April 12, 2008 by Walter Schneider.

Ms JW wrote:

Please can you explain how Quebec Laws allow fathers and mothers who wish to avoid paying child support emigrate to your beautiful country.

Why is Quebec not part of the REMO treaty with the UK and other countries of the world.

Or hopefully I am totally wrong and you can kindly give me the contact of the correct office to contact and claim maintenance as his father has run away and RETIRED to your country.

Thanking you kindly

Ms JW

Hello Ms JW,

The short answers are, no, I can’t explain it but can only speculate on it, and, yes, I can direct you to sources of the information you seek.  However, there is also a more fundamental question that you perhaps should have asked but did not.  Why do laws exist that force expunged parents (usually fathers) to pay for “crimes” they did not commit, for children whom they cannot see, and for divorces they did not want or deserve?

Here are the long answers.

I neither reside in Quebec nor speak French.  Therefore I am not very familiar with child-support enforcement rules in Quebec and  don’t have precise and certain answer to your questions, but it appears to me that Canada has a reciprocal agreement with the UK, in relation to the enforcement of the collection of child support.  I do not know that Quebec is exempt from that international agreement.

If Quebec is not part of that agreement, that could be because family- and divorce law in English-speaking Canada and in Quebec evolved differently over time.  In English-speaking Canada, jurisprudence is based on English Common Law, while in Quebec, jurisprudence is based on the Code Napoleon.  That the evolution of family laws diverged somewhat in various portions of Canada is entirely possible and even a fact, as those laws are largely provincial and not federal matters.

However, that there is a difference such as that which concerns you seems somewhat incongruous.  With the aid of lavish and enormously generous government funding derived from taxes paid by all Canadian income earners who were generally totally unaware of the socially destructive unconstitutional laws with which they were about to be hit, the domination and control of Canadian jurisprudence by father- and family-hostile law societies and interest groups were foisted on Canada in the 1960s (e. g.: “no-fault” divorce against the wishes of the other partner in an ostensibly life-long contract, and the legalization of extortion for the financing of the filching of the children of the non-custodial parent - usually the father).

Quebec jurisprudence is even more rabidly father- and family-hostile than is the case in English-speaking Canada and other developed nations.  It is incomprehensible that the feminist interest groups and the feminist lawmakers that drive the increasingly totalitarian, anti-family family laws in Canada would have overlooked Quebec as a source of profit to be derived from reciprocal child-support enforcement procedures for the UK and Canada.  Still, it is possible - however unlikely - that the lawmakers (i. e.: legislators) in Quebec refused to be railroaded into the feminist-desired unconstitutional changes to Canadian family law to the extent that such changes were considered and advertised in international agreements for child-support enforcement.  After all, such laws are a nationa shame.

I suggest that you ask your lawyer the question of why it would be that Quebec is exempt and that you change lawyers if he hasn’t got the answer.

Failing that, you may wish to direct your inquiries to some family-rights organizations in Quebec, although the best avenue of success would probably be to go directly to the Quebec government or to the Canadian Embassy.  The most obvious agency that should be able to provide you with the information you seek would be the one you should contact through the web page that you perhaps visited already: http://www.csa.gov.uk/en/case/remo.asp

I copied your information request and my answers to some other pro-family and pro-father activists.  Perhaps they will provide more precise information.

Permit me to ask questions.  Did either you or your ex-husband break your marriage contract against the objections of the other parent of your children?  After separation and divorce, did you regularly and equitably share access to and custody of your children?

If your separation and divorce were the outcome of a mutual agreement between you and him, and if child access and -custody were shared equitably while the father was still present in the UK, then there was really no need for a child-support order.  There would then not even have been any motivation for the father of your children to “avoid paying child support [and to] emigrate” to Canada, right?  After all, what motivation would there be to escape from something that doesn’t exist?

It appears to me that the father of the children you had by him quite possibly and naturally tried to escape the paying of extortion money for goods and services he can’t enjoy.

Regards,

Walter Schneider
http://fathersforlife.org

Posted in Child-Custody Awards, Family, Feminist Jurisprudence, Child Abduction | Print | No Comments »

April 10, 2008 by Walter Schneider.

