A Systematic Observational Study of a Juvenile Drug Court Judge

The shift of the juvenile justice system from its initial rehabilitative ideal toward a more punitive orientation highlights the need to systematically document key elements of the juvenile drug court model. In particular, it is important to clearly document the role of the juvenile court judge because he or she is considered vital to this program model. The current study used participant observation as well as confidential questionnaires on which youth shared their perceptions of the judge. Findings show the judge‐participant interactions typically were brief, varied by the participants' level of compliance with the program, and that sanctions were given twice as often as rewards. Youth perceived the judge to be fair, respectful, and concerned about their lives. Discussion focuses on the significant opportunity that juvenile drug court judges have for positively influencing the lives of drug‐involved youth.     

Issue opacity and sustainability standard effectiveness

Many voluntary sustainability standards govern opaque environmental and social issues, which are difficult to understand and address. Extant studies show mixed evidence around the effectiveness of such standards. We develop a theoretical framework that relates different degrees and types of opacity to standard effectiveness. Systemic opacity results from issues embedded in complex, diverse, and dynamic settings, whereas behavioral opacity stems from human challenges in interpreting and acting upon focal issues. Rigid sustainability standards, oriented toward compliance, are effective for addressing issues that are transparent or enshrouded by behavioral opacity, but are counterproductive for issues with systemic opacity. The trade-off between rigidity and flexibility leads to optimal effectiveness when standards governing systemically and behaviorally opaque issues are moderately rigid. Our ideas are illustrated with two leading sustainability standards in the fisheries and real estate sectors, which effectively address transparent issues but show limited success when facing opacity. We conclude that unpacking issue opacity is instrumental in designing and implementing more effective sustainability standards.     

Fundamental Rights: An Unsettling EU Competence

For many years, fundamental rights were primarily protected in the European Union (EU) legal order in a negative way; EU institutions and Member States should not infringe fundamental rights when acting within the scope of EU law. However, since the Treaties of Amsterdam and Lisbon, the EU has gained greater competences to develop fundamental rights standards, and new mechanisms for the protection of these standards have emerged. Although these new instruments enhance the mandate of the EU regarding fundamental rights protection, they also trigger a number of important questions. They are capable of calling into question, to an unprecedented extent, sensitive domestic policy areas through a rights-based process of Europeanization. Furthermore, the EU regime for the protection of fundamental rights is increasingly difficult to contain within the limits of the traditional principle of attributed competences that was initially designed to circumscribe the process of European integration. Both types of questioning trigger significant resistances at the EU as well as national level.     

Sudden death after exercise in an adolescent with hemoglobin SE

Hemoglobin (Hb) S and Hb E are the most common variant hemoglobins, but because of the geographical separation of the areas where they are prevalent, the combination of the 2 is uncommon. Approximately 46 cases of hemoglobin SE compound heterozygosity have been reported. No deaths from the condition have been reported previously, whereas death after vigorous physical activity in individuals with sickle cell trait (hemoglobin AS) has been described in a few case reports. Here we report previously undiagnosed hemoglobinopathy SE in a 12-year-old American boy who collapsed during football practice and had a cardiac arrest on the field after a brief lucid interval. The autopsy was significant only for postmortem intravascular sickling. A postmortem hemoglobin electrophoresis test revealed 57% S, 34% E, and 1% F hemoglobins. The death is attributed to cardiac ischemia from functional vaso-occlusion by sickled erythrocytes.     

Individual Characteristics and the Multiple Contexts of Adolescent Bullying: An Ecological Perspective

This paper uses an ecological perspective to explore the risk factors associated with bullying behaviors among a representative sample of adolescents aged 11–14 Data derived from the Health Behavior in School Children: WHO Cross-National Survey were used to model the relationship between bullying and media effects, peer and family support systems, self-efficacy, and school environment. Overall, the results of this study suggest that bullying increases among children who watch television frequently, lack teacher support, have themselves been bullied, attend schools with unfavorable environments, have emotional support from their peers, and have teachers and parents who do not place high expectations on their school performance. In addition, we found an inverse relationship between being Asian or African American, feeling left out of school activities and bullying. Our results lend support to the contention that bullying arises out of deficits in social climate, but that social support systems mediate bullying behavior irrespective of the student’s racial/ethnic characteristics, parental income levels or media influences. Because the number of friends and the ability to talk to these friends increases the likelihood of bullying, we suggest that bullying is not simply an individual response to a particular environment but is a peer-group behavior. We conclude that limiting television viewing hours, improving student’s abilities to access family support systems and improving school atmospheres are potentially useful interventions to limit bullying behavior.

BOOK SYMPOSIUM

The processes of peace-building and democratization in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) were instituted on 14 December 1995 by the Dayton Accords, which brought an end to the Bosnian War. While claiming their objectives to be reconciliation, democracy, and ethnic pluralism, the accords inscribed in law the ethnic partition between Bosnian Serbs, Croats, and Muslims by granting rights to “people” based on their identification as “ethnic collectivities.” This powerful tension at the heart of “democratization” efforts has been central to what has transpired over the past 16 years. My account uses ethnographic methods and anthropological analysis to document how the ethnic emphasis of the local nationalist projects and international integration policies is working in practice to flatten the multilayered discourses of nationhood in BiH. As a result of these processes, long-standing notions of trans-ethnic nationhood in BiH lost their political visibility and potency. In this article I explore how trans-ethnic narod or nation(hood) – as a space of popular politics, cultural interconnectedness, morality, political critique, and economic victimhood – still lingers in the memories and practices of ordinary Bosnians and Herzegovinians, thus powerfully informing their political subjectivities.