Who are the people in your neighborhood? The effects of community notification on the community

In 1990 Washington became the first state to authorize the use of community notification by local law enforcement agencies as a means of managing released sex offenders in the community. Although community notification is currently being practiced in all fifty states, surprisingly little research has been done on its effectiveness in preventing further crime or other effects it may have on sex offenders, their families, and the community This research examined the possible effects of community notification on community members in terms of increased anxiety and fear based upon their reactions to different versions of a mock notification flyer. The results indicate that the quality of a notification flyer has little effect on anxiety in the general population. Authors Note: At the time this research was conducted. Mary Southwick was a psychology student at Whitman College, Walla Walla, WA 99362. Dr. Rubin is Professor of Psychology in the Division of Social Sciences. The authors wish to than Carol Lepiane, Susan Haluschak. Professor Kat Diamond, Virginia Hall, and Gayle Worthington.     

The mandatory notification of data breaches: Issues arising for Australian and EU legal developments

Public and private sector organisations are now able to capture and utilise data on a vast scale, thus heightening the importance of adequate measures for protecting unauthorised disclosure of personal information. In this respect, data breach notification has emerged as an issue of increasing importance throughout the world. It has been the subject of law reform in the United States and in other jurisdictions. This article reviews US, Australian and EU legal developments regarding the mandatory notification of data breaches. The authors highlight areas of concern based on the extant US experience that require further consideration in Australia and in the EU.     

The minor's right of privacy: limitations on state action after Danforth and Carey.

The current status of the minor's right of privacy is examined, and the possible interests of parents and the state in controlling the minor's childbearing decisions is evaluated. Attention is directed to the development of an adult right of privacy and the potential barriers blocking its full extension to minors. The impact of the Danforth and Carey decisions extended the right of privacy to protect a minor's childbearing decisions from unwarranted state interference, and the constitutionality of statues that predicate a minor's abortion or contraceptive decision on either prior parental notification or parental judicial approval. The scope and vitality of the protection afforded by the Danforth and Carey decisions will be largely undermined if a minor's fundamental decisions are held to be constitutionally subject to parental or judicial review. State-mandated involvement of 3rd parties, aside from the minor's attending physician, in the decision to prevent or terminate pregnancy serves no significant state interest. Rather such restrictions impermissibly subject minors to the dangers of pregnancy and childbirth. Additionally, by selectively burdening only those childbearing decisions which result in the prevention or termination of pregnancy, parental consent, consultation, and notification requirements violate the Roe decision's insistence on a neutral state policy towards the outcome of fundamental personal choices. In sum, state-assisted parental or judicial intervention in the minor's childbearing decisions unconstitutionally limits the protection granted by the right of privacy.     

Abortion laws in African Commonwealth countries

This paper provides an overview of the range of current (1981) abortion laws in the African Commonwealth countries, traces the origins of the laws to their colonial predecessors, and discusses legal reform that would positively provide for legal termination of pregnancy. The authors claim that the range of these laws demonstrates an evolution that leads from customary/common law (Lesotho and Swaziland) to basic law (Botswana, The Gambia, Malawi, Mauritius, Nigeria's Northern States and Seychelles) to developed law (Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria's Southern States, Sierra Leone, and Uganda), and, finally, to advanced law (Zambia and Zimbabwe). The authors call for treating abortion as an issue of health and welfare as opposed to one of crime and punishment. Since most of the basic law de jure is treated and administered as developed law de facto, the authors suggest decriminalizing abortion and propose ways in which to reform the law: clarifying existing law; liberalizing existing law to allow abortion based upon certain indications; limiting/removing women's criminal liability for seeking an abortion; allowing hindsight contraception; protecting providers treating women in good faith; publishing recommended fees for services to protect poor women; protecting providers who treat women with incomplete abortion; and punishing providers who fail to provide care to women in need, with the exception of those seeking protection under a conscience clause. The authors also suggest clarifying the means by which health services involving pregnancy termination may be delivered, including: clarification of the qualifications of practitioners who may treat women; specification of the facilities that may treat women, perhaps broken down by gestational duration of the pregnancy; specifying gestational limits during which the procedure can be performed; clarifying approval procedures and consents; and allowing for conscientious objections to performing the procedure.     

