Murderous parents

This article offers observations regarding some of the major manifestations of family violence, neonaticide, infanticide, and filicide with the purpose of aiding in the early identification of parents at risk. They are discussed within the past and present historical and cultural milieu. A brief review of pertinent literature is presented. Pertinent case studies from the forensic psychiatric practice of the author along with psychodynamic reflections are offered.     

Policy change through sector intersection: forest and aboriginal policy in Clayoquot Sound

Abstract: Network and regime approaches to policy studies are both organized around the idea of a policy-specific subsystem. The problem with this sectoral focus is that it overlooks a potentially important source of policy: the intersection of one sector with another. This article analyses one example of policy change through sector intersection: the case of Clayoquot Sound on the western side of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Prior to the late 1980s B.C. forest policy was conducted through a traditional regime emphasizing the mutually compatible interests of industry and government. Aboriginal policy, such as it was, was made in a relatively distinct policy regime. As a result of a critical combination of conditions in the early 1990s, these two policy regimes intersected, producing dramatic policy changes. This article analyses the separate regimes for forest and aboriginal policy in British Columbia and how the two regimes have been transformed in recent years and become increasingly entangled. The focus is then turned to Clayoquot Sound, a Crucible of change, where these developments have been taken to their greatest extreme. The article concludes by examining the implications of these developments beyond Clayoquot Sound and for theories of public policy. Sommaire: L'étude des politiques qui fait appel aux méthodes dites de «réseau» et de «régime» est axée sur l'idée d'un sous-systéGme caractéristique de la politique. Cette méthode sectorielle a le désavantage de négliger une source de politiques qui peut stre importante: l'intersection d'un secteur avec un autre. L'article analyse un exemple de changement de politique entraîiné par l'intersection de deux secteurs: il s'agit du cas de la baie Clayoquot, sur le côté ouest de I'éle de Vancouver, en Colombie -Britannique. Avant la fin des années 80, les politiques forestières de la Colombie Britannique suivaient un régime traditionnel qui mettait l'acccent sur les intérêts mutuellement compatibles de I'industrie et du gouvernement. Les politiques autochtones, si modestes fussent-elles, étaient formulées dans le cadre d'un régime distinct. Lorsqu'une combinaison critique de conditions s'est produite au début des années 1990, il y a eu intersection de ces deux régimes de formulation des politiques, produisant des modifications profondes de politiques. Cet article analyse les deux régimes différents de politiques forestières et autochtones en Colombie-Britannique ainsi que leur évolution au cours de ces dernières années qui a menéà leur enchevêtrement croissant. On se penchent ensuite sur le cas de la baie Clayoquot, point focal du changement, où ces tendances ont atteint leur niveau extrôme. Pour conclure, l'article examine les répercussions de cette évolution, au-dell de la baie Clayoquot, sur les diverses théories de politique gouvernmentale.     

Allocution b I'occasion de la parution du Rapport de la Commission royale sur les peuples autochtones

Sommaire: Dans cette allocution, les co-présidents de la Commission royale sur les peuples autochtones présentent quelques-uns des principaux thèmes et conclusions du rapport final de la Commission. D'entrée de jeu, ils insistent sur l'urgence de changer la relation entre Autochtones et non-Autochtones au Canada. Dans sa forme actuelle, cette relation entraine un gigantesque gaspillage de potentiel, d'argent et de vies humaines, lequel est confirmé par les statistiques sur les taux de suicide, sur l'alcoolisme et la toxicomanie, sur l'incarcération, sur le chômage, sur la dépendance à l'égard de l'aide sociale, sur l'abandon scolaire préoce, sur le mauvais état de santé et sur les piètres conditions de logement. Le rapport propose une stratégie détaillée sur 20 ans pour restaurer la santé sociale, économique et politique des peuples autochtones et redéfinir leur relation avec l'ensemble des Canadiens. Cette stratégie comporte un double cheminement vers le changement: un nouvel équilibre des pouvoirs politiques et des ressources économiques, complété par un effort en we de restaurer la santé et l'efficacité des individus, des familles, des collectivités et des nations. Les co-présidents croient que le Canada devrait s'engager à réduire de 50% l'écart des conditions sociales et économiques entre Autochtones et non-Autochtones au cours des vingt prochaines années. Ils font valoir que le Canada ne peut plus se permettre de maintenir l'actuel régime de dépendance, de productivité perdue et de dépenses sociales sans cesse croissantes. En effet, on estime à un peu plus de 13 milliards de dollars la somme que tous les gouvernements vont dépenser en 1996 rela-tivement aux Autochtones. Cette wmme pourrait passer à plus de 17 milliards annuellement dans 20 ans, du seul fait de la croissance démographique. Abstract: In this article, the co-chairs of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples present some of the major themes and conclusions of the final report of the commission. From the outset, they insist on the urgency of altering the relationship between aboriginal and non aboriginal people in Canada. As it now stands, that relationship is one of waste: wasted potential, wasted money, wasted lives. It is measured in statistic after statistic: in the rates of suicide, of substance abuse, of incarceration, of welfare dependance, of low educational attainment, of poor health and poor housing. The report proposes a comprehensive strategy over 20 years to restore the social, economic and political health to aboriginal peoples and rebuild their relationship with all Canadians. It entails the pursuit of two mutually reinforcing paths to change: rebalancing political authority and economic resources; and a reinforcing effort to restore health and effectiveness to individuals, families, communities and nations. It is the co-chairs' belief that Canada should commit to reducing by fifty per cent the gap between the social and economic condition of aboriginal and non aboriginal people over the next twenty years. They point out that Canada can no longer afford to maintain the current regime of dependency, lost productivity and ever-growing social expenditures. Indeed, the amount all governments will spend in 1996 in relation to aboriginal peoples is estimated at just over $13 billion. This could rise to over $17 billion annually in twenty years as a result of demographic pressure alone.     

