Exploring the Impacts of Racial Disparity Within the American Juvenile Justice System

The racial disparity in the American juvenile justice system impacts the lives of many youth of color. Youth of color constitute 34% of the U.S. population, however, they make up 62% of the youth charged in the juvenile justice system. The cycle of racial inequality and imprisonment are factors influenced by residential segregation and policing practices. Juvenile justice involvement leads to poorer physical and mental health in youth, stymied social outcomes, poorer familial relationships, decreased graduation and employment rates, increased rates in violence, and long-term negative future outcomes. The article advocates for mental health treatment and family services to be incorporated within incarcerated settings. Clinical strategies and future direction are discussed to begin to combat these various adverse impacts.     

Security-Civil Liberties Trade-offs: International Cooperation in Extraordinary Rendition

Following the launch of the WoT, the United States established a global rendition network that saw the transfer of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) terrorist suspects to secret detention sites across the world. Conventional accounts of foreign complicity show that 54 diverse countries were involved, including many established democracies. What determined more than a quarter of the world’s countries to participate in RDI operations during the post-9/11 period? Given the sensitive nature of cooperation required, I argue that the United States screened countries according to their preferences on security-civil liberties trade-offs. Countries with similar preferences to the United States on human rights were cheaper to buy off and would have required less persuasion to cooperate. This theory is consistent with the existing claim that cooperation is more likely between countries with similar preferences as both actors are better off when the partnership increases. I test this hypothesis on global data using UNGA voting data as a proxy for common interest and develop a spatial variable that models a country’s logistical utility during the transfer of a detainee based on its distance to a central rendition transit corridor between the United States and Afghanistan. The analysis provides robust empirical support for my theoretical argument.     

Introduction: East Asia's Contested Security Order

East Asia's security environment is changing rapidly. Over the past five years or so, the security order has become increasingly unsettled as it is buffeted by a complex array of forces. The region is entering a period of growing rivalry and animosity states are uncertain over the strategic intentions of great and rising powers, nationalism is an increasingly pervasive force, and military spending has been ramping up in many countries over the past decade. That the security environment is changing is unarguable. But what is the extent of these changes? And what are the implications of these shifts for regional states? This paper introduces the special issue “East Asia's Contested Security Order”. It begins by discussing the broad contours of the changing East Asian security order and what is at stake for regional powers. It then introduces the seven articles in this edition that challenge existing conceptualisations of the East Asian security order, articulate diverse perspectives on that order held by regional, middle and smaller powers, examine their complex and different security strategies that contribute to shaping the regional order, and consider the extent to which the regional security order may be said to be “contested”.     

THE INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL VALIDITY OF THE REGRESSION DISCONTINUITY DESIGN: A META‐ANALYSIS OF 15 WITHIN‐STUDY COMPARISONS

Theory predicts that regression discontinuity (RD) provides valid causal inference at the cutoff score that determines treatment assignment. One purpose of this paper is to test RD's internal validity across 15 studies. Each of them assesses the correspondence between causal estimates from an RD study and a randomized control trial (RCT) when the estimates are made at the same cutoff point where they should not differ asymptotically. However, statistical error, imperfect design implementation, and a plethora of different possible analysis options, mean that they might nonetheless differ. We test whether they do, assuming that the bias potential is greater with RDs than RCTs. A second purpose of this paper is to investigate the external validity of RD by exploring how the size of the bias estimates varies across the 15 studies, for they differ in their settings, interventions, analyses, and implementation details. Both Bayesian and frequentist meta‐analysis methods show that the RD bias is below 0.01 standard deviations on average, indicating RD's high internal validity. When the study‐specific estimates are shrunken to capitalize on the information the other studies provide, all the RD causal estimates fall within 0.07 standard deviations of their RCT counterparts, now indicating high external validity. With unshrunken estimates, the mean RD bias is still essentially zero, but the distribution of RD bias estimates is less tight, especially with smaller samples and when parametric RD analyses are used.     

Working the Spaces in between: A Case Study of a Boundary‐Spanning Model to Help Facilitate Cross‐Sectoral Policy Work

Since the 1990s, ‘joined‐up government,’ ‘whole‐of‐government,’ and ‘horizontal governance’ approaches have emerged in many industrialized countries, resulting in the devolution of government functions to diverse policy networks. From these shifts, complex systems of networked actors have emerged, involved in designing, implementation, and influencing policy. Arguably, networked approaches to policy may solve some problems. However, as with all paradigm shifts, new problems have emerged. Specifically, skill and knowledge gaps have opened up, reflecting the need for new collaborative and networked relationships that can increase the capabilities and agility to work in these ways. In response to these gaps, we developed the Power to Persuade initiative. Power to Persuade is an annual symposium and online forum, aimed at deepening knowledge and awareness of current problems faced by policy networks, and providing the skills and knowledge to overcome them. In this paper, we discuss how Power to Persuade works within the spaces in between as a vehicle for relationship building and better policy.     

