Women and Men who Committed Murder: Male/Female Psychopathic Homicides

The present study was designed to compare gender differences in psychiatric diagnosis with the dimension of psychopathy in women and men who had attempted or committed homicide. The study samples consisted of 39 homicidal females and 48 homicidal males who were confined in one of Italy’s REMS or prison facilities in two southern provinces of Italy (Puglia and Basilicata). Assessment instruments included the SCID-5, the PID-5 IRF, and the PCL-R. Each gender group was stratified according to the level of criminal responsibility for the homicidal offense (full, partial, absent), and after assessments, according to the degree of the psychopathic dimension. There were clear gender differences in homicidal individuals. Female offenders were less likely to have had a record of criminal charges/convictions or imprisonment, and their homicides were more often intrafamilial, victimizing especially of their children, whereas males targeted intimate partners and extrafamilial victims. In the entire group, there was an inverse relationship between the level of psychopathy and the personality disorder on one side, and the psychotic disturbance on the other. Factor 2 (lifestyle/antisocial dimension) of the PCL-R was higher among the homicidal males, whereas females tended to score higher on Factor 1 (the interpersonal/affective dimension). Finally, if the psychopathic dimension is a qualifier for antisocial personality disorder, as indicated in DSM-5, this appears to be less true for females who tend to have other personality disorders.     

Willing Daughters: The Moral Rhetoric of Filial Sacrifice and Financial Autonomy in Tokyo's Sex Industry

Japan has one of the world's largest and most diverse legal sex industries. In a limited female labor market, sex industry work is a stigmatized yet lucrative form of women's short-term employment and advertisements for recruiting new employees are prominently displayed across urban spaces associated with feminized consumption. In this article, I examine the ideological impasses that adult Japanese women working in Tokyo's sex industry express when talking about their motives for pursuing this work. Female sex workers commonly justify their work as the necessary sacrifice of filial daughters. This rhetoric of reluctant acceptance for the sake of others, however, obscures the reality that many sex workers are middle-class and college-educated women who find the financial opportunity and flexibility of this industry appealing in contrast to more dominant forms of feminized labor. These women express the ambivalence of their desires for economic self-sufficiency through narrating the dependence of others on them. Examining these ambivalences, I argue that sex workers’ motivations can only be understood through considering the ethical and moral frameworks that define the gendered economies in which they labor.     

Mental Capacity in Patients Involuntarily or Voluntarily Receiving Psychiatric Treatment for an Acute Mental Disorder

Despite the growing amount of data, much information is needed on patients' mental capacity to consent to psychiatric treatment for acute mental disorders. The present study was undertaken to compare differences in capacity to consent to psychiatric treatment in patients treated voluntarily and involuntarily and to investigate the role of psychiatric symptoms, competency, and cognitive functioning in determining voluntariness of hospital admission. Involuntary patients were interviewed with the MacArthur Competence Assessment Tool for Treatment (MacCAT‐T), the 24‐item Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS), the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) and the Raven's Colored Progressive Matrices, and their data were compared with those for age‐ and sex‐matched voluntary patients. Involuntary patients performed worse in all MacCAT‐T subscales. Capacity to consent to treatment varied widely within each group. Overall, involuntary patients have worse consent‐related mental capacity than those treated voluntarily, despite capacity to consent to treatment showing a significant variability in both groups.     

Assessment of the Capacity to Express Informed Consent for Organ Donation in Patients with Schizophrenia

Abstract: In Italy, the “silent‐consent” principle of donor’s willingness regulates organ donation for postmortem transplantation, but civil incompetence excludes it. We investigated decisional capacity for organ donation for transplantation of 30 controls and 30 nonincompetent patients with schizophrenia as related to clinical symptoms, cognition, and functioning. Assessments were carried out through the Competence for Donation Assessment Scale (CDAS), Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS), Scale for the Assessment of Positive Symptoms (SAPS), Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms, Life Skills Profile (LSP), Raven’s Colored Progressive Matrices (RCPM), Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, Rey RI, Rey RD, and Visual Search. Patients and controls differed on the CDAS Understanding and Choice Expression areas. Patients showed significant inverse bivariate correlations between CDAS Understanding and scores on total BPRS, LSP self‐care scale, and RCPM cognitive test. Our results show that decisional capacity for participating in research does not predict decisional capacity for postmortem organ donation in patients with schizophrenic or schizoaffective psychosis; hence, before judging consent for donation, patients must be provided with enhanced information to better understand this delicate issue.     

