Does Training and Coaching Matter? An 18-Month Evaluation of a Community Supervision Model

During the last decade, several formalized approaches have been developed to improve the effectiveness of probation and parole by implementing evidence-based research into community supervision practices. A key component of these new approaches are the use of officer coaching sessions, which are designed to improve officer fidelity in the core correctional skill areas. This study explores the impact of an initial training and monthly coaching sessions in the Effective Practices in Community Supervision (EPICS) model on probation and parole officer use of core correctional skills. The results examine the average quarterly officer use of skills over an 18-month follow-up period based on training status (i.e., trained versus untrained officers) in the EPICS model. This study adds to the understanding of the role training and coaching may play in improving officer use of core correctional skills. Policy implications and recommendations for future research are also discussed.     

Single,straight, wants kids: media framing of single,heterosexual fatherhood via assisted reproduction

The new reproductive technologies have made possible various postmodern family forms. I highlight an emerging form that has received little attention: single fathers by choice (SFCs), created by single men using egg donation and surrogacy. I focus on heterosexual SFCs, which have been largely ignored in the scholarly literature even as gay and lesbian parenthood have increasingly become topics of feminist inquiry. This type of fatherhood raises several important questions for gender and family scholars about the ‘traditional’ family, the relationship between masculinity and fatherhood, and men’s own desires for parenthood without a female partner. I analyze US media framing to explore cultural sense-making of SFCs. While media framing cannot tell us about men’s lived experiences as intentional single fathers, it does point to larger discourses that potentially impact these men as they engage in non-normative fathering. I identify three core themes within the media frames: (1) viewing men and women as similar, but ultimately different, (2) addressing the tension between bachelorhood and fatherhood, and (3) representing the gender of paternal desire in multiple, conflicting ways. Overall, I argue that further investigations of SFCs can illuminate issues about men’s desires for children and agency in becoming fathers.     

Cognitive Vulnerabilities to Depression for Adolescents in Single-Mother and Two-Parent Families

Although research consistently suggests that adolescents in single-mother families are at increased risk for depression, the mechanisms that explain this relationship are unclear. In a community sample of adolescents (N?=?368; ages 12–16; 50?% female; 50?% White) and their mothers (42?% single), adolescents completed measures of depressive symptoms, rumination, and depressogenic inferential style at baseline and two yearly follow-ups. Mothers reported on stressful events that occurred in the child’s life from birth until baseline. Adolescents raised by single mothers, relative to partnered mothers, experienced more childhood stressors and higher rumination levels at 1-year follow-up. Additionally, higher rumination mediated the relationship between single motherhood and greater youth depressive symptoms at the 2-year follow-up. Clinical implications and developmental considerations are discussed.     

Cortisol Stress Response Variability in Early Adolescence: Attachment,Affect and Sex

Attachment, affect, and sex shape responsivity to psychosocial stress. Concurrent social contexts influence cortisol secretion, a stress hormone and biological marker of hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis activity. Patterns of attachment, emotion status, and sex were hypothesized to relate to bifurcated, that is, accentuated and attenuated, cortisol reactivity. The theoretical framework for this study posits that multiple individual differences mediate a cortisol stress response. The effects of two psychosocial stress interventions, a modified Trier Social Stress Test for Teens and the Frustration Social Stressor for Adolescents were developed and investigated with early adolescents. Both of these protocols induced a significant stress reaction and evoked predicted bifurcation in cortisol responses; an increase or decrease from baseline to reactivity. In Study I, 120 predominantly middle-class, Euro-Canadian early adolescents with a mean age of 13.43 years were studied. The girls’ attenuated cortisol reactivity to the public performance stressor related significantly to their self-reported lower maternal-attachment and higher trait-anger. In Study II, a community sample of 146 predominantly Euro-Canadian middle-class youth, with an average age of 14.5 years participated. Their self-reports of higher trait-anger and trait-anxiety, and lower parental attachment by both sexes related differentially to accentuated and attenuated cortisol reactivity to the frustration stressor. Thus, attachment, affect, sex, and the stressor contextual factors were associated with the adrenal-cortical responses of these adolescents through complex interactions. Further studies of individual differences in physiological responses to stress are called for in order to clarify the identities of concurrent protective and risk factors in the psychosocial stress and physiological stress responses of early adolescents.     

