Methodology for the analysis of civil commitment detention times and costs

The authors expand their methodology for quantifying and comparing civil commitment processes by developing new formulas for the determination of the average commitment detention time and cost. They also examine the effects of specific changes in commitment procedures on the average detention time and cost. Using data from Oregon's civil commitment process, the authors present several examples of the practical application of their methodology and conclude with a discussion of its major administrative and research implications.     

Victims of fraud: comparing victims of white collar and violent crime

Mental health professionals have focused attention on the psychiatric sequelae of criminal victimization. This article compares the experience of white collar and violent crime victims on several parameters including statistical risk of victimization and psychiatric outcome after victimization. Emphasis is given to data obtained from interviewing 77 victims of a fraudulent financial scheme.     

Housing instability is as strong a predictor of poor health outcomes as level of danger in an abusive relationship: findings from the SHARE Study

Advocates, clinicians, policy makers, and survivors frequently cite intimate partner violence (IPV) as an immediate cause of or precursor to housing problems. Research has indicated an association between homelessness and IPV, yet few studies examine IPV and housing instability. Housing instability differs from homelessness, in that someone experiencing housing instability may currently have a place to live but faces difficulties with maintaining the residence. We present baseline findings from a longitudinal cohort study of 278 female IPV survivors with housing as a primary concern. Our analysis indicates the greater the number of housing instability risk factors (e.g., eviction notice, problems with landlord, moving multiple times), the more likely the abused woman reported symptoms consistent with PTSD (p < .001), depression (p < .001), reduced quality of life (p < .001), increased work/school absence (OR = 1.28, p < .004), and increased hospital/emergency department use (OR = 1.22, p < .001). These outcomes persist even when controlling for the level of danger in the abusive relationship and for survivors' drug and alcohol use. Importantly, both housing instability and danger level had stronger associations with negative health outcomes than other factors such as age, alcohol, and drug use; both make unique contributions to negative health outcomes and could contribute in different ways. Housing instability is an important and understudied social determinant of health for IPV survivors. These findings begin to address the literature gap on the relationship between housing instability, IPV, and survivors' health, employment, and utilization of medical care services.     

National Subversion of Supranational Goals: ‘Pork-Barrel’ Politics and EU Regional Aid

The structural funds were designed to give the European Commission supranational control over where regional aid was spent. In this article, we argue that domestic ‘pork-barrel’ politics determine which regions are awarded regional aid in the new member states of Eastern Europe. Support for our argument comes from a dataset that includes 1,688 European Regional Development Fund grants to Latvia's 118 regions and 1,533 pre-accession Phare awards to Bulgaria's 264 municipalities. In both Bulgaria and Latvia, we find that regional aid projects went to wealthier not poorer localities, and to those that supported coalition parties in the previous election.     

Does faith limit immorality? The politics of religion and corruption

Critically considering scholarship relating religiosity to ethical behaviour, we contend that religion is systematically related to levels of corruption, and that the nature of this relationship is contingent on the presence of democratic institutions. In democracies, where political institutions are designed to inhibit corrupt conduct, the morality provided by religion is related to attenuated corruption. Conversely, in systems lacking democratic institutions, moral behaviour is not tantamount to staying away from corrupt ways. Accordingly, in non-democratic contexts, religion would not be associated with decreased corruption. Time-series cross-sectional analyses of aggregate data for 129 countries for 12 years, as well as individual level analyses of data from the World Values Surveys, strongly corroborate the predictions of our theory. The correlation of religion with reduced corruption is conditional on the extent to which political institutions are democratic.     

Can Small High Schools of Choice Improve Educational Prospects for Disadvantaged Students?

This paper provides rigorous evidence (for 12,130 participants in a series of naturally occurring randomized lotteries) that a large‐scale high school reform initiative (New York City's creation of 100+ small high schools of choice between 2002 and 2008) can markedly and consistently increase high school graduation rates (by 9.5 percentage points overall and for many different student subgroups) for a large population of educationally and economically disadvantaged students of color without increasing annual school operating costs. These findings are directly relevant to current debates by policymakers and practitioners about how to improve the educational prospects of disadvantaged students in the United States.     

Struggling and surviving: The life style of European immigrant breadwinning mothers in American industrial cities, 1900–1930

Immigrant working mothers created strategies to meet increasingly competing demands of family and job. Despite their wage-earning capacity and rising expectations, ethnic mores, patriarchy, poverty and discrimination perpetuated a rigid family hierarchy which precluded freedom for these women to seek alternatives to their traditional life styles.