Associations between national gambling policies and disordered gambling prevalence rates within Europe

Policymakers and other interested stakeholders currently are seeking information about the comparative effectiveness of different regulatory approaches to minimising gambling-related harm. This study responds to this research gap by exploring associations between gambling policies and disordered gambling prevalence rates. We gathered information about gambling policies for thirty European jurisdictions and past-year prevalence rates for disordered gambling for twelve of these jurisdictions. We present policy trends and prevalence rates and then describe the level of association between policy and prevalence. We observe one statistically significant association between policy and prevalence: rates of sub-clinical (i.e., Level 2) disordered gambling were higher within environments that mandated less strict regulation of advertising for online gambling. Finally, we discuss the implications of our research in the context of the current process regarding the pan-European regulation of gambling. Our findings do not offer evidence for certain assumptions made in the past by the European judiciary.     

Introduction: Growing pains — China debates its international future

Liberal democracies in North America, Europe, and Japan have coalesced into a global power center with shared in-group values and a common foreign policy outlook. Despite its growing materialist capacities, China finds itself hardly closer to the great power center, perceiving itself instead condemned to the periphery and victimized by the assertion of the emerging global center. Confronted with this predicament, Chinese intellectuals and policy elites have debated over how China should relate to the world and the United States. Their answer remains uncertain, as China is still struggling to find the way out of the periphery. However, so long as it believes that the great power club is open to its membership, China will likely continue to try to live up to its self-identification as a responsible power.     

Drinking and drug use by college students: Comparing criminal justice majors and non-majors

The current research examined drinking and drug use among college students. Using a self-report survey of students from a midwestern university, the frequency of alcohol use, binge drinking, and drug use were explored. Particular attention was paid to drinking behaviors and drug use among Criminal Justice (CJ) students compared to students from other majors. Differences were found between CJ and non-CJ students especially in terms of drinking behavior; fewer differences were found between majors in terms of drug use. Issues of moral authority were examined as well as issues of employability. Implications for CJ students, faculty and advisors are discussed.     

Community Involvement as a Vehicle for Integration: A Study with Young Immigrants

ABSTRACT

Immigrants are often exposed to conditions of economic deprivation or to hardships of a social nature connected to their status. These factors increase their feeling of impotence, thus slowing down the integrative process. An element that could counter these disadvantaged conditions is participation in an association that promotes immigrants’ demands on a socio-political level. The first aim of this study is understanding the relationships between involvement and integration. The authors hypothesize that youth engaged in community are more integrated than not engaged immigrant youth. The second aim is to investigate the relationship between the type of activity, type of association and integration. The participants were 644 immigrant youth (Age range 19–35, 56.2%) that were involved in the community. The results show that involved immigrant youth report higher levels of both ethnic and national identity compared to not involved youth. Regarding the type of activity carried out, there is a statistically significant difference between activity of a social type, which obtains higher means, and of a civic type, which rather obtains lower means. While exploratory, the study shows and confirms the relationship between community engagement, young immigrants’ integration process and construction of identity.     

Share and Share Alike? Hedge Funds,Human Rights,and Owning Enterprise in Britain

This article explores the meanings of ownership and shareholding in the context of the 2007 run on Northern Rock, its subsequent nationalization in 2008, and the resulting legal challenge brought by former shareholders. Drawing on evidence from a range of sources outside traditional legal and official doctrine, and from original empirical research, it focuses on the perspective and voices of local small individual shareholders in relation to shareholding, bank failure, and government responses to financial crisis. It tells the story of these individual shareholders against differing conceptions of share ownership rights and responsibilities, and from various angles, to show the many different subjectivities of corporate shareholding and ownership of enterprise of which orthodox legal and economic models take scant account. It concludes on a note of historic persistence in demand for proprietary shares in banking institutions, despite the differing levels of understanding and tolerance of equity risk among shareholders that our research reveals.     

Texas Christian University (TCU) Short Forms for Assessing Client Needs and Functioning in Addiction Treatment

The TCU Short Forms contain a revised and expanded set of assessments for planning and managing addiction treatment services. They are formatted as brief (1-page) forms to measure client needs and functioning, including drug use severity and history (TCUDS II), criminal thinking and cognitive orientation (CTSForm), motivation and readiness for treatment (MOTForm), psychological functioning (PSYForm), social relations and functioning (SOCForm), and therapeutic participation and engagement (ENGForm). These instruments facilitate optically-scanned data entry, computerized scoring, and rapid graphical feedback for clinical decisions. The present study (based on 5,022 inmates from eight residential prison treatment programs) examines evidence on scale reliabilities and measurement structures of these tools. Results confirmed their integrity and usefulness as indicators of individual and group-level therapeutic dynamics.     

Indians are drunks and drunks are Indians: alcohol and indigenismo in Guatemala, 1890–1940

This article explores the ways in which the use of alcohol articulated with the discourse of indigenismo in Guatemala between the late 1890s and the late 1930s. In the first decades of the twentieth century, the public language of alcoholism merged with that of indigenismo. By the early 1930s, during presidency of Jorge Ubico (1931–1944), the theoretical conflation of alcoholism and indigenismo was fully evolved, providing a seamless paradigm for those who would place the credited Guatemala's‘drunken’and‘racially degenerate’indigenous majority with the nation's underdevelopment. The article utilises indigenista literature, newspapers, contemporary legislation and judicial records on the alcohol contraband trade and drunkenness to construct this argument.     

The role of inspection sequence in compliance with the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration's (OSHA) standards: Interpretations and implications

We examined the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's (OSHA) inspections in the US to identify the effects of repeated inspections and the time between inspections on non-compliance. Our sample included 549,398 inspections conducted from 1972 through 2006 in manufacturing plants in the 29 states where federal OSHA enforces the law. We controlled for inspection type, industry, establishment size, and year. The number of total violations cited fell by 28%–48% from the first to the second inspection; after that, the numbers declined much more slowly. These effects were found in every one of the four sub-periods examined. The number of violations cited increased with each additional year since the prior inspection after controlling for other variables; however, the increases were small, totaling approximately 15% over five years. OSHA should probably give higher priority to first time inspections than to repeated inspections. The current requirement that at least two years elapse between planned inspections should probably be lengthened.