American Capital Punishment in Comparative Perspective

It is often said that American capital punishment fulfills no purposes, serves no functions, and possesses no coherent rationale. In Peculiar Institution: America's Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition (2010), David Garland argues that American capital punishment is functional, meaningful, and effective, especially in the cultural realm of death penalty discourse. He also demonstrates that America's radically local version of democracy helps explain why the death penalty has persisted in the United States long after it disappeared in other Western democracies and that many of the peculiar forms through which American capital punishment is now administered have been designed to deny association with the lynchings that have occurred in American history. Garland arrives at these conclusions by comparing capital punishment in contemporary America with death penalty systems from the American past and from other Western nations. This essay argues that comparison with Asia further illuminates what is peculiar—and ordinary—in American capital punishment.     

The First World War and the Middle East: a literature review of recent scholarship

The historiography of the First World War in the Middle East has changed over the last two decades, and while some established works stand the test of time, there are new works to consider. This article is designed to assist scholars seeking to trace the contours of recent publications, illustrating the variety of themes and subjects that surround that conflict. Military history is by no means the sole issue of interest, and readers will be struck by the range of works on culture, ethnic and sectarian groups, propaganda, diplomatic history, and medicine, among others. The centenary of the First World War has produced its own crop of studies, but the Middle East continues to attract significant interest and tragically recent conflicts inevitably raise questions about the origins and impact of that war in 1914–1918.     

It Takes a Village: Using a Community-Defined Practice Approach to Develop a Tribal In-Home Services Model for Alaska Native Families

The current evidence base for in-home services in child welfare is limited, with insufficient research on the use of in-home services among ethnically diverse populations. This article describes a case study examining the use of a community-defined practice and evidence approach to develop tribally based in-home service models with Alaska Native communities. The models were co-created by tribal elders, community members, and service providers, with technical assistance provided by the Western and Pacific Child Welfare Implementation Center (WPIC). Research findings suggest that this is an effective approach to developing culturally appropriate child welfare practices while also building local support and ownership.     

Understanding the Taliban and Insurgency in Afghanistan

Afghanistan is in danger of capsizing in a perfect storm of insurgency that mimics operations and tactics witnessed in Iraq. This article assesses this insurgency and the re-emergent Taliban. The common view of the Taliban as simply a radical Afghan Islamist movement is overly simple, for that organization has been able to build on tribal kinship networks and a charismatic mullah phenomenon to mobilize a critical and dynamic rural base of support. This support, buttressed by Talib reinforcements from Pakistan's border areas, is enough to frustrate the U.S.-led Coalition's counterinsurgency strategy. At the operational level, the Taliban is fighting a classic “war of the flea,” while the Coalition continues to fight the war largely according to the Taliban “game plan.” This is resulting in its losing the war in Afghanistan one Pashtun village at a time.     

Cost-shifting: the discount dilemma

Cost-shifting, the practice by hospitals of raising their prices to make up for reimbursement shortfalls from payers that do not pay full charges, is an important and controversial issue. Concerns about cost-shifting, particularly its effects on payment equity and cost escalation, have led many insurers, business groups, and legislators to advocate rate-setting regulation for hospitals. This article seeks to clarify the definition of cost-shifting, and quantifies its magnitude in Minneapolis/St. Paul. We believe that cost-shifting is the consequential result of the failure of both public and private payers to structure payment policies that reward cost-effective hospitals, and we outline a market-oriented alternative to rate-setting to address the discount dilemma caused by cost-shifting.     

A comparison of instruments for assessing competency to stand trial

The present study compared two instruments for assessing competency to stand trial, The Competency Screening Test and a revised version of The Georgia Court Competency Test. in a sample of 140 defendants admitted to the forensic unit of a state hospital for court-ordered pretrial evaluation. Scores on the tests were used to predict staff decisions about competency. Correlates of scores on the two tests also were examined. The tests were highly correlated with one another and with the decisions of forensic examiners. Although neither of these instruments should provide the sole basis for competency decisions, both may be useful components of a comprehensive program of competency evaluation.Portions of this paper were presented at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association, Washington, D.C., August, 1986.