Male and female child murderers: an empirical analysis of U.S. arrest data

Recent U.S. cases of murders by children below age 11 have captured national headlines. A review of the literature reveals that little is known about this population of juvenile homicide offenders (JHOs). Most studies on juvenile murderers have used small clinical samples, focused on adolescents, and concentrated on male offenders. Studies that have used Supplementary Homicide Report (SHR) data have found significant gender differences among juveniles below 18 years arrested for murder. This study investigated gender differences among 226 juvenile murderers ages 6 through 10 involved in single-victim incidents using bivariate and multivariate statistical techniques. Consistent with previous research, bivariate analyses revealed gender differences with respect to the type of weapon used, age of the victim, relationship to the victim, and circumstances of the crime. Logistic regression analysis identified female JHOs as more likely to use a knife, kill a family member, and kill a victim below age 5, when compared with male JHOs. From these findings, profiles of young male and female JHOs can be drawn. The article concludes with a discussion of the study's implications for prevention and treatment. The authors recommend that future research in gender differences among young children focus on examining psychological, neurological, and sociological variables not included in the SHR data set.     

Correlates of handgun carrying among adolescents in the United States

Weapon-related violence, especially the use of handguns, among adolescents is a serious public health concern. Using public-use data file from the adolescent sample (N = 17,842) in the 2008 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), this study examines the behavioral, parental involvement, and prevention correlates of handgun carrying. Overall, 3.1% of adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17 reported carrying a handgun in the past year. Results from a series of logistic regression models indicated that males, selling and using illicit drugs, were robustly associated with an increased probability of handgun carrying among adolescents. Furthermore, youth who carry handguns were significantly less likely to report a parent being involved in their lives and were significantly more likely to have encountered violence and drug prevention programming compared with youth who did not carry handguns. Implications of these results for prevention and policy are discussed.     

The Stewardship Code's Achilles' Heel

Many concerned about UK corporate governance have urged those who own equity in listed companies to forsake a traditional bias in favour of passivity and act as responsible, engaged ‘owners’. The recent financial crisis has given added impetus to such calls, with the notion of ‘stewardship’ taking centre stage and resulting in July 2010 with the launch of a Stewardship Code targeting UK‐based institutional investors. This paper summarises the Stewardship Code initiative and argues that, primarily due to sustained fragmentation of share ownership occurring over the past 20 years, the Code is unlikely to foster substantially greater shareholder involvement in UK corporate governance.     

Forecasting Dangerous Inmate Misconduct: An Application of Ensemble Statistical Procedures

In this paper, we attempt to forecast which prison inmates are likely to engage in very serious misconduct while incarcerated. Such misconduct would usually be a major felony if committed outside of prison: drug trafficking, assault, rape, attempted murder and other crimes. The binary response variable is problematic because it is highly unbalanced. Using data from nearly 10,000 inmates held in facilities operated by the California Department of Corrections, we show that several popular classification procedures do no better than the marginal distribution unless the data are weighted in a fashion that compensates for the lack of balance. Then, random forests performs reasonably well, and better than CART or logistic regression. Although less than 3% of the inmates studied over 24 months were reported for very serious misconduct, we are able to correctly forecast such behavior about half the time.

Brain distribution of selected antipsychotics in schizophrenia

The brain distribution of phenothiazine antipsychotics in 22 confirmed schizophrenic and 11 control subjects were collected at autopsy. Specimens were homogenized, extracted with n-butyl chloride, and analyzed via liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry, using atmospheric pressure electrospray ionization operating in the positive mode. Drug concentrations normalized for those observed in cerebellum showed three distinct patterns of distribution corresponding to different structural features of each type of phenothiazine. Those drugs with high affinity for dopamine receptors were detected in the highest concentrations in regions with high concentrations of such receptors. However, those associated with relatively lower dopaminergic activity were found in the highest concentration in the occipital cortex, a region with a relatively low concentration of dopamine receptors. The regional brain distribution of thioridazine and its metabolites was concentration dependent. These results have implications for determining the role of these drugs in the sudden and unexpected deaths of schizophrenics.     

The dynamic prediction of antisocial behavior among forensic psychiatric patients: a prospective field study

Staff ratings of 595 supervised forensic psychiatric patients on the Proximal Risk Factor Scale and the Problem Identification Checklist were completed monthly for an average of 33 months. During the follow-up, there were 265 incidents, 86 of which were violent. The average ratings, excluding those from the index month, differentiated patients who had incidents from those who did not. As well, the average ratings distinguished between individuals with and without incidents of a violent or sexual nature. There were significant increases in staff ratings in the months preceding the index incident month. Within-patient analyses showed that changes in dynamic risk scales comprising the best items for predicting incidents of any kind and violent or sexual incidents were strongly related to their respective outcomes and were significantly related to outcome in an independent sample. Changes in monthly staff ratings predict the imminent occurrence of antisocial and violent behaviors.