What Happens After School? Linking Latino Adolescents’ Activities and Exposure to Community Violence

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Although community violence and the deleterious behavioral and psychological consequences that are associated with exposure to community violence persist as...     

Policy feedback and public opinion: the role of employer responsibility in social policy

This study extends the literature on policy feedback and explores the extent to which public attitudes reflect learning from past government initiatives. We analyze the ways in which feedback mechanisms affecting public attitudes may differ from those earlier identified in the literature. We apply this general analytic framework to help explain variation in public attitudes toward private employer involvement in health care, explore possible causal pathways, and offer some preliminary empirical tests of these hypotheses. There are different levels of public support for the notion of employer obligation involving medical care, long-term care, and the treatment of substance abuse. Our evidence suggests that lessons about the performance of institutions in each of these policy domains represent the most important effect of existing policy on public attitudes. Furthermore, these differences correspond to what one would expect based on our model of policy feedback and cannot be explained by other plausible sources of policy legitimacy.     

Police officers who commit suicide by cop: a clinical study with analysis

Suicide by cop has become a familiar topic among members of law enforcement, mental health professionals, and the general public. This paper presents two cases where police officers chose to commit suicide by getting other police officers to kill them. The two police officers studied, by examination of closed case files, were found to be similar to civilians who committed suicide by cop on several demographic (gender, age, history of mental illness, and suicide attempts), and situational (stress factors, trigger) variables. The cases help us to understand possible motives and management for individuals who choose to end their life in this manner.     

Inside a Cultural Agency: Team Ethnography and Knowledge Exchange

This article undertakes an auto-critical analysis of the research team's ethnographic study of Cultural Enterprise Office (CEO), a Scottish creative business support agency. We discuss the team's composition and how this relates to other analyses of ethnographic teamwork. Our research is situated in the wider policy context of the “creative-economic” turn in the UK's research funding. This has been accompanied by increased emphasis on “knowledge exchange” and “impact” in the drive for greater accountability in higher education. The team's evolution in the course of undertaking research is illustrated by reference to four “pivotal moments,” which illustrate how we “performed” knowledge exchange.     

Youthful Familicidal Offenders: Targeted Victims,Planned Attacks

A nonrandom national sample of 16 familicides, which involved 19 offenders (ages 14 to 21 years) who either killed or made a serious attempt to kill their families, was studied. The majority of offenders were Caucasian (78.91 %) males (84.21 %) with interpersonal family conflicts due to parental control, substance use, or physical violence. Prior to the murders, 50 % of the offenders reported to others their intent to kill their families. All of the 42 reported victims were specifically targeted and most of the homicides were planned shooting attacks (75 %) rather than spontaneous eruptions. Immediately following the homicides, 75 % of the offenders stole money from their families, and in 50 % of the cases they either called their friends to report the murders or to plan leisure activities. All offenders were immediate suspects and 81.25 % confessed to the homicides. Implications for furthering our understanding of this group of young offenders are offered.     

Secret weapon: the "new" Medicare as a route to health security

Over the past twenty years, Medicare has been transformed from a single-payer insurer into a hybrid of complementary public and private insurance arrangements. Despite creating ongoing controversy, these changes have resulted in an ironic and largely overlooked strategic potential: Medicare's evolving hybrid form makes it the most promising vehicle for overcoming the historical obstacles to universal health insurance in the United States. To make this surprising case, we first explore the distinctive political dynamics of programs that, like today's Medicare, are hybrids of public and private arrangements. We then consider how these political dynamics might circumvent past barriers to universal health insurance. Finally, we discuss the strengths and weaknesses of alternative pathways through which Medicare could be expanded to promote health security.