BL Explains why the respect in which the UN is held is not matched by admiration for its practical attempts to safeguard human rights.

This thought-provoking work raises important questions about sex offender laws, drawing from personal stories, research, and data to prove the policies promote fear, destroy lives, and fail to protect children. Do sex offender laws protect children, or are they inherently unfair practices that, at their worst, promote vigilante justice? The latter, this book argues. By analyzing the social, political, historical, and cultural context surrounding the emergence of current sex offender policies and laws, the work shows how sex offenders have come to loom as greater-than-life monsters when, in many cases, that is not true at all. Looking at its subject from a fresh viewpoint, the book shares research and new analyses of data and qualitative evidence to show how sex-offender laws are not only ineffective, but engender destructive fear and anxiety. To help readers understand the impact of these laws, the author presents interviews with sex offenders and their families as they describe the day-to-day reality of living on the sex offender registry. Citing research and statistics, the book challenges the idea that sex offenders must be continually monitored and publicly identified because they are incurably predatory. Most important, the study shows that undue sex offender panic is preventing policymakers from addressing the true threats to children—poverty and growing inequality.

While many claim that being a mom is the most important job in the world, in reality motherhood in the United States is becoming harder. From preconception, through pregnancy, and while parenting, women are held to ever-higher standards and are finding themselves punished – both socially and criminally – for failing to live up to these norms. This book uncovers how women of all ethnic backgrounds and socioeconomic statuses have been interrogated, held against their will, and jailed for a rapidly expanding list of offenses such as falling down the stairs while pregnant or letting a child spend time alone in a park, actions that were not considered criminal a generation ago. While poor mothers and moms of color are targeted the most, all moms are in jeopardy, whether they realize it or not. Women and mothers are disproportionately held accountable compared to men and fathers who do not see their reproduction policed and almost never incur charges for “failure to protect.” The gendered inequality of prosecutions reveals them to be more about controlling women than protecting children. Using a reproductive justice lens, Caitlin Killian analyzes how and why mothers are on a precipice and what must change to prevent mass penalization and instead support mothers and their children.

State collapse is one of the major threats to peace, stability, and economic development in sub-Saharan Africa today. In a collapsed state the regime finally wears out its ability to satisfy the demands of the various groups in society; it fails to govern or to keep the state together. The collapse is marked by the loss of control over political and economic space. A collapsed state can no longer perform its basic security and development functions and has no effective control over its territory and borders. Efforts to avoid drawing other nations into a wider conflict created by the collapse of a state—and creating favorable conditions for reconciliation and reconstruction of a failed state after it has collapsed—present major challenges. In April, 2008 the Cornell Institute for African Development called a symposium on ‘Failed and Failing States in Africa: Lessons from Darfur and Beyond’ to address these critical issues. Key contributions to the symposium are brought together in this volume. Taken together these essays represent a significant discussion on the challenges presented by the presence of failing states within Africa.

Pride and Legal Prejudice is the second part of a trilogy covering the author’s efforts to parent and advocate for his adopted child with severe attachment issues in both Seattle and Los Angeles. Readers will be able to see here how his tenacious efforts to help his daughter would end up being denied or invalidated by the child-welfare legal complex in Los Angeles. How the author fought with pride against the legal prejudice that he and his daughter endured during their traumatic three-year dependency court case in Los Angeles will become the focus of this second volume. The author will conclude that reunifying successfully with one’s child in any dependency case needs to involve more than just being willing to complete an assigned case plan or keeping up with visitation demands. Beyond these worthy goals, Cambridge will be exploring the many ways in which a strong and motivated legal team that is just as intent on the goal of reunification as the parent, is of paramount importance. Cambridge believes that while he was able to retain his parental rights at the end of their long case, he and his daughter could have forestalled much lasting trauma if their assigned social workers and therapists had been able to “see better” and if the presiding commissioner of his case had been less prejudiced. The author was left still trying to reach his troubled daughter when their dependency case ended. Readers will be able to judge the extent to which he succeeded or made progress in his final volume.

This book is Brad Henry's true life stories. There have been so many failures in Brad's life that many people will be able to relate to this book. To be sure there are some success stories mixed in but the true character of a person is not defined when everything is going great. It is defined when everything seems hopeless and when you have nowhere to go. If you have ever felt this way then this book is for you. This book will give you hope again to dream.