The Role and Place of <Emphasis Type="Italic">American Journal of Criminal Justice</Emphasis> in the Discipline

The American Journal of Criminal Justice (AJCJ), the peer-reviewed publication of the Southern Association of Criminal Justice (SCJA), has been in publication for 35 years. SCJA has often been viewed as an approachable association to become involved with for young faculty in criminal justice. In addition, based on the findings of this assessment, SCJA’s journal has also been viewed as a desirable starting place for new academics to foray into the world of peer-reviewed publications. This article reviews the 35 year history of AJCJ’s articles and authors by addressing the trends in subjects, methods, authors, and citations to articles in the journal.     

Journal Publishing, Journal Reputation, and the United Kingdom's Research Assessment Exercise

Many academic lawyers believe that the Research Assessment Exercise has encouraged writing for academic journals, often at the expense of other forms of scholarly discourse. Moreover, it is widely perceived that the reputation of the journal in which research is published affects how that research is assessed in connection with the RAE. In this article, the authors report data gathered from a large-scale study measuring the perceptions of academic lawyers concerning the journal publishing process, how the RAE has affected journal quality generally, and how specific journals rank in terms of academic quality and their perceived importance to the RAE process.     

Psychological Injury and Law: Editorial Introducing a Journal and an Association

In this inaugural editorial to the journal, I describe briefly the topic of psychological injury and law and the association set up to house this the new journal on the topic. I present the journal’s aims and scope and invite members of the relevant professional communities to participate in our work and publications.     

Psychological Injury and Law: Editorial on Truth and Consequences, Psychologists and Attorneys

Psychology and law are established but evolving professions that need to communicate better with each other. In the interface of psychology and law in civil proceedings, such as in cases of psychological injury in tort, psychology can help in arriving at just and fair legal decisions that are appropriate in context. Professionals in the legal and mental health communities will find that the combination of the journal, Psychological Injury and Law, and its housing association, ASAPIL, function as a bridge between the two communities.     

Relationships among alcohol outlet density, alcohol use, and intimate partner violence victimization among young women in the United States

Greater access to alcohol has been widely found to be associated with many negative outcomes including violence perpetration. This study examines the relationship between alcohol outlet density, alcohol use, and intimate partner violence (IPV) victimization among young women in the United States. A direct association between alcohol outlet density in one's neighborhood and the likelihood of IPV victimization was examined. Data were from Wave III of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), which followed a nationally representative sample of adolescents into adulthood. Participants were young adult females age 18 to 26 at Wave III. Of the 4,571 female respondents who reported a current heterosexual relationship and had IPV data, 13.2% reported having been the victim of physical violence only and 6.5% experienced sexual only or physical and sexual violence in the relationship during the past year. In the regression models tested, there was no significant direct association between neighborhood alcohol outlet density and IPV victimization nor was there an association between outlet density and drinking behaviors, thus eliminating the possibility of an indirect association. Results of fully adjusted models indicate females who drank heavily, whether infrequently or frequently, were at significant risk for experiencing sexual only IPV or sexual and physical IPV. Asians and Native Americans were at significantly greater odds of experiencing sexual only or sexual and physical IPV compared with non-Hispanic Whites, while non-Hispanic Blacks were at significantly greater odds for physical only IPV. We conclude that a continuous measure of alcohol outlet density was not associated with IPV in models controlling for individual and other neighborhood characteristics. Young women who drink heavily, whether infrequently or frequently, have greater odds of experiencing sexual only or sexual and physical compared to abstainers. Similar to previous study findings, young women living with or married to their partner were at far greater risk of experiencing physical only and/or sexual only or sexual and physical IPV. The study adds to the growing body of literature that examines how community characteristics such as outlet density influence the likelihood of IPV.     

