The impact of disrupted caregiving for juvenile sexual offenders

ABSTRACT

Research that attempts to understand why young people commit sex crimes points to an array of family factors that may uniquely contribute to sexual offending over general juvenile delinquency. This study examines the potentially moderating role of disrupted caregiving in the relationship between offending and caregiver-child relationship quality. Two distinct moderators were tested: gender of caregiver and biological relationship between caregiver and child. Results indicate that juvenile sexual offenders have particularly poor relationships with their primary caregivers compared to incarcerated non-sexual offenders and community controls. Furthermore, sexual offenders with male caregivers were found to have lower relationship quality scores than sexual offenders with female caregivers. In contrast, sexual offenders raised by non-biological caregivers reported better relationship quality than did offenders raised by their biological parents. These findings suggest opportunities for early intervention, before caregiving is disrupted.     

Sex, race/ethnicity, and context in school-associated student homicides

This study assessed the importance of sex, race/ethnicity, and geographic context for incidents of school-associated student homicides between July 1, 1994 and June 30, 1999, covering 5 academic years. Using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention School Associated Violent Deaths Study (n = 125 incidents), we compared percentages and medians of victim, offender, motive, and school characteristics for incidents by geographic context and race/ethnicity of the offenders. Most incidents involved urban areas (53.6%), Black and Latino offenders and victims, moderately high youth poverty, and male on male violence (77.6%) driven by disputes and gang-related motives. Suburban area incidents (31.2%) often involved offenders and victims of a different race/ethnicity (51.3%). Multiple victims and White offenders were more common in rural areas (15.2%). More than 50% of the rural incidents involved male offenders and female victims. White offender incidents more often included multiple victims and female victims while Black and Latino offenders more often included single victims of the same sex. These results emphasize the utility of an incident-based analysis of school-associated student homicides in highlighting important variations by intersections of sex, race/ethnicity, and geographic context.     

Risk-based crime statistics: A forecasting comparison for burglary and auto theft

A major criticism of official statistics on crime is that they use inappropriate bases for computing rates. Here we investigate whether computing crime rates that contain in their denominators the number of exposures to risk of a specific event (e.g., residential burglary and auto theft) provides more accurate forecasts than employing the traditional FBI denominators as a base (e.g., the number of auto thefts and burglaries per 100, 000 persons living in the United States). Single equation, macrodynamic structural models are fitted to both the “traditional” and “alternative” forms of computing auto theft and burglary rates over the twenty-seven-year period from 1947–1974, in order to determine how well they perform on statistical and substantive grounds over the estimation period. Ex-post forecasts of the 1975–1979 observed crime rates, used to gauge the accuracy of these models, reveal few differences between the two kinds of rates in terms of how well they forecast. Both types of rates forecast well with the exogenous variables employed here and lead to similar substantive conclusions. The forecasts of the “traditional” rates are consistently, but only slightly, more accurate than those of the “alternative” rates (in most cases the differences are less than 1 percent). It is argued that the criticism of official data may be overstated and that little benefit accrues from the modification of the rate base for some purposes.     

The role of mandates in third party intervention

Conclusion Mandate, as a noun, is the charge that authorizes and legitimizes an intervenor's actions. The intervenor may act at the bidding of the disputants or of third party stakeholders. Mandate provides a functional taxonomy of intervenors—from go-betweens to conciliators to mediators to arbitrators to dictators. Mandate affords a perspective for analyzing initiation, process, and evaluation of intervention. Useful heuristics have been proposed for categorizing the ways in which intervenors restricted to persuasion, such as mediators, can attempt to change beliefs. Future work might seek to determine conditions under which an intervenor's persuasive abilities may change beliefs about available alternatives, about the probability that the alternative will lead to certain outcomes, and about the value of the outcome. Sanda Kaufman is Assistant Professor of Urban Studies at the College of Urban Affairs, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, Ohio 44115.George T. Duncan is Professor of Statistics at the School of Urban and Public Affairs, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Penn. 15213.The authors thank Mark Kamlet for many valuable discussions, Linda Argote for her thoughtful suggestions, and Christina Duncan for her criticial reading.     

Adult children of alcoholics: An exploration of Axis II disorders and replicated dysfunctional family patterns

This study examined Axis II personality disorders and replicated dysfunctional family patterns in adult children of alcoholics (ACAs). Parental and spousal confirming and disconfirming communication patterns, and replicated physical, sexual, and emotional abuses were explored. Sixty ACAs were assessed using structured clinical interviews and self-report measures. Sixty-five percent met DSM-IIIR criteria for one or more Axis II disorders. Failure to feel confirmed (valued) by one's alcoholic parent was significantly associated with ACA Axis II disorders and alcohol abuse. Significant relationships between physical and sexual abuses and Axis II pathology were found. Replication of childhood abuse and dysfunctional communication was also noted.