Sexual abuse of vulnerable young and old men

During a 4-year period, aggregated data from Adult Protective Services case files in Virginia revealed 17 cases of sexually abused young, middle-age, and old men. The most common types of sexual abuse across age groups involved instances of sexualized kissing and fondling and unwelcome sexual interest in the individual men's bodies. The majority of alleged perpetrators were male; they typically were similar in age to the men and resided in the same residential facility. In none of the cases was the alleged perpetrator prosecuted. Only two of the men continued to be at risk of further sexual abuse by the alleged perpetrator. Implications of these data for future research and practice include a need for studies that focus on differences between male and female victims, especially concerning investigations and interventions, and for training on reporting and intervention for facilities and agencies and organizations working with victims and alleged perpetrators.     

In Principle <Emphasis Type="Italic">and</Emphasis> in Practice: Learning Political Tolerance in Eastern and Western Europe

Political tolerance is a key democratic value believed to undergird successful and healthy democracies. In nascent democracies especially, citizens must tolerate the views and participation of opposing groups in order to ensure methodical transfers of power with successive elections. Yet, despite its importance, little research considers tolerance outside established democracies. In this paper, we compare political tolerance across eight Eastern European countries and six Western countries. We demonstrate that mean levels of tolerance are lower in the newly democratized countries of Eastern Europe and then examine whether they are a function of East Europeans’ limited experience with democracy. We also test whether established individual-level theories of tolerance replicate across this wide range of new and old democracies. We find some support for theories of democratic learning and also show that models of tolerance operate differently across the range of countries in our sample.

Overview of: “Getting the Law Involved a Quasi-Experiment in Early Intervention Involving Collaboration Between Schools and the District Attorney's Office”

Research Summary Precursors to serious and chronic delinquency often emerge in childhood, stimulating calls for early interventions. Most intervention efforts rely solely on social service programs—often to the exclusion of the juvenile justice system. The juvenile justice system has been reluctant to become involved in the lives of relatively young children fearing net widening or further straining resources that could be used for older youth with documented delinquency histories. We report here the results of an early intervention program sponsored by and housed in a district attorney's office in Louisiana. Using a quasi-experimental design, we examined outcomes associated with program involvement as well as whether the obvious involvement of the prosecutor's office was associated with further reductions in problem behavior.

• 1 : The results revealed that significant reductions in problem behaviors of young children could be attributed to program participation.
• 2 : The obvious involvement of the district attorney's office, however, was associated with limited, albeit significant, reductions in specific problem behaviors.
• 3 : These findings show that successful early intervention efforts can be made part of the juvenile justice system and that in some limited situations prosecutorial involvement can result in positive outcomes.

Policy Implications The expansion of early intervention programming into the juvenile justice system offers opportunities to address early problem behavior. Our study and its results have the following policy implications.

• 1 : Closely coupled partnerships between schools and the juvenile justice system can effectively address, mitigate, and perhaps prevent an early onset of antisocial behavior.
• 2 : Even so, coupling early intervention efforts to the mission of the juvenile justice system warrants debate. Net-widening, resource diffusion, and the potential for officials to rely too heavily on the deterrent characteristics of the justice system represent serious threats to the integrity of effective early intervention programs.
• 3 : We suggest substantial debate and consideration is given before coupling early intervention efforts to the juvenile justice system.

     

Forensic analysis of black coral (Order Antipatharia)

Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), discriminate analysis, X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF), and stereoscopic microscopy were used to separate black coral forensic evidence items from similarly appearing items manufactured from plastics, bovid keratin, and mangrove wood. In addition, novel observations were made of bromine and iodine relationships in black coral that have not been previously reported.     

Challenger Quality and the Incumbency Advantage

Most estimates of the incumbency advantage and the electoral benefits of previous officeholding experience do not account for strategic entry by high‐quality challengers. We address this issue by using term limits as an instrument for challenger quality. Studying US state legislatures, we find strong evidence of strategic behavior by experienced challengers. However, we also find that such behavior does not appear to significantly bias the estimated effect of challenger experience or the estimated incumbency advantage. More tentatively, using our estimates, we find that 30–40% of the incumbency advantage in state legislative races is the result of “scaring off” experienced challengers.     

Strategic entry deterrence and terrorism: Theory and experimental evidence

Using a two stage rent-seeking framework, we present a simple model of strategic entry/terrorism deterrence and test the model using laboratory experiments. Our contest success function highlights the potential for strategic spillovers. The theory illustrates that, relative to a cooperative outcome, negative externalities lead to over-spending on deterrence and positive externalities lead to under-spending on deterrence. Our experimental results are broadly consistent; subjects in the negative externality treatment had higher expenditures. In contrast to theoretical predictions, participation decisions, while primarily driven by the probability of winning a contest, were influenced by a subject’s ability to participate in multiple contests.     

Sociodemographic variations in the linkage between emotion regulation and peer victimization

Sociodemographic variables may have important implications for understanding the role of global and discrete-level emotion regulation ability in the prediction of elementary school children’s peer victimization. We tested this hypothesis in a sample of 109 elementary school children from economically and racially diverse backgrounds. There was a positive relation between sadness regulation and overt victimization for children in early elementary grades, but not for children in later grades. In addition, there was a positive relation between sadness regulation and relational victimization for boys and a negative association between the two variables for girls. Girls were rated higher than boys on global emotion regulation ability. In addition, economically disadvantaged children reported more relational victimization than their more affluent peers. Affluent children also received higher ratings on global emotion regulation as well as sadness regulation. Anger regulation was also positively associated with overt victimization.     

Crime-Reduction Effects of Open-street CCTV: Conditionality Considerations

This study addresses the conditional nature of the effectiveness of open-street CCTV (closed circuit television) by examining the differences in the effects (1) between daytime and nighttime crime, (2) between weekday and weekend crime, (3) across specific-crime offenses, and (4) depending on CCTV site characteristics, including location type (e.g. downtown, business district, school/university, or residential area) and the site’s base rate of crime. This study used HLM (hierarchical linear modeling) with 84 repeated measures across 34 camera locations in Cincinnati, Ohio, while also accounting for overlapping camera areas. Overall, the findings provided minimal evidence of the effectiveness of CCTV in reducing crime, though some types of crime were reduced in residential areas especially, and effectiveness was clearly interdependent with an area’s base rate of crime. Finally, WDQ analyses showed that diffusion of benefits occurred much more often than displacement in cases where there was a crime reduction, post-CCTV.