Legal mobilization in schools: the paradox of rights and race among youth

In this article, we analyze ethnoracial patterns in youth perceptions and responses to rights violations and advance a new model of legal mobilization that includes formal, quasi-, and extralegal action. Slightly more than half of the 5,461 students in our sample reported past rights violations involving discrimination, harassment, freedom of expression/assembly, and due process violations in disciplinary procedures. Students, regardless of race, are more likely to take extralegal than formal legal actions in response to perceived rights violations. Self-identified African American and Latino/a students are significantly more likely than white and Asian American students to perceive rights violations and are more likely to claim they would take formal legal action in response to hypothetical rights violations. However, when they perceive rights violations, African American and Asian American students are no more likely than whites to take formal legal action and Latino/a students are less likely than whites to take formal legal action. We draw on in-depth interviews with youth and adults—which we interlace with our quantitative findings—to explore the interpretive dynamics underlying these survey findings, and we offer several theoretical and methodological implications of our work.     

School disorder, victimization, and general v. place-specific student avoidance

This study utilizes a national sample of 3, 776 high-school students to test two theoretical models of school avoidance behavior. More specifically, this study examines the relationships between student avoidance and both school disorder (or, incivilities) and previous victimization experiences. Further, the study also examines whether the presumed effects of incivilities and victimization on avoidance operate indirectly, through student fear. Negative Binomial regression analyses showed that perceived disorder in the form of presence of gangs and previous bullying victimization are key sources of student fear. In turn, student fear is positively correlated with two distinct types of avoidance behavior. Interestingly, controlling for student fear does not dissolve the significant, positive effects of perceived gang presence and bullying victimization.     

The Short-Term Dynamics of Peers and Delinquent Behavior: An Analysis of Bi-weekly Changes Within a High School Student Network

Objectives

To analyze short-term changes in peer affiliations, offending behavior and routine activities in order to evaluate three different processes: peer selection, peer socialization and situational peer influences.

Methods

The short-term longitudinal TEENS study was conducted among a cohort of students from one mid-sized high school in Kentucky, as part of the larger Rural Substance Abuse and Violence Project. The study sample consists of one complete network of 155 ninth graders who completed surveys about their peer affiliations, routine activities and offending behaviors over the course of five waves of data collection during the beginning of the school year. The measurement intervals were no more than 2 weeks long. Longitudinal network analysis (SIENA software that enables actor-oriented stochastic modeling) was used to estimate peer selection, socialization, and situational effects.

Results

Peer networks, offending, and routine activities appeared to be very volatile over the research period. Peer selection effects were found for structural network properties, demographics and delinquent values, but not for peer delinquency. We did not find significant peer socialization effects within the research period, but instead found that changes in offending were related to situational changes in unstructured socializing, alcohol use and marijuana use.

Conclusions

The results suggest that traditional time lags of one year or six months between measurements may fail to capture short-term relations between peers and behavior. Long-term peer influence processes like socialization may be less important in the short run, while situational peer effects might be more salient.

     

A Comparison of Defendants with Mental Illness Represented by Public Defenders and Private Attorneys: an Analysis of Court-Ordered Pretrial Psychiatric Evaluations

This study compared the characteristics and court-ordered evaluation questions and responses among 4,430 defendants to determine if differences existed between those represented by public defenders and private attorneys when receiving trial competency or responsibility psychiatric evaluations from a state department of mental health. Defendants represented by public defenders were more likely to be younger, to have less education, to have psychotic disorders, to have a history of inpatient psychiatric treatment, to live in urban or rural counties, and to be jailed at the time of the evaluation. In addition, defendants represented by public defenders were less likely to have a request for a criminal responsibility evaluation and more likely to be evaluated as having a mental illness, to be incompetent to stand trial, and to need hospitalization pending trial. Consideration of whether defendants with public defenders receiving less requests for responsibility evaluations was indicative of a therapeutic jurisprudence approach is discussed. Implications for research on types of legal representation of defendants with mental illness are discussed.     

The Role of Postmortem Computed Tomography in the Evaluation of Strangulation Deaths

We explored the value of postmortem computed tomography (PMCT) to augment autopsy in evaluating strangulation fatalities. A literature search identified 16 studies describing autopsy findings in 576 deaths and two studies describing autopsy and PMCT findings in six deaths. Similar cases were identified from our institution, yielding 130 deaths with autopsy findings and 14 deaths with both autopsy and PMCT findings. The presence of laryngohyoid fracture and soft tissue hemorrhage was compared from autopsy and autopsy+PMCT cases. The detection rates of fractures in autopsy and autopsy+PMCT cases were not significantly different. PMCT identified all fractures observed at autopsy and five fractures not identified. While PMCT may not detect soft tissue injuries in decomposed remains or subtle internal hemorrhages in neck injury, it is equally able to detect bony injuries as autopsy and might surpass autopsy in detecting subtle fractures. We conclude PMCT is useful to supplement autopsy in strangulation cases.     

