Centering Minoritized Students in Campus Interpersonal Violence Research

Journal of Family Violence - Campus interpersonal violence - defined as sexual assault, sexual harassment, intimate partner violence, and stalking - is a social problem that has received widespread...     

Judicial Review Without Rights: Some Problems for the Democratic Legitimacy of Structural Judicial Review

This article addresses an issue overlooked in most of the literatureon judicial review: the legitimacy of judicial review of a constitution'sfederal and structural provisions. Debates about the legitimacyof judicial review—at least as conducted throughout theCommonwealth—are usually focussed on rights. These debatesappear to assume that the power of courts like the AustralianHigh Court and the Canadian Supreme Court to interpret and enforcefederal and structural provisions is unproblematic. This articletests that assumption and concludes that those who hold democracy-basedobjections to constitutional rights should seriously reconsider,and perhaps oppose, federal and structural judicial review aswell.     

Youth gang membership and serious violent victimization: the importance of lifestyles and routine activities

Youth gangs have received substantial scholarly and public attention during the past two decades. Although most of the extant research on youth gang members has focused on their offending behaviors, recent studies have examined the victimization of youth gang members relative to their nongang peers. Gang members generally have been found to be at increased risk of victimization, although the reasons for this relationship have not fully been explored. The current study uses data from a multisite study of youth to explore whether the gang membership-victimization link is mediated by lifestyles and routine activities. In other words, is gang members' involvement in delinquent lifestyles and routine activities a viable explanation for their increased risk of serious violent victimization? Implications of these findings and suggestions for future research and policy are discussed.     

An economic analysis of the in-prison therapeutic community model on prison management costs

This study estimated the impact of an in-prison, therapeutic community (TC) substance abuse treatment program on management costs in a California prison. A deconstruction method was developed to estimate the opportunity cost of staff time and other resources involved in various prison administrative tasks. Compared to “non-treatment” yards within the facility, the TC environment generated lower administrative costs for disciplinary actions, inmate grievances, and major disruptive incidents resulting in lockdowns. These findings suggest that, in addition to their intended rehabilitative outcomes, prison-based TCs may foster institutional environments that help to control prison management costs.     

Recurrent default or policy-optimal taxation

This paper investigates the syndrome of “this time is different” with respect to Reinhart and Rogoff’s (This time is different: eight centuries of financial folly Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2011) interpretation of their extensive, historical data on financial default, and with particular regard to public debt in a closed-economy. Recurrent and over-generous promises to credulous investors of an ex ante, policy-optimal return amounts to an extra policy instrument in boosting the demand for public debt. In a numerical simulation of a version of the Diamond (Am Econ Rev 55:1126–1150, 1965) model, we find that the incentive for the policy-maker to pursue this strategy is trivial if taxes can be set at a policy-optimal level, but possibly over-riding if they cannot. Thus, the main result lines up with the empirical conclusion of Reinhart et al. (Debt intolerance. Debt intolerance, 2003) that “debt intolerant countries have weak fiscal structures”. The subsidiary result of the model is that defaulting countries will also have higher shares of public expenditure. Thus the model also predicts Wagner’s Law to the extent that fiscal structure is correlated with economic development.     

Dental Age Estimation: Pattern Recognition of Root Canal Widths of Mandibular Molars. A Novel Mandibular Maturity Marker at the 18‐Year Threshold

The final stage of third molar development is used to assign a subject to above the 18‐year threshold. Some subjects exhibiting this final stage are less than 18 years. Radiographs from 1000 females and 1000 males age 16.00–25.99 years were examined. Each half‐year age band comprised 50 females and 50 males. Three categories of root canal widths (RCW) of the LL6, LL7, and LL8 [FDI 36, 37, and 38] were defined. Reproducibility was achieved by re‐assessing the same subjects 12 months apart. For females, the minimum value for RCW‐A was 16.33 years, RCW‐B 17.23 years, and RCW‐C 18.45 years. For males, the minimum values were RCW‐A 17.16 years, RCW‐B 18.29 years, and RCW‐C 18.16 years. The presence of RCW‐C in a female, and the presence of RCW‐B or RCW‐C in a male is compelling evidence that the subject is above the 18‐year threshold.     

Offender personality disorder pathway: the impact of case consultation and formulation with probation staff

The latest government policies for personality disordered offenders emphasise the importance of a formulation-based approach to rehabilitation and pathway planning. However, research into forensic case formulation is limited. This paper examines the impact of consultation and formulation, on probation staff working with personality disordered offenders. Staff rated their knowledge, confidence, motivation, and understanding (of offenders), and satisfaction with management plans at three stages: pre-consultation, post-consultation and after receiving a written formulation. The analyses revealed that ratings on all variables examined increased after attending a consultation meeting, with no additional increase in scores following receipt of the formulation letter. The findings provide evidence that consultation has a range of benefits for probation staff, and offer support for the current model of joint-agency working. Further research is needed to clarify the benefits of providing written formulations after consultations, and to explore what features of a formulation are most useful to probation staff.     

Postface: fragmentation,failing trust and enduring tensions over what counts as climate finance

The Paris Agreement commits nations in Article 2(1) to “Making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development.” However there is an absence of internationally agreed accounting rules that would permit overall assessments of progress to this goal and any meaningful comparisons of performance between countries. This is true also for the quantitative Copenhagen/Cancún promise by developed nations to jointly mobilize US$100 billion by 2020. Our goal is to provoke discussion about the depth of the problems this lack of a functional definition and accounting system have created and perpetuated. We do so by describing the fragmented system of national reporting of climate finance and how the OECD’s Rio Marker system is serving neither contributors nor recipients. More than a trust issue between developed and developing countries, we argue that the lack of modalities to account for climate finance also considerably impedes the effective functioning of the bottom-up approach that now prevails under the UNFCCC. The deadline to propose "modalities of accounting climate finance" by 2018 is a crucial window in which to address this chronic issue in international climate policy.