scholarly journals Throwing Away the Key: An Examination of the Renaissance of Preventive Detention in New Zealand

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Jordan Anderson

<p>The indeterminate sentence of preventive detention has experienced a renaissance in New Zealand since the 1980s. What was once a seldom used, emergency provision intended for application to the most dangerous offenders in our society, is now used with alarming frequency: while fifteen offenders served sentences of preventive detention in 1981, the number had risen to 263 by 2014. This thesis seeks to explore the forces driving the renaissance of preventive detention in New Zealand.   Throughout advanced liberal democracies, there has been a shift toward risk driven penal policy. Significant social, political, and economic changes in these societies from the 1980s onwards - such as the neoliberal reforms, and the associated uncaging of risk; social liberation and restructuring; and the cultivation of lifestyles; have contributed to, and exacerbated ontological insecurity and anxiety. The delegation of risk by the state to the individual has produced the variety of benefits and opportunities it was intended for, however it has also left people feeling insecure about their safety and wellbeing within the modern society, knowing that the shrunken state is unwilling, or unable to intervene and protect them. The expansion of preventive detention is an example of the state stepping in and performing a ‘spectacular rescue’ (Pratt and Anderson, 2016: 12). The revival and expansion of preventive detention has been part of the response of the New Zealand government to the intolerable risk of irreparable and irredeemable harm, posed by violent and sexual offenders in particular.  The significant increase in the use of preventive detention is representative of a wider trend of risk driven penal policy throughout the main English speaking societies. While the parallel strand of punitive penal policy has been explored in great depth, the trend toward risk driven penal policy has elicited less focus. Within the literature, there is a lack of identification of risk driven penal policy as a separate strand of development, subject to a separate line of inquiry. This thesis seeks to add to the literature on the influence of risk, exploring it as the driving force behind the revival of preventive detention.</p>

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Jordan Anderson

<p>The indeterminate sentence of preventive detention has experienced a renaissance in New Zealand since the 1980s. What was once a seldom used, emergency provision intended for application to the most dangerous offenders in our society, is now used with alarming frequency: while fifteen offenders served sentences of preventive detention in 1981, the number had risen to 263 by 2014. This thesis seeks to explore the forces driving the renaissance of preventive detention in New Zealand.   Throughout advanced liberal democracies, there has been a shift toward risk driven penal policy. Significant social, political, and economic changes in these societies from the 1980s onwards - such as the neoliberal reforms, and the associated uncaging of risk; social liberation and restructuring; and the cultivation of lifestyles; have contributed to, and exacerbated ontological insecurity and anxiety. The delegation of risk by the state to the individual has produced the variety of benefits and opportunities it was intended for, however it has also left people feeling insecure about their safety and wellbeing within the modern society, knowing that the shrunken state is unwilling, or unable to intervene and protect them. The expansion of preventive detention is an example of the state stepping in and performing a ‘spectacular rescue’ (Pratt and Anderson, 2016: 12). The revival and expansion of preventive detention has been part of the response of the New Zealand government to the intolerable risk of irreparable and irredeemable harm, posed by violent and sexual offenders in particular.  The significant increase in the use of preventive detention is representative of a wider trend of risk driven penal policy throughout the main English speaking societies. While the parallel strand of punitive penal policy has been explored in great depth, the trend toward risk driven penal policy has elicited less focus. Within the literature, there is a lack of identification of risk driven penal policy as a separate strand of development, subject to a separate line of inquiry. This thesis seeks to add to the literature on the influence of risk, exploring it as the driving force behind the revival of preventive detention.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Ailish Wallace-Buckland

<p>In January 1932, the Sydney-based lifestyle magazine Health and Physical Culture published an article titled ‘The Menace of Effeminacy’. This article, written by Carl Hertzig, and read by magazine-subscribers across the Tasman, documented anxieties around the state of men and masculinity following the upheaval of the Great War. Touching on topics such as gender, psychology, eugenics, and sexuality this article and its concerns represent those that this thesis explores in order to understand what the ‘fear of effeminacy’ actually meant for New Zealanders during the interwar years (c.1918-1939). This thesis documents and analyses contemporary discussions of male sexuality and masculinity through a series of sources in order to establish the ways in which these concepts were understood in interwar New Zealand. Firstly, it examines some of the key pieces of legislation and reports that demonstrated official approaches, and ways of thinking, towards mental defectives, sexual offenders, and those with war neuroses. It then explores medical journals, and the dissertations of medical students; and finally, it analyses parts of popular print culture in Aotearoa/New Zealand, such as magazines and newspapers, in order to investigate and piece together the landscape in which said anxieties around effeminacy, masculinity, mental stability, and other deviations from the societally prescribed norm met. This thesis approaches these primary sources in such a way that acknowledges the evolutionary framework of understanding that was pervasive in medical circles during this era.  By thus examining the connections between constructions of the male body, homosexuality and effeminacy, late nineteenth to early twentieth century ideas around eugenics, and psychology and psychiatry, this work further uncovers the state of masculinity and male sexuality in New Zealand during the interwar period. This thesis argues that the ‘threat’ to masculinity perceived in a variety of venues was a mixture of anxieties around physical and mental wounds inflicted by the Great War; population concerns exacerbated by the exposure of the health-standards of troops, and worries of how to recover and reconstruct a virile society following four years of strife; concerns at the apparent loosening of sexual mores, and the changing manifestations of both masculinity and femininity; and ever increasing interest in the psychology of self, sexuality, and society. It adds to existing work on post-World War One masculinity by centring New Zealand discussions and understandings in a way that contributes to the broader literature on New Zealand twentieth-century masculinity, psychology and psychiatry, eugenics, and male sexuality.</p>


