CHILDREN'S AND PARENTS’ PERCEPTIONS ON CHILDREN'S PARTICIPATION IN DECISION MAKING AFTER PARENTAL SEPARATION AND DIVORCE*

This article outlines the views of children and parents involved in family law disputes, about the need for and appropriateness of children's participation in decisions regarding residence and contact arrangements. Ninety parents and 47 children (ranging in age from 6 to 18 years) who had been through parental separation, were interviewed. Both parents and children had a range of views about the general appropriateness and fairness of children being involved, but the great majority, particularly of parents, thought that children should have a say in these matters. Core findings of the study include the considerable influence that older children had over the arrangements either in the aftermath of the separation or in making further changes over time, and the higher stated need of children who had experienced violence, abuse, or high levels of conflict to be heard than those in less problematic and noncontested matters. Parents involved in contested proceedings supported the participation of children at a younger age than those who were not. There was a reasonable degree of agreement between parents and children about the need for children to be acknowledged and the value of their views being heard in the decision‐making process. Parents, however, expressed concern about the pressure and manipulation that children can face and exert in this process, whereas children were generally more concerned about the fairness of the outcomes, and maintaining their relationships with their parents and siblings.     

Elusive justice: tribal police officers’ perception of justice in an American Indian community

This paper explores justice-related perceptions among tribal police officers providing service within a southeastern Indian Reservation in the United States. Interviews with 27 tribal police officers were conducted to understand the manner of the administration of tribal justice. Almost half of the participants interviewed felt that their tribal justice system was dysfunctional due to inter-tribal politics, federal government restrictions, and lenient tribal judges. Additionally, tribal police officers also described the failure of the federal government in prosecuting felony crimes on the reservation. As a result, they believed that both the tribal and federal criminal justice systems did not adequately address crime on the reservation.     

The integrity of the game: exploring attitudes of professional male athlete criminality#

It has been argued that sports act as a social institution in the United States, encompassing many network headlines and reports. Resulting from the popularization of sports entertainment has been an enhanced insight into the criminal behavior of professional athletes. This research sought to understand how the general public perceives alleged professional athlete criminality. Utilizing household mail surveys with residents in Pennsylvania, respondents rated the seriousness, wrongness, and punitiveness of alleged athlete criminality depicted in five different vignettes. Results indicated that the strongest predictor of attitudes between professional athletes and non-athletes was offense type; more specifically gambling, which this sample rated more serious and wrong for professional athletes compared to non-athletes. This indicated that alleged offenses that may be perceived as attacking the integrity of the sport may be viewed more harshly.     

Female Police Officers and Their Experiences: The Metropolitan Police of Buenos Aires Context

This research explores the experience of female police officers in the Metropolitan Police of Buenos Aires, which began providing public safety in 2010. The purpose of this research is to better understand the barriers and opportunities female officers are encountering in this new context of community policing in Latin America. With better understanding, law enforcement officials will be better equipped to ensure that female officers achieve at the highest levels in organizations. Responding female officers identified civic duty as a primary reason for joining the force. Female officers did not report significant levels of institutional discrimination but did report informal disparaging treatment, including sexual harassment. The results of this research suggest that as this young police force matures, officials should pay close attention to the emerging culture of the organization, as many common and negative aspects of it have already started to form.     

“杨天庆涉黑案”的特点、成因与防控类似违法犯罪的对策

“杨天庆涉黑案”是重庆2009年“打黑大审判”第一案。该案既有我国黑社会性质组织的一般特点,也有其个别化特点,前者使本案成立黑社会性质组织犯罪,后者使该犯罪具有残暴性、隐蔽性和迷惑性。该黑社会性质犯罪组织的滋生和形成,主要源于溺爱型的家庭教育、基层行政执法不力、重庆的“袍哥文化”、刑满释放人员等的社会化不足问题等因素。为防控类似违法犯罪的滋生和蔓延,应针对这些因素采取相应对策。     

Sickle Cell Trait Mimicking Multiple Inflicted Injuries in a 5-Year-Old Boy

Abstract:  Sickle cell disease (SCD) and sickle cell trait (SCT) can be associated with sudden unexpected death in the pediatric population, usually due to pulmonary complications occurring within the acute chest syndrome (ACS). Musculoskeletal complications can occur and are classically limited to bone infarcts. The occurrence of bone pathology centered upon the epiphyseal growth plate in SCD/SCT is extremely rare, and multiple such injuries in a single patient have not been previously reported. Herein, we describe a case of sudden unexpected death in a 5-year-old child with undiagnosed SCT due to the ACS, with widespread epiphyseal and periosteal bone lesions mimicking multiple inflicted injuries at autopsy. This case highlights the importance of clinicopathological correlation and is the first to describe SCT pathology as a mimic of nonaccidental injury.     

