Adherence to Scheduled Sessions in a Randomized Field Trial of Case Management: The Criminal Justice–Drug Abuse Treatment Studies Transitional Case Management Study

The Transitional Case Management (TCM) study, one of the projects of the Criminal Justice Drug Abuse Treatment Studies (CJ-DATS) cooperative, was a multi-site randomized test of whether a strengths-based case management intervention provided during an inmate’s transition from incarceration to the community increases participation in community substance abuse treatment, enhances access to needed social services, and improves drug use and crime outcomes. As in many intervention studies, TCM experienced a relatively large percentage of treatment-group participants who attended few or no scheduled sessions. The paper discusses issues with regard to participation in community case management sessions, examines patterns of session attendance among TCM participants, and analyzes client and case manager characteristics that are associated with number of sessions attended and with patterns of attendance. The average number of sessions (out of 12) attended was 5.7. Few client or case manager characteristics were found to be significantly related to session attendance. Clinical and research implications of the findings and of adherence in case management generally are discussed.     

Political cartoons as carnivalesque: a multimodal discourse analysis of Argentina’s Humor Registrado magazine

Political cartoons, although generally neglected by academic criticism, are often one of the only forms of socio-political critique permitted during authoritarian rule (Barajas, Rafael. 2000. “The Transformative Power of art: Mexico’s Combat Cartoonists.” NACLA Report on the Americas, 3: 6–41). This paper explores the reasons behind this, reading the genre as a form of Bakhtin’s carnivalesque, a participatory space of oppositional discourse outside the official version with which it has an “ambivalent” relationship (Bakhtin, Mikhael. 1984. Rabelais and His World (Trans Iswolsky H). Bloomington: Indiana University Press) and can be allowed to circulate as a “safety valve” (Holquist, Michael. 1984. “Prologue.” In Rabelais and his World, edited by M. Bakhtin, xiii–xxiii. Bloomington: Indiana University Press) of controlled protest. Drawing on tools of Multimodal Discourse Analysis, Social Semiotics (Kress, Gunther, and Theo Van Leeuwen. 1996. Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. New York: Routledge) and Semiology (Barthes, Roland. 1968. Elements of Semiology. New York: Hill and Wang) for methodological purposes, this study investigates this hypothesis through the political cartoons of the covers of satirical fortnightly publication Humor Registrado during the final year of Argentina’s last dictatorship, 1982–1983. The magazine’s role in challenging the dictatorship is explored through an analysis of its representations of key social actors and events during Argentina’s difficult period of transition from dictatorship to democracy following defeat in the 1982 Malvinas/Falklands War.     

Children’s Perceptions of Intimate Partner Violence: Causes,Consequences, and Coping

Children’s appraisals of conflictual and aggressive parental interactions mediate their effect on children’s adjustment. Previous studies have relied almost exclusively on self-report questionnaires to assess appraisals; consequently we know little about perceptions that occur naturally when children witness interparental aggression. This study employed a semi-structured interview to assess the thoughts and feelings of 34 children (ages 7–12) whose mothers were receiving services at domestic violence agencies, and mothers reported on interparental aggression that took place in the home. Children’s thoughts centered on consequences and efforts to understand why fights occurred. They generally viewed their mother’s partner as responsible for violence, though a significant number viewed both parents as playing a role. Sadness and anger were more common than anxiety, and children often attempted to stop or withdraw from fights or both. When asked why family violence occurs, most focused on perpetrators’ lack of control of anger or personal characteristics, but approximately one-third viewed victims as provoking aggression. These findings support the idea that children actively attempt to understand the causes and consequences of interparental violence and suggest that their perceptions and interpretations are important for understanding the development of beliefs regarding the use of violence in close relationships.     

Recklessness Without the Risk

Criminal Law and Philosophy - Risk is at the core of criminal recklessness, but its exact constitution comes into focus only in unusual cases. In rethinking criminal law, Larry Alexander and...     

Defend,Stand By,or Join In?: The Relative Influence of Moral Identity,Moral Judgment,and Social Self-Efficacy on Adolescents’ Bystander Behaviors in Bullying Situations

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - In bullying situations, adolescent bystanders may help bullied others, just stand by, or join in the antisocial behavior. Current studies have yet to fully...     

Emotional Distress Among LGBT Youth: The Influence of Perceived Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation

The authors evaluated emotional distress among 9th–12th grade students, and examined whether the association between being lesbian, gay, bisexual, and/or transgendered (i.e., “LGBT”) and emotional distress was mediated by perceptions of having been treated badly or discriminated against because others thought they were gay or lesbian. Data come from a school-based survey in Boston, Massachusetts (n = 1,032); 10% were LGBT, 58% were female, and ages ranged from 13 to 19 years. About 45% were Black, 31% were Hispanic, and 14% were White. LGBT youth scored significantly higher on the scale of depressive symptomatology. They were also more likely than heterosexual, non-transgendered youth to report suicidal ideation (30% vs. 6%, p < 0.0001) and self-harm (21% vs. 6%, p < 0.0001). Mediation analyses showed that perceived discrimination accounted for increased depressive symptomatology among LGBT males and females, and accounted for an elevated risk of self-harm and suicidal ideation among LGBT males. Perceived discrimination is a likely contributor to emotional distress among LGBT youth.     

Personality and the Intergenerational Transmission of Educational Attainment: Evidence from Germany

Research based in the United States, with its relatively open educational system, has found that personality mediates the relationship between parents’ and child’s educational attainment and this mediational pattern is especially beneficial to students from less-educated households. Yet in highly structured, competitive educational systems, personality characteristics may not predict attainment or may be more or less consequential at different points in the educational career. We examine the salience of personality in the educational attainment process in the German educational system. Data come from a longitudinal sample of 682 17 to 25 year-olds (54% female) from the 2005 and 2015 German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Results show that adolescent personality traits—openness, neuroticism, and conscientiousness—are associated with educational attainment, but personality plays a negligible role in the intergenerational transmission of education. Personality is influential before the decision about the type of secondary degree that a student will pursue (during adolescence). After that turning point, when students have entered different pathways through the system, personality is less salient. Cross-national comparisons in a life course framework broaden the scope of current research on non-cognitive skills and processes of socioeconomic attainment, alerting the analyst to the importance of both institutional structures and the changing importance of these skills at different points in the life course.