Social disorganization perceptions, fear of gang crime, and behavioral precautions among Whites, Latinos, and Vietnamese

Gangs were an important media and policy topic during the 1990s, but few studies focused on fear of gangs specifically. Even fewer studies examined ethnic differences in perceptions of community problems, fear, and behavioral precautions due to gangs. Using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) techniques, this article examines differences among Whites, Latinos, and Vietnamese in perceptions of community disorder and diversity, perceived risk and fear of gang crime, and resulting behavioral precautions. Results indicated that Vietnamese were most concerned about community problems and felt most at risk and afraid of gang crimes. Latinos also felt more concerned and more at risk and afraid than Whites did. Most people in all three groups practiced avoidance behaviors to avoid gang crime, but few turned to weapons for protection. Results confirmed that minorities were more afraid and point to the importance of focusing limited policy resources on populations most affected by gangs.     

Reporting Femicide-Suicide in the News: The Current Utilization of Suicide Reporting Guidelines and Recommendations for the Future

Public health officials have developed and disseminated recommendations for the responsible reporting of suicide in an effort to dispel myths about suicide-completers and minimize contagion effects. However, recommendations as to the reporting of homicide-suicide events have not been a priority in these initiatives. The current study assesses the degree to which newspaper coverage of the most commonly occurring type of homicide-suicide event, femicide-suicide, adhere to existing suicide reporting recommendations by examining newspaper coverage (n?=?143) of a population of femicide-suicide cases (n?=?83) from North Carolina for the years 2002–2009. The current study demonstrates the importance of developing and disseminating reporting guidelines to assist in dispelling myths about the victims and perpetrators of lethal intimate partner violence.     

Examining the Impact of Proximate Culpability Mitigation in Capital Punishment Sentencing Recommendations: The Influence of Mental Health Mitigators

In spite of the ruling in Atkins v. Virginia (2002), concerns remain that individuals with mental illness and reduced capacity are eligible for the death penalty. When mental illness or reduced capacity is not enough to preclude death-eligibility, these factors are often discussed at the sentencing phase as mitigators. Mitigation remains an under-researched avenue in the sentencing literature, particularly when it comes to the influence of specific types of mitigation. The present study contributes to knowledge on mental health mitigation by examining five mitigators relevant to the mental health and capacity of defendants. Using data from 834 capital sentences in North Carolina, the influence of these proximate culpability mitigators on jury sentence recommendations is examined. Results indicate that acceptance of certain mental health mitigators reduces the probability of death, but acceptance of others is not significantly related to death recommendations. These findings and their implications are discussed.     

Public accountability in higher education and health: an international perspective

Hospitals and universities in British Columbia (BC), and indeed in Canada generally, face a serious loss of faith in the self-regulatory model of funding and external governance whereby, essentially, they are given resources and the autonomy to use them as they see fit. Generally, the last two decades in Canada have been a period of scarce resources, loss of external confidence, general funding limitations, some additional pressures in the form of increased controls and accountability requirements, but little evidence that hospitals and universities are willing to respond positively to these new pressures. The argument of the paper is that responding to pressures for improved accountability reporting may be the price of preserving autonomy and relative funding levels. An active, cooperative response to external concerns about information will enable hospitals and universities to shape the information agenda to their advantage--at the very least, having it reflect reasonably accurately their circumstances and performance. The paper argues further that hospitals should begin by addressing patient care measures and universities should begin by dealing with measures of teaching performance.     

Budget-Making for Social Purposes

A theory of the budgetary process within public resource allocation has to recognize two basic properties of budgetary behavior and budgetary interaction: variation over time and program variation. Our results indicate that the hypothesis of program variation is worthy of effort, as we find different decision mechanisms operating in the six programs studied, which belong to different categories of public resource allocation. Variation over time is particularly difficult to accommodate within the framework of incrementalist notions: incremental decision rules imply structural stability over time slices. We find the opposite to be true in two of the program types analyzed, the transfer programs and the service programs. Bureaucratic programs may look incremental; however, that may only be an appearance, as a closer analysis of the data indicates that the decision mechanism involves the occurrence of shift-points or non-incremental changes. A theory of the public expenditure process has to take into account both incremental decision strategies and non-incremental ones, which requires an econometric methodology based on the possibility of structural variability. Such a methodology includes the use of both test statistics and estimation techniques suitable to the occurrence of structural variability.     

Observations from practice: support group membership as a process of social capital formation among female survivors of domestic violence

This article explores the authors' practice observations of female domestic violence survivors' journey from first agency contact to active participation in a support group process. The authors have witnessed female victims of domestic violence challenging the social isolation imposed by their dominant partners as they search for meaning in their lives. As practitioners, they have observed women building trustful relationships and establishing supportive networks during the group process. In this article, the authors suggest that the support group process facilitates trust and network formation indicative of social capital.     

International Organisation as Coordination in N-Person Games

One major problem in global governance is the specification of decision-making rules for international and regional organisations to coordinate the states of the world. Various organisations use different decision-making rules, and the properties of these rules may be compared systematically in terms of the power index approach. The power index solution concept of N-person games may be employed to display a basic problem in global governance, namely, the fundamental trade-off between state veto on the one hand and the capacity of the organisation or groups of states to act, meaning its decisiveness, on the other hand. Thus, when states coordinate through the setting up and running of international organisations, they then face a trade-off between their own control over the organisation and the capacity of the organisation to act. States make this trade-off in different ways depending upon the nature of the international or regional organisation as they reflect upon what is most important, to wit, own control or the capacity of the group to act.     

Politics, Economics and the Measurement of Power

To what extent is political power fundamentally different from or, alternatively, comparable to economic power? While it is true that the basic institutions of democratic political life - the electoral arena and the sovereign representative assembly - differ from such capitalist economic institutions as the market and the joint-stock company, the logic of the power game which takes place in both settings is quite similar. In both institutions power will be a function of the capacity to enter decisive coalitions with other players: individuals, political parties, stockholders or groups of stockholders. Power indices may therefore be employed in order to reveal aspects of the strategic gaming that takes place both in representative assemblies and at yearly stockholders' meetings. This article discusses and compares various quantitative measures of voting power in the two kinds of voting bodies.