The Impact of Emotional Disturbances on the Arrest Trajectories of Youth as They Transition into Young Adulthood

This article identifies the arrest trajectories of youth from ages 12 through 24 years old and tests hypotheses derived from Moffitt’s developmental taxonomic theory of crime concerning the impact of various emotional disturbances on the specific trajectories of the youth involved. The study uses exclusively administrative data sets and includes a gender and racially diverse sample of 10,360 youth (30.7 % females) who were arrested at least once between ages 12 and 24 in the early 2000s. Latent class growth analysis was employed in order to identify distinct arrest trajectories of youth in the sample. Multinomial logistic regression was used to identify diagnostic and other characteristics associated with membership in the specific trajectories predicted by Moffitt’s theory. Five trajectory classes were identified, 3 of which were consistent with taxonomic theory including high and classic adolescence limited trajectory classes and a “snared adolescence limited class” described more recently by Moffitt. The distribution of youth among the 5 classes was very different for those with and without emotional disturbances. Youth with emotional disturbances in their late adolescent years were more likely to fall into the high arrest trajectory class and much less likely to fall into the low arrest trajectory class. Compared to youth without an emotional disturbance, youth with psychotic disorders were more than twice as likely to fall into the high as into the low arrest trajectory class. Youth with disruptive behavior disorders were more than twice as likely to fall into the high and intermediate classes as into the low trajectory class. Anxiety and depressive disorders were not associated with significantly greater likelihood of falling into any one of the trajectory classes. Youth in the snared adolescence limited class were more likely than those in the classic adolescence limited class to be male, black versus white and in the foster care enrollment category lending some support to Moffitt’s conceptualization of this class as an adolescence limited class composed of youth who are snared by involvement in the criminal justice and or social services systems. Implications of these results for public policy and the study of adolescence are discussed.     

Political economy of crime and punishment under Stalin

Why do dictatorships favor harsher punishments than democracies? We use a rational choice approach to explain the stylized facts of Stalin’s dictatorship—preference for harsh sanctions, higher incarceration rates, greater use of capital punishment, low tolerance for theft of state property and workplace violations. They are shown to be explained by the preferences of a rational dictator, who does not internalize the social and private cost of punishment.     

Estimation of age-at-death for adult males using the acetabulum, applied to four Western European populations

Methods to estimate adult age from observations of skeletal elements are not very accurate and motivate the development of better methods. In this article, we test recently published method based on the acetabulum and Bayesian inference, developed using Coimbra collection (Portugal). In this study, to evaluate its utility in other populations, this methodology was applied to 394 specimens from four different documented Western European collections. Four strategies of analysis to estimate age were outlined: (a) each series separately; (b) on Lisbon collection, taken as a reference Coimbra collection; (c) on Barcelona collection, taken as a reference both Portuguese collections; and (d) on London collection taken as reference the three Iberian collections combined. Results indicate that estimates are accurate (83-100%). As might be expected, the least accurate estimates were obtained when the most distant collection was used as a reference. Observations of the fused acetabulum can be used to make accurate estimates of age for adults of any age, with less accurate estimates when a more distant reference collection is used.     

Peer effects in private and public schools across countries

Many argue that the composition of a school or classroom‐that is, the characteristics of the students themselves‐affect the educational attainment of an individual student. This influence of the students in a classroom is often referred to as a peer effect. There have been few systematic studies that empirically examine the peer effect in the educational process. In this research, we examine the peer effect with a unique data set that includes individual student achievement scores and comprehensive characteristics of the students' families, teachers, other school characteristics, and peers for five countries. The data allow an examination of peer effects in both private and public schools in all countries. Our analysis indicates that peer effects are a significant determinant of educational achievement; the effects of peers appear to be greater for low‐ability students than for high‐ability students. The finding is robust across countries but not robust across school type. © 2000 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Diversification of rural incomes and non-farm rural employment: Survey evidence from Russia

The results of a rural survey in two Russian regions demonstrate that agriculture is no longer the main source of income for rural families. Rural families are diversifiers, earning non-agricultural income through both non-agricultural wage employment and non-farm self-employment. The rural population is risk-averse, preferring the relative security of wage employment to individual entrepreneurship. Although all respondents would like to earn more, they are reluctant to consider the option of changing their place of work and are afraid of losing their current job. It may be difficult for new profit-oriented employers to offer equitable solutions to all segments of the rural population without properly designed government support programmes, which furthermore should be targeted to the labour force of the future, i.e., the Russian youth.     

Secret Public Finance: Revenues and Expenditures of the Soviet Communist Party, 1938–1965

Patterns of the Soviet Communist Party expenditures, major sources of revenue, and patterns of interregional transfers are analysed with special attention to the party's major donors: the army and large cities. Financial records for the period 1938 – 1965 allow us to study the role of the party in the Soviet institutional design and the relationships between central and regional party organisations. In addition to the selection of cadre, supervision of production, and ‘production’ of ideology, the party provided alternative channels for the redistribution of state resources. Empirical evidence suggests that the pattern of the distribution of subsidies through party channels was consistent with investing in political support by creating promotion incentives in the party system.     

Psychosocial Adjustment and Family Relationships: A Typology of Italian Families with a Late Adolescent

The importance of family relationships in human development and adjustment has always been recognized in psychological studies. The present study aims to construct a typology of families with a late adolescent and to analyze the family relationships present in each type. The typology, constructed using family satisfaction—a global index of family functioning—as the discriminate variable, took into account eight types. This study is focused on the two extreme types of the typology: Families with adequate functioning or satisfied families and Families with inadequate functioning or dissatisfied families. These two types of families were compared according to variables such as: (a) parent-child communication and its topics and (b) the family's decision-making process on topics related to the adolescent and his/her future orientation. All subjects completed a questionnaire composed of different scales. The results show substantial differences in the two family types regarding both family functioning and the role played by mothers and fathers. Satisfied families give evidence of a better communication process than the dissatisfied ones, greater sharing between parents and adolescents and, finally, a decision-making process based mostly on sharing and support. Moreover, in satisfied families the father has the role of social mediator. In this way, he succeeds in part in restoring equilibrium to the relational imbalance in favor of mothers so typical of Italian families.     

Boards of trustees,agency problems,and university output

The analysis and empirical evidence in this paper indicate that the structure of the boards of trustees of state universities influences the provision of higher education. The structure of the boards is important because it helps to define the constraints on the board members and on the internal agents of the universities. An implication of this study is that public universities can be made to function more like private ones by placing them under separate governing boards.These results are especially interesting when examining the trends regarding board structures. The trend over this century across the states has been toward increasing the number of universities under the jurisdiction of a single board. This analysis suggests that the trend is a response to political pressure from educators, not from taxpayers and consumers of higher education.