Social Policy Commons^™

The Consideration Of Race In Child Placement: Does It Serve The Best Interests Of Black And Biracial Children?, Donna B. Mcelroy

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Women And Economic Development In The Middle East And North Africa, Lindsay Markle

Student Papers in Public Policy

Women in the Middle East and North Africa face daily challenges due to gender norms in society. These norms are rooted in culture, religion, and family structure and affect the way women are able to participate in their economy and public sphere. In an age of globalization and an increasingly open economy, governments in the Middle East and North Africa would benefit financially from incorporating more women into their workforce.

Social Construction And Political Decision Making In The American Prison System(S), Jeremiah Olson

Theses and Dissertations--Political Science

With over two million inmates, the United States’ prison population is the largest in the world. Nearly one in one hundred Americans are behind bars, either in prisons or pre-trial detention facilities. The rapid growth in incarceration is well-documented. However, social science explanations often stop at the prison gates, with little work on treatment inside prisons. This black box approach ignores important bureaucratic decisions, including the provision of rehabilitative services and the application of punishment.

This dissertation offers a systematic analysis of treatment decisions inside the American prisons. I use a mixed methods approach, combining multiple quantitative datasets with environmental ...

“Yo Apoyo Al Tipnis ¡Y Qué!”: El Surgimiento De Apoyo Urbano Para La Viii Marcha Indígena En Defensa Del Tipnis, Jeanne Stuart

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Después de la autorización por el Presidente Evo Morales de la construcción de una carretera que atravesaría el Territorio Indígena y Parque Nacional Isiboro-Sécure (TIPNIS), la VIII Marcha Indígena en Defensa del Territorio Indígena y Parque Nacional Isiboro-Sécure (TIPNIS) por la Vida, Dignidad, y los Derechos de los Pueblos Indígenas caminó 600 kilómetros por sesenta y seis días en oposición a la construcción de la carretera y a la falta de una consulta previa con las comunidades que viven allí. La Octava Marcha inspiró un apoyo urbano y una movilización social sin precedentes, a través de una amplia variedad de ...

Managing The Polarities Of Democracy: A Theoretical Framework For Positive Social Change, William J. Benet

The Journal of Social Change

People around the globe have embraced democracy to bring about positive social change to address our environmental, economic, and militaristic challenges. Yet, there is no agreement on a definition of democracy that can guide social change efforts. The Polarities of Democracy model is a unifying theory of democracy to guide healthy, sustainable, and just social change efforts. The Polarities of Democracy model consists of ten elements, organized as five polarity pairs: freedom & authority, justice & due process, diversity & equality, human-rights & communal-obligations, and participation & representation. In this model each element has positive aspects and negative aspects and the objective is to successfully ...

Rusticus: Notes On Class And Culture In Rural New Hampshire, Donald Hall

New England Journal of Public Policy

Old New Hampshire Highway Number Four was incorporated by an act of the New Hampshire legislature in the autumn of 1800. It wound out of Portsmouth, a seaport that once rivaled Boston, drove west through Concord, north past Penacook, through Boscawen, Salisbury, Andover, and Wilmot on its way to Lebanon and the Connecticut River. These names string history like beads. The Penacook tribe assembled each year on the banks of the Merrimack at the site of the present town that bears their name. I grew up thinking Boscawen an unusual Indian name; it is Cornish, surname of an admiral victorious ...

On Dumpster Diving, Lars Eighner

New England Journal of Public Policy

Lars Eighner became homeless in 1988 after leaving a job he had held for ten years as an attendant at a state hospital in Austin, Texas. He lives in a small apartment in Austin and continues to scavenge. This article was originally published in the Fall 1990 issue of The Threepenny Review. Reprinted with permission.

This article originally appeared in a 1992 issue of the New England Journal of Public Policy (Volume 8, Issue 1): http://scholarworks.umb.edu/nejpp/vol8/iss1.

An Enabling Society: The Coming Transformation Of Social And Employment Polices, Policy Analysis And National Social Statistics, Peter Hicks

Population Change and Lifecourse Strategic Knowledge Cluster Discussion Paper Series/ Un Réseau stratégique de connaissances Changements de population et parcours de vie Document de travail

The paper explores the coming transformation in the content and structure of social and employment policies – and associated transformations in national social statistics and in the tools of policy analysis. Supporting analysis explores the technological advances that are making these ‘enabling society’ transformations possible and situates enabling society policies in the context of evolving theories of what constitutes good public policy. Illustrations are provided showing how the transformed policy would work in practice and how the changes might be introduced in Canada, including a practical strategy for increasing co-ordination across academic, program and jurisdictional silos.

Enabling society policies and programs ...

Potential Barriers To Aboriginal Teenaged Mothers' Access To Maternal And Parental Benefits, Jeremy Hull

The International Indigenous Policy Journal

This chapter uses available data to examine the ways in which federal and provincial maternity, maternal, or parental benefits are likely to receive less income than others because of their lower income and parental leave programs may have a differential impact on Aboriginal teen mothers as compared to other Canadian parents. This is done through analysis of the employment and income characteristics of Aboriginal teen mothers in relation to the benefits and eligibility criteria for maternity and parental leave programs. It is concluded that Aboriginal teen mothers are less able to receive these benefits because they are less likely than ...

