Multiple traumatic experiences and the development of posttraumatic stress disorder

This study assesses the differential and combined impacts of multiple lifetime stressors in the development and severity of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. One hundred and four clinical and 64 nonclinical participants were assessed for their exposure to four types of interpersonal trauma: physical and sexual abuse in childhood, lifetime community violence, and domestic violence in adulthood. PTSD symptomatology was assessed using the Los Angeles Symptom Checklist (LASC). Results indicated that exposure to lifetime multiple traumatic experiences was positively correlated with severity of PTSD symptoms. Clinical participants had experienced significantly more multiple traumas and had a higher rate of PTSD than the nonclinical participants. Results also suggested that adults who had experienced childhood sexual abuse were at higher risk for the development of PTSD related to interpersonal violence than adults who were not sexually abused as children.     

The relationship between childhood sexual abuse and adult mental health among undergraduates: victim gender doesn't matter

A large body of research has documented the harmful effects of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) on adult mental health among females, but less work has examined this issue among males. This study examined whether gender moderated the relationship between CSA and adult mental health among a mixed-gender sample of 406 undergraduates. A Pearson chi-square test indicated that a significantly greater proportion of females (41.6%) than males (30.7%) reported a history of CSA. ANCOVAs tested whether gender, CSA status, and their interaction were related to adult mental health symptomatology as measured by Brief Symptom Inventory gender-normed t scores. Participants with a history of CSA reported significantly higher levels of global mental health problems, hostility, paranoid ideation, and psychoticism. The gender by CSA status interaction was not significant for any scale, indicating that the harmful effects of CSA on adult mental health did not vary by gender.     

Reconsidering the relationship between alcohol and lethal violence

Prior event-based research regarding the relationship between alcohol and violence suffers from important limitations, including the absence of a comparison group, an inappropriate comparison group, or a comparison group that could be considered appropriate but does not control for potential confounders. To overcome such limitations, we use a matched pair design. Drawing on interviews with men imprisoned for an aggravated assault or homicide committed in response to a conflict with another man, we examine matched pairs of violent and nonviolent conflicts nested within respondents. The results suggest that guns mediate the relationship between alcohol and lethal male-male violence.     

Seeking One's Day in Court: Chinese regime responsiveness to international legal norms on AIDS carriers' and pollution victims' rights

Over the last two decades, international actors have sought to diffuse repertoires of contentious practices, including rights-based litigation, to China. Multilateral organizations, foundations, and international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) have used funding and training programs conducted in China and at law schools abroad in order to raise the capacity of Chinese attorneys, NGOs, judges, and legal officials to improve rule of law and protection of human rights. In particular, international actors have worked with Chinese NGOs and state officials to found legal aid centers that provide information and advocacy to protect the rights of pollution victims and AIDS carriers. Legal aid centers, attorneys, and their financial backers seek to bring forward ‘impact litigation’ cases in the courts to establish model decisions for other plaintiffs, attorneys, and judges to follow. To date, environmental groups have enjoyed more success gaining access to the courts and in receiving favorable court judgments than have AIDS groups. In many cases involving AIDS victims, attorneys and legal aid centers seek compensation through alternative dispute resolution methods rather than litigation, which do not establish a legal precedent. This paper explores the reasons for the divergent outcomes of efforts to protect the rights of pollution victims and AIDS carriers in the courts. Primarily, the institutional particularities and contexts of the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the Ministry of Public Health have allowed international legal norms related to the environment to take deeper root than those related to AIDS.     

Integrated Theory and Crimes of Trust

The integrated theory first proposed by Elliott et al. (1979), combining strain, social control, and social learning (and sometimes social disorganization) theories, has been repeatedly tested and consistently supported for a wide range of behaviors including licit and illicit substance use, violence, and other forms of illegal behavior. It has not, however, been tested for a class of illegal behaviors best described as crimes of trust, which include different types of fraud, workplace theft, and income tax evasion. This category of offending includes offenses commonly regarded as white collar crime, and also offenses that have been more or less marginal to the study of white collar crime. The present paper tests the integrated theory specifically for crimes of trust in the National Youth Survey Family Study, a national, multigenerational sample of individuals whose focal respondents were 11–17 years old in 1976–1977, and who are now in middle adulthood. Relying on structural equation modeling (SEM), parallel tests are performed for two generations, the focal respondents in early middle age (ages 38–45) and their adult offspring (ages 18–24) for the period 2002–2004.     

Ironies of Crime, Control, and Criminology

Irony is a kind of communication in which shared knowledge about a particular context is formed as a counter-intuitive statement with hidden meaning. Irony is important because it branches the tree of knowledge and balances morality. This paper reviews the definition and value of irony; examines ironic works on crime and control; proposes an irony of criminology: it can be studied with science and thereby improved; draws on this idea to provide a method-based theory of theory and findings; and concludes by discussing implications for future work in reflexive criminology.     

No small matter for some: practitioners' views on the moral status and treatment of human embryos

In this paper, we discuss findings from two studies designed to access and analyse the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours of health-care professionals and scientists working in morally contested fields of biomedicine that involve the embryo. We seek to support the view that the embryo typically 'matters' to the people we interviewed and whose work we observed, even though it is impossible for them to agree in terms of why that is, and even though their work is of the type to which the moral guardians of the embryo object. In the first part of this paper, we touch on the policy and legal position in relation to embryos, noting Margot Brazier's account of the development of the relevant regulation in the UK and the importance of her claim that the embryo is widely thought to have an important symbolic value. We then turn to explore some of the views, attitudes, and work practices of those whose work involves the embryo, whether that be in relation to fertility treatment services, including IVF and PGD, or research that uses embryos. Our discussion shows the extent to which the embryo typically matters, in various ways, to those working in these fields.     

Redefining Corporate Social Responsibility in an Era of Globalization and Regulatory Hardening

Globalization and the growth of multinational enterprises (MNEs) have been accompanied by an increasing call for corporations to take responsibility for their environmental and social impacts, and for greater corporate disclosure and transparency with regard to nonfinancial risks (collectively known as corporate social responsibility or CSR). At the same time, governments have increasingly turned to mandatory obligations for formerly voluntary CSR engagement, a trend we call the legalization of CSR. This article analyzes the “hardening” and legalization of CSR, and considers what this process tells us about norms and assumptions regarding the social responsibility of firms in the United States and around the world. Through our analysis of corporate trends, regulations, and case law from the United States, European Union, China, and India, we argue that the process of legalization and redefinition of CSR through a shareholder primacy lens may, troublingly, undermine the very notion of CSR. In the face of these trends, this article concludes with a redefinition of CSR that includes an express commitment to corporations’ social and ethical responsibility to society.