivers!: Adventure, Misadventures, and Glimpses of Nirvana along Our Storied Waterways do just this (264). Davis is the literary curator of the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University and the editor and author of eight books. Sam L. Pfiester is chair of the Wittliff Collections Advisory Council and has authored four novels. Pfiester and Davis, having met through their work with the Wittliff collections, both feel strongly that the waterways that support the life and lifestyle of Texans should be protected. Sponsored by the Wittliff Collections Literary Series in partnership with The Meadows Center for Water and the Environment at Texas State University, Viva Texas Rivers! carries on the work John Graves started in 1960 with Goodbye to a River to educate, safeguard, and treasure Texas’s waterways. Pfiester and Davis put together this collection to bring to life the “‘spirit of place’ for dozens of Texas rivers and streams” and to highlight the unique qualities of each waterway (xvii). The collection of short stories, novel excerpts, republished periodicals, historical records, and poems is divided by region: East Texas, Central Texas, North Texas, West Texas, and South Texas. Viva Texas Rivers! begins with an “Invocation” by Chicana writer Carmen Tafolla entitled “This River Here” and closes with a “Benediction” by poet and author Pat Mora. Pfiester and Davis include texts from a diverse selection of writers, including Texas and national literary luminaries and historical figures such as John Graves, John James Audubon, Attica Locke, Billy Lee Brammer, Pat Mora, Edwin “Bud” Shrake, J. Frank Dobie, Larry McMurtry, Elmer Kelton, Frederick Law Olmsted, Sandra Cisneros, and Américo Paredes, among others. Each section opens with a fold-out map of [End Page 425] the region by artist and mapmaker Molly O’Halloran. These maps are worthy of praise and study on their own. Featuring the major and minor tributaries of many Texas rivers and streams, the cities built along their banks, and the highways that crosshatch them, these maps assist in the place-making the collection is invested in by showing the roots and routes of Texas’s many rivers and streams. Located at the end of the book is a useful appendix of local and national river and conservation advocacy groups. This list is a valuable tool for anyone looking to get involved in cleaning, protecting, and supporting their local or national waterways. Readers will gain a deep place-based understanding of the living routes that run in and out of Texas. As a reader, I began to see and understand the waterways that have sustained me every day, sometimes without me realizing it, in new ways. As Pfiester and Davis advocate in their introduction, these writings can help us learn “how to look, and how to see” Texas rivers and streams “not just [as] our present and past, but also our future” (xviii). Viva Texas Rivers! is for lovers of waterways and environmental advocates alike. Environmental justice scholars, organizations, and policymakers will find Pfiester and Davis’s collection inspirational and may even find a template for future work. This collection is also a great companion for instructors looking to teach on subjects related to critical regionalism, the formation of regional identity, environmental justice, river advocacy, or the intersection of western and southern literature. For readers of Western American Literature, Viva Texas Rivers! will prove to be an invaluable addition to the canon of Texas literature, bioregionalism, environmental literature, and western literature. [End Page 426] Chaney Hill Rice University Copyright © 2023 Western Literature Association ...

The major link in global politics

This paper will explore major political concepts such as equality, power, diplomacy, trade, etc. in a range of contexts and at a variety of levels. It widens the horizon of students in understanding of the local, international and global dimensions of political activity, as well as giving them the opportunity to explore political issues affect6ing their lives. The concept of global politics encompasses a lot of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, it also help in the understanding the abstract political concepts as it ground us in real world Examples and case studies to ensure a transnational perspective. Generating international mindedness and an awareness of multiple perspectives is at the heart of this paper. It encourages round-table discussion and dialogue, nurturing the capacity to interpret competing and contestable claims. There are some core units in global politics which includes power sovereignty and international relation, human rights, development, peace and conflict, but these may not be necessary for now. This paper merely focus on the links in global politics, to this end the paper will only look at diplomacy, trade, justice and international organization alone. These will form the basis of this paper.