The following comments were sent to a fathers rights activist in response to his assertion that all that is missing for fathers rights organizations to gain political power is to obtain government funding.

George,

All the FR movement lacks is money? I cannot quite agree with that.

Money is the root of all evil, so the saying goes. It would therefore follow that money cannot possibly be the solution to a problem like the lack of inroads made by the FR movement, or can it?

As one of the largest budget items in the federal budget, subsidies to Canadian Natives to solve their woes at roughly $6,800 a year for every native man, woman and child have hardly solved any problems the Canadian Natives suffer from. A few success stories can be mentioned. However, as a whole,

• The life expectancies of our Natives are many years below the Canadian average;
• Their suicide rates are probably the highest of all ethnic groups in the world, higher than those in any of the nations in the world, much higher even than those in the Russian Federation, and about five times higher than the Canadian national average;
• The incident rate of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is about 70 percent in some Native communities;
• Their rates of fatherlessness and infant mortality are higher than the national average;
• The crime and incarceration rates for Natives are ten times higher than the Canadian average; but
• The department of Native and Indian Affairs is a boon for an army of civil servants and even produced a few prime ministers, most notably Pierre Elliot Trudeau and Jean Chretien.

If I were a Native leader and were to observe those dismal outcomes of centuries of Canadian empathy for Natives, I would tell the federal government to go and fly a kite. However, why in the world would FR activist organizations ask for financial assistance by the government? Financial assistance breeds political and economic dependency.

It was not financial assistance from the government that gave political power to feminists. It was political power that enticed the government to provide financial assistance to Natives and to feminism.

How did the Natives gain political power? They demonstrated, closed roads, stopped logging operations, etc.. They also went to universities and studied law at far higher rates than other Canadians did. Political power brought financial and other concessions for natives, but overall that brought benefits only to band councils and to bureaucrats. The few handovers of large areas of Canada did not perceptibly hurt the average Canadian, and all of the concessions made to the Natives helped build the careers of an enormous number of bureaucrats and lawyers, with just about all of the bureaucrats and the vast majority of the lawyers not being Natives. However, the net-”gains” made by Natives were confined to the First Nations and to Native communities. Canadians paid their taxes, and the Native problems hardly ever intruded into their lives.

How did the feminists gain political power? They raised their children (in their image), and they burned their bras. Just as the natives did, they also went to universities and studied law at far higher rates than other Canadians did. They went a bit farther, they began lecturing at universities, and they formed law societies that forced feminist laws upon the judiciary and thereby on all of society. In the process of doing that, they obtained ever escalating financial and legal concessions, but overall that brought benefits only to feminists and to bureaucrats. Those concessions do hurt all Canadians, but, just as with the Natives - only on a much larger scale - feminism helped build the careers of legions of bureaucrats, lawyers, judges, psychologists, lecturers, counselors, mediators, etc.. However, the net-”gains” made by feminists, although confined to women, did nothing for the Canadian economy as a whole and were extremely expensive. Even though Canadians paid their escalating taxes to pay for it all, given that we live in a closed system, men pay the majority of all taxes (about 70 percent) and at best receive 30 percent of all available social benefits, while women pay a small share of all taxes (about 30 percent) while they receive at least 70 percent of all social benefits.

How do men gain political power? They increasingly don’t get to raise their children, and they can at best burn their jockstraps - which latter, moreover, many men don’t ever wear. Besides, compare the public appeal of bras vs. jockstraps, of mammary glands vs. prostate glands and rectums.

One thing is certain, men will not gain financial or any other sort of concessions from the government until they have political power and begin to wield it. The question is not so much what the benefits are that men have to offer - and let there be no mistake, the benefits that men can return for financial and other concessions must be irrefutably good (while feminists never had to offer anything other than the promise to set social injustices for women right). The question is whether a sufficiently large critical mass of men can agree on what men have to offer.

The feminists didn’t have a heck of a lot of money to begin to achieve their progress. Why would men need a lot of money to do something comparable?

