The United States Sentencing Commission, Compassionate Release, and Judicial Discretion: The 2022–2023 Amendment Cycle

The Sentencing Commission is meeting for the first time in three years to promulgate guideline amendments. This amendment cycle promises to be among the Commission's most consequential. Among its tasks, the agency must update USSG 1B1.13, the policy statement that governs reduction of sentence for "extraordinary and compelling reasons.” So-called "compassionate release” has taken on new significance since Congress amended the authorizing statute in the First Step Act of 2018. Because the Commission had no quorum at the time and for several years after it has been unable to amend the guideline to conform to changes made by the FSA. Creative litigation has transformed compassionate release from the last resort for incarcerated people who were aging, debilitated, or dying to one used for a variety of situations deemed extraordinary and compelling by federal courts. These include grants based on reasons ranging from vulnerability to COVID all the way to the injustice of continued incarceration of people serving sentences the FSA lowered but did not make retroactive. Confronting the Commission is the question of whether and to what extent it might cabin the discretion judges have been exercising to recognize various grounds for compassionate release, including intervening changes in the law that make the sentence inequitable.In this article, the author traces the history of compassionate release, discusses the transformation of its use since passage of the FSA, explores the various proposals the Commission has presented for comment, and presents the choices through the lens of one incarcerated person's experience.

Putting the "Compassion” in Compassionate Release: The Need for a Policy Statement Codifying Judicial Discretion

In a harsh and inflexible system that offers few opportunities for judges to reevaluate the sentences they impose when circumstances warrant, federal compassionate release holds great promise. When the First Step Act was passed in 2018, sentencing judges were freed from the restrictive Sentencing Commission policy statement that limited the circumstances under which judges could grant relief. Exercising that newfound discretion, judges began granting sentencing reductions for reasons not enumerated in the outdated policy statement, such as COVID-19 and excessive and unjust sentences. Judges in certain federal circuits, however, have been increasingly constrained by appellate case law that cabins judicial discretion.This article makes the case for the Sentencing Commission to expand and codify in its forthcoming policy statement judicial discretion to identify unenumerated "extraordinary and compelling” circumstances warranting a sentencing reduction and to reject circuit courts' narrowing of compassionate release. We illuminate how judges have mindfully used their discretion over the past four years to grant relief for a variety of extraordinary and compelling reasons. In particular, this article describes our Clinic's successful litigation for victims of law enforcement's stash house reverse sting operations as illustrative of the need for expanded judicial discretion in compassionate release. Enshrining that discretion in an updated policy statement would provide an administrable safety valve consistent with Congress's intent that compassionate release be a mechanism to remedy truly unjust sentences. Only then will compassionate release be truly compassionate.

A Digital Checkup on HIPAA: Modernizing Healthcare Privacy Standards for Telehealth Services

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted ways in which HIPAA should be reformed to address issues with using telehealth services. HHS' Notification of Relaxed Enforcement allows health care providers to offer telehealth services through common platforms such as Facebook Messenger and FaceTime, and thus patients with limited access to more advanced video platforms can connect with their health care team without inperson contact. Although this increased flexibility allows patients and health care providers to easily connect, it also raises privacy concerns. The Notification of Relaxed Enforcement states that OCR will use its enforcement discretion to determine whether to penalize health care providers who utilize non-HIPAA compliant platforms. Allowing providers to use non-HIPAA compliant platforms for telehealth services invites possible security risks to patients' private health information. The risks highlighted from the use of non-HIPAA compliant platforms also highlights inadequacies in HIPAA as it stands outside of a public health emergency.

Social justice and the judicial interpretation of international equal protection law

Social justice is turning into an international concern. This development is a response to the continuous rise of socioeconomic inequality – the gap between the rich and the poor –growing in several OECD member states since the 1970s. International human rights law (IHRL) presently only establishes a weak normative framework regarding social justice. This article argues that the full potential of this framework has still not been activated by international human rights adjudication. There are several reasons for this: a complex history of ideas suggesting little common understanding of the notion of social justice, the focus of international human rights adjudication on individual rather than constitutional justice, and the priority of liberty rights over equality rights. Yet, the domination of the liberal over the social in international human rights adjudication has started to change. The article shows how the social justice concern is beginning to be incorporated into IHRL by judicial interpretation of international equal protection and non-discrimination law (international equal protection law, IEPL). Integrating the social justice concern into IEPL is a legitimate yet transformative step as it increases judicial discretion at the international level. More than many other human rights, socioeconomic equality is highly context-specific and depends on a complex factual assessment of the local circumstances. This exacerbates the institutional legitimacy challenge levelled against international human rights courts. However, the article argues that the legitimacy challenge can be alleviated by focusing more on procedural rather than a substantive international review.