The “Phantom Local” and the Everyday Distinction Practices of Humanitarian Actors in War: A Socio-Legal Perspective

ABSTRACT

This article is concerned the everyday practices of international humanitarian actors who deliver assistance in armed conflict zones. Drawing on original fieldwork conducted in South Sudan, it elucidates how humanitarian actors engage with the principle of distinction in international humanitarian law (IHL). The article considers how the desire to enforce distinction impacts humanitarian actors’ relationships with others, and introduces the concept of everyday distinction practices. These practices have an important performance component, designed to appease the “phantom local.” It is proposed that such practices may have adverse implications for the humanitarian–beneficiary encounter. By positioning war-affected populations as an audience for distinction, everyday distinction practices reconfigure the victims of war from being receivers of aid to perceivers of aid. By lumping beneficiaries together with armed actors as part of the “phantom local,” distinction practices also paint the victims of war as an object of mistrust, fear, and potential danger.     

Weight-Based Victimization Among Adolescents in the School Setting: Emotional Reactions and Coping Behaviors

Weight-based victimization is a frequent experience for adolescents, but little is known about their emotional reactions and coping strategies in response to weight-based teasing and bullying. The present study examined the ways that adolescents cope with experiences of weight-based victimization at school. An initial sample of 1,555 students from two high schools in central Connecticut completed a comprehensive battery of self-report measures to assess their experiences of weight-based teasing and bullying at school, affective responses to these experiences, and coping strategies used to deal with incidents of weight-based victimization. Only those students who reported experiencing weight-based victimization (N = 394) were included for the purposes of the present study. Of this sub-sample, 56% were females, 84% were Caucasian, and the mean age was 16.4 years. Weight-based victimization resulted in 40–50% of adolescents feeling sad and depressed, worse about themselves, bad about their body, angry, and some feeling afraid. Gender differences emerged with respect to how boys and girls react to experiences of weight-based victimization. However, structural equation model estimates demonstrated that both boys and girls who reported negative affect in response to weight-based victimization were more likely to use coping strategies of avoidance (e.g., avoiding gym class), increased food consumption, and binge eating. Binary logistic regressions showed that the odds of students skipping school or reporting that their grades were harmed because of weight-based teasing increased by 5% per teasing incident, even after controlling for gender, age, race, grades, and weight status. To our knowledge, this study is the first systematic examination of affective reactions and coping strategies among overweight adolescents in response to weight-based victimization. These findings can inform efforts to assist overweight youth to cope adaptively with weight-based victimization.     

Continuity and Change from Adolescence to Emerging Adulthood: Adolescence-limited vs. Life-course-persistent Profound Ego Development Arrests

Participants (n = 36) with consistent Pre-conformist ego development levels during multiple adolescent assessments were studied to determine whether and how their ego levels had changed at age 25. Those (n = 12) whose ego levels remained at the Pre-conformist level were assigned to a life-course-persistent profound ego development arrest trajectory group; those (n = 24) whose ego levels reached the Conformist or Post-conformist level at age 25 were assigned to an adolescence-limited profound ego development arrest trajectory group. Analysis of predictors and age 25 correlates of group membership revealed that selected age 14 family interaction behaviors differentiated the two groups. At age 25, members of the adolescence-limited group showed superior performance on several measures of interpersonal and intrapersonal functioning.

Parental Smoking-specific Communication,Adolescents’ Smoking Behavior and Friendship Selection

In this study, we investigated whether parental smoking-specific communication is related to adolescents’ friendship-selection processes. Furthermore, we investigated whether adolescents and their best friends influence each other over time, and what role parents play in this process. In the present study we used data from the Family and Health project in which at baseline 428 full families participated. In this 2-year, three-wave longitudinal study data were available from fathers, mothers, early adolescents (aged M = 13.4 years, SD = .50), and middle adolescents (aged M = 15.2 years, SD = .60). The majority of the participating adolescents were of Dutch origin (>95%). There was an almost equal distribution of boys and girls, and adolescents with lower, middle, and higher educational levels were equally represented. Analyses were conducted by means of Structural Equation Modeling. Results demonstrate that a high quality of the smoking-specific communication is related to a lower likelihood of adolescent smoking, whereas the frequency is positively associated with adolescent smoking. Both the quality and frequency of parental smoking-specific communication were related to adolescents’ selective affiliation with (non-)smoking friends. The findings suggest that parental smoking-specific communication is associated with adolescent smoking directly but also indirectly by influencing the friends the adolescents will associate with.

The Utility of Forms and Functions of Aggression in Emerging Adulthood: Association with Personality Disorder Symptomatology

A sample of 679 (341 women) emerging adults (M = 18.90 years; SD = 1.11; range = 18.00–22.92) participated in a study on the utility of forms (i.e., physical and relational) and functions (i.e., proactive and reactive) of aggression. We examined the link between these four subtypes of aggression and personality pathology (i.e., psychopathic features, borderline personality disorder features, and antisocial personality disorder features). The study supports the psychometric properties (i.e., test–retest reliability, internal consistency, discriminant validity) of a recently introduced measure of forms and functions of aggression during emerging adulthood. Aggression subtypes were uniquely associated with indices of personality pathology. For example, proactive (i.e., planned, instrumental or goal-oriented) and reactive (i.e., impulsive, hostile or retaliatory) functions of relational aggression were uniquely associated with borderline personality disorder features even after controlling for functions of physical aggression and gender. The results highlight the differential associations between forms and functions of aggression and indices of personality pathology in typically developing emerging adults.