Fatal Families: Why Children are Killed in Familicide Occurrences

This literature review attempts to identify the underlying factors and commonalities regarding the killing of children in occurrences of familicide (wherein the entire family is slain by a family member). Numerous journal and newspaper articles were reviewed to glean information regarding similarities in victim families, the breakdown of the family prior to the incident of familicide, and the degree of pre-meditation by the perpetrator. This information is then used to discuss and inform possible implications in counselling such as assessment, prevention, and grief and loss therapy as well as directions for future research.     

Beyond Endogeneity: How Firms and Regulators Co‐Construct the Meaning of Regulation

What role do regulators and firms play in the construction of open‐ended regulatory terms? The new institutional legal endogeneity model posits that organizations respond to legal uncertainty by adopting formal structures to symbolically signal their compliance. These structures, however, tend to embody businesses' managerial and commercial values, as opposed to regulatory goals. Law becomes endogenous insofar as legal actors then defer to businesses' institutionalized ideas about regulation and compliance. Professionals, such as lawyers and human‐resource managers, and their strategic deployment of framing, are portrayed as the engines of the above process of legal endogeneity. By comparison, administrative agencies' strategies in shaping the meaning that corporations attach to the law are practically ignored. Building on a detailed case study of British financial firms' responses to the Financial Services Authority's Treating Customers Fairly initiative, this article problematizes the supposition of regulatory deference to business constructions of law. Instead, it develops a more balanced model that recognizes business professionals' and regulators' co‐construction of regulation and compliance. The process of regulatory meaning co‐construction, as depicted by this model, involves alignment and disputes between regulators' and professionals' strategic framing of regulatory concerns with tangible consequences for the enactment of regulation.     

Development of an Index of Subsidized Housing Availability and its Relationship to Housing Insecurity

Housing insecurity is a known threat to child health understanding predictors of housing insecurity can help inform policies to protect the health of young children in low-income households. This study sheds light on the relationship between housing insecurity and availability of housing that is affordable to low-income households.

We developed a county-level index of availability of subsidized housing needed to meet the demand of low-income households. Our results estimate that if subsidized units are made available to an additional 5% of the eligible population, the odds of overcrowding decrease by 26% and the odds of families making multiple moves decrease by 31%. Both of these are known predictors of poor child health outcomes. Thus, these results suggest that state and federal investments in expanding the stock of subsidized housing could reduce housing insecurity and thereby also improve the health and well-being of young children, including their families' food security status.     

Forensic Features of Lethal Late‐Presenting Diaphragmatic Hernias

Diaphragmatic defects are a relatively common and benign finding in adults which may be congenital or secondarily acquired. The case files at Forensic Sciences South Australia were reviewed over a 10‐year period from July 2005 to June 2015 for all adult (>17 years) cases in which diaphragmatic hernias were identified at postmortem examination that had either caused or contributed to death. Five cases were found: age range 49–90 years (average 67.2 years); male:female ratio 2:3. Herniated organs included the stomach (N = 3), small (N = 3) and large intestines (N = 2). Mechanisms of death involved lung compression with respiratory failure and/or mediastinal shift, and vascular compromise with gastric or intestinal infarction and/or perforation. Diaphragmatic hernias may not be identified until the time of autopsy and may be quite complex entities to evaluate due to a lack of clinical history and to difficulties in determining their origin and possible contributions to mechanisms of death.     

Facts,Preferences, and Doctrine: An Empirical Analysis of Proportionality Judgment

Legal proportionality is one of the most important principles for adjudicating among conflicting values. However, rather little is known about the factors that play a role in the formation of proportionality judgments. This research presents the first empirical analysis in this regard, relying on a sample of 331 legal experts (lawyers and legal academics). The policy domain addressed by the experiment is the antiterrorist military practice of targeted killings, which has been the subject of a legal debate. Our experimental findings suggest that proportionality judgments are receptive to normatively relevant facts. We also find strong correlational evidence for the effect of ideological preferences on such judgments. These results are consistent for two proportionality doctrines. We suggest that proportionality judgment is anchored jointly in the experts’ policy preferences and the facts of the case. We outline the implications of the findings for the psychological and legal literature.     

Societal transformation,public opinion and Saudi youth: views from an academic elite

Saudi socio-politics is being affected by societal transformation; one that is being driven by a potent combination of demographics, improved education, wider access to the Internet and burgeoning new media usage. Whilst Saudi government decision-making remains ‘top-down’, the dynamic within this approach has shifted as the top-down system incorporates a consultation process that includes newly established civil society institutions. Nonetheless, of particular significance in Saudi Arabia is growing public awareness, particularly amongst young educated Saudis, of the need for government accountability, transparency and best-practices.

This paper discusses the views of a group of young men who represent an academic elite. Saudi-related literature frequently centers on the status of Saudi women, but the perspective of young Saudi men is generally overlooked even though this constituency is going to be of critical importance to the Kingdom's future social and political stability. The author recognizes that this elite sample does not represent Saudi youth in its entirety, but the diversity of student backgrounds and access to their extended networks can act as a barometer of educated youth opinion regarding many of the pressing politico-economic and socio-cultural issues facing Saudi Arabia today.