Measuring the relative impacts of criminology and criminal justice journals: A research note

Journals can be rated according to a number of subjective and objective criteria. The present paper uses citations of a journal as an index of objective rank. Previous work using this index has several flaws, including a reliance on a single source journal and a lack of adjustments for age and size to its raw citations scores. The present paper uses a longer list of source journals to tabulate citation counts and provides raw impact, age-adjusted impact, and impact factor scores for each of 26 criminal justice/criminology journals. In addition, this study found subjective ratings from previous research on criminology journals to be significant, although not strong predictors of the impact factor, one objective index of journal quality. Little evidence was found for the notion that journal rankings are a function of other variables, including age of the journal or sponsorship by a professional organization.     

Why Listening to Children and Young People is Important in Family Justice

During the last 30 years, there has been a growing body of evidence indicating that children and young people often feel marginalized when their parents are making critical decisions that will shape their young lives, and they are calling for family justice professionals to hear their voices. This article explores the research evidence, examines the relevant theories about child development, and demonstrates how a focus on age‐related competency fails to take account of children's subjective meanings about their lives. The authors consider a model of participation first designed to understand adult participation in government and show how this can be usefully applied to understanding children's participation in family justice.     

Belonging and Unbelonging in Encounters Between Young Males and Police Officers: The Use of Masculinity and Ethnicity/Race

This article is based on a study in which the work of police officers has been followed on a day-to-day basis, with a special focus on the work directed at youths. The focus is on how contact is established or obstructed in the meeting between police officers and young males, and the significance of constructions of masculinity and ethnicity/race for this process. Encounters between young males and police officers are analysed from Yuval-Davis notions of belonging and unbelonging. The analysis shows how both masculinity and ethnicity/race can be used for establishing or obstructing contact between police and young males. The article also show how belonging and unbelonging is a question of negotiations that can undergo a number of shifts in the course of a given situation, and also that these negotiations take the form of a collaborative activity, even if this starts from unequal power positions. A situation that starts from an antagonistic approach may in fact, via markers of belonging, turn out quite different. But it is also pointed out that the markers of belonging in one dimension, at the same time may generate markers of unbelonging in others. Finally this developing of contact shall be understood both as a way of changing the contacts into less conflicted ways and as one of several ways of gaining more control in stigmatized areas.     

Young children as regenerative tissue donors: considering the need for legal reform in light of divergent ethical approaches

In Australia, young children who lack decision-making capacity can have regenerative tissue removed to treat another person suffering from a severe or life-threatening disease. While great good can potentially result from this as the recipient's life may be saved, ethical unease remains over the "use" of young children in this way. This article examines the ethical approaches that have featured in the debate over the acceptability and limits of this practice, and how these are reflected in Australia's legal regime governing removal of tissue from young children. This analysis demonstrates a troubling dichotomy within Australia's laws that requires decision-makers to adopt inconsistent ethical approaches depending on where a donor child is situated. It is argued that this inconsistency in approach warrants legal reform of this ethically sensitive issue.     

Prodromal psychosis as an etiology of suicide: a case report and review of the literature

Suicides without apparent antecedent causes present great difficulties for medical examiners and families alike. A case is presented of a young male suicide victim whose antemortem course did not demonstrate apparent psychopathology to either his family or fellow students. A journal written by the decedent was found, however, which revealed extensive ruminations on death, depressive symptomatology, and evidence of possible delusions, and hallucinations. We opine that this represents the prodrome of a psychotic process, possibly schizophrenia, and the decedent's suicide was a response to his awareness of his deteriorating mental status. The prodrome of schizophrenia is a well-described entity that manifests as a decline in social and occupational functioning, along with increasingly bizarre behavior. Prodromal psychosis could represent an explanation for some cases of suicide seemingly without causation.     

Banking in the cloud: Part 1 – banks' use of cloud services

This paper looks at EU banks' use of public cloud computing services. It is based primarily on anonymised interviews with banks, cloud providers, advisers, and financial services regulators. The findings are presented in three parts. Part 1 explores the extent to which banks operating in the EU, including global banks, use public cloud computing services. It describes how banks are using cloud computing and the key drivers for doing so (such as time to market), as well as real and perceived barriers (such as misconceptions about cloud and financial services regulation), including cultural and technical/commercial aspects. It summarises how banks have approached the cloud and how cloud providers have approached the banking sector.Part 2 of this paper will cover the main legal and regulatory issues that may affect banks' use of cloud services, including how the regulation of outsourcing applies to banks' use of cloud services. Part 3 will look at the key contractual issues that arise between banks and cloud service providers, including data protection requirements, termination, service changes, and liability.All three parts of the paper can be accessed via Computer Law and Security Review's page on ScienceDirect at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/02673649?sdc=2. The full list of sources is available via the same link and will be printed alongside the third part of the paper.     

