Depressive Symptoms and School Burnout During Adolescence: Evidence from Two Cross-lagged Longitudinal Studies

The main purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which middle and late adolescents’ depressive symptoms predict their later school burnout and, in turn, the extent to which school burnout predicts depressive symptoms. Drawing on data gathered at ages 15–19 in two-three-wave longitudinal studies, we investigated cross-lagged paths between school burnout and depressive symptoms. In Study 1 the participants were 15-year-old adolescents (Time 1: N = 611, Time 2: N = 614, Time 3: N = 725) who completed the School Burnout Inventory and depressive symptoms twice during their final term of comprehensive school and once after the transition to upper secondary high school or vocational school. In Study 2 the participants were 17-year-old adolescents whose school burnout and depressive symptoms were measured three times annually (Time 1: N = 474, Time 2: N = 412, Time 3: N = 414) during their 3 years of secondary education. Results of both studies revealed moderate stability for both school burnout and depressive symptoms. They also showed that school burnout more strongly predicted subsequent depressive symptoms later on than vice versa. Lastly, they revealed cumulative cycles between school burnout and depressive symptoms.     

Does Spending Time in Public Settings Contribute to the Adolescent Risk of Violent Victimization?

Objectives

Using data from a nationally representative survey of adolescents in Finland this research examined the influence of spending time in public settings on the risk of physical assault and robbery victimization.

Methods

Binary and multinomial regression models were estimated to disaggregate associations between hours spent in public settings and characteristics of the victimization incident. The amount of causality/spuriousness in the association was examined using a method of situational decomposition.

Results

Our findings indicate that: (1) an active night life (any time after 6 pm) has a strong effect on victimization for boys, whereas much of the association between night life and victimization is spurious for girls; (2) after-school activity is not a risk factor; (3) adolescents who frequent public places at night increase their risk of victimization by people they know as well as strangers; and (4) much of the risk of night time activity in public settings is alcohol-related.

Conclusions

Our research suggests that a good deal of the risk associated with spending time in public settings is a function of the victim’s own risky behavior rather than inadvertent physical contact with motivated offenders in the absence of capable guardians. In addition, this lifestyle is significantly more victimogenic for males.     

Personal Value Orientation as a Moderator in the Relationships Between Perceived Organizational Justice and Its Hypothesized Consequences

This study examined whether personal value orientation moderated the relationships between perceived organizational justice and its three hypothesized consequences: group pride, respect within the group, and turnover intentions. On the basis of conceptual correspondences between self-enhancement and self-transcendence values of Schwartz's value typology and previous conceptualizations of distributive and procedural justice two hypotheses were developed and tested with a sample of 160 employees of a research organization. It was predicted and found that relationships between distributive justice and outcome variables were stronger among people who were high in self-enhancement values (power, achievement). The relationships between procedural justice and outcome variables, by contrast, were predicted to be stronger among those high in self-transcendence values (universalism, benevolence). Our results provided no support for the latter hypothesis.     

Think Nationally,Act Locally: The Municipal-Level Effects of the National Crime Prevention Program in Finland

This paper gauges the effects of the National