Signaling Government Financial Reporting Quality to Credit Analysts

The quality of governmental financial reporting and auditing is of continuing concern to oversight bodies and to those interested in the financial accountability of governments. While governments may have operational incentives to improve financial reporting, external incentives depend on external users' ability to distinguish cities with better reporting practices from those with inferior systems. Two methods that cities with better systems may use to distinguish themselves are the GFOA's Certificate of Excellence for Financial Reporting and through the reputation of the audit firm. This article examines whether the degree of reliance that bond raters place on accounting data is influenced by the Certificate and by the type of auditor. In addition, since inadequate fees have been cited as a possible cause of substandard audits, we examine the trend in audit fees for cities for the period 1985–1989. The findings suggest that the use of a Big Eight audit firm does increase the reliance placed on cities' financial statement numbers but there is only weak evidence that the Certificate has a similar effect. In addition we find evidence of a significant decline in audit fees for the period 1985–1989.     

Ideology and candidate evaluation

How does the expressed political ideology of voters influence their evaluation of presidential candidates? The classic answer to this question is provided by the spatial theory of electoral choice in which utility for a candidate is a function of the proximity between the voter and candidate positions on the liberal-conservative continuum. We have argued elsewhere that spatial theory, while intellectually appealing, is inadequate as an empirical model of mass behavior. We have developed a directional theory of issue voting that we believe provides a more realistic accounting of how specific policy issues influence utility for a candidate. Directional theory is based on the view that for most voters issues are understood as a dichotomous choice between two alternative positions. While ideology is widely understood as a continuum of positions, the directional model can be applied to the relationship between ideology and candidate evaluation. In this paper we compare the two theories using National Election Study data from 1972 to 1988. The results tend to favor the directional model over the traditional proximity model. We conclude by briefly tracing out the implications of this finding.     

Development and Validation of the Validity Indicator Profile

The Validity Indicator Profile (VIP; Frederick, 1997) is a two-alternative forced choice (2AFC) procedure intended to identify when the results of cognitive and neuropsychological testing may be invalid because of malingering or other problematic response styles. The test consists of 100 problems that assess nonverbal abstraction capacity and 78 word-definition problems. The VIP attempts to establish whether an individual's performance in an assessment battery should be considered representative of his or her true overall capacities (valid or invalid). Performances classified as valid are classified as compliant and reflect a high effort to respond correctly. Performances classified as invalid are subclassified as careless (low effort to respond correctly), irrelevant (low effort to respond incorrectly), or malingering (high effort to respond incorrectly). The VIP development sample included 944 nonclinical participants and 104 adults undergoing neuropsychological evaluation. The cross-validation sample consisted of 152 nonclinical participants, 61 brain-injured adults, 49 individuals considered to be at risk for malingering, and 100 randomly generated VIP protocols. The nonverbal subtest of the VIP demonstrated an overall classification rate of 79.8%, with 73.5% sensitivity and 85.7% specificity. The verbal subtest of the VIP demonstrated an overall classification rate of 75.5%, with 67.3% sensitivity and 83.1% specificity.Ross Crosby was at NCS Assessments, Minnetonka, Minnesota, during much of this project     

Narcotics and crime: A causal modeling approach

The present study examines the relationships between narcotics use and criminality utilizing a confirmatory structural equation modeling approach. Latentvariable and manifest-variable models are used to represent causal relationships between narcotics use and criminality in both the postaddiction and the pretreatment periods of the addiction career. Latent-variable models include a preexisting deviance construct as an exogenous factor, and manifest-variable models include a measure of drug trafficking, or dealing, as an influencing variable. Both inclusions are made as an attempt to minimize specification error in the models. The results are consistent in showing that, while simultaneous relationships between narcotics and criminality are clearly demonstrable, the prediction of either variable from the other across time cannot be demonstrated. It is concluded that causal relationships between narcotics and criminality are probably not characterized by an appreciable or identifiable time lag. Other theoretical considerations suggested by the modeling results are discussed, such as the role of idiosyncratic approaches to the economics of maintaining addition.