How ‘Vulnerable’ young people describe their interactions with police: building positive pathways to drug diversion and treatment in Sydney and Melbourne,Australia

This article describes findings from an Australian mixed method study, and explores young people’s perceptions of police. We focus on the nature of positive experiences, and the potential for positive encounters to improve outcomes for young offenders affected by problematic alcohol and other drug use. Buber’s concept of dialogical interaction is used to articulate the components of a positive experience and how this increases police legitimacy. In doing so, we demonstrate that, despite negative experiences, young people can be sympathetic to the tensions of modern policing, and can envisage police as positive role models. As such, police can enhance outcomes for ‘vulnerable’ young people through more respectful interactions.     

Abolition and pedagogy: reflections on teaching a course on alternatives to punishment,state repression and social control

Abolitionism is an important, but often overlooked, theoretical and political alternative to the failings and injustices of the penal system and other forms of social control. While many have documented different approaches to abolitionist strategy, few have explored the work that is done sensitizing individuals to abolitionism, including in university settings. Through an analysis of student journal entries, this study discusses how students enrolled in a mandatory abolition course engaged with the viability of, and barriers to, a world without prisons, punishment and other forms of control. By looking at abolition as a threshold concept, we consider how students negotiate the concept of abolition as a radical justice alternative. As the journal entries showed, while students were able to understand the basic tenets of abolition, many remained in a liminal state between the existing system and the unknown landscape of abolition, and could not see its viability or possibility as a radical alternative. We conclude that other learning strategies may have been helpful in moving student through such a ‘dangerous’ concept. Further research on sensitising individuals to abolition is needed given the current proliferation and intensification of penal and carceral institutions today.     

Revisiting the role of communication in adolescent intimate partner violence

A growing literature suggests that communication strategies can promote or inhibit intimate partner violence (IPV). Research on communication is still needed on a group ripe for early IPV intervention: high school-aged adolescents. This article revisits our previous analyses of young female reproductive clinic patients (Messinger, Davidson, & Rickert, 2011) by examining how the adolescent and young adult respondents differ. To explore replicability of the adolescent results across populations, they are compared to 487 adolescent female students sampled from four urban high schools. Across samples, all communication strategies were used more frequently within violent relationships. Multivariate analysis identified escalating strategies used and received as being positively associated with physical violence used and received in all three samples. Regarding verbal reasoning and temporary conflict avoidance, substantial differences appeared between the young adult and adolescent clinic samples, and results from the adolescent clinic sample were largely replicated with the adolescent school sample, suggesting that young adult samples in this literature are not adequate proxies for adolescents.     

ASSOCIATIONS OF FATHERS' HISTORY OF INCARCERATION WITH SONS' DELINQUENCY AND ARREST AMONG BLACK,WHITE, AND HISPANIC MALES IN THE UNITED STATES*

Nearly 13 percent of young adult men report that their biological father has served time in jail or prison; yet surprisingly little research has examined how a father's incarceration is associated with delinquency and arrest in the contemporary United States. Using a national panel of Black, White, and Hispanic males, this study examines whether experiencing paternal incarceration is associated with increased delinquency in adolescence and young adulthood. We find a positive association with paternal incarceration that is robust to controls for several structural, familial, and adolescent characteristics. Relative to males not experiencing a father's incarceration, our results show that those experiencing a father's incarceration have an increased propensity for delinquency that persists into young adulthood. Using a national probability sample, we also find that a father's incarceration is highly and significantly associated with an increased risk of incurring an adult arrest before 25 years of age. These observed associations are similar across groups of Black, White, and Hispanic males. Taken as a whole, our findings suggest benefits from public policies that focus on male youth “at risk” as a result of having an incarcerated father.     

