Attitudes toward mental health services among homeless and matched housed youth

Homeless youth experience high rates of mental health problems yet they under-utilize mental health services. The present study surveyed 56 homeless youth and 97 matched at-risk housed youth on their attitudes toward mental health services, and investigated the link between social support and attitudes. Results showed groups shared similar neutral to positive attitudes. Higher levels of social support were associated with increased positive attitudes toward services. Further analyses found that lesbian/gay/bisexual/questioning youth held more positive attitudes compared to heterosexual youth. Implications of the current study can assist service providers with eliminating barriers and increasing mental health service use.     

Black organs and optics: gazing at viscera in the work of Doreen Garner

Between Doreen Garner’s performance The Observatory and sculpture Black Ocean/Big Black, a significant divergence in gazes and spaces emerges. On the one hand, The Observatory arguably evokes a metaphorical nexus between body, flesh, organs, and land – a move that integrates archaeological and clinical gazes into a black female optic of pleasure wherein an oppositional gaze disidentifies the theatrical and scopophilic framing of black women’s bodies. The author argues that while Garner’s vitrine-enclosed performances, which elicit several gazes at once, signify a geological position and attempt to exhume the gory archives of black women’s bodies in art and science, her sculptural installation Black Ocean signals a queer liquidation and kinetics of black flesh.     

How stalled global reform is fueling regionalism: China’s engagement with the G20

In the Chinese view, the architecture of contemporary global governance – especially that of the Bretton Woods institutions – is flawed and in need of reform. Developing nations (like China), the argument runs, need to be given a role proportionate to their global economic influence. Since the Group of Twenty (G20) became a leaders’ summit in 2008, China has used the forum to push for such reform. But today, despite some supposed progress, reform has stalled. Recognising this fact, China is increasingly emphasising regional integration in its strategy for overcoming the middle-income trap. Global reform has not been abandoned, but – given its infeasibility – is no longer a short-term priority.     

Forcible Stops: Police and Citizens Speak Out

A recent federal district court decision found that the New York City Police Department engaged in unconstitutional policing. Officers stopped millions of minority young men over the span of several years. Most of those stopped were innocent of any wrongdoing. This article uses qualitative and quantitative research methods to investigate these inequities, examining the views of both the police and those who were stopped. The authors find that pressure on officers emanating from headquarters was responsible for much of the illegal behavior by lower‐level officers. Additionally, youth in minority neighborhoods felt mistreated by the police; this led to distrust in the police. The authors suggest solutions to ameliorate this painful episode in police practice. The article concludes with specific recommendations such as reducing management pressure on officers and police developing community partnerships.     

Democratising the separation of powers in EU government: The case for presidentialism

The EU, while not a state, can be conceived as a mixed or compound political system. Capturing its character of separation of powers has implications for understanding what the EU polity is, but also should be, not least from a democratic standpoint. Hence, the article addresses the EU as system of government in order to identify one appropriate path of democratisation. It first revisits separation of powers and the typology of parliamentary and presidential government to delineate criteria for categorising horizontal (i.e. between branches) division‐of‐powers arrangements. To this end, it elaborates in particular the criteria proposed by Steffani which allow for a more parsimonious differentiation between types of governments. Subsequently, the EU polity (e.g. its structure and functioning of separation of powers and “checks and balances”) is assessed regarding its conformity to a government type. Finally, I discuss implications for identifying a more certain point of reference for an approach to democratise EU government that is not only institutionally compatible, but also ‘demos enabling’.     

A shifting enemy: analysing the BBC’s representations of “al-Qaeda” in the aftermath of the September 11th 2001 attacks

This article seeks to explore how the BBC made sense of the al-Qaeda phenomenon in its flagship “News at Ten” bulletin during the aftermath of the September 11^th 2001 attacks. Using Critical Multimodal Discourse Analysis, it shows how the BBC’s representations function as a dynamic and continually shifting site upon which a range of fears, identities, discourses and forms of knowledge and power struggle and contend, and through which a number of different “al-Qaedas” manifest themselves. In particular, three shifting modes of visual and verbal representation are identified within the BBC’s coverage which each correspond to a separate understanding of al-Qaeda: the “Islamic” mode, the “Personalised” mode and the “Elusive” mode. These representations both draw upon and challenge the dominant discourses surrounding Islam, non-state terrorism and the identities of terrorist suspects, providing audiences with a variety of often conflicting ways of seeing and speaking about this entity. As such, the article provides insight into the complex nature of the BBC’s representations of al-Qaeda during its coverage of the September 11^th 2001 attacks, and shows how such complexity serves, albeit inadvertently, to legitimise the far-reaching counterterrorism policies that were enacted in the aftermath of these attacks.     

Police Manipulations of Crime Reporting: Insiders’ Revelations

Social scientists have theorized about the corruption of crime reports (Bayley, 1983; Campbell, 1976). Yet, scant empirical research has examined the impact of modern policing methods on the accuracy of crime reporting. Our research uses an anonymous survey of 1,770 retired New York City police officers examining retirees’ experiences with crime report manipulations across their years of retirement. This includes retirees from the community policing as well as police performance management eras. We subject the data to various statistical tests including tabular analysis, graphical trends to visualize the data, MANOVA, and logistic regression to explain report manipulations. Results indicate that the misuse of the performance management system and pressures on officers from management are key explanations for manipulating crime reports. Individual explanatory variables such as gender, educational status, rank, race, and marital status had no effect. Our research supports Bayley’s and Campbell’s theories. We recommend greater transparency to remedy this.