P004“Unmet need for abortion”: Conceptualization, relevance, and utility as a tool for meeting abortion needs in the us

<h3>Objectives</h3> To present a nuanced and critical analysis of unmet need for abortion, including its conceptualization and utility for the abortion rights movement. <h3>Methods</h3> We conducted 30 in-depth interviews with stakeholders in abortion access in the US, including people working in direct service, research, advocacy, abortion funds, reproductive justice organizations, and philanthropy. <h3>Results</h3> Stakeholders conceptualized unmet need for abortion in two ways: outcome-based unmet need, with need defined as obtaining an abortion; and process-based unmet need, in which need is additionally defined in terms of the experience of getting an abortion, including navigation of obstacles, preferences in method and setting, and quality of care. Stakeholders identified potential benefits and harms of using unmet need for abortion as a tool to frame and measure problems with abortion access. As a tool, unmet need for abortion could draw necessary attention to crises in abortion access. However, benefits were counterbalanced by concerns — that the tool could be misused, the limits of quantification are too costly, and it would further disconnect abortion from the broader fight for reproductive justice. <h3>Conclusions</h3> Unmet need for abortion is a complex concept that has potential benefits and harms as a tool to document and improve abortion access.

Setbacks and Partial Victories: Social Justice Struggles After 28 Years of Democracy in South Africa

Post-apartheid South Africa is ravaged by crises of extreme unemployment, poverty, and inequality. While the majority who were politically excluded by apartheid can now choose their government through democratic elections, social and economic justice continues to elude them. Neoliberal policies which seek to reduce state expenditure on social services and promote state policies that protect the interests of big businesses at the expense of working-class and poor communities, along with corruption and abuse of power, are the primary causes of poverty and unemployment. However, what is missing in the assessments of social justice since the pre-1994 democratic era is the recognition that social justice organisations have not simply disappeared, but have actually remained involved in social justice struggles. Based on information from in-depth interviews and internet sources, this article records some of the partial victories scored through these struggles, albeit in the context of generalised pauperisation of working-class and poor communities. These partial victories in the era of defeats show that these organisations, although weakened, have not given up the struggle for social justice.

Research-Practice Partnerships in Pursuit of Racial Justice in Schools: Navigating a Hostile Sociopolitical Climate

Grounded in a partnership among researchers, a racial justice organization, and K-12 schools, this study uncovers the challenges of pursuing racial justice work in a polarized sociopolitical climate. Specifically, we illustrate these tensions across three dimensions of our work: (a) establishing critical commitments with K-12 partners; (b) building organizational capacity for critical racial analysis; and (c) confronting internal and external resistance. Throughout, we highlight approaches for leveraging the positionality and expertise of our partners to create the conditions for promoting and sustaining racial justice work in schools.

Grounded in Community: Development of a Birth Justice-Focused Volunteer Birth Companion Program.

Continuous labor support is an evidence-based practice demonstrated to improve birth outcomes, particularly when provided by a trained doula or birth companion. Access to doula services designed to meet the needs of historically underserved and diverse communities can mitigate the negative effects of structural racism and health disparities in perinatal care. Unfortunately, continuous labor support by a companion of choice is not universally supported. This leaves individuals with limited resources unable to access services from a trained doula. Volunteer birth companion programs are one model for increasing access to continuous labor support by bringing the community into the hospital. This article describes a birth justice-focused volunteer birth companion program that evolved out of a multistakeholder collaboration between community birth workers, local reproductive justice organizations, and hospital-based providers, staff, and administrators in direct response to community needs. This program is unique in its collaborative development, grounding in core values, and design of a reproductive justice-focused curriculum that includes training in diversity, inclusion, and care for clients with a history of trauma or perinatal substance use. Key takeaways include recommendations to center client needs, consider sustainability, and embrace flexibility and change. Discussion includes recognition of the strengths and limitations of a volunteer-based model, including acknowledgment that volunteer birth work, while filling an important gap, necessitates the privilege of having sufficient time, economic freedom, and social support. Ensuring universal insurance coverage for doula services has the potential to increase access to continuous labor support, improve birth outcomes, and diversify the birth workforce.

