THE ROLE OF SOLICITORS IN DIVORCE PROCEEDINGS*

“I was walking down the boulevard one day with my sister who was down for a week's holiday. She said off the cuff ‘When are you going to get divorced?’ I said ‘I don't know.’ Seeing a solicitor's office, I said ‘ I'll pop in here’—just the job, just like going in the shop for a loaf of bread. So I sees the receptionist. She said ‘ I'll see if he can see you straight away.’ Well, he gave me an interview straight away. Within an hour everything was done. He told me to bring all the gen I could in a couple of weeks time, which I did and then we got on with the job.”     

REVISITING JUVENILE WAIVER: INTEGRATING THE INCAPACITATION EXPERIENCE*

More than 20 years after an expansion of juvenile transfer policies, questions remain regarding the specific deterrent effect of juvenile waiver given the singular focus on the court of jurisdiction and neglect of other critical aspects of the provision, such as the incapacitation experience. Prior research has also not been focused on identifying the mediating mechanisms that produce criminogenic, null, or deterrent effects. We use data from the Pathways to Desistance Study, propensity score methodology, and mediational analyses to examine how and why the waiver‐incapacitation experience is related to recidivism rates during emerging adulthood. We find that the prior focus on a binary “waiver effect” is potentially misleading as it masks meaningful variation. Furthermore, we find that the path to increased recidivism in emerging adulthood is indirect and we identify stymied educational attainment as a mediator. Our discussion is focused on the criminogenic effects of incapacitation for juveniles and its implications for juvenile transfer research. The discussion also calls for future research to explore treatment heterogeneity further.     

HIGH SCHOOL EXPERIENCE AND THE RISK OF ADULT INCARCERATION*

This study assesses the effects of high school educational experiences on the risk of incarceration for young men aged 19–36 using event history analysis and National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data. High school education serves as a defining moment in an individual's life course. Young men who enroll in secondary occupational course work significantly reduce their likelihood of incarceration both overall and net of differences in the adult labor market. High school student/teacher ratios and student composition also significantly affect an individual's risk of incarceration.     

LEVELS AND PREDICTORS OF RECIDIVISM: THE MALTA EXPERIENCE*

Research on recidivism has been confined primarily to a few highly industrialized Western nations (e.g., United States, Great Britain, Canada, and Australia) in which the data and resources needed for such research are readily available. The restriction of recidivism research to such a small number of nations begs the question: Do these results reflect patterns of offending and products of the criminal justice systems unique to these nations, or do they describe patterns of recidivism across a much wider range of social and cultural contexts? In this study I extend the scope of recidivism research by examining levels and patterns of recidivism in the Republic of Malta, a small Mediterranean island that differs considerably from the typical context in which recidivism is studied. Specifically, I examine the likelihood of recidivism among persons released from Malta's only prison between 1976 and 1994. In addition, I examine factors shown in previous research to be strong predictors of recidivism to assess their value as predictors of recidivism among Maltese prisoners. Proportional hazards regression models reveal that levels and predictors of recidivism in Malta approximate those observed in societies that are socially and culturally quite different. The findings suggest that the role of social institutions in reintegrating offenders into society may be more complex than commonly believed.     

MOTHERING,FATHERING, AND DIVORCE: THE INFLUENCE OF DIVORCE ON REPORTS OF AND DESIRES FOR MATERNAL AND PATERNAL INVOLVEMENT*

The present study investigated the extent to which young adults' reports of—and desires for—maternal and paternal involvement differed between intact and divorced families. An ethnically diverse sample of 1,376 young adults completed measures of reported and desired mothering and fathering across 20 parenting domains. Results indicated that both reports of and desires for father involvement differed sharply by family form (intact versus divorced), whereas few family form differences emerged for reported or desired mother involvement. These findings are discussed in terms of implications for custody and access decisions within the family court system.     

THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF DIVORCE

This article objectively reviews the effects of divorce on the financial well-being of families. Women and children suffer disparities in income, but the differences are not as great as publicized in other studies and diminish with remarriage. The absence of marriage, not the presence of divorce, is the major cause of poverty for women.     

THE DIVORCE EDUCATION INTERVENTION MODEL

This article offers a divorce education intervention model that court systems can use to determine the level of programming that fits their goals for divorce education and their available resources. This model includes three levels of education that vary by extent of presenter and parent involvement: basic information, feelings and skills, and brief focused intervention. Eight program components are compared: goals, personnel, strategies, resources, examples, parental involvement, potential outcomes, and limitations.