Physical Discipline and Socioemotional Adjustment Among Jamaican Adolescents

The study examined the relationship between physical punishment and socioemotional well-being in a sample of Jamaican adolescents. The data indicated that the overwhelming majority of adolescent respondents experienced physical punishment within their families. Physical punishment was significantly associated with adverse psychological and behavioral consequences, in that adolescents reporting being victims of physical punishment also indicated a greater propensity to developmental adjustment problems than their non-victimized peers. However, unlike findings from research emanating from more industrialized cultures, sociodemographic factors were not associated with the incidence of physical punishment. Gender showed statistical significance on all socioemotional dimensions and with behavior problems but not with physical punishment. Implications for policy decisions to reduce children’s exposure to violence within that particular cultural context are discussed.     

Book reviews

Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, Instructions From the Centre. Top Secret Files on KGB Foreign Operations 1975-1985 (Hodder and Stoughton, 1991), 238pp.

Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky (eds.), More 'Instructions from the Centre': Top Secret Files on KGB Global Operations, 1975-1985 Intelligence and National Security (London, Frank Cass) 130pp. £24 hb.

Gunnar Skogmar, Nuclear Triangle: Relations between the United States, Great Britain and France in the Atomic Energy Field 1939-50 (Copenhagen, Political Studies Press, 1993), 240pp.

K.S. Sandhu, Sharon Siddique, Chandran Jeshurun, Ananda Rajah, Joseph L.H. Tan, Pushpa Thambipillai (eds.), The ASEAN Reader (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1992), xxvi + 582pp. S$58/ US$39.90 (soft cover); S$89/US$59.90 (hard cover). ISBN 981-981-3016-41-8 (soft cover), 981-3016-42-6 (hard cover).     

AGAINST JOINT CUSTODY: A DISSENT TO THE GENERAL BULLMOOSE THEORY

With the exception of the opening section, which is all my own, this article has been written in a kind of collaboration with authors from whose works and reports I have borrowed liberally, with permission. These include the majority report of the 1987–88 Executive Committee of the Child Custody Committee, Family Law Section of the American Bar Association, Professor Carol S. Bruch of the Martin Luther King, Jr. School of Law, University of California, Davis: Joanne Schulman, a gifted attorney who has researched, written and spoken extensively on the subject and the report of the Women's Legal Defense Fund on Joint Custody. Others are cited in footnotes.     

Testamentary competency

This paper examines the development of the doctrine that restricts testation to competent persons, and the use of expert testimony in implementing that doctrine. Since 1870 the leading articulation of this doctrine has been Lord Cockburn's Rule, which among other things requires that the testator knew the natural objects of his bounty at the time the will was made. The facultative theory of mind underlying Lord Cockburn's Rule is consistent with the contemporary, functional approach to competency to make medical decisions taken by the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research. Where expert testimony, based on training in the behavioral sciences, takes a functional approach to discovering the nature of the testator's values regarding other persons, it can assist the trier of fact significantly more than the lay opinion testimony which many courts have preferred in questions of testamentary competency. The concern of commentators that courts make false attributions of testamentary competency out of a perceived need to protect the family would be lessened, and the freedom of testation promoted, if courts directed their attention, through the kind of expert testimony proposed, to the testator's psychological family, instead of the persons identified as family members in intestacy statutes.The author wishes to thank Professors John Monahan, Roberta A. Morris, and Richard J. Bonnie for their helpful critiques of an earlier draft of this paper. The author also gratefully acknowledges the research assistance of Vicki L. Epling and Paul A. Lombardo, law students at the University of Virginia.A portion of this paper was presented by the author at the 1982 Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association under the title, The Application of Psychology to Legal Problems Involving Trusts and Estates, as part of the symposium, Psychological Questions in Legal Areas Largely Unexplored by Psychologists. This symposium was proposed and organized by Professor Gary B. Melton of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.     

Bureaucracy and consultation: the Correctional Service of Canada and the requirements of being democratic

Abstract: The question of how the “participatory” climate of the 1900s has affected government decision-making processes in Canada has caught the attention of many students of public administration. The Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) has made a commitment over the last decade to greater public involvement in its operations. However, the csc initially underestimated the tensions between bureaucratic and consultative practice, as well as the extent of the organizational changes required for meaningful consultation. The result was a delayed adaptation to the requirements of consultation, which impaired the csc's ability to communicate with the public. The first part of this paper delineates the tensions between bureaucratic and consultative practice that manifest themselves in different assumptions concerning who should make policy decisions, what criteria should be used in decision making, who should be informed and, finally, how the decision-making organizations should be designed. In the second part, the csc's attempts to overcome such tensions are examined in four cases of community consultation conducted in the 1990s. Sommaire: De nombreux étudiants en administration publique se sont penchés sur la question de savoir comment le climat «participatif» des années 1990 a influé sur le processus décisionnel gouvernemental au Canada. Le Service correctionnel du Canada (scc) s'est engagé au cours de la dernière décennie à faire participer davantage le grand public à ses opérations. Cependant, le scc avait sous-estime au depart la tension qui régnait entre l'approche bureaucratique et l'approche consultative, ainsi que l'ampleur des changements organisationnels nécessaires pour avoir une consultation valable. Par conséquent, l'adaptation aux exigences de la consultation a tardéà se produire, ce qui diminua l'aptitude du scc à communiquer avec le public. l.a première partie de cet article décrit les écarts entre les deux approches mentionnées plus haut, écarts qui se manifestent par des idées divergentes concernant quidevrait prendre les décisions en matiere de politique, quels criteres devraient guider les décisions, qui devrait êre mis au courant et enfin, comment les organismes décisionnels devraient être concps. La deuxième partie de l'article examine quatre cas de consultation communautaire réalisées dans les années 1990, Afin de cerner les efforts du SCC visant àéliminer ces tensions.