Mortality under and after sentence of male convicts transported to Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania), 1840–1852

This article reports on mortality in a cohort of 7084 English, Irish and Scottish-born convict men who were transported on 30 ships to Tasmania between 1840 and 1852. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first study of convict mortality that systematically traces the mortality of convicts after emancipation as well as under sentence. This pilot study investigates the relationship between pre-transportation characteristics, convict discipline, reactions to convict discipline, and mortality under and after sentence of the male convict population. The convict men were various in their origins but shared the experience of penal servitude under the gaze of a paper panopticon. Controlling for other factors, the authors find that the convicts were more likely to die under sentence if they were born in Scotland, London or an industrial-urban area; if they exhibited disturbed mental behaviour under sentence, such as tearing their clothes; or if they had more time in solitary confinement or more accumulated insults of their mind and body. For those who survived sentence, mortality was higher for those born in an industrial-urban area, those who had more alcohol-related offences under sentence, those with more time in solitary confinement under sentence, and those who were violent or threatened violence while under sentence.     

The social organization of masculine violence in nighttime leisure scenes

Recent scholarship on masculinity and crime suggests that men who have difficulty asserting their masculine status due to social marginalization (across age, class, and racial lines) have a higher likelihood of engaging in violent behavior to offset their lack of social power in other areas. While marginalization can abet the development of masculine violence, in this article I suggest more attention to the mitigating effects of structural changes and cultural contexts is necessary for a richer understanding of how masculine violence plays out. Drawing on multi-method ethnographic data from a case of one major US city with a thriving nighttime cultural economy, I aim to show how the structural characteristics of nighttime leisure scenes create situations for the enactment of particular forms of violence that reflect a number of subterranean convergences with the masculinization of the cultural economy.     

Does Country-Level Social Disorganization Increase Terrorist Attacks?

This study examines the effects of a measure of country-level social disorganization on levels of terrorist attacks and fatalities in 101 countries from 1981 to 2010. We measure social disorganization as the presence of state instability: revolutionary and ethnic war, adverse regime change, and genocide. The classic social disorganization perspective posits that individuals experiencing these types of rapid social change will be freed from the institutional and informal restraints that bind them to society, and keep them conforming to social norms and laws. We examine the extent to which this reasoning applies to the number of terrorist attacks and fatalities from terrorist attacks occurring in countries. To control for the possibility that better functioning states are better able to prevent terrorist attacks, we include two measures of state capacity. We find that controlling for state capacity and a wide variety of other variables, social disorganization is consistently associated with increases in terrorist attacks and fatalities. We consider implications of the results for future research and policy.     

Asakusa ‘Newtown’: the transformation of outcaste space in early modern Edo/modern Tokyo

This paper examines the historical transformation of urban outcaste areas into commoner neighbourhoods in early modern/modern Japan. Focusing on Tokyo's largest early modern outcaste community, an Asakusa area referred to as Shinchō (literally ‘Newtown’), the paper argues that a combination of factors, namely the historical processes of urbanization, status group consolidation, labour specialization, capital accumulation, and inter-status group network creation, created an elite stratum of neighbourhood residents who were reasonably well-integrated into the broader social and economic landscape of Edo by the late Tokugawa period. This movement towards desegregation in turn laid important foundations for the later administrative and conceptual incorporation of the Shinchō area into the broader metropolitan area. Wide-ranging entrepreneurial activities by members of this elite class in the early Meiji period further built on and propelled these changes although they also facilitated their eventual exodus from the community. Proto-capitalist development, however, while clearly capable of inducing an emancipatory effect for some key elites figures and while enabling the neighbourhood itself to become more closely identified with an emerging working class Asakusa, also worked to create a substratum of people subjected to a compounded form of discrimination that took place along both traditional status and newly emerging modern capitalistic lines.     

Is PCL-R psychopathy associated with either type or severity of personality disorder?

