Nonsex offenses committed by child molesters: findings from a longitudinal study

This study, which used a prospective as well as a retrospective methodology, examined the criminal records of 30 child molesters prior to, and up to 10 years after an index event of sexual abuse for which they were convicted: 73% had convictions for other offenses, 60% had convictions for offenses other than sex offenses, 50% had convictions for property offenses, 27% had convictions for offenses involving violence, and 23% had convictions for drug offenses. Offending levels for nonsex offenses were significantly higher than the general adult male population. Any theory concerning the dynamics of sex offending against children needs to account for the level of nonsex offenses committed by child molesters.     

Barcelona 2002: law, ethics, and human rights. "I have no watch, but I haven't missed a dose"

Anyone who was fortunate enough to hear Fred Minandi speak in Barcelona must have been moved by what he had to say. Mr Minandi is a person living with HIV/AIDS from Chiradzulu, Malawi, who spoke at Time to Treat: Transforming AIDS Treatment from Right to Reality, a satellite meeting of the XIV International Conference on AIDS held on 7 July 2002, and sponsored by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and the Health Global Access Project. His presentation is a passionate, first-hand account of how antiretroviral therapy has transformed lives, how it has given hope to people, how it has helped to reduce the stigma against AIDS in his community, and how it has contributed to prevention efforts.     

Legitimacy Problems in Deliberative Democracy

The classic accounts of deliberative democracy are also accounts of legitimacy: 'that outcomes are legitimate to the extent they receive reflective assent through participation in authentic deliberation by all those subject to the decision in question' ( Dryzek, 2001 , p. 651). And yet, in complex societies deliberative participation by all those affected by collective decision-making is extremely implausible. There are also legitimacy problems with the demanding procedural requirements which deliberation imposes on participants. Given these problems, deliberative democracy seems unable to deliver legitimate outcomes as it defines them.
Focusing on the problem of scale, this paper offers a tentative solution using representation, a concept which is itself problematic. Along the way, the paper highlights issues with the legitimate role of experts, the different legitimate uses of statistical and electoral representation, and differences between the research and democratic imperatives driving current attempts to put deliberative principles into practice, illustrated with a case from a Leicester health policy debate. While much work remains to be done on exactly how the principles arrived at might be transformed into working institutions, they do offer a means of criticising existing deliberative practice.     

Responsibility Budgeting at the Air Force Materiel Command

The case study reported here challenges conventional wisdom about the feasibility of implementing responsibility budgeting and accounting practices in U.S. government. A variant of this practice took root and operated effectively in a large federal agency—the Air Force Materiel Command—during the period of study. Contrary to conventional wisdom, implementing a meaningful form of responsibility budgeting and accounting does not require changes in public management policies or systemic institutional reform. However, the evidence shows that instituting practices of responsibility budgeting and accounting may require considerable administrative ingenuity in adapting the generic practice to the situation at hand.     

The assessment of mother-child interactions in physically abusive and nonabusive families

Physically abusive mothers and their children were compared with matched nonabusive mothers and their children in a laboratory playroom setting. Parenting skills, as well as mother-child interaction patterns, were assessed using three different tasks designed to create varying levels of parental stress and child frustration. Mother-child interactions were observed and coded. Questionnaire measures of knowledge of child behavior and a measure of social desirability were also administered. Discriminant function analyses revealed that 10 of the 11 abusive mothers and 10 of the 12 control mothers could be correctly identified, representing an 87% classification rate. The main difference between the two groups was in the overall rate of activity. Abusive mothers engaged in significantly less behavior toward their children than control mothers; behavior rates were essentially similar for both groups of children. Abusive mothers contingently praised appropriate behavior significantly less often than controls, and abused children complied significantly less often to requests. The implications of these findings for the understanding and treatment of abusive parent-child interactions were discussed.