Masculinities and emotional expression in UK servicemen: ‘Big boys don’t cry’?

Dominant discourses of military servicemen position them as more prone to psychological damage than the general population, but as reluctant to seek psychological assistance, because of the military culture of ‘toughness’, a military masculinity, that values stoicism, emotional control and invulnerability and implicitly excludes ‘feminine’ characteristics like emotionality. This is seen as a barrier to military personnel seeking help, by implicitly discouraging emotional disclosure and expression. This article presents an analysis of semi-structured interviews with six male military and ex-military personnel, focused on their experience and understandings of emotion, emotional expression and ‘mental health’ in the military. The dominant construction of military masculinity certainly renders some forms of emotion inexpressible within certain contexts. However, we argue that the construct is more complex than a simple exclusion of the ‘feminine’ and the ‘emotional’. We explore how the highly masculine notions of military solidarity and ‘brotherhood’ create a ‘safe’ masculine space within which men could share their emotional experiences, but also highlight how this space for emotional expression is relatively constrained. We argue that these notions of solidarity and brotherhood open a space for emotional connection and expression that must be respected and worked with creatively, in therapeutic and other interventions.     

Diagnostic Bias and Conduct Disorder: Improving Culturally Sensitive Diagnosis

Disproportionately high rates of Conduct Disorder are diagnosed in African American and Latino youth of color. Diagnostic bias contributes to overdiagnosis of Conduct Disorder in these adolescents of color. Following a diagnosis of Conduct Disorder, adolescents of color face poorer outcomes than their White counterparts. These negative outcomes occur within mental health and juvenile justice settings. The aims of this article are to: (a) identify the factors that contribute to overdiagnosis of Conduct Disorder in adolescents of color, (b) discuss the associated negative outcomes, and (c) provide recommendations for culturally sensitive diagnosis of adolescents of color with conduct problems in order to reduce overdiagnosis. Clinical and research implications will also be presented.     

Beneath the surface: the masculine self and body in Sheridan Le Fanu’s ‘Green Tea’

This article examines the relationship between the masculine self and male body in Sheridan Le Fanu’s short story ‘Green Tea’ (1872), using a masculinity studies lens to analyze Mr Jennings’ destabilized masculinity within the parameters of Victorian male gender norms. I highlight the interwoven relationship between the masculine self and the body through looking at the physical depiction of Jennings, arguing that Jennings’ masculinity, his masculine self, is imprisoned as a reflection of the physical body; a relationship echoing Victorian gender norms regarding masculinity and the body. In the story, a demon follows and watches Jennings, appearing when Jennings is engaged in activity. Focusing on the relationship between the demon’s manifestation and Jennings’ activity, I show that the demon’s presence results from Jennings’ nonconformity to traditional notions of the masculine self. Le Fanu’s emphasis on the demon’s gaze serves to criticize Jennings’ masculinity as Jennings becomes submissive to the demon’s presence; as a result, this submission is mirrored in Jennings’ deteriorating physical body and health. By positing the masculine self within the body, the story acts to highlight Victorian society’s rigid male gender norms and the penalization of bodies that undermine those ideals.     

THE INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL VALIDITY OF THE REGRESSION DISCONTINUITY DESIGN: A META‐ANALYSIS OF 15 WITHIN‐STUDY COMPARISONS

Theory predicts that regression discontinuity (RD) provides valid causal inference at the cutoff score that determines treatment assignment. One purpose of this paper is to test RD's internal validity across 15 studies. Each of them assesses the correspondence between causal estimates from an RD study and a randomized control trial (RCT) when the estimates are made at the same cutoff point where they should not differ asymptotically. However, statistical error, imperfect design implementation, and a plethora of different possible analysis options, mean that they might nonetheless differ. We test whether they do, assuming that the bias potential is greater with RDs than RCTs. A second purpose of this paper is to investigate the external validity of RD by exploring how the size of the bias estimates varies across the 15 studies, for they differ in their settings, interventions, analyses, and implementation details. Both Bayesian and frequentist meta‐analysis methods show that the RD bias is below 0.01 standard deviations on average, indicating RD's high internal validity. When the study‐specific estimates are shrunken to capitalize on the information the other studies provide, all the RD causal estimates fall within 0.07 standard deviations of their RCT counterparts, now indicating high external validity. With unshrunken estimates, the mean RD bias is still essentially zero, but the distribution of RD bias estimates is less tight, especially with smaller samples and when parametric RD analyses are used.