The Supreme Court's spring term: abortion, the right to die, and the decline of privacy rights

Wing analyzes the constitutional significance and the important long-term implications for health policy of three 1990 U.S. Supreme Court decisions: Hodgson v. Minnesota, Ohio v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health, and Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health. Hodgson and Ohio upheld state statutes requiring parental notification of a minor's impending abortion. Cruzan upheld a state court decision refusing to allow the family of a patient in a persistent vegetative state to discontinue life-sustaining treatment. Wing argues that these decisions reach far beyond "the abortion issue" or "the right to die." Not only have they narrowed the constitutional protection of individual privacy, but they allow states to regulate activities like abortion in a manner that indicates that the Court is prepared to repeal the notion that individual privacy is entitled to enhanced judicial protection.     

Medical data breaches: Notification delayed is notification denied

The EU and the United States have implemented data breach notification rules that cover the health sectors. Nevertheless, data breach incidents involving medical data continue to rise, especially in the US and the UK. The HITECH Act, Pub. L. 111-5 Title XIII is the first federal health breach notification law in the US to be characterized by less government intrusions, while the revised EU Privacy Directive, 2009/136/EC calls for tougher privacy protection for data held by electronic communication providers. While the EU law sets a global de facto standard, the law remains toothless without strong enforcement mechanisms.     

TENNESSEE'S ADOPTION LAW

Tennessee has recently enacted legislation increasing access to adoption records, allowing adult adoptees to obtain their birth certificates and other information contained only in their adoption records. After that controversial statute became law, it was challenged in Doe v. Sundquist . After 3 years of litigation, the Tennessee Supreme Court held that the statute was constitutional. The authors discuss the history of Tennessee's adoption law, demonstrating how certain events led to the passing of the controversial statute. They also discuss the adoption triad, including the birth parents, adoptive parents, and adoptees, noting the interests of each party. Following that is a discussion of the Tennessee statute and how it operates. The commentary continues with a detailed look at Doe v. Sundquist , including the procedural and substantive issues in both federal and state court. The authors conclude that the Tennessee law is a practical and reasonable solution to the controversy over sealed adoption records.     

THE IMPACT OF MEGAN'S LAW ON SEX OFFENDER RECIDIVISM: THE MINNESOTA EXPERIENCE*

Although Megan's Law was passed more than 10 years ago, very little is known as to whether it reduces sex offender recidivism significantly. Using a retrospective quasi‐experimental design, we examine whether community notification has a deterrent effect by comparing the recidivism rates of 155 level 3 (“high public risk”) sex offenders released from Minnesota prisons between 1997 and 2002 who were subject to broad notification with two separate control groups who were not. The first control group (referred to as the prenotification group) contained 125 sex offenders released between 1990 and 1996 (the 7 years preceding the implementation of the Community Notification Act) who likely would have been subject to broad community notification had the law been in effect at the time of their release. The second control group (referred to as the non‐notification group) was composed of 155 offenders (37 level 1 and 118 level 2) released between 1997 and 2002 who were not subject to broad community notification. The results from the Cox proportional hazards models reveal that broad community notification significantly reduced the risk of time to a sex reoffense (rearrest, reconviction, and reincarceration) compared with both control groups. The findings were mixed, however, for both non‐sex and general reoffending. Whereas broad community notification significantly reduced the risk of timing to both non‐sex and general recidivism compared with the prenotification group, no such effects were found in the non‐notification group analyses. We discuss the implications of these results and attempt to explain why Megan's Law seems to reduce sex offense recidivism in Minnesota.     

CLASS,GENDER, AND ARREST: AN INTERGENERATIONAL ANALYSIS OF WORKPLACE POWER AND CONTROL*

Power‐control theory posits that parental workplace positions affect adolescent law violation. To date, however, no test of the theory has directly measured occupational power and control. This paper tests whether parental and adolescent workplace freedom and control affect criminal behavior and arrest as the theory predicts, using data from a prospective longitudinal survey of 1, 000 adolescents and their parents. The results suggest sex differentials in the effects of maternal authority position and parental freedom and control. In particular, daughters whose mothers hold authority positions are more likely to be arrested than are daughters whose mothers do not hold such positions. The effects of adolescent employment also differ by sex, with perceived workplace power and control reducing rates of arrest among females but increasing them among males.     

CHANGES IN POLICE NOTIFICATION FOR RAPE, 1973–2000*

We use data from the National Crime Survey (NCS) and the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) to explore changes in the likelihood of police notification in rape incidents. The findings indicate that during the 1970s and 1980s there was a significant increase in police notification by third parties and by victims raped by non‐strangers. During the 1990s the increase in rates of police notification in rape incidents accelerated and broadened in scope. In addition, differences in police notification between stranger and non‐stranger incidents diminished during the 1970s and 1980s and, by the early 1990s there was no significant difference.     

