Poly-Victimization as a Life Condition: Correlates of Poly-Victimization among Finnish Children

According to criminological literature, victimization tends to cluster among the same adolescents. Recent American studies have shown that the poly-victimized youth are different in terms of their whole victimization profile than those children with fewer or no victimization experiences. In this article poly-victimization is studied among Finnish sixth and ninth graders (n = 13,459) based on the Finnish Child Victim Survey 2008. The article will answer questions with regard to accumulation of victimization and its associations with children's psycho-social well-being. The study examines the individual and family level background characteristics which are related to poly-victimization. The accumulations of these risk factors are analysed with poly-victimized children compared with less or non-victimized children. According to the analysis, poly-victimization exists among Finnish children and adolescents. In addition, the characteristics indicated as risk factors of victimization seem to accumulate among poly-victims. With cross-sectional data, no causal conclusions can be made, but poly-victimization is related to higher levels of psycho-social problems. The results confirm earlier findings of poly-victimization as a life condition.     

Comparing trends in infanticides in 28 countries, 1960–2009

The term ‘infanticide’ refers to the homicide of a child younger than one year old. In this article, we describe infanticide trends in 28 industrialized countries between 1960 and 2009. The analysis is based on the cause of death data from the WHO Mortality Database and national materials. The purpose is to compare those trends in all these 28 countries not to compare countries per se. Cause of death statistics are based on ICD classification. During the review period, ICD classification changed three times. In addition to describing infanticide trends, we will analyse the impact of those changes on statistical infanticide levels, to be sure that changes in trends could be seen as real, not statistical artefacts. According to our analysis, the change from ICD-7 to ICD-9 in 1968–1970 seems to have had some impact on registered infanticide mortality levels in three of the studied countries. In other countries, the changes did not have any general impact on registered infanticide levels. During the period, infanticide rates decreased in almost all European countries, and increased or were stable in most non-European industrialized countries. Even in Europe, there were significant differences in the decreasing trend between countries. We also found some structural variation behind the trend figures, which raised the question of whether the aggregated infanticide levels really describe an identical phenomenon in different countries.     

Does Spending Time in Public Settings Contribute to the Adolescent Risk of Violent Victimization?

Objectives

Using data from a nationally representative survey of adolescents in Finland this research examined the influence of spending time in public settings on the risk of physical assault and robbery victimization.

Methods

Binary and multinomial regression models were estimated to disaggregate associations between hours spent in public settings and characteristics of the victimization incident. The amount of causality/spuriousness in the association was examined using a method of situational decomposition.

Results

Our findings indicate that: (1) an active night life (any time after 6 pm) has a strong effect on victimization for boys, whereas much of the association between night life and victimization is spurious for girls; (2) after-school activity is not a risk factor; (3) adolescents who frequent public places at night increase their risk of victimization by people they know as well as strangers; and (4) much of the risk of night time activity in public settings is alcohol-related.

Conclusions

Our research suggests that a good deal of the risk associated with spending time in public settings is a function of the victim’s own risky behavior rather than inadvertent physical contact with motivated offenders in the absence of capable guardians. In addition, this lifestyle is significantly more victimogenic for males.     

Low recidivism rates of child sex offenders in a Finnish 7-year follow-up

ABSTRACT

This study examines the recidivism rates of Finnish child sex offenders convicted in 2010 (n = 361) over a follow-up period of seven years. The results indicate that while reoffending for other types of offences was common (34%), offenders had very low sexual crime recidivism rates (1%). In terms of more persistent criminal careers, less than a quarter of the offenders had both a previous criminal history and at least one subsequent offence during the follow-up period. Offenders with child sexual abuse material-related crimes reoffended more rarely than did others. Study limitations and implications for policymaking, media and rehabilitation are discussed.     

Are Children with Disabilities and Long-term Illnesses at Increased Risk of Disciplinary Violence?

This study examined the association between disability status and the risk of disciplinary violence at the hands of parents. The data consist of a nationally representative sample of 12–13 and 15–16-year-old Finnish school children (n = 13,459). These representative data were collected by the Police College of Finland. The results show that having a visual impairment, mental health problems, learning and/or memory difficulties, or another chronic illness, such as asthma, is associated with an increased risk of disciplinary violence. Children with multiple disabilities were significantly more likely to be targets of disciplinary violence. These findings suggest that children with disabilities are particularly vulnerable to maltreatment.     

The logic of regulatory impact assessment: From evidence to evidential reasoning

Agencies involved in generating regulatory policies promote evidence-based regulatory impact assessments (RIAs) to improve the predictability of regulation and develop informed policy. Here, we analyze the epistemic foundations of RIAs. We frame RIA as reasoning that connects various types of knowledge to inferences about the future. Drawing on Stephen Toulmin's model of argumentation, we situate deductive and inductive reasoning steps within a schema we call the impact argument. This approach helps us identify inherent uncertainties in RIAs, and their location in different types of reasoning. We illustrate the theoretical section with impact assessments of two recent legislative proposals produced by the European Commission. We argue that the concept of “evidence-based regulatory impact assessment” is misleading and should be based on the notion of “regulatory impact assessment as evidential reasoning,” which better recognizes its processual and argumentative nature.     

Reactions of Boys and Girls to Sexual Abuse and to Sexual Encounters with Peers

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - To understand the etiology and consequences of child sexual abuse it is important to study the victims’ subjective reactions to such incidents. Because...     

Adolescent Delinquency and Social Control in Finnish Schools: A Multilevel Analysis

The importance of local community in the prevention of juvenile delinquency has often been emphasized from the theoretical, practical, and political points of view. The role of the school in particular has recently gained attention along with the growing field of research on local communities and crime. This study examined the significance of school‐related social control in preventing adolescents' active delinquent behaviour. The study is based on a random cluster sample of Finnish 15–16‐year‐olds and conducted by employing multilevel logistic regression analysis. Results indicate that social control in schools, as a community characteristic, helps reduce boys' active delinquency even after crucial individual‐level characteristics have been taken into account. However, if there is wide variation in how social control is perceived, the positive effect diminishes. In the case of girls the meaning of the school‐level social control was insignificant. Both the average and standard deviation indicated that the effect would be similar to that of the boys, but statistically they were insignificant. The study affirms the earlier studies of the meaning of the school as a shared social environment and emphasizes the different dimensions in school‐level phenomena.     

Triallelic patterns in STR loci used for paternity analysis: evidence for a duplication in chromosome 2 containing the TPOX STR locus

We report triallelic patterns in several short tandem repeat (STR) loci revealed by routine paternity testing using the commercial AMPFlSTR Profiler and AMPFlSTR SGMplus kits. One case where the TPOX-locus (2p25.3) produced three peaks from the blood sample of a child was analysed further. Quantitative polymerase chain reaction (QPCR) and STR typing of the DNAs of the family trio revealed a large (>1.59 Mb) duplication flanking the TPOX-locus in chromosome 2 in both the mother and child. The implications of such genetic anomalies for paternity testing are discussed.     

Social Safety Net in Islam: The Case of Persian Gulf Oil Exporters

The Persian Gulf oil-exporting countries have had a poor record of managing their oil wealth to meet the basic needs of their citizenry and have failed in insuring an equitable distribution of income and opportunities. Government expenditures in the social sector can be characterized as wasteful and subsidies as regressive and for the more-heavily populated countries simply unsustainable. Set within the paradigm of Islamic economics, providing both normative and ethical guidance on the development of a just economic order, the issue of reforms to the social safety net is analyzed and how these oil exporters can better address the needs of the disadvantaged in an Islamic context is suggested.