Troubled Children and Children in Trouble: Redefining the Role of the Juvenile Court in the Lives of Children

This Essay considers the emerging research in the area of dual‐jurisdiction children, often referred to as “crossover kids”—those currently or previously involved in maltreatment proceedings who have also committed delinquent acts. Part I describes the development of the juvenile courts in the early twentieth century. Part II of this Essay questions the need to “track” children along one legal path or another and points to the pitfalls of providing services to some children through a criminal justice paradigm instead of treating all children through a social work paradigm. Finally, Part III advocates a redesign of the juvenile court—a return to its roots—to better enable a court to consider the needs of the whole child, in context with the needs of her/his family.     

Learning from the news: Experiments in media,modality, and reporting about star wars

This study explores what ordinary American adults learn from news reported in different communications modalities and media. In the first experiment, the text of news items about Star Wars is held constant but the communications modality varies. In the second experiment, news reports reflect the journalistic style of television, newspaper, and magazine reporting. In the modality experiment, subjects learned equally well from the audiovisual, audio, or print versions of the stories. In the media experiment, subjects in the magazine and television conditions gained substantially more information than those in the newspaper condition; but when subjects were asked to apply information to policy judgments about Star Wars, magazine readers were more dovish than television viewers. For Star Wars news, it appears that the content and characteristic style of a news medium have important effects on news comprehension, particularly for the least informed and least interested members of the public.     

Women and conflict transformation: Influences,roles, and experiences

At first glance it would appear that despite women's vital participation in peace-making processes, they are for the most part marginalised or belittled. However, moving away from the idea of women as outsiders and/or victims, we find evidence of their involvement in projects initiated and driven by them and/or in activities in which they work in equal roles alongside men. Many women in conflict areas are advocating and working effectively with approaches to lasting positive peace that transcend traditional male-dominated structures and ideologies. Large numbers of ordinary women, men, and children are working mostly behind the scenes to achieve justice and equality. Women are very much involved but get far less recognition than men. The scale and diversity of largely unacknowledged but effective grassroots peace efforts worldwide, particularly among women, requires much greater recognition by the international community. This article is based on a research project that uses an oral testimony approach and a multicultural perspective to give voice to women working in the field in a wide range of transformational processes.     

A special police unit: Intimate partner violence and perceived helpfulness of services received

To evaluate the perceived effectiveness of domestic violence assistance offered by a special unit of an urban police department, 90 women having filed assault, stalking, or harassment charges on an intimate were interviewed. Threats of abuse, physical abuse, and stalking were measured—86% of the women reported experiencing severe abuse and 60% of the women had been stalked. On follow-up interview—41% of the women reported the abuse had stopped, while 7% said the abuse had decreased. Half of the women had used information provided by the unit, with 86% of the women considering police services received as being helpful. Authors' Note: Pam Willson, Ph.D., is a post-doctoral research associate at Texas Woman's University in Houston. Judith McFarlane, Dr. PH, currently holds the Parry Chair in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention at the University. Ann Malecha, Ph.D., is assistant professor of nursing at the University. Dorothy Lemmey, Ph.D., is associate professor of Nursing at Lakeland College.