Mental health weapons prohibition: demographic and psychiatric factors in petitions for relief

Federal law and most states prohibit possession of firearms by individuals with a history of certain psychiatric diagnoses and/or treatment. In California, an involuntary 72-h hold can trigger a 5-year ban on firearm possession. Individuals so prohibited may petition for early termination of the ban. We report on the demographic and psychiatric characteristics of a sample of individuals petitioning for early relief in Los Angeles County, and on the results of their petitions. The majority of petitioners were Caucasian men over age 40. Sixteen percent of petitioners were employed in law enforcement or armed security, and all of their petitions were granted. Individuals for whom there was greater evidence of mental disorder were significantly less likely to petition successfully. The results are discussed in terms of the benefits of involving a forensic expert in the petition process, which is not presently required under California law.     

Facial soft tissue depths in craniofacial identification (part I): An analytical review of the published adult data

With the ever increasing production of average soft tissue depth studies, data are becoming increasingly complex, less standardized, and more unwieldy. So far, no overarching review has been attempted to determine: the validity of continued data collection; the usefulness of the existing data subcategorizations; or if a synthesis is possible to produce a manageable soft tissue depth library. While a principal components analysis would provide the best foundation for such an assessment, this type of investigation is not currently possible because of a lack of easily accessible raw data (first, many studies are narrow; second, raw data are infrequently published and/or stored and are not always shared by some authors). This paper provides an alternate means of investigation using an hierarchical approach to review and compare the effects of single variables on published mean values for adults whilst acknowledging measurement errors and within-group variation. The results revealed: (i) no clear secular trends at frequently investigated landmarks; (ii) wide variation in soft tissue depth measures between different measurement techniques irrespective of whether living persons or cadavers were considered; (iii) no clear clustering of non-Caucasoid data far from the Caucasoid means; and (iv) minor differences between males and females. Consequently, the data were pooled across studies using weighted means and standard deviations to cancel out random and opposing study-specific errors, and to produce a single soft tissue depth table with increased sample sizes (e.g., 6786 individuals at pogonion).     

The PCL: YV and recidivism in male and female juveniles: a follow-up into young adulthood

Adolescents, and most recently, adolescent females, have emerged as an important population in violence risk assessment and have sparked a debate regarding the downward and gendered extension of the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (PCL:YV). This article evaluates the differential prediction of the three and four-factor models of the PCL:YV for male (n=201) and female (n=55) juvenile offenders using a prospective four and one-half year follow-up (M=3 years) study. Both models of the PCL:YV were significant predictors for boys; however, contrary to findings from studies using shorter follow-up periods, the predictive power was due primarily to the behavioral features of psychopathy. The PCL:YV was not a significant predictor of non-violent or violent recidivism for girls. This study does not lend support for the use of the PCL:YV as a risk factor for girl offenders. More research is needed to understand the application of the psychopathy construct in youth, particularly in girls.     

Psychopathy among prisoners in England and Wales

Most research into psychopathy among prisoners is based on selected samples. It remains unclear whether prevalences are lower among European populations. This study aimed to measure the prevalence of psychopathy, and the distribution and correlates of psychopathic traits in a representative national sample of prisoners. Psychopathy was measured using the revised Psychopathy Checklist (PCL-R) in a second stage, cross-sectional survey of prisoners in England and Wales in 1997 (n = 496). Poisson regression analysis was carried out to examine independent associations between correlates and PCL-R total and factor scores. The prevalence of categorically diagnosed psychopathy at a cut off of 30 was 7.7% (95%CI 5.2–10.9) in men and 1.9% (95%CI 0.2–6.9) in women. Psychopathic traits were less prevalent among women. They were correlated with younger age, repeated imprisonment, detention in higher security, disciplinary infractions, antisocial, narcissistic, histrionic, and schizoid personality disorders, and substance misuse, but not neurotic disorders or schizophrenia. The study concluded that psychopathy and psychopathic traits are prevalent among male prisoners in England and Wales but lower than in most previous studies using selected samples. However, most correlates with psychopathic traits were similar to other studies. Psychopathy identifies the extreme of a spectrum of social and behavioral problems among prisoners.     

