Psychiatric disorders and management of sexual offenders in the prison psychiatric consultation unit of Marseille

Since 2017, complaints of sexual violence have increased in France. At the same time, the management of sexual offenders has been at the center of international public health policies. The prevalence of mental disorders among sexual offenders is an essential field of research. There are some published studies on the prevalence of psychiatric disorders in sexual offenders in detention, but there are few recent published studies among French individuals who were detained. Our objectives were to determine the prevalence of psychiatric disorders among persons detained for sexual offenses and the level of care received according to their diagnosis. For this purpose, we carried out a retrospective observational study from January 2017 to October 2021 of all adult sexual offenders, whether accused or convicted, who were seen in the psychiatric consultation unit of Les Baumettes prison, Marseille, France. The primary outcome measure was the psychiatric diagnosis entered in the medical records. One hundred forty-two patients were included in analysis. All patients were men, and the majority (n = 97, 68.3%) of these patients presented with at least one psychiatric disorder, principally a personality disorder (31.7%). 10.6% presented with a schizophrenic disorder, 4.9% a bipolar disorder, 3.5% a depressive disorder, 5.6% pedophilic paraphilia, and 25.4% an addictive disorder. Their management and comorbid addictions were analyzed in subgroups for each psychiatric disorder. Patients appeared to receive an appropriate level of care for their diagnosed disorder. It seems important to develop structured assessment of recidivism risk for better management of sexual offenders.     

Childhood Maltreatment Experiences and Child Abuse Potential: Temperamental Sensitivity as Moderator?

This study aimed to examine the relationship between negative experiences in childhood (physical-, sexual-, and emotional abuse and emotional neglect) and the risk for an individual to become a perpetrator of child maltreatment in adulthood. Participants were 337 female college students who completed self-report measures of childhood trauma and temperament. Risk for child abuse was assessed with the Child Abuse Potential Inventory. Results showed experiences of emotional neglect significantly predicted higher child abuse potential. Additionally it was shown that experiences of physical abuse significantly predicted higher child abuse potential but only in those individuals with high temperamental orienting sensitivity. These results underline the potentially damaging long-term effects of emotional neglect in childhood and indicate temperamental sensitivity may moderate the relationship between being abused as a child and being at risk for maltreating one’s own offspring.     

Poly- and Distinct- Victimization in Histories of Violence Against Women

We report results from pre-testing an Europe-wide Survey on Violence against Women. A questionnaire on women’s experiences of stalking, harassment, psychological, physical, and sexual violence by non-, ex-, and current partners was tested on 10 known victims of violence in intimate relations and 20 randomly selected women. Multiple Correspondence Analysis uncovered two profiles of victimization: women poly-victimized in multiple life ambits and women distinctly victimized in only some of them. Known-victims of intimate partner’s violence (IPV) were more likely to be poly-victimized than randomly selected women. Heterogeneity in women’s socio-economic conditions could only partly account for IPV’s over-representation among poly-victimized women. This gave more credence to an interpretation that highlights the role played by previous traumatic experiences of victimization on re-victimization.     

A method using two dimensions of the patent classification for measuring the technological proximity: an application in identifying a potential R&D partner in biotechnology

This paper aims to show how the information contained in patent documents can be used to identify basic and specific technological proximities between firms and therefore a potential research and development (R&D) partner. More generally, it looks at patents as a strategic tool that can be used for concluding cooperative R&D agreements (CRDA). The approach begins by looking at the state of the art on the role of technological proximity in CRDAs. This review clearly raises the problem of measuring technological proximity, which needs to be gauged at a two-fold level: general and specific. Then a dual method based on patent portfolios for analyzing the profiles of different potential partners is described along with an example of its application. Concretely, the exploratory study proposed here is based on an analysis of the patent portfolios of 14 French listed biotechnology companies and those of their main R&D partners. The analysis of 5,603 patents filed by the focal firms and their partners shows how the approach can be used to identify compatible partners that are more or less technologically matched.     

Working women in France,nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Where,when, and which women were in work at marriage?

We look at women's labour force participation for the whole of France in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We study to what extent young women were working at the time of their marriage, in which occupations, and how differences in labour force participation might be explained. Using a sample of 53,451 marriage records from the TRA project, we identify regional and temporal differences in rates of female labour force participation and in types of work in France between 1860 and 1986.We observe rather stable levels of female labour force participation between 1860 and 1950 of about 60 per cent, but higher levels in the second half of the twentieth century. Over time, women started to work across virtually all occupational sectors. Regional differences declined over time but continued to exist in the late twentieth century. We formulate a set of hypotheses to explain which women worked, taking into account their resources, as well as their expectations, in a male-breadwinner-dominated society. The results of our hierarchical logistic analysis indicate that women with fewer parental resources were more likely to work.     