The engineering and scientific challenges of environmental justice organizations in the US: A qualitative study

While there is increased interest among engineers and scientists to collaborate with environmental justice organizations (EJOs), and while there are well-known programs that facilitate collaborations between engineers, scientists, and underserved communities, little is known systematically about the engineering and scientific challenges faced by EJOs. We lay the foundation for such a systematic understanding through exploratory research in which we conducted 47 semi-structured interviews with EJO staff across the United States to ask what their engineering and scientific challenges to combating environmental injustice are. Using deductive-inductive coding we discover that EJOs are looking for support to engineering and scientific challenges that fit specific topical areas and methods. Using the words of our informants, we then unpack the qualitative themes of select topical areas (air quality, public and environmental health, fossil fuel infrastructure, clean and just energy transitions, environmental restoration, and indigenous groups) and methods (data collection, data dissemination, data analysis, spatial analysis, online platform building, networking of experts). We explore the patterns of how these themes overlap with five different strategies (policy change, utilizing the media, educating the public, providing legal advice, and developing collaborative projects) used by the EJOs in our study. We show that EJOs want to collaborate with engineers and scientists to solve technical problems, mitigate harm to their communities, and create positive futures. Our research informs the conception of strategic efforts to expand the impact of engineering and scientific work done to address EJ challenges, particularly given the limited resources that currently exist to support collaborative efforts in this space.

성공적인 양형개혁을 위한 양형위원회의 상시 임무

Fifteen years after the sentencing guidelines system was first introduced in Korea, sentencing guidelines have been set for most major crimes and the compliance rate has proven to be high. The Korean Sentencing Commission adopted the gradual approach in designing the guidelines and has worked to enhance the objectivity of the sentencing guidelines by way of quality evaluation of the sentencing factors. It appears that at present the sentencing guidelines system has been firmly implemented into the justice system.&#x0D; However, for sentencing reform to be successful, the Sentencing Commission must be faithful to meet its perennial responsibilities. These responsibilities include but are not limited to consistently designing and revising the guidelines, more evidence-based monitoring of compliance to and the effects of the guidelines, making public and educating others about the sentencing guidelines, providing access to the disclosure of sentencing information, and establishing sound sentencing policies with an emphasis on very important issues such as pertaining to corrections.&#x0D; To that end, the Commission should operate an empirical data based sentencing guidelines system by way of collection and analysis of high quality sentencing data. Abundant and sound data will provide for a better sentencing data base and a sentencing information system which will in turn be pivotal in achieving a higher level of research and education. These tasks will perforce require cooperation between various criminal justice organizations. Unfortunately, the Korean Sentencing Commission’s on-going operations have not reached an optimal level in collecting qualified sentencing data to ensure the implementation and adherence to the guidelines nor effectively researching sentencing policies.&#x0D; Contrary to the original intent of the establishment legislation, the Sentencing Commission has operated as a mere branch under the jurisdiction of the Korean Supreme Court and has focused most of its attention to the promulgation of various individual guidelines. The Sentencing Commission must be treated as an independent and specialized entity to ensure successful implementation of its continual responsibilities. The goal of sentencing reform can only be attained by the ongoing efforts of the Commission and its willingness to work towards this common end.

The environmental and organizational determinants of county prosecutor salaries

ABSTRACT National surveys show that criminal justice organizations must devote considerable energy to recruiting qualified personnel and, in some cases, they struggle to attract sufficient applicant pools. To address these problems, organizations may use salary as a means of attracting candidates. From a contingency theory perspective, pay should be higher when the demands of the work and the nature of the organizational environment serve as detractors to successful recruitment. Using data from national surveys of prosecutor offices, this study explores the relationship between salary, the environment, and the organization. Results suggest that prosecutor pay is consistently related to county cost of living and, in different analytical models, caseload, government form, community conservatism, and rurality. The implications for theory and policy are discussed.

Output measurement in professional public organizations: insights from European justice systems

PurposeThe aim of this study is to empirically explore and analyze the concrete tasks of output measurement and the inherent challenges related to these tasks in a traditional and autonomous professional public work setting – the judicial system.Design/methodology/approachThe analysis of the tasks is based on a categorization of general performance measurement motives (control-motivate-learn) and main stakeholder levels (society-organization-professionals). The analysis is exploratory and conducted as an empirical content analysis on materials and reports produced in two performance improvement projects conducted in European justice organizations.FindingsThe identified main tasks in the different categories are related to managing resources, controlling performance deviations, and encouraging improvement and development of performance. Based on the results, key improvement areas connected to output measurement in professional public organizations are connected to the improvement of objectivity and fairness in budgeting and work allocation practices, improvement of output measures' versatility and informativeness to highlight motivational and learning purposes, improvement of professional self-management in setting output targets and producing outputs, as well as improvement of organizational learning from the output measurement.Practical implicationsThe paper presents empirically founded practical examples of challenges and improvement opportunities related to the tasks of output measurement in professional public organization.Originality/valueThis paper fulfils an identified need to study how general performance management motives realize as concrete tasks of output measurement in justice organizations.

