Won't you be my neighbor? Using an ecological approach to examine the impact of community on revictimization

An ecological model is used to explore the moderating effects of community-level variables on the relation between childhood sexual, physical, and emotional abuse and adult intimate partner violence (IPV) within a sample of 98 African American women from low incomes. Results from hierarchical, binary logistics regressions analyses show that community-level variables (perceived neighborhood disorder and community cohesion) moderated the relation between childhood emotional abuse and adult physical IPV. Findings support the use of an ecological approach in examining the phenomena of revictimization. Clinical implications from a community and ecological perspective are discussed.     

The impact of after‐school programs on the routine activities of middle‐school students: Results from a randomized,controlled trial*

Research Summary Unsupervised after‐school time for adolescents is a concern for parents and policymakers alike. Evidence linking unsupervised adolescent socializing to problem behavior outcomes heightens this concern among criminologists. Routine activities theory suggests that, when youth peer groups congregate away from adult authority, both opportunity for and motivation to engage in deviant acts increase. After‐school programs are a possible solution to unsupervised teen socializing during afternoon hours and are much in demand. However, empirical research has yet to test the relationship between the availability of after‐school programs and youth routine activities. This study presents evidence from a multisite, randomized, controlled trial of an after‐school program for middle‐school students in an urban school district. Policy Implications Youth in the treatment group engaged in less unsupervised socializing after school than youth in the control group but not as much less as would be expected if the after‐school program was providing consistent supervision to youth who would otherwise be unsupervised. Additional analyses examined why the influence of the after‐school program was not more pronounced. We found that, although program attendance was related to decreases in unsupervised socializing, the program did not attract many delinquency‐prone youths who were unsupervised, which suggests that the students most in need of the program did not benefit. Furthermore, data obtained from a mid‐year activity survey revealed that youth in the study were highly engaged in a variety of after‐school activities. The addition of the after‐school program into the mixture of available activities had little effect on the frequency with which students participated in organized activities after school.     

An experimental evaluation of teen courts

Teen Court (TC) is a juvenile diversion program designed to prevent the formal processing of first-time juvenile offenders within the juvenile justice system. TC instead utilizes informal processing and sanctions in order to prevent future offending. Despite its widespread popularity throughout the United States of America, little rigorous research has been conducted on the effectiveness of the TC model for reducing recidivism. Using an experimental design, this study examined the effectiveness of TC in reducing recidivism and improving the attitudes and opinions of juvenile offenders in comparison with a control group of youth who were formally processed. Self-reported delinquency was higher for those youth who participated in TC. TC youth were also found to have significantly lower scores on a scale of belief in conventional rules than had youth who were processed in the Department of Juveniles Services. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Semen analysis using methods of molecular genetics--a case report

The presented case report describes the exclusion of the suspect of a sexual offence by means of methods of molecular genetics. Pretests for prostate-specific antigen performed at the beginning of the investigation and cytological sperm tests were negative. Nevertheless, by combining the methods of differential lysis and DNA quantification a small number of spermatozoa could be demonstrated in the trace evidence. Subsequently, the profile of the woman's boyfriend, with whom she had had unprotected vaginal intercourse two days before the incident, could be detected in the fraction of the hard lysis.     

Bumping into a knife--exculpatory statement or (tragic) accident?

Assessing stab wounds is a common task in forensic medicine. Quite often an accused claims that the victim bumped into the knife. Taking into account all the facts ascertained in the investigations conducted, such a statement can be rapidly disproved in most cases. The present case of a 14-year-old boy fatally wounded by his mother with a kitchen knife examines the aspect of walking into a knife. It is an example that this statement cannot always be regarded as implausible and that every single case has to be reconstructed in detail on the basis of all the investigation results.     

Long-term care: common issues and unknowns

All industrialized countries are grappling with a common problem—how to provide assistance of various kinds to their rapidly aging populations. The problem for countries searching for models of efficient and high-quality long-term care (LTC) policies is that fewer than a dozen countries have government-organized, formal LTC policies. Relatively new surveys focused on the elderly populations of about 25 countries could become the basis for research on which LTC policy design choices have desired outcomes for individuals and society and might be replicable in other countries. As in earlier decades when U.S. researchers created the Current Population Survey (CPS) modules and the Survey of Income and Program Participation to answer policy questions, researchers and policy analysts are now at a point where a concerted effort is needed to generate questions that international comparative research on LTC could answer as well as the data needed to address the questions.     

Analysis with the Combur-Test--special aspects in forensic trace examination

The Combur Test is a ready-made and easy-to-use pretest for blood. It is based on the oxidation of tetramethylbenzidine (TMB), which is catalysed by haemoglobin and its derivatives. Despite its high sensitivity, there are many known substances which are responsible for false positive and false negative test results. On the basis of experiments of our own, case reports and the pertinent literature special aspects of the application of the Combur Test in the forensic routine case work are discussed.     

A farewell to urban/rural bias: peripheral finance capitalism in Mexico

Based on a discussion of the structural transformation of the Mexican economy, this paper investigates the impact of financialization on agriculture’s role in capitalist development. It argues that the peripheral financialized economy is a rural–urban economy. On the one hand, agriculture and industry are bifurcated into a growing export sector and a stagnating local economy, and there are no functional ‘developmental’ links between capitalist agriculture and industry. On the other hand, the economic structures have resulted in the consolidation of a huge mass of rural–urban ‘classes of labour’. Capitalist agriculture and industry are linked through and dependent on cheap labour sustaining the export economy. I argue that the current economic formation is not due to ‘urban bias’, ‘rural bias’ or any misallocation of resources among economic sectors. Rather, it can be explained in relation to ‘finance bias’: the taking over of debt relations as the key driving force of economic activities. A major contradiction in peripheral finance capitalism arises from the financing of cheap labour through debt. This is likely to result in new financial crisis, when the contradictions between increasing levels of (private and public) debt, a stagnating domestic economy, and below-subsistence level wages become too large.