Preventing Homelessness for System‐Involved Youth

Too many youth and young adults find themselves on the streets, couch‐surfing with friends, in emergency shelters or worse, after exiting the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. In some circumstances, youth have had court hearings until their exit from the legal system, but those hearings have not focused on long‐range plans of youth and emergencies youth may encounter. In other circumstances, there has been little or no planning prior to discharge, especially for young people who leave the juvenile justice system. Courts can and should prevent, alleviate or end youth homelessness for youth who appear before them through strategies that are enumerated in the recently‐passed NCJFCJ resolution. This article expounds on three of these strategies – coordinating transition and re‐entry plans, insisting on effective legal representation of youth, and utilizing sound judicial leadership. It also describes the concurrent efforts of the Coalition for Juvenile Justice and the American Bar Association's Homeless Youth Legal Network to remove legal barriers and improve outcomes for youth and young adults experiencing homelessness.     

A comparison of plastic cable ties based on physical,chemical and stable isotopic measurements

Plastic cable ties can be utilised in a range of serious criminal activities and a comparison of cable ties, or fragments, may form part of the physical evidence presented to a Court of law. This research assessed the potential value of evidence based on the analysis of plastic cable ties. Twenty packets of black coloured plastic cable ties (nominally 200 mm × 4.8 mm) were purchased in pack sizes ranging from 25 to 100 individual cable ties (Brisbane, Australia, March 2015). Representative samples from each packet were visually examined, compared and tested to determine their physical dimensions, chemical compositions and stable isotopic compositions (δ²H, δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N).All of the individual cable ties from a given packet were found to be indistinguishable with respect to appearance, physical, chemical and isotopic measurements (within-batch variability). Individual cable ties were also found to be isotopically homogeneous with respect to hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen. All of the cable ties analysed were found to have very similar chemical compositions and to be manufactured predominantly from nylon 6,6. The elemental compositions of composite samples, prepared from each packet, were found to be highly variable and, as such, were of very limited value.Cable ties from ten of the twenty packets were uniquely characterised by physical appearance (between-batch variability). Physical measurements such as the width, thickness and tooth-count of the grip section did not provide additional discrimination. Cable ties from nineteen of the twenty packets were uniquely characterised by isotopic composition, based on δ²H and δ¹⁵N measurements. Samples from two packets of Crescent brand cable ties were found to be indistinguishable with respect to all of the tests applied in this study. These two packets were inadvertently purchased from the same retailer and had the same barcode and batch number. It was considered a reasonable assumption that these two packets originated from the same manufacturing batch.The authors reason that a likelihood ratio (that might be presented to a Court of law) can be derived from this type of discrete data based on a calculation of the possible combinations of distinguishable objects (unordered sampling with replacement) in a convenience sample collected from the background population. In this example, a database of 19 distinguishable objects can yield a likelihood ratio as high as 210, with a verbal equivalent of “moderately strong support” for a proposition that two cable ties have the same isotopic composition because they originate from the same batch rather than by random chance.     

Do the Mental Health Consequences of Sexual Victimization Differ Between Males and Females? A General Strain Theory Approach

Sexual assault is a traumatizing event linked to numerous mental health consequences. Although extant research has thoroughly examined the collateral consequences experienced by females, limited literature exists regarding how sexual violence comparatively affects males and females. Using data from the National Violence Against Women Survey (1995–1996) and a strain theoretical framework, the current study addresses this research gap to understand the effects of sexual assault and sex on depression. Results indicate that victims of sexual assault have higher depression scores than persons who have not been sexually assaulted in their lifetime. Moreover, we found no sex effect for sexual assault on depression. The methodology used eliminated a bias typically associated with regression analyses, caused from statistical inference after improper model selection. Policy implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Rational rejection? The ethical complications of assessing organ transplant candidates in the United Kingdom and the United States

The practice of allocating scarce organs in medicine is an ethical minefield. Due to the organ shortage, organ procurement agencies in both the United Kingdom and the United States are placed in the unenviable position of having to choose a limited number of patients to compete equally for life-saving treatment. They do this by composing multidisciplinary transplant teams, which must evaluate transplant candidates and their complex range of personal, medical, environmental, psychiatric and financial characteristics. During the candidate assessment process, such teams may often be torn between their moral duty to save those who are most in need, considerations of efficiency, and the battle against forming moral judgments about particular candidates. Several ethical approaches can be adopted by transplant teams during the decision-making process, but do these ideologies provide adequate justification for their sometimes controversial decisions? This article provides a detailed examination of the ethical principles available to transplant teams in the United Kingdom and the United States, and the effect that these principles have on assessment procedures, organ allocation protocols, transplant candidates and their prospects.     

The sex ratio and male-on-female intimate partner violence

Two divergent perspectives have been articulated in the literature regarding the effect that an unbalanced sex ratio is speculated to have on male-on-female intimate partner violence. Evolutionary psychology proffers that a high sex ratio (i.e., more men than women in the population) propagates competition among males for female mates. This competition for female mates is thought to engender sexual jealousy among men, which in turn results in male-on-female intimate partner violence. In contrast, the Guttentag and Secord thesis argues that a high sex ratio acts to attenuate rather than amplify male-on-female intimate partner violence because the relatively small number of women in the population makes them more highly valued and respected by men. Using data culled from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) and the Census, we investigate the relationship between the sex ratio and male-on-female intimate partner violence. We define male-on-female intimate partner violence as violence occurring within a marriage or boyfriend/girlfriend type relationship. Multivariate regression results furnish evidence supporting evolutionary psychology by demonstrating that a high sex ratio increases male-on-female intimate partner violence. Results also show that male-on-female intimate partner violence is higher in cities where more women work. Such a finding further buttresses the logic associated with evolutionary psychology because participation in the workforce is theorized to afford a woman a greater opportunity to meet and interact with men other than her husband or boyfriend.     

Tracing policy influence of diffuse interests: the post-crisis consumer finance protection politics in the US

Dodd–Frank, the financial reform law passed in the United States in response to the 2008 financial crisis, established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a new federal regulator with the sole responsibility of protecting consumers from unfair, deceptive, or abusive practices. This decision marked the end of a highly politicized reform debate in the US Congress, in which proponents of the new bureau would normally have been considered to be much weaker than its opponents. Paradoxically, an emerging civil society coalition successfully lobbied decision-makers and countered industry attempts to prevent industry capture. What explains the fact that rather weak and peripheral actors prevailed over more resourceful and dominant actors? The goal of this study is to examine and challenge questions of regulatory capture by concentrated industry interests in the reform debates in response to the credit crisis which originated in the US in 2007. The analysis suggests that for weak actors to prevail in policy conflicts over established, resource-rich opponents, they must undertake broad coalition building among themselves and with influential elite allies outside and inside of Congress who share the same policy goals.