Moroccan adolescent suspect offenders in the Netherlands: ethnic differences in offender profiles

Ethnic minority youths are over-represented in the juvenile justice system in Western societies. However, research on the nature of crime committed by these youths is lacking. In the present study, offending patterns of incarcerated native Dutch adolescents and adolescents of Moroccan origin were compared. Criminal record data were used to examine the offence history of 291 incarcerated adolescents. Offender types were determined through latent class analysis. Adolescents of Moroccan origin were incarcerated more often, for more offences and at a younger age than native Dutch adolescents. A four-class model of offender types was found: property offenders, violent offenders, sexual offenders and arsonists. Property offenders were mainly Moroccan adolescents, the other offender types consisted predominantly of native Dutch adolescents. Moroccan adolescents in pre-trial arrest in the Netherlands can be characterized as early starting offenders who persist in being incarcerated for property-based crime.     

Occupational Logics and Political Commitment: American Artists Against the Iraq War

This article analyzes the political commitment of American artists, belonging to various art worlds, against the recent war in Iraq. Through the construction of three types of trajectories, I distinguish several mechanisms of commitment and forms of political involvement. I show how artists' heterogeneous professional identities structure their political commitment throughout the protest, how occupational logics shape the possible forms of action, in the artists' eyes. In the second part of the article, I focus on what is changing, in this context, in the relationships between the artistic and the political spheres, and what is revealed about their ordinary functioning. As a result of the increasing differentiation and specialization of the spheres of action in our societies, it has become more and more difficult and illegitimate for artists to fuse their artwork and their political positions. At the same time, individuals with strong resources of notoriety, especially in the film industry, have demanded a new role of public representation, challenging the exclusive political legitimacy to represent people.     

Cross-ethnic generalizability of the three-factor model of psychopathy: the Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory in an incarcerated sample of native Dutch and Moroccan immigrant boys

Background

Previous research provides support for the existence of the psychopathy construct in youths. However, studies regarding the psychometric properties of psychopathy measures with ethnic minority youths are lacking.

Methods

In the present study, the three-factor structure of the Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory (YPI) was examined for both native Dutch youth (N = 158) and an ethnic minority group, Moroccans (N = 141), in an incarcerated adolescent population in the Netherlands.

Results

Our results showed that the three-factor structure of the YPI is comparable across an ethnic majority and an ethnic minority group in an incarcerated sample in the Netherlands. Moreover, associations between psychopathic traits and mental health problems were similar for both ethnic groups.

Conclusion

The results support the cross-ethnic generalizability of the three-factor model of psychopathy as measured through the Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory.     

Making “A Political Movie That Does Not Take a Political Stand:” Specialization and Depoliticization in American Cinema

Based on sociological interviews and observations, this paper addresses the question of the politicization of art in a contemporary American fieldwork: the production and promotion of a fiction film referring to the war in Iraq, Day Zero (2007). The analysis of this artwork reveals the modes of politicization open to artists—holding different types of position in the film industry and diversely positioned in terms of their own careers—in this particular professional sphere. This case study contrasts both with the experiences of activist filmmakers in the 1960–1970s, in the USA as well as in France, and with the explicitly political, if not partisan, posture taken in a number of contemporary documentary films regarding Iraq. The paper first depicts the ambivalent type of involvement built through the participants’ discourses and activities around this movie. They refer to a civic duty fulfilled through their contribution to the making of the film but, at the same time, they remain extremely cautious, restrictive and minimal in the way they publicly acknowledge its connection to any “political message.” In so doing, they paradoxically define an “a-political engaged art.” The second section of the study analyzes the professional logics and rules driving the protagonists, resulting in such naming and framing mechanisms. The participants work to reshape the political events referred to in the movie according to the formats and limits required by the film world, in order to avoid the risk of transgressing the specialized norms and codes used to evaluate the quality of an artwork. The conditions of appropriate actions are thus defined at the crossroads between political dynamics and professional constraints.     

Fatal poisoning by vanadium

We report here a fatal intoxication case involving ammonium vanadate. A 24-year-old woman was admitted to the Emergency Department for abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, multiple daily diarrheas, hypoglycaemia (0.2g/L) and severe acute renal failure with glomerular filtration rate estimated at 21 ml/min. This patient had taken an undetermined amount of ammonium vanadate 12h after ingesting. She died next morning in the context of respiratory distress despite intensive care and oxygen therapy. The autopsy revealed widespread asphyxia syndrome and erosive gastritis. Determination of vanadium concentration in blood was carried out by means of mass spectrometer (ICP-MS) using rhodium ((103)Rh) as the internal standard. The vanadium concentration was 6.22 mg/L, corresponding to 6000 times higher than normal concentration in the general population. The latency and the brutality of clinical picture degradation seem to be in consideration of systemic poisoning by vanadium leading to inhibition of the cellular respiratory process.     

Changing Definitions of Risk and Responsibility in French Political Scandals

In the 1990s in France, a large number of political scandals developed and many political actors were prosecuted. This process of making politicians responsible related, in particular, to the rise of 'new risks' regarding public health and security. In this paper, I analyse the diffusion and the crystallization of discourses linking public risk and political responsibility. First, I point to some of the social and cognitive bases in which the recent uses of the notions of risk and responsibility are rooted. Second, I focus on the mechanisms through which the notions were mobilized and invested with new definitions in the course of the scandal hearings. Third, I explore some of the effects of the changes which occurred during the 1990s: new perception frames in terms of risk and responsibility are consolidated and are progressively appropriated by social actors located in various professional spheres.