Rating the prison boss: Examining supervision among prison health care staff

Health care staff are instrumental in prisons given their roles in aiding security and the growing demand for medical services among prisoners. Unfortunately, little attention has been paid to this prison staff subpopulation. This study examined perceptions of supervision among 424 prison health care staff in the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Participants felt that prison supervisors were most effective in clarifying expectations and least effective in giving feedback for performance, involving staff in planning, and extending job autonomy. Using hierarchical linear models (HLM), some unique findings emerged. Efficacy in dealing with inmates was the strongest predictor variable: health care staff who felt more positive and effective with inmates had more favorable feelings toward supervision. Staff working in high- and medium-security prisons had more positive feelings toward supervision than those in minimum security, and younger staff had more favorable attitudes toward supervisors than older staff. The implications of these findings and directions for future research are discussed.     

Increased Substance Use and Risky Sexual Behavior Among Migratory Homeless Youth: Exploring the Role of Social Network Composition

Travelers are a migratory subgroup of homeless youth who may be especially prone to engaging in risky behavior. This study compared the substance use and sexual behavior of young homeless travelers and non-travelers to evaluate the extent and possible sources of travelers’ increased risk. Data came from face-to-face interviews with 419 homeless youth (36.6% female, 34.0% white, 23.9% African American, and 20.0% Hispanic) between the ages of 13 and 24 years (M = 20.1 years, SD = 2.5) who were randomly sampled from 41 shelters, drop-in centers, and street sites in Los Angeles. Travelers were almost twice as likely as non-travelers to exhibit recent heavy drinking, 37% more likely to exhibit recent marijuana use, and five times as likely to have injected drugs. Travelers also had more recent sex partners and were more likely to report having casual or need-based sexual partners and combining sex with substance use. Mediation analyses suggest that travelers’ deviant peer associations and disconnection to conventional individuals and institutions may drive their elevated substance use. Differences in sexual risk behaviors are likely attributable to demographic differences between the two groups. Overall, these differences between travelers and non-travelers suggest different service needs and the need for different service approaches.     

Do Alliances Deter Aggression? The Influence of Military Alliances on the Initiation of Militarized Interstate Disputes

Scholars have long debated the effects of military alliances on the likelihood of war, and no clear support has emerged for the argument that alliances improve the prospects for peace through effective deterrence nor that they kindle the flames of war. In this study, I argue that alliance commitments affect the probability that a potential challenger will initiate a militarized interstate dispute because alliances provide information about the likelihood that others will intervene in a potential conflict. Yet, different agreements provide different information. Alliance commitments that would require allies to intervene on behalf of potential target states reduce the probability that a militarized dispute will emerge, but alliance commitments promising offensive support to a potential challenger and alliances that promise nonintervention by outside powers increase the likelihood that a challenger will initiate a crisis. As diplomats have long understood, the specific content of international agreements helps to determine their effects.     

Child Well-Being: Where Is It in Our Data Systems?

Child well-being is a required goal for public child welfare. Despite this requirement, there continues to be no systematic inclusion of child well-being indicators in administrative data, particularly for children remaining in the home. This brief commentary provides a rationale and suggested steps for moving toward inclusion of well-being indicators as a part of standard electronic record-keeping. Suggested operationalized elements for inclusion in electronic records are offered as well as suggestions for linkage across systems to begin to capture elements of the outcome of well-being automatically. Limitations and barriers are discussed as well as present policy changes that may provide support for this endeavor.     

The participatory principle in development projects: the costs and benefits of cooperation

Many development theorists and practitioners, including those in key agencies like the World Bank and UNDP, now see participation as critical to successful project implementation, and strongly support cooperative organizational systems. This article cautions against undue optimism about such forms of organization, and attempts to explain their limited success when they compete with private firms by applying rational choice theory to behaviour in cooperative systems. It examines the relevance of assumptions of self interest, opportunism and bounded rationality in such solidaristic organizations, then uses them to calculate the costs and benefits of using participatory systems. It shows that these costs are likely to outweigh the benefits in large organizations unless participatory processes are effectively associated with managerial autonomy, appropriate incentives, sanctions and hierarchies. © 1996 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Development and validation of videotaped scenarios: a method for targeting specific participant groups

Researchers using scenarios often neglect to validate perceived content and salience of embedded stimuli specifically with intended participants, even when such meaning is integral to the study. For example, sex and aggression stimuli are heavily influenced by culture, so participants may not perceive what researchers intended in sexual aggression scenarios. Using four studies, the authors describe the method of scenario validation to produce two videos assessing alcohol-related sexual aggression. Both videos are identical except for the presence in one video of antiforce cues that are extremely salient to the young heterosexual men. Focus groups and questionnaires validate these men's perceptions that (a) the woman was sexually interested, (b) the sexual cues were salient, (c) the antiforce cues were salient (antiaggression video only), and (e) these antiforce cues inhibited acceptance of forced sex. Results show the value of carefully selecting and validating content when assessing socially volatile variables and provide a useful template for developing culturally valid scenarios.     

Criminal Punishment,Labor Market Outcomes,and Economic Inequality: Devah Pager's Marked: Race,Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration

A growing empirical literature examines the role of incarceration in labor market outcomes and economic inequality more broadly. Devah Pager's book, Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration (2007), offers compelling evidence that employment opportunities for former prisoners—especially black former prisoners—are bleak. I review Pager's methods and findings, place them in the context of previous work, and discuss the relation of race to a criminal record. I then explore several lines of related research that investigate the increasing reach of criminal punishment into various social realms. One goal of this essay is to draw research on economic inequality into the law and society literature.     

Internalizing Symptoms and Externalizing Problems: Risk Factors for or Consequences of Cyber Victimization?

Experiences of traditional victimization often co-occur with cyber victimization in adolescence but are not always controlled for when considering how cyber victimization is uniquely related to internalizing and externalizing symptoms. This is particularly problematic in longitudinal studies that attempt to determine the longitudinal associations between cyber victimization and internalizing symptoms, and between cyber victimization and externalizing problems and how these patterns may differ for adolescent boys and girls. In the current study, traditional victimization was controlled to examine the longitudinal sequences of association between cyber victimization and internalizing symptoms, and between cyber victimization and externalizing problems for adolescent boys and girls. Participants included 510 seventh and tenth grade students (M_age?=?13.7, 61.6% girls, 44% Asian and 30% White) who completed surveys across three academic years in middle and high school. Findings from longitudinal path models suggest that internalizing symptoms and externalizing problems respectively were associated with increases in experiences of cyber victimization (beyond the effect of traditional victimization) both within and across time, particularly for adolescent girls. Efforts to address adolescents’ experiences of cyber victimization must consider the vulnerabilities created by adolescents’ continued internalizing symptoms and externalizing problems that may differ for boys and girls. Implications for cyber victimization prevention and intervention efforts are discussed.

     

Rebel or Rioter? Luddites then and now

The Encyclopaedia Britannica contains an entry under the heading ‘Luddite’ and has had such an entry for over 100 years. This essay employs standard discourse analysis techniques to identify changes in the way the Luddites have been presented to the public by the Encyclopaedia over the same period. It is argued that as the potential readership has broadened and deepened across class boundaries, so has the narrative shifted from autocratic towards populist and the Luddites from rioting simpletons to rebel handicraftsmen.