Early career mentoring in England: a case study of professional discretion and policy disconnection

Purpose: This paper aims to consider the practices and experiences of the new school-based mentors for Early Career Teachers (ECT's), emerging from the UK Government's new early career framework (ECF) policy (DfE, 2019a). The paper uses Lipsky's (2010) framing of professionals as "street level bureaucrats” to consider the extent to which the ECT mentors, as new policy actors, exercise professional discretion (Lipsky, 2010) in negotiating and aligning the new ECF policy with existing practice. Design/methodology/approach: To research the mentor's interpretation and enactment of the new ECF policy, semi structured interviews were undertaken with an initial sample of nine mentors and four induction tutors who were also mentors. Online semi structured interviews were held, lasting around 50 min. This method was largely pragmatic as the study started during a period when schools were still cautious of face-to-face visitors in terms of COVID-19. Although the benefits for the interviewer experiencing the culture and context in which the ECT mentor was situated were lost, offering online interviews was critical in securing mentors' time. Findings: Findings suggest a disconnect between the intentions of the policy and the reality of its enactment at a local level. The ECT mentors have limited professional discretion, but some are exercising this in relation to their own professional development and the training they are providing for their ECTs. Most of the mentors are adapting the ECT's professional development journey whilst mindful of the programme requirements. The degree to which the ECT mentors used professional discretion was linked and limited largely by their own levels of confidence and experience of mentoring, and to a lesser extent the culture of their schools. Research limitations/implications: The ECF policy represents an important step in acknowledging the need to professionally develop mentors for the work they undertake supporting beginning teachers. However, the time and the content of the mentor training have not been given sufficient attention and remains a hugely missed opportunity. It does not appear to be recognised by the government policy makers but more significantly and concerning in this research sample it is not being recognised sufficiently by those mentoring the ECTs themselves. Practical implications: There is an urgent need by the UK government and school leaders to understand the link between the quality of mentor preparation and the quality of the ECTs who will be entering the profession and influencing the quality of education in future years. More time and resourcing need to be focussed on the professional development of mentors enabling them to exercise professional discretion in increasingly sophisticated ways in relation to the implementation of the ECF policy. Originality/value: The ECF policy is the latest English government response to international concerns around the recruitment and retention of teachers. The policy mandates for a new policy actor: the ECT mentor, responsible for the support and professional development of beginning teachers. The nature of the mentor's role in relation to the policy is emerging and provides an interesting case study in the disconnect between the intentions of a policy and its initial enactment on the ground. The mentors may be viewed as street level bureaucrats exercising degrees of professional discretion as they interpret the policy in their own school context. © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited.

The street-level bureaucracy research agenda in the pandemic context: an integrative review

The implementation of public policies in crisis situations is a scarce field of study, especially at the street level, in which there is interaction between the State and the citizen. The pandemic as a crisis affected the autonomy of frontline professionals and shaped their behavior, especially influenced by organizational and relational factors. This way, the study explores the research agenda in the context of the pandemic, available in the Web of Science database, seeking to understand its influence on street-level implementation of public policies, using the integrative review method for this purpose. Additionally, an attempt was made to understand how the use of software contributes to data analysis, pointing out its advantages and limitations. For this, VOSviewer 1.6.17 was used. The main results revealed that crisis contexts such as the pandemic profoundly influence the implementation of public policies at the street level with negative impacts on user service. The research focus defined has limitations due to the lack of advances in the number of data analyzed, but contributes to a better understanding of the influences of crises for implementation of public policies at the street level. Investigations on the emotional consequences to the front line and the approach to action during the crisis by professionals who deal daily with emergency situations such as firefighters and professionals of mobile vehicles of the medical emergency network are indicated.

Digital distributive leadership in the time of the Covid-19 pandemic-New light on the transition from physical workplaces to digital spaces in Swedish eldercare

The Covid-19 pandemic has had a huge effect on working life in many welfare sectors. An ongoing qualitative study on distributed leadership work in Swedish eldercare has highlighted the premises of needs assessment during the pandemic. This article applies the concepts of distributed leadership, space and temporality to shed new light on the transition from physical workplaces to digital spaces. The article stresses the importance of co-working, co-responsibility and close interaction between leaders and employees, and argues that the ongoing pandemic can help us understand how the digital transition is changing the premises for leadership work in eldercare needs assessments. The empirical material was derived from several organisational levels of needs assessment and both individual interviews and participant observations were conducted. The results confirm how managerial work is in a state of transition that changes the interaction between managers and the needs assessors. Both the challenges and the importance of interaction are enhanced in the digital space.

