Each year, approximately one-third of all people admitted to prison in the United States are committed as the result of a revocation of community-based supervision such as probation, parole, or federal supervised release (Carson & Anderson, 2016). Many of these individuals are being incarcerated for technical violations of their supervision - conduct other than the commission of a new crime which is in violation of a condition of supervision. The practice of committing offenders to prison for technical violations of supervision is rather common at the state level. In a 2013 study, for example, Ostermann found that although paroled inmates in New Jersey were less likely than inmates who served their entire prison terms without parole to engage in new criminal conduct following their release, the paroled inmates were just as likely to be returned to prison within three years due to having been charged with technical violations of their supervision. This practice also occurs in the federal criminal justice system, where 70% of the offenders under community-based supervision who are returned to prison each year are recommitted on the strength of technical violations of supervision alone (Administrative Office of the United States Courts, 2017a). A substantial amount of prior work (for example, Apel et al., 2010; Clear, 2007; Petit, Sykes & Western, 2009; Rose & Clear, 1998) has revealed the potentially harmful consequences of imprisonment. Despite this, little research has examined how incarcerating persons for technical violations of supervision compares to widely-available alternative, intermediate sanctions such as home confinement and reentry center placement in terms of ability to prevent the commission of new crimes or continued technical non-compliance. The present study examined these questions, utilizing a sample of offenders in the federal criminal justice system. Propensity score matching was used to construct comparable treatment and control groups, thereby reducing concerns of selection bias. Post-matching analyses suggest the following: 1) the effect of incarcerating offenders for technical violations of supervision is negligible compared to subjecting them to intermediate sanctions with regard to preventing the commission of new crimes; 2) offenders incarcerated for technical violations of supervision are more likely to commit new crimes post-sanction – and sooner – than offenders subjected to intermediate sanctions; 3) offenders imprisoned for technical violations are more likely to engage in subsequent technical violations – and sooner – than offenders subjected to intermediate sanctions; and 4) the greater the intensity of the intermediate sanction (i.e., residential reentry center placement vs. home confinement), the more likely an offender will be charged with a technical violation during service of the sanction. Although the study is subject to concerns about potential sensitivity to unobserved confounders and other limitations, it makes an important contribution to our understanding of a topic which has rarely before been examined. When one considers the financial, public safety, and ethical consequences of incarcerating people for non-criminal conduct, the research has implications for persons under supervision, probation and parole organizations, and the general public alike. / Criminal Justice

Esta tesis surge de una reflexión sobre el panorama político español, la corrupción y la cuestión de género. En una sociedad en la que aún pesa el machismo y los estereotipos de género cabe preguntarse si de algún modo se exige a la mujer ser “menos corrupta” en los cargos políticos que ocupa. Por ello surgen interrogantes sobre si esos estereotipos benefician o perjudican a las mujeres para el acceso a la política, si son castigadas en mayor medida cuando no cumplen dichas expectativas, o si quizás la polarización política afectiva en España supera una potencial polarización por género en la valoración de los políticos. Con esta tesis se pretender aunar esfuerzos con otros investigadores para aportar una perspectiva de género al análisis de la percepción de la corrupción política, de manera que pueda detectarse si existe o no una mayor tolerancia de determinados comportamientos según el sexo del actor político, así como crear un instrumento de medida que sirva para el estudio de esta perspectiva en el análisis de la corrupción política. Por ello se ha planteado realizar una investigación ex post facto, transversal, descriptiva