Minors,gender, and family: The discourses in the court system of traditional Buenos Aires

The article deals with public attitudes toward family responsibility in early-nineteenth-century Bienos Aires, particularly as revealed in lawsuits occasioned by disputes over the custody of minors. The care and education of minors was ordinarily entrusted to parents, but death, incapacity, licentious conduct, poverty or abandonment often resulted in the minor being removed from parents and taken by others into custody of guardians or institutions of public welfare. The majority of the analyzed lawsuits resulted from an attempt by parents to recover their authority over their children. The lawsuits indicate that the racial, gender, social, and generational “disadvantages” of plaintiffs did not a priori determine the judgement, but rather that arguments for family stability frequently were decisive when heard by sympathetic judges. Disadvantages persons thus frequently argued sucessfully about the meaning of the family, as protagonists in the legal system that otherwise often marginalized them.     

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-III: a perspective from family court

The third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association (DSM-III) is evaluated from the standpoint of forensic science experience in a family court setting. The importance of diagnosis in developing pertinent recommendations within an adversarial system is discussed, with particular emphasis on difficulties in coordinating the Manual with the mental disorders frequently found in such a population. The limitations of the current criteria of the developmental disabilities are noted, and problems of reconciling incest and child abuse with the nomenclature are investigated. Some inconsistencies in the conceptualization of the conduct disorders and antisocial personality disorder are explored in terms of the needs of the juvenile justice system. An additional coding procedure is proposed for DSM-III, in order to identify more easily prodromal or emerging disorders of clinical significance.     

Australia: court orders doctors to pay damages to woman who contracted HIV from her husband

IN a case that received extensive media coverage, the New South Wales Supreme Court has found two doctors negligent for failing to take steps to make a bride aware that she was at risk as a result of her prospective husband's HIV infection. The court awarded the woman AUD$727,437 in damages. The couple had attended the physicians together to be tested for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, but had received their test results separately. She subsequently contracted HIV as a result fo unprotected sexual intercourse with him.     

Exploring gender issues in the development from conduct disorder in adolescence to criminal behaviour in adulthood

Using results from a large Norwegian follow-up study of former adolescent psychiatric in-patients we have traced the progression from mental disorders requiring hospitalisation in adolescence to registered criminal behaviour in adulthood, particularly highlighting gender differences. A nationwide representative sample of 1095 adolescent psychiatric inpatients (46% females) was followed up 15–33 years after admission to the National Centre for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in Oslo, Norway. In adolescence 45% fulfilled the DSM-IV criteria for a disruptive behaviour disorder. At follow-up, 63% of the males and 39% of the females had a criminal record. Among females, psychoactive substance use disorder in adolescence seemed to be a sine qua non for later registered criminality, with intravenous drug use a potent risk factor for life-course-persistent criminality. The same strong association between drug use and criminality was not found in males. Factor analysis demonstrated that while the DSM-IV Conduct Disorder criteria structure was similar across genders, the prevalence of the various forms of expression was different in males and females. The differences between individuals with violent and non-violent crimes were more substantial in males than in females. There were marked gender differences in the criminal profiles observed, with the females' criminal career developing in a less serious manner than in males: females had later criminal debut, a lower number of acts on record, less diverse criminal behaviour, and an escalation in the severity of offences over time was less frequently encountered. However, secular trend analyses indicated that gender differences had diminished over the last several decades, with females “catching up” with their male counterparts. Overall, the results demonstrated important qualitative and quantitative gender differences in the criminal behaviour of former adolescent psychiatric in-patients. The results may be of use in prevention.     

Communication in family court: financial remedy proceedings from the perspective of litigants in person

The article presents a rationale for communicative, conceptual, cognitive and procedural challenges experienced by litigants in person in financial remedy proceedings. The article also explores oscillation between written and spoken legal genres and narrative development strategies which litigants in person have to use throughout different stages (from the early stages of starting proceedings, filling in court forms and providing documentation, through the negotiation process to interaction in court). While legal professionals express themselves in paradigmatic legal mode influenced by legal acts and legislation, litigants in person tend to express themselves in narrative mode similar to everyday storytelling. The objective is to investigate obstacles litigants in person experience during the process originally designed by legal professionals for legal professionals. The article evaluates different options for empowering lay people involved in legal proceedings and argues for the need to provide more specific support for different stages of family proceedings.     

青少年骨龄鉴定及其相关问题

本文综述了骨龄研究和应用历史,以及骨龄评测的新方法和新技术,讨论了骨骼发育的影响因素、骨龄标准时效性、骨龄评测部位选择及法医骨龄鉴定等相关问题。     

It's just so difficult to get anything done: Teen mental health in the family court setting

Navigating the family court setting to protect teen mental health, meet teens' mental health needs, and promote resilience and coping skills is challenging. We have tools that can help us meet that challenge. That toolkit includes: expanding who is involved in the work to develop a parenting plan or treatment plan; not reducing the case to a one-dimensional fact pattern; restructuring family court proceedings for ongoing problem-solving, providing protections for the teen's privacy; using consensual dispute resolution and adjudication on parallel tracks; and educating the decision makers through expert declarations and Brandeis briefs (even at the trial court level).     