Risk and Resilience Factors among Italian Municipal Police Officers Exposed to Critical Incidents

Police officers are exposed to critical events as part of their duty which can affect their well-being. The present study examines the relationships between risk and protective factors and health outcome following critical incident exposure among police officers. Person-oriented analyses were applied to questionnaire data from a sample of 509 Italian municipal police officers. Two groups with different patterns of risk and protective factors were found by cluster analysis. One group (resilient officers) had higher levels of protective factors such as self-esteem and social support and lower levels of risk factors such as peritraumatic distress and perceived threat in comparison to the other group (non resilient police officers). The resilient group reported fewer traumatic stress reactions than the non resilient group in spite of a similar degree of exposure to critical incidents and better health than expected in spite of severe abuse. The two groups differed according to sleeping pills use but not for alcohol and smoking habits. Risk and protective factors could offer an explanation of resilience as an outcome.     

Attorneys’ career dissatisfaction in the new normal

The 2008 economic recession had a seismic impact on the legal market. In this article, we empirically assess whether the recession has made law an unsatisfying career. Relying on survey data from over 11,000 active members of the State Bar of Texas, we find that only 13.5 percent of all attorneys and 11.5 percent of full-time attorneys are dissatisfied with their careers. Newer attorneys report greater career dissatisfaction than more experienced attorneys, yet they too are largely satisfied. We also determine using logistic regression that three factors are highly predictive of lawyers’ career dissatisfaction: (1) comparatively low incomes; (2) working in private practice as opposed to in government or non-profit/public interest; and (3) law firm employment in a non-partnership role. Equally important, debt and lower class rank only slightly increase the odds of career dissatisfaction; and race, gender, years of practice experience, and firm size have no effect.     

Korruptionsstrafrecht und Dienstrecht

Mit dem am 1. September 2009 in Kraft getretenen Korruptionsstrafrechts?nderungsG 2009 wurden die Tatbest?nde des StGB zur Korruptionsbek?mpfung neuerlich ge?ndert. Die Vorl?uferregelung war in Wissenschaft und Praxis auf heftige Kritik gesto?en. Abgesehen von zahlreichen Unklarheiten hatte sie für ?ffentliche Bedienstete so strenge Regelungen geschaffen, dass sogar bisher erlaubte Verhaltensweisen kriminalisiert waren: insb die sog "orts- und landesüblichen Aufmerksamkeiten" und die Teilnahme an Repr?sentationsveranstaltungen. Demgegenüber trachtet die neue Regelung nun sorgf?ltig, Wertungswidersprüche im Verh?ltnis zum Dienstrecht zu vermeiden. Dazu wurde eine Verweistechnik gew?hlt: Einige der neuen Tatbest?nde verweisen nun geradezu pauschal auf die dienstrechtlichen Verbote und ausnahmsweise bestehenden Erlaubnisse. Um zu wissen, was strafbar ist, muss man also nun die Regelungen des Dienstrechts kennen. Der folgende Beitrag schildert die wichtigsten Probleme, die sich aus dieser Anknüpfung ergeben, und untersucht die Verfassungskonformit?t der neuen Regelungen.     

Pathogenesis of conjunctival petechiae

Conjunctival petechiae from 15 cases (cause of death: different natural and unnatural) were analysed using confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) in order to visualize the kind of the damage within the vessel wall (diapedesis versus rhexis). The pathomorphological findings with multiple ruptures of vessels appearing to be filled to bursting point define the conjunctival petechiae as a rhexis-haemorrhage.     

Intersektionalit?t als Beitrag zu einer gesellschaftstheoretisch informierten Ungleichheitsforschung

The following article argues that an in depth analysis of different living conditions requires a theoretical and empirical perspective which does not only take into account class but also other categories of social inequality such as gender, race and body. Departing from the idea that these categories are mutually intertwined, the article suggests an intersectional multi-layered approach which allows to examine reciprocal effects between class, gender, race and body on three different levels: the level of social structures, the level of identity construction and the level of symbolic representation. Considering the theoretical relationship between the analysis of class and social inequality, the article also intends to understand and explain how these different levels of analysis are interrelated, how the linkage between social categories and levels of social reality have to be methodologically reflected and how they can be made accessible in and through empirical research.