DIVORCE AND THE FAMILY COURT: WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT DOMESTIC VIOLENCE?

Approximately 50% of couples who have separated report being victims of violence and/or emotional abuse by their former intimate partners. Family courts can make an important contribution toward reducing the number of intimate partners who report being victims of domestic violence and abuse during and following their participation in divorce proceedings in three ways. First, increase opportunities for participation in nonadversarial procedures. Second, implement mandatory assessment/screening for domestic violence using field‐tested instruments that link subscores on sets of items (e.g., control motivated violence, conflict instigated violence/abuse, substance abuse associated violence/abuse) with appropriate community‐based treatments and/or resources. Third, educate family court judges, lawyers, mediators, and other court personnel in the dynamics of domestic violence generally, as well as the dynamics associated with separation/divorce.     

TWENTY‐FIRST CENTURY PINK OR BLUE: HOW SEX SELECTION TECHNOLOGY FACILITATES GENDERCIDE AND WHAT WE CAN DO ABOUT IT

In the midst of a genetic revolution in medicine, Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) has become a well‐established technique to help infertile women achieve pregnancy. But many women are now turning to ART not just to circumvent infertility, but consciously to shape their families by determining the sex of their children. Many patriarchal cultures have a gender preference for males and to date have used technological advances in reproductive medicine to predetermine the sex of the child being born. Women have sought sex‐selective abortions, where the pregnancy was being terminated solely on the basis of the sex of the unborn fetus. The combination of ART advances and gender preference has led to the disappearance of at least 100 million girls from the world's population leading to a mass gendercide. This article examines the societal impact of unbalanced gender ratios and the need to regulate sex selection to avoid nations of bachelors.     

FAMILY COURT IMPROVEMENT AND THE ART OF GRANTSMANSHIP: A JUDGE'S PERSPECTIVE

Many American courts face funding obstacles as they try to create and implement unified family court processes that have not been part of the traditional family court adversarial process. To create new staff positions, build and equip adequate facilities, and create and implement innovative programs, grant funding may be available to supplement what local and state governments provide. While social science research confirms that children are adversely affected by exposure to high‐conflict family litigation and domestic violence, many communities have few affordable and available resources to address these issues. This article presents lessons and principles that one court learned as it applied for a grant to design programs for high‐conflict families and families with domestic violence history.     

WEAPON EFFECTS AND INDIVIDUAL INTENT TO DO HARM: INFLUENCES ON THE ESCALATION OF VIOLENCE*

In order to assess the roles of weapons and offender intentions in the outcomes of potentially violent events, we analyze more than 2,000 incidents described by offenders. We advance the study of weapons effects through a within‐person analysis that lets us control for all time‐stable characteristics of the offenders. Thus, we address the concern that relationships between type of weapon and incident outcome may be spurious because individuals with a greater propensity to do harm are more likely to use guns. Findings indicate that weapons have independent effects that differ across the stages of an event.     

RELIGION AND CRIME REEXAMINED: THE IMPACT OF RELIGION,SECULAR CONTROLS,AND SOCIAL ECOLOGY ON ADULT CRIMINALITY*

Since Hirschi and Stark's (1969) surprising failure to find religious (“hellfire”) effects on delinquency, subsequent research has generally revealed an inverse relationship between religiosity and various forms of deviance, delinquency, and crime. The complexity of the relationship and conditions under which it holds, however, continue to be debated. Although a few researchers have found that religion's influence is noncontingent, most have found support—especially among youths—for effects that vary by denomination, type of offense, and social and/or religious context. More recently the relationship has been reported as spurious when relevant secular controls are included. Our research attempts to resolve these issues by testing the religion-crime relationship in models with a comprehensive crime measure and three separate dimensions of religiosity. We also control for secular constraints, religious networks, and social ecology. We found that, among our religiosity measures, participation in religious activities was a persistent and noncontingent inhibiter of adult crime.     

UNRAVELING THE CONTEXTUAL EFFECTS ON STUDENT SUSPENSION AND JUVENILE ARREST: THE INDEPENDENT AND INTERDEPENDENT INFLUENCES OF SCHOOL,NEIGHBORHOOD, AND FAMILY SOCIAL CONTROLS*

Scholars of human development argue that a variety of social contexts affect youth development and that the interdependency of these contexts bears on the shape of human lives. However, few studies of contextual effects have attempted to model the effects of school, neighborhood, and family context at the same time, or to explore the relative and interdependent impact of these contexts on youth outcomes. This study provides an examination of the independent and interdependent influences of school, neighborhood, and familial contexts through an analysis of student suspension and juvenile arrest. Findings reveal that school‐based and family‐based informal social controls additively combine to reduce the likelihood of suspension and arrest. Moreover, for suspension, results support the hypothesis that an interdependent compensatory relation is present between the extent of collective efficacy in schools and in the surrounding neighborhood; school collective efficacy has a controlling influence on the likelihood of suspension that becomes even stronger in the absence of neighborhood collective efficacy. However, for arrest, an accentuating effect of school‐based social controls exists rather than a compensatory effect. A lack of neighborhood collective efficacy and a lack of school‐based social controls combine to exert a substantial increase in the likelihood of arrest.     

DETERRENCE AND MORAL PERSUASION EFFECTS ON CORPORATE TAX COMPLIANCE: FINDINGS FROM A RANDOMIZED CONTROLLED TRIAL*

Previous studies on tax compliance have focused primarily on the tax‐reporting behavior of individuals. This study reports results from a randomized field test of the effects of deterrence and moral persuasion on the tax‐reporting behavior of 4,395 corporations in Israel. Two experimental groups received tax letters, one conveying a deterrent message and the other a moral persuasion message. Three types of measures are used to evaluate compliance based on the magnitude of the difference‐in‐differences of means in 1) gross sales values reported to the authority, 2) tax dollars paid to the authority, and 3) tax deductions. Overall, both deterrence and moral persuasion approaches do not produce statistically significant greater compliance compared with control conditions. These results do not support the ability of a policy of sending tax letters to increase substantively the reporting of true tax liability or tax payments by corporations. However, these results also show that moral persuasion can be counterproductive: Corporations in this experimental group show an increase rather than a decrease in tax deductions, which translates into loss of state revenues. The implications for theory, research, and tax policy are discussed.