Mediation Verses Arrest Approaches to Domestic Assault: Policy Implications for Addressing Domestic Abuse Among Under-Educated and Jobless Offenders

Mediation as a response to domestic abuse would seem a promising direction in curbing domestic battering among offenders with a low stake in conformity. This study compares the effects of mediation verses arrest on two general types of domestic abusers; one category with a high school education or above and is presently employed, while the other category comprising individuals with less than a high school education and are currently unemployed. Pooled data from three of the original group of six Minneapolis Domestic Violence Project cities are used in this study. The findings show unemployed Blacks with less than a high school education who were mediated were significantly less likely to have re-offended within six months than unemployed non-Blacks similarly mediated with less than a high school education. Also, unemployed Blacks with less than a high school education not mediated were significantly more likely to re-offend than unemployed non-Blacks with less than a high school education and not mediated. Finally, among those in the sample unemployed with less than a high school education and mediated were significantly less likely to re-offend compared to those not mediated. The findings are consistent with seeing mediation as a viable police strategy in curbing domestic abuse among jobless and undereducated offenders.     

Organizational Resources and Methods of Participation

This report deals with the influence of various organizational resources upon methods of participation. We found it useful to subdivide the concept of political participation into four groups: Input participation, decision participation, consumer participation, and respondent participation. Using data from one city and one sector we cannot suggest any general conclusions. Our findings show these various methods of participation to be highly intercorrelated and that the various methods of participation - along with organizational resources as income and staff, the contextual variable, and preoccupation with the local system level - influenced each method of participation. This means that we have to take the positions of organizations in the political system into consideration if we want to study their participation in the political processes. The resources stemning from positions in the political system are perhaps more influential upon the method of participation than the traditional organizational resource variables.
The process of consuming public finances is not without political effects. Consumer participation is related both to decision participation and to input participation. Our study also indicates that it is wrong to assume closed models with no feedback loops when we study relations between interest organizations and public authorities.     

INNOVATIVE APPROACHES IN CHILD CUSTODY EVALUATIONS

This article discusses the joint office interview as an innovative technique for evaluation of families, the feedback or "summary" sessions by evaluators, and the role of the mediator in the feedback process. A retrospective analysis of the procedures revealed that considerable material could be studied and presented. Summaries of these data are offered as a guide to those interested in the resolution of child custody disputes.     

Determinants of the Psychosocial Adjustment of Southern Sudanese Men

Our study examines the psychosocial adjustment of 164 SouthernSudanese men who are resettling in a western Canadian city.Special emphasis is placed on the role of financial and emotionalstrain associated with their sending money to relatives in Africa.Key findings point to the importance of religiosity in predictingtheir psychological adjustment, and social support and reducedfinancial role strain in predicting their social adjustment.Findings serve to guide the provision of culturally appropriateservices and policies for African immigrants and refugee claimantsin Canada.     

Exploring the potential of stricter gun restrictions for people with serious mental illness to reduce homicide in the United States

This study explores the potential that current efforts to limit access to firearms for individuals with serious mental illness (SMI) have for reducing overall rates of murder by firearm in the United States. Official arrest, court and health records provided data on personal and offense characteristics of 95 individuals with SMI and 423 without, all of whom had been convicted of murder in the State of Indiana between 1990 and 2002. Bivariate analyses examined differences between the two groups and logistic regression models examined the relationship between SMI and offense characteristics. Compared to those without, a relatively small proportion of convicted murderers had a diagnosis indicating SMI. The presence of SMI was associated with reduced likelihood of targeting a stranger and was not associated with having multiple-victims or firearm use. Focusing on access to firearms exclusively by individuals with SMI will have little impact on multiple-victim or firearm-related homicides.     

Own-age bias in video lineups: a comparison between children and adults

Abstract

The present study investigated whether child (six–eight years of age) and adult witnesses (18–29 years of age) would exhibit an own-age bias when trying to identify targets from video lineups. One hundred and eighty-six participants viewed two filmed events that were identical, except one starred a child target and one a young adult. After a delay of two–three days each witness saw a lineup for the child and adult target. Children exhibited an own-age bias and were better at correctly identifying the own-age target from a target-present (TP) lineup and made more correct rejections for the own-age target-absent (TA) lineup. Adults however, showed a reversed own-age bias for the TP lineups as they made more correct identifications for the child target, but exhibited no bias for the TA lineups. The results suggest that differences in identification accuracy may be due to whether witness age and suspect age overlap.