Use of a television crime-drama series to promote legal understanding in mentally ill, incompetent defendants: a pilot study

Videotaped material is used for educational purposes in many areas of medicine. In forensic facilities, programs designed to restore competency to stand trial (CST) in incompetent, mentally ill defendants have utilized videotaped courtroom proceedings as learning tools. This pilot study reviewed the progress of incompetent defendants (N = 15) who participated in a program that utilized videotaped segments of the television crime-drama "Law & Order", among other techniques, to promote CST in individuals deemed unfit to stand trial. The authors hypothesized that participation in at least one cycle of the Competency Restoration Group (CRG)'s curriculum would be associated with improvement in the areas of understanding, reasoning and appreciation. In order to assess whether the group was beneficial to the patient's treatment goal of competency restoration, patients were screened using the MacArthur Competence Assessment Tool-Criminal Adjudication (MacCAT-CA) prior to starting the group and after completing a cycle of the group's curriculum. The Wilcoxon signed ranks test was employed to analyze the results from the pre- and post-group MacCAT-CA testing. The tests yielded significant (p < 0.005) post-test differences in the hypothesized direction for each of the three subsections: Understanding, Reasoning, and Appreciation as well as a significant post test improvement in the total MacCAT-CA scores. These results suggest that a didactic program, using a popular crime drama series, can be effective in facilitating learning in competency restoration programs. Limitations of this study include its lack of a control group and small population.     

Quebec's Caisse de dépôt et placement: tool of nationalism

Abstract: As Canada's sixth-ranking financial institution, holding a major equity share in several of the country's largest corporations, Quebec's Caisse de dkppbt et placement has been the object of criticism and suspicion from the business community and even the federal government. But despite the important questions raised by the investment activities of the Caisse, this agency has not been subject to the careful analysis which is warranted by its size and role as an instrument of economic development. Questions regarding the precise nature of the relationship between the Quebec government and decision-makers in the Caisse, and between the Caisse and the corporations in which it holds a major equity stake, remain unanswered. This article examines the role of the Caisse as an instrument of economic policy. In the first section the origins and growth of the Caisse are placed in the theoretical context of economic nationalism. The second part of this article examines the investment activities of the Caisse since the PQ came to power. We argue that there is little evidence to support claims that the investment policy of this agency is influenced in a direct and systematic way by the political objectives of the PQ government. Sommaire. La Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, étant classée au sixième rang parmi les institutions financières et ayant acquis la majorité des actions ordinaires de plusieurs des plus grandes entreprises du pays, a été le sujet de critiques et suspicions de la part de la communauté des affaires et même du gouvernement fédéral. Malgré les importantes questions qui se posent en raison de ses activités d'investissements, la Caisse n'a pas été assujettie à la scrupuleuse analyse que justifieraient sa grandeur et son rôle en tant qu'instrument de développement économique. Les questions, traitant de la nature précise des relations entre le gouvemement québécois et les dirigeants de la Caisse, et celles de la Caisse et des corporations dans lesquelles elle détient une part majoritaire, restent sans réponses.     

Child care quality in different state policy contexts

Using data from the Child Care Supplement to the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, we test associations between the quality of child care and state child care policies. These data, which include observations of child care and interviews with care providers and mothers for 777 children across 14 states, allow for comparisons across a broader range of policy regimes and care settings than earlier research on this topic. Using multilevel linear and logistic models, we found that more generous subsidy policies (that is, greater investment, higher income eligibility) were positively associated with the quality of care in nonprofit child care centers, as well as with the use of center care. The stringency of regulations (that is, teacher education requirements, teacher‐child ratios/thresholds) was also associated with both quality and type of care, but in more complex ways. Higher teacher training requirements were positively associated with the quality of both family child care and nonprofit centers, while more stringent regulations decreased the number of children attending center care. No links were found between state policies and the quality of for‐profit center care. The implications for policy makers, advocates, and policy analysts are discussed. © 2007 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

Can we identify a benevolent hegemon?

Analysts frequently assess the underlying character of the state with the largest concentration of material capabilities in the system—the hegemon. Scholars typically differentiate a hegemon that is benevolent from one that is predatory. In the current era, many have wondered about how to best characterise the United States. Scholars became particularly interested in this question during the George W Bush administration and reached strikingly different answers. This article aims to provide greater clarity regarding how we reach a judgment about the underlying character of a hegemon, in general, and the United States, in particular. The first section analyses the policies that the hegemon adopts towards the global economic system. The second section considers the hegemon's policies in the security realm, focusing on the key issue of how unilateralism should be conceptualised. The final section discusses the potential significance the ‘hegemonic reference point’—that is, the comparison that is made between the hegemon and the leading alternative leader of the global system.     

