Characteristics of assaultive patients with schizophrenia versus personality disorder: six year analysis of the Assaulted Staff Action Program (ASAP)

Literature reviews of individual assaultive patients, repetitively violent patients, and restrained assaultive patients document that persons diagnosed with schizophrenia or personality disorder are at the highest risk to become assaultive. While there has been some initial research of possible predictor variables across diagnostic groups, this six-year retrospective study is the first to compare only persons with schizophrenia or personality disorder on basic demographic and the selected clinical variables of history of violence, personal victimization, and substance use disorder. In this study, the variance suggested that persons with schizophrenia and personality disorder were both likely to be assaultive. Assaults by persons with schizophrenia were somewhat proportional to their presence in the population studied. However, personality disordered patients represented a disproportional increase from the population studied. Younger females with a diagnosis of personality disorder and with histories of violence toward others and personal victimization appeared at increased risk to be assaultive and to require restraints. The findings and their implications for safety and clinical care are discussed.     

Buried in the unremissive ground: reading Richmond's subterranean signs

Like the forgotten memories of seminal events that purportedly lurk in the mind's subconscious, the buried substrata of a city can contain unresolved pasts, forgotten incidents that have shaped the present. And like memories, these buried artifacts can be painful once unearthed. Using Richmond, Virginia as a case, this article explores how the public reaction to a city's buried past serves as a map to the social worth of its citizens. Modern reactions to what is underground signal the relative status of modern groups; the treatment of the dead can be read as a code for modern race and class relations.     

Pilgrimage to Mecca

The February 2009 elections mark a water-shed in Israeli politics and highlight an increasingly rightward drift in Israeli politics: Labour had its worst ever result. The violent intifada shattered belief that negotiations with the Palestinians could ever be successful and the security barrier seemed increasingly necessary if Israel was to remain both Jewish and democratic. The coalition government constructed by Binyamin Netanyahu was carefully balanced and looks durable, the more so as, somewhat surprisingly, it includes Labour and Barak as defence minister. Kadima could face some hard days in opposition unless Netanyahu falls out with Washington, or the coalition collapses.     

Reviews

Les relations de pouvoir façonnent le cours de l'existence du secteur pétrolier depuis la découverte et la commercialisation de l'or noir remontant au 19e siècle. Progressivement, quoique bien rapidement, cette substance devint le moteur de l'évolution économique mondiale toujours en vigueur. Étrangement, plusieurs études actuelles, que l'on rassemble sous la thèse de la malédiction des ressources (resource curse [RC]), semblent pourtant esquiver leur centralité à la compréhension de la paupérisation et des violences vécues chez les populations de certaines régions riches en ressources pétrolières. À travers la problématisation de la littérature analytique portant sur la RC appliquée à la situation chaotique de la région du delta du Niger au Nigéria et sa mise en relation avec les débats appréciatifs des pratiques de RSE (responsabilité sociale des entreprises), cet article démontre l'importance de prendre en compte l'ensemble des dimensions politiques du vécu de la RSE dans une réalité locale, nationale et internationale aux diverses ramifications "s'inter-constituant."     

Globalization: Another false universalism?

Throughout human history the idea of moral universalism has repeatedly appeared, but always in some less than universalistic, and hence morally compromised, form: in the religious imagination and culture, in the ideologies of liberalism and official socialism and in the liberal theory of the state, and in the informing worldview of the modern human and social sciences, especially anthropology. This discussion raises the question whether, and poses the possibility that, despite all the travails which globalization processes are unleashing worldwide (and perhaps even unknown to, and despite the political preferences of, many of globalization's more ardent champions), the present era of advancing globalization may be ushering in a truly historical moment and change in the history of the human moral imagination. By producing for the first time, no matter how unevenly, a single, interdependent humankind and, in prospect if not yet in actuality, a single worldwide human community, globalization processes may be producing an objective, experiential basis for the emergence of a genuine and uncompromised moral universalism: as a successor to, and to transcend, the sequence of selective intimations and incomplete intuitions of human universality that has hitherto constituted the history of humankind's moral imagination.     

Collaborative Procurement: A Relational View of Buyer–Buyer Relationships

Collaborative procurement is increasingly on the policy agenda in many countries, yet problems with collaboration occur. This article adopts a relational theory perspective to explore the enablers of and barriers to collaboration in purchasing, helping identify success factors. The authors adopted a mixed qualitative/quantitative methodology and interviewed 51 senior staffers in the United Kingdom. They found that collaborative public procurement is hindered by local politics and differing priorities, supplier resistance, reliance on suppliers for data, and a lack of common coding systems. Enabling factors for collaborating with local governments include dealing with local issues and buying from small and medium‐sized enterprises. For health care providers, important themes are product innovation and ensuring supply. The authors develop a list of enabling factors and show their effect on collaboration success. This may assist policy makers in identifying areas of guidance and help practitioners prevent problems in collaboration.     

Paying to Be Punished: A Statutory Analysis of Sex Offender Registration Fees

Over the last 20 years, sex offender policies, specifically in terms of community corrections, have increased in scope. One of the most controversial and pervasive sex offender policies is that of registration. In response to the consumption of already limited resources, jurisdictions have imposed increasingly higher community supervision fees onto the offenders, requiring them to pay for their own re-entry. However, to date no research study has examined the statutory language associated with registration fees collected post release from formal community sanctions. Using a statutory analysis within the United States, this research finds and quantifies the imposition of a registration fee on offenders who are legally compelled to pay these registration costs, regardless of whether they are still currently under community supervision. Results show that more than half of U.S. states (n?=?28) incorporate statutory language authorizing registration fees, ranging anywhere from $5 per registration to up to $250 per year. These findings, as well as suggestions for future research and policy recommendations, are discussed.