Advances in the assessment and prediction of interpersonal violence

This article underscores the weakness of clinical judgment as a mechanism for prediction with examples from other areas in the psychological literature. Clinical judgment has as its Achilles'heel the reliance on a person to incorporate multiple pieces of information while overcoming human judgment errors--a feat insurmountable thus far. The actuarial approach to risk assessment has overcome many of the weaknesses of clinical judgment and has been shown to be a much superior method. Nonetheless, the static/historical nature of the risk factors associated with most actuarial approaches is limiting. Advances in risk prediction will be found in part in the development of dynamic actuarial instruments that will measure both static/historical and changeable risk factors. The dynamic risk factors can be reevaluated on an ongoing basis, and it is proposed that the level of change in dynamic factors necessary to represent a significant change in overall risk will be an interactive function with static risk factors.     

Contextualizing community violence and its effects: an ecological model of parent-child interdependent coping

This article presents an integrated conceptual framework that contextualizes exposure to community violence and the interpersonal and interdependent processes of parent and child response to community violence. This model posits that parental distress, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression, is a significant mediator of child distress symptomatology and behavior problems. The model advances understanding of the impact of community violence in the lives of parents and children through various mechanisms, including social capital. This article underscores the need for a fundamental shift in the study of community violence, in the delivery of mental health services, and in prevention efforts from focusing on the individual child to concentrating on the parent, family, and community-level factors and processes. This article highlights important areas to address in future research, including investigation and specification of the mechanisms and processes by which neighborhoods affect and influence human development outcomes.     

B: Reviews: review articles

THE OTTOMAN GULF: THE CREATION OF KUWAIT, SAUDI ARABIA AND QATAR. By Frederick F. Anscombe. New York, Columbia University Press, 1997. 270 pp., maps, $21.00/£14.00 (pb), $55.00/£38.00 (hb).

THE BLOOD‐RED ARAB FLAG: AN INVESTIGATION INTO QASIMI PIRACY, 1797–1820. By Charles E. Davies. Exeter, University of Exeter Press, 1997. 453 pp., illustrations, maps, £40.00.

THE POLITICS OF REGIONAL TRADE IN IRAQ, ARABIA AND THE GULF, 1745–1900. By Hala Fattah. SUNY Series in the Social and Economic History of the Middle East (11). Albany, NY, State University of New York Press, 1997. 254 pp., maps.

AN OTTOMAN CENTURY: THE DISTRICT OF JERUSALEM IN THE 1600s. By Dror Ze'evi, edited by Jere Bacharach. SUNY Series in Medieval History. Albany, NY, State University of New York Press, 1996. xii + 258 pp.

FABRICATING ISRAELI HISTORY: THE ‘NEW HISTORIANS’. By Efraim Karsh. London and Portland, Frank Cass, 1997. 210 pp., £25.00 (hb).

ISLAM AND MODERNITY: MUSLIM INTELLECTUALS RESPOND. Edited by John Cooper, Ronald Nettler and Mohammed Mahmoud. London and New York, I. B. Tauris, 1998. xii + 228 pp., £39.50.

DEFINING ISLAM FOR THE EGYPTIAN STATE: MUFTIS AND FATWAS OF THE DAR AL‐IFTA. By Jakob Skovgaard‐Petersen. Leiden, New York and Koln, Brill, 1997. vii + 420 pp.

CIVIL SOCIETY, DEMOCRACY AND THE MUSLIM WORLD. Edited by Elisabeth Özdalga and Sune Persson. (Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul Transactions Vol. 7.) Richmond, Curzon Press, 1997. 143 pp., £15.00.

CIVIL SOCIETY IN YEMEN: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ACTIVISM IN MODERN ARABIA. By Sheila Carapico. (Cambridge Middle East Studies 9.) Cambridge and New York, Cambridge University Press, 1998. 256 pp., map, 14 tables, £35.00.     

Time Exposures

He is the author of many articles on the cultural significance of photography, including “The Photographer as Educator” published in Teachers College Record.     

Elite recruitment and state-society relations in technocratic authoritarian regimes: The Russian case

This article argues that Russia has a peculiar form of authoritarianism that exhibits pronounced technocratic features. The analysis places in a comparative frame the bases of regime legitimacy and the paths to political, administrative, and economic power in Russia. By locating the Russian state in a matrix that considers the ideology of governance on one axis and the backgrounds of elites on the other, the article highlights areas of overlap and separation between state–society relations in Russia and other regimes in the developed and developing world. It also illustrates the ways in which technocratic elites in Russia differ from their counterparts in other parts of the world.     

Government capacity to contract: health sector experience and lessons

Using case-study material of contracting for clinical and ancillary services in the health care sector of developing countries, this article examines the capacities required for successful contracting and the main constraints which developing country governments face in developing and implementing contractual arrangements. Required capacities differ according to the type of service being contracted and the nature of the contractor. Contracting for clinical as opposed to ancillary services poses considerably greater challenges in terms of the information required for monitoring and contract design. Yet, in some of the case-studies examined, problems arose owing to government's limited capacity to perform even very basic functions such as paying contractors in a timely manner and keeping records of contracts negotiated. The external environment within which contracting takes place is also critical; in particular, the case-studies indicate that contracts embedded in slow-moving, rule-ridden bureaucracies will face substantial constraints to successful implementation. The article suggests that governments need to assess required capacities on a service-by-service basis. For any successful contracting, basic administrative systems must be functioning. In addition, there should be development of guidelines for contracting, clear lines of communication between all agents involved in the contracting process, and regular evaluations of contractual arrangements. Finally, in cases where government has weak capacity, direct service provision may be a lower-risk delivery strategy. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Breaking Bad News: Penal Populism,Tabloid Adversarialism and Brexit

This article analyses the role that British conservative tabloid newspapers play in promoting penal populism and delegitimising liberal prison reform initiatives. Principally, we consider how different sections of the British press reacted to the then Prime Minister David Cameron's prison reform speech of 8 February 2016. The analysis illustrates how different newspapers cohered around two diametrically opposing interpretations of the scandalous state of the prison system, reflecting distinctive penal philosophies and moral positions. In the context of penal populism and the populist furies unleashed by the Brexit campaign, the central research finding is that the comparatively passive and equivocal support offered by the broadsheets was no match for the vitriolic attack mounted by the conservative tabloids on the ‘soft justice’ parts of Cameron's prison reform agenda. We conclude by arguing that the stark lesson to be learned is that the scandal‐ridden prison is a particularly toxic issue marked by serial policy failure. Consequently, in a febrile, intermediatised penal populist context, why would any political leader take on the manifest risks associated with embarking on liberal prison reform?