Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on Ways and Means. Subcommittee on Social Security
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 164
Book Description
Commissioner of Social Security's Proposal to Improve the Disability Process
Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on Ways and Means. Subcommittee on Social Security
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 164
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 164
Book Description
Reforming Juvenile Justice
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309278937
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 463
Book Description
Adolescence is a distinct, yet transient, period of development between childhood and adulthood characterized by increased experimentation and risk-taking, a tendency to discount long-term consequences, and heightened sensitivity to peers and other social influences. A key function of adolescence is developing an integrated sense of self, including individualization, separation from parents, and personal identity. Experimentation and novelty-seeking behavior, such as alcohol and drug use, unsafe sex, and reckless driving, are thought to serve a number of adaptive functions despite their risks. Research indicates that for most youth, the period of risky experimentation does not extend beyond adolescence, ceasing as identity becomes settled with maturity. Much adolescent involvement in criminal activity is part of the normal developmental process of identity formation and most adolescents will mature out of these tendencies. Evidence of significant changes in brain structure and function during adolescence strongly suggests that these cognitive tendencies characteristic of adolescents are associated with biological immaturity of the brain and with an imbalance among developing brain systems. This imbalance model implies dual systems: one involved in cognitive and behavioral control and one involved in socio-emotional processes. Accordingly adolescents lack mature capacity for self-regulations because the brain system that influences pleasure-seeking and emotional reactivity develops more rapidly than the brain system that supports self-control. This knowledge of adolescent development has underscored important differences between adults and adolescents with direct bearing on the design and operation of the justice system, raising doubts about the core assumptions driving the criminalization of juvenile justice policy in the late decades of the 20th century. It was in this context that the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) asked the National Research Council to convene a committee to conduct a study of juvenile justice reform. The goal of Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach was to review recent advances in behavioral and neuroscience research and draw out the implications of this knowledge for juvenile justice reform, to assess the new generation of reform activities occurring in the United States, and to assess the performance of OJJDP in carrying out its statutory mission as well as its potential role in supporting scientifically based reform efforts.
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309278937
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 463
Book Description
Adolescence is a distinct, yet transient, period of development between childhood and adulthood characterized by increased experimentation and risk-taking, a tendency to discount long-term consequences, and heightened sensitivity to peers and other social influences. A key function of adolescence is developing an integrated sense of self, including individualization, separation from parents, and personal identity. Experimentation and novelty-seeking behavior, such as alcohol and drug use, unsafe sex, and reckless driving, are thought to serve a number of adaptive functions despite their risks. Research indicates that for most youth, the period of risky experimentation does not extend beyond adolescence, ceasing as identity becomes settled with maturity. Much adolescent involvement in criminal activity is part of the normal developmental process of identity formation and most adolescents will mature out of these tendencies. Evidence of significant changes in brain structure and function during adolescence strongly suggests that these cognitive tendencies characteristic of adolescents are associated with biological immaturity of the brain and with an imbalance among developing brain systems. This imbalance model implies dual systems: one involved in cognitive and behavioral control and one involved in socio-emotional processes. Accordingly adolescents lack mature capacity for self-regulations because the brain system that influences pleasure-seeking and emotional reactivity develops more rapidly than the brain system that supports self-control. This knowledge of adolescent development has underscored important differences between adults and adolescents with direct bearing on the design and operation of the justice system, raising doubts about the core assumptions driving the criminalization of juvenile justice policy in the late decades of the 20th century. It was in this context that the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) asked the National Research Council to convene a committee to conduct a study of juvenile justice reform. The goal of Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach was to review recent advances in behavioral and neuroscience research and draw out the implications of this knowledge for juvenile justice reform, to assess the new generation of reform activities occurring in the United States, and to assess the performance of OJJDP in carrying out its statutory mission as well as its potential role in supporting scientifically based reform efforts.
