Worlds we have lost and worlds we may regain: two centuries of changes in the life course in Sweden.

"The article seeks to place into historical context the familial changes in ?post-industrial' Sweden during the past two decades, by comparing them with general characterizations (based on documented life-course experiences) of the traditional Swedish agrarian society (before 1800), the transitional society (c. 1800-1870), and the industrial society (c. 1870-1980). Familial lives in traditional Swedish society tended to be stable. By contrast, during the agrarian-to-industrial society, especially since World War II, stability became once again the hallmark because of general government social policy."     

Randomized experiments in criminology: What have we learned in the last two decades?

This paper aims to review randomized experiments in criminology with offending outcomes and reasonably large numbers that were published between 1982 and 2004. A total of 83 experiments are summarized, compared with only 35 published between 1957 and 1981: 12 on policing, 13 on prevention, 14 on corrections, 22 on courts, and 22 on community interventions. Randomized experiments are still relatively uncommon, but there have been more large-scale multi-site experiments and replication programs. There have also been several experiments in which 100 or more places were randomly assigned. Relatively few experiments (only 10 out of 83) were conducted outside the United States. Meta-analyses suggest that prevention methods, correctional therapy, batterer programs, drug courts, juvenile restitution and deterrent policing were effective in reducing offending, while Scared Straight and boot camp programs caused a significant increase in offending.     

Measuring damages for lost enjoyment of life: the view from the bench and the jury box

Civil jury instructions are inconsistent in defining what constitutes noneconomic damages, which may include pain, suffering, disability, disfigurement, and loss of enjoyment of life (LEL), among other injury sequelae. This inconsistency has been manifested recently in court decisions that have considered whether LEL should be treated as a separate element of noneconomic damages, distinct from pain and suffering. This paper reviews the case law on this issue and also describes a jury simulation experiment. Mock jurors awarded damages after they received instructions on noneconomic damages in which LEL was (1) not identified as a distinct element of damages; (2) defined as an element of damages distinct from pain and suffering, but participants awarded a single amount for noneconomic damages; or (3) defined as a distinct element of damages, and participants awarded separate amounts for LEL and pain and suffering. Instructions about LEL resulted in larger awards, but only when mock jurors also made a separate award for that element of damages.     

Assessing Need in the United States, Germany, and Sweden: The Organization of Welfare Casework and the Potential for Responsiveness in the "Three Worlds"

An ongoing challenge for the administrative state is balancing the programmatic values of responsiveness and accountability. Few studies have examined these policy issues cross-nationally for social assistance, a needs-based form of income support where these tensions are especially significant. Based on street-level case studies, this article demonstrates persistent diversity among welfare states in how these programmatic tradeoffs are made, contrasting a U.S. approach that emphasizes programmatic control via a bureaucratic, flat-grant system, with German and Swedish programs in which individualized assessments of need are a core organizational task. In each European case, legal frameworks, expertise, and work arrangements have evolved in nationally specific ways to contend with the challenges frontline discretion poses to program integrity.     

In-Between Worlds: Marleasing and the Emergence of Interlegality in Legal Reasoning

Abstract Lawmakers and scholars are so busy looking for new ways to develop a European private law that they are failing to see the virtues of an already existing private law harmonisation tool. This tool is the requirement of interpretation in conformity with directives as it has been designed by the Court of Justice in Marleasing and its progeny. In this paper, it is submitted that this case law operating at the level of rules on legal reasoning, and not at the level of substantive law, is a far more sophisticated means of private law harmonisation than all the measures discussed in the last years. Namely, the requirement of interpretation in conformity with directives is allowing the Common Market to develop coherently without neglecting the significance of national legal cultures. How this difficult equilibrium between harmonisation and legal pluralism might be maintained by the tool the Court of Justice developed in Marleasing is explained in this paper with the help of evolutionary jurisprudence.     

Pornographic exposure over the life course and the severity of sexual offenses: Imitation and cathartic effects

Purpose

Extant scholarship has examined pornography's putative link to the commission of sex crime. Yet, virtually no research speaks to whether an offender's exposure to pornography during many different stages of life elevates the violence of a sex offense. The current study addresses this gap.

Methods

Using retrospective longitudinal data, we systematically investigate the effect of offender pornography exposure during adolescence, adulthood, and immediately prior to the offense on the level of physical injury as well as the extent of humiliation experienced by sex crime victims.

Results

Findings indicate that adolescent exposure was a significant predictor of the elevation of violence—it increased the extent of victim humiliation. Results also suggest a tempering, or cathartic effect of pornography—using pornography just prior to the offense was correlated with reduced victim physical injury. No effects, however, were observed for adult pornography exposure.

Conclusion

Pornography use may differentially influence offenders’ propensity to harm or degrade victims over the life course.     

Comparing ethics education in medicine and law: combining the best of both worlds

This article compares various models of ethics education and how these models are employed by both medical schools and law schools. The authors suggest ways in which each profession can enhance their ethical teaching and argue that ethics education in both medicine and law should combine the best elements of each education model, thereby producing graduates who are more knowledgeable and appreciative of ethical issues in practice.     

