Perceived accountability and public attitudes toward local police

Recent national events have brought the issue of police-community relations into the public eye. Even though a large body of academic research exists on the predictors of public attitude toward police, very little is known about how public perceptions of police accountability influence satisfaction with the police. This study seeks to fill that gap by using ordered logistic regression and multi-year community-level survey data from one Western city (n = 3725) to examine the relationship between satisfaction with police accountability and overall attitudes toward the police. The results indicate that respondent satisfaction with police accountability was a strong, consistent predictor of satisfaction with local police, even after controlling for other important variables, such as race/ethnicity and community context. The findings suggest that public perceptions relating to the control of police officer conduct should be considered when assessing the predictors of attitudes toward the police.     

德国法院在公务员惩戒救济制度中的角色

文章探讨德国《联邦惩戒法》制度下行政法院的角色与功能。与中国制度不同,在德国公务员惩戒决定不但不排除在法院受案范围之外,然而有部分处分决定甚至需要经过行政法院审理通过方能作出。为此,德国行政诉讼法设有专门的诉讼类别,即惩戒诉讼(Disziplinarklage)。笔者认为,该制度由于在客观性、中立性上存在较大优势,适合较严厉的惩戒处分,故对中国公务员制度今后的发展完善具有一定的参考价值。     

Of citizens and plebeians: Postnational political figures in Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Rancière

This paper focuses on Habermas's notion of cosmopolitan democracy. Reconfiguring the basic ideas of democracy in postnational terms is inevitable if social and political integration is to succeed on a supranational level. In exploring Habermas's ideas, we draw on Rancière, whose thought stands in a complex relationship to Habermas. On the one hand, Rancière largely shares Habermas's diagnosis of the present. Both bemoan the erosion of the political caused by post‐democracy and censure the rise of right‐wing extremism in Western societies. On the other hand, and in contrast to Habermas, Rancière holds that these problems should be addressed not primarily by strengthening political institutions and reaching a consensus between conflicting parties, but by rethinking conflict and resistance. We show that Habermas's and Rancière's propositions can be productively brought in dialogue by focusing on the paradigmatic types of political subjectivity involved in their accounts: the citizen (Habermas) and the plebeian (Rancière).     

Violence prevention in psychiatry: an umbrella review of interventions in general and forensic psychiatry

Relative risks of violence in psychiatric patients are high compared to the general population and existing evidence in non-psychiatric populations may not translate to reductions in violence in psychiatric populations. We searched 10 databases including Medline, EMBASE, CINAHL and Scopus, from inception until August 2015 for systematic reviews and meta-analyses of violence prevention interventions in psychiatry. Reviews were included if they used a hard outcome measure (i.e. police or hospital recorded violence, or reincarceration) and contained randomized or non-randomized controlled studies. Five reviews met our inclusion criteria (n = 8876 patients in total), of which four received a GRADE rating of ‘low’ or ‘very low’. Three randomized studies (n = 636) reported that therapeutic community interventions may reduce reincarceration in drug-using offenders with co-occurring mental illness (‘moderate’ GRADE rating). The lack of intervention research in violence prevention in general and forensic psychiatry suggests that interventions from non-psychiatric populations may need to be relied upon.     

Household furniture tip-over deaths of young children

The potential for the injury or death of a child resulting from the tip-over of a piece of household furniture or a domestic appliance has not been previously well recognized. We reviewed nine accidental deaths of young children that resulted from avoidable residential hazards and/or lapses in supervision of the children by their caregivers. The offending household items included televisions, bedroom dressers, a kitchen stove, and a lounge chair. The causes of death were mechanical asphyxia, blunt trauma, and combined blunt head trauma and asphyxia. All of the deaths could have been prevented by appropriate anchoring of the piece of furniture and/or closer supervision of the child. A thorough multidisciplinary investigation is essential in establishing the cause and manner of death in such cases and in identifying risk factors that may aid in the prevention of future childhood deaths.     