Patriarchy and changing family strategies: Class and gender in the Dominican Republic

This article explores the issue of ideologies of family formation and their influence on the concept of family strategies. It assesses the influence of patriarchal ideas using a historical case study of a rural village in the Dominican Republic as point of departure. The principal focus is the importance of patriarchal ideologies for class and gender relations. The article argues that the analysis of family strategies should take into account the context of class relations in the countryside and the influence of hegemonic ideologies on the gender relations within rural families. These factors led to specific strategies of rural families, but at the same time for diverging and often contradictory attitudes between individual family members.     

Aggression and rule-breaking: Heritability and stability of antisocial behavior problems in childhood and adolescence

Purpose

This twin study examined the structure of genetic and environmental influences on aggression and rule-breaking in order to examine change and stability across the span of childhood to mid-adolescence.

Methods

Behavioral assessments were conducted at two time points: age 9–10 years and 14–15 years. Using behavioral genetics biometric modeling, the longitudinal structure of influences was investigated.

Results

Aggression and rule-breaking were found to be influenced by a latent common factor of antisocial behavior (ASB) within each wave of data collection. The variance in the childhood-age common factor of ASB was influenced by 41% genetics, 40% shared environment and 19% nonshared environment. In adolescence, 41% of variance in the common factor were novel and entirely genetic, while the remainder of variance was stable across time. Additionally, both aggression and rule-breaking within each wave were found to have unique influences not common across subscales or across waves, highlighting specificity of genetic and environmental effects on different problem behaviors at both ages.

Conclusions

This research sheds light on the commonality of influences on different forms of antisocial behavior. Future research into interventions for antisocial behavior problems in youth could focus on adolescence-specific environmental influences.     

Ethnicity, gender, and global risk indicators in the lives of status offenders coming to the attention of the juvenile court

The present study examined the risks and needs of status offenders in comparison to an at-large juvenile court sample, with specific attention paid to factors related to gender and ethnicity. Status offenders displayed significantly higher risk scores than the comparison sample in domains associated with both family and parenting concerns and educational concerns. In addition, females displayed higher risk levels than males and White youth displayed significantly higher risk levels than minority youth across a wide variety of risk domains. Further analyses were conducted regarding the participation of African American males and females in a program designed as an alternative to detention. For both groups, successful program completion was accompanied by little or no further court involvement, whereas failure to complete the program was related to a variety of negative outcomes. However, African American females and males successfully completing program requirements displayed different risks and needs at the outset of their participation.     

The legal implications of student use of social networking sites in the UK and US: current concerns and lessons for the future

This paper provides a comparative snapshot of the current state of the law in the US and UK with respect to potential liability of university and college students for use (and misuse) of social networking sites. It reviews the limited case law on this topic, highlights the differences in the two nations’ laws of defamation and the various possible legal claims available to individuals allegedly harmed by postings on these social networking sites, and concludes that neither country currently offers a satisfactory legal or quasi-legal model for resolving these disputes.     

Exploring gender differences in constellations of problem behaviors and associated health-related factors during adolescence

Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), this study expands on previous research on adolescent problem behavior by (1) examining gender differences in patterns or ‘subgroups’ of adolescents based on self-reported problem behaviors and (2) identifying differences in health-related factors including service utilization, physical and mental health, and violent victimization across the identified gender-specific subgroups. The data used in this study were taken from Wave 2 of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) data and includes respondents under the age of 18 (n?=?10,360). Based on 16 problem behavior items measuring delinquency, substance use, risky sexual practices, and status offending, latent class analyses identified a 4-class model for the male subsample and a 3-class model for the female subsample. Important differences in health-related factors were observed across the latent classes. However, these differences were fairly consistent for boys and girls. Implications for prevention and intervention strategies, specifically focusing on the intersection of juvenile justice and public health services, are discussed.     

Mandatory,fast, and fair: Case outcomes and procedural justice in a family drug court

Journal of Experimental Criminology - Problem-solving courts are traditionally voluntary in nature to promote procedural justice and to advance therapeutic jurisprudence. The Family Treatment Drug...     

A preliminary study of the factors related to trauma in childhood sexual abuse

This study examined levels of depression, anxiety, and self worth in a sample of 75 sexually abused girls. The subjects had higher levels of anxiety and depression and lower levels of self worth than normal samples. Although multivariate analysis failed to find a relationship between abuse-specific variables and outcome when the variables were examined alone, significant interactions emerged. The interaction between the identity of the perpetrator and force was significantly related to levels of depression and self worth. Force was related to a less serious impact when the father was a perpetrator and more serious with a non-father perpetrator. The interaction of the perpetrator and whether the child was removed from the home was related to anxiety. When abused by a perpetrator who was not a father figure, those removed from the home had higher levels of anxiety. Trends in the data and significance of the research to intervention are discussed.