Policy Matters

TOP-US O-GE SIT, USE LUN LEVA. HEL DEKA O-VIV-US GAN DA KOVI. IN UKI-US HUZI, ERS-MANI REVA. UD ZITA DA OGL ETO UVO BOVI. TATAT-US SEMI OF AVE SOMA

Above the dirty city, a white moon rises. Frost covers the dead garden and flowers. In their houses, peasants dream. I sit and watch these gray boxes. Hidden seeds of the future are sleeping.

Rick Harrison (translation of the original from the artificial language UNI)

The paradox of race in America is that our common destiny is more pronounced and imperiled precisely when our divisions are deeper?…?There is no escape from our interracial interdependence, yet our enforced racial hierarchy dooms us as a nation—the unmaking of any democratic order.

Cornel West (2001 West, C. 2001. Race Matters., , 2nd, New York: Vintage Books.  [Google Scholar], 9)

Dear George Bush: I remember racial profiling, and how all of these other constitutional violations have been used for centuries, especially against the African-American community, and that minority citizens and immigrants have been subject to some of the grossest infringements of civil liberties—the two words that uphold the very power of democracy—for a very long time.

Kristin Prevallet     

The suffragist and the “average woman”

This paper questions the marginality of women's suffrage to the new social history of women in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Britain. In so doing, it seeks to challenge any notion of the suffragist and the “average woman” as absolutely distinct categories. Its argument draws on two major revisions underway in the historiography of this field: firstly, the growing recognition that “votes for women” was not simply a single-issue, equal rights demand, reflecting only a restricted liberal perspective; secondly, the equally significant insistence on the need to apply more extended definitions of both the “political” and the “public” to women's history in this period. The autobiographical writings of Helena Swanwick, Hannah Mitchell and Mary Gawthorpe, it is argued, suggest that the meaning of the vote lies in the mesh experienced by such suffragists between the politics of ordinary, everyday life and their subsequent involvement in the formal politics of parliament and political parties.     

The mediating role of self-regulation between intrafamilial violence and mental health adjustment in incarcerated male adolescents

This article investigates the relation between history of intrafamilial violence and self-regulatory capacity, cognitive processing, and mental health adjustment in incarcerated adolescents. Adolescents were incarcerated at the time of the study for various violent offenses, ranging from persistent delinquency to sexual assault (n = 115). A model is proposed that posits that self-regulation, cognitive ability, and cognitive processing are integral to the relation between intrafamilial violence and mental health function. The primary hypothesis of the study tests this mediation model. The relations between mental health, cognitive processing, self-regulation, and intrafamilial violence are also examined. The study was conducted during two sessions at a juvenile facility in the Midwest using survey measures, academic and intelligence testing, and cognitive tasks. Youth were between the ages of 13 and 20. Approximately 70% were previously diagnosed with a disability. Significant Pearson's correlations were found between seven out of eight mental health subscales of the Youth Self-Report (YSR) and intrafamilial violence history. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the role of cognitive processing in the association between intrafamilial violence and mental health function. Nonverbal or performance deficits, a significant difference between verbal skills and nonverbal skills, were related to intrafamilial violence. Self-regulation partially mediated the relation between intrafamilial violence and mental health function. Self-regulation ability may be compromised by intrafamilial violence and be a precursor to both internalizing and externalizing mental health problem in incarcerated youth. Educational, clinical, and research implications are discussed.     

Typologies of Violence Exposure and Cognitive Processing in Incarcerated Male Adolescents

Incarcerated youth experience high rates of violence exposure (VE), cognitive processing (CP) deficits, and mental health (MH) problems. It is not clear whether VE combined with CP deficits are particularly salient risk factors for MH dysfunction. Male incarcerated youth offenders (n?=?115) completed standardized self-reports of MH and VE. CP was measured with executive functioning tasks and academic assessments. Person-centered Ward’s Squared Euclidian Distance cluster analysis was used to examine unique patterns of CP and VE. Cluster analysis defined five distinct profiles of MH functioning, CP, and VE rates within incarcerated adolescents. Two groups, with high rates of VE and CP deficits, showed high rates of MH problems. Linear techniques may obscure important differences within this population.