Popping the cultural bubble of violence risk assessment tools

Violence risk instruments are administered in medico-legal contexts to estimate an individual’s likelihood of future violence. However, their ostensible limitations; in particular their mono-cultural and risk-centric composition, has drawn academic attention. These concerns may facilitate erroneous risk evaluations for certain non-white populations. Yet it remains unaddressed how cultural differences will be appraised in a risk assessment framework and which specific cultural factors should be considered. Provisions under the Canadian Criminal Code allow for Gladue Reports, to be sought by judicial officers prior to sentencing Indigenous people. Gladue Reports provide insights into an Indigenous person’s unique circumstances that may have led to their offending as well as community-based options for rehabilitation. We proffer that there may be value in augmenting the risk evaluation with culturally relevant Gladue style considerations identified by relevant Indigenous people to provide a more holistic account of an Indigenous individual’s circumstances.     

The Role of Incubators in the Entrepreneurial Process

We outline a model that improves our understanding of the role of incubators in the entrepreneurial process. Specifically, we focus on the impact of the services offered, namely infrastructure, coaching and networks, on the graduation rates of the respective incubators tenants. The model is tested among three different types of incubators, for-profit, non-profit, university-based incubators. Based on our qualitative findings, we conclude that our initial model is ineffective, in the sense that it cannot fully explain the role of the incubators in facilitating entrepreneurship. Interviews with directors of incubator centers were also carried out simultaneously. Further analysis of the results along with interview responses from incubator directors, led us to propose a more comprehensive model to explain how incubators affect the entrepreneurial process.     

Monitoring deliberate self-harm presentations to general hospitals

Monitoring of deliberate self-harm (DSH) presentations to hospitals (and in other settings) is receiving increased attention in many countries. This is due to greater recognition of the size of the problem and awareness of its relevance to suicide prevention policy initiatives, because of the strong association between DSH and suicide. A system for monitoring all DSH presentations has been in place in the general hospital in Oxford for 30 years. Based on our experience, in this paper we describe procedures for monitoring, including case definition and identification, linkage of persons and episodes in order to investigate repetition of DSH and other outcomes (including deaths), and data protection and ethical issues. We also provide details of how to carry out monitoring, including different models of data collection, and what data to collect. Finally we consider the potential uses of the data for both clinical and research purposes, including evaluation of national suicide prevention initiatives.     

Patients Are More than their Illnesses: The Use of Story in Medical Education

[W]hen a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experiences; the ordinary man's experience is chaotic, irregular, fragmentary. The latter falls in love, or reads Spinoza and these experiences have nothing to do with each other, or with the noise of the type-writer or the smell of cooking; in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes. —T.S. Eliot     

Government aid to industry: a private sector perspective

Abstract: The real world is that of an increasingly competitive marketplace which espouses free trade but implements a wide variety of policies and practices in pursuit of industrial stimulation. The number and variety of such interventions are so great that the policy issue becomes not whether there should be a rationale for government aid but what that rationale should be. The acceptable rationale is that government support is valid if it recognizes and nourishes private enterprise as the engine of the economy. All industrial policies should be consciously and rigorously measured by this criterion. Other principles of industrial policy follow. Government “aid” should be redefined as an economic contract between government and industry. Such a contract should be limited in time, and be viewed in a sectoral context. At the end of the contract the company or sector should either survive based on market support or be allowed to fail. Current instruments and programs relating to industrial policy are fragmented and lack a strategic framework. The most significant institutional issue, however, is that of the proliferating crown corporations which inevitably restrict private operations. They should be time-limited, with plans at the outset to return the function performed to the private sector. Sommaire: Le monde, vu de façon réaliste, est un marché de plus en plus compétitif qui se veut libre tout en mettant en oeuvre une grande diversité de méchanismes politiques et pratiques dans le but de stimuler l'industrie. Le nombre et la variété de ces interventions sont tels que la question n'est plus de décider si l'aide gouver-nementale est justifiée, mais plutot d'en comprendre le fondement. Il est acceptable de considérer l'aide gouvernementale comme valable si elle reconnaît et alimente l'industrie comme étant le moteur de 1'économie. C'est le critère qui devrait êre appliqué sciemment et avec rigueur à toutes les politiques industrielles. D'autres principes de politique industrielle en découlent. “L'aide” du gouvernement devrait être redéfinie comme représentant un contrat entre le gouvernement et l'industrie. Ce contrat devrait êre limité dans le temps et envisagé dans le contexte du secteur concerné A l‘échéance, la société industrielle ou le secteur devrait pouvoir survivre avec la seule assistance du marché ou faire faillite. Les instrumeats et programmes actuels de politique industrielle sont fragmentés et manquent de cadre stratégique. La questiori la plus grave du point de vue des institutions est, toritefois, celle de la prolifération des sociétés de 1e couronne qui restreignent inévitablement les opérations privées. Elles devraient être limitées daris le temps avec, dès le début. des plans pour rendre au sectenr privé la fonction qu'elles remplissent. “We made it with government assistance — what's so bad about that?— Lee Iacocca, chairman, Chrysler     

Incestuous victimization by Juvenile Sex offenders

Most research and clinical data dealing with child sexual abuse have focused on adult offenders (usually a parent or relative) and their child victims. More recently, however, the data are beginning to show that a sizeable number of these sexual encounters are being committed by juvenile offenders. Thus, parents and members of the helping professions are beginning to see that what had previously been labeled sexual experimentation may be more serious. Using 37 cases drawn from the files of a local Children and Family Service agency that met the study definition of a juvenile sexual offense, data are reported on the following variables: the age difference between the victim and the offender, the relationship between victim and offender, the act involved, the context in which the act occurred, the pattern of the sexual contact, problems the offender exhibited that may have resulted from the sexual encounter, and general demographic data about the offender's family.     

Education Aid in New York State: Targeting Issues and Measures

The distribution of state aid for public education in New Yorkis the result of a combination of political and educationalconcerns. They influence the amount of school aid distributed,the pattern of aid distribution among school districts, thetypes of programs funded, and the accountability required forthese funds. This article focuses on the forces that influencethe split between general state aid and targeted state aid.General aid refers to aid that districts may use for any purposeconsistent with local priorities or needs. Targeted aid is moneyprovided by the state to a district for a particular purpose.When a district accepts targeted aid, it must agree to spendthe funds in accord with specific statutes or regulations. Considerationsof equity, mechanics of state aid distribution, and the historyof the development of school aid legislation are also discussedin this article.