One thing is for sure, the liberalism, sexual revolution and women’s liberation promoted by the student revolutions that happened simultaneously throughout the world in 1968 did not happen spontaneously.

…the student revolution of 1968 (brought about, as in all other nations where it happened, through organizational direction by Moscow and funding by Pankow - [a suburb of Berlin] the capital of the GDR - happened not just in France but in many nations at the same time - e. g.: 1968 in an international context), and then led to the world-wide usurpation of power and control by radical feminism - largely by means of the influence of radical feminism on the UN.

All those changes happened through whatever special interest group’s ideology influenced the bureaucracy, controlled it and then had the bureaucracy promote and enforce it. (See Trends of the politics of sex)

Men’s rights and fathers’ right organizations throughout the world ignore history. They ignore it at their own and at all of mankind’s peril.

Posted in Men's Issues, Family, Feminism, The New World Order | Print | 1 Comment »

April 8, 2008 by Walter Schneider.

Well, that is not quite it, but it is a good part of what needs to be done, as Angry Harry - in his usual and admirable lucid style - explains in his piece, Feminists Destroy the Planet (April 4, 2008)

Read it. You, and especially policy makers, will most certainly obtain a few good ideas on what it takes to save the planet and, in the process, human civilization.

I farmed for decades, trying to keep wilderness at bay and motivating even Jehovah’s Witnesses who came to our door to exclaim: “You live in a beautiful place, you have a lot to be thankful for.” To which I usually explained, “Well, the piece of Paradise on Earth you see here and admire was created by man, mostly by me, working with the material that God gave me - not exactly gave, but I had to buy it with my earnings and with my labour. If you wish to see the original state of the God-given assets I had to work with, let’s go a half a mile east from our yard and let’s take a look at what things used to be like in their natural state.”

I also usually explained that, without the improvements brought about by man, Nature tends to be a bitch given to be very harsh and unforgiving.

Funny that none of the JWs ever took me up on my invitation and never went to take a look at what Nature in its natural state really is like (they also always expected that we would be ready to listen to them but never paid any attention to me when I asked them to give a hand first with pressing things before we would sit down, such as assisting with lambing). Still, Angry Harry is right. Man cannot live in harmony with Nature when feminists are bent on doubling the unavoidable losses that occur when man tries to make a living.

Posted in Feminism, Propaganda Exposed, The New World Order | Print | No Comments »

April 7, 2008 by Walter Schneider.

Dr. Albert Mohler’s blog features an entry today that is very favorable of Stephen Baskerville’s book “Taken into Custody”, a damning expose of the widespread corruption in the government-designed and -run divorce industry: a conglomerate of racketeering involving not only legislators, judges, prosecutors, social workers, police and bureaucrats but also a host of private-industry adjuncts to the government’s sector of the divorce industry, namely: child-support enforcement and similar agencies (in whom many politicians have a vested interest); psychologists; psychiatrists; mediators; lawyers; bar associations; law societies; universities; journalists; reporters and other interests in the media, and so on.

As Professor Stephen Baskerville describes in his book, all of those parties, especially those connected with the family-court system, conspire to intrude and insert themselves into families - even into the most intimate parts of family life - to expunge loving fathers from their families and their children’s lives, to apprehend and control children for the purpose of financially and emotionally devastating fathers (but not exclusively just fathers), to control women (for example, so as to dictate to women that they must choose between being married to the fathers of their children or to lose their children).

“Taken into Custody provides overwhelming evidence that a major reason for the existence and cancerous growth of what Dr. Albert Mohler calls the “Divorce Industrial Complex,” is the overwhelming greed and corruption that permeates the divorce industry.

“Taken into Custody” was popular from the time the first printing was released in the summer of 2007, but even now, quite a few months later, its popularity and appeal are still growing.  Last night the reader reviews at amazon.com for “Taken into Custody” numbered 37. This morning their number had increased to 41, all of them favorable and five-star rated. The most remarkable thing about those reviews is that amongst them is not a single one written by a family- or father-hostile feminist.  Just a few years ago that would have been unimaginable, while a dozen years ago Stephen Baskerville would have had a very serious problem with finding a publisher willing to produce and distribute his book.

