PRECOCIOUS ROLE ENTRY AS A MEDIATING FACTOR IN WOMEN'S METHAMPHETAMINE USE: IMPLICATIONS FOR LIFE‐COURSE AND PATHWAYS RESEARCH*

Precocious adoption of adult roles and responsibilities at an early age often has been linked to substance abuse and criminal behavior. Yet, much of the existing research suggests that early offending behaviors induce precocious movement into adulthood; less attention has focused on the way in which early adoption of adult roles and responsibilities might itself contribute to the onset of offending. In the following article, we examine the cumulative impact of early transitions into adult roles and responsibilities on the onset of methamphetamine (MA) use. Through inductive analyses of interviews with women methamphetamine users, we identified a range of adult roles and responsibilities that women described as facilitating their initiation into MA use, including family caretaking, motherhood, independent living, and peer and romantic associations with adults. Such findings have theoretical implications for both life‐course perspectives and feminist pathways research. They highlight the importance of attending to the timing and sequencing of experiences as well as highlight the gendered nature of these processes.     

Medicaid program; deadline for submitting moratorium state plan amendments--HCFA. Notice

This notice announces the deadline for Medicaid State agencies to submit State plan amendments requesting moratorium protection under section 2373(c) of the Deficit Reduction Act of 1984, as amended by the Medicare and Medicaid Patient and Program Protection Act of 1987. Section 2373(c) initiated a moratorium period during which HCFA cannot take any compliance, disallowance, penalty or other regulatory action against a State agency whose State plan contains an income or resource methodology or standard for determining eligibility for medically needy and certain categorically needy groups that is less restrictive than the required standard or methodology. This notice provides formal notification to States that plan amendments requesting moratorium protection will not be accepted after the last day of the first full calendar quarter following publication of this notice in the Federal Register.     

Studying Parole in the “Spotlight”: Lessons from a Large American Jurisdiction

In September 2008 the Governor of Pennsylvania, USA, imposed a moratorium on all parole (early conditional) releases from the state prisons, which lasted until March 2009. As a political measure, the moratorium was triggered by a series of violent incidents involving recently released parolees culminating with the killings of several police officers. This paper documents the impact of the moratorium on the parole and correctional processes in the state and discusses its implications for the legitimacy of the two justice agencies affected, the Board of Parole and the Department of Corrections. The paper also describes the research undertaking of the team tasked with conducting the comprehensive review of parole and corrections at the Governor’s request, which circumscribed the lifting of the moratorium on the results of the investigation. In addition to qualitative data, the study employed quantitative methods to investigate through predictive analyses both parole decisions and parolee performance upon release. The challenges of conducting action research in the “spotlight” are also highlighted. The nature of the study and its setting in a large state in the United States should provide a useful illustration of problems and potential approaches to dealing with them that similar crime prevention tasks may face in other jurisdictions around the world relying on conditional release as a means of prison release.     

The impact of race on criminal justice ideology: An examination of high school students

Research suggests that differences exist in the criminal justice ideology of Black and White Americans. For example, adult African Americans are more likely than their White counterparts to support criminal justice measures that address the root causes of crime. There has, however, been limited interest in exploring the criminal justice ideology of juveniles. Using survey data collected from 1,398 rural and suburban public high school students, the present study examined the influence of race on the criminal justice ideology of juveniles. The findings suggested that while Black teenagers are significantly more likely to hold a liberal crime control ideology and White teenagers are significantly more likely to hold a conservative ideology, confidence in the justice system to be fair strongly influences the beliefs of both groups.     

Getting Caught and Getting Hitched: An Assessment of the Relationship Between Police Intervention,Life Chances,and Romantic Unions

Little research has assessed the link between formal police intervention, financial hardship, and the formation and quality of romantic relationships. Using data from the Rochester Youth Development Study, we contribute to this literature by examining effects of police intervention at two time points on marriage stability and romantic relationship quality. We find that police intervention during adolescence is associated with increases in financial hardship during young adulthood, which, in turn, decreases the odds of entering into a stable marriage by age 31 and the extent to which those who have a romantic relationship feel their partner is supportive. Early police intervention also is indirectly associated with a reduction in partner satisfaction and an increase in partner violence via young adult arrest. We conclude that even minimally invasive contact with the criminal justice system during adolescence has long-lasting collateral consequences in the family arena.     

Early Childhood Trauma Impact on Adolescent Brain Development,Decision Making Abilities,and Delinquent Behaviors: Policy Implications for Juveniles Tried in Adult Court Systems

By examining previous literature on the brain’s developmental process during adolescence, this paper aims to determine how early childhood trauma potentially effects decision making in adolescence through exploring self-regulation theory. Through a self-regulation framework, the hope is to determine the connection, if any, between early childhood trauma, delinquent behavior, and involvement in the juvenile justice system. The author insists that not only do adolescents have less culpability due to their brain developmental stage compared to adults, but also early childhood trauma puts adolescents at a greater risk of impaired self-regulation which allows for more probable delinquent behavior. This paper also considers implications for social policy makers and youth advocates concerned with juvenile offenders tried in adult courts and existing racial disparities in the system.     