Improving the Social Security Disability Decision Process
Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309178916
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Book Description
The Social Security Administration (SSA) provides Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) benefits to disabled persons of less than full retirement age and to their dependents. SSA also provides Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments to disabled persons who are under age 65. For both programs, disability is defined as a "medically determinable physical or mental impairment" that prevents an individual from engaging in any substantial gainful activity and is expected to last at least 12 months or result in death. Assuming that an applicant meets the nonmedical requirements for eligibility (e.g., quarters of covered employment for SSDI; income and asset limits for SSI), the file is sent to the Disability Determination Services (DDS) agency operated by the state in which he or she lives for a determination of medical eligibility. SSA reimburses the states for the full costs of the DDSs. The DDSs apply a sequential decision process specified by SSA to make an initial decision whether a claim should be allowed or denied. If the claim is denied, the decision can be appealed through several levels of administrative and judicial review. On average, the DDSs allow 37 percent of the claims they adjudicate through the five-step process. A third of those denied decide to appeal, and three-quarters of the appeals result in allowances. Nearly 30 percent of the allowances made each year are made during the appeals process after an initial denial. In 2003, the Commissioner of Social Security announced her intent to develop a "new approach" to disability determination. In late 2004, SSA asked the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to help in two areas related to its initiatives to improve the disability decision process: 1) Improvements in the criteria for determining the severity of impairments, and 2) Improvements in the use of medical expertise in the disability decision process. This interim report provides preliminary recommendations addressing the three tasks that relate to medical expertise issues, with a special focus on the appropriate qualifications of medical and psychological experts involved in disability decision making. After further information gathering and analyses of the effectiveness of the disability decision process in identifying those who qualify for benefits and those who do not, the committee may refine its recommendations concerning medical and psychological expertise in the final report. The final report will address a number of issues with potential implications for the qualifications of the medical experts involved in the disability decision process.
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309178916
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Book Description
The Social Security Administration (SSA) provides Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) benefits to disabled persons of less than full retirement age and to their dependents. SSA also provides Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments to disabled persons who are under age 65. For both programs, disability is defined as a "medically determinable physical or mental impairment" that prevents an individual from engaging in any substantial gainful activity and is expected to last at least 12 months or result in death. Assuming that an applicant meets the nonmedical requirements for eligibility (e.g., quarters of covered employment for SSDI; income and asset limits for SSI), the file is sent to the Disability Determination Services (DDS) agency operated by the state in which he or she lives for a determination of medical eligibility. SSA reimburses the states for the full costs of the DDSs. The DDSs apply a sequential decision process specified by SSA to make an initial decision whether a claim should be allowed or denied. If the claim is denied, the decision can be appealed through several levels of administrative and judicial review. On average, the DDSs allow 37 percent of the claims they adjudicate through the five-step process. A third of those denied decide to appeal, and three-quarters of the appeals result in allowances. Nearly 30 percent of the allowances made each year are made during the appeals process after an initial denial. In 2003, the Commissioner of Social Security announced her intent to develop a "new approach" to disability determination. In late 2004, SSA asked the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to help in two areas related to its initiatives to improve the disability decision process: 1) Improvements in the criteria for determining the severity of impairments, and 2) Improvements in the use of medical expertise in the disability decision process. This interim report provides preliminary recommendations addressing the three tasks that relate to medical expertise issues, with a special focus on the appropriate qualifications of medical and psychological experts involved in disability decision making. After further information gathering and analyses of the effectiveness of the disability decision process in identifying those who qualify for benefits and those who do not, the committee may refine its recommendations concerning medical and psychological expertise in the final report. The final report will address a number of issues with potential implications for the qualifications of the medical experts involved in the disability decision process.
Refugee Roulette
Author: Jaya Ramji-Nogales
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814741061
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 356
Book Description
The first analysis of decisions at all four levels of the asylum adjudication process : the Department of Homeland Security, the immigration courts, the Board of Immigration Appeals, and the United States Courts of Appeals. The data reveal tremendous disparities in asylum approval rates, even when different adjudicators in the same office each considered large numbers of applications from nationals of the same country. After providing a thorough empirical analysis, the authors make recommendations for future reform. From publisher description.