Traditio ◽  
1970 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 91-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
James F. Powers

In modern society, enmeshed with confrontations involving the individual, military service and the state, historians are often inclined to make comparisons with the distant past which offer relief from the pressures of contemporary history. Regarding military service, the Middle Ages are occasionally suggested as an age when combat was sporadic, when only the small feudal aristocracy encountered a martial obligation, and when the remainder of society could concentrate on the other burdens of life, free of the paraphernalia of war, hot or cold. As with many romantic generalizations concerning the period, the comparative bliss of the medieval non-combatant is open to question. Many would note, however, that the feudal classes did possess a monopoly on warfare for several centuries in parts of Continental Europe, and would tend to place all discussion of military institutions within a feudal context.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Mark Prebble

<p>This thesis considers how best to administer redistribution policies. It focuses particularly on the information needed to assess relative circumstances, the implications of the government collecting such information, and processes by which the appropriate information may be assembled and assessed. In New Zealand, as with many other OECD nations, the Government's redistribution policies are administered through a range of different agencies, with duplication in some areas and gaps in others. An integrated approach to redistribution systems may offer a means to improve equity and efficiency. Part One discusses the assessment of relative well-being, and adopts the choice set as the intellectual device for this purpose. The time period for the assessment of income is examined in detail, with the conclusion that a long period should be used except where the individual is constrained to operate under a short time horizon. A new concept of "bankability" is developed as a means of identifying those operating under such constraints. Part Two uses the philosophical foundations of the value of privacy to develop a new statement of the right to privacy, such that everyone should be protected against the requirement to divulge information, unless that information is the "business" of another party. A view on the business of the state depends on one's ideology of the state. Since it is generally accepted in New Zealand in the late twentieth century that the state has a role in redistribution, the state has some right to collect information for that purpose. However, the rights of the state are moderated by the existence of a common law tradition of respect for individuals. A set of criteria for evaluating redistribution systems is devised in Part Three. These criteria, which include consideration of the information to be collected, individual control over personal information, and administrative simplicity, are then used to identify significant weaknesses in the systems currently used in New Zealand. The main problems identified are the collection of inadequate information, duplication, and complex institutional structures; the main virtue of the current systems is that information provided is only used for the purpose for which it was provided. An alternative approach is outlined which would address the problems while retaining the current protection of privacy interests. This thesis is a mix of inter-disciplinary academic enquiry and policy development. Part One is an amalgam of economic and philosophical approaches, Part Two involves philosophy and politics, and Part Three applies the theoretical considerations to issues of public administration.</p>


Author(s):  
Jason L. Powell

This paper analyses the concept of ‘risk’, which both as a theoretical tool and dimension of modern society, is slowly being developed within the humanistic and social sciences (Delanty, 1999). Notwithstanding this, the concept of risk and the meaning and implications associated with it, have not been fully explored in relation to disability. Risk is shrouded in historical and contemporary political debate about whose ‘role’ and ‘responsibility’ is it for ‘disability’ in society – does it reside with the state or the individual?


