Social Strategies
Transparency in Governance: The Influence of Open Data on Public Trust in the Philippine Context
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Florenda Frivaldo
This study examines how open data in government affects public trust in the Philippines. Open data is when the government shares information online that anyone can access and use, like budgets, project statuses, and spending reports. This transparency aims to make the government more accountable and build trust with the people. However, whether it actually increases public trust is still debated. In the Philippines, where corruption has been a long-standing issue, the government has started sharing more data with the public. This research looks at how open data impacts people's trust in government, focusing on whether it helps citizens feel informed and confident in their leaders. The researcher collected information from surveys and interviews within the National Capital Region to understand their views on government openness. The results show that people who regularly access government data online tend to trust the government more. They feel that open data allows them to see how decisions are made and where money is spent. However, some challenges, like limited internet access and low awareness of open data, prevent everyone from benefiting equally. This study concludes that while open data is a positive step, it must be paired with better internet access and education on how to use this information. Open data can be a powerful tool for increasing public trust, but it needs more support to reach its full potential in the Philippines.
Introducing the Stringency of Sentencing Policy (SSP) Index: How and Why Does Sentencing Policy Severity Vary? View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Lily Rice
In this paper, I present a novel formal Index (the Stringency of Sentencing Policy (SSP) Index) that measures for the first time the relative punitiveness of a country’s body of criminal sentencing policies without conflating this concept with sentencing practice. Scholars have been trying to identify the factors that have caused incarceration rates to skyrocket in many countries for decades, and it is clear that a country’s “sentencing environment” (meaning both sentencing policy (e.g. criminal statutes) and sentencing practice (the actual sentencing decisions of sentencing bodies)) contribute directly to prison population rates. However, this literature often conflates the concepts of sentencing policy and sentencing practice. This prevents sufficient analysis of the reasons why stricter policies are adopted, and leads to misinterpretation of the actual severity of the legislation in place. The SSP Index overcomes this shortcoming by measuring the severity of the national criminal sentencing policies in place at one point in time without relying on sentencing outcomes to do so. This new Index is applied to the United States and Ireland in this paper, but can be applied to any country with criminal sentencing statutes in place. Validation and reliability tests demonstrate the Index’s ability to measure the real variation in the strictness of criminal sentencing legislation over time. This SSP Index constitutes a new tool for researchers of comparative public policy and criminal law, and its creation is part of a larger research project studying the conditions under which stricter sentencing policies are passed into law.
What Harms Are Being Reduced? The Controversies and Biopolitics of Harm Reduction and Illicit Drug Use
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session María-Victoria Pérez-y-Pérez
In 2021, New Zealand sanctioned a harm reduction approach to recreational illicit drug use through the passage of the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Act, which made drug checking legal. Though this move could be seen as a move towards recognising the importance of harm reduction and the need for drug law reform, the New Zealand political landscape surrounding harm reduction for people who use drugs (PWUD) remains contentious. Drug policy has long been shaped by the capriciousness of political, social and moral forces, and hegemonic notions about the superiority of abstinence. Though a harm reduction narrative is the current trend internationally, how this narrative is translated into services for PWUD and the context for implementation of such services matters greatly. Harm reduction policy and practices that place the interests of society in opposition to, or above, the harms to users has the consequence of further excluding or ‘othering’ PWUD. Drawing on current literature in the area of harm reduction and drug use, and the preliminary findings from two recent qualitative studies undertaken in New Zealand and United Kingdom, this paper traces the controversies and biopolitics of harm reduction for PWUD.