The vast majority of the reader reviews originated in the USA, but quite a few are from reviewers in other countries, such as the U.K., Sweden, Australia and one with an origin identified as “International”.

There is apparently as of yet no review by a Canadian reader. I should have written one, but have not yet finished reading the book, having received it, finally, and after two inexplicably failed attempts, just a couple of days ago.  I will make up for my missing review as soon as I am through reading “Taken into Custody.”

The fundamental issues discussed in “Taken into Custody” are not exclusive to the USA.  They are endemic of all English-speaking nations (as Stephen Baskerville identified with numerous examples and citations pertaining to many of those nations).  Still, they are applicable to - to mention a few such nations other than the USA - Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, the countries of the former Soviet block, India, Japan, Egypt, Spain, Italy, France, Holland, Germany, Canada, South Africa, and so on.  The preceding list of countries is based on what is being reported to and discussed with me by fathers and by pro-father- and pro-family activists from around the world.

If you haven’t yet obtained a copy of “Taken into Custody”, get one, and you will find out that - if you dare to dream of having a family - civil rights and liberties are only an illusion.  You will also find out that families make up the fabric of society, and that society is being destroyed when governments engage on a deliberate war that is designed to rip families apart.

As I am reading “Taking into Custody,” I cannot help but feel that the views I have held for years are confirmed.  We managed in the ostensibly “free” West to install absolute totalitarianism by the government bureaucracy.

Posted in Shared Parenting, Men's Issues, Divorce, Media Bias, Child-Custody Awards, Family, Propaganda Exposed, Feminism, Feminist Jurisprudence, Child Abduction | Print | 5 Comments »

April 5, 2008 by Walter Schneider.

Edmonton Journal,
April 4, 2008, B16

Wife sentenced for slicing man’s penis, butt

Convinced he was having an affair, Calgary woman attacked husband during sex

Daryl Slade
Calgary Herald

In the midst of lovemaking, Abigail London-Fife pulled out a knife she had hidden under the bed and slashed her husband’s penis and buttocks.

The woman suspected her husband of cheating, court heard Thursday, when she was handed a 12-month conditional jail sentence, with house arrest for the first six months.

Provincial court Judge Judith Shriar and Crown prosecutor Deven Singhal both said the woman should be treated in the same manner as a man who assaulted his wife.

“Regardless of what’s going on in the home and background, you do not take two knives to the bedroom and stab your husband in the penis and buttocks,” Shriar said.

London-Fife, 35, pleaded guilty Jan. 16 to assault causing bodily harm to Leonard Fife for the Aug. 24 assault.  She has had no contact with him since.

Singhal earlier told court London-Fife was angry over phone calls she intercepted that led her to believe her husband was having an affair.

She planned the attack by bringing the weapons to bed, and carried it out at the most opportune time, the prosecutor said.  “He was in a vulnerable position and she took advantage of it.”

The judge ordered her to take psychological counselling, and to continue domestic violence and anger-management courses.

She is also prohibited from owning or possessing any weapons for a year.

________________
Notes by Fathers for Life

The Edmonton journal took considerable liberties with what it purports is an article published in the Calgary Herald.  For example, the following information was deleted from the edited text of the article:

Singhal noted the victim sustained a 2.5-centimetre laceration to the shaft of his penis, a 15-centimetre laceration to his left buttock, a puncture wound inside his right thigh, a laceration to his scrotum, a 10-centimetre laceration to the back of his shoulder and 7.5-centimetre lacerations to both hands.

However serious the redactions by the Edmonton Journal are, the case of Abigail-the-penis-slasher deserves more attention than even the Calgary Herald gave it.

What would happen if a man would attack his wife in a similar manner?  Right, the man would get locked up, and the key would be thrown away.  However, the “punishment” handed down to Abigail London-Fife-the-penis-slasher proves that women can with impunity commit crimes of domestic violence. We can rest assured that if a man had committed a crime of comparable and equal severity, not only would he have served a long term of incarceration, the story would quite likely have made the frontpage.