Small island developing states and international climate change negotiations: the power of moral “leadership”

Being at the frontline of climate change, small island developing states (SIDS) hold a serious stake in climate negotiations. However, these countries usually are marginalized in the international political arena, due to their lack of structural power. This paper explores the strategic influence of SIDS and its representative organization, the Alliance of Small Island States, in the negotiations leading to the Copenhagen summit of December 2009. Using the concepts of leadership and discourses, the position, strategies, and impact of SIDS are analyzed on negotiation processes and their final outcome, focusing on three core demands of small island countries at Copenhagen: a temperature rise limit of 1.5 °C above preindustrial levels, funding for adaptation, and a legally binding outcome. Results reveal that SIDS practiced entrepreneurial, intellectual, and environmental leadership strategies and especially made use of moral claims in the debate. Given their near absence of structural power, they managed to secure a surprisingly large part of “their” agenda and interests in the final Copenhagen Accord, especially through (discourse) coalitions with various other state and non-state stakeholders.     

Euvoluntariness and just market exchange: moral dilemmas from Locke’s Venditio

It is a maxim of Public Choice that voluntary exchanges should not be interfered with by the state. But what makes a voluntary market exchange truly voluntary? We suggest, contra much of the economics literature, that voluntary exchange requires consent uncoerced by threats of harm, but that this is not sufficient. In particular, a person pressured to exchange by the dire consequences of failing to exchange—e.g., dying of thirst or hunger—is still coerced, and coerced exchange cannot be voluntary. The weaker party’s desperation gives the other party unconscionable bargaining power. We argue for a distinction, based on a neologism: in the case of coercion by circumstance but not by threat, exchange is still voluntary in the conventional sense, but it is not euvoluntary (i.e., truly voluntary). We will argue that all euvoluntary exchanges are just, while non-euvoluntary exchanges may or may not be unjust; that in competitive markets all exchanges are just, even those that are not euvoluntary, while in bilateral monopolies some exchanges are neither euvoluntary nor just. We will propose a mental device, the “fictitious negotiation”, to determine the just price in non-euvoluntary market exchanges. A primitive version of these ideas can be found in a little known monograph by John Locke, which we will analyze in detail.     

Immigrant sexual citizenship: intersectional templates among Mexican gay immigrants to the USA

Existing literature on sexual citizenship has emphasized the sexuality-related claims of de jure citizens of nation-states, generally ignoring immigrants. Conversely, the literature on immigration rarely attends to the salience of sexual issues in understanding the social incorporation of migrants. This article seeks to fill the gap by theorizing and analyzing immigrant sexual citizenship. While some scholars of sexual citizenship have focused on the rights and recognition granted formally by the nation-state and others have stressed more diffuse, cultural perceptions of community and local belonging, we argue that the lived experiences of immigrant sexual citizenship call for multiscalar scrutiny of templates and practices of citizenship that bridge national policies with local connections. Analysis of ethnographic data from a study of 76 Mexican gay and bisexual male immigrants to San Diego, California, reveals the specific citizenship templates that these men encounter as they negotiate their intersecting social statuses as gay/bisexual and as immigrants (legal or undocumented); these include an ‘asylum’ template, a ‘rights’ template, and a ‘local attachments’ template. However, the complications of their intersecting identities constrain their capacity to claim immigrant sexual citizenship. The study underscores the importance of both intersectional and multiscalar approaches in research on citizenship as social practice.     

DNA genotyping of unbuffered formalin fixed paraffin embedded tissues

Formalin-induced DNA degradation was studied at different fixation times (3, 7, 16 and 32 days) each on 10 formalin fixed paraffin embedded tissues (FFPET) stored for 15 years at room temperature.The four different extraction protocols used in this study showed that Chelex100 extracts performed the best at 3 and 7 days of formalin fixation (DFF) (with regard to the quantity and the quality of the DNA). However, Qiamp extracts showed better results for long sized alleles, as well for single polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplifications after 16 and 32 DFF, as for multiplex PCR at shorter fixation times. DNA degradation is expressed by the size of the amplified alleles, only 100 bp templates surviving after 32 DFF (AMG locus). Single locus amplifications (CD4 and FES/FPS alleles) performed better than multiplex PCR (ProfilerPlus), with nearly 100% positive results at 7 DFF. In both types of amplifications, the success rate decreased proportionally with the time of formalin fixation and, consequently, with the size of the required DNA template.