The effect of inmates' self-reported childhood and adolescent animal cruelty: motivations on the number of convictions for adult violent interpersonal crimes

Few researchers have investigated the potentially predictive power of motives for childhood and adolescent animal cruelty as it is associated with interpersonal violence in adulthood. Based on a sample of 261 inmates at medium- and maximum-security prisons in a southern state, the present study examines the relationship among several retrospectively reported motives (anger, fun, dislike, and imitation) for animal cruelty and violent crime convictions (assault, rape, and murder). Almost half reported abusing animals out of anger, whereas more than one third did so for fun. Dislike for the animal and imitation were less frequently occurring motives. Participants who abused animals at an earlier age and those who did so out of anger or for fun were more likely to repeat the offense. Regression analyses revealed that abusing an animal out of fun in their youth was the most statistically salient motive for predicting later interpersonal violence as adults.     

Intimate Partner Violence Among Adolescent and Young Adult Mothers

The associations between intimate partner violence (IPV) and mental health among adolescent and young adult mothers were compared. The sample was drawn from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study and participants were 672 mothers between the ages of 14 and 21. IPV was significantly positively associated with both depression and anxiety among young adult mothers. However, these associations were not found among adolescent mothers. In addition, IPV and marital status were significantly related among young adult mothers, but not adolescent mothers. Results suggest that IPV may have different consequences during different parts of the life course, or that mental health symptoms may be reported only later in life.

Doing time: A qualitative study of long-term incarceration and the impact of mental illness

Once convicted, the perpetrator of serious crime embarks upon a new journey: the challenge of adjusting to long-term imprisonment. Prisoners' views of incarceration and the meaning of this experience may affect their later adjustment to life in the community. On the basis of brief narrative responses collected during an epidemiological survey of the psychological health of prisoners in France, this study examined the impact of incarceration on psychological state in a group of 59 inmates serving long sentences. Qualitative content analysis and computer-assisted linguistic analysis (using ALCESTE software) were performed on the textual data of open responses to three standard questions. Using a combination of these two approaches, seven categories of the subjective experience of prisoners in the sample were identified: the Outside World, Others, Punishment, Time, Affects and Impulses, Self-Concept, and Speech. Further qualitative analyses were then performed to compare the responses of Severely Mentally Ill (SMI) subjects and subjects with no psychiatric disorder. These analyses revealed contrasting attitudes towards incarceration. SMI subjects spoke in more hostile and persecutory terms about their experience in prison, attributing suffering to external circumstances, while subjects with no psychiatric disorder evoked similar themes, but with an introspective attitude. The themes evoked by mentally ill individuals in our sample suggest that their reactions to the prison environment arise in part from aspects of their psychiatric symptoms, and this may have relevance to future mental health policy and practices in criminal corrections.     

The Face-to-Face Mediation Program: A Massachusetts success story

Summary An effort that began as an experimental alternative to small claims court for consumer cases has fostered the application of alternative dispute resolution to many other conflicts in Massachusetts. The Attorney General's Face-to-Face Mediation Program, unique in the country, has proven to be an effective local resource to citizens of the state for resolving consumer disputes. The influence of the program has been felt outside the Attorney General's office as well as within.In the two years since this report was written, the Attorney General's Face-to-Face Mediation Program has shown a steady increase both in referrals and in quality of service. Today, all but one of the seven remaining mediation programs is running at or near capacity. In 1988, 84 percent of the approximately 700 cases that were mediated reached agreement, and 96 percent of those agreements were upheld. Suzanne Goulet Orenstein, who is Senior Associate, Program on Environmental Dispute Resolution with The Conservation Foundation, Washington, D.C., formerly was Chief, Local Consumer Groups and Dispute Resolution Activities with the Office of the Massachusetts Attorney General.Kathleen Grant is Coordinator of the Face-to-Face Mediation Program, Public Protection Bureau, The Massachusetts Attorney General's Office, 131 Tremont St., Boston, Mass. 02111.     

Reviews

Steven Fortescue, The Communist Party and Soviet Science. Macmillan, London/Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1986, 234 pp. £27.50, $28–50.

Cameron Ross, Local Government in the Soviet Union: Problems of implementation and Control. London: Croom Helm, 1987, 229pp., £29.95.

Albert P. van Goudoever, The Limits of Destalinization in the Soviet Union. Translated by Frans Hijkoop. London: Croom Helm, 1986, viii + 276 pp., £25.00.

Donald Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Stalinist Industrialization: the Formation of Modern Soviet Production Relations, 1928–1941, London: Pluto Press, 1986, vi + 338 pp., £25.00.

William Chase, Workers, Society, and the Soviet State. Labor and Life in Moscow, 1918–1929. Urbana, Il.: University of Illinois Press, 1987, xviii + 344 pp., $29.90.

Catherine Andreyev, Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Movement: Soviet Reality and Emigre Theories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, xiv + 251 pp., h/b £25.00, $34.50.

Olimpiad S. Ioffe and Mark W. Janis, eds. Soviet Law and Economy. Law in Eastern Europe Series, no. 32. Dordrecht, Holland: Martinus Nijhoff, 1986, xii + 335 pp., £58.75.

A. Hewett, ed., Energy Economics and Foreign Policy in the Soviet Union. Washington DC: The Brookings Institution, 1984, xi + 228 pp., £12.85 p/b, £34–00 h/b.

George W. Hoffman (with contributions by Leslie Dienes), The European Energy Challenge: East and West. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1985, xvi + 207 pp., £34.75.

Carl H. McMillan, Multinationals from the Second World. London: Macmillan, 1987, xvi + 220pp., £29.50.

Sergio Alessandrini and Bruno Dallago, eds., The Unofficial Economy: Consequences and Perspectives in Different Economic Systems. Aldershot: Gower, 1987, 345 pp., £22.50.

A. James McAdams, East Germany and Detente: Building Authority after the Wall. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, xi + 233 pp., £25.00, $34.00.

Karel Kaplan, The Short March, The Communist Takeover in Czechoslovakia 1945–1948. London: C. Hurst & Company, 1987. xvi + 207 pp., £16.50.

D. Turnock, The Romanian Economy in the Twentieth Century, Basingstoke, Kent: Croom Helm, 1986, xx + 296 pp., £27.95.

John Hiden, The Baltic states and Weimar Ostpolitik. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, xi + 276 pp., £25.00.

Jan F. Triska, ed., Dominant Powers and Subordinate States: the United States in Latin America and the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe, Duke University Press, 1986, 504 pp. £48.90 h/b, £14.40 p/b.

Rasul B. Rais, The Indian Ocean and the Superpowers. Economic, Political and Strategic Perspectives, London: Croom Helm, 1986, 215 pp., £25.00.

Vera Broido, Lenin and the Mensheviks. The Persecution of Socialists Under Bolshevism, Hants: Gower/Maurice Temple Smith, 1987, 224 pp. £17.50.

J. P. Roos and Andrzej Sicinski. Ways of Life in Finland and Poland. Gower, Aldershot and Vermont: 1987, viii + 203 pp., £18.50.