For some crimes of equal severity committed by men or by women there are even laws, unlike in this case, that provide preferential treatment for women, such as the category of murder involving children of age 12 months or under.  It is called murder when a father kills his child, and it is called infanticide when a mother murders her child that truly or allegedly is an infant - supposedly less human than a child.  In fact, the category of crime “infanticide” has been applied in cases of the murders by mothers of their children when the victims were far older, as old as six years. When murdering a child, a woman almost always gets off free, with at most a conditional sentence (serving no time in prison, such as in the case of Abigail London-Fife-the-penis-slasher), while a man gets locked up for a lengthy time, which he should be, just as a woman should be.  After all, according to our most fundamental laws, men and women are equal in all regards.

However, there is always an excuse when a woman commits a crime. There is always someone - virtually always a man - or something (if everything else fails, even her inner demons or the devil will do) that compelled a woman to be a criminal or to have been violent, whereby she is then deemed to be suffering and not deserving of any punishment.

The excuse used - entirely illegally but nevertheless by a judge in a court of law - in the case of Abigail London-Fife-the-penis-slasher is that she is a woman and therefore dumb and ignorant of the law.

Isn’t it odd that the feminists refuse to raise a stink about that sort of demeaning and most vile discrimination against women?

In reality, of course, feminists welcome such discrimination.  Such discrimination perpetuates the lie that women cannot be violent and when evidence to the contrary presents itself, as it invariably will and shows women to be as often and as seriously violent as men are, the violence must be excused and thereby condoned.

The worst consequence of that will of course be that the victimization by women of all those who are less powerful or lower in social status (that is primarily children, men and the elderly) intensifies.  A “sentence” such as that with which Judge Judith Shriar rewarded Abigail London-Fife for slashing her husband’s penis and body is an incitement, not a deterrent, for all women to freely exercise their potential for violence against others.

The most remarkable aspect of the case of Abigail London-Fife-the-penis-slasher is what neither the original nor the edited version of the story mentions, the total absence of any injuries to the penis-slasher.  That says a lot about men’s potential for violence against women.  Virtually all men will protect and avoid hurting women, even when under a potentially deadly attack by a violent woman.

Posted in Child Murder, Feminist Jurisprudence, Feminism, The New World Order, Women's Violence | Print | 1 Comment »

April 4, 2008 by Walter Schneider.

Quite a few men write to us about how to pick a wife or girlfriend whom they can trust to be able to live with.  It seems that the answer to that is obvious to most.

Here is the advice that we offer to them when such a question is asked.

The most important aspect of a wife-to-be is how she treats the men in her life: her father, her sons, her brothers, her uncles, her husband or her boyfriend, and even her ex-husbands and ex-boyfriends.  For example:

• If she cheats on her husband or on her boyfriend, she will be likely to cheat on you;
• If she talks bad about any of the men in her life, she will be likely to talk bad, or worse, about you;
• If she says that she is the victim of any of the men in her life, she will be likely to eventually say the same thing, or worse things, in relation to you;
• If she denies the father of her child his rightful place at the side of that child, she will be likely to deny you that place in the life of the child that she will have from you;
• If she steals from any of the men in her life, she will be likely to steal from you, especially your child’s love and affection;
• If she lies to or about anyone, she will be likely to lie about you and to you about anything and everything, and
• If she mistreats any of the men in her life that were there before you came on the scene, she will be likely to mistreat you the same way or mistreat you even worse.

Posted in Men's Issues, Family | Print | 1 Comment »

April 2, 2008 by Walter Schneider.

A toddler martyred to native identity

Jonathan Kay, National Post
Tuesday, April 01, 2008

The article describes the circumstances of the suspicious death of a toddler who had been abandoned by his mother before he was a year old.

Gage …was given over to his great-aunt, a former car thief who’d been imprisoned for assault. A month later, the day after his second birthday, he died– allegedly after falling down the stairs. (Child services workers subsequently rescued Gage’s sister from the same home, covered in bruises.)