The introduction of data breach notification legislation in Australia: A comparative view

This article argues that Australia's recently-passed data breach notification legislation, the Privacy Amendment (Notifiable Data Breaches) Act 2017 (Cth), and its coming into force in 2018, makes an internationally important, yet imperfect, contribution to data breach notification law. Against the backdrop of data breach legislation in the United States and European Union, a comparative analysis is undertaken between these jurisdictions and the Australian scheme to elucidate this argument. Firstly, some context to data breach notification provisions is offered, which are designed to address some of the problems data breaches cause for data privacy and information security. There have been various prominent data breaches affecting Australians over the last few years, which have led to discussion of what can be done to deal with their negative effects. The international context of data breach notification legislation will be discussed, with a focus on the United States and European Union jurisdictions, which have already adopted similar laws. The background to the adoption of the Australia legislation will be examined, including the general context of data privacy and security protection in Australia. The reform itself will be then be considered, along with the extent to which this law is fit for purpose and some outstanding concerns about its application. While data breach notification requirements are likely to be a positive step for data security, further reform is probably necessary to ensure strong cybersecurity. However, such reform should be cognisant of the international trends towards the adoption of data security measures including data breach notification, but lack of alignment in standards, which may be burdensome for entities operating in the transnational data economy.     

Policies and practices of fertility control under the state socialism

The socialist state run modernization produced low fertility throughout Eastern Europe. Fertility rates started falling soon after the end of the Second World War quickly reaching below replacement levels in many areas. This article examines the state responses to the falling fertility as well as birth control practices that individuals relied on in order to maintain small families. After outlining some common features of population policies under the state socialism, the article focuses on family planning policies in Yugoslavia. It is argued that liberal population policy and uninterrupted liberal abortion legislation in Yugoslavia, resulted, among other reasons, from the communist leadership's commitment to national and gender equality, respectively. It is further argued that gender hierarchy within the marriage and family remained almost untouched by the socialist project of women's emancipation and that these hierarchical gender relations shaped birth control practices in specific ways.     

An analysis of the effectiveness of the EU data breach notification obligation

In this paper we study the law and economics of the EU data breach notification obligation (EU DBNO), which is part of the general data protection regulation. We start our discussion with the origins and aims of the EU DBNO. Following this, we study the social benefits of the DBNO and the conditions for these social benefits to emerge. Next, we analyse whether there would be spontaneous notification without the existence of a DBNO. We discuss how the national DPAs, that are responsible for the execution of the EU DBNO, can sufficiently induce data controllers to comply with the regulation. We also discuss the scope of the regulation from a social welfare perspective, in particular the conditions, which trigger a notification from data controllers.     

Intimate partner violence, depression, and posttraumatic stress disorder as additional predictors of low birth weight infants among low-income mothers

Estimates of intimate partner violence (IPV) during pregnancy vary by population being studied, measures, and other methodological limitations, hindering the ability to gauge the relationship between IPV and negative birth outcomes. The authors report aggregated data from a subsample (n = 148) of the first three waves of the Women's Employment Study. The authors compared groups of women who did and did not give birth to low birth weight infants on demographic, material deprivation, risk behavior, mental health, and IPV factors. The prevalence of domestic violence was more than twice as high for women with low birth weight infants as those women who had a normal weight infant. When considering additional risk factors, including food insufficiency, substance dependence, and depression and/or posttraumatic stress disorder, IPV remained a significant indicator, but it was most strongly associated with low birth weight among women also experiencing depression and/or posttraumatic stress disorder.     

Adolescents' capacities to provide voluntary informed consent

Minors' capacities to provide a valid informed consent for the treatment of medical and psychological disorders are contingent in part on the determination of whether they can make voluntary treatment decisions. The gravity of a medical dilemma and the nature of parental influence are two factors hypothesized to effect and perhaps compromise the voluntariness of treatment decisions made by adolescents. In the present study 40 14- and 15-year-old subjects were asked to note their conviction for treatment decisions they had made in response to hypothetical medical dilemmas in which parental influence varied. It was found that adolescents making treatment decisions are generally deferent to parental influence, although they are more likely to resist parental influence when the consequences of the decision have serious implications for the hypothetical adolescent's health.This investigation was supported in part by a grant from the American Psychology-Law Society/ Division 41 of the American Psychological Association, whose assistance is gratefully acknowledged. Gratitude is also extended to the Albemarle County School District, the Blue Ridge School. and St. Anne's-Belfield for their kind cooperation. The authors wish to thank William Gardner, Jeanne Smith, and Edith Lawrence for their work on behalf of this project. Special recognition is due to Lois A. Weithorn for her guidance and support of this research endeavor.     