y relacional con el uso de técnicas cuantitativas, a través de una encuesta aplicada a un panel online, y con el objetivo de analizar la percepción de la población respecto a los hombres y mujeres con cargos políticos que presentan un comportamiento reprobable y/o corrupto, para determinar si existen estereotipos de género sobre la corrupción que generen mayores preferencias por las mujeres, y que a su vez supondrían un mayor nivel de exigencia en su comportamiento y un mayor nivel de castigo ante cualquier desviación del estereotipo. Se ha diseñado un cuestionario adaptado y/o inspirado en fuentes secundarias relevantes, cuya validez de contenido ha sido validado mediante un juicio de expertos, y cuya fiabilidad y validez de constructo se ha comprobado tras la realización de dos pretests. Dicho instrumento ha sido aplicado a una muestra de 400 casos, con un nivel de error del 5% (95% NC y p=q=0.5 en m.a.s.), con un muestreo por cuotas de edad y sexo proporcional a la población nacional. Los principales resultados muestran que en una parte de la ciudadanía aún persisten los estereotipos de género hacia las mujeres en la política, y que en función de ellos presentan una clara preferencia por ellas como candidatas al gobierno del país, fundamentado en valores y creencias asignadas a las mujeres como mayor capacidad de organización, empatía, escucha y eficacia, capacidad de negociación y pragmatismo, así como también que son menos corruptas y más honestas. No obstante, no se ha podido demostrar que la sociedad castiga en mayor medida a las mujeres cuando estas no cumplen las expectativas de los estereotipos indicados, y presentan comportamientos poco éticos o corruptos. Por el contrario, sí se ha podido demostrar que la alta polarización política afectiva en España, y en función de ello la variable independiente de posicionamiento ideológico, es lo que afecta en mayor medida a la valoración de los comportamientos reprobables de los políticos sin tener en cuenta su género, de manera que se ha observado como el castigo hacia dichos comportamientos se realizaba en función de filias y fobias ideológicas, superando una posible polarización por género.

When do leaders choose state-sponsored repression as a response to certain threats to the state? Conventional wisdom states that authoritarian regimes will be more likely to use these repressive acts in order to maintain law and order, as well as to suppress the opposition. However, previous literature on the subject fails to recognize the effect of irregular civil wars on this decision, as well as the types of repression that will - or will not - be used against citizens. I analyze cross-sectional time series data in 46 African states between 1990 and 2010 on human rights violations and their causes. The key independent variable is irregular civil war, but I also look at the effects of protest movements and domestic terror attacks to find the levels of human rights violations and the specific type of human rights violations used. Irregular civil war is the most important indicator for human rights violations, specifically, the use of killing and disappearances to silence the opposition and end the warfare.

yes / This third report from the Bradford NLW Project aims to give the reader a brief update of developments and debates within the NLWs field over the last few months. We hope that it will be of interest not only to NLW `specialists', but also to those with a general interest in this area. Interest in non-lethal weapons, which have been defined as being `explicitly designed and primarily employed to incapacitate personnel or material while minimising fatalities, permanent injury to personnel, and undesired damage to property and the environment', has increased dramatically over the last five years as a result of non-lethal technology progress and increasing calls from military forces (especially those engaged in peacekeeping) and civil police for more sophisticated non-lethal responses to violent incidents¿whilst there are evident advantages linked with non-lethal weapons, there are also key areas of concern associated with the development and deployment of such weapons. These include threats to existing weapons control treaties and conventions, their use in human rights violations (such as torture), harmful biomedical effects, and what some predict as a dangerous potential for use in social manipulation and social punishment within the context of a technology of political control.

