Examining the Effects of Health in Explaining Fear of Crime: A Multi-Dimensional and Multi-Level Analysis

We examine the understudied link between mental/physical health problems and their relationship with perceived unsafety via higher levels of vulnerability. We examine this relationship by linking data at the individual-level, the neighborhood-level, and the county-level using the Portraits of American Life Survey (PALS). Using this data we examine the effect of individual and neighborhood conditions on perceived safety while controlling for county-level crime rates. Findings indicate that higher numbers of physical impairment and mental health issues are independently related to higher levels of perceived unsafety. Both mental and physical health problems are associated with higher levels of fear. These higher levels of vulnerability then directly contribute to higher levels of feeling of unsafety. Unlike past research, we find a mental health link to fear of crime that cannot be explained by physical impairments.     

Assessing Risk of Placement Instability to Aid Foster Care Placement Decision Making

Placement stability is of critical importance to the well-being of children in foster care and has an impact on other key outcomes. Placement decision-making that matches children with placement resources is often cited as a practice that impacts placement stability, but little research exists to inform this practice. The focus of this research is on a child assessment tool that was developed to determine the appropriate level of care, which serves as one component of a web-based matching system that pulls together child and placement information used to inform the placement decision. The research examines the relationship between the child assessment subscale domains and placement stability for first and subsequent placement decisions and evaluates the stability of placements made in and outside of the indicated level of care.     

A Distant Hand Fell from His Shoulder

This essay is concerned to trace a materialist current within the work of Peter Goodrich, with the aim of evaluating it in the light of the work of Deleuze and Guattari. The are two reasons for this: firstly, it serves to encourage the development of Deleuzean perspectives within critical legal studies, and secondly, it presents the potential of a re-invigoration of a branch of criticism based not only upon the problems raised by issues of meaning and representation, but one which is also sensitive to the conditions of the relations of production of both meaning and desire. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Climate Change and Environmental Security: For Whom the Discourse Shifts

This article explores the implications of the April 2007 United Nations Security debate on the security dimensions of a changing climate for international climate change politics. Specifically, our analysis focuses on whether and how security concerns have been addressed in past international political debates on climate change and considers whether the Security Council debate, which emphasized the threat of climate-related conflict, reflects a discursive shift. We elaborate on two general discourses on the relationship between environment and security, which we call environmental conflict and environmental security . Using content and discourse analysis, we demonstrate that both the historical climate change debate and the more recent Security Council debate have been informed by the environmental security discourse, meaning that a discursive shift has not taken place. We conclude by considering the possibility of a future discursive shift to the environmental conflict perspective and argue that such a shift would be counterproductive to the search for an effective global response to climate change.     

Emotional labor and employee outcomes: A meta-analysis

While there is agreement among scholars that people-work requires emotional labor, there is still some uncertainty about the consequences of emotional labor for employees. This article conducts a random-effects meta-analysis including 545 correlations across 175 primary studies to explore the relationship between emotional labor, burnout, and job satisfaction. The meta-analysis suggests that emotional labor can be both harmful and beneficial to employees, depending on the emotional labor strategy used, that is, surface acting or deep acting. In addition, the meta-regression shows that effect sizes between emotional labor and employee outcomes (i.e., burnout and job satisfaction) differ in collectivist and individualist cultures. The article concludes by discussing the implications of these findings for research and practice.     

Cardiac Ventricular Laceration Due to Child Abuse: Abusive Ventricular Laceration

Traumatic cardiac ventricular ruptures in children are rare. Only a single case of left ventricular rupture due to child abuse has been reported. We report a child who sustained a fatal left ventricular apical rupture. It appeared to have resulted from hydrostatic forces resulting from abusive blunt thoracic injury. That he was being abused was previously missed when he was presented to the emergency department with facial pyoderma. It was not noted that he also had lip and oral mucosal injury, sites not affected by staph toxins. As a result, his underlying, abusive and secondarily infected, facial flow type scald burn was not appreciated. Within a week thereafter his fatal injury occurred, accompanied by extensive and obvious associated abusive injuries. Postmortem high‐detail whole body computed tomography scanning aided the autopsy. Although rare, ventricular rupture from abusive blunt thoracic injury can occur.     

Fathers as carers in UK law and policy: dominant ideologies and lived experience

This article explores how working fathers are conceptualised within the UK’s work-family law and policy framework and whether a dominant ideology of fatherhood can be discerned. The socio-legal literature on men and masculinities is considered alongside established feminist theory on families, paid work and unpaid care to provide a backdrop to the analysis of current policy provision in this area. Three ‘ideal’ type ideologies of fatherhood are identified (‘absent’, ‘involved’ and ‘active’) which are used to critically examine the current legal framework. Despite claims to the contrary, the current framework supports and reaffirms the gendering of care so that the intransigence on the part of men and women to rebalance related responsibilities is unsurprising. The authors argue for a more care-centric approach to work-family policy in place of gender-specific normative modelling. A legal framework which enabled and encouraged all care providers to participate regardless of gender and biological relationship would not only improve the workplace experiences of women, but also enable men to develop and fulfil their care-giving aspirations and potential.     

Identification of Eight Synthetic Cannabinoids,Including 5F‐AKB48 in Seized Herbal Products Using DART‐TOF‐MS and LC‐QTOF‐MS as Nontargeted Screening Methods

Synthetic cannabinoids are sprayed onto plant material and smoked for their marijuana‐like effects. Clandestine manufacturers modify synthetic cannabinoid structures by creating closely related analogs. Forensic laboratories are tasked with detection of these analog compounds, but targeted analytical methods are often thwarted by the structural modifications. Here, direct analysis in real time coupled to accurate mass time‐of‐flight mass spectrometry (DART‐TOF‐MS) in combination with liquid chromatography quadruple time‐of‐flight mass spectrometry (LC‐QTOF‐MS) are presented as a screening and nontargeted confirmation method, respectively. Methanol extracts of herbal material were run using both methods. Spectral data from four different herbal products were evaluated by comparing fragmentation pattern, accurate mass and retention time to available reference standards. JWH‐018, JWH‐019, AM2201, JWH‐122, 5F‐AKB48, AKB48‐N‐(4‐pentenyl) analog, UR144, and XLR11 were identified in the products. Results demonstrate that DART‐TOF‐MS affords a useful approach for rapid screening of herbal products for the presence and identification of synthetic cannabinoids.     

The Prevalence of Paraphernalia Found at the Scene of Drug‐Related Deaths

Many illicit drugs involve the use of paraphernalia, and the presence of paraphernalia found at the scene of death may suggest that the death is drug‐related. Few sources of objective data are available regarding the prevalence of drug paraphernalia found at the scene of drug‐related deaths or the likelihood of a death with drug paraphernalia found at the scene to be drug‐related. This study reviews the deaths which were investigated by the Bexar County Medical Examiner's Office in an attempt to provide objective data. Over 4000 deaths with scene investigations were reviewed, and the presence of paraphernalia was found to be strongly associated with the death being drug‐related, heroin‐related, or cocaine‐related with the relative risk for each being 5.0, 15.4, and 6.6, respectively. This confirms that the presence of drug paraphernalia at the scene of death strongly suggests the death to be drug‐related and in particular heroin‐related.