Anatomically detailed dolls and the evaluation of child sexual abuse allegations

Although anatomically detailed dolls are becoming the most commonly used tool in the validation of sexual abuse allegations, their use is not without significant problems. This evaluation of the psychometric properties of the dolls using the existing empirical literature reveals that there is considerable difficulty in the standardization of the dolls, administration and scoring procedures, and training in the doll's use. Furthermore, appropriate norms have not been developed. Although good interobserver reliability has been reported, the construct and criterion-related validity has not been demonstrated consistently. The current lack of an empirically based psychometric foundation does not support the use of the dolls in validation interviews, nor the admissibility of doll-based evidence in legal proceedings.     

Policing in the Hyde Park neighborhood, St. Louis: Racial bias, political pressure, and community policing

Policing in the inner-city neighborhood of Hyde Park is evaluated against a backdrop of racial polarization within the city of St. Louis and political pressures upon the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department (SLMPD). Data garnered from immersion into Hyde Park community life, participation in and observation of numerous police/community meetings, document analyses, a focus group session with rank-and-file police officers, interviews with a sergeant and the captain of the Police Fifth District, and numerous informal conversations with residents and police officers provide evidence of poor community/police relationships. The data also provide evidence—on the part of police—of racial bias, lack of and/or poor understanding of the underlying causes of criminal behavior, pervading adventure and excitement lures toward police work, and a less than adequate understanding of the community oriented problemsolving (COPS) policing initiative. An underlying theme of little or absent informed locus of control at various levels regarding policing practices links issues of poor police/community relationships and the influence of racial bias and political pressures.     

AIDS and health care deficiencies

He is author of many books and articles including Images of the American City; Professions, Work, and Careers; Psychiatric Ideologies and Institutions; Where Medicine Fails;and most recently Creating Sociological Awareness: Collective Images and Symbolic Representations;all published by Transaction. He and the co-authors have also written The Social Organization of Medical Work.     

“Like photographs of ghosts”: representing post-apartheid South Africa in Ivan Vladislavić’s Double Negative

The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) heard its first testimony in April of 1996. Two years later, in 1998, the first volume of the report of the commission was published. While it aims to be a document representing closure in terms of the history of apartheid, the TRC report is rife with gaps and omissions across the long history of apartheid. Approaching this history and its legacy in literary prose, Ivan Vladislavi?’s Double Negative (2010) serves as a counter-history to the TRC’s narrative of closure. Extending formal strategies from his earlier works, including composite literary form and performative modes of writing, Vladislavi? employs photography and ghosts within his text to unsettle official history and to offer a melancholic approach to the past of apartheid and its ongoing effects in post-apartheid South Africa.