Perceptions of Appropriate Court-Ordered Sanctions for Situational Couple Violence Offenders: A Pilot Study

Over recent decades, social scientists have documented a fluctuation in community members’ perceptions of the appropriate social and legal responses to intimate partner violence. A lack of response to the social problem was followed by a punitive response during the 1980s and 1990s. A therapeutic response in the early 21st century followed. In this pilot study, which is a fully crossed factorial survey, we measured community members’ perceptions of appropriate responses to intimate partner violence, specifically situational couple violence. The analysis of 1,500 judgments showed that most respondents perceived community-based counseling as the appropriate sanction for situational couple violence that results in minor, physical injuries. Perceptions were influenced by victim and offender characteristics, and by the respondents’ characteristics.     

Determining the Toxicological Significance of Pregabalin in Fatalities

Pregabalin has become more widely prescribed and abused in recent years but is still not always included in laboratory analysis. An LC‐MS‐MS method has been developed and applied to measure pregabalin in 93 postmortem cases, including drug‐related deaths, alternative causes of death, and fatalities where pregabalin was likely to have contributed to death. Other drugs or alcohol was detected, and the most common drug types (in decreasing frequency) were antidepressants, opioids, benzodiazepines, opiates, alcohol, antipsychotics, cocaine, cardiac drugs, amphetamines, cannabis, anticonvulsants, and antihistamines. New psychoactive substances (methoxphenidine and synthetic cannabinoids) were only found in two cases. The results provide further data to assist in evaluating the significance of postmortem pregabalin concentrations and a toxicologically significant concentration of 25 mg/L is proposed. Pregabalin, especially with concomitant use of other CNS depressant drugs, presents a significant toxicological risk and existing laboratory protocols should be reviewed for their suitability to detect pregabalin.     

Putting the market in its place: food security in three Mapuche communities in southern Chile

This article analyzes the impact of state policies since the 1970s on household food security in several Mapuche communities in the Araucanía region of Chile (Region IX). The author highlights key transformations in the national economy and food system and endeavors to link those to local phenomena, in particular the absorption of the local livelihood strategies and food systems into capitalist markets and the high incidences of food insecurity. The article concludes that a reconceptualization of macroeconomic and indigenous policies are required to rebuild the material and social foundations of rural Mapuche communities that provide the bases from which their inhabitants can reconstruct a mutually beneficial relationship with the broader Chilean society and avert the continued acceleration of tension and violence.     

The Roles of Mothers’ Neighborhood Perceptions and Specific Monitoring Strategies in Youths’ Problem Behavior

The neighborhood context can interfere with parents’ abilities to effectively monitor their children, but may be related to specific monitoring strategies in different ways. The present study examines the importance of mothers’ perceptions of neighborhood disorganization for the specific monitoring strategies they use and how each of these strategies are related to youths’ alcohol use and delinquency. The sample consists of 415 mother–child dyads recruited from urban and suburban communities in Western New York state. Youths were between 10 and 16 years of age (56% female), and were mostly Non-Hispanic White and African American (45.3 and 36.5%, respectively). Structural equation modeling shows that mothers who perceive greater neighborhood problems use more rule-setting strategies, but report lower levels of knowledge of their children’s whereabouts. Knowledge of whereabouts is related to less youth alcohol use and delinquency through its association with lowered peer substance use, whereas rule-setting is unrelated to these outcomes. Thus, mothers who perceive greater problems in their neighborhoods use less effective monitoring strategies. Prevention programs could address parental monitoring needs based upon neighborhood differences, tailoring programs for different neighborhoods. Further, parents could be apprised of the limitations of rule-setting, particularly in the absence of monitoring their child’s whereabouts.     

Economic Development,Violent Leader Removal,and Democratization

This article argues that autocratic regime strength plays a critical mediating role in the link between economic development and democracy. Looking at 167 countries from 1875 to 2004, I find that development strengthens autocratic regimes, as indicated by a reduced likelihood of violent leader removal. Simultaneously, greater development predicts democratization, but only if a violent turnover has occurred in the recent past. Hence, development can cause democratization, but only in distinctive periods of regime vulnerability. Although development’s stabilizing and democratizing forces roughly balance out within autocracies, they reinforce each other within democracies, resolving the puzzle of why economic development has a stronger effect on democratic stability than on democratization. Further, the theory extends to any variable that predicts violent leader removal and democracy following such violence, pointing to broad unexplored patterns of democratic development.     

