Female Delinquents: the Effect of Offense Characteristics on Adult Criminal Careers in the 1958 Philadelphia Birth Cohort

This paper uses the official juvenile offenses among delinquent girls in the 1958 Philadelphia Birth Cohort to investigate the two overarching questions. This research investigates the nature of delinquency conduct, offense-by-offense, and its relationship to adult crime status. Although it is convenient to think of an offender’s delinquency career as a whole, such a career actually consists of one or more specific offenses, and offense conduct can be worth studying in its own right. Thus, it is necessary to determine whether the timing, type, severity, court disposition, and so on, of these juvenile offenses can be used to predict adult career pathways. An extensive review of the literature revealed that investigations of early offense conduct and its connection to adult crime are exceedingly scarce. This study indicates as follows. First, the way a delinquent begins her criminal career is predictive of the adult trajectory that will be followed. Second, we also found that aspects of the first few offenses doe influence whether delinquent girls do continue committing crimes as adult. The strongest predictor of adult crime status was juvenile court dispositions.     

Les transformations du travail et de l'entreprise : qu'attendre des politiques publiques?1

Sommaire : Les politiques publiques du travail ont été conçues pour offrir des mesures de protection aux salariés travaillant à temps plein, pour un seul employeur, sous son contrôle et sur les lieux de l'entreprise. Or, le marché du travail est aujourd'hui composé d'une pluralité de relations d'emploi qui limitent l'efficacité de ces protections. Ce constat soulève la question suivante : que devraient contenir les politiques publiques pour être mieux adaptées au marché du travail? La première partie de cet article examine les voies de renouvellement possible des politiques publiques pour tenir compte des transformations du travail et de l'entreprise. Certaines suggèrent de faire reposer l'octroi de droits et d'avantages sur l'existence d'un travail ou d'une activité professionnelle alors que d'autres les rattachent à l'individu ou au citoyen. Ces propositions ne pourront cependant voir le jour que si elles font l'objet d'une appropriation par les acteurs sociaux et étatiques. Une réflexion sur le contenu des politiques doit ainsi être combinée à l'étude des processus sociaux susceptibles de faire émerger de telles réformes. Cette question est abordée dans la deuxième partie de l'article à partir de trois exemples récents de réformes législatives. Abstract: Public labour policies were developed to ensure the protection of workers who work for one employer on a full‐time basis, at the employer's place of work and under his control. However, today's labour market is composed of a multiplicity of employment relations that limit the effectiveness of the protection. This raises the following question: what features should public policies include to better meet the needs of the labour market? The first part of this article examines how public policies could be renewed in order to take work and organizational transformations into account. Some policies suggest that rights and benefits should be granted on the basis of a job or professional activity, whereas others link rights and benefits to the individual or the citizen. However, these proposals will only emerge if they are appropriated by social and governmental stakeholders. A reflection on the content of the policies must therefore be undertaken in combination with a study of the social processes that may influence the emergence of such reforms. This question is examined in the second part of the article through a review of three recent examples of legislative reform initiatives.     

Citizenship in Pakistan: state,nation and contemporary faultlines

The research investigates young Pakistanis' self-articulation of their relationship with the state and what factors play a role in determining their views. The article argues that beyond the issues traditionally seen as causing the instability of the Pakistani state (which include sectarian and ethnic faultlines as well as the role of the army), there is another – between ordinary citizens and the state. Although there are provincial differences, people at large feel alienated by the state and the concept of citizenship has become hazy as it is often mixed up with the issue of identity. Given the paucity of rights and responsibilities and the lack of political participation, the problems across Pakistani society are ever increasing. The research used a mixed methods approach and 1300 questionnaires were collected in 27 different education institutions across three provinces. On aggregate response the research found that there is a high sense of belonging to the nation, yet paradoxically also a high sense of alienation with regard to the state. Whilst most of those surveyed professed awareness of their rights and duties, as well as political awareness, political participation was very low. The qualitative section of the questionnaire exemplified the level of alienation and anger felt by many across the various institutions and provinces.     

Congruence-building on multiple fronts: Indian elite perceptions of EU rule promotion in India during the EU-India FTA negotiations (2007–2013)

Asia Europe Journal - How does the European Union export its rules and regulations to its partners during free trade negotiations? While the research fields on EU foreign policy promotion abroad...     