The article makes a very sensible recommendation:

It’s heartbreaking to study the details of Gage Guimond’s last days. But it’s something Canadians need to do. The Winnipeg toddler’s death is not just an excruciating human tragedy. It is also a perfect encapsulation of everything wrong with native policy in this country.

(Full Story)

Canadian natives comprise about 3% of the Canadian population and roughly 30% of prison inmates. Here are somewhat more detailed statistics on that:

• …in 1991-1992, Native offenders accounted for 11% of total admissions to federal penitentiaries and 24% of admissions to provincial penitentiaries nationally, while the Native population only represented perhaps 2.3% of the total Canadian population (Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, 1993:74; Statistics Canada, 1993a).
  ______________
  ALTERNATIVE PERSPECTIVES ON THE OVERREPRESENTATION OF NATIVE PEOPLES IN CANADIAN CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTIONS: THE CASE STUDY OF ALBERTA, by Xavier Cattarinich (Source text, PDF file, 310kB)

• According to Statistics Canada data, while the overall incarceration rate for non-Aboriginal people is 117 per 100,000 adults, the overall incarceration rate for Aboriginal people in Canada is estimated to be 1,024 per 100,000 — or almost 9 times higher for Aboriginal persons.
  ________________
  [http://www.turtleisland.org/discussion/viewtopic.php?p=7585]

• 2. 1 Aboriginal People in the Criminal justice SystemAboriginal people come into conflict with the law disproportionately to their representation in the general population. While representing 2.7 per cent of Canada’s population, self-identified Aboriginal people represent approximately 17 per cent of all admissions to federal institutions.

  [In 1999], Adult Aboriginal people are incarcerated more than six times the national rate. In Saskatchewan, the adult Aboriginal incarceration rate is over 1,600 per 100,000, compared to 48 per 100,000 for adult non-Aboriginals. The number of Aboriginal offenders is expected to rise dramatically over the next decade due to the high rate of the Aboriginal youth population. Furthermore, according to data from the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics Homicide Survey, approximately fifteen per cent of all homicides victims in a given year were Aboriginal.
  ____________
  Facts and Figures Aboriginal community development in corrections Demographic Overview of Aboriginal Peoples in Canada and Aboriginal Offenders in Federal Corrections, Correctional Services Canada, last modified 2007-12-27, source text)

Posted in Child Murder, Family, Feminist Jurisprudence, The New World Order, Women's Violence | Print | No Comments »

April 1, 2008 by Walter Schneider.

This is an interesting article, not so much because of another woman catching on to the damages that feminism caused and is causing to the relationships between the sexes, but because of how even women who catch n to that have a hard time casting off the stereotypes that feminism indoctrinated us with.

Detroit Free Press
28 March 2008

Feminism may go too far in girls vs. boys
By Holly Browne

I recognize that U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton has the ability and as much
right as any man to run for president. I firmly believe in equal pay for
equal work, and that women can do any job they set their minds to doing. I
grew up witnessing the many positive changes feminism has brought about -
including economic and political gains for women, as well as changes in the
way we live, dress, make a living and dream of a future.

But as I sat in the stands of my local indoor soccer facility, watching my
son’s under-12 boys team being physically abused by a girls team, I
couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps feminism has finally gone too far….

The article concludes with:

We are raising our boys to be men in a world that increasingly disrespects
men in a variety of venues. If we truly believe in equal rights, then we
women need to speak up and stop allowing TV programs, clothing, and even
children’s sports to get away with the male bashing that is going on. We
need to build up our boys instead of tearing them down. We need to teach
them how to be men. Men who are intelligent, sensitive and strong.

Men who know how to treat a lady….(Full Story)

It seems to me that  Holly Browne got it wrong.  Even though she is right, in as much that we need to build boys up, there is little use in building boys up to learn to be “men who know how to treat a lady”, if girls don’t learn how to be ladies.

However, as the saying goes, if a woman (or a girl) needs to be told what it means to be a lady, she isn’t one.  That is a lesson that the parents of girls Holly Browne is talking about need to learn, but feminism is getting in the way of that.

The teaching of Western Chivalry always was a one-sided affair.  There never was a female counterpart of that.  However, if there was, what was it called when it still existed?