Negotiating a Victim Identity: Young Men as Victims of Violence

This article is based on an interview study of how 10 young male crime victims talk about violent events and actors involved. It focuses on how the young men present their identities as ‘young men’ who have been victims of violent crimes. In their narrations the men struggle with a cultural understanding that ‘masculinity’ is associated with strength and power, while ‘victim’ is associated with weakness and impotence. During the interviews the young men actualize several balancing acts in their presentation of themselves as men and victims in a delicate manner by use of specific word choice, manner of speaking, laughter, etc. The young men are negotiating a victim identity; they portray themselves by careful positioning as both victims and strong, active young men. By this discursive balancing of identities the young men present themselves as manly at the same time as they present themselves as victims. In collaboration with the interviewer the participants negotiate how they want to be known: as ‘victim-worthy’ young men, with associations to a ‘hegemonic manliness’.     

A Life-Course Perspective on Stress,Delinquency, and Young Adult Crime

This study uses General Strain Theory (GST) to describe and examine one potential pathway of delinquency/crime escalation and de-escalation across adolescence and young adulthood. In particular, the time-varying consequences for delinquent behavior and young adult crime of persistent or increasing levels of strain are addressed using data from the Family Health Study, an eight-year longitudinal data set (n = 840). The results indicate that there is a positive association between experiencing one type of strain—stressful life events—and involvement in delinquent or criminal behavior during this period of the life-course. However, the impact of stressful life events on these behaviors is diminished among young adults. Moreover, delinquent/criminal peer associations attenuate the age-specific effects of stressful life events, thus suggesting that peers play a central role in the association between strain and these behaviors. Implications of the results for theory and policy are discussed.     

Queensland general practitioners' applications of the "mature minor" principle: the role of patient age and gender

Most Australian jurisdictions do not have legislation that stipulates an age by which a minor can make their own medical treatment decisions. Instead, they rely on Gillick v West Norfolk and Wisbech Area Health Authority [1986] AC 112, an English common law decision that recommends individual assessments of "maturity". This study explores how medical practitioners in the State of Queensland understand and apply this legal authority when faced with a young person wishing to make a contentious medical treatment decision. Almost 200 doctors made decisions about a hypothetical patient's competence and confidentiality, and detailed their reasoning in an open-ended format. The data indicate that the vagaries of existing legal criteria allow for a range of philosophical perspectives and idiosyncratic heuristics to play a role in assessment practices, and that particular combinations of patient age and gender made these cognitive shortcuts more likely to occur. A notable proportion of such processes are not consistent with legal guidelines, and this has implications for general practitioners' vulnerability to litigation as well as young patients' treatment trajectories.     

重庆市非公有制企业外来务工青年权益保障现状及对策初探

近年来,侵害进城务工者权益的事件时有发生,而在非公有制企业表现尤甚。在进城务工者队伍中,青年又占了较大比重。维护青年权益,促进青年健康成长,是党和政府交给共青团组织的一项重要职责,共青团组织有义务维护非公有制企业外来务工青年的合法权益。本文通过对重庆市部分区县的实地调研、个案访谈和相关资料的分析,对重庆市非公有制企业外来务32青年权益保障状况和形成原因进行了探讨,并提出了对策性意见,为共青团_组织协助党和政府做好非公有制企业外来务工青年的权益保障工作作了一定的理论思考和探索。     

Through the Eyes of the Abolitionists: Free Association and Anti-Slavery Expression

When the rights of a private association conflict with the rights of an individual, which have priority? A series of twentieth century free association cases from the Supreme Court of the United States have focused on this issue, but the historical roots trace back as early as the mid-nineteenth century. This historical case study explores the concept of free association in the context of the American abolitionist movement. Specifically, it focuses on abolitionist leader Charles Osborn, whose struggle with the Society of Friends provides one example of how a private threat to expressive association played out prior to the Civil War. Osborn's case sheds light on the historical roots of the tension between individual and organizational expression in the private realm. It also adds a richness of detail to our broad social and political understanding of the right of association, and suggests that this area may be ripe for further historical inquiry.