VERSION ANGLAISE DISPONIBLE AU DÉPARTEMENT; THÈSE RÉALISÉE CONJOINTEMENT AVEC L'ÉCOLE DES SCIENCES DE LA COMMUNICATION DE L'UNIVERSITÉ MCGILL (DRS. K. STEINHAUER ET J.E. DRURY). / La présente thèse reprend trois articles de recherche (deux études et un article de revue) portant sur les neurosciences cognitives du langage, chacun desquels a été écrit en vue d’identifier les bénéfices que la théorie (neuro)linguistique contemporaine pourrait tirer d’une étude exhaustive des processus cognitifs et neuraux sous-tendant les troubles du spectre autistique (TSA) et inversement. Deux études y sont présentées, utilisant la méthode des potentiels évoqués, lesquelles fournissent des preuves préliminaires, chez des individus typiques, de deux aspects de la compréhension de phrases nécessitant une recherche approfondie chez des personnes autistes : (1) Les corrélats neuraux de la nature syntaxique et sémantique particulière des verbes d’expérience (par exemple The girl has feared the storm) contrairement aux verbes d’action (par exemple The kids have eaten the fries) et leur interface potentielle avec la Théorie de l’Esprit – la capacité d’attribuer des états mentaux à soi et à autrui – pour laquelle les personnes autistes semble accuser un retard et/ou un déficit, et (2) les corrélats neuraux des compétences en « imagerie visuelle », telles quelles sont identifiées à l’aide des Matrices de Raven, sur les processus de détection de violations de catégories grammaticales (par exemple He made the meal to enjoy with friends/He made the enjoy to meal with friends) dans un paradigme expérimental “équilibré” et en modalité visuelle. L’article de revue cherche à fournir une perspective plus large du rôle que les neurosciences cognitives des TSA peuvent jouer dans l’étude biologique du langage. L’importance de considérer l’autisme comme un « style cognitif » plutôt qu’un trouble en soi y est défendue, en particulier contre la notion commune d’autisme en tant que déficit de Théorie de l’Esprit. Au delà de leurs perspectives potentielles de recherche future auprès de populations autistes, ces trois articles cherchent à répondre à plusieurs questions de recherche cruciales sur le développement et la compréhension du langage (c’est à dire le débat sur la «P600 sémantique», les théorie d’échantillonnage asymétrique de la perception de la parole et de la musique, le rôle de la vision dans le langage, la modularité, les styles cognitifs et l’inférence Bayesienne). / The present thesis comprises a set of three research articles (two studies and one review article) on the cognitive neuroscience of language, all of which were written with the purpose of understanding the benefits that contemporary (neuro)linguistic theory may draw from an extensive study of the cognitive and neural processes underlying Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and vice versa. Two studies are presented, using event-related brain potentials, which provide preliminary evidence in typical individuals for two aspects of sentence processing in need of future investigation in ASD participants: (1) The neural correlates of the peculiar syntactic and semantic nature of verbs of experience (Experiencer Subject verbs, i.e., The girl has feared the storm) as opposed to verbs of action (Agent Subject verbs, i.e., The boys have eaten the fries) and their potential interface with Theory of Mind – the ability to attribute mental states to self and others – known to present delays and impairments in autism, and (2) the neural correlates of “visual imagery” skills, as assessed through the Raven Matrices, on comprehenders’ ability to detect word category violations (e.g., He made the meal to enjoy with friends/He made the enjoy to meal with friends) in a balanced visual paradigm and their potential insights into the role of visual imagery in language comprehension, known to play a potentially predominant role in ASD. The review article attempts to provide a larger perspective on the role of the cognitive neuroscience of ASD in the biology of language, in which the importance of considering autism as a “cognitive style” rather than as a disorder is given greater value, especially relative to the common notion of autism solely as a Theory of Mind impairment. Aside from their potential prospects for future research in autistic populations, these three articles also attempt to frame their topic of inquiry into the broader context of contemporary research questions on language development and language comprehension, such as the role of animacy in language processing (the “semantic P600” debate), asymmetric sampling theories of speech and music perception, the role of vision in language, modularity, cognitive styles or Bayesian inference.

