Thirty-one Years of Irish-Chinese Diplomatic Relations

IN 2010, in the midst of economic turmoil, Irish society is enriched because of its close friendship with China and the Chinese people; a friendship that is based on mutual respect, cultural understanding and trust.     

The prison in economics: private and public incarceration in Ancient Greece

Recent histories of Ancient Greece describe a transition from customary law to public criminal justice between 800 and 400 B.C. This narrative contains three pieces of evidence against the presumption that prisons are a public good and government must provide incarcerations. First, before the rise of a formal government, Ancient Greece had a functioning system of criminal law enforcement. Second, the timeline surrounding the rise of government institutions in Ancient Greece originated with Solon’s penal reforms. Lastly, the rise of a government system was more the result of private rather than public interest.     

Child Sexual Abuse Perpetrated by Women: Case Series and Review of the Literature

The literature on child sexual abuse (CSA) perpetrated by female sexual offenders (FSOs) is exiguous, and many studies have focused on judicial databases. The present retrospective study, instead, analyzed clinical and judicial data of a group of both victims and alleged FSOs, to additionally include women who have not been convicted by the criminal justice system, but who hold strong clinical suspicions of being perpetrators of CSA. The medical records and the Court files of 11 children and their eight suspected FSOs have been collected and critically reviewed in light of the literature to date. This approach allowed for a deeper understanding of the relationship between child and FSO. The authors hypothesize that the victims’ severe psychopathological outcomes were a result of a failure to develop appropriate attachments with their prospective caregivers, which could have been damaged by the pathological relationship with FSOs, who were the victims’ caregivers.     

Associations Between Shyness and Internalizing Behaviors,Externalizing Behaviors,and Relationships during Emerging Adulthood

Many studies have documented the ways in which shyness can be a barrier to personal well-being and social adjustment throughout childhood and adolescence; however, less is known regarding shyness in emerging adulthood. Shyness as experienced during emerging adulthood may continue to be a risk factor for successful development. The purpose of this study was to compare shy emerging adults with their non-shy peers in (a) internalizing behaviors, (b) externalizing behaviors, and (c) close relationships. Participants included 813 undergraduate students (500 women, 313 men) from a number of locations across the United States. Results showed that relatively shy emerging adults, both men and women, had more internalizing problems (e.g., anxious, depressed, low self-perceptions in multiple domains), engaged in fewer externalizing behaviors (e.g., less frequent drinking), and experienced poorer relationship quality with parents, best friends, and romantic partners than did their non-shy peers.

A tale of two cities

The authors are respectively parttime professor sociology at the University of Texas (San Antonio) as well as lecturer at the medical faculty of the State University Limburg (section psychiatry) and researcher at the Research and Documentation Centre of the Ministry of Justice, Schedeldoekshaven 100, 2511 EX The Hague, The Netherlands. Dorette Courtar, a mobility programme exchange student at the University of Maastricht and the Stockholm University, assisted in the basic research. We would like to thank Paulina Loennroth and the mayor of Hulst, dr. A.A.L.G.M. Kessen, both connected to the ECAD and Paul Vasseur, Urban Weber, Suzanne Schardt, all connected to the ECDP for their information and comments.