How do uncompensated care pools affect the level and type of care? Results from New York State

Uncompensated care pools have been used by several states in their attempt to aid hospitals and increase the volume of care provided to patients without health insurance. We examined the uncompensated care pool used in New York State between 1983 and 1987. Our primary interest was to estimate the impact of the pools on the level and type of care provided to uninsured patients. Our results indicate that hospitals responded to the pools by increasing the volume of care provided to uninsured patients. Without the pools, over 30,000 fewer adjusted hospital admissions would have been provided to the uninsured in a typical year. Many of these newly purchased admissions were for "nondiscretionary" medical care, suggesting that beneficial care to the indigent was rationed prior to the introduction of the uncompensated care pools.     

Reverse Sex Discrimination: Manhart

The author addresses himself to the problems of sex discrimination in pensions. He contends that there have been fundamentai errors in the perceptions of those problems. Equality in pay-both of wages and of fringe benefits-requires equality in employer contributions, which produces actuarial equality in benefits. This is true for pensions, at least, both as a matter of statutory interpretation and as a matter of fundamental fairness, absent a compelling need that has not been and probably cannot be shown. He concludes that Manhart was wrongly decided but that in any event it should be given the narrowest possible interpretation and not be permitted to sire illegitimate progeny.     

Comparison of ages of epiphyseal union in North American and Bosnian skeletal material

The accurate determination of age at death is a critical component in the analysis of human skeletal remains. Population specific techniques are often used without due consideration of the provenance of the material being studied. This communication considers the ages at which epiphyseal union occur in young Bosnian males and compares those findings to data published by McKern and Stewart on young North American soldiers killed during the Korean War. Of the ten epiphyses considered in this study, all elements were observed to be at least two years in advance in the Bosnian sample compared to the American sample. This article demonstrates that whilst standards based on an American sample produce broadly applicable age ranges for use on forensic work in the Balkans, the age ranges generated produce an upper age limit that is often two or more years older than the chronological age. Therefore, it is desirable, that wherever possible, appropriate standards should be devised for more accurate aging reflecting population specific profiles.     

Invited Commentary: Exploring the Promises,Intricacies, and Challenges to Positive Youth Development

We highlight the need for and critical importance of the program of research reported in this Special Issue. We emphasize that a focus on positive youth development is sorely overdue. The impressive project covering one decade, 42 states and 7,000 participants demonstrates critical contributors to positive youth development. The two identified themes emerging from the set of papers are that contexts and the nature of assets matter for youth. Collectively, the papers explored a variety of positive youth development relevant questions and utilized combinations of annual assessments and data sources from an extraordinary data base. The core methodological and conceptual flaw across papers was the under-representation of minorities in the data set, which limited the generalizability of findings. While the major shortcoming was acknowledged at the onset and recognized as a failing in each paper, nevertheless, merely conceding the flaw was seen as insufficient given the policy, practice, and research implications. The inadequate sampling and follow-up of youth from families which continue to face persistent social inequality and having the most to gain from a positive youth development conceptual strategy and was a major shortcoming; it prevented within group analyses. The co-authors note that although research decisions made limited the generalizability of the positive youth development research strategy for non-white American youth, the intended goals for inclusiveness are evident and, accordingly, suggest a level of hopefulness.     

Resisting Removal: The Impact of Community Mobilization in Rio de Janeiro

The experiences of communities in Rio de Janeiro under threat of removal through gentrification or mega‐event construction present an opportunity to review the process and impact of urban community mobilization. This article assesses the determinants of community strategies, the challenges to implementation, and the impact of mobilization on outcomes for such communities. It reviews the case of Vila Autódromo, detailing the dynamic influence of both rational expectations and the “right to the city” ideology in developing resistance strategies and providing evidence to confirm the importance of social capital and civic capacity for community efficacy. The analysis updates theorizing beyond the politics of clientelism and contributes to understanding how the urban regime approach may apply to the Latin American context, while demonstrating the continued relevance of the political opportunity structure for determining policy outcomes.     

The ‘Groundhog Day’ of the Human Trafficking for Sexual Exploitation Debate: New Directions in Criminological Understanding

This paper considers the intellectual framework that is used to understand human trafficking and the limitations that it imposes on the criminological study of this phenomenon. First, there is a brief historical perspective which allows for comparisons between current debates and the moral crusades of the Victorian/Edwardian social purists. The contemporary focus on trafficking for sexual exploitation, rooted in Victorian/Edwardian construction has, the authors argue, narrowed the policy remit and the criminological investigation into human trafficking. The paper then proceeds to address the interaction between these enduring (historical) myths, the role of trans-national organised crime and the constraining effects of the contemporary intellectual framework. It is argued that in order to challenge the cyclical nature of the debates, it is necessary to make redundant the use of the term human trafficking and to widen the criminological lens through which we consider the problem. In doing so, we hope to highlight those groups whose experiences are missing or marginalised in the current construction of the problem and urge a reconsideration of the way in which criminology approaches this issue.