Extent, trends, and perpetrators of prostitution-related homicide in the United States

Prostitute women have the highest homicide victimization rate of any set of women ever studied. We analyzed nine diverse homicide data sets to examine the extent, trends, and perpetrators of prostitution-related homicide in the United States. Most data sources substantially under-ascertained prostitute homicides. As estimated from a conservative capture-recapture analysis, 2.7% of female homicide victims in the United States between 1982 and 2000 were prostitutes. Frequencies of recorded prostitute and client homicides increased substantially in the late 1980s and early 1990s; nearly all of the few observed pimp homicides occurred before the late 1980s. These trends may be linked to the rise of crack cocaine use. Prostitutes were killed primarily by clients, clients were killed mainly by prostitutes, and pimps were killed predominantly by pimps. Another conservative estimate suggests that serial killers accounted for 35% of prostitute homicides. Proactive surveillance of, and evidence collection from, clients and prostitutes might enhance the investigation of prostitution-related homicide.     

Involuntary outpatient treatment as “desintitutionalized coercion”: The net-widening concerns

In American jurisprudence, two justifications have traditionally been put forth to support the government's social control of persons with mental illness: police power and parens patriae. As public mental hospitals became less available as loci in which to exercise these functions, governments sought alternative means to achieve the same ends. One prominent but quite controversial means is involuntary outpatient treatment (IOT). While the concerns about IOT have been myriad, one often alluded to but never documented is that of “net-widening.” That is, once IOT became available, it would be applied to an ever greater number of individuals, progressively expanding the margins of the designated population to whom it is applied, despite the formal standard for its application remaining constant. We tested the net-widening belief in a naturalistic experiment in Massachusetts. We found that net-widening did not occur, despite an environment strongly conducive to that expansion. At this time, whatever the arguments against IOT might be, net-widening should not be one of them.     

Dr Livingstone,I Presume? Evangelicals,Africa and Faith-Based Humanitarianism

Humanitarianism is a principal means through which Northern-based Christian groups intervene into sub-Saharan African states. However, current scholarship neglects the agentive roles played by religious actors in the delivery of mainstream aid. This secularises humanitarian governance, “others” religious actors and supports the portrayal of global aid as a technical-rational project, against which faith-based humanitarianism appears inherently suspect. In the post-Cold War period, the Northern-based evangelical community has intensified its support for emergency aid. Professional evangelical relief organisations disproportionately account for the delivery of faith-based humanitarianism. Yet few analyses explore their micro-political and sociological dimensions. Drawing primarily on fieldwork conducted in Juba, South Sudan, I argue that evangelical humanitarianism encompasses overlapping and sometimes competing “religious” and “emergency” imaginaries. Through these, evangelicals are shaped by, negotiate and respond to the structural, normalising and pragmatic pressures of the mainstream humanitarian field. In order to understand how faith-based humanitarianism differs from secular variants—politically, practically, organisationally, ethically—it needs to be analysed as part of the heterogeneous whole of global humanitarianism. I join recent scholarship in arguing for more in-depth analyses of the social dimensions of faith-based aid. Doing so sheds light onto dynamics that cross-cut global humanitarianism in its entirety.     

The effects of religion on domestic conflicts

Religion has four basic functions in politics, society and conflict: To provide a value‐laden worldview; to supply rules and standards of behavior based on that worldview; to organize adherents through institutions; and to legitimate actors, actions and institutions. Although these functions have remained constant for most of recorded history, the nature of religious worldviews have changed over time. The magnitude and extent of their impact on intra‐state conflicts vary according to their social context. Modern phenomena have much affected the nexus between religion and society. Ethnic issues, especially national self‐determination, have become intertwined with religious issues. Democratization has provided a new environment in which religious movements must find their place. Fundamentalist demands for a return to first sources as a way of life are, to a great extent, a reaction to two modern phenomena: serious social dislocations caused by modernization and societies in which secular ideologies now fill the social functions which were once the purview of religion.     

Introduction: the measures of waves

Abstract

The aftershocks of the spring of 2011 in Japan led the nation into a paralysis of futureshock. But as the aftershocks continued and news of more radiation seeped out of the cracks in the tightly sealed industrial-political power generator, it became clear that the idea that the earthquake has brought a new reality to Japan must itself be resisted. Indeed what is now evident is that little has changed, despite renewed urgency to respond.

Although the waves of disaster in Japan unfolding from 11 March caught everyone off guard, in some significant ways Japan was already prepared. Such preparedness can be read into Japan's long history of dealing with disasters, twenty years of economic stagnation and the growing prevalence of mysticism and eschatology in pop culture in the wake of the Kobe earthquake and Aum Shinrikyō attacks on the Tokyo subway. So, rather than a rupture, an anomalous event, the series of catastrophes of the spring 2011 that appeared as if out of the blue could be narrativized in real time through social media and connected to historical and social contingencies and continuities.

Rather than mourning the passing of some Japan that may never have existed or may already have passed away some time in the early 1990s, 11 March should be the occasion for reflection on the past, action in the present and taking stock for the future. Fighting the tendency to be stunned into complacency, this special issue reflects on the past and future amid the aftershocks radiating from Fukushima and post-earthquake Japan.     

中印关系的进展、认知与和平前景

中印两国政府希望加强双边关系.本文旨在评估政府的这种热情能否对两国大众、政治参与者以及专家间的相互认知产生积极的影响.通过对民意调查、出版物和官方文件的分析,发现事实并非如此.两国问的相互认知明显地表现为矛盾心理和不信任情绪.