Troubled Children and Children in Trouble: Redefining the Role of the Juvenile Court in the Lives of Children

This Essay considers the emerging research in the area of dual‐jurisdiction children, often referred to as “crossover kids”—those currently or previously involved in maltreatment proceedings who have also committed delinquent acts. Part I describes the development of the juvenile courts in the early twentieth century. Part II of this Essay questions the need to “track” children along one legal path or another and points to the pitfalls of providing services to some children through a criminal justice paradigm instead of treating all children through a social work paradigm. Finally, Part III advocates a redesign of the juvenile court—a return to its roots—to better enable a court to consider the needs of the whole child, in context with the needs of her/his family.     

Book Review

Understanding criminal behaviour, psychosocial approaches to criminality D. W. Jones Devon: Willan Publishing, 2008.     

Violent men: ordinary and deviant

This article deals with discourses of intimate partner violence and is based on interviews with professionals who meet violent men. The professionals emphasized the importance of men taking unreserved responsibility for their violent behavior. Intimate partner violence was viewed not only as "power and control" but as the result of complex situations and interplays. The discourses presented an ambivalent explanation of violent men as both ordinary and deviant. They were understood as having a strained background, but to be rather ordinary, often functioning well at work and in society. Yet, they have nonstandard views of women, act deviant in their communication and interplay with others, and cannot cope with certain situations in intimate relationships. Based on the interviews, men inclined to partner violence may be generalized as those who: attack immediately, explode unexpectedly, or ultimately become aggressive. The discussion challenges unreflected discourses as means for change when counteracting violence.     

Testing repeatability and error of coordinate landmark data acquired from crania

This study evaluates issues of precision, repeatability, and validation in three-dimensional (3D) landmark coordinates. Two observers collected 19 homologous cranial landmarks from three skulls during three separate digitizing sessions. Statistical analysis was conducted on the 171 interlandmark distances (ILDs) derived from the original coordinate data. A mixed model ANOVA detected significant within-subject error in 54 of the 171 ILDs (i.e., 32%). A GLM procedure revealed significant between-observer variation in 14 ILDs and significant observer-by-session differences in 13 ILDs. The majority of these differences involved ILDs with type 3 landmarks as endpoints, such as euryon and alare. Unlike type 1 and 2 landmarks which are biologically informative in all directions, type 3 landmarks contain a substantial arbitrary component. Thus, it is not surprising type 3 landmarks displayed significant digitizing error. Given these results, we caution researchers to be mindful of type 3 landmarks measurement discrepancies when selecting landmarks for coordinate data evaluation.     

A comparison of memory for homicide, non-homicidal violence, and positive life experiences

Defendants commonly claim amnesia for their criminal actions especially in cases involving extreme violence. While some claims are malingered or result from physiological factors, other cases may represent genuine partial or complete amnesia resulting from the psychological distress and/or extreme emotion associated with the perpetration of the crime. Fifty Canadian homicide offenders described their memories of their homicide, a non-homicide violent offense, and their most positive adulthood life experience. Self-reported and objective measures of memories for these events revealed that homicides were recalled with the greatest level of detail and sensory information. Although dissociative tendencies were associated with a self-reported memory loss, objective measures of memory quality did not reflect this perceived impairment, suggesting a failure of meta-memory. Recollections of positive life events were superior to those of non-homicidal violence, possibly due to greater impact and meaning attached to such experiences. Findings suggest that memory for homicide typically is enhanced by the powerful emotion associated with its perpetration.