Loss of a chance in medical malpractice litigation: expanding liability of health professionals versus providing justice to those who have lost

The loss of a chance doctrine in medical malpractice litigation is essentially based on the perceived unfairness of denying recovery to a patient when a health provider's malpractice has reduced the patient's chance of a better outcome. It is the thesis of the article that loss of a chance must the recognised at law, notwithstanding that the chance is less than even or not subject to the benefit of statistical and/or scientific proof and that each lost chance should be assessed according to the value of that chance. Varying approaches to allocating value to the chance lost are examined both historically and internationally. The author contends that the policy arguments--which include potential for increased medical malpractice litigation, tainted reputations and an increase in professional indemnity policies--are insignificant when compared to the value and quality of human life and therefore cannot be supported.     

Inside the prison black box: toward a life course importation model of inmate behavior

The importation model is a venerable theoretical explanation for inmate misconduct but it has not been extended in nearly 50 years. The current study advances a life course importation model of inmate behavior where life events in childhood cascade to predict antisocial behavior during adolescence and misconduct occurring during periods of confinement. Based on data from 2,520 institutionalized male delinquents, ordinary least squares, logistic, and negative binomial regression models indicated that family background variables were largely predictive of multiple facets of delinquent careers. Negative binomial regression models of institutional misconduct indicated that proximal delinquent career variables were more consistently associated with misconduct than distal family background factors. Because institutional behavior can be understood as the importing of family deprivation experiences and chronic delinquency, the life course importation model is a useful conceptual framework to study crime over the life course, even including periods of confinement.     

Sex industry exposure over the life course on the onset and frequency of sex offending

Purpose

Research has examined pornography use on the extent of offending. However, virtually no work has tested whether other sex industry experiences affect sex crime. By extension, the cumulative effect of these exposures is unknown. Social learning theory predicts that exposure should amplify offending. Separately, the developmental perspective highlights that the timing of exposure matters.

Methods

Drawing on retrospective longitudinal data, we first test whether exposure during adolescence is associated with a younger age of onset; we also examine whether adulthood exposure is linked with greater frequency of offending.

Results

Findings indicate that most types of adolescent exposures as well as total exposures were related to an earlier age of onset. Exposure during adulthood was also associated with an overall increase in sex offending, but effects were dependent on “type.”

Conclusion

There are nuances in the effect of sex industry exposure on offending patterns. Implications of results are discussed.     

Land accumulation,life course,and inequalities among generations in eighteenth-century france: The winegrowers from the Chartres region

The article deals with the relationships during the life course of small landowners between the accumulation of real estate and constraints caused by eco- nomic conditions. Examination of the transactions of about a hundred winegrowers of the Chartres region during the eighteenth century allows us to explore three assump- tions. First, real estate accumulation closely follows the familial cycle: the optimal time to buy or sell land results from the production/consumption equilibrium reached by each household. Second, accumulation opportunities depend on conjuncture: crises and prosperity constantly throw the “patrimonial cycle” off balance. Third, discor- dance between life-cycle stages and economic phases generates strong disparities among successive generations in terms of their total investments. These disparities can- not be balanced by recoveries and therefore give rise to specific characteristics of the life course of each generation.     

Nuptiality and family reproduction in male-inheritance systems: reflections on the example of the Franche-Comte (seventeenth-eighteenth centuries).

"The family system practiced in the rural Franche-Comte [France] until the nineteenth century was based on egalitarian inheritance among sons and on the exclusion of daughters; as such, it was associated with distinct Malthusian nuptiality. This system cannot be understood without an examination of the formation and dynamics of a type of family that included frequent stages of undivided patrimony and coresidence in a context giving little encouragement to neolocal marriage and to the independence of sons. A comparative perspective suggests certain similarities with the stem family system, despite differences in inheritance norms.... Acceptance of the common idea of a contrast between impartible and partible inheritance should be highly qualified, insofar as partibility can hide various patterns of social reproduction. Different kinds of joint family household systems must be distinguished carefully, for they have neither the same significance nor imply the same demographic patterns."     

The impact of military service on criminal offending over the life course: evidence from a Dutch conviction cohort

Objectives  

Examination of the relationship between military service and criminal conviction, and evaluation of its sensitivity through the use of two distinct study designs.     

The impact of education on the demographic life course: The family reproduction process of literates and illiterates in the Netherlands at the end of the nineteenth century

A widely held assumption is that the decline of illiteracy had a notable impact on the demographic transition in western Europe in the nineteenth century. Literates, it is said, were more open to innovation and were better equipped to control their environment and their destiny. The article examines this hypothesis by looking into the family reproduction process of literates and illiterates who lived in the town of Eindhoven between 1850 and 1900. Using the concept of the life course, the article looks at differences in age at marriage, fertility, and infant and child mortality, and finds that in each category of literacy a certain form of demographic behavior prevailed.