‘Death is painful so it is better to be holding a gun’: the socio-ecologically situated dis/rearmament decisions of formerly abducted persons in northern Uganda

In northern Uganda, children and youth once abducted by the notorious Lord's Resistance Army now live in internally displaced persons camps, facing challenging social, economic and security conditions. Within this context, former combatants state they would prefer to rearm than face a ‘painful’ and inevitable death. Drawing on qualitative interviews and focus group discussions with over 300 former combatants, we apply a socio-ecological lens to determine the push/pull factors that influence their decision to rearm or disarm. A lack of personal security, levels of stigmatisation and poor economic and educational opportunities are among the highest push factors toward rearmament. These findings point to a broad range of causes and actors responsible for child and youth militarisation and call for more holistic DDR approaches.     

The Generalizability of Police Legitimacy: Procedural Justice,Legitimacy, and Speeding Intention of South Korean Drivers

Asian Journal of Criminology - Empirical support for procedural justice theory in criminology is robust in the developed Western countries, whereas the results are mixed for non-Western or...     

Trust is hard to come by: Disentangling the influence of structural characteristics and race on perceptions of trust in the police in a major Southern County

The current study will add to the literature on public attitudes toward law enforcement by assessing the individual and contextual-level predictors of one of the key concepts in police legitimacy literature: trust. Examining individuals nested within zip code results showed a significant equalizing effect of structural resource deprivation on both White and Black respondents' perceptions of trust in the police. Additionally, results found respondents who perceived racial profiling to be widespread had a universally decreased likelihood of having trust in the police, and these disparities were exacerbated as structural resource deprivation increased.     

Considering Mixed Mode Surveys for Questions in Political Behavior: Using the Internet and Mail to Get Quality Data at Reasonable Costs

Telephone surveys have been a principle means of learning about the attitudes and behaviors of citizens and voters. The single mode telephone survey, however, is increasingly threatened by rising costs, the declining use of landline telephones, and declining participation rates. One solution to these problems has been the introduction of mixed-mode surveys. However, such designs are relatively new and questions about their representativeness and the intricacies of the methodology remain. We report on the representativeness of a post election mixed-mode (Internet and mail) survey design of 2006 general election voters. We compare sample respondent means to sample frame means on key demographic characteristics and examine how mail and Internet respondents differed in terms of attitudes, behaviors and demographics. We find that overall the Internet respondents were representative of the population and that respondent choice of mode did not influence item response. We conclude that mixed-mode designs may allow researchers to ask important questions about political behavior from their desktops.     

In the Eye of the Beholder? Motivated Reasoning in Disputed Elections

This study uses an experimental design to simulate the ballot counting process during a hand-recount after a disputed election. Applying psychological theories of motivated reasoning to the political process, we find that ballot counters’ party identification conditionally influences their ballot counting decisions. Party identification’s effect on motivated reasoning is greater when ballot counters are given ambiguous, versus specific, instructions for determining voter intent. This study’s findings have major implications for ballot counting procedures throughout the United States and for the use of motivated reasoning in the political science literature.     

Activity Fields and the Dynamics of Crime

Our current understanding of the role of the social environment in crime causation is at best rudimentary. Guided by the theoretical framework of Situational Action Theory, and using data from the ESRC financed Peterborough Adolescent and Young Adult Development Study (PADS+), this paper aims to propose how we can better theorise and study the role of the social environment, particularly the person and place interaction, in crime causation. We will introduce, and illustrate the usefulness of, a space–time budget methodology as a means of capturing people’s exposure to settings and describing their activity fields. We will suggest and demonstrate that, combined with a small area community survey and psychometric measures of individual characteristics, a space–time budget is a powerful tool for advancing our knowledge about the role of the social environment, and its interaction with people’s crime propensity, in crime causation. Our unique data allows us to study the convergence in time and space of crime propensity, criminogenic exposure and crime events. As far as we are aware, such an analysis has never before been carried out. The findings show that there are (a) clear associations between young people’s activity fields and their exposure to criminogenic settings, (b) clear associations between their exposure to criminogenic settings and their crime involvement, and, crucially, (c) that the influence of criminogenic exposure depends on a person’s crime propensity. Having a crime-averse morality and strong ability to exercise self-control appears to make young people practically situationally immune to the influences of criminogenic settings, while having a crime-prone morality and poor ability to exercise self-control appears to make young people situationally vulnerable to the influences of criminogenic settings.     

Integrating Behavioral Health Care and Primary Care: Application of a Clinical and Economic Model in Culturally Diverse Communities

Although mental illness treatment protocols exist, the organization and financing of screening and treatment services inhibit access. These challenges are compounded for refugees, immigrants, and other groups vulnerable due to their ethnicity, race, or culture. By creating a system-wide, collaborative, integrated model that recognizes and addresses critical clinical and economic aspects in the delivery of services, high quality, evidence-based care can be made available to groups susceptible to the burdens of mental illness. Clinically and financially aligning primary and specialty care offers a viable alternative for improving access and quality of mental health services to vulnerable populations.