Crime in the country: The vulnerability and victimization of rural citizens

While a considerable body of research, theory, and statistics has developed concerning the “urban crime problem” in America, crime in rural areas has been comparatively neglected. This study addresses that neglect by refining and extending National Crime Panel victimization survey techniques to elicit the victimization experiences, perceptions, fears, and actions of residents of a highly representative rural county in the midwestern United States. The implications of this study are discussed, including the need to educate rural citizens concerning crime prevention in order to reduce their vulnerability to continued victimization. The data suggest that the romanticization surrounding rural America may help mask the fact that increasing diffusion of criminal behavior, along with increasing homogenization of our society, have significantly eroded the rural/urban dichotomy which has dominated criminological inquiry.     

Changes in perikymata and their significance to a postmortem dental identification

Perikymata are wavelike features that are normally found in the surface enamel of teeth. These structures are known to undergo regressive changes due to gradual attrition, mechanical abrasion, or chemical erosion. Forensic science has suggested that significance be placed on some forms of their loss as indicators of age, oral habits, and alignment of individual teeth. The dental identification of victims of a Vietnam War military aircraft crash is presented. The unusual pattern of perikymata change on two of the teeth suggests the antemortem existence of a removable partial denture. These findings support the exclusionary conclusions.     

Factors affecting perception of pregnancy risk in the adolescent

Perception of pregnancy risk, fertility knowledge, and probability-based teaching examples of risk were assessed in 104 primiparous urban adolescents 13–18 years of age in their second and third trimester of pregnancy. Perception of risk was not associated with age, actual frequency of intercourse, or level of fertility knowledge. Sexually active adolescents were surprised at subsequent conceptions. Adolescents were unable to utilize concepts of risk taking, even after concrete examples and teaching techniques had been presented.This study was conducted under the auspices of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Baylor College of Medicine, which provides medical faculty to the Harris County Hospital District, Houston, Texas.Received Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. Current interests are patterns of adolescent child bearing and rearing.Received M.P.H. from the University of Texas School of Public Health. Current interests are adolescent contraceptive behavior.Received D.P.H. from the University of Texas School of Public Health. Current interests are biological psychiatry and socio-medical research.Received M.D. from Baylor College of Medicine. Current interests are continuing education in medical and nonmedical settings.     

Dangers of police professionalization: An empirical analysis

This study examines relationships between professionalization (measured by the amount of college education and police training) and police officer attitudes. Using data from a survey of 712 police officers in twenty-nine departments in the St. Louis area, the analysis focuses on propositions derived from scholars who have identified harmful effects they expect to flow from the reform. Although the limited operational definition of the key variables and other factors noted in the study require caution in interpreting the findings, little evidence in support of the expected “dangers” is found. This result, in combination with other studies that have failed to find support for the case made for raising the educational level of police, suggests the need to reassess expectations about the impact of college education in policing.     

Death during immersion in water in childhood.

Drowning is a relatively common cause of accidental death in children. Autopsy records at the Adelaide Children's Hospital over a 27-year period from 1964 to 1990 were examined, and 58 cases were found where the cause of death was listed as drowning. In six cases, however, careful examination of the history and postmortem findings provided important additional information that suggested a more complex antemortem sequence of events. Specifically, four patients aged between 6 years, 10 months and 11 years were known to have had epilepsy. A further patient, an 8-year-old boy, died from a subarachnoid hemorrhage due to a bleeding cerebral arteriovenous malformation while swimming. The final patient, an 11-year-old boy who collapsed in a public swimming pool, was found at autopsy to have marked hypoplasia of the right coronary artery. In this series, six of 58 (10.3%) of the pediatric cases had additional underlying medical problems that could either have initiated the drowning episode or caused death due to alternate mechanisms. We present the clinicopathological findings in detail to demonstrate that a high index of suspicion must be maintained in all cases of pediatric drowning, not only for unnatural causes of death but also for additional natural disease processes that may have contributed significantly to the fatal episode. These findings may have particular relevance in jurisdictions where full postmortem examination is not always required by law.     

Maternal aspirations,socialization, and achievement of boys and girls in the white working class

Analysis of the scholastic achievement of 150 white pre-teen-age boys and girls in relation to their mothers' aspirations for them, selected socialization practices, and their social origins helps explain disparities in scholastic achievement between working class and middle class children as well as disparities in achievement within the working class. Mothers in this stratum, as a rule, do not articulate high educational and occupational aspirations for their children, especially for girls. Yet, girls exhibit significantly higher achievement than boys and their achievement is conditioned more by maternal aspirations than that of boys. Girls' greater responsiveness to their mothers' aspirations and their higher scholastic ability are due to the fact that white working class mothers engage in more early interaction and employ less coercive discipline with daughters than with sons. Boys' achievement is more responsive to variations in maternal practices than to maternal aspirations. Although not typical, mothers who interact much with their sons early in life and who do not employ coercive discipline produce high-achieving sons. Otherwise, they do not, whatever aspirations they hold for their sons. For girls, maternal aspiration is the more critical determinant of achievement. Downwardly mobile women, those working class women with middle class origins, differ from the stable women in their stratum in that they have equally high aspirations for daughters and sons. As a result of their mothers' high aspirations and more enlightened practices, the daughters of downwardly mobile women are the highest achievers in the white working class. Their sons, however, are underachievers, mainly because downward mobiles adopt the prevailing pattern of their class of destination and rely more on coercive discipline in socializing boys.This research is supported by Welfare Administration, HEW, under grants CRD-371-C2-9 and 10-P-56018/5-4.A revised and extended version of a paper given at the Society for the Study of Social Problems, August 1970, under the title, White Working Class Women and Their Families.Received Ph.D. in Sociology from Columbia University, New York, New York. Major present research interests are structural determinants of variations in patterns of socializing children, intergenerational changes in socialization practices and beliefs, and the effects of family structure and socialization on children in different structural contexts.