Balancing in the pandemic: how social workers respond to new risks when supporting clients who experience domestic violence

Since the winter of 2020, COVID-19 has significantly changed the lives of many people. The aim of the present study is to explore how social workers specialised in the field of domestic violence (DV) balance the expectation and need to protect themselves from infection with the expectation and need to protect their clients and how this balancing affects their discretion. The method was qualitative interviews with social workers, team leaders, and managers in two Swedish municipalities. The results offer insights in how professionals experience and respond to changing conditions of social work and the potential consequences for victimised women. Three street-level responses to pandemic restrictions are presented: professionals who complied with new restrictions, professionals who negotiated some far-reaching restrictions, and professionals who resisted restrictions. Consequences for the social services, women experiencing DV, and civil society are discussed. The authors suggest that the results provide learning opportunities for managers and social workers to better understand the complex everyday life that surrounds their mission.

Rethinking Faculty as Street-Level Bureaucrats: Exploring the Role of Ethics and Administrative Discretion in Contemporary Higher Education

Within the past two years, the COVID-19 pandemic and political intervention in higher education has highlighted the need to reconceptualize higher education administration. This work addresses the roles faculty currently serve and how their ethics guide discretion while acting as the engagement point and makes the case that the group should be characterized as street-level bureaucrats. The article uses a theoretical analysis to provide support that faculty's place as street-level bureaucrats is changing due to political and ethical demands. The article provides evidence for a redefinition of faculty's role and suggests implications for the change. [ FROM AUTHOR]

The moderating effect of managerial discretion on cross-border knowledge search and the innovation quality of high-tech firms in a global health emergency: evidence from China

Purpose>This study aims to analyze the moderating effect of managerial discretion on the relationship between cross-border knowledge search and the high-tech firms' innovation quality in a global health emergency and addresses the following issues: the influence mechanism of different types of cross-border knowledge search on the high-tech firms' innovation quality in a global health emergency;and the moderating role of different dimensions of manager discretion on the above relationship.Design/methodology/approach>Based on the firms' strategy selection methods, the authors divided cross-border knowledge search into three aspects, namely, breadth, depth and balance, and analyzed the impact of cross-border knowledge search on the innovation quality of high-tech firms in a global health emergency, taking managerial discretion as the moderating variable, and divided it into position rights, pay rights and operation rights according to the key rights of firms' strategic management. Furthermore, the authors constructed a theoretical model, and for an analysis sample, the authors collected data from Chinese high-tech firms from 2013 to 2021.Findings>The empirical results show that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between cross-border knowledge search breadth, depth and balance and the innovation quality of high-tech firms. The position rights, pay rights and operation rights of managerial discretion have partially significant moderating effects on the relationship between cross-border knowledge search breadth, depth and balance and the high-tech firms' innovation quality.Originality/value>Considerable literature has grown around the theme of the impact of knowledge search on the firms' innovation quality. Nevertheless, only a few studies draw on the combination of global health emergency, cross-border knowledge search and the innovation quality;in particular, no literature has analyzed the relationship between the three from the managerial discretion perspective. Exploring the above relationships has great theoretical value for enriching and improving knowledge management and innovation management theories and provides a theoretical basis and practical support for high-tech firms to face challenges of a global health emergency and to break through the innovation dilemma.

‘Ain’t I a human being?’: self-documentation of living in poverty in the face of the abandoning state

How is life in social isolation seen from the viewpoint of people who experience persistent poverty? Given the systemic denial of self-representational agency from those living in poverty and the neoliberalisation of the welfare state, this article turns to those who remained invisible to either the media or the state during the pandemic. In line with current tendencies to prioritise the voice and lived knowledge of people in poverty, we provided our interlocutors with a specifically designed diary tool to allow them to share their mundane experiences and thoughts at their own discretion. Using these diaries of women and men in poverty, and complementary interviews, this article unpacks the ways our participants deal with and understand their everyday relationships with the absent state, mostly welfare and education. Based on the themes that emerged from our interlocutors’ journals, our findings reveal the Janus-faced abandoning/monitoring state that they routinely confront. We then demonstrate how they are constantly chasing the state, struggling to receive the support they lawfully deserve. At the same time, being subjected to practices of state monitoring and surveillance often results not only in mistrust but also in withdrawing almost altogether from the welfare services and social workers, and turning to alternative support networks. We conclude by offering two insights that accentuate, on the one hand, what we and our diarists already know, namely that they count for nothing. Still, on the other hand, the act of self-documentation itself reveals the representational agency of those brave diarists who refuse to forsake their worthiness as citizens.