The Age Structure-Crime Rate Relationship: Solving a Long-Standing Puzzle

Objectives

Develop the concept of differential institutional engagement and test its ability to explain discrepant findings regarding the relationship between the age structure and homicide rates across ecological studies of crime. We hypothesize that differential degrees of institutional engagement—youths with ties to mainstream social institutions such as school, work or the military on one end of the spectrum and youths without such bonds on the other end—account for the direction of the relationship between homicide rates and age structure (high crime prone ages, such as 15–29).

Methods

Cross sectional, Ordinary Least Squares regression analyses using robust standard errors are conducted using large samples of cities characterized by varying degrees of youths’ differential institutional engagement for the years 1980, 1990 and 2000. The concept is operationalized with the percent of the population enrolled in college and the percent of 16–19 year olds who are simultaneously not enrolled in school, not in the labor market (not in the labor force or unemployed), and not in the military.

Results

Consistent and invariant results emerged. Positive effects of age structure on homicide rates are found in cities that have high percentages of disengaged youth and negative effects are found among cities characterized with high percentages of youth participating in mainstream social institutions.

Conclusions

This conceptualization of differential institutional engagement explains the discrepant findings in prior studies, and the findings demonstrate the influence of these contextual effects and the nature of the age structure-crime relationship.     

Longitudinal Associations between Social Relationships and Alcohol Use from Adolescence into Young Adulthood: The Role of Religiousness

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - As adolescence is a time characterized by rapid changes in social relationships as well as an increase in risk-taking behaviors, this prospective longitudinal...     

Is international agricultural research a global public good? The case of rice biofortification

The status of international agricultural research as a global public good (GPG) has been widely accepted since the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. While the term was not used at the time of its creation, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) system that evolved at that time has been described as a 'prime example of the promise, performance and perils of an international approach to providing GPGs'. Contemporary literature on international agricultural research as a GPG tends to support this view and focuses on how to operationalize the concept. This paper adopts a different starting point and questions this conceptualization of the CGIAR and its outputs. It questions the appropriateness of such a 'neutral' concept to a system born of the imperatives of Cold War geopolitics, and shaped by a history of attempts to secure its relevance in a changing world. This paper draws on a multi-sited, ethnographic study of a research effort highlighted by the CGIAR as an exemplar of GPG-oriented research. Behind the ubiquitous language of GPGs, 'partnership' and 'consensus', however, new forms of exclusion and restriction are emerging within everyday practice, reproducing North-South inequalities and undermining the ability of these programmes to respond to the needs of projected beneficiaries.     

Observations of reintegrative shaming in a mental health court

This study compares the use of stigmatizing and reintegrative shame - as specified in Braithwaite's Crime, shame and reintegration (1989) - across traditional criminal court and mental health court settings. Items from the Global Observational Ratings Instrument were used to gather data on 87 traditional court cases and 91 mental health court cases, presided over by five different judges. The observational items capture three constructs: respect, disapproval, and forgiveness, as they apply to Braithwaite's theory. We present means tests to examine differences in shaming between court types and judges. Findings show that the mental health court is more likely to use reintegrative shaming and show respect and forgiveness for offenders, and less likely to show disapproval. Similarly, judges who preside in both court types are significantly more likely to practice reintegrative shaming in the mental health court context. We further explore these findings using field notes and illustrate those components of a mental health court that are conducive to reintegrative shaming.     

Confronting Law Affectively: Encounters of a Patpong Sex Tourist

When considering spaces of sex-work such as Patpong in Bangkok, Thailand, the inclination is to be drawn into habitual debates concerning the legitimacy of sex-work and the clear objectification of sex-workers. While these concerns are valid and real, there are significant absences in terms of the theoretical mapping of the space, such as the affect of the presence of law, bodies, space and the sexual encounter itself. Law emerges as the most significant presence, since it both forms the transactional surface of Patpong and produces the confusion and revilement that results from the confluence of cold legal exchange with the tactile intimacy of the sexual encounter. This text explores the ethnographic space of Patpong in order to understand ways in which law’s transactional, effective surface is both embodied through subjectivication and spatially emplaced, yet also disrupted through the affective agency of the bodies and spaces it enfolds in order to produce this surface. This exploration will point to the limitations of law’s effective surface and suggest ways in which law might be located within a regime of affect, which returns the law to the body it subjectivises.