Understanding the Influence of Mental Health Diagnosis and Gender on Placement Decisions for Justice-Involved Youth

Justice-involved youth have high rates of psychiatric diagnoses, and these youth are often placed out-of-home, although evidence identifies several negative implications of juvenile confinement, especially for youth with psychopathology. Furthermore, youth in the justice system may be processed differently based on gender. As males and females tend to manifest symptoms differently, the psychopathology of youth may act to moderate the relationship between gender and placement in the juvenile justice system. The present study used a large, diverse sample (n?=?9?851, 19.8?% female) to examine whether youth placed in various types of out-of-home facilities differed in terms of externalizing, internalizing, substance use, or comorbid disorders, and to determine the predictive value of mental health diagnoses in placement decisions. The moderation effect of psychopathology and substance use on the relationship between gender and placement also was explored. The results indicated that each type of disorder differed across placements, with internalizing being most prevalent in non-secure, and externalizing, comorbid, and substance use being most prevalent in secure settings. Mental health diagnoses improved the prediction of placement in each out-of-home placement beyond legal and demographic factors such that externalizing and substance use disorders decreased the likelihood of placement in non-secure settings, and internalizing, externalizing, and substance use disorders increased the likelihood of placement in secure and state-secure facilities. The relationship between internalizing pathology and placement in more secure facilities was moderated by externalizing pathology. The relationship between gender and placement was significantly moderated by mental health such that females with mental health diagnoses receive less secure placements. Implications for policymakers and practitioners are discussed, as well as implications for reforming juvenile justice within a developmental approach.     

drones,swarms and becoming-insect: feminist utopias and posthuman politics

Insects and ‘the swarm’ as metaphors and objects of research have inspired works in the genres of science fiction and horror; social and political theorists; and the development of war-fighting technologies such as ‘drone swarms’, which function as robot/insect hybrids. Contemporary developments suggest that the future of warfare will not be ‘robots’ as technological, individualised substitutions for idealised (masculine) warfighters, but warfighters understood as swarms: insect metaphors for non-centrally organised problem-solvers that will become technologies of racialisation. As such, contemporary feminist analysis requires an analysis of the politics of life and death in the insect and the swarm, which, following Braidotti (2002), cannot be assumed to be a mere metaphor or representation of political life, but an animating materialist logic. The swarm is not only a metaphor but also a central mode of biopolitical and necropolitical war, with the ‘terrorist’ enemy represented as swarm-like as well. In analysing the relations of assemblage and antagonism in the war ontologies of the drone swarm, I seek inspiration from what Hayles (1999, p. 47) describes as a double vision that ‘looks simultaneously at the power of simulation and at the materialities that produce it’. I discuss various representations and manifestations of swarms and insect life in science/speculative fiction, from various presentations of the ‘Borg’ in Star Trek (1987–1994, 1995–2001, 1996), Alien (1979) and The Fly (1958, 1986) to more positive representations of the ‘becoming-insect’ as possible feminist utopia in Gilman’s Herland (2015 [1915]) and Tiptree’s Houston, Houston, Do You Read? (1989 [1976]). Posthuman warfare also contains the possibilities of both appropriating and rewriting antagonisms of masculine and feminine in the embodiment of the subject of war in the swarm. This piece seeks to analyse new ways of feminist theorising of the relations of power and violence in the embodiment of war as the swarm.     

The venturous bid for the independence of Catalonia

Following an ambiguous constitutional compromise for democratization, the territorial decentralization of the Spanish state developed by means of political party competition, exchanges, and bargaining. Hence, the so-called state of autonomies was characterized as “non-institutional federalism” [Colomer, Josep M. 1998. “The Spanish ‘State of Autonomies’: Non-institutional Federalism.” West European Politics 21 (4): 40–52]. In the most recent period, competition and instability have intensified. New developments include, on one side, attempts at recentralizating the state and, on the other side, demands and mobilizations for Catexit, that is, the independence of Catalonia from Spain, which resulted in sustained inter-territorial conflict. This article addresses these recent changes with a focus on the relations between the Spanish and the Catalan governments. The political changes were analyzed as a result of opportunities and incentives offered by a loose institutional framework and the subsequent competitive strategies of extreme party leaders.     

“Unwilling Cocoons”: Boko Haram's War Against Women

The kidnapping of 276 girls at Government Secondary School Chibok, Borno State, Nigeria, on 14 April 2014 has brought into international prominence the organization Jama'atu Ahlis Suna Lidda'awati Wal Jihad or Boko Haram. This incident heralded a new trajectory in Boko Haram's tactics and strategies. This article focuses on Boko Haram's strategic deployment of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) against women. The gendered performativity of Boko Haram, its methodology for sourcing for women and young girls, and its concomitant utilitarian/instrumental approach vis-à-vis SGBV against women are analyzed against the backdrop of the political economy and patriarchal ideational infrastructure of the Nigerian society. The article argues that Boko Haram's deployment of SGBV against women is an extension of the “repertoire of violence” ingrained in the sociopolitical and cultural milieu of Boko Haram's primary area of operation. Boko Haram's instrumental approach to SGBV is fourfold and hinges on the sociobiological utility of women. Boko Haram construes women as the bearers of its future despite its brutality toward them. The consequence is a strategic plan for procreation of a new generation of children raised through the cyclical constellation of mass rape of women, consequent impregnation and kidnapping the offspring of such rapes. Overall, this article contributes to the burgeoning scholarly literature on Boko Haram's terrorist activities.