Helplessness and Hopelessness in Adolescents who Commit Sexual and Nonsexual Crimes

The authors’ purpose was to test the relationship of helplessness and hopefulness to experienced trauma, as well to explore the role of these emotions to sexual and nonsexual criminal behaviors among 332 residential youths adjudicated for sexual crimes. All subtypes of trauma measured were positively correlated with helplessness, whereas hopelessness was not associated with sexual or physical abuse. Helplessness was associated with the severity of sexual crimes, as well as the commission of multiple nonsexual crimes. Hopelessness was not associated to any sexual crime characteristics and only associated with general delinquency and property damage. In the regression models, controlling for trauma, helplessness predicted sexual and nonsexual criminality, and hopelessness predicted nonsexual criminality. Implications for practice, policy, and research are discussed.     

Natural Resource Damages from Oil Spills in the United States

Large oil spills in the United States often result in some natural resource damages (NRD), which arise from injuries to natural resources and losses of their services. We use multiple regression analysis to identify the factors that explain variations in NRD settlements, including: spill amount, whether threatened and endangered species were injured, whether recreation closures occurred, some temporal factors, some geographic factors, and some characteristics of the government agencies pursuing NRD. Then, we use our preferred statistical model to predict the median and confidence interval for the NRD settlement for future oil spills with specified characteristics. Such predictions for future spills will be helpful in determining the appropriate scale for the NRD assessment and for setting aside reserves for settlement.     

Literacy and State–Society Interactions in Nineteenth-Century France

Modern states are distinguished by the breadth and depth of public regulation over private affairs. This aspect of state capacity and state power is predicated on frequent and dense encounters between the state and the population it seeks to control. We argue that literacy in the language of state administration facilitates state–society interaction by lowering the transaction costs of those encounters. We support this claim with evidence drawing upon detailed historical data from nineteenth-century France during a crucial period of state and nation building. Focusing on the specific domain of French marriage regulations, we find that increasing literacy predicts greater popular involvement with local authorities across French regions over time. These results demonstrate that literacy plays an important role in political development not solely by enhancing loyalty to the state, as the literature has recognized, but also by lowering linguistic and human capital barriers to state–society interaction.     

The Scavenging Patterns of Feral Cats on Human Remains in an Outdoor Setting

Two cases of feral cat (Felis catus) scavenging were documented at the Forensic Investigation Research Station in Whitewater, Colorado. Human remains at the facility are placed outside, observed daily, documented with field notes, and photographed; decomposition is scored on a Likert scale. Scavenger activity is monitored with game cameras. The cases documented included: preferential scavenging of the soft tissue of the shoulder and arm, differential consumption of tissue layers, superficial defects, and no macroscopic skeletal defects. This pattern more closely parallels the documented pattern of bobcat (Lynx rufus) scavenging than that of domestic cats. Scavenging among felids is relatively rare, as felids typically prefer to hunt. Such cases studied in detail are relatively few, spatially relative, and lack statistical robustness. While only two examples are reported here, these cases are rare overall, and this documentation may help field investigators understand the place of feral cats within a local scavenger guild.     

Gender,Race and Ecotourism Assemblages in Rural Creole Belize

Race and gender intertwine with ecotourism in Belize's northern rural Creole villages, communities that are home to protected areas renowned for birds and other wildlife. Racialising and gendering assemblages found here emerge out of Belize's long history of forest-based slavery economies. From the early days of sport fishing and jaguar hunting in the 1950s through to contemporary bird-and wildlife-watching, tourism has joined these socio-natural formations. Intersectional feminist political ecology and assemblage theory provide an analytical frame that reveals how ecotourism serves to re-entrench gendered and racialised inequality, yet in cases where the ecotourism industry is small-scale and locally owned, possibilitie s for challenging those hierarchies also arise.     

Blunt force injury of the abdomen complicating previously undiagnosed peliosis hepatis in a 2-year-old female

Peliosis hepatis is an abnormal accumulation of blood-filled lakes in the liver that is most commonly seen in adults and is generally associated with chronic wasting diseases, use of androgenic steroids or bacterial infection. Few cases have been reported in children. We report a case of a 2-year-old female with no past medical history who presented with homicidal blunt force abdominal injury. The autopsy revealed lacerations in the liver and previously undiagnosed peliosis hepatis.     

One Size Does Not Fit All: Traditional Lockdown Versus Multioption Responses to School Shootings

ABSTRACT

Two paradigms inform responses to active shooting situations: a traditional lockdown approach where individuals find cover in a classroom and lock the door, and a multi-option approach where individuals evacuate the area, create barricades, and, in last resort situations, actively resist the gunman. While a majority of schools conduct active shooter drills, typically using a traditional lockdown approach, little is known about their effectiveness. Through simulations, this study sought to determine which of the two paradigms that inform active shooter drills is the most effective. Drills informed by the multi-option response paradigm were found to end more quickly and result in fewer people being shot.     

The Media, the Politics of Truth, and the Coverage of Corporate Violence: The Westray Disaster and the Public Inquiry

This paper studies the relationship between news sources, knowledge claims and the social construction of truth surrounding the public inquiry into the Westray mine disaster from 1995 to 1998. We draw on Michel Foucault’s concept of the “politics of truth” and Stanley Cohen’s ideas about “states of denial” to demonstrate how formal media processes constituted “regimes of truth” about Westray. We argue that news discourse about the public inquiry was framed differently from news coverage in the immediate aftermath of the explosion (1992–1993). Later press reporting constructed a new “regime of truth” around political scandal but corporate crime was written out of existence in the truth-telling exercises of the press.