Posted in Education, Men's Issues, Feminism, Women's Violence | Print | No Comments »

April 1, 2008 by Walter Schneider.

The Reality Check
23 March 2008

The Intellectual Perversion of the VAWA Mafia

By Carey Roberts

This article by Carey Roberts is an excellent account of government-sponsored intellectual perversion in the government-driven propaganda war, called VAWA (US Violence against Women Act), against men and families.

It shows that without a doubt the government-policy that government policies need to be based on lies instead of the truth (critiqued by Professors Reece Walters and Tim Hope in Critical thinking about the uses of research) is endemic not only in the U.K. but in the U.S. as well, as it is in all developed nations.

Posted in Family, Censorship, Feminist Jurisprudence, Feminism, Propaganda Exposed, Women's Violence | Print | 1 Comment »

April 1, 2008 by Walter Schneider.

A March 31, 2008 press release by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies annnounces a study report (a monograph titled “Critical thinking about the uses of research“, by Reece Walters and Tim Hope).  The monograph is critical of the issue of government research data reflecting government policy rather than government policy being based on research data that reflect facts, the latter approach requiring honesty as promised by David Blunket in the year 2000.

The press release states:

The government is reluctant to use the learning from critical, independent evidence based analysis and research to inform criminal justice policy making according to a new report published today by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King’s College London.

The authors of the report argue that the government does not want learn from academics or entertain the kind of serious debate that independent academic research can generate.

The author of one essay in the report, Professor Reece Walters, argues, `Home Office suppression of criminological research that contradicts ministerial policy and opinion is a feature of this arm of government. The Home Office remains silent on all those topics that have the potential to reflect poorly on government and is not an institution that represents the British public’. Professor Walters calls for an academic boycott of any Home Office sponsored research.

In his essay, Professor Tim Hope, reflecting on his experience of working on Home Office research, argues that `having placed such a premium on evidence based policy the government has failed to live up to that promise and has resorted to fixing both the process and publication of Home Office research publication to meet the political needs of the time.’ Professor Hope is worried that officials and politicians can be tempted to be selective in their choice of the evidence used to illustrate success of programmes thus resulting in the exclusion of some data and the simplification or misrepresentation of others.

Will McMahon, Policy Director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies said:

`The publication of Critical thinking about the uses of research raises important questions about the transparency of government funded crime research and the need for mechanisms to ensure that research funded by the tax payer is open to proper scrutiny.’

Contact:

Will McMahon, Policy Director, Centre for Crime and Justice Studies: 020 7848 1695 or 07968 950223.

Notes to editors:

1. Reece Walters is Professor in Criminology at the Open University. He has published widely on the ways that criminological knowledge is constructed including his book Deviant Knowledge, Criminology, Policy and Practice. With over 70 authored works on issues such as youth justice, state and corporate crime and more recently on environmental crime, Professor Walters is an internationally reputed scholar. In 2007 he was awarded the Radzinowicz Prize inCriminology.
2. Tim Hope has been Professor of Criminology at Keele University since 1997. He is also Senior Visiting Research Fellow, Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research, School of Law, University of Edinburgh. He co-leads Work-package 6 (Public Policies and Crime) of the CRIMPREV Co-ordination Action of the EU Sixth Framework Programme. Please note that Professor Hope will not be available for interviews.
3. The Centre for Crime and Justice Studies is an independent charity based at King’s College London. It was established in 1931 and aims to inform and educate about all aspects of crime and the criminal justice system from an objective standpoint. It encourages and facilitates healthy debate and understanding of the complex nature of issues concerning crime. The views expressed in Critical thinking about the uses of research are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies.
4. In November 2006 the Science and Technology committee of the House of Commons published a report Scientific Advice, Risk and Evidence Based Policy Making Seventh Report of Session 2005-06. The Government published a response, Scientific Advice, Risk and Evidence Based Policy Making: Government Response to the Committee’s Seventh Report of Session 2005-06, in February 2007.

ENDS

Posted in Censorship, Education, Propaganda Exposed, The New World Order | Print | No Comments »