Cocaine babies: the scourge of the '90s

Six cases of cocaine-related deaths of infants have covered the spectrum of potentially devastating effects. They include an intrauterine death of a 35-week-old fetus following acute maternal cocaine abuse; anoxic encephalopathy at birth with 3 months' vegetative survival from a similar episode; traumatic compression asphyxia in a 4-month-old; infectious cardiomyopathy with heart failure in a twin at age 21 months following maternal cocaine abuse at birth; malnutrition and dehydration in a 7-week-old during continuing cocaine abuse by the parents; and a teenage sibling's cocaine lacing of a baby milk bottle ingested by his 6-week-old brother. All the cases had positive toxicological screening for cocaine or metabolites or both in the mother at delivery or in the infant at birth, or both. There were no instances of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS, or "crib death"). Pathologic and toxicologic, as well as birth, developmental, and social data are presented. An integrated medical, public health, law enforcement, and educational policy to prevent or at least ameliorate these tragic cases, now approaching epidemic proportions, has yet to be developed. A careful obstetrical history and examination of the mother, indication on the birth certificate of maternal drug abuse, and notification of health authorities (by birth certificate checking, among other ways) may send an early warning message to providers for intercession. Active ingestion/injection and passive inhalation by older children and teenagers require more intensive monitoring and aggressive interaction by pediatricians, social workers, school authorities, and employers.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)     

The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Teen Childbearing

After 41 consecutive years of increase, out-of-wedlock teenchildbearing unexpectedly reversed course in 1991 and by 2002was 20% below its peak. Explanations for that reversal haveproven elusive. In this paper, we present evidence that exposureto legalized abortion in utero for the cohort of women thatbecame teenagers in the 1990s is one factor contributing tothis decline. We estimate that the legalization of abortionin the 1970s changed the composition of women at risk of bearingchildren out of wedlock some 15–24 years later. This compositioneffect reduced out-of-wedlock teen birth rates by 6%, whichaccounts for roughly 25% of the observed decline in unmarriedteen birth rates over this period. It also lowered rates ofunmarried births for women aged 20–24. At the same time,it increased the number of married births to women 20–24,so that there is only a small reduction in total fertility overthe ages 15–24. The detailed information available onbirth certificates enables a more direct identification of inutero abortion exposure than prior studies looking at otheroutcomes such as crime.     

Medicine,statistics, and the encounter of abortion and “depopulation” in France (1870–1920)

The anxiety about the population decline in France acquired at the end of the XIXth Century a great strength. Among the scholarship specialities involved in its analysis, the population studies developed by authors like Adolphe and Jacques Bertillon played a key role, but were limited by their lack of concern and/or precise data concerning the intimate behaviours. The growing implication of doctors in the issue of “depopulation”, and the concrete professional practices of some of them, led to an emerging focus on abortion. The obstetricians, who undertook in the “belle époque” personal statistics of abortions, permitted (despite the numerous limits of their works) to provide original data. They gave militants and politicians occasion to shape “mass abortion” as the principal “cause of denatality”. This paper examines the scientific, social and ideological genesis of this process, and enlightens the historical interest of these peculiar knowledges.     

Contradictions and inconsistencies in Australia's mandatory data breach notification laws

This article critically examines the objectives and practical operation of Australia's mandatory data breach notification [MDBN] law. We find that the scope and application of Australia's law do not reflect the legislative objectives underpinning the law. The wording of the law is ambiguous, and it is beset by conceptual inconsistencies. The law also fails to adequately consider the needs of individuals whose personal information has been compromised in a data breach. As a result, Australia's MDBN law is unlikely to meet the needs of organisations that have experienced a data breach, or of individuals who are notified. We conclude by identifying options for reform to better reflect the law's rationale and to better achieve its objectives. Comparisons are made with similar laws in force in the United States and with the General Data Protection Regulation.     

School crime policy changes: The impact of recent highly-publicized school crimes

Highly-publicized school shootings have heightened concern over school safety. This study examines the impact of school crimes on campus policy. The administrators of 336 Texas middle and high schools were surveyed. Policy changes were related to parental complaints about school crime policies and administrator perceptions that students felt less safe. School administrators should base safety policies on strategies that have been evaluated for their effectiveness in reducing school crime and fear. The authors wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.