Training Child Welfare Professionals to Support Healthy Couple Relationships: Examining the Link to Training Transfer

Integrating healthy relationship and marriage education (RME) into child welfare services is a relatively recent initiative. Guided by the theoretical work in child welfare training evaluation, the current study describes the development and testing of a new RME training for child welfare professionals. Based on data collected from 272 trainees, results from structural equation modeling indicate a linear association between learner attitudes and newly acquired knowledge and skills to perceptions of training usefulness, which, in turn, influenced implementation of RME skills with clients. Implications for the delivery and evaluation of programming, in general and specific to RME, are shared.     

Toward an Interpretive Criminal Justice

This paper presents the academic field of criminal justice as an interpretive social science. The opening section discusses academic criminal justice from scientific and interpretive perspectives, arguing that the terminology of “justice” is essentially contested. The second section presents the key implication of a contested core terminology: that an interpretive approach is the best way to develop the academic field of criminal justice. Section three reviews central elements of the Gadamerian tradition, with an eye towards its application to the field of criminal justice. The fourth section considers two issues pertinent to an interpretive criminal justice—the problem of interpretation in a field where professional practice is destructive to other normative systems, and the contribution of an interpretive criminal justice to public policy.     

Observing Environmental Destruction Stimulates Neural Activation in Networks Associated with Empathic Responses

The negative impacts of environmental disruption disproportionately affect marginalized and underprivileged communities; thus, the degree to which society is complicit in allowing unchecked environmental destruction to occur has important social justice applications. Although decades of research have sought to understand factors which determine acceptance of environmental destruction, most of this research has been based on self-report surveys. In the present work, we used neuroimaging techniques to examine the neural correlates of environmental concern. To do this, we compared responses to observing suffering dogs with responses to observing suffering ecosystems. Our results extend previous findings which had shown largely overlapping neural response patterns to observing animal and human suffering. Critically, we found activation in regions previously identified as active in empathy processes in response to viewing harm to ecosystems (i.e., without any animals present in the images). We also found relative differences in response patterns between the two types of stimuli: witnessing harm to environments (vs. dog suffering) led to reduced activation in some regions, but similar activation in others. We discuss these findings in terms of their potential implications for behavioral interventions and possibilities for continued neuroimaging research examining neural responses to environmental ecosystems and other nonhuman entities.     

What Could a New Crime Commission Accomplish?

Even though the crime rate in the United States has dropped since the U.S. President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice under President Johnson issued its report in 1967, the total number of serious crimes in the nation has increased, and public concern about the subject remains high. The 1960s Commission did not fully consider several major subjects that have emerged after it reported, including mental illness, immigration, cybercrime and other white collar crimes, indigent defense, crime victims, and evidence‐based crime policy. Many observers believe that the need to deal with these subjects in addition to those discussed by other researchers in this volume warrants an examination of crime and justice by a new commission. Congress has considered proposals for such a study for nearly a decade, but they are yet to be acted on amid ideological disputes over other criminal justice issues. If Congress fails to establish a new commission, it is still possible that one could be formed with the support of state, county, and local governments, as well as with the support of private foundations.     

The changing association between prenatal participation in WIC and birth outcomes in New York City.

We analyze the relationship between prenatal WIC participation and birth outcomes in New York City from 1988-2001. The analysis is unique for several reasons. First, we have over 800,000 births to women on Medicaid, the largest sample ever used to analyze prenatal participation in WIC. Second, we focus on measures of fetal growth distinct from preterm birth, since there is little clinical support for a link between nutritional supplementation and premature delivery. Third, we restrict the primary analysis to women on Medicaid who have no previous live births and who initiate prenatal care within the first four months of pregnancy. Our goal is to lessen heterogeneity between WIC and non-WIC participants by limiting the sample to highly motivated women who have no experience with WIC from a previous pregnancy. Fourth, we analyze a large sub-sample of twin deliveries. Multifetal pregnancies increase the risk of anemia and fetal growth retardation and thus may benefit more than singletons from nutritional supplementation. We find no relationship between prenatal WIC participation and measures of fetal growth among singletons. We find a modest pattern of association between WIC and fetal growth among U.S.-born Black twins. Our findings suggest that prenatal participation in WIC has had a minimal effect on adverse birth outcomes in New York City.     

Financial Reporting by Australian Nonprofit Organisations: Dilemmas Posed by Government Funders

Nonprofit organisations comprise a growing and important sector of the Australian economy. This sector is being used by governments to an increasing extent for the delivery of services. The most common manner in which nonprofit organisations are funded by government is through the provision of grants, contracts or service agreements. Nonprofits discharge their accountability for these funds through reporting guidelines issued by the government funders. This article examines the financial accountability requirements of government funders, in one jurisdiction in Australia to support the central argument that the emphasis on ‘upward and external’ accountabilities serve as a functional and control tool on the sector. This emphasis detracts from the development of the ‘downward and internal’ mechanisms of accountability which are the essential building blocks for the strategic development of the capacity of the sector to respond to calls for greater accountability.     

Do government subsidies increase the private supply of public goods?

Public Choice - We study three different models in which public goods are supplied by private contributions. In one of these models, tax-financed government subsidies to private contributions will...