Adult Hirschsprung's disease diagnosed during forensic autopsy

We report a case of fatal Hirschsprung's disease (HD) discovered at autopsy. A 20-year-old man collapsed at home. Emergency medical personnel found him in cardiac arrest and all resuscitative efforts failed. He had a past history of chronic constipation since infancy. Forensic autopsy revealed a megacolon full of gas and stools. Microscopic examination showed absence of ganglion cells in a short segment of the rectum and enterocolitis in the left and transverse colon. HD is rarely described in adults. In many cases, patients complained of constipation since infancy but the affection remained misdiagnosed. The relative good tolerance of the disease is usually due to a short aganglionic bowel segment. Enterocolitis is a frequent and severe complication of HD in children but is rarely described in adults. This case suggests the importance of HD diagnosis in childhood in order to avoid fatal complications with forensic consequences.     

Whose deaths matter? Mortality, advocacy, and attention to disease in the mass media

Diseases capture public attention in varied ways and to varying degrees. In this essay, we use a unique data set that we have collected about print and broadcast media attention to seven diseases across nineteen years in order to address two questions. First, how (if at all) is mortality related to attention? Second, how (if at all) is advocacy, in the form of organized interest group activity, related to media attention? Our analysis of the cross-disease and cross-temporal variation in media attention suggests that who suffers from a disease as well as how many suffer are critical factors in explaining why some diseases get more attention than others. In particular, our data reveal that both the print and the broadcast media tend to be much less attentive to diseases that disproportionately burden blacks relative to whites. We also find a positive link between the size of organizational communities that take an interest in disease and media attention, though this finding depends on the characteristics of those communities. Finally, this study also reveals the limitations of relying on single-disease case studies-and particularly HIV/AIDS-to understand how and why disease captures public attention. Many previous inferences about media attention that have been drawn from the case of AIDS are not reflective of the attention allocated to other diseases.     

Maternal cigarette smoking during pregnancy and criminal/deviant behavior: a meta-analysis

A growing body of empirical literature has emerged examining the somewhat inconsistent relationship between maternal cigarette smoking (MCS) during pregnancy and children's subsequent antisocial behavior. To systematically assess what existing studies reveal regarding MCS as a criminogenic risk factor for offspring, the authors subjected this body of literature to a meta-analysis. The analysis reveals a statistically significant--yet rather small--overall mean "effect size" of the relationship between MCS and the likelihood children will engage in deviant/criminal behavior. In addition to being rather moderate in size, the MCS-crime/deviance relationship is sensitive to a number of methodological specifications across empirical studies--particularly those associated with sample characteristics. The implications of this modest, and somewhat unstable, relationship are discussed in terms of guidelines for future research on this subject and how existing theoretical perspectives may be integrated to explain the MCS-crime/deviance link.     

Gamma-hydroxybutyric acid stability and formation in blood and urine

Gamma-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB) can cause problems in interpretation of toxicological findings due to its endogenous nature, significant production in tissues after death and potential formation in stored samples. Our study was designed to determine the influence of storage conditions on GHB levels and its possible in vitro formation in blood and urine in cases where no exogenous use of GHB or its precursors was suspected. The samples were prepared by validated method based on liquid-liquid reextraction with adipic acid internal standard and MSTFA derivatization and assayed on a GC-MS operating in EI SIM mode. The first part of the study was performed with pooled blood and urine samples obtained from living and deceased subjects stored with and without NaF (1% w/v) at 4 and -20 degrees C over 8 months. In ante-mortem samples (both blood and urine) no significant GHB production was found. After 4 months of storage, the substantial GHB rise up to 100 mg/Lwas observed in post-mortem blood stored at 4 degrees C without NaF with subsequent gradual decrease in following months. The inhibition of GHB production was apparent during storage in NaF treated frozen blood samples. In post-mortem urine only slight temporary GHB levels were ascertained (up to 8 mg/L). The second part of our study was aimed to analyse 20 individual post-mortem blood samples stored at 4 degrees C for 16-27 days between autopsy and analysis without preservation followed by storage at 4 degrees C with NaF for 4 months. The temporary GHB production with maximum of 28 mg/Lwas detected in some samples.