Alienation-reduction as a paradigm for delinquency reduction

It is suggested that agencies adopt the concept of alienation-reduction as the paradigm for designing and coordinating juvenile delinquency programs. Existing theory and data are consistent with the view that delinquency is associated with alienation and most existing rehabilitation approaches can be viewed within the framework of alienation-reduction. Adoption of the paradigm offers three important advantages: (1) it defines the problem in terms of the individual's relation to his environment; (2) it can facilitate communication among diverse youth-serving agencies; (3) it provides a logical basis for action and decisions regarding prevention, diversion, and treatment programs.     

Book review

Veronica Doubleday, Three Women of Herat. London: Jonathan Cape, 1988, ix + 222 pp., glossary, illustrative chapter headings, colour photographs; L12.95. ISBN 0–224–02440‐X.     

Hanging: suicide or homicide?

Death by Hanging: Suicide or Homicide. Six cases of homicidal hanging and murder presented as suicidal hanging are recorded. Suspension followed strangulation by ligature or throttling and head injuries in 4 cases. Distinction between homicide and suicide was easy in 5 cases: two of the perpetrators gave themselves up to the police, one committed suicide immediately after he had hanged his 15 year old daughter; in two cases tracks of blood, heavy injuries of the victims, and traces of robbery were obvious. Unless the victim is an infant or an adult person incapacitated by drink, disease, or drugs, or unless there are several assailants murder is difficult to accomplish. Distinction between murder and suicide may be impossible by an examination of the body alone. Detailed investigation of the scene, reconstruction of the position of the suspended body, examination of the rope, the knots, the direction of the fibres on the rope may serve to discover homicidal hanging. - Compared to suicidal hanging homicide has a frequency of about 1% in our autopsy material. However, we cannot estimate the number of obscure cases.     

Society as emergent and more than rational: An essay on the inappropriateness of program evaluation

In considering the efficacy of program evaluation researchers have not put language in proper perspective. They have not acknowledged that information gained from applied research is partly determined by situational factors, that language is selective and goal-oriented, justifying activity as often as it describes it, or that some important action cannot be expressed. The importance of language distinguishes applied social assessment from the natural science models of research from which it was derived. Examples from a wide range of applied situations are used to illustrate that, as an anticedent-consequent model of objective quantified assessment, evaluation is also inconsistent with the complex, resourceful, emergent social processes it is intended to measure. Three alternatives to quantification are discussed to illustrate interventions that may be made when the disadvantages of program evaluation outweigh the advantages.Preparation of the paper was supported by National Institute of Mental Health post-doctoral training grant 5T222-MH00180. Comments and requests for reprints should be sent to Nancy Cochran, Department of Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities, State of Illinois, 160 N. LaSalle Street, Chicago. Illinois 6061.     

Differences in assessments of relative prestige and utility of criminal justice and criminology journals

Several articles have been written about the relative prestige of journals in criminology and criminal justice. Almost uniformly, however, those rankings have focused on sociology and criminology journals and have generally reflected a sociological orientation. If criminal justice is indeed a separate discipline, such approaches are tantamount to asking psychologists to rate sociological journals within a list of psychology journals. Our approach is first to separate respondents by their degree of identification with criminal justice and their educational orientation. Second, we compile a list of responses to questions about prestige and utility to practitioners across the range of criminal justice and criminology journals. Analyses of these data indicate that there are differences in the way scholars rate journals, based on their identity with criminal justice and their educational orientation. These differences, however, are found in specific journals and in types of journals (i.e., police, corrections, criminal justice) rather than in aggregate perceptions of all criminal justice and criminology journals.