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814741061
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 356
Book Description
The first analysis of decisions at all four levels of the asylum adjudication process : the Department of Homeland Security, the immigration courts, the Board of Immigration Appeals, and the United States Courts of Appeals. The data reveal tremendous disparities in asylum approval rates, even when different adjudicators in the same office each considered large numbers of applications from nationals of the same country. After providing a thorough empirical analysis, the authors make recommendations for future reform. From publisher description.
Lives in the Balance
Author: Philip G. Schrag
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479865982
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
Although Americans generally think that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is focused only on preventing terrorism, one office within that agency has a humanitarian mission. Its Asylum Office adjudicates applications from people fleeing persecution in their homelands. Lives in the Balance is a careful empirical analysis of how Homeland Security decided these asylum cases over a recent fourteen-year period. Day in and day out, asylum officers make decisions with life-or-death consequences: determining which applicants are telling the truth and are at risk of persecution in their home countries, and which are ineligible for refugee status in America. In Lives in the Balance, the authors analyze a database of 383,000 cases provided to them by the government in order to better understand the effect on grant rates of a host of factors unrelated to the merits of asylum claims, including the one-year filing deadline, whether applicants entered the United States with a visa, whether applicants had dependents, whether they were represented, how many asylum cases their adjudicator had previously decided, and whether or not their adjudicator was a lawyer. The authors also examine the degree to which decisions were consistent among the eight regional asylum offices and within each of those offices. The authors’ recommendations, including repeal of the one-year deadline, would improve the adjudication process by reducing the impact of non-merits factors on asylum decisions. If adopted by the government, these proposals would improve the accuracy of outcomes for those whose lives hang in the balance.
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479865982
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
Although Americans generally think that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is focused only on preventing terrorism, one office within that agency has a humanitarian mission. Its Asylum Office adjudicates applications from people fleeing persecution in their homelands. Lives in the Balance is a careful empirical analysis of how Homeland Security decided these asylum cases over a recent fourteen-year period. Day in and day out, asylum officers make decisions with life-or-death consequences: determining which applicants are telling the truth and are at risk of persecution in their home countries, and which are ineligible for refugee status in America. In Lives in the Balance, the authors analyze a database of 383,000 cases provided to them by the government in order to better understand the effect on grant rates of a host of factors unrelated to the merits of asylum claims, including the one-year filing deadline, whether applicants entered the United States with a visa, whether applicants had dependents, whether they were represented, how many asylum cases their adjudicator had previously decided, and whether or not their adjudicator was a lawyer. The authors also examine the degree to which decisions were consistent among the eight regional asylum offices and within each of those offices. The authors’ recommendations, including repeal of the one-year deadline, would improve the adjudication process by reducing the impact of non-merits factors on asylum decisions. If adopted by the government, these proposals would improve the accuracy of outcomes for those whose lives hang in the balance.
Model Rules of Professional Conduct
Author: American Bar Association. House of Delegates
Publisher: American Bar Association
ISBN: 9781590318737
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 216
Book Description
The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.
Publisher: American Bar Association
ISBN: 9781590318737
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 216
Book Description
The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.
