Extent and characteristics of woman batterers among federal inmates

Efforts to identify men who batter women in clinical settings have increased in recent years, but batterer research in United States federal prisons is lacking; low security federal prisons are logical places to consider batterer screening and treatment given the number of men, the domestic violence "risk markers" associated with these men and the likelihood they will be released and return to female partners. This study examined intake assessment data for 115 low security federal inmates. The inmates evidenced high levels of risk markers for woman battering, one in three (33%) acknowledged recent physical violence against women partners, 1 in 10 (13%) admitted severe violence, and the self-identified batterers showed more substance use and personality problems than other inmates. The findings suggest that batterer screening and treatment may be needed in federal prisons and that more research is warranted with a burgeoning male population that ultimately returns to society.     

Financial Management Development in Spain: Who is Playing Sancho Panza?

“What giants?” said Sancho Panza. “Those thou seest there,” answered his master, “with the long arms, and some have them nearly two leagues long.” “Look, your worship,” said Sancho, “what we see there are not giants but windmills, and what seem to be their arms are the sails that turned by the wind make the millstone go.” “It is easy to see,” replied Don Quixote, “that thou are not used to this business of adventures; those are giants; and if thou art afraid, away with thee out of this and betake thyself to prayer while I engage them in fierce and unequal combat.” So saying, he gave the spur to his steed Rocinante, heedless of the cries his squire Sancho sent after him, warning him that most certainly they were windmills and not giants he was going to attack. He, however, was so positive they were giants that he neither heard the cries of Sancho nor perceived, near as he was, what they were, but made at them shouting.     

Results of the GEP-ISFG collaborative study on the Y chromosome STRs GATA A10, GATA C4, GATA H4, DYS437, DYS438, DYS439, DYS460 and DYS461: population data

The Spanish and Portuguese ISFG Working Group (GEP-ISFG) carried out a collaborative exercise in order to asses the performance of two Y chromosome STR tetraplexes, which include the loci DYS461, GATA C4, DYS437 and DYS438 (GEPY I), and DYS460, GATA A10, GATA H4 and DYS439 (GEPY II). The groups that reported correct results in all the systems were also asked to analyse a population sample in order to evaluate the informative content of these STRs in different populations. A total of 1020 males out of 13 population samples from Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Macao, Mozambique, Portugal and Spain were analysed for all the loci included in the present study. Haplotype and allele frequencies of these eight Y-STRs were estimated in all samples. The lowest haplotype diversity was found in the Lara (Argentina) population (95.44%) and the highest (99.90%) in Macao (China). Pairwise haplotype analysis showed the relative homogeneity of the Iberian origin samples, in accordance with what was previously found in the European populations for other Y-STR haplotypes (http://www.ystr.org). As expected, the four non-Caucasian samples, Macao (Chinese), Mozambique (Africans), Costa Rica (Africans) and Argentina (Lara, Amerindians), show highly significant Phist values in the pairwise comparisons with all the Caucasian samples.     

Value,Growth, Development: South American Lessons for a New Ecopolitics

Current debates on politics and ecology in South America offer a number of lessons on the controversy concerning ecosocialism and degrowth. Some recent experiments on the South American left show a strong emphasis on socialism while deploying conventional developmentalism including decisive social and environmental impacts. In this dispute the different conceptions of value are very clear. Original perspectives on Buen Vivir as a radical critique of development point to alternatives that are at the same time post-capitalist and post-socialist, alternatives in which the recognition of the intrinsic value of the non-human is a core component.     

Assessing the impacts of a peer-to-peer training programme for women in Peru

This article reports on research that aimed to assess the economic and social impacts of a peer-to-peer training programme targeted to women in Peru, looking at overall and differentiated impacts according to design features, on a sample of 300 women in participant and non-participant communities. The study found significant positive impacts on women’s time devoted to work outside the house and in their saving propensity, although no significant change on time allocated to domestic activities. It also detected some effects on an index of family cohesion and on home improvements. Finally, there was evidence that some design features influence the magnitude and significance of these impacts.     

Policy and regulatory design for developing countries: a mechanism design and transaction cost approach

The first-generation literature on policy design has made considerable contributions over the last 30 years to our understanding of the process, politics and implications of policy design and instrument choice. This literature, however, has generally treated institutions as a black box and has not developed a coherent set of frameworks, theories and models of how institutions matter to policy design. In this paper, I unpack the black box of institutions using transaction cost and mechanism design to show how regulations can be better designed in developing countries when institutions are weak, unaccountable, corrupted or not credible. Under these conditions, I show that efficient regulatory design has to minimize transaction costs, particularly agency problems, by having incentive compatible (self-enforcing) mechanisms. I conclude with a second-generation research agenda on regulatory design with implications for environmental, food and drug safety, healthcare and financial regulation in developing countries.     

Dynamics of State Modernization in Colombia: The Virtuous Cycle of Military Transformation

Military transformations are usually understood as linear processes involving diverse, steady, and costly initiatives to be achieved during a specific timeframe. However, other influencing elements, such as assessment, follow-up, and feedback from the personnel in charge of enforcing and evaluating their implementation, are often disregarded. This article seeks to bridge this information gap and provide a model to analyze the transformation of the military forces of Colombia as a virtuous cycle using the perceptions of its future implementers as its core and main evaluating resource. The questionnaire developed focuses on national interests and the roles and functions of the military forces, gathering the perceptions of officers who will be responsible for implementing the transformation. The statistical findings suggest that determining threats, factors of influence, obstacles, enhancers, and priorities such as drug trafficking, defense expenditure, conflict of interests, fiscal responsibility, and doctrine and policy are central to obtaining successful outcomes.     

The Politics of Urban Violence: Challenges for Development in the Global South

At the start of the twenty-first century, urban violence represents one of the most significant challenges for development across much of the Global South. This essay introduces a new framework for analyzing the politics of urban violence that combines a subnational comparative perspective with multi-method and multi-level approaches. The empirical contributions to this special issue analyze the politics of urban violence and its consequences for development in major cities across Africa, Latin America, and South Asia. First, the contributors show how variation in the nature of relations between states and local armed actors poses distinct implications for several outcomes, including patterns of violence, associational life, and economic markets. Second, the volume unpacks how the integration of developing world cities into both licit and illicit global economic flows impacts local patterns of and political responses to violence. And, third, the contributions identify how actors and interests that operate at multiple territorial and institutional scales influence the local dynamics and consequences of urban violence.     

The Alliance System of the Abu Sayyaf, 1993–2000

Unsettled conditions on Jolo and Basilan islands in the southwestern Philippines have seriously hampered efforts to obtain information about the Abu Sayyaf. The result has been a continuing ignorance over the most fundamental features of the group. In the attempt to broaden our understanding of its structure, this article examines data drawn from an array of sources in light of the authoritative work of Thomas Kiefer on the traditional Tausug alliance system on Jolo. It argues that the Abu Sayyaf consists of a system of alliance groups of the kind customarily found in Muslim Filipino societies.