Multiple murder and criminal careers: A latent class analysis of multiple homicide offenders

PurposeTo construct an empirically rigorous typology of multiple homicide offenders (MHOs).MethodThe current study conducted latent class analysis of the official records of 160 MHOs sampled from eight states to evaluate their criminal careers.ResultsA 3-class solution best fit the data (?2LL = ?1123.61, Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) = 2648.15, df = 81, L² = 1179.77). Class 1 (n = 64, class assignment probability = .999) was the low-offending group marked by little criminal record and delayed arrest onset. Class 2 (n = 51, class assignment probability = .957) was the severe group that represents the most violent and habitual criminals. Class 3 (n = 45, class assignment probability = .959) was the moderate group whose offending careers were similar to Class 2.ConclusionA sustained criminal career with involvement in versatile forms of crime was observed for two of three classes of MHOs. Linkages to extant typologies and recommendations for additional research that incorporates clinical constructs are proffered.     

Miscommunication in the COVID-19 Era

This article discusses issues around the communication of preventive health messages related to COVID-19 to indigenous language-speaking communities in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. Official communication is primarily in Spanish, and the many translation initiatives that have arisen do not always succeed in getting the message across due to the lack of cultural interpretation that needs to accompany the linguistic message. This situation compounds the vulnerability of indigenous peoples in the face of the crisis.     

The Social Sciences and a New Administration

The policy issues confronting the new administration in 2009 can benefit greatly from the results of social, behavioral, and economic sciences research. Climate change, energy, human capital, social, capital, migration, public health, fairness, new technologies, and foreign and defense policy are all issues that the research has addressed. The participation of social scientists in the policy process will enhance the contributions of the research.

Does Gerrymandering Cause Polarization?

Both pundits and scholars have blamed increasing levels of partisan conflict and polarization in Congress on the effects of partisan gerrymandering. We assess whether there is a strong causal relationship between congressional districting and polarization. We find very little evidence for such a link. First, we show that congressional polarization is primarily a function of the differences in how Democrats and Republicans represent the same districts rather than a function of which districts each party represents or the distribution of constituency preferences. Second, we conduct simulations to gauge the level of polarization under various "neutral" districting procedures. We find that the actual levels of polarization are not much higher than those produced by the simulations. We do find that gerrymandering has increased the Republican seat share in the House; however, this increase is not an important source of polarization.     

Protective Factors Associated with Daily Affective Reactivity and Instability During Adolescence

The daily emotional experiences of adolescents are dynamic, vary significantly across individuals, and are crucial to their psychological adjustment, warranting a need to identify factors that promote adaptive affective responses to stressors and attenuated affective instability. The objective of this study, therefore, was to examine protective factors linked to individual differences in daily affective reactivity and instability utilizing a daily diary design in a national sample of 100 U.S. adolescents (13–17 years; 40% girls; 79% White). Adolescents completed a baseline survey and then 14 daily online surveys. Better mother-adolescent communication predicted lower negative affect reactivity, whereas greater use of problem-focused coping strategies predicted higher positive affect reactivity. Greater trait resilience and instrumental support seeking predicted lower negative affect instability. Conversely, more emotional support seeking predicted higher negative affect instability. No factors were associated with positive affect instability, and father-adolescent communication was unrelated to daily affective reactivity and instability. The findings implicate specific protective factors associated with distinct aspects of affective reactivity and instability.

     

The IMF,austerity and the state in Latin America

The Brazilian Economic Crisis

No to Recession and Unemployment: An Examination of the Brazilian Economic Crisis. Celso Furtado, London: Third World Foundation. 1984. 77pp. £2.95pb

Impact of Islam: domestic and foreign policies of Muslim states

Faith and Power: The Politics of Islam. Edward Mortimer, London: Faber and Faber. 1982. 432pp. £10.50pb

Islam in Foreign Policy. Edited by Adeed Dawisha, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1983. 191pp. £17.50

Central American Directions

Rift and Revolution: The Central American Imbroglio. Edited by Howard J Wiarda, Washington DC: American Enterprise Institute. 1984. 392pp. $10.95

Central America: Anatomy of Conflict. Edited by Robert S Leiken, Oxford: Pergamon. 1984. 351pp. £13.95.

Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America. Walter LaFeber, London: W W Norton. 1983. 357pp. £14.95.

The Long War: Dictatorship and Revolution in El Salvador. James Dunkerley, London: Junction Books. 1982. 264pp. £12.50. £5.95pb.

International Organisations: Principles and Issues. A LeRoy Bennett, Hemel Hempstead, England: Prentice‐Hall International. 1984. 498pp. £26.75

Peacekeeping in Vietnam: Canada, India, Poland and the International Commission. Ramesh Thakur, Edmonton, Canada: University of Alberta Press. 1984. 375pp. $30.00

The World's Money: International Banking from Bretton Woods to the Brink of Insolvency. Michael Moffitt, London: Michael Joseph. 1984. 284pp. £9.95

Banking on Poverty: The Global Impact of the IMF and World Bank. Edited by Jill Torrie, Toronto, Canada: Between the Lines. 1983. 336pp. $22.95. $12.95pb

The Management of the World Economy. Evan Luard, London: Macmillan. 1983. 270pp. £25.00. £7.95pb

International Money and Capitalist Crisis: The Anatomy of Global Disintegration E A Brett London: Heinemann. 1983. 271pp. £13.50

Escape from Empire: The Attlee Government and the Indian Problem. R J Moore, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1983. 376pp. £19.50

The Multinational Corporation. Sanjaya Lall, London: Macmillan Press. 1983. 264pp. £6.95pb

