A psychometric typology of U.K. domestic violence offenders

A number of studies have described subtypes of domestically violent men, and the heterogeneity of domestically violent men is well established. The aim of the current study was to investigate the distribution of subtypes using psychometric measures in convicted domestically violent offenders in England. Four subtypes of offenders were identified: low pathology, borderline, narcissistic, and antisocial. These subtypes were broadly comparable with the family-only, dysphoric/borderline, and generally violent/antisocial types proposed by Holtzworth-Munroe and Stuart. The majority of the sample (60%) best fit the generally violent/antisocial profile. However, the reliance on psychometric measurement and lack of corroborative evidence from partners means that further research is necessary to test these findings.     

The work the document does: research, policy, and equity in health

At the center of the politics of health equity, in many countries and circumstances, stands a signal report of research. This article is concerned with what might be described as the architecture of such documents, including how they are produced and organized and the relationships they demonstrate with others that parallel, precede, and succeed them. The article examines how scientific and political authority is established and comments on the evidence of cross-national learning that these documents reveal. It discusses differences in how the problem of health equity is constructed in different countries and how research findings are converted into policy recommendations. It begins to trace a process of implementation by noting how these documents are referred to and written about. The argument is that the politics of health equity are expressed or realized in the documents and reports, which are its principal vehicle. This is not to claim that there is no world beyond the text or that the world somehow is a text, but that to fully understand that world we must understand the text and the work it does.     

Seven hundred seventy eight bite marks: analysis by anatomic location, victim and biter demographics, type of crime, and legal disposition

A study of the etiology, anatomic location, victim demographics and legal disposition of bite mark cases was made with the purpose of updating and augmenting previous research in the field. The information may be of interest to a myriad of professional disciplines including Forensic Odontologists, Medical Examiners, Detectives, Profilers, Emergency Room Personnel, Coroners, Psychologists, and Family Service Counselors, as bite marks provide both physical and biological data. While bite marks were found on all anatomic regions of the body some sites are significantly more likely to receive bites, and the frequency that an area is bitten may vary with the type of crime. Sex and age of the victim may also impact the resulting location and frequency of bites. A survey form for bite mark cases was created and mailed to all Diplomates of the American Board of Forensic Odontology. The survey form was also included in the American Society of Forensic Odontology newsletter. The survey requested that the recipient fill out a separate form for each case for which the recipient was the primary investigator of a patterned injury. The data from the resulting surveys were entered into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. The responses detailed two hundred thirty two (259) bite mark cases that included seven hundred (778) individual bite marks. Harvey (1976) and Sweet and Pretty (2000) published studies finding the highest percentage of bites to the breasts. In 1983 Vale and Noguchi published the paper indicating that the most frequently bitten area was the upper extremities. The survey forms were sent to approximately 1100 forensic dentist in 26 countries. The forensic experience level of the dentists varied from neophyte to very experienced. The data were analyzed and the results reported and organized in the following categories; Victim Distribution by Gender, Victim Distribution by Age, Child Abuse Distribution by Age and Gender, Sexual Assault Distribution by age and Gender, Homicide Distribution by Age and Gender, Bite Mark Distribution by Gender and Location, Number of Bite Marks per Victim, Bite mark Distribution Comparison to Previous Research, Child Abuse Suspect Age Distribution by Age and Sex, Homicide Suspect Age Distribution by Age and Sex, Sexual Crimes Suspect Age Distribution by Age and Sex, and Bite Mark Incidence by Anatomical Area and Type of Crime. Fifty-two forensic odontologists from seven countries responded. Nineteen responders were Diplomates of the American Board of Forensic Odontology. The number of cases reported by each responder ranged from one to thirty-three and the average number of cases reported was 4.5. In this broad based study, females were bitten more often than males. The average male victim was younger than the average female victim. Males that were victims tended to be either very young or very old. The youngest victim was a two-month-old boy and the oldest victim a 95-year-old woman. Perpetrators were male more often than female and there was an average of 1.4 suspects per case. The results show that most bites occurred on the arm, followed by the breast. If broken down by gender, males were bitten on the arm more than females, and females were bitten on the breast more often than males. The data show patterns in location and number of bites that seem related to both the type of crime and the age of the victim.     

Beach boys or sexually exploited children? Competing narratives of sex tourism and their impact on young men in Sri Lanka??s informal tourist economy

Sex trafficking and the commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) are widely identified as global social problems, but each remain politically charged, especially given the disproportionate emphasis on sexual slavery. The current investigation is a case study of CSEC within the context of Sri Lanka??s international tourism industry. I draw from data collected during a multi-year field study to analyze and compare those understandings of sex tourism and CSEC driven by local ??moral crusaders????which dominated policy and public discussion??with the experiences of adolescent boys and young men who participated in these markets. Moral claims-making, focused as it was on cultural purity, morality, Western perversions, sexual slavery, and deviance, shifted attention away from the global political and economic contexts in which transactional sex took place. This resulted in both distortions and harms to marginalized youth in tourism communities, and a failure to address the economic realities of those involved in the informal tourism economy, including transactional sex with tourists. The current study thus adds additional support to the concerns raised by scholars and activists about the scope, nature, and impact of efforts to ameliorate commercial sexual exploitation, including the harms that result from narrow foci on individual deviance and sexual slavery.     

The Poverty of Statistics and the Statistics of Poverty

This paper offers a critique of the picture of world growth and world inequality generally disseminated by international agencies. The positive view commonly presented depends on the widespread consensus that economic performance should be measured using ‘Purchasing Power Parity’ (PPP) statistics, instead of market exchange rates. Although originally conceived narrowly as a basis for comparing living standards, PPP indicators are now indiscriminately promoted as an unexceptionable standard for comparing and aggregating national income statistics. This article highlights the flaws in the PPP approach by accepting the claims made on their behalf at face value. It shows that, even on the basis of these claims, the wrong conclusions have been drawn. By comparing PPP and market exchange rate measures of inequality it shows that what really took place, at the end of the last century, was a systematic reduction in the prices of consumption goods in the Third World. PPP statistics have concealed this underlying and unsustainable trend, allowing it to be packaged as a stable reduction in poverty. Neither genuine growth, nor lasting poverty reduction was achieved over this period. The fall in the price of consumer goods masked a systematic failure to overcome the central problem of development—the high price of capital goods, which PPP statistics understate, and of intermediate goods, which they completely omit.     

The US presidential election of 1992 and its impact on Asia

Andrew Mack, (ed.), Asian Flashpoint: Security and the Korean Peninsula (Canberra and St. Leonards: ANU and Allen and Unwin, 1993), 175 pp.

Toh Mun Heng and Linda Low, (eds.), Regional Cooperation and Growth Triangles in ASEAN (Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1993), 256 pp.

Kent E. Calder, Strategic Capitalism: Private Business and Public Purpose in Japanese Industrial Finance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 373 pp.

Garry Rodan, (ed.), Singapore Changes Guard: Social, Political and Economic Directions in the 1990s (Melbourne, Australia: Longman Cheshire Pty Limited and New York: St. Martin's Press, Inc., 1993), xxii + 209 pp.

J. Mark Ramseyer and Frances McCall Rosenbluth, Japan's Political Marketplace, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993) 262 pp.

Roger Goodman and Kirsten Refsing, (ed.), Ideology and Practice in Modern Japan (Routledge: London, 1992) 243 pp.

John Bresnan, Managing Indonesia: The Modern Political Economy (New York, Columbia University Press, 1993), 375 pp.