Historical and social aspirations: influence of SME key decision makers’ resilience, social skills and stress on attaining firm performance goals

Purpose>This paper examines how some specific psychological characteristics and stress levels of small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) key decision-makers (founders/managers) (KDMs) influence firm goal attainment based on two firm aspiration types.Design/methodology/approach>This study hypothesizes that perceived resilience, social skills (self-promotion, ingratiation, expressiveness, social adaptability), and stress of SME KDMs will differently influence firm performance goal achievement based on firm historical versus social aspirations. IBM AMOS v27 is used to test these hypotheses on survey data of 267 Australian SME KDMs.Findings>The study reveals that KDMs’ perceived resilience, social skills and stress differentially impact the achievement of firm performance goals when selecting firm-level historical and social aspirations. Resilience and some specific social skills can even have a detrimental effect on achieving firm goals when applying historical and social aspirations. Historical aspirations are based on the firm’s performance history, while social aspirations are based on the performance of a reference group of competitor firms. The differences in the relationship between these characteristics and the two aspiration types are also explained. Furthermore, the study reveals the important role of perceived stress levels in achieving firm performance goals, using both aspiration types.Originality/value>This study is the first to investigate how the perceived use of some specific psychological characteristics of SME KDMs influence the ability to meet firm performance goals based on the discretionary use of historical and social aspirations and the relationship between these aspiration types. In this context, the paper explains the reasons for the differences and similarities in their use. Thus, this study provides an important empirical contribution to research on the emergent domain of micro-foundational SME goals.

Domestic violence during the pandemic: ‘By and for’ frontline practitioners’ mediation of practice and policies to support racially minoritised women 1 : The Interdisciplinary Journal of Organization, Theory and Society

This article analyses 26 interviews with frontline female practitioners from domestic violence and abuse (DVA) services for racially minoritised women in England and Wales, exploring how these practitioners – who are from the same racially minoritised communities as the women they support – responded to the challenges of the COVID-19 crisis. These specific practitioner perspectives offer valuable insights into the specific ways in which the pandemic exacerbated the intersectional vulnerabilities of minoritised women experiencing DVA. Interpreted through a standpoint feminist lens, the findings reveal how frontline practitioners used bureaucratic discretion both to meet minoritised women’s changed needs during the pandemic in order to enhance their safety and to challenge the exclusions and intersectional inequalities underpinning pandemic policies. The study illuminates the institutional dimensions of frontline practitioner responses to the pandemic and contribute to debates within the street-level bureaucracy scholarship about the nature of bureaucratic discretion exercised by frontline practitioners.

Permission to bail out EU's national flag carriers? Technocratic and political determinants of commission approval of state aid to national airlines in difficulties in the pre-COVID era

The enforcement of EU state aid rules is often portrayed as mainly driven by technocratic standards, but there are indications that political factors also play a role. However, their exact impact and relationship with technocratic factors remain unknown. This article studies under which technocratic and political conditions the Commission approves or does not approve state aid to national airlines. Based on a crisp-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis of all 14 cases of alleged state aid to national airlines between 2004 and 2019, the article shows that both the approval and non-approval of aid are predominantly dependent upon the Commission's technocratic assessment: a low degree of market distortion turns out to be a sufficient condition for the approval of aid, whereas a high degree of market distortion is a necessary condition for the non-approval of aid. However, in some cases, political factors are decisive in determining enforcement outcomes.

The public prosecution’s office in facing the reflections of the covid-19 crisis: an analysis about its judicial and extrajudicial action in the state of Rio Grande do Norte

This study aimed to understand the role of the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the State of Rio Grande do Norte in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic between March and September 2020. Therefore, a survey of Parquet activities was carried out based on the portal of MPRN news, considering, in the analysis, the period of operation;the classification of the measure;the theme;the territorial cut of the performance;involved actors and the stage of public policy of each measure analyzed. Then, the activities of the MPRN were classified based on the typologies pointed out by Goulart;Coelho and Kozicki;Silva and Da Ros. The results obtained evidenced, on the one hand, the preference for dialogue regarding public policies and extrajudicial action in a context of sanitary crisis and, on the other, the existence of internal conflicts that explained the discretion that characterizes the performance of the Public Ministry in the Brazil. It is noteworthy that the data refer to the performance reported by the institution itself, not covering the entire effort made by the MPRN during the research period. © 2021 Centro Universitario de Brasilia. All rights reserved.

Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Waiver at the World Trade Organization: A BIT of a Challenge

To augment the global production and distribution of Covid-19 medical products such as vaccines, drugs, and other therapeutics, countries are negotiating temporarily waiving certain provisions of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement at the World Trade Organization (WTO). Depending on the conditions that will govern the waiver, countries will amend their domestic intellectual property (IP) laws to effectively implement the waiver. While the waiver will provide immunity to IP-related regulatory measures from legal claims at the WTO, multinational pharmaceutical companies can use the investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism under bilateral investment treaties (BITs) to challenge such IP-related regulatory measures. In case of such a challenge to IP-related regulatory measures, will the host State be able to defend these measures? The article answers this question by dividing the investment treaty practice into those BITs that contain carve-out for IP and those that don't. The former set of treaties provides greater regulatory autonomy to implement the TRIPS waiver. However, given the fragmented and incoherent nature of the ISDS mechanism, the outcome will depend on arbitral discretion.

Relevant dimensions for the analysis of decision making in social intervention in disaster contexts

The COVID-19 pandemic, due to its catastrophic nature, has revealed deep social and economic inequalities that have led to the growing precariousness of a large part of the population. Faced with this, professional teams working in direct care have been constantly challenged by the adjustments that the pandemic context brings to the processes of social intervention. In this scenario, the pandemic as a disaster is discussed, as well as the challenges in the observation and analysis of these processes, under the notion of discretionality and the relevance of categorization. At the same time, some analytical dimensions are proposed to observe decision-making in intervention in disaster contexts, as a possible option to establish reflections that blur the traditional view of the discipline in these scenarios.

Mediating the claim? How ‘local ecosystems of support’ shape the operation and experience of UK social security

Local state and third sector actors routinely provide support to help people navigate their right to social security and mediate their chequered relationship to it. COVID-19 has not only underlined the significance of these actors in the claims-making process, but also just how vulnerable those working within ‘local ecosystems of support’ are to external shocks and their own internal pressures. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork with organisations providing support to benefit claimants and those financially struggling during COVID-19, this paper examines the increasingly situated nature of the claims-making process across four local areas in the United Kingdom. We do so to consider what bearing ‘local ecosystems of support’ have on income adequacy, access and universality across social security systems. Our analysis demonstrates how local state and third sector actors risk amplifying inequalities that at best disadvantage, and at worst altogether exclude, particular social groups from adequate (financial) assistance. Rather than conceiving of social security as a unitary collection of social transfers, we argue that its operation needs to be understood as much more fragmented and contingent. Practitioners exhibit considerable professional autonomy and moral agency in their discretionary practice, arbitrating between competing organisational priorities, local disinvestment, and changing community needs. Our findings offer broader lessons for understanding the contemporary governance of social security across welfare states seeking to responsibilise low-income households through the modernisation of public services, localism, and welfare reforms. © 2022 The Authors. Social Policy & Administration published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Roles of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on COVID-19 Pandemic Crisis Management Policies

The new coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis has had a devastating impact across the world. Public administration discipline addresses emergency crisis management in various ways and dimensions. This article seeks answers to the question: "How can AI contribute to crisis management policies to fight against COVID-19 and its impacts?" To this, the techniques and methods of AI in fighting against the COVID-19 virus will be explained in various dimensions. AI can make significant contributions in the preparation, mitigation-prevention, response, and recovery policies in the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. If adopted, AI can be used to find better treatment routes and drug development. Equally, policymakers can benefit from AI as decision support to reach high-quality decisions through fast and accurate data. The paper concludes that governments should create and implement effective AI-based crisis management strategies to fight against the epidemic locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally with a multi-level governance perspective.

Flexibility Of Urban Building Laws During Corona virus Disease - 2019 Pandemic: The Legalization Of "Puxadinhos" And The Relationship With The Pandemic

Objectives: Investigated the rules for the flexibilization of urban norms that occurred in the Municipality of Rio de Janeiro - RJ to tolerate the "puxadinhos" (additions) and if this is, legitimate within the ratio furls of Urban Law, for the cases of those people who are already irregular to the date of the pandemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and for cases in which works can be built during this period. Methodology: It was developed with a qualitative approach that led to the elaboration of the propositional thesis regarding the legality of the rules for regularizing the "puxadinhos". It was bibliographic and documentary, as it analyzed articles and books already published, collected data in journalistic articles and analyzed the legislation. Results: He formulated a propositional thesis in which he supports the feasibility of easing the rules in those cases where it is necessary because of Coronavirus Disease - 2019 (Covid-19) and to face Covid-19. The thesis proved to be supported by the general clauses of the legislation and by the specialized literature. Contributions: The flexibility hypotheses verified in this research will mainly benefit families that have an urgent need to guarantee minimum conditions of survival during the crisis. The application of the thesis allows the legality and regularity of additions ("puxadinhos") to be made, without the subsequent application of a fine or obligation to demolish.