Les institutions internationales ont à la suite de la 2ème guerre mondiale créé un corpus de droits reliés à l’essence de la condition humaine qui sont aussi intuitifs que difficiles à systématiser. Cette émergence se trouve à l’origine de la relation étroite entre le droit international et un noyau intangible de valeurs considérées comme universelles, érigé à la lumière de constructions philosophiques et juridiques du concept d’humanité jusqu’au moment où elles sont saisies par le droit international coutumier et conventionnel dans une logique de protection. Cette protection relève, d’un côté, du droit international pénal à partir notamment de l’édification des concepts de crime contre l’humanité et de génocide ayant comme corolaire également la définition du concept de graves violations et, de l’autre côté, du droit international des droits de l’Homme, en ce qu’il s’est occupé de la sauvegarde de l’individu en tant qu’être à la fois singulier et collectif, mais aussi des droits essentiels à la préservation de sa condition humaine. Le problème majeur qui se pose est celui des difficiles interactions entre le droit international et le droit national, combiné à l’héritage des paradigmes du droit international classique, ce qui nous amène à répondre à la question du comportement des États quand le droit international a pour objet la préservation de ce noyau dur des valeurs humaines. Dans la présente thèse, nous cherchons donc à démontrer que la protection tissée notamment sur la base des prohibitions apporte au droit international une position de suprématie liée à son caractère de jus cogens, de manière à imposer des devoirs non seulement aux États mais aussi aux individus. / Como resultado da Segunda Guerra Mundial, as instituições internacionais criaram um conjunto de direitos relacionados à essência da condição humana que são tão intuitivos quanto difíceis de sistematizar. Dessa emergência tem origem a estreita relação entre o direito internacional e a tutela de um núcleo intangível de valores da comunidade humana em seu conjunto, engendrados à luz das construções filosóficas e jurídicas do conceito de humanidade até o momento em que a mesma passou a ser protegida pelo direito internacional costumeiro e convencional. Essa proteção deu-se, de um lado, pelo direito internacional penal a partir da edificação do conceito de crime contra a humanidade e de genocídio, de modo a possibilitar a identificação do sentido de graves violações e, de outro lado, pelo direito internacional dos direitos humanos, naquilo em que se ocupou da salvaguarda do indivíduo enquanto ser ao mesmo tempo singular e coletivo, assim como dos direitos essenciais à preservação de sua condição humana. O problema maior que se apresenta diz respeito às difíceis interações do direito internacional com o direito nacional, agravado pela herança deixada pelos paradigmas do direito internacional clássico, o que nos leva a buscar responder à pergunta de como se comportam ou devem se comportar os Estados quando o direito internacional tem por objeto resguardar esse núcleo duro de valores humanos. Na presente tese, buscamos demonstrar que a proteção exercida sobretudo sob a base de proibições aporta ao direito internacional uma posição de supremacia que se liga ao seu caráter de jus cogens, de modo a impor obrigações tanto aos Estados quanto aos indivíduos. / Because of World War II, international institutions have created a set of rights related to the essence of the human condition that are as intuitive as they are difficult to systematize. The close relationship between international law and the protection of intangible values of the human community as a whole has its sources from this emergence. Indeed, these values were identified in the light of philosophical and legal constructions about the concept of humanity until the moment when it became protected by the customary and conventional international law. On the one hand, this protection came from the international criminal law and its enlightenment about the conception of crime against humanity and genocide, in a manner that it enabled the identification of the meaning of serious violations. On the other hand, this protection came likewise from international human rights law, in which it took care to safeguard the individual either as a singular and collective human being, as well as of the fundamental rights to the preservation of its human condition. The hardest problem that is presented here is about the difficult interactions between international law and national law. This problem is aggravated by the heritage left by the classic international law paradigms, which leads us to seek the answer concerning how the States react or how States must react when international law aims to safeguard these core human values. In this thesis, we seek to demonstrate that the protection exercised, especially on the basis of prohibitions, places international law in a position of supremacy linked to its character of jus cogens, in order to impose obligations over both States and individuals.