Police officers' perceptual distortions during lethal force situations: Informing the reasonableness standard*

Research Summary In 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court held that determinations about the constitutional appropriateness of police force usage—deadly or not—must be “judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight.” Although the Court's ruling established a clear standard for judging officers' actions (i.e., the perspective of a reasonable police officer on the scene), we know little about the sorts of factors that might frame the perspective of reasonable police officers during situations in which they apply force. This article presents the results of a study that examined 80 police officers' detailed accounts of how they perceived what transpired during 113 incidents in which they shot citizens. Respondents reported experiencing a wide range of sensory distortions, with the vast majority of officers reporting two or more distinct sorts. This study takes these findings as a point of departure to expand our understanding of what constitutes a reasonable officer's perspective during the tense, uncertain moments during which he or she makes the decision to employ deadly force. Policy Implications Given that officers are likely to experience multiple distortions during shootings, the findings have implications for civilian and police oversight policies. In particular, those responsible for reviewing police shooting incidents should take into consideration that officers' behavior will not always be based on the objective reality of what is occurring at the time they decide to pull the trigger, but rather an altered conception of it. Such an understanding is crucial to improving the image of police in certain communities and positively impacting citizen trust of, and satisfaction with, the police.     

Modeling Change in Perceptions about Sanction Threats: The Neglected Linkage in Deterrence Theory

Deterrence theory describes a process of offender decision making that consists of two linkages—one in which official sanctions and other information affect a would-be offenders perceptions about the risks of criminal conduct, and another in which such perceptions influence the decision whether or not to offend. Decades worth of empirical research has concentrated virtually exclusively on this latter linkage, and in so doing, has produced an incomplete account of the deterrence process. This article develops a model of how perceptions of sanction certainty are modified in response to an individuals involvement in criminal activity and the consequences (if any) therefrom. Implications of the model are tested with data from a multi-wave, panel survey of 1,530 high school students from the southeastern U.S. Key findings include: the manner in which new information affects perceived certainty depends on the level of perceived certainty before the new information is received, and the extent of peer offending was one of the most influential factors in determining change in perceived sanction certainty over time.     

The Effect of Gender in the Perception of Elder Physical Abuse in Court

Two experiments investigated mock jurors' perceptions of elder abuse (EA) in a physical assault case. In Experiment 1, participants read a fictional criminal trial summary of a physical assault case in which the alleged victim was 66, 76, or 86 years old. In Experiment 2, the age of the alleged victim was 76 years old, but the gender of the alleged victim and the gender of the defendant were crossed. The results of the experiments showed that women believed the alleged victim more and rendered a guilty verdict more often than men. Overall, the alleged victim was believed more than the defendant regardless of the age of the alleged victim, and most verdicts were guilty. These results are discussed in terms of the factors that affect perceptions of alleged victims of EA in court.     

Victim's perceptions of initial police responses to robbery and aggravated assault: Does race matter?

Despite the fact that police officers are usually the first persons within the criminal justice system to respond to a criminal victimization, the majority of research investigating racial discrimination within the system has examined primarily the effects of race on adjudication outcomes which occur after initial police interventions, such as conviction decisions and sentences. Very little empirical effort has been devoted to examining the effects of race on early police responses to a reported victimization. Using data from the National Crime Victimization Survey from 1987 to 1992, this paper investigates the effects of both the victim's and the offender's race on three police responses to robbery and aggravated assault: (1) police response time to the scene, (2) effort exerted by the police at the scene, and (3) likelihood of arrest. It was found that police were quicker to respond and also exerted more effort at the scene such as searching and taking evidence to incidents of black on white robbery compared to all other racial dyads. This relationship held even after controlling for other factors such as victim-offender relationship, poverty, injury to the victim, and victim's gender. No significant effects of race, however, were found when predicting the probability of arrest in cases of robbery. The effects of race on police responses to aggravated assault were more complicated. For assaults involving strangers, police were significantly more likely to exert additional effort at the scene if the victim was white and the offender was perceived to be black. This effect was reversed, however, for nonstranger assault victimizations. Police were significantlyless likely to exert effort at the scene or to make an arrest in black on white assaults involving nonstrangers. The most consistent predictors of arrest in both stranger and nonstranger assault victimizations were police response time, injury to the victim, and the incident occurring in a public setting.