MAKING THE CONNECTION: LEGAL ADVOCACY AND MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES

Recent research documenting the magnitude of mental health needs among juveniles has intensified calls for interventions that both address clinical needs and decrease recidivism. This article first examines research supporting the movement toward community mental health treatment for juveniles and argues that effective legal advocacy requires interdisciplinary coordination to identify and address mental health needs. Next, we present one jurisdiction's model for increasing access to community‐based mental health services and discuss how attorneys can apply the model to achieve this end.     

LEGAL CONSUMERS AS COPRODUCERS

Although the extent of unbundling among private legal practitioners in the changing Australian marketplace remains uncertain, there is a shift in thinking about the appropriate role of consumers in accessing everyday legal services. This is evident in the delivery of legal services other than those provided by private practitioners, where the consumer's role in legal service delivery arrangements is gradually being transformed. Among those institutions that are responding positively, if not inevitably, to the rising tide of legal self-helpers is the Family Court of Australia. The court's activities in attempting to meet the needs of its pro se consumers is simultaneously creating opportunities for unbundled legal service delivery, at least for those lawyers willing to seize these opportunities. It would appear that family law disputes, together with the large numbers of voluntary and involuntary legal self-helpers that these disputes generate, is fertile terrain for the development of alternative forms of legal service delivery.     

The Justiciability of Resource Allocation

A perennial problem in public law is how courts ought to deal with legal challenges to the allocation of public resources. This article explains and renders more coherent the varied approaches of English courts to the justiciability of resource allocation disputes in administrative and tort law. It draws a distinction between 'discretionary allocative decision-making' and 'allocative impact.' The non-justiciability doctrine in R v Cambridge Health Authority , ex p B is concerned with the former only. By contrast, allocative impact is a justiciable matter, but can still ultimately defeat a claim. This distinction, however, does not guide judicial approaches under the Human Rights Act 1998, where courts have chosen mostly to eschew the non-justiciability doctrine in favour of more flexibly applied notions of judicial deference. Thus while the non-justiciability doctrine has a relatively narrow scope in administrative and tort law, it has nearly disappeared under human rights law.     

Needle exchange programs and drug infection behavior.

This study examines how drug injection and needle sharing propensities respond when a needle exchange program (NEP) is introduced into a city. I analyze 1989-1995 Drug Use Forecasting data on adult male arrestees from 24 large U.S. cities, in nine of which NEPs opened during the sample period. After controlling for cocaine and heroin prices, AIDS prevalence, fixed effects for cities and years and city-specific time trends, the model indicates that the presence of a NEP is associated with declines of 13 percent in drug injection and 20 percent in needle sharing among drug injectors.     

The future of terrorism research: a review essay

This essay sets forth a research agenda to begin filling some key gaps in terrorism studies. Since the September 2001 Al Qaeda attacks against the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon that claimed over 3000 lives, interest in terrorism research has increased. After these attacks, the United States and other governments prioritized the scientific study of the causes of and responses to terrorism. Importantly though, our review of the terrorism literature demonstrates that despite this progress, intriguing questions remain underexplored or altogether unexplored. This essay identifies four gaps in terrorism studies: (1) employing non-terrorist comparison groups, (2) broadening the dependent variable (focus of study), (3) exploring exceptions/anomalies to “established” findings, and (4) engaging measurement issues. We discuss these issues and outline a research agenda that could begin to fill these gaps.     

Demographic change and the demand for environmental regulation

Environmental regulation in the United States has increased pollution abatement expenditure as a percentage of gross national product from 1.7 percent in 1972 to an estimated 2.6 percent in the year 2000. This rise in regulation has coincided with demographic and economic changes that include rising educational levels, a growing minority population, an aging population, and decreasing employment in polluting industries. This paper examines whether these trends have contributed to increasing aggregate demand for environmental regulation. New evidence on voting on environmental ballots in California, local government environmental expenditures across the United States, and 25 years of congressional voting on environmental issues is examined to document the demographic correlates of environmental support. Minorities and the more educated are more pro‐green, whereas manufacturing workers oppose environmental regulation. While demographics help explain observed differences in environmental support and thus can help predict long trends in the “average voter's” environmentalism, environmentalism varies substantially year to year unrelated to population demographics. © 2002 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Punctuated equilibrium in the energy regime complex

The concept of a regime complex has proved fruitful to a burgeoning literature in international relations, but it has also opened up new questions about how and why they develop over time. This article describes the history of the energy regime complex as it has changed over the past 40 years, and interprets this history in light of an interpretive framework of the sources of institutional change. One of its principal contributions is to highlight what Stephen Krasner referred to as a pattern of “punctuated equilibrium” reflecting both periods of stasis and periods of innovation, as opposed to a gradual process of change. We show that the timing of innovation depends on dissatisfaction and shocks and that the nature of innovation—that is, whether it is path-dependent or de novo—depends on interest homogeneity among major actors. This paper is the first to demonstrate the empirical applicability of the punctuated equilibrium concept to international regime complexes, and contributes to the eventual development of a dynamic theory of change in regime complexes.     

Social Factors Associated with History of Sexual Assault Among Ethnically Diverse Adolescents

We examine the association of adolescents’ self-reported sexual assault victimization with their living arrangements, parent’s education, and plans for college. Participants included 1,634 ethnically-diverse and economically-disadvantaged high school students in southeast Texas. Lifetime history of forced sexual assault was reported by 8.3% of girls and 9% of boys. No association with gender, age, or parent’s education was detected. However, adolescents in non-traditional households (living with one parent, grandparents, or other) were more likely to report rape than youth living with both parents. Adolescents who were one race/ethnicity were less likely to report being raped than those in the multiple race category. Sexual assault intervention programs should account for a teenager’s living situation; and prevention efforts may benefit from targeting individuals in non-traditional households. The lack of an association with either gender or socio-educational status indicates that all children are at risk and that school-based programs should be broadly targeted.