The Criminal Justice Technology Forecasting Group (CJTFG) deliberated on the effects that major technology and social trends could have on criminal justice in the next two to five years and identified potential responses. This report captures the results of the group’s meetings and initiatives, presents the emerging trends and highlights of the group’s discussion, and presents the results of analyses to assess connections between the trends.

Laws subject people who perform sex work to arrest and prosecution.  The Compassionate Court? assesses two prostitution diversion programs (PDPs) that offer to “rehabilitate” people arrested for street-based sex work as an alternative to incarceration. However, as the authors show, these PDPs often fail to provide sustainable alternatives to their mandated clients. Participants are subjected to constant surveillance and obligations, which creates a paradox of responsibility in conflict with the system’s logic of rescue. Moreover, as the participants often face shame and re-traumatization as a price for services, poverty and other social problems, such as structural oppression, remain in place.
 
The authors of The Compassionate Court? provide case studies of such programs and draw upon interviews and observations conducted over a decade to reveal how participants and professionals perceive court-affiliated PDPs, clients, and staff. Considering the motivations, vision, and goals of these programs as well as their limitations—the inequity and disempowerment of their participants—the authors also present their own changing perspectives on prostitution courts, diversion programs, and criminalization of sex work.
 

Families today are experiencing untold pressures and are expected to shoulder enormous burdens at a time when resources for support are becoming ever scarcer. This important book examines the effects of stress on both children and parents and explores various strategies for coping.

The authors—experts in child health and development and in business and social policy—emphasize that the problems of the family and of its members cannot be considered individually. They view the family as a dynamic system whose health is vitally related to its internal relationships and its interactions with other social networks. Stress in this context can be either a positive or a negative influence on the family’s effectiveness in raising children, depending on the personal and public resources available.

The strength of the book lies in its integrated approach to a many-sided problem. The authors provide reviews of research, clinical applications, and theoretical discussions, including several frameworks for understanding the constellation of factors within the family that affect children’s development. They examine specific situations that can present families with formidable challenges: unemployment, divorce, two-career families, single parenthood,teenage pregnancy, demands from the workplace. Some of these situations are traumatic but brief; others, such as chronic illness, require long-term coping strategies. The authors show the similarities that underlie these stressful situations—how they can affect the fabric of family life and the development of the young child.

The emphasis throughout the book is on policy implications: the urgent need for more enlightened and supportive corporate and government involvement. Unless we make the well-being of the family a priority, the number of children in adverse situations will continue to increase. This book will serve as an indispensable guide to psychologists, pediatricians, psychiatrists, educators, business executives, and government officials.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals initiative has the potential to set the direction for a future world that works for everyone. Approved by 193 United Nations member countries in September 2016 to help guide global and national development policies through the year 2030, the seventeen goals build on the successes of the Millennium Development Goals, but also include new priority areas, such as climate change, economic inequality, innovation, sustainable consumption, peace, and justice. Assessed against commonly agreed targets and indicators, the goals should facilitate inter-governmental cooperation and the development of regional and even global development strategies. This book explores, through a series of case studies, the substantial challenges for assembling reliable data and statistics to address pressing development challenges, particularly in Africa. By highlighting the enormous potential value of creating and using high quality data, statistics, and records as an interconnected resource and describing how this can be achieved, the book will contribute to defining meaningful and realistic global and national development policies in the critical period to 2030.