The New Multinationals: The Spread of Third World Enterprises. Sanjaya Lall, Chichester, England: John Wiley. 1983. 268pp. £13.50

Poverty and Aid. Edited by J R Parkinson, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 1983. 264pp. £19.50

State of the World 1984. Lester R Brown et al, London: W W Norton. 1984. 252pp. $15.95

Development and the Environmental Crisis: Red or Green Alternatives? Michael Redclift, London: Methuen. 1984. 149pp. £9.50. £ 4.25pb

Deepsea Mining and the Law of the Sea. A M Post, The Hague, Boston and Lancaster: Martinus Nijhoff. 1983. 358pp. np

Climate and Development. Edited by Asit K Biswas, Dublin: Tycooly International. 1984. 146pp. £16.50. £5.95pb

The Political Economy of West African Agriculture. Keith Hart, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1982. 226pp. £19.00. £7.50pb

The Trouble with Nigeria. Chinua Achebe, London: Heinemann. 1984. 68pp. £1.95

The Struggle for Africa. Mai Palmberg, London: Zed Press. 1983. 286pp. £17.95. £5.95pb

State and Class in Africa. Edited by Nelson Kasfir, London: Frank Cass. 1984. 125pp. £18.50

Underdevelopment and Agrarian Structure in Pakistan. Mahmood Hasan Khan, Lahore, Pakistan: Vanguard. 1981. 335pp. Rs150.00

Pakistan: The Political Economy of Development. Karamat Ali, Lahore, Pakistan: Vanguard. nd. 381pp. Rs175.00

Rank and Rivalry: The Politics of Inequality in Rural West Bengal. Marvin Davis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1983. 237pp. £20.00. £7.95pb

Rural Development and the State: Contradictions and Dilemmas in Developing Countries. Edited by David M Lea and D P Chaudhri, London: Methuen. 1983. 351pp. £9.95pb

The Hong Kong Crisis. Gregor Benton, London: Pluto Press. 1983. 114pp. £3.5pb

Revolutionary Islam in Iran: Popular Liberation or Religious Dictatorship? Surdosh Irfani, London: Zed Press. 1983. 267pp. £18.95. £6.95pb

The Foreign Policy Systems of North and South Korea. Byung Chul Koh, London: University of California Press. 1984. 274pp. £22.80

The Developing Economies and Japan: Lessons in Growth. Saburo Okita, London: University of Tokyo Press. 1983. 283pp. £14.00

Arab Oil Policies in the 1970s: Opportunity and Responsibility. Yusif A Sayigh, London: Croom Helm. 1983. 271pp. £11.95

Guyana: Fraudulent Revolution. Latin America Bureau, London: Latin American Bureau. 1984. 105pp. £2.95pb

Problems of Development in Beautiful Countries: Perspectives on the Caribbean. Ransford W Palmer, Lanham, Maryland: North South Publishing Co. 1984. 91pp. $12.50

The Grenada Intervention: Analysis and Documentation. William G Gilmore, London: Mansell. 1984. 116pp. £5.95pb

O Mercado da Segurança: Ensaios sobre economia politica da defesa. Clóvis Brigagão, Rio de Janeiro: Editora Nova Fronteira. 1984. 183pp. np

Argentina: The Malvinas and the End of Military Rule. Alejandro Dabat and Luis Lorenzano, London: Verso. 1984. 206pp. £20.00. £5.95pb

A Vision of Hope: The Churches and Change in Latin America. Trevor Beeson and Jenny Pearce, London: Fount. 1984. 290pp. £2.95pb

Oil and Politics in Latin America: Nationalist Movements and State Companies. George Philip, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1982. 577pp. £37.50     

Place-Based Leadership and Public Service Innovation

This article discusses two matters that are becoming increasingly important in debates about local government: place-based leadership and public service innovation. The troubling international economic outlook means that many local authorities are focusing on ‘efficiency savings’ and the prevailing mantra in public policy circles is ‘do more with less’. This article questions this approach. It aims to contribute to what one chief executive described to us as ‘more with more’ thinking. This approach strives to release the community and business energies of a locality. If this can be achieved the total resources available to improve the local quality of life can be increased, even if state spending is shrinking. A conceptual framework for studying place-based leadership is presented. This distinguishes three, overlapping realms of leadership in any given locality – political leadership, managerial/professional leadership, and community and business leadership. It is argued that the areas of overlap between these realms can be viewed as innovation zones – spaces in which established approaches can be questioned and new trajectories developed. These zones can, however, also become conflict zones with little learning and exchange taking place. Place-based leadership can influence whether such political spaces are used to promote creative problem solving or whether they become arenas for dispute and friction between sectional perspectives. By drawing on a study of the current Digital+Green initiative in Bristol, UK, the article suggests that an imaginative approach to place-based leadership – one that accepts intelligent risk taking – offers potential for improving the local quality of life as well as strengthening local democracy.     

Addressing the legitimacy of the council-manager executive in local government

This article uses the concept of legitimacy to contribute to the debate about leadership change in local government. It focuses on the council-manager form of executive, used in Australia, Ireland, Finland, New Zealand, the US, and was an option for English local authorities in the Local Government Act 2000. After reviewing the central features, underlying values, and variations that the council-manager model displays cross-nationally, the article draws on research carried out in Stoke-on-Trent, England, a city which adopted a variant of the council-manager form. The analysis assesses the model operating there in terms of legitimacy, and argues that some of its shortcomings are addressed by the introduction of a form of decentralised, deliberative, neighbourhood governance.