Informal helping networks in prison: The shape of grass-roots correctional intervention

Factors related to the delivery of human services to prisoners with problems and crises of adjustment were explored in this study. Emphasis was placed on describing the human service roles played by custodial and treatment staff, particularly among staff members who took it upon themselves to (a) expand their formal organizational roles to include a general mandate to identify and assist inmates with problems, and (b) work cooperatively with similarly motivated staff as more or less stable members of informal helping networks or teams. Interview data were used to reconstruct the parameters of informal helping networks, to identify factors that facilitated or inhibited their development, and to obtain indications of their usefulness in the helping process. The research findings suggest more efficient ways to deploy existing correctional resources in the delivery of human services to prisoners. The study also highlights issues of correctional resource deployment that may bear on the larger problem of cultivating human environments in which rehabilitation or planned change can occur.     

The ethical implications of prospective payment and corporate medical practice: A research agenda

The major trends in the growth of prospective payment and the corporatization of medical practice in the United States are examined. In particular, the ethical implications of these changes in the context of the multiple system goals of access, cost containment, and quality are considered. Considerable concern is being expressed that with the dominant emphasis on cost containment, the principles of access and quality might be compromised. This paper formulates a research agenda to address this question, based on a review and synthesis of empirical evidence and hypotheses about the probable or actual impact of these changes on the multiple health system goals. A basic premise is that ethical judgments should be grounded in empirical evidence about what actually is or will be.     

A ‘Life-Style Choice’ or a Philosophical Belief?: The Argument for Veganism and Vegetarianism to be a Protected Philosophical Belief and the Position in England and Wales

Liverpool Law Review - The recent judgment in Casamitjana Costa v The League Against Cruel Sports in England and Wales held that ethical veganism was a protected philosophical belief under...     

Escala de Abuso Economico: Validating the Scale of Economic Abuse-12 (SEA-12) in Spanish

Journal of Family Violence - Language is a key consideration in the development of culturally-responsive interventions for survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV), and this includes not only...     

The Influence of News Media on Political Elites: Investigating Strategic Responsiveness in Congress

News media play a central role in democratic politics, yet we know little about how media affect the behavior of policy makers. To understand the conditions under which news media influence political elites, we advance a theory of strategic responsiveness, which contends that elected representatives are more likely to heed their constituents' preferences when voters are attentive. Accordingly, news media's influence on legislative behavior should be most apparent near elections and dependent on the partisan composition of the constituency. We capitalize on the incremental rollout of the conservative Fox News Channel in the late 1990s to evaluate our theoretical predictions. Fox News caused both Republicans and Democrats in Congress to increase support for the Republican Party position on divisive votes, but only in the waning months of the election cycle and among those members who represent districts with a sizable portion of Republican voters.