La présente thèse reprend trois articles de recherche (deux études et un article de revue) portant sur les neurosciences cognitives du langage, chacun desquels a été écrit en vue d’identifier les bénéfices que la théorie (neuro)linguistique contemporaine pourrait tirer d’une étude exhaustive des processus cognitifs et neuraux sous-tendant les troubles du spectre autistique (TSA) et inversement. Deux études y sont présentées, utilisant la méthode des potentiels évoqués, lesquelles fournissent des preuves préliminaires, chez des individus typiques, de deux aspects de la compréhension de phrases nécessitant une recherche approfondie chez des personnes autistes : (1) Les corrélats neuraux de la nature syntaxique et sémantique particulière des verbes d’expérience (par exemple The girl has feared the storm) contrairement aux verbes d’action (par exemple The kids have eaten the fries) et leur interface potentielle avec la Théorie de l’Esprit – la capacité d’attribuer des états mentaux à soi et à autrui – pour laquelle les personnes autistes semble accuser un retard et/ou un déficit, et (2) les corrélats neuraux des compétences en « imagerie visuelle », telles quelles sont identifiées à l’aide des Matrices de Raven, sur les processus de détection de violations de catégories grammaticales (par exemple He made the meal to enjoy with friends/He made the enjoy to meal with friends) dans un paradigme expérimental “équilibré” et en modalité visuelle. L’article de revue cherche à fournir une perspective plus large du rôle que les neurosciences cognitives des TSA peuvent jouer dans l’étude biologique du langage. L’importance de considérer l’autisme comme un « style cognitif » plutôt qu’un trouble en soi y est défendue, en particulier contre la notion commune d’autisme en tant que déficit de Théorie de l’Esprit. Au delà de leurs perspectives potentielles de recherche future auprès de populations autistes, ces trois articles cherchent à répondre à plusieurs questions de recherche cruciales sur le développement et la compréhension du langage (c’est à dire le débat sur la «P600 sémantique», les théorie d’échantillonnage asymétrique de la perception de la parole et de la musique, le rôle de la vision dans le langage, la modularité, les styles cognitifs et l’inférence Bayesienne). / The present thesis comprises a set of three research articles (two studies and one review article) on the cognitive neuroscience of language, all of which were written with the purpose of understanding the benefits that contemporary (neuro)linguistic theory may draw from an extensive study of the cognitive and neural processes underlying Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and vice versa. Two studies are presented, using event-related brain potentials, which provide preliminary evidence in typical individuals for two aspects of sentence processing in need of future investigation in ASD participants: (1) The neural correlates of the peculiar syntactic and semantic nature of verbs of experience (Experiencer Subject verbs, i.e., The girl has feared the storm) as opposed to verbs of action (Agent Subject verbs, i.e., The boys have eaten the fries) and their potential interface with Theory of Mind – the ability to attribute mental states to self and others – known to present delays and impairments in autism, and (2) the neural correlates of “visual imagery” skills, as assessed through the Raven Matrices, on comprehenders’ ability to detect word category violations (e.g., He made the meal to enjoy with friends/He made the enjoy to meal with friends) in a balanced visual paradigm and their potential insights into the role of visual imagery in language comprehension, known to play a potentially predominant role in ASD. The review article attempts to provide a larger perspective on the role of the cognitive neuroscience of ASD in the biology of language, in which the importance of considering autism as a “cognitive style” rather than as a disorder is given greater value, especially relative to the common notion of autism solely as a Theory of Mind impairment. Aside from their potential prospects for future research in autistic populations, these three articles also attempt to frame their topic of inquiry into the broader context of contemporary research questions on language development and language comprehension, such as the role of animacy in language processing (the “semantic P600” debate), asymmetric sampling theories of speech and music perception, the role of vision in language, modularity, cognitive styles or Bayesian inference. / VERSION ANGLAISE DISPONIBLE AU DÉPARTEMENT; THÈSE RÉALISÉE CONJOINTEMENT AVEC L'ÉCOLE DES SCIENCES DE LA COMMUNICATION DE L'UNIVERSITÉ MCGILL (DRS. K. STEINHAUER ET J.E. DRURY).

