Juvenile Court Practitioners’ Construction of and Response to Sex Trafficking of Justice System Involved Girls

The commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) is a growing domestic health and policy concern. Exploited girls may be at heightened risk for entering the juvenile justice system. The purpose of this study was to explore the needs of CSEC victims and resources available for system-involved girls. The data from this study included semistructured interviews, case discussions, and residential placement meeting observations with juvenile justice personnel. Findings revealed labeling issues related to (1) how court workers construct female victims of CSEC through exploitation myths, (2) the importance of trauma history and relational contexts, and (3) system-level barriers. Recommendations for practice are discussed.     

Candidate ideology and electoral success in congressional elections

In examining the factors that contribute to electoral success in congressional elections, legislative scholars often consider the actions of elected representatives; however, other research suggests that one must consider what challengers are (or are not) doing as well. For instance, inexperience and poor funding can significantly inhibit challenger success. We expand this list of potential shortcomings by arguing that ideological congruence with a constituency may be another factor in explaining challenger defeat. Using ideology measures derived from campaign contributions, we find that unsuccessful challengers in the U.S. House are generally more extreme than those who win, but ideological extremity is not a disadvantage to those seeking to represent an extreme constituency. More importantly, our existing political institutions may actually serve to mitigate the already high levels of partisan polarization in Congress.     

The relationship between gunshot-residue particle size and Boltzmann distribution

Gunshot-residue(GSR)particles usually form spherical structures,have special dimensions,and a composition that consists of burned and partially unburned matter with a 0.5–50-mm diameter(sometimes larger).The GSR particle-size distributions have been argued to be caused by the effects of equilibrium-surface distributions during formation and have not yet been correlated with a theoretical analysis or probability distribution.This study proposes a model to explain the GSR particle-size distribution quantitatively.Based on the data,and,as predicted by our model,the number of GSR particles decreases proportionally to the inverse square of the GSR particle size as the particle size increases.This result occurs because of the abundance of microstructures that are encountered in the GSR particles.     

Implementing Welfare Reform in Kansas: Moving, But Not Racing

Will welfare reform lead some states to race to the bottom?At least for Kansas, the answer appears to be a resounding no.Data gathered as part of the State Capacity Study's analysisof welfare reform suggest that in Kansas, elected officialsand the bureaucracy have responded in a fashion consistent withthe state's political and administrative culture: cautiouslyand incrementally. First, Kansas' welfare reform policy hasbeen driven primarily by bureaucratic decisions. Welfare administrators,supported by the governor, have minimized legislative resistanceto their policy objectives. Second, from the perspective ofwelfare generosity, Kansas has not deviated significantly fromits typical "middle" position relative to other states' policies.Third, Kansas' administration of reform embraces three primarystrategies: decentralized management authority; new links withother agencies to tackle specific welfare problems; and a newlyintegrated approach to frontline welfare case-management.     

Informal institutions rule: institutional arrangements and economic performance

Institutions are widely believed to be important for economic development. This paper attempts to contribute to our understanding of how institutions matter by examining the effect of formal and informal institutional arrangements on economic progress. Formal institutions represent government defined and enforced constraints while informal institutions capture private constraints. The findings suggest that the presence of informal institutions is a strong determinant of development. In contrast, formal institutions are only successful when embedded in informal constraints, and codifying informal rules can lead to negative unintended consequences. This suggests that institutions cannot be easily transplanted in order to spur economic development.     

When Do Displaced Persons Return? Postwar Migration among Christians in Mount Lebanon

Under what conditions will forcibly displaced persons return to their original homes after wars end? We draw on theories of labor migration to show that even displaced persons who have positive feelings toward their original location may nevertheless choose to return as regular visitors rather than permanent residents unless the location offers attractive economic opportunities. Furthermore, we argue that violence can create negative emotions not only toward geographic locations of bloodshed but also against its perpetrators. After ethnic wars, the displaced may be unwilling to return to intermixed locations, exacerbating ethnic separation. We study postwar migration among Lebanese Christians displaced during the 1980s and identify economic conditions using exogenous price shocks for olive oil, a major local export. Among policy implications for economic reconstruction and transitional justice, our most important insight is that sometimes we should help the displaced in their new location rather than induce permanent return to their old homes.     

Variation in midfacial tissue thickness of African-American children

Forensic anthropologists use facial reconstruction to develop a likeness of an unknown individual in order to generate public interest that may lead to a positive identification. Tissue thicknesses of the face from living persons or cadavers are an essential part of the reconstruction method. The purpose of this study is to add to the growing database of tissue thicknesses along the facial midline of African-American children and to begin to examine the possibility of geographic differences between children of the same ancestral group. Results indicate that significant differences do not exist between males and females or between African-American females from the Midwest and Southeast U.S. Only age was determined to have a significant effect on mean tissue thickness variation, in our sample, with the majority of change occurring in the facial region.     

‘A confession of ignorance’: deaths from old age and deciphering cause-of-death statistics in Scotland, 1855–1949

A large amount of the research undertaken in an attempt to discover the reasons underlying the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century mortality decline in Britain has relied on the statistics published by the Registrars General. The processes by which individual causes of death are recorded and then processed in order to create the statistics are not, however, well understood. In this article, the authors build on previous work to piece together a time series of causes of death for Scotland, which removes many of the discontinuities encountered in the published statistics that result from the Registrar General deciding to update the nosology, or classification system, which was being used to compile his figures. Having regrouped individual causes of death to ‘smooth’ the time series, the authors use the new groups to examine the changing causes of death in Scotland for selected age groups, before turning to undertake a detailed examination of mortality amongst those aged 55 or more. The authors find that when deaths from ‘old age’ in the latter age group are separated from other ‘ill-defined’ causes, it becomes obvious that there was a ‘rebranding’ of cause of death. The authors then use individual-level data from two Scottish communities to further dissect the roles played by ‘informants’ and ‘doctors’ in this rebranding, in order to see how these roles may have altered over time and what the consequences might be for one's view of how mortality changed in Scotland between 1855 and 1949. Finally, the authors argue that their findings have important implications for some of historical demography's most prominent theories: the McKeown thesis and the theory of epidemiological transition.