Sex, race/ethnicity, and context in school-associated student homicides

This study assessed the importance of sex, race/ethnicity, and geographic context for incidents of school-associated student homicides between July 1, 1994 and June 30, 1999, covering 5 academic years. Using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention School Associated Violent Deaths Study (n = 125 incidents), we compared percentages and medians of victim, offender, motive, and school characteristics for incidents by geographic context and race/ethnicity of the offenders. Most incidents involved urban areas (53.6%), Black and Latino offenders and victims, moderately high youth poverty, and male on male violence (77.6%) driven by disputes and gang-related motives. Suburban area incidents (31.2%) often involved offenders and victims of a different race/ethnicity (51.3%). Multiple victims and White offenders were more common in rural areas (15.2%). More than 50% of the rural incidents involved male offenders and female victims. White offender incidents more often included multiple victims and female victims while Black and Latino offenders more often included single victims of the same sex. These results emphasize the utility of an incident-based analysis of school-associated student homicides in highlighting important variations by intersections of sex, race/ethnicity, and geographic context.     

Special Issue: Gender,Sexuality and Human Rights

This brief article introduces a special issue of Feminist Legal Studies addressing gender, sexuality and human rights, and comprising papers drawn from an E.S.R.C.-funded workshop held at the University of Kent in June 2004 on the theme of “Gender-Auditing the Human Rights Act”. The article begins by situating the themes of the special issue within the broader context of feminist engagement with rights discourse. It goes on to consider the introduction of the Human Rights Act 1998 into the U.K. with a view to assessing its implications in terms of engendering a positive legal and political culture for equality-seeking initiatives. The article concludes with a survey of the contributions to the special issue, highlighting the possibilities for feminist theory and strategy posed by a wider intersectional engagement with rights issues.     

Adolescent Marital Expectations and Romantic Experiences: Associations With Perceptions About Parental Conflict and Adolescent Attachment Security

This study tested associations between adolescent perceptions of interparental conflict, adolescent attachment security with parents, and adolescent marital expectations and romantic experiences. Participants were 96 early adolescent females from 2 parent families. Insecurity was examined as a mediator of the association between negative perceptions of parental conflict and romantic outcomes. Results supported the mediation model in which adolescents' negative perceptions of parental conflict was associated with insecure attachment with parents, which was in turn associated with negative marital expectations and romantic experiences. Implications for understanding how parent-adolescent and interparental variables influence adolescent marital expectations and romantic experiences are discussed.

Human rights in Vancouver: do injection drug users have a friend in city hall?

In april 2003, the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) initiated a crackdown in the city's Downtown Eastside, an area frequented by drug users and the site of one of the developed world's worst AIDS epidemics. Human Rights Watch (HRW) visited the city and issued a report documenting first-hand accounts of unnecessary use of force by police officers and other human rights abuses. In this article, HRW staffers Joanne Csete and Jonathan Cohen describe how the initial euphoria that greeted the election of Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell has worn off; how a crackdown that was supposed to be aimed at drug traffickers had the effect of driving drug users away from health and harm-reduction services; and how both the VPD and city tried to discredit the HRW report. Finally, the authors discuss how concerns about the VPD have led to official complaints being filed, and they question whether police forces should be allowed to investigate themselves.     

Medical/health histories and physical evaluation of physically and sexually abused child psychiatric patients: A controlled study

This study examines findings from a pediatric health history and child physical examination conducted for 105 outpatient and 105 inpatient children who were classified on the basis of their history of physical and sexual abuse. Based on multivariate and univariate analyses, physically abused children had more early developmental delays, neurologic soft signs, serious physical injuries, skin markings and scars, and stimulant drug use than their non-physically abused peers. Sexually abused children were reported to exhibit higher levels of sexual activity and stimulant drug use, and had more physical signs of genital manipulation than non-sexually abused children. These data highlight the need to further examine the impact of medical and developmental aberrations, the nature and origins of recurrent physical injuries in this population, and the extent of risk-taking in understanding the differences between physical and sexual child maltreatment.     

OPINION CONGRUENCE AND THE FORMULATION OF SEISMIC SAFETY POLICIES

This article examines key actors'and citizens'perceptions on several issues involving various actions designed to lessen the effects of a damaging earthquake as well as the degree of concern these groups have over the occurrence of such an event. The relationship discovered between key actors'and the public's attitudes on these issues indicates that several other studies of earthquake policy adoption which suggest that a lack of citizen awareness and support for earthquake policy are the major barriers to adoption may be in error. In fact, it is discovered that in the Central states, it is the public which is concerned and supportive of such policy and the key actors who are more reluctant to endorse such policies.     

How important is participatory constitution-making? Lessons from Timor-Leste and Bougainville

How can fragmented or divided post-conflict societies best be accommodated and adjust to state structures in order to achieve sustainable peace? Reflecting on the contrary experiences of Timor-Leste and Bougainville, an autonomous region of Papua New Guinea, this article argues the answer to this question rests partly on the role that participatory constitution-making can play in state-building, nation-building and peace-building. Constitution-making can play a central role in state-building, because constitutions provide the operating system that establishes state institutions and regulates state power. It can also play a nation-building role by defining the political bond between the people, and a peace-building role by encouraging reconciliation and embedding state institutions in society. This article draws on liberal political theory to argue that public participation in constitution-making can enhance the likelihood that the constitution produces legitimate and effective state institutions, generates a unifying sense of national identity and establishes sustainable peace. It finds that extensive public participation in Bougainville played a positive role by creating a sense of common identity, reconciling many of the most severe societal divisions and creating institutions that are relatively legitimate and effective. In contrast, minimal public participation in Timor-Leste meant that the constitution-making process did not play a positive role; it did not create a unifying national identity, left certain societal divisions unreconciled and exacerbated others, and created institutions that were largely illegitimate and ineffective.     

Legal Compliance in Street‐Level Bureaucracy: A Study of UK Housing Officers

Street‐level bureaucratic theory is now at a fairly mature stage. The focus on street‐level bureaucrats as ultimate policymakers is now as familiar as it is important. Likewise, the parallel sociolegal study of the implementation of public law in public organizations has demonstrated the inevitable gap between law‐in‐the‐books and law‐in‐action. Yet, the success of these advances comes at the potential cost of us losing sight of the importance of law itself. This article analyzes some empirical data on the decision making about one legal concept—vulnerability in UK homelessness law. Our analysis offers two main contributions. First, we argue that, when it comes to the implementation of law, the legal abilities and propensities of the bureaucrats must be taken into account. Bureaucrats' abilities to understand legal materials make a difference to the likelihood of legal compliance. Second, we must also pay attention to the character of the legal provisions. Where a provision is simple, it is more likely to facilitate legal knowledge and demands nothing of bureaucrats in terms of legal competence. Where the provision is also inoffensive and liveable, it is less likely to act as an impediment to legal conscientiousness.