PROTECTING YOUTH PLACED IN UNLICENSED,UNREGULATED RESIDENTIAL “TREATMENT” FACILITIES

Throughout the country, there is considerable inconsistency in how states regulate residential treatment programs for youth. In states with little oversight, the health and safety of youth are unprotected and they may be subject to substandard treatment, rights violations, and/or abuse. Three initiatives to address this issue are reported: (1) an Internet survey of youth who are former residents, (2) a four‐state pilot study of how states regulate and monitor residential programs, and (3) a bridge‐building conference between residential treatment providers and mental health leaders. Recommendations address the next steps for lawmakers, lawyers, judges, mental health and education professionals, and parents.     

Feeling the Heat? Anticorruption Mechanisms in Comparative Perspective

This article addresses the implications of political executives losing control over corruption investigations of senior officeholders following the creation of anticorruption mechanisms (e.g., commissions, special prosecutors, independent counsels, investigating judges). When investigations hit close to home, the ensuing political fallout makes political executives eager to look for ways to derail such investigations, especially when investigators proceed with an uncharted mandate. Against this background, two hypotheses are investigated: (i) the striking outcome of this process is a concerted move by targeted political executives to undermine the credibility of anticorruption mechanisms and, when deemed necessary, to terminate their operation, and (ii) the extent to which the prosecutors are successful depends on both institutions and media accessibility: the more centralized and fused political power is, and the less media accessible the government is, the harder it will be to carry out an investigation. These hypotheses are strongly supported by a comparative analysis of five anticorruption mechanisms in the United States, the Soviet Union, Italy, and Australia (Queensland and New South Wales.)     

Criminal responsibility for two consecutive crimes

Criminal legally responsible for responsibility in Israel his crimes unless the is defined in terms of polarity： all or nothing. An individual is court has determined that he is exculpated from criminal responsibility; there is no diminished criminal responsibility. The authors present a unique case where two expert psychiatrists determined that the accused was culpable for the first crime, rape, but was exculpated from criminal responsibility for the second crime, stabbing, which was committed immediately thereafter. As per the court approved plea bargain, the accused was charged only with rape, and was sentenced to incarceration in the psychiatric ward of the prison. The social significance of the expert psychiatric opinion and the court ruling will be examined in this paper.     

Contextual and Personal Predictors of Adaptive Outcomes Under Terror Attack: The Case of Israeli Adolescents

This paper explores individual differences in perceptions of political violence, strategies for coping with violence, and adaptive outcomes. Data on political violence stress, personal variables, coping strategies, and stress reactions were gathered on a sample of 227 Israeli adolescents in Haifa and Northern Israel confronted with a prolonged period of terror attack in the course of the Al-Aqsa Intifada. Political violence stress and trait anxiety were shown to be meaningful predictors of both coping strategies and adaptive outcomes. Although adolescents reported employing more avoidance coping, on average, than other coping modes, it was primarily the use of emotion-focused coping efforts that predicted stress reactions. The observation that problem-focused coping did not meaningfully alleviate stress reactions may have been a function of the uncontrollable nature and severity of the community stressor. The data were discussed and explicated in the context of stress and coping theory and research. Professor and Dean of Research and Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Emotions, Haifa University, Mt. Carmel, Israel.     

Effects of group intervention on moral development of distressed youths in Israel

The effects of a positive peer culture (PPC) program [H. H. Vorrath and L. K. Brendatro (1974),Positive Peer Culture, Aladin, Chicago, Illinois] upon the moral development of youths in distress within the framework of streetcorner gangs was measured. This group was compared with two control groups, one related and the other unrelated to the participants. Moraldevelopment measures used in this study—resistance to temptation, moral stage, feeling after offense, punishment, and confession [A. Ziv (1976), Measuring aspects of morality.J. Moral Educ. 5: 189–201]—indicated a positive effect upon the participants, and for some moral indices, on their friends' moral development (the related group). The potential effect upon moral development of such a program and the possibility of working with representatives of youth-in-distress groups in order to produce change are stressed.He received his B. A. from the University of Haifa, and his M.S.W. and D.S.W. from the University of Pennsylvania. His professional interests: criminal justice, juvenile delinquency, and the administration of human service organizations.     

Presentation of a three-banded allele pattern--analysis and interpretation

The Israel police forensic biology laboratory received as an item of evidence in an attempted murder case, a pair of trousers belonging to a suspect. A bloodstain was observed on the trousers and analyzed by STR typing for nine loci using the Promega GenePrint STR silver stain detection kits. The genetic profile defined was found to be identical to that of the victim's at all nine loci. Within this profile a three-banded allele pattern was observed at the D16S539 locus, both in the bloodstain and in the victim's reference blood sample. Confirmation of this phenomenon was accomplished by amplifying the extracted DNA from both the trousers and the victim's blood sample using the PowerPlex 16 kit by Promega and the AmpFlSTR SGM Plus kit by Perkin Elmer, followed by analysis of the amplification products by capillary electrophoresis on the ABI prism 310 genetic analyzer. The same three-banded allele pattern was observed at the D16S539 locus in both specimen and reference DNA, using each of the three kits. Three additional loci located on chromosome 16 (D16S3407, D16S2617 and D16S3082), not employed for forensic identification, were also analyzed and did not show three-banded allele pattern.