Punishing coaching: bukatsudō and the normalisation of coach violence

At the beginning of 2013 two independent cases made the headlines of Japanese newspapers. The first case involved the suicide of a high school student that was allegedly triggered after he received several beatings from his basketball coach for failing to perform well enough. The second case involved fifteen female judoka, including competitors in the London Olympics, who filed a letter with the Japanese Olympic Committee complaining of violence by two coaches, including the head coach of the women's team. Both these cases caused a national debate about the practice of taibatsu (corporal punishment) in sport in Japan. This article is based on the outcomes of focus groups that were conducted with students at ten universities from across Japan in 2013. In particular, we examine the ways in which students’ normalised acts of violence from coaches, accepting them as necessary forms of discipline and, in many cases interpreting such acts as indicative of caring coaching and kindness. Further, we consider the responses of students, which suggest that these forms of corporal punishment are necessary in producing a uniquely Japanese form of identity. The complex relationship between sport and education in Japan suggests that attempts to change the ways in which bukatsudō operate, including coach/athlete relationships, is problematic and may require major reconsideration of the role of sport in education.     

Effect of Victimization on Impulse Control and Binge Drinking among Serious Juvenile Offenders from Adolescence to Young Adulthood

A vast literature has found longitudinal effects of early life stress on substance use and self-regulatory processes. These associations may vary by period-specific development among youth involved in the juvenile justice system. The current study used an accelerated longitudinal design and auto-regressive latent trajectory with structure residuals (ALT-SR) model to examine the within-person cross-lagged associations between binge drinking, impulse control, and victimization from 15 to 25 years of age. A large sample (N?=?1100) of justice-involved youth were followed longitudinally for 7 years (M _{age baseline} ?=?15.8, M _{age conclusion} ?=?22.8). In general, the sample was ethnically diverse (41% Black, 34% Hispanic, 21% White, 4.3% Other) and primarily male (87.2%). Participants reported on their frequency of binge drinking, impulse control, and frequency of victimization at each time point. The results indicated that, during adolescence, victimization and binge drinking attenuated impulse control, which resulted in more binge drinking and victimization during young adulthood. The current study highlights the importance of assessing developmental processes and period-specific transitions among at risk youth, especially for youth experiencing early life stress.     

Are Associations Between “Sexist” Video Games and Decreased Empathy Toward Women Robust? A Reanalysis of Gabbiadini et al. 2016

Gabbiadini, A., Riva, P., Andrighetto, L., Volpato, C., & Bushman, B, (PloS ONE, 2016) provided evidence for a connection between “sexist” video games and decreased empathy toward girls using an experimental paradigm. These claims are based on a moderated mediation model. They reported a three-way interaction between game condition, gender, and avatar identification when predicting masculine ideology in their original study. Masculine ideology was associated, in turn, with decreased empathy. However, there were no main experimental effects for video game condition on empathy. The current analysis considers the strength of the evidence for claims made in the original study on a sample of 153 adolescents (M _age?=?16.812, SD?=?1.241; 44.2% male). We confirmed that there was little evidence for an overall effect of game condition on empathy toward girls or women. We tested the robustness of the original reported moderated mediation models against other, theoretically derived alternatives, and found that effects differed based on how variables were measured (using alternatives in their public data file) and the statistical model used. The experimental groups differed significantly and substantially in terms of age suggesting that there might have been issues with the procedures used to randomly assign participants to conditions. These results highlight the need for preregistration of experimental protocols in video game research and raise some concerns about how moderated mediation models are used to support causal inferences. These results call into question whether use of “sexist” video games is a causal factor in the development of reduced empathy toward girls and women among adolescents.     

A Community-Level Comparison of Terrorism Movements in the United States

The aim of this article is to identify characteristics of communities where persons indicted under terrorism charges lived, planned, and prepared prior to carrying out a terrorist act. Guided by a model of community deterioration and using data from the Terrorism and Extremist Violence in the United States database, findings indicate: (1) half of all census tracts where terrorists planned and prepared for attacks were located in the western United States; nearly one fourth were in the Northeast; (2) nationally, terrorist pre-incident activity is more likely to occur in census tracts with lower percentages of high school graduates for Al Qaeda and associated movements (AQAM) terrorism but not for far-right terrorism, higher percentages of households living below the poverty level, more urban places, and more unemployed; and (3) communities with terrorist pre-incident activity are different types of places compared to those where there was no pre-incident activity, generally between different regions of the country, and specifically in terms of differences across far-right and AQAM terrorist movements.     

Entrepreneurial Police and Drug Enforcement Policy

The hypothesis that drug enforcementis relatively high in local jurisdictions where statelaws dictate that police retain seized assets istested in the context of a reduced-form equation ofthe supply and demand for drug enforcement. Theresults are robust across model specifications, someof which directly control for the level of drug use:legislation permitting police to keep seized assetsraises drug arrests as a portion of total arrests byabout 20 percent and drug arrest rates by about 18percent. Police bureaucrats apparently desirediscretionary budget increases, and they haveconsiderable discretion in determining resourceallocation.     

Distinguishing graduates from dropouts and dismissals: Who fails boot camp?

This study of 784 inmates in a boot camp in a southern state was designed to determine what elements from life-course theory distinguished between graduates, dropouts, and dismissals from the program in this facility. Multinomial logistic regression analysis showed that several social bonds—such as employment, income, marital status—and personal assets like self-efficacy differentiated graduates from dropouts and dismissals from that program. In contrast, selling drugs, illegal income, and carrying a weapon also were associated with graduation.Lack of self-control, drug use, and peer association differentiated dropouts from graduates, whereas history of being abused, emotional problems, and suicidal attempts distinguished dismissals from graduates. The implications of these findings for further research and current decision-making are discussed.     

Antiterrorism legislation in the United States: Problems and implications

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