Lorsque des allégations de violations du droit international des droits de l’homme (DIDH) ou du droit international humanitaire (DIH) sont rapportées dans un pays, une meilleure compréhension des faits et de la situation est souvent nécessaire afin que l’Organisation des Nations Unies (ONU) puisse répondre de manière appropriée. A cette fin, les organes de l’ONU y compris l’Assemblée générale, le Conseil de sécurité, le Secrétaire général, le Conseil des droits de l’homme et même le Haut-Commissariat aux droits de l’homme peuvent créer des missions d’établissement des faits. Ces missions sont des organes interétatiques ad hoc créés en réponse à des violations graves et massives DIDH et du DIH. Leurs fonctions principales sont le plus souvent d’établir les faits, de les qualifier en droit et de faire des recommandations pour mettre fin à ces violations et y remédier. Le recours à ces missions, parfois appelées commissions d’enquête, n’a cessé de croître ces vingt dernières années, en particulier lorsque des violations du DIDH et du DIH, pouvant constituer des crimes internationaux, sont alléguées. A cet égard, la théorie de la justice transitionnelle et la doctrine de la responsabilité de protéger ont ouvert de nouvelles perspectives pour l’établissement des faits. Ceci explique que les objectifs et les fonctions des missions d’établissement des faits se sont diversifiés. Cependant, les Etats et une partie de la doctrine remettent en cause le caractère ad hoc du mode de création de ces missions, de leur mandat, et de leurs méthodes de travail. Nous étudierons cette tension entre uniformité et diversité afin de proposer des solutions adaptées permettant de remédier aux problèmes dénoncés par la doctrine et de maximiser l’impact de ces missions sur de la réponse des parties prenantes notamment l’État concerné et l’ONU. / To respond appropriately to violations of human rights and humanitarian law, the United Nations requires an in-depth knowledge of the facts alleged and a better understanding of the relevant situation on the ground. To this end, United Nations organs including the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Secretary General, the Human Rights Council and even the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights may create fact-finding missions. These missions are collegial ad hoc bodies created in response to human rights and humanitarian law violations that are particularly grave. Their functions generally include establishing the facts, conducting a legal appraisal of facts, and making recommendations for the cessation of violations and for their remedy. In the past twenty years, United Nations organs have increasingly resorted to these missions – often referred to as commissions of inquiry – in particular when violations of international human rights and international humanitarian law may amount to international crimes. In this respect, transitional justice theory and the doctrine of the responsibility to protect provide new perspectives for fact-finding. The objectives and functions of these missions have therefore diversified. However, some states and scholars criticize the ad hoc creation of the missions, their often politicized mandate, and their methods of work. We will elaborate on this tension between uniformity and diversity and propose some solutions. These proposals will aim at addressing the issues raised by scholars as well as maximizing the missions’ impact on stakeholders’ response to the situation.

The present thesis seeks to problematize the UN discourse within transitional justice. Many scholars have pointed out that the discourse has been normalised and that is why it is in need for deconstruction. The study aims to critically analyse how justice and reconciliation are understood in the field. For the purpose of the study Derrida’s concepts on justice and forgiveness have been chosen as theoretical frameworks. The method of study is a deconstructive analysis, based on Derrida’s notion of deconstruction. The method implies analysis of language of the research material, i.e. four UN reports regarding transitional justice from 2004, 2009, 2010 and 2011. The study has shown, firstly, that the rule of law concept is closely connected with the idea of justice and, secondly, justice is often reduced to accountability. That in turn explains the dominance of the juridical instruments in transitional justice processes. Apart from this, based on Derrida’s concept of forgiveness, reconciliation and mechanisms applied represent a conditional forgiveness, seeking to re-establish normality. Another problem is that reconciliation is not sufficiently approached in the reports. Nevertheless, the history of the transitional justice development has shown that there is a potential for further changes and that is why it necessary to continue question the established norms.   Finally, deconstruction analysis has proved to be an adequate method for analysing transitional justice discourses and contributed to a nuanced analysis. The use of two languages, English and Russian versions of the reports allowed to identify and visualise some conceptual constructions that could otherwise have been missing.

This master thesis focuses on social business and its influence in economy. Social business as a tool to solve social problems is approximated by development aid as its subset and by human rights violations as related social problems. Human rights open a discussion of their relationship to economics and consequently development. The empirical part tests whether human rights are affected by a distribution of development aid to different sectors, namely social and economic infrastructure and services and production sectors. The panel data analysis of 30 least developed countries in three regions according to the Human Development Index over a period 2005 to 2001 brings results that flows of official development aid to the economic infrastructure and services significantly drives human rights violations. JEL Classification O1, O4, K1, K3, K4 Keywords Social business, development aid, human rights, violations of human rights Author's e-mail petrakonecna.uk@email.cz Supervisor's e-mail mlcoch@fsv.cuni.cz