Vetting Sexual Offenders: State Over-extension, the Punishment Deficit and the Failure to Manage Risk

This article examines the state regulation of sexual offenders in the particular context of pre-employment vetting. A successive range of statutory frameworks have been put in place, culminating in the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006, to prevent unsuitable individuals from working with the vulnerable, and children in particular. Contemporary legislative and policy developments are set against a backdrop of broader concerns in the area of crime and justice, namely risk regulation, preventative governance and ‘precautionary logic.’ Proponents of these approaches have largely ignored concerns over their feasibility. This article specifically addresses this fissure within the specific field of vetting. It is argued that ‘hyper innovation’ and state over-extension in this area are particularly problematic and have resulted in exceptionally uncertain and unsafe policies. These difficulties relate principally to unrealistic public expectations about the state’s ability to control crime; unintended and ambiguous policy effects; and ultimately the failure of the state to deliver on its self-imposed regulatory mandate to effectively manage risk.

Average household income, crime, and smoking behaviour in a local area: The Finnish 10-Town study

Social environments, like neighbourhoods, are increasingly recognised as determinants of health. While several studies have reported an association of low neighbourhood socio-economic status with morbidity, mortality and health risk behaviour, little is known of the health effects of neighbourhood crime rates. Using the ongoing 10-Town study in Finland, we examined the relations of average household income and crime rate measured at the local area level, with smoking status and intensity by linking census data of local area characteristics from 181 postal zip codes to survey responses to smoking behaviour in a cohort of 23,008 municipal employees. Gender-stratified multilevel analyses adjusted for age and individual occupational status revealed an association between low local area income rate and current smoking. High local area crime rate was also associated with current smoking. Both local area characteristics were strongly associated with smoking intensity. Among ever-smokers, being an ex-smoker was less likely among residents in areas with low average household income and a high crime rate. In the fully adjusted model, the association between local area income and smoking behaviour among women was substantially explained by the area-level crime rate. This study extends our knowledge of potential pathways through which social environmental factors may affect health. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

"Studying Crime and Conflict: The Northern Ireland Example",

(With R. Geary.)

Intergenerational Solidarity and Justice in Ireland: towards a new national dialogue

Gross domestic product plummets. Unemployment soars. Large-scale emigration reemerges after a decade of labor-market driven immigration. The International Monetary Fund and European Union are called to bail out the economy. Indebtedness haunts households in the aftermath of a spectacular housing market crash. The Celtic Tiger is firmly consigned to history books as Ireland’s economic fortunes have waned with unprecedented rapidity. The trials of the economy and policy are highly visible in the media and political debates. However, we know little about how these public travails are reflected in the private sphere where the recession is translated into mass emigration of young workers, defaults on mortgages, former twoearner households turning into no-earner families, and cutbacks in health and social care services that leave many younger and older citizens without the supports on which they could rely.

Unveiling Fairness for the Consumer:The Law, Economics and Justice of Expanded Arbitration

In recent years, the US Supreme Court has rather controversially extended the ambit of the Federal Arbitration Act to extend arbitration’s reach into, inter alia¸ consumer matters, with the consequence that consumers are often (and unbeknownst to them) denied remedies which would otherwise be available. Such denied remedies include recourse to class action proceedings, effective denial of punitive damages, access to discovery and the ability to resolve the matter in a convenient forum.

The court’s extension of arbitration’s ambit is controversial. Attempts to overturn this extension have been made in Congress, but to no avail. In contrast to American law, European consumer law looks at pre-dispute agreements to arbitrate directed at consumers with extreme suspicion, and does so on the grounds of fairness. In contrast, some argue that pre-dispute agreements in consumer (and employment) matters are consumer welfare enhancing: they decrease the costs of doing business, which is then passed on to the consumer. This Article examines these latter claims from both an economic and normative perspective.

The economic analysis of these arguments shows that their assumptions do not hold. Rather than being productive of consumer surplus, the use of arbitration is likely to have the opposite effect. The industries from which the recent Supreme Court cases originated not only do not exhibit the industrial structure assumed by the proponents of expanded arbitration, but are also industries which exhibit features that facilitate consumer welfare reducing collusion.

The normative analysis addresses the fairness concerns. It is explicitly based upon John Rawls’ notion of “justice as fairness,” which can provide a lens to evaluate social institutions. This Rawlsian analysis considers the use of extended arbitration in consumer matters in the light of the earlier economic results. It suggests that the asymmetries present in the contractual allocation of rights serve as prima facie evidence that such arbitration–induced exclusions are prima facie unjust/unfair. However, as asymmetry is only a prima facie test, a generalized criticism of the arbitration exclusions (of the sort found in Congress and underlying the European regime) is overbroad.