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Jessica Maynard

<p>This thesis examines the development of recreational amateur swimming in New Zealand between 1936 and 1956. During this period, swimming ability and drowning prevention became issues of national importance and extensive measures were introduced to encourage the expansion of amateur swimming culture. The growth of interest in swimming was partly a response to the perception that drowning deaths were too common. This thesis discusses the trends and characteristics of deaths by drowning. The extension of swimming was also largely thanks to the efforts of the Labour Government, elected in 1935, which instituted a new and active approach to enabling leisure. In 1936, just months after being elected, Labour made its first move towards extending New Zealanders’ opportunities for aquatic recreation by offering greater support to voluntary swimming and lifesaving associations. In 1938, under the newly enacted Physical Welfare and Recreation Act, the Government launched the Learn-to-Swim campaign, followed by the Prevent Drowning campaign in 1949. These campaigns helped to establish ‘proper’ swimming as a valuable part of modern life, an increasingly popular leisure pursuit, and an expected skill, as well as advocating the necessity of ‘water wisdom’. By 1956, the perceived need for government intervention into leisure had diminished and swimming and drowning prevention were once again viewed as private matters, the concern of the individual and not of the state. Consequently, the Government (now that of the National administration) withdrew its support from the campaigns. However, swimming was firmly established as an enjoyable, valuable, and important recreational pursuit. Thus, the Water Safety campaign was launched by voluntary swimming and lifesaving organisations to take the place of the Learn-to-Swim and Prevent Drowning campaigns. This thesis argues that the 1936-1956 period was one of significant growth in recreational swimming and the state was an important and active agent in this process of modernising New Zealand’s swimming culture.</p>


2019 ◽  
Vol 70 ◽  
pp. 11002
Author(s):  
Julia Isakova ◽  
Maxim Pchelnikov

The necessity of transition to ecologically oriented civilization, conditionality of formation of system of knowledge in education education and culture is shown. The system of values of ecocentric orientation is offered. In the conditions of transitive modern society the complex of ecologically significant skills is formed at receiving education and is transformed into internal beliefs of the individual. It is argued that the modern reality requires immediate initiation and development of ecological education of youth at all stages and levels of education: the state of the environment can not wait for full formation of generations, which is subject-oriented environmental education in early childhood, and does not allow time for long-term experiments.


2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 352
Author(s):  
Zhandos Bahtybaevich ZHOLZHAKSYNOV

The article is devoted to criminal law measures to resist criminal abuses related to violence. In modern society, the protection of individual rights and freedoms is one of the most important tasks. Within this task, the most critical issue is that of protection of the individual from criminal violence by criminal law measures. The problems of violent crime, despite all measures taken by the state and society, do not go into the past, but become relevant for modern society. Without exaggeration, they represent a social disaster that threatens the security of the individual, society and the state. The purpose of the article is to analyze the criminal law methods of combating violent crime, to study the criminal provisions relating to the use of violence in Kazakhstan's national criminal legislation and legislation in a number of foreign countries. The article examines the opinions of scientists on the nature and characteristics of criminal violence, the criminal law of Kazakhstan and the legislation of a number of foreign countries in terms of violent crimes, formulates conclusions and sets out the recommendations for the further improvement of the criminal protection of the individual against violent endeavors. On the basis of an examination of the theoretical material and experience of foreign countries in the field of countering violent crime, the author suggested ways of counteracting the mentioned crime, suggesting further improvement of the criminal legislation of the Republic of Kazakhstan, in the sphere of protecting the individual from criminal violence. The main provisions and conclusions of the article can be used in science and practice in addressing crime prevention, comparative characteristics of the criminal regulations regarding violence in Kazakhstan and foreign countries, as well as the subsequent reform of the criminal law in the field of the physical integrity of the individual.


Author(s):  
Il'ya Chestnov

This article is about secure issues. Secure as the object of research is considered in the historical and socio-cultural context. Theoretical representation and secure issues in “risk society” is the object of research. The post-classical methodology used by the author assumes the analysis of security in the historical and socio-cultural context. This context is a post-modern society characterized by risk and uncertainty. In this regard, the author suggests reviewing the established ideas about security. Security includes two dimensions – objective and mental (mental, subjective), which complement each other. In this case, security is the idea of the security of the individual, the state, and society constructed by the authorities. Constructability and relativity of security are its most important characteristics in the «risk society». Today, security is one of the fundamental human rights. The content of security as a human right is also a measure of freedom. This right is guaranteed by security measures developed and implemented by the state and civil society. Such measures are aimed at the person who may pose a security threat, and the protected object. These measures are historically variable and relative to the threats that appear to be most relevant.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1 SI) ◽  
pp. 18-21
Author(s):  
Viktor Bondarenko

Cybersecurity, cyberwarfare, information wars, cyber defense, cyberspace - concepts that have recently increasingly filled the space around everyone. More and more often we hear these words, more and more often they play an important role. The role of the state in the protection of the national social space, the protection of the individual in this information confrontation is also growing. Equally important in our fleeting world is the growing problem of protecting interethnic peace in the country, and especially in such polyethnic states as Ukraine. Nowadays, even relatively mono-ethnic states, due to active migration processes and significant economic changes, have to deal with the security of the interethnic space. After all, the security of the information space is now, without a doubt, also the security of the state.


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