A Primer on Criminal Child Abuse and Neglect Law

This article surveys major aspects of criminal child abuse and neglect law encountered by judges, prosecutors and defense lawyers, child advocates, and child care professionals. The author, whose casebook, Children and the Law: Doctrine, Policy and Practice (West 4th ed. 2010) (with Sarah H. Ramsey), is required reading in law schools throughout the United States, analyzes both constitutional and statutory law.     

An examination of types of delinquency through path analysis

Relationships between father's occupation, delinquent peer association, tendency to neutralize, and self-reported delinquency are explored in a path model. Self-reported delinquency are categorized into Minor, Predatory, and Aggressive delinquency. The effect of this division is analyzed among Mexican Americans and Anglo college students (N=694). The structure of the resulting path models remained similar across these subsamples, although there was some variation in the strength of the relationships. The effect of father's occupation was minimal. The strongest relationships were between neutralization and delinquency, controlling for delinquent peers and for father's occupation, which decreased as the seriousness of the delinquency increased. Additionally, neutralization was more strongly related to delinquency among Anglos than among Mexican Americans, explaining 39% of the variation in delinquency among Anglos, but only 28% among Mexican Americans. Association with delinquent peers, however, was more strongly related to delinquency among Mexican Americans.Received his Ph.D. from Oklahoma State University. Current interests are social gerontology, adolescent behavior, and medical sociology.Received his Ph.D. from the University of Kansas. Current interests are adolescent behavior, human development, and the sociology of sport.     

Out on the town: an evaluation of brief motivational interventions to address the risks associated with problematic alcohol use

Alcohol has long been identified as a significant contributory factor in crime and anti social behaviour, yet there is a dearth of effective treatment available for those individuals whose drinking contributes significantly to their criminality, and subsequently the health risks and the economic and wider social implications associated with it. The literature on treatment programmes is drawn almost exclusively from medical experience but indicates that brief interventions are at least as effective as more intensive programmes in reducing alcohol consumption in at-risk groups. This research was undertaken to evaluate projects based in the West Midlands, United Kingdom, providing brief motivational interventions to offenders arrested for offences where alcohol is identified as a significant contributory factor. The evaluation indicates that an arrest referral scheme as developed in the West Midlands can achieve good levels of identification and referral, acceptable attendance, retention rates, and effective outcomes in terms of attitude and behaviour change.