Judicial Integrity
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047413717
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 321
Book Description
Traditional separation of powers theories assumed that governmental despotism will be prevented by dividing the branches of government which will check one another. Modern governments function with unexpected complicity among these branches. Sometimes one of the branches becomes overwhelming. Other governmental structures, however, tend to mitigate these tendencies to domination. Among other structures courts have achieved considerable autonomy vis-à-vis the traditional political branches of power. They tend to maintain considerable distance from political parties in the name of professionalism and expertise. The conditions and criteria of independence are not clear, and even less clear are the conditions of institutional integrity. Independence (including depolitization) of public institutions is of particular practical relevance in the post-Communist countries where political partisanship penetrated institutions under the single party system. Institutional integrity, particularly in the context of administration of justice, became a precondition for accession to the European Union. Given this practical challenge the present volume is centered around three key areas of institutional integrity, primarily within the administration of justice: First, in a broader theoretical-interdisciplinary context the criteria of institutional independence are discussed. The second major issue is the relation of neutralized institutions to branches of government with reference to accountability. Thirdly, comparative experience regarding judicial independence is discussed to determine techniques to enhance integrity.
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047413717
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 321
Book Description
Traditional separation of powers theories assumed that governmental despotism will be prevented by dividing the branches of government which will check one another. Modern governments function with unexpected complicity among these branches. Sometimes one of the branches becomes overwhelming. Other governmental structures, however, tend to mitigate these tendencies to domination. Among other structures courts have achieved considerable autonomy vis-à-vis the traditional political branches of power. They tend to maintain considerable distance from political parties in the name of professionalism and expertise. The conditions and criteria of independence are not clear, and even less clear are the conditions of institutional integrity. Independence (including depolitization) of public institutions is of particular practical relevance in the post-Communist countries where political partisanship penetrated institutions under the single party system. Institutional integrity, particularly in the context of administration of justice, became a precondition for accession to the European Union. Given this practical challenge the present volume is centered around three key areas of institutional integrity, primarily within the administration of justice: First, in a broader theoretical-interdisciplinary context the criteria of institutional independence are discussed. The second major issue is the relation of neutralized institutions to branches of government with reference to accountability. Thirdly, comparative experience regarding judicial independence is discussed to determine techniques to enhance integrity.
Improving the Social Security Disability Decision Process
Author: Committee on Improving the Disability Decision Process: SSA's Listing of Impairments and Agency Access to Medical Expertise
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309181054
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 147
Book Description
The Institute of Medicine (IOM) Committee on Improving the Disability Decision Process has been working since it first met in January 2005 to develop recommendations to the Social Security Administration (SSA) on how to improve the medical aspects of its disability determination process. By law, Social Security can only pay benefits to those unable to engage in substantial gainful activity because of a "medically determinable physical or mental impairment which can be expected to result in death or which has lasted or can be expected to last for a continuous period of not less than 12 months (emphasis added)." Medical and psychological expertise is critical both in developing the criteria for measuring the severity and functional impact of an impairment or impairments on an applicant's ability to work and in applying the criteria to individual cases where the medical evidence does not clearly meet the criteria in the eyes of a nonmedical disability examiner.
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309181054
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 147
Book Description
The Institute of Medicine (IOM) Committee on Improving the Disability Decision Process has been working since it first met in January 2005 to develop recommendations to the Social Security Administration (SSA) on how to improve the medical aspects of its disability determination process. By law, Social Security can only pay benefits to those unable to engage in substantial gainful activity because of a "medically determinable physical or mental impairment which can be expected to result in death or which has lasted or can be expected to last for a continuous period of not less than 12 months (emphasis added)." Medical and psychological expertise is critical both in developing the criteria for measuring the severity and functional impact of an impairment or impairments on an applicant's ability to work and in applying the criteria to individual cases where the medical evidence does not clearly meet the criteria in the eyes of a nonmedical disability examiner.
Controlling Administrative Power
Author: Peter Cane
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107146356
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 609
Book Description
An historical and comparative explanation of some puzzling differences between the administrative law of England, the USA and Australia.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107146356
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 609
Book Description
An historical and comparative explanation of some puzzling differences between the administrative law of England, the USA and Australia.
Examining Ways the Social Security Administration Can Improve the Disability Review Process
Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Subcommittee on Energy Policy, Health Care, and Entitlements
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Disability evaluation
Languages : en
Pages : 132
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Disability evaluation
Languages : en
Pages : 132
Book Description