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Methods? Methodological Games and Role Play

In terms of gamification within political science, some fields—particularly international relations and American politics—have received more attention than others. One of the most underserved parts of the discipline is research methods; a course that, coincidentally, is frequently cited as one that instructors hate to teach and students hate to take. Given the well-documented merits of games in promoting student engagement and the key role of methods as a building block to student understanding of political science, this article attempts to rectify this oversight by introducing three games—Zendo, Murder Mystery, and the Archeologist’s Quandary— geared at teaching key concepts and approaches in research methods.     

Foreign aid,democracy, and gender quota laws

Why do so many developing countries have gender quota policies? This article argues that foreign aid programmes influence developing countries to adopt policies aimed at fulfilling international norms regarding gender equality. This relationship is driven by two causal mechanisms. On the one hand, countries may use gender quotas as a signal to improve their standing in the international hierarchy, possibly as an end unto itself, but more likely as a means towards ensuring future aid flows. On the other, countries may adopt gender quotas as a result of successful foreign aid interventions specifically designed to promote women’s empowerment. I test these two causal mechanisms using data on foreign aid commitments to 173 non-OECD countries from 1974 to 2012. The results suggest that while programmes targeting women’s empowerment may have some influence on quota adoption, developing countries dependent on United States foreign aid are also likely to use gender quotas as signalling devices rather than as a result of ongoing liberalization efforts.     

Risk and Outcomes: Are Adolescents Charged with Sex Offenses Different from Other Adolescent Offenders?

Juveniles who have committed sexual offenses are subject to specialized treatment and policies based on their assumed unique dangerousness, despite contradictory evidence. Limited information is available regarding risk factors and their relationships to outcomes in this population. The comparative frequency and predictive utility of empirically supported risk factors for general delinquency were examined using data from the Pathways to Desistance study. Adolescent males who committed sexual offenses (n = 127) were compared to adolescent males who committed non-sexual offenses (n = 1021). At the start of the study, the sample ranged in age from 14 to 18 (M = 16.00, SD = 1.12) and self-identified as primarily African American (44 %), Latino (29 %), or White (25 %). Outcomes were measured over 7 years and included general and sexual recidivism, involvement in school and work, and positive relationships with peers and adults. The results indicated a few small differences in the presence of risk factors and their relationship to outcomes, with many similarities. Juveniles who have committed sexual offenses had equivalent general recidivism but higher sexual recidivism, though this rate was low (7.87 %, or 10 of the 127 adolescents who had committed sexual offenses). New clinical and policy approaches may be needed given the similarities between groups.     

Disrupting (gendered) Islamophobia: the practice of feminist ijtihad to support the agency of young Muslim women

Muslim feminist scholars highlight, and seek to transform, racist, sexist and Islamophobic discourses through feminist interpretations of their religion. This paper reports on data gathered from an interview-based study involving four young Muslim women from the same Brisbane (Queensland) community. The focus is on how these young women are understanding, and finding spaces of agency, within these discourses with reference to their faith. The Islamic principle of ijtihad (jurisprudential interpretation of religious text) and the practice of feminist ijtihad are theorized as powerful tools in supporting the young women to counter the Islamophobia and gendered Islamophobia in their lives. Using these tools, however, as this paper argues, is not unproblematic and can reinscribe disempowering gender and ethno-cultural relations. Amid unprecedented gendered Islamophobia and the clear imperative of supporting Muslim women to access the tools of feminist ijtihad, the paper provides important insight into the possibilities and problematics of these tools.     

Marriage and the crisis of peasant society in Gujarat,India

ABSTRACT

This contribution takes marriage as the example of a crisis of production and reproduction in rural India. Through the juxtaposition of ethnography separated by six decades, we detail a shift away from land and agriculture as the primary markers of status among the Patidars of central Gujarat, western India, in favour of a hierarchical understanding of international migration. The paper discusses the disconnect between a cultural revolution in favour of migration, and the failure of many to live up to their own cultural standards. More broadly, we reflect on the forces that simultaneously strengthen and dissolve caste inequality in the context of India's uneven growth.