Fatalities Due to Failure of Continuous Subcutaneous Insulin Infusion Devices: A Report of Six Cases

Diabetes mellitus type 1 and type 2 are diseases characterized by impaired regulation of blood glucose due to decreased insulin production and insulin resistance, respectively. Management of diabetes mellitus often requires injection of exogenous insulin. Continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion (CSII or insulin pump) is a diabetes treatment modality utilizing a device to aid in regulation of glycemic control. Malfunctions in device components can have rare fatal consequences. Described in this report are six fatalities due to one such malfunction, the failure of plastic cannulas of CSII devices to penetrate the skin and deliver insulin, resulting in fatal diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA). The cases derive from four different death investigation systems. For each case, scene and autopsy findings are presented, as well as selected toxicology and histology findings. These cases illustrate the importance of careful examination of CSII devices in death investigations and introduce a discussion on discrepant manner of death classifications.     

Community Awareness of Patron Banning in Australia: a Brief Report

Patron banning involves banning individuals who engage in problematic behaviour in night time entertainment precincts from certain areas. Patron banning is used in most jurisdictions within Australia despite a lack of evidence regarding its effectiveness. To have an impact, patron banning should act as a deterrent for problematic behaviour at a range of licenced premises (individual and general deterrence), as well as constituting as an immediate punishment which prevents future problem behaviours at the establishment(s) from which an individual has been banned (incapacitation). However, for deterrence to occur, the general public must be aware of the existence and basic functions of patron banning. Therefore, the aim of this study is to determine the level of public awareness of patron banning and its use. One hundred seventy-two participants anonymously completed an online questionnaire, comprising two sections: (1) demographic information and (2) participant’s awareness, understanding, and previous experience with patron banning. The majority of participants indicated being aware of patron banning, but most did not know any details about it. The results of this study indicate that while individuals are aware that banning powers exist, they are less aware of how these powers are used in practice. In this way, patron banning fails to fulfil the requirements of a general deterrent. Given its expanding use, further research is needed to determine if patron banning does affect the behaviour of those receiving bans and of the community more generally.     

Corporations,Sovereignty and the Religion of Neoliberalism

This article seeks to contribute to the thinking of forms of corporateness, sociality and authority in the context of, but also beyond, neoliberalism, the neoliberal state and neoliberal accounts of the corporation. It considers neoliberalism in relation to the theological genealogies of modernity, politics and economy, and the way in which neoliberalism itself functions as a secular religion—one which intensifies liberal individualism and involves a blind faith in the market redefining all social interactions in terms of contract. I turn to the theological genealogies of sovereignty and economy, and of the corporation, as a way of grounding a radical consideration of collectivity and sociality. For, while the rise of neoliberalism is associated with the growth of multi-national or trans-national corporations, the privatisation of state assets and the corporatisation of public institutions, each of these involve not a diminishing of the state or the project of state sovereignty but rather its reformulation, reaffirmation and intensification. The corporation, despite being redefined as the interaction of fundamentally self-willing and contracting individuals operating in the market, is still fundamentally intertwined with state sovereignty. Attempts to address or respond to corporate power need to go beyond calls for greater regulation of corporations, increased corporate social responsibility or even the desire to eliminate corporate personhood. Rather, what is required is a greater emphasis on the notion of corporateness that undergirds the theological genealogy of the corporation—for if neoliberalism functions as a religion then part of the solution may be a theological one.     

Broadcasting Badness: Violence,Identity, and Performance in the Online Gang Rap Scene

This study contributes to an emerging literature both detailing Internet usage among street gangs and gang members and exploring how street life is presented in underground rap music. We present a content and cultural analysis of 78 rap videos posted on YouTube by gang members in Buffalo, New York, between 2009 and the first few months of 2015. Violence was the most dominant and consistent theme in the videos. We find that online space operates like a virtual street corner enabling individuals and groups to perform social and collective gang identities that emphasize and exaggerate their capacities for lethal violence. Online gang rap videos use violent imagery, revisit violent events, and reference gang conflicts to enhance both gang myth-making and social or collective identity development.     

The Moral Justification for the Preventive Detention of Terrorists

The moral, as opposed to legal, justification for the preventive detention of terrorists is the topic of this article, and, in particular, for the preventive detention of members of extremist Islamist terrorist organizations, such as Islamic State (IS) and Al Qaeda (AQ). The article argues that preventive detention of terrorists is morally justified under certain circumstances. Its argument for preventive detention of terrorists is analogous to that used to detain enemy combatants as prisoners of war. However, rather than relying on the possession of the properties definitive of the legal status of a combatant, it relies on demonstrable possession of constitutive features of functionally integrated membership of a terrorist organization. Membership in this sense of a terrorist organization creates the presumption of a standing intention to commit murder, or at least to assist others to do so, in the service of the organization’s political ends.