Building An Evidence-Base For The Civil Justice System: Civil Justice System Framework And Literature Review Report, Robyn Sheen, Penny Gregory

Access to Justice

The aim of this project was to scan research into the civil justice system conducted over the last five years to find empirical research that relates to the draft objectives for the civil justice system. The research has been classified under the relevant objectives through assignment to a classification framework developed in consultation with the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department (AGD).

Through this process of scanning the literature, the consultants were also asked to make findings in relation to the state of civil justice research in Australia, with a view to informing the planned development of an evidence base for the ...

Wie Featured Person Of The Month Highlights (Katina Michael), Keyana Tenant, Katina Michael

Associate Professor Katina Michael

The WIE Featured Person of the Month is Katina Michael, editor-in-chief of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine. After working at OTIS Elevator Company and Andersen Consulting, Katina was offered and exciting graduate engineering position at Nortel in 1996; and her career has been fast track from there. Read Katina’s story on Page 7.

Should Doctors Help You To Die? (Podcast 026), Dennis M. Sullivan

CedarEthics Podcasts

A ballot initiative in Massachusetts may make physician-assisted suicide legal in that state. If approved, Massachusetts would join Washington and Oregon (and by a state Supreme Court ruling, Wisconsin) in allowing terminal patients to choose an early death by a doctor’s prescription.

A Study For The Design And Administration Of A Successful Foreclosure Mediation Program In Massachusetts, Madhawa Palihapitiya, Kaila O. Eisenkraft

Massachusetts Office of Public Collaboration Publications

This study examines foreclosure mediation programs and legislation in ten jurisdictions across the nation as well as relevant research and scholarship in the field in order to capture best practices and lessons learned to inform the authorization and design of effective foreclosure mediation programming for Massachusetts. The lens for the examination is the need for foreclosure mediation in Massachusetts and the statutory and programmatic frameworks necessary for the design and implementation of a successful foreclosure mediation program. The study provides an account of how Massachusetts is dealing with residential foreclosures at present and the ways mediation can contribute to resolving ...

The Ethics Of Obamacare: A Post-Election Perspective (Podcast 027), Dennis M. Sullivan

CedarEthics Podcasts

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (H.R. 3590) is now a reality. And after the election of Barack Obama to a second term, it is clear that “Obamacare” is going to remain with us.

The national debate over health care reform has been one of the most divisive issues in our modern public discourse. One reason for this is that people often start discussing political solutions without really understanding the issues. The politics are messy, but the ethical issues at stake are critically important. Without rancor or political posturing, we take a look at the ethical problems in ...

Fall To Grace, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Fall to Grace (2013) directed by Alexandra Pelosi.

The National Economic Security Standard Index, Gerontology Institute, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Gerontology Institute Publications

The Elder Economic Security Standard Index (Elder Index) is a new tool for use by policy makers, older adults, family caregivers, service providers, aging advocates, and the public at large. Developed by the Gerontology Institute at the University of Massachusetts Boston and Wider Opportunities for Women (WOW), the Elder Index is a measure of income that older adults require to maintain their independence in the community and meet their daily costs of living, including affordable and appropriate housing and health care. The development and use of the Elder Index promotes a measure of income that respects the autonomy goals of ...

Women’S Political Leadership In Massachusetts, Paige Ransford, Meryl Thomson, Sarah Healey

Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy Publications

The Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy (CWPPP) at UMass Boston’s McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies has been tracking the election of women at the municipal level in Massachusetts since 1996. In 2003, the Project expanded to include all New England states. CWPPP remains the only research center in the United States that regularly tracks women’s political representation at the local level.

Revitalizing Hamilton's Heart: Business Owners And The Prospects For King Street Downtown, Claire S. Atkin

Open Access Dissertations and Theses

Since the 1960’s, post industrial downtowns across North America and Europe have suffered economic and population losses. Downtown revitalization theory is now a major subject in urban geography. Although each city is unique and requires customized revitalization techniques, certain approaches have worked better than others. Hamilton, Ontario, is a city of roughly 520,000 located just outside the Greater Toronto Area. Its downtown has struggled since the 1970’s. In the last ten years, however, certain areas of downtown have shown signs of revitalization. Conversation about this change has largely focused on attracting creative industries. King Street, Hamilton’s ...

Privacy Issues And Solutions In Social Network Sites, Xi Chen, Katina Michael

Associate Professor Katina Michael

The boom of the internet and the explosion of new technologies have brought with them new challenges and thus new connotations of privacy. Clearly, when people deal with e-government and e-business, they do not only need the right to be let alone, but also to be let in secret. Not only do they need freedom of movement, but also to be assured of the secrecy of their information. Solove [6] has critiqued traditional definitions of privacy and argued that they do not address privacy issues created by new online technologies. Austin [7] also asserts: “[w]e do need to sharpen ...

Privacy- The Times They Are A-Changin', M.G. Michael, Katina Michael

Associate Professor Katina Michael

This special section is dedicated to privacy in the information age. Since the rise of mobile social media in particular and the advent of cloud computing few can dispute that the times have changed. Privacy is now understood in context, and within a framework that is completely different to what it once was. The right to be let alone physically seemingly has been replaced by the right to give away as much information as you want virtually. What safeguards can be introduced into such a society? We cannot claim to wish for privacy as a right if we ourselves do ...