STOP WARS

STOP WARS

Generative Dissensus in a Youth-Led Coalition-Building Enterprise

Context: Rooted in the principles of Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR), this article explores how a team of youth community activists extended their coalition virtually to produce a bill of demands for structural social change in their city and its surrounding county. Focus of Study: Our inquiry focuses on how the youth’s dialectic goal of arriving at consensus (through debate fiercely, and intentionally, tied to the country’s own internal reckonings) loomed, uncomfortably at times, over the dialogic process of inviting youth from across the city to share experiences, exchange ideas, and build relationships. Setting: The youth’s coalitional work extended outward from the Yamacraw Center, a community literacy center and social justice organization based in a historic coastal city in the southern United States. Participants: The primary team, reported on here, was made up of eight youth researchers and two adult allies/co-researchers responsible for supporting youth as they engaged in YPAR. Research Design: Our study is a reflexive thematic analysis of the interplay between youth during 11 planning and organizing sessions. Data Collection: The data collected for this study are video digital Google Hangout meetings recorded over a five-month period. Findings: Our findings consider key strategies youth exhibited in coming together to hear one another, triage priorities, and carefully attend to the ways they needed to craft their arguments to be taken seriously. Conclusions: We highlight the importance of process in building youth capacity, detail discursive moves youth made to maintain critical momentum, and situate the project within a larger ethos that recognizes the immanent value of cultivating youth capacity to engage in fierce and humanizing exchanges with their peers in pursuit of collective progress.

When Fake News and Personal Experience Contradict: Limits to Post-Truth in Turkey

ABSTRACT While many studies examine Erdoğan’s growing control over the Turkish media sector, there are hardly any studies that look at how post-truth affects the low-income urban consumers of partisan media in Turkey, which this article aims to do. This focus group study reveals that the partisan media has a significant impact on the views and behaviour of the relatively less educated urban poor, but personal experiences prove a significant factor in the success of post-truth politics. If interviewees are locked into a relation of interest with Justice and Development Party organizations, particularly if they are recipients of social aid, their loyalty to Erdoğan and inclination to believe fake news from partisan media are stronger. However, when their personal experiences are diametrically different from the claims made in fake news, these individuals are harder to be persuaded by partisan media.

Making space for solidarity: The transformative role of shame in challenging racialised hegemony

AbstractUsing an affective framework, this article explores the role of shame in stimulating non‐migrant citizen solidarity with asylum seekers and refugees across the UK. Combining research on shame with ongoing discussions of solidarity and influential work by Bourdieu, the productive potential of affect is discussed. This paper argues that shame is an affect capable of creating a ‘rupture’ in an individual or organisation's habitus. This rupture is evidenced as resulting in structural change in the organisations as they reckon with actions that fall into structures of racial domination. Findings from 15 research interviews with active individuals in migrant justice organisations are analysed in relation to shame and solidarity. Data is from a wider project, utilising participatory methods alongside in‐depth interviews looking to understand the work of organisations supporting asylum seekers, refugees and migrants. This paper develops the burgeoning theoretical field of affect within Geography and Sociology, arguing for shame as a useful affect in challenging implicit racial hierarchies in the process of creating transformative solidarity. Shame is an affect too often dismissed as unproductive and, as a result, its use within social movements has been significantly under‐researched. This paper argues against this representation of shame and instead explores its power in challenging hegemonic social relations. As an activist researcher, this theoretical development is part of a wider desire to interrogate the nuances of solidarity, to help myself and other activists to understand its importance and formation.

