Cumulative career traumatic stress (CCTS): A pilot study of traumatic stress in law enforcement

The present study measured the existence of traumatic stress symptomatology as reported by certified law enforcement officers within the State of Delaware. A questionnaire was devised which documented age, sex, race, education, years of service, marital status, children, rank, position, and shift work. The questionnaire was divided into parts which assessed the exposure and the frequency of specific traumatic incidents experienced in the line of duty, and the frequency of experienced traumatic symptomatology criteria: re-experiencing, numbing, and arousal.     

Intimate Partner Violence in Extremely Poor Women: Longitudinal Patterns and Risk Markers

Despite high revalence rates of intimate partner violence in the lives of extremely poor women with dependent children, few studies have investigated the patterns of violence that occur over time, and the characteristics of women that serve as risk markers for partner violence. This paper describes patterns of domestic violence longitudinally and uses multivariate analyses to delineate childhood and adult risk markers for recent intimate partner violence in this population of women. Analyses draw upon a sample of 436 homeless and extremely poor housed mothers receiving welfare, in a mid-sized city in Massachusetts with a large Hispanic population of Puerto Rican descent and relatively fewer Blacks. We found that among women with complete longitudinal data (N=280), almost two-thirds experienced intimate partner violence at some point during their adult life by the end of study follow-up, and that the abuse before and after the baseline interview was episodic and limited over time. To examine the role of individual women's factors, while controlling for partner characteristics, we used baseline data on women who had been partnered during the past year (N=336). Among childhood predictors, we found that sexual molestation contributed most significantly to adult intimate partner violence that occurred during the past year prior to the baseline interview. Adult risk markers included inadequate emotional support from non-professionals, poor self-esteem, and a partner with substance abuse problems. Having a partner with poor work history was another independent predictor of recent abuse. Ethnicity did not significantly predict whether women were abused or not during the past year, contrary to other findings reported in the literature.     

LIFE STORIES, DOCTRINES, AND DECISION MAKING

This article explores three supreme court appellate cases where one parent moves away with the children. These decisions from New York, Canada, and California reached very different conclusions.     

Reviews

Stephen Sestanovich (ed.), Rethinking Russia's National Interests. Washington, DC: Center for Strategic & International Studies, 1994, xii + 115pp., $14.95 p/b.

Neil Malcolm, (ed.), Russia and Europe: An End to Confrontation? London and New York: Pinter Publishers, for The Royal Institute of International Affairs, London, 1994, xi + 240pp., £35.00.

Douglas W. Blum (ed.), Russia's Future: Consolidation or Disintegration? Boulder, CO, San Francisco, CA & Oxford: Westview Press, 1994, 173pp., £33.50 h/b, £9.95 p/b.

Lynn D. Nelson & Irina Y. Kuzes, Property to the People. The Struggle for Radical Economic Reform in Russia. New York and London: M. E. Sharpe, 1994, xi + 268 pp., £48.00 h/b, £16.00 p/b.

Richard F. Kaufman & John P. Hardt (eds) for the Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, The Former Soviet Union in Transition. Armonk, NY, York and London: M. E. Sharpe, 1993, xxiv + 1222pp.

Michael Jakobson, Origins of the Gulag. The Soviet Prison Camp System 1917–1934. Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 1993, xiv+ 176pp., $28.00.

Paul R. Gregory, Before Command: An Economic History of Russia from Emancipation to the First Five‐Year Plan. Princeton; NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994, viii + 188pp., £30.00.

Helene Seppain, Contrasting US and German Attitudes to Soviet Trade, 1917–91. Politics by Economic Means. New York & Basingstoke: St Martin's Press and Macmillan, 1992, xiv + 349pp.

Graham Smith (ed.), The Baltic States: The National Self‐determination of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. London: The MacMillan Press Ltd, 1994, xii + 214pp., £40.00.

Jan Zaprudnik, Belarus: At a Crossroads in History. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992, xxiii + 278pp., £11.95 p/b.

Dirk Kretzschmar, Die Sowjetische Kulturpolitik 1970–1985. Bochum: Universitatsverlag Dr N. Brockmeyer, 1993, xxvi + 873pp., DM89.80.

Jan Kubik, The Power of Symbols against the Symbols of Power; The Rise of Solidarity and the Fall of State Socialism in Poland. Pennsylvania, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994, xiv + 322pp., £38.00 h/b, £13.95 p/b.

Ljerka Fulgosi & Vlasta Vince‐Ribaric (eds), Hundred Testimonies: The Moving Accounts of Croatian Displaced Persons and War Prisoners. Zagreb: Society of Croatian Professional Women and INA Consulting, 1994, 196pp., $20.00.

Theodor Bergman, Gert Schaefer & Mark Seldon (eds), Bukharin in Retrospect. New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1994, xxv +251pp.     

Gender and Disorder Specific Criminal Career Profiles in Former Adolescent Psychiatric In-Patients

A Norwegian nation-wide sample of 1087 former adolescent psychiatric in-patients, 584 males and 503 females, were followed up 15–33 years after first hospitalization. On the basis of detailed hospital records from index hospitalization all were rediagnosed according to DSM-IV. The patient list was linked to the national criminal register and the diagnostic groups were compared as to gender-specific frequency of registered criminality. Next, the criminal career characteristics were compared in those with criminal records at follow-up, relative to mental disorder at index hospitalization. The prevalence of registered criminality, both overall and for specific types of crimes, differed significantly between diagnostic groups and between genders. In both genders criminal convictions were most frequent in disruptive behavior disorders and personality disorders. Among males, the lowest violent crime rate was observed in those with psychotic disorders. Males had more severe criminal careers than females, both quantitatively and qualitatively. The diagnoses and criminal profiles of the 10 most active criminals in the study sample were described closer, as were the 11 individuals found guilty of homicide.     

It Can't Happen Here,1 or Has It? Sinclair Lewis's Fascist America

Sinclair Lewis, the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, anticipated many aspects of Donald J. Trump's 2016 campaign and election in his 1935 satirical dystopia, It Can't Happen Here. It was his most popular novel to date and is still satisfying, thought-provoking political theater. Lewis was influenced by growing totalitarianism in Europe, reported on by his second wife, foreign correspondent, Dorothy Thompson. Noting the power of Father Coughlin and Huey Long, among others, to mobilize a public still suffering from the Great Depression, Lewis feared a fascist takeover of the American government by democratic means. Lewis's fictional nightmare features a loutish, ignorant demagogue, who is manipulated by a sinister ghostwriter adviser. With support from a resentful League of Forgotten Men, the demagogue is elected President and quickly establishes a military, racist, and anti-Semitic dictatorship. It Can't Happen Here dramatizes the dire consequences of this takeover, which is not taken seriously at first by Lewis's newspaper editor protagonist, but then is increasingly resisted. Lewis is a social satirist in the Mark Twain tradition, and his novel is worth reading today for its suggestive parallels with current history and its good-hearted humor.