The onset of adult offending: A neglected dimension of the criminal career

The conventional wisdom in criminology is that adult onset of offending is a rare event. Closer examination of the extant literature that use official records, however, reveals that an average of 50 percent of adult offenders initiate offending at age eighteen or older. Although criminological research has investigated late onset offending in adolescence, there is little research on adult onset offending and the correlates of adult offending. Using police contact and interview data from the 1942 and 1949 birth cohort data from Racine, WI, this study investigated the correlates of crime for adult onset and persistent offenders. The results show that employment is the only correlate to affect the probability of adult offending differently for previously delinquent and nondelinquent offenders. This article concludes by highlighting the neglect of research on adult offenders, specifically the large percentage of adult onset offenders, and calling for more research on this topic.     

A case of child abandonment--reflections on criminal responsibility in adolescence

The issue of responsibility for delinquent acts has been examined in the light of adolescence as a unique developmental stage, and it has been proposed that the degree to which one should hold an adolescent morally responsible for his/her acts corresponds to the degree to which he/she has individuated from his/her family and become a psychologic adult. A case was presented in which the crime of child abandonment was committed by an adolescent who was still deeply enmeshed interpersonally with her mother and had not yet achieved a separate identity as an adult. The psychiatric findings were presented to the Court after a plea bargain had been struck and prior to sentencing. They conveyed the belief, in lay terms, that moral responsibility for this crime was collective, to be borne in part by the perpetrator's family. The Court responded humanely with a suspended sentence, conditioned on psychotherapy, allowing the young mother to remain together with her first child. Not only does this article suggest the value of an understanding of adolescent psychiatric concepts for the forensic psychiatrist, it also suggests that the more subtle aspects of assigning responsibility can be better evaluated by the court at the time of sentencing than during the trial phase.     

Currently effective Indian Health Service eligibility regulations. Indian Health Service, HHS. Republication of currently effective Indian Health Service eligibility regulations

The HHS is publishing in the Federal Register, final regulations governing eligibility for services from the Indian Health Service. The eligibility regulations currently codified at 42 CFR part 36 are under a congressional moratorium. Republishing the regulations that are currently in effect while the codified regulations are under moratorium is being done for the convenience of the public and in conformance with the requirement of the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. 552(a)(1), that the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) must contain currently effective regulations.     

Childhood Violence Exposure: Cumulative and Specific Effects on Adult Mental Health

Childhood exposure to violence and victimization is a significant public health problem, with potentially long-lasting, deleterious effects on adult mental health. Using a longitudinal study design, 123 young adults—identified in adolescence as at-risk for high school dropout—were examined for the effects of multi-domain childhood victimization on emotional distress and suicide risk, net of adolescent risk and protective factors, including family dysfunction. The hypothesis that higher levels of cumulative childhood victimization would be significantly associated with mental health maladjustment in young adulthood was confirmed by the analysis. However, the victimization predictors of adult emotional distress were different than the predictors of adult suicide risk. These findings indicate the need for prevention and intervention approaches that include thorough assessment, and focus on the childhood and adolescent problem areas that are most consequential for long-term psychological well-being.     

Confidence in the death penalty and support for its use: Exploring the value-expressive dimension of death penalty attitudes

Recent media and political attention has raised public awareness of a number of issues surrounding the death penalty. Questions regarding innocence, fair trials, and equitable access to counsel and the appellate process are ubiquitous in coverage of the death penalty. Adequate information about public attitudes toward the death penalty in light of these issues is currently lacking. In 2002, as part of the annual Texas Crime Poll, questions were asked about confidence in the administration of the death penalty, support for the death penalty, and support for a moratorium. The results indicate that, although a majority of respondents support the death penalty, a substantial proportion lack confidence in its use and support a moratorium on executions. Of those lacking confidence and those supporting a moratorium, strong majorities maintain support for the death penalty (68% and 73%, respectively). These findings suggest that death penalty attitudes may be largely value expressive.     

Gender, Ethnicity, and Offending over the Life Course: Women’s Pathways to Prison in the Aloha State

This paper develops what some researchers are now calling the ‘pathways’ approach to understanding women’s criminality. This perspective argues that women’s offending is an outgrowth of histories of violence, trauma, and addiction – conditioned by race, culture, gender inequality, and class. This paper expands the perspective on crime across the life course for females, providing a more nuanced analysis of the nature of intimate relationships and developmental turning points for women. Whereas men’s assumption of adult responsibilities such as marriage and childrearing may be turning points away from delinquency and crime, the matter is far more complex and may even be the inverse for some women. The paper also finds that women of Native Hawaiian ancestry have more negative experiences with education, employment, and poorer outcomes on parole compared to women without Hawaiian ancestry, thus contributing to the literature on the relationship between ethnicity, structure, and offending over the life course.     

