Commentary on Seagrave and Grisso: Impressions of the State of the Art

Seagrave and Grisso (2001) questioned the clinical-forensic utility of tests designed to assess juvenile psychopathy. They discussed potential problems with such tests and some avenues for future research. We agree with the points made by Seagrave and Grisso, but believe their critique did not go far enough. The state of the art with respect to the assessment of juvenile psychopathy is like an Impressionist painting: fine from a distance;but the closer you get, the messier it looks. We conclude that although tests of juvenile psychopathy measure something, it is impossible to be sure at this time they are actually measuring psychopathy.     

Racial disparities in access to long-term care: the illusive pursuit of equity

While nursing homes were insulated from civil-rights enforcement at the time of the implementation of the Medicare program and lagged behind other parts of the health sector in providing comparable access to minorities, they are the only providers for which current reporting requirements make it possible to fully assess racial disparities in use and quality of care. We find that African Americans' use of nursing homes in 2000 in the United States was 14 percent higher than Caucasians' use. The largest relative African American use of nursing homes in 2000 took place in the South and West. Average nursing-home case-mix acuity for African Americans and Caucasians were essentially identical, suggesting that shifts in payment incentives have eliminated the selective admission of easy-care private-pay (predominantly Caucasian) patients and helped fuel the growth of private pay home care and assisted living for this segment of the population. While these shifts in incentives helped increase the use of nursing homes by African Americans, a high degree of segregation and disparity in the quality of the nursing homes used by African Americans persists. Parity in use is an illusive benchmark for measuring progress in assuring equity in treatment.     

Social movements,protest movements and cross-ideological coalitions – the Arab uprisings re-appraised

This article explores the utility of social movement theory, reviewing conceptual developments and its application to Middle East cases before examining its relevance to the Arab uprisings. The initial youth-led new social movements were non-ideological, leaderless, and lacking in clear organizational structures. As the protest movements spread, they grew to encompass a diverse array of other movements and actors: The breadth and diversity of these coalitions made the successful achievement of their core demands for regime change possible. However, the persistence of ideological cleavages within them made agreement on the post-regime change political order near impossible.