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Public Inquiries (public + inquiry)
Selected AbstractsUtopia and the doubters: truth, transition and the lawLEGAL STUDIES, Issue 3 2008Colm Campbell Truth commissions have an intuitive appeal in squaring the circle of peace and accountability post-conflict, but some claims for their benefits risk utopianism. Law provides both opportunities and pitfalls for post-conflict justice initiatives, including the operation of truth commissions. Rather than adopting a heavily legalised approach, derived from Public Inquiries, an ,holistic legal model', employing social science fact-finding methodologies to explore pattern of violations, and drawing appropriately on legal standards, may provide the best option for a possible Northern Ireland truth commission. [source] Public Inquiry: Panacea or Placebo?JOURNAL OF CONTINGENCIES AND CRISIS MANAGEMENT, Issue 1 2002Dominic Elliott This article reviews and examines the role of the public inquiry as a mechanism for investigating disasters within the United Kingdom. A number of authors have considered the growing penetration of technology into our lives, as well as economic liberalisation, societal fragmentation and the globalisation of business, as factors that have contributed to a post modern view of the world. Within this context, this article considers the efficacy of the public inquiry as a tool for learning from disaster. Is an instrument born of the late nineteenth century suited to the demands of the early twenty-first century? Data are drawn from the football and rail industries, both of which have witnessed a sequence of large-scale accidents investigated through the public inquiry mechanism. Drawing upon literature from the fields of socio-legal studies and crisis management, three broad areas are critiqued: the process, underlying aims, and impartiality of the public inquiry process. [source] Promotion of Transparency Through Public Inquiry: Oil-for-Food, the Volcker and Cole Inquiries, and Australia's Wheat Exports to IraqBUSINESS AND SOCIETY REVIEW, Issue 2 2007HOWARD HARRIS First page of article [source] SHARED SERVICES IN AUSTRALIAN LOCAL GOVERNMENT: A CASE STUDY OF THE QUEENSLAND LOCAL GOVERNMENT ASSOCIATION MODELECONOMIC PAPERS: A JOURNAL OF APPLIED ECONOMICS AND POLICY, Issue 4 2008BRIAN DOLLERY Professor of Economics, Director A host of recent public inquiries into Australian local government have recommended increased use of shared services and resource-sharing models between groups of local councils. While little is known about the extent and consequences of service sharing, emphasis has been fixed on ,horizontal' shared service models between different local councils in the same municipal jurisdictions. However, other models of shared services and resource sharing are possible. This paper considers the Queensland Local Government Association (LGAQ) model as a case study of a resource sharing between all councils in a given system of local government. This form of shared service and resource sharing seems to offer excellent prospects for cost savings and capacity enhancement. [source] Making Child Protection Policy: The Crime and Misconduct Commission Inquiry into Abuse of Children in Foster Care in QueenslandAUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, Issue 3 2008Clare Tilbury Internationally as well as in Australia, public inquiries have become one of the dominant means of scrutinising child protection services. As such, inquiries have become a policy mechanism for defining the problem of child abuse, and developing possible solutions. This article examines the 2004 Crime and Misconduct Commission Inquiry into the Abuse of Children in Foster Care in Queensland. It discusses both the problems and potential of public inquiries in promoting positive change in a contested policy field like child protection. [source] Professional perpetrators: sex offenders who use their employment to target and sexually abuse the children with whom they workCHILD ABUSE REVIEW, Issue 3 2002Joe Sullivan Abstract Professionals who use their work as a cover for targeting and sexually abusing children have become the focus of public, media and legislative concerns in recent years. In the past 15 years, scandal after scandal has led to review investigations and public inquiries. These in turn have led to legislative changes to help improve childcare practices and prevent perpetrators from gaining access to children through institutions and organizations. This paper explores the literature and research studies which examine institutional abuse and professional perpetrators. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Public Inquiry: Panacea or Placebo?JOURNAL OF CONTINGENCIES AND CRISIS MANAGEMENT, Issue 1 2002Dominic Elliott This article reviews and examines the role of the public inquiry as a mechanism for investigating disasters within the United Kingdom. A number of authors have considered the growing penetration of technology into our lives, as well as economic liberalisation, societal fragmentation and the globalisation of business, as factors that have contributed to a post modern view of the world. Within this context, this article considers the efficacy of the public inquiry as a tool for learning from disaster. Is an instrument born of the late nineteenth century suited to the demands of the early twenty-first century? Data are drawn from the football and rail industries, both of which have witnessed a sequence of large-scale accidents investigated through the public inquiry mechanism. Drawing upon literature from the fields of socio-legal studies and crisis management, three broad areas are critiqued: the process, underlying aims, and impartiality of the public inquiry process. [source] From Victim to Victimhood: Truth Commissions and Trials as Rituals of Political Transition and Individual HealingTHE AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 2 2003Michael Humphrey The victim has been put at the centre of states' post-atrocity strategies to reform governance, rehabilitate state authority and promote reconciliation. This paper explores the role of the victim in the truth commissions and trials aimed at reconciliation and justice and their experiences of the outcomes. The successor state's focus on recovering victims after mass atrocity ritually inverts the former regime's project of producing them. In both truth commissions and trials the state seeks to manipulate the ,spectacle' of the victim's pain and suffering to publicly project the power of the state for different ends. Whereas the repressive state seeks to deepen the effects of violence as a strategy of rule, the successor state seeks to reverse the social and political effects of violence. These strategies of transitional justice have sought to reverse the effects of exclusion, to reverse the direction of state power from producing victims towards redeeming victims, from injuring to healing. Because of the problems of mass criminality and widespread impunity, truth commissions have become widely adopted in preference to trials as a bureaucratic response to bureaucratic murder. They set about producing a ,democratising truth' through a process of public inquiry located outside the state in the people. On the whole, the process, the public testimony and the witnessing has been better received than the product, the reports and the reparations. By contrast, trials seek to produce a societal consensus based on the recovery of the law. But in both cases the victim is redeemed through the individualising discourse of law or the polarising logic of trials which establishes the guilty and innocent. The truth of atrocity is found in affirming gross human rights abuses in victims, in transacted violence rather than the deeper structures of violence. Thus, victimhood is built on a universalising human rights discourse which overly individualises the origins of atrocity. [source] | |||||||||||||