Organizational support for the potentially traumatic impact of video evidence of violent crime in the criminal justice system: ‘We’re almost making more victims’

As graphic video evidence becomes a standard element in the investigation and prosecution of violent crime, criminal justice organizations must consider and address exposure to and impact of this potentially traumatizing workplace material for criminal justice professionals. Using a discovery-oriented qualitative design and a long-interview method of data collection, this study explores organizational responses to the exposure of criminal justice professionals to a growing volume of video evidence of violent crime. Repeated exposure to high-quality video evidence has the effect of placing criminal justice professionals in the midst of traumatic events, resulting in responses that are akin to trauma contagion. However, organizational awareness and the acceptance of trauma and support systems have not kept pace with the exponential rise in exposure, often being deployed when the person is no longer able to continue in their role. As a result, affected individuals may over-rely on equally affected colleagues for support, intensifying the cycle of trauma contagion. Organizational responses to reduce trauma contagion and the psychological burden on professionals working with video evidence of violent crime should occur at three levels: prevention through moderating exposure; preparation through creating a culture of awareness and acceptance; and intervention through systematic and formal supports.

Determinant of Audit Quality: The Guardian and Justice Organizations (Target 16.6 SDGs)

External auditors play a major role in supporting governments and global organizations in implementing their plans for achieving sustainable development goals. The current research determines the factors that affect audit quality of a company. The authors reviewed research articles related to the topic published in the last 30 years (1980– 2020) to identify the factors that affected audit quality. Data were analyzed using the Leximancer software. It was found that the internal control system and audit tenure are the two variables that had a significant effect on audit quality. The internal control system had a relationship level of up to 92%, while the audit tenure had a level of 22%. Additionally, work rotation, workload, reputation, audit committee, and provided services were variables that had a high level of relevance with a level range of 16–19%.&#x0D; Keywords: audit quality, Leximancer, determinant of audit quality

Switch to safer basic chemicals, activists tell industry

The chemical industry needs to switch from its major building-block petrochemicals so that it can transform into a sector that no longer harms people’s health or the environment, according to a July 13 report from activist groups . Lower-hazard substances that are not derived from fossil fuels should replace benzene, butadiene, ethylene, methanol, propylene, toluene, and xylene, the report says. It is by policy, science, and market experts and Coming Clean , a US-based network of community activists and environmental justice organizations. “The petrochemical sector’s reliance on fossil-fuel feedstocks and manufacturing processes that have evolved little in a hundred years is a massive barrier for change,” Beverley Thorpe, program manager at Clean Production Action and the author of the report, says in a statement . Clean Production Action promotes green chemicals, materials, and products. Switching to biobased feedstocks, such as wood pulp, to make these basic chemicals isn’t a solution,

New York’s housing justice movement: facing the COVID eviction cliff edge

The coronavirus pandemic highlighted the deep-rooted links between poor housing and poor health, particularly for working class communities of colour, for whom the right to the city is systemically undermined by unaffordable, precarious and sub-standard housing. This paper examines these issues against the background of a grassroots movement against evictions in New York during 2021. It describes and discusses the organisation, tactics and strategies of that movement as it attempted to challenge the dominance and norms of the real estate industry. It suggests that the pandemic engendered a radical shift in the demands of tenant and housing justice organisations, which led to New York being virtually eviction free for 22 months. While this success partly arises from the particular circumstances of New York, it is argued that there are lessons to be learned for housing campaigns elsewhere. However, questions are raised about the extent to which ‘professionalised activism’ represents a sustainable model and the capacity for local mobiisations to influence national political forces at a time of unprecedented volatility in an age of crisis capitalism.

The rise and fall of support for the Istanbul Convention: Understanding the case of KADEM

This article focuses on the Turkish Justice and Development Party's (AKP) government-linked non-governmental organization for women's rights, the Women and Democracy Association (KADEM). Drawing on social movement scholars specializing in the Middle East and North Africa region, the article argues that women within Islamist movements exploit changing discursive and non-discursive opportunity structures within the male-dominated establishment and/or transformations in the wider political structure. To analyse Islamist women's critical agency, the article suggests an issue-based examination of women's political activities within Islamist movements. Taking the example of the Istanbul Convention and the Islamist backlash against it in 2019 and 2020, the article discusses how women in the AKP frame their defence of women's rights and gender. Islamist women do not always choose to defend gender interests if it means withdrawing from their movements' larger political interests. The Istanbul Convention was a rare yet critical moment when Islamist women were not co-opted by but rather contested male-governed Islamist movements. To understand how and why Islamist women stand up for their gender interests, it is crucial to recognize and analyse the structural dynamics behind female contestation.