Harry Adams – författare

Applies the concept of personal and political autonomy to children and children's development.In this groundbreaking theory of justice for children, Harry Adams takes the basic moral and political ideal of autonomy and shows what radical implications it has when applied to children and their development. Adams argues that it makes little sense to try to respect everyone's autonomy if enough attention hasn't been given to the ways that people do and do not develop autonomy in the first place, when they're young. Using the latest empirical research-from developmental psychology to population health and life course studies to primate ethnology and neurobiology-he explores how children develop different degrees of autonomy. Adams also discusses various public policies and programs that he feels any truly just society will have in place, in order to protect disadvantaged children's attainment of a minimal level of autonomy. He analyzes the ethical and practical appeals to, as well as the dangers and limits of, various family intervention programs, compulsory contraception programs, and early education programs, providing both a parental licensing model and an educational justice standard.

High and Low Corruption: Children, Capabilities, and Crime provides a systematic theory of corruption, and analyzes “high corruption” in terms of political corruption and high-end white-collar crime, and “low corruption” in terms of juvenile delinquency and street crime. It shows how delinquents and street criminals often suffer from arrested development of their basic human capabilities. In turn, Harry Adams argues that their maldevelopment often emerges neither merely through their own fault when they were children nor through the fault of biological caregivers who were guilty of parental child neglect. Beyond this, Adams argues that the maldevelopment of at-risk youth commonly emerges through a kind of political child neglect, when corrupt public officials fail to provide adequate protection or back-up support for their development. In these ways, the author shows how the former type of high corruption (or “suite crime”) can significantly contribute to the latter type of corruption (and street crime). By applying a set of moral, constitutional, and criminological principles from Derek Parfit, Ronald Dworkin, and Jeffrey Reiman, respectively, Adams also provides a systematic account of why and how both these types of corruption should be curbed.