Envisioning the next generation of behavioral health and criminal justice interventions

The purpose of this paper is to cast a vision for the next generation of behavioral health and criminal justice interventions for persons with serious mental illnesses in the criminal justice system. The limitations of first generation interventions, including their primary focus on mental health treatment connection, are discussed. A person–place framework for understanding the complex factors that contribute to criminal justice involvement for this population is presented. We discuss practice and research recommendations for building more effective interventions to address both criminal justice and mental health outcomes.     

Book Reviews

Matthew Amengual, Politicized Enforcement in Argentina: Labor and Environmental Regulation. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Figures, tables, appendix, notes, bibliography, index, 286 pp.; hardcover $99.99, ebook $80. Matthew C. Ingram, Crafting Courts in New Democracies: The Politics of Subnational Judicial Reform in Brazil and Mexico. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Maps, figures, tables, appendixes, bibliography, index, 392 pp.; hardcover, $110. Russell Crandall, The Salvador Option: The United States in El Salvador, 1977–1992. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Photographs, maps, figures, list of organizations, bibliography, index, 698 pp; hardcover $99.99, paperback $39.99, ebook $32. Luis Fernando Angosto‐Ferrández, Venezuela Reframed: Bolivarianism, Indigenous Peoples and Socialisms of the Twenty‐First Century. London: Zed Books, 2015. Appendix, bibliography, index, 312 pp.; paperback, ebook. Fábio de Castro, Barbara Hogenboom, and Michiel Baud, eds., Environmental Governance in Latin America. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Tables, figures, map, bibliography, index, 350 pp.; hardcover $31, ebook. Eduardo Alemán and George Tsebelis, eds., Legislative Institutions and Lawmaking in Latin America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Figures, tables, notes, bibliography, index, 296 pp.; hardcover $90, ebook. Joseph S. Tulchin, Latin America in International Politics: Challenging U.S. Hegemony. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2016. Bibliography, index, 235 pp.; hardcover $60. Kevin P. Gallagher, The China Triangle: Latin America's China Boom and the Fate of the Washington Consensus. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Tables, figures, bibliography, index, 256 pp.; hardcover $27.95, ebook.     

“The roughest form of social work:” How court officials justify bail decisions

Growing research has analyzed quantitative patterns of bail decisions and outcomes, but we know far less about how court officials justify their bail decisions. To enhance understanding of how bail decisions—and their resulting pretrial outcomes—are generated, we interviewed 104 judges, prosecutors, and public defenders in a northeastern state. Court officials in our study reported three primary justifications at bail: ensuring defendants return to court, preventing crime, and lessening harm. The first two justifications have been suggested in the literature, but the latter is novel and encompasses two secondary justifications: lessening criminal legal system harm and lessening societal harm. We show how these justifications and the decisions they enable blend risk management with rehabilitation and emerge from court officials’ shared assumption of defendants’ social marginality but varied beliefs about what to do about such marginality pretrial. Each justification allows for distinct, but at times overlapping, bail decisions. We discuss the implications of our findings for theories of court official decision-making, research on racial and socioeconomic inequality, and bail reform policy.     

Comparing the role of personal and organisational support on the innovative behaviour of frontline healthcare workers in Australia and the United States

This paper empirically uses a street-level bureaucrat (SLB) lens to compare the impact of personal and organisational support on the innovative behaviour of frontline healthcare workers in Australia and the United States. Survey data came from the 260 U.S. and 220 Australian respondents. The structural equation model shows that organisational (i.e. manager–subordinate relationships) and personal supports (i.e. psychological capital [PsyCap]) significantly influence the innovative behaviour of frontline SLBs in health care. Further, the mediation results show that reciprocal social exchanges provide the foundations for facilitating the growth of healthcare workers’ PsyCap, which then gives them the resilience to be innovative in the workplace. The U.S. respondents perceived stronger organisational support and consequently had a better platform for building PsyCap – providing better work conditions for facilitating innovative behaviour to bourgeon. The paper adds to SLB theory concerning the influence of two variables on SLBs' innovative behaviour, in addition to a meaningful comparison of the U.S. and Australian healthcare workers. If governments and organisations want innovative workers, then the policies must be based on empirical evidence that shows the impact on all stakeholders, including SLBs, because otherwise, irrespective of policy directives, the outcome is low levels of employee wellbeing (which likely results in limited innovative activity).     

Re-visioning the “Eye in the Sky”: targeted drone strikes and an ethics of the encounter

ABSTRACT

The complexities which beset any attempts to ascribe a foundational ethic to matters of a political stripe are well known, and continue to provoke fierce debate within studies of international relations, geopolitics and security studies. Unsurprisingly, these questions have taken on crucial import within the sub-field of critical terrorism studies (CTS), as authors grapple with the range of counter-terrorism, counter-radicalisation and counter-extremism practices enacted by the Western state as part of an ongoing ‘War on Terror.’ And while much of this scholarship has been invaluable in problematizing the concept of ‘terrorism’ per se, normative questions have proven somewhat more elusive. Through a reading of the film Eye in the Sky, along with its take on the controversial counter-terrorism practice of targeted drone assassinations, this article reiterates the case for an ethical approach which takes radical difference as the basis for any engagement with the Other. Moreover, and following international relations authors of a poststructuralist lineage, it will be argued that supplementing Levinasian ethics with Derridean deconstruction can open up new and useful ways of approaching such seemingly intractable ethical conundrums.     

“My World Is Upside Down”: Transnational Iraqi Youth and Parent Perspectives on Resettlement in the United States

The U.S. war with Iraq led to the displacement of millions of Iraqis, many of whom have resettled in the United States as refugees. We explore the challenges Iraqi families face after resettlement, with a particular focus on the agency of refugees and challenges/opportunities of familial social reproduction in a transnational context. We conducted 181 qualitative interviews with 38 Iraqis (11 youth, 27 adults) and 5 service providers. Our findings highlight the importance of exploring refugee agency and illuminate how the interplay between structure and agency in transnational contexts is a useful framework for understanding transformations around social roles.     

Low‐Income Housing Development,Poverty Concentration,and Neighborhood Inequality

Considerable debate exists about the merits of place‐based programs that steer new development, and particularly affordable housing development, into low‐income neighborhoods. Exploiting quasi‐experimental variation in incentives to construct and rehabilitate rental housing across neighborhoods generated by Low‐Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program rules, we explore the impacts of subsidized development on local housing construction, poverty concentration, and neighborhood inequality. While a large fraction of rental housing development spurred by the program is offset by a reduction in the number of new unsubsidized units, housing investment under the LIHTC has measurable effects on the distribution of income within and across communities. However, there is little evidence the program contributes meaningfully to poverty concentration or residential segregation.