Paths to destruction: the lives and crimes of two serial killers

Although research into the phenomenon of serial murder has revealed that serial killers frequently do not fit the initially described paradigm in terms of their physical and psychological profiles, backgrounds, and motives to kill, the media continues to sensationalize the figures of such killers and the investigators who attempt to analyze them on the basis of aspects of their crimes. Although the so-called "typical" profile of the serial murderer has proven accurate in some instances, in many other cases the demographics and behaviors of these killers have deviated widely from the generalized assumptions. This report details two unusual cases in which five and eight murders were committed in upstate New York. The lives and crimes of these offenders illustrate the wide spectrum of variations in the backgrounds, demographics, motivations, and actions witnessed among serial murderers, and highlight the limitations and dangers of profiling based on generalities.     

“But the UN Said So …”: International Organisations as Discursive Authorities

Many scholars take it as given that international governmental and non-governmental actors play a decisive role in international politics as regulative, moral or epistemic authorities. Hence, a denationalised “multi-centric world” (James Rosenau) is said to be emerging, although empirical evidence for this is incomplete at best. Building on a variety of communication theoretical approaches, I argue for a clear-cut differentiation between authority and the power of the better argument. Moreover, I claim that, by looking at the way actors select and refer to the statements of others (“authority talk”), we can research the reproduction of authority as a specific type of relational power exercised by a variety of political actors, including governments, international agencies and non-state actors. The usefulness of this kind of analytical framework for researching an emerging “world authority structure” (John Boli) is illustrated, using speeches and news pieces on the humanitarian crisis in Sudan/Darfur. Results suggest that the common perception of an existing “non-governmental order” in humanitarian politics is highly exaggerated. Instead, what we see is a high degree of “UN-isation” of debate and a pivotal role of national governments that are widely acknowledged as authoritative sources of meaning.     

Russian Adaptations of General and Personal Belief in a Just World Scales: Validation and Psychometric Properties

In a questionnaire study, Russian versions of the General and Personal belief in a just world (BJW) Scales were validated. Results from exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis showed that the Personal BJW Scale could be empirically differentiated from the General BJW Scale; however, both scales correlated positively. Good internal consistencies of both scales were demonstrated. Age was positively correlated with personal BJW but not with general BJW. Gender differences were found neither in personal nor in general BJW. Personal BJW was found to be stronger than general BJW. Convergent validity was tested by inspecting correlations of BJW scales with the Basic World Assumptions Scale. Divergent validity was examined by inspecting correlations with Markers for the Big Five Factor Structure Scale and Justice Sensitivity Scales. Both personal and general BJW showed positive connections with all subscales of the Basic World Assumptions Scale (self-worth, benevolence of world, justice, luck, and control). We demonstrated divergent validity of personal BJW regarding intellect, agreeableness, conscientiousness, beneficiary and perpetrator sensitivity, and divergent validity of general BJW regarding intellect, beneficiary, perpetrator, and observer sensitivity. Both BJW dimensions were unrelated to beneficiary and perpetrator sensitivity. In addition, general BJW was not related to observer sensitivity. Results give evidence for satisfactory psychometric properties and validation of the Russian versions of BJW scales.     

Belief in a Just World as a Resource of Victimized Students

In a cross-sectional questionnaire study with N?=?2593 German students, aged between 12 and 17 years (M?=?14.1, SD?=?0.5), we investigated the relation between students’ personal belief in a just world (BJW) and their victimization in bullying situations. According to the just-world theory and research, we expected that the more strongly the students endorsed the personal BJW, the less likely they were to report being victimized by other students. We aimed to extend previous findings that failed to confirm this negative relation by considering students’ personal experience of teacher justice as a possible mediator in this relation, while statistically controlling for sex and school type. We further considered the nested data structure with regard to school classes in our analyses. The results of latent mediation analyses at the individual and group levels showed that the more the students endorsed personal BJW, the more they evaluated their teachers’ behavior toward them personally as being just, and the less likely they were to report that they were bullied. However, the students’ personal experience of teacher justice did not mediate the relation between personal BJW and victimization at the individual or group level when controlled for sex and school type. We discussed the adaptive functions of BJW and implications for future school research and practice.