The extent to which assessment of personality disorders (PDs), and trans-diagnostic measures of PD severity, can capture the variance in psychopathy measured by the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) was examined in 100 forensic patients with a history of violent offending. Correlational and linear regression analyses were carried out to establish whether (i) combinations of PDs would predict PCL-R scores for each of its two factors, interpersonal–affective (F1) and antisocial deviance (F2); (ii) ‘acting out’, a putative measure of externalising maladjustment that transcends PD categories, would predict PCL-R scores. Results showed that narcissistic and avoidant PDs contributed significantly to the prediction of F1, but only antisocial PD contributed to the prediction of F2. ‘Acting out’ predicted both F1 and F2, suggesting that core features of PCL-R psychopathy are embedded within and across different PD diagnoses. Results are discussed in relation to different sub-types of psychopathy described in the literature.     

PTSD symptom reporting and persistent malingering in recipients of state compensation for violent crime victimization: an exploratory study

Previous research suggests that victims of violent crime who have applied for state compensation may persist in malingering after conclusion of the application process. To further explore this topic, the current study investigated differences in PTSD symptomatology between violent crime victims who had received compensation from the Dutch state and those who had been denied such compensation. Potential participants were approached through the Dutch Violent Offences Compensation Fund. Eventually, 125 victims agreed to participate and filled out a set of paper-and-pencil questionnaires. Both univariate and multivariate analyses revealed that recipients of compensation had reported higher symptom levels, than non-recipients but only when they could be qualified as probable malingerers. If compensation recipients could not be qualified as probable malingerers, they had reported lower symptom levels than non-recipients. This suggests that some victims will emotionally benefit from compensation, while others will unconsciously accept it as a validation of initially malingered symptoms. Results were discussed in terms of directions for future research and study limitations.     

Back to the Future? Warnings from History for a Future UK Constitutional Convention

Amid the fallout from the Scottish independence referendum, a UK constitutional convention has been proposed as a mechanism to take stock not only of the referendum, but also of the past fifteen years of devolution. However, despite longstanding conceptions of British constitutional development, a constitutional convention would not herald a brave new world for the UK's constitution. As the article highlights, in the past hundred years there have been two attempts to treat the territorial constitution in the round: the Speaker's Conference on Devolution, 1919–1920 and the Royal Commission on the Constitution, 1969–1973. This article examines both of these forums, arguing that they provide clear warnings for a future UK constitutional convention, in particular the threat of internal division that any such forum risks facing. A danger that this article highlights is heightened by the associated difficulty of reaching agreement across the UK's ‘state of unions’.     

Crime,time, and punishment: An exploration of selection bias in sentencing research

The sentencing decision reflects the culmination of a long series of processing and, thus, selection decisions, with cases leaving the system at each decision point. Accordingly, the substantive implications of bias due to sample selection are of particular concern for sentencing research. In an effort to assess the existence and manifestations of selection bias, the sentencing decision is modeled for three samples, each of which was selected from different stages of the justice process. Event-history data on felony arrests in the State of California over a 3-year period are used, along with a relatively simple analytic technique which reduces such bias. Results indicate that biasis introduced when censored observations are excluded from the analyses. Also, the effects of certain exogenous variables on sentence length differ, depending upon the selection criteria. Of these, the influence of pleading guilty rather than going to trial is especially interesting. Overall, our findings are consistent with the possibility that selectivity bias has concealed effects of sentence bargaining in some earlier studies.The data utilized in this study were collected and made available by the State of California Department of Justice, Bureau of Criminal Statistics. The Department of Justice bears no responsibility for the analyses or interpretations presented here.     

Understanding a New Typology of Batterers: Implications for Treatment

This article reviews early theories of the phenomenology of battering as well as more recent empirical research on batterer personality and behavioral characteristics. These studies yielded inconsistent findings. Most recently, Chiffriller and Hennessy (Chiffriller, 2002; Chiffriller & Hennessy, in press) conducted an extensive study that attempted to expand and correct for the methodological limitations of previous research. Cluster analysis yielded five distinct profiles of men who batter women. Based on the behavioral and personality characteristics that defined each cluster, the following five labels were chosen: (a) pathological batterers, (b) sexually violent batterers, (c) generally violent batterers, and (d) psychologically violent batterers, and (e) family-only batterers. These five profiles, and the implications for understanding battering and developing appropriate interventions, are discussed.