LISTEN TO ME! EMPOWERING YOUTH AND COURTS THROUGH INCREASED YOUTH PARTICIPATION IN DEPENDENCY HEARINGS

Currently, there are more than half a million youth in foster care. Often, these youth are unaware of when, or if, legal hearings about their lives are taking place. This Note advocates for states to pass laws ensuring that youth receive notice of their hearings and for courts to conduct review hearings when youth are not present. Through the course of this Note, the benefits of youth participation are outlined, as are the reasons most often given for denying youth the opportunity to meaningfully participate. The Note concludes with suggestions to help courts more effectively engage youth and the benefits of doing so.     

A Study of the Emergence of Cooperation in Mediation

All mediators confront the challenge of how to encourage cooperation among parties in a mediation. Based on a phenomenological study of workplace mediation, this article explores the variables that are linked to the emergence of cooperation between parties. In the first part of the study, factors influencing the desire to cooperate are identified and categorized, based upon whether they help or hinder cooperation. The second part of the study compares the characteristics of cooperative and antagonistic mediation climates in order to better understand how cooperation is established during the mediation process. Based on the findings, strategies are proposed to help mediators facilitate the transition of an antagonistic climate into a cooperative one and thereby encourage the emergence of cooperation.     

The Cohort-Size Sample-Size Conundrum: An Empirical Analysis and Assessment Using Homicide Arrest Data from 1960 to 1999

A number of studies use the Age-Period-Cohort Characteristic (APCC) model to address the impact of cohort related factors on the age distribution of homicide offending. Several of these studies treat birth cohorts as spanning several years, an operationalization that most closely matches tenets of cohort theory, yet sharply reduces the number of observations available for analysis. Other studies define birth cohorts as those born within a single year, an operationalization that is theoretically problematic, but provides many more observations for analysis. We address the sample size problem by applying a time-series-cross-section model (panel model) with age-period-specific homicide arrest data from the United States for each year from 1960 to 1999, while operationalizing cohorts as five-year birth cohorts. Our panel model produces results that are very similar to those obtained from traditional multiyear APCC models. Substantively, the results provide a replication of work showing the importance of relative cohort size and cohort variations in family structure for explaining variations in age-period-specific homicide rates. The additional observations provided by our approach allow us to examine these relationships over time, and we find substantively important changes. The year-by-year estimates of the age distribution of homicide offending help us to examine the model during the epidemic of youth homicide.     

Traumatic Events and Maternal Education as Predictors of Verbal Ability for Preschool Children Exposed to Intimate Partner Violence (IPV)

Despite research on the effects of intimate partner violence (IPV) on children, little is known about its impact on cognitive development. In this study, 87 preschool-aged children and their mothers exposed to IPV within the last two years participated in interviews to ascertain verbal ability, history of violence, and exposure to trauma. When compared to a national sample of 1,700 same-age children not evaluated for exposure to traumatic events, children exposed to IPV scored significantly lower on verbal ability, as assessed with standardized measures. In order to understand variation in verbal ability, multiple regression models were tested. Both prior exposure to traumatic events and the level of mother’s education were significant predictors of verbal ability. However, level of education mediated the relationship between traumatic events and the child’s verbal ability.     

The challenges of measuring food security and sovereignty in the Yucatán Peninsula

In a study of food security and sovereignty (FSS) in 22 indigenous Mayan communities in Yucatán State, Mexico, a participatory action research (PAR) methodology was combined with an analytical framework comprised of 10 FSS indicators to measure food security in the study area and identify strengths and weaknesses of the analytical framework. While some of the FSS indicators were approaching satisfactory, the majority were only partially satisfied, and food self-sufficiency was for the most part unsatisfactory. It was also found that food security indicators are relatively easier to measure, while sovereignty indicators present challenges in terms of defining progress.     

The Socio-Economic Background of the Gwangju Uprising

The Gwangju Uprising is fully explained when it is viewed not as a single event for 10 days but as the eruption of socio-economic contradictions of South Korean society in the late 1970s. Located between the Bak Jeong-hee dictatorship and the June Breakthrough of the working class in 1987, it was an explosion of the confrontation between monopoly capitalists and the unruling classes that had been alienated in the process of industrialization in the 1960s to 1970s. This contradiction appeared as the confrontation of troops commanded by the new military coup leaders versus Gwangju citizens demanding democratization.