COMMENTARY ON TIPPINS AND WITTMANN'S "EMPIRICAL AND ETHICAL PROBLEMS WITH CUSTODY RECOMMENDATIONS:

Although in substantial agreement with Tippins and Wittmann's analysis, their call for a moratorium on the practice of custody evaluators making recommendations to the court does not solve the many problems that they have raised, and may have unintended consequences which place families at even greater risk. This commentary reflects our agreement with some of the authors' major points of contention, focuses on several points of disagreement, and suggests alternative remedies for the shortcomings and ethical problems described in child custody evaluations.     

TESTING MOFFITT'S ACCOUNT OF ADOLESCENCE‐LIMITED DELINQUENCY*

Much of the research testing Moffitt's taxonomy of antisocial behavior has concentrated on life‐course‐persistent as opposed to adolescence‐limited offending. For Moffitt, adolescence‐limited delinquency occurs near puberty as a function of factors endemic to the peer social context of adolescence, including the realization that adolescents are physically mature enough to engage in adult‐like behaviors, but are forbidden to engage in such acts because of their biological age. Using data from the Youth‐In‐Transition survey, we find that adolescence‐limited delinquency is characterized by involvement in rebellious but not aggressive delinquency. Further, rebellious delinquency is accounted for by the interaction between early maturity and the autonomy aspects of peer activities.     

The new biology and the question of personhood: implications for abortion

Opposition to abortion is based in part on the assumption that personhood is achieved at or shortly after fertilization of the egg. This interpretation of personhood arises from a contemporary application of the ancient doctrine of preformationism, a doctrine which holds that there is a preformed individual, in an ontological sense, within the developing entity. The assumption that the fertilized egg is unique in its capacity to develop into a human being is at least in part responsible for the opinions of those opposed to abortion. Yet, the uniqueness of the zygote in its capacity to develop into an adult organism is qualified by the discovery that development may be possible in a number of other ways. Consideration of the phenomena of cloning, parthenogenesis and chimerism can relieve moral ambiguity about abortion and may reduce opposition to that practice.     

Maternal Attachment Trajectories and Criminal Offending By Race

Parental attachment is a key predictor of juvenile offending. Most prior research on the topic, however, assumes that parental attachment is stable throughout youth and adolescence. On the contrary, recent research has established that parenting is a dynamic factor for many youth during adolescence. In the current study, we assess the relationship between trajectories of maternal attachment and offending during adolescence and young adulthood. Following a cohort of 859 youth from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data aged 10 or 11 over a period of 6 years, we find four distinctive trajectories of maternal attachment and two distinctive trajectories of offending. The results suggest that changes that occur in maternal closeness are linked to changes in offending across adolescence. However, when young adult offending is assessed when the youth are 18 or 19 years of age, we find that adolescent maternal attachment trajectories are not significant predictors of offending.     

我国青少年法规范基本类型探析

当前,具有中国特色的青少年法律体系在我国已具雏形,这不仅体现在一系列附属性的青少年法律规范的规定上,而且也体现在专门性的青少年法的颁布和施行方面。本文拟就我国青少年法的基本内容和种类作一概要的分析,以为青少年法的理论研究提供一个清晰的界阈范围,并为保护青少年合法权益、有效预防青少年违法犯罪提供必要的实务参考。     

Moral judgment development: The effects of education and occupation

Data from the Rest longitudinal study of moral judgment development were used to (i) consolidate past research into a single process model of moral judgment development, and (ii) assess the relative contributions of education and work to moral judgment development. Subjects were 102 individuals who were first interviewed in 1972–1974 and were followed up in 1983. A general model was specified which included moral judgment development in adolescence, dedication, educational attainment, occupational attainment, fulfilling career, and adult moral judgment development. The model was tested on the total sample and in a subsamples analysis that examined the unique pathways to moral development of subsamples which had either completed 2 years or more of college (higher education) or had completed less than 2 years of college (lower education). The general model confirmed that both education and occupation play important roles in the explanation of adult moral judgment development; the subsamples analysis suggested that work-related variables were the most important determinants of development in the lower education group and that education was the most important determinant of the higher education group.Dr. Boldizar died on March 28, 1992.     

Teenage Drivers and Fatal Crash Responsibility

Data from national files on fatal crashes are analyzed to reveal that young drivers, especially sixteen and seventeen year olds, are more often responsible for fatal crashes than are older drivers. This is particularly the case for young males. Moreover, those killed in crashes for which teenagers are responsible are disproportionately people other than the teenaged drivers. A possible explanation for these facts lies in the "macho" culture of teenaged males. Potential countermeasures include those directed to limiting the driving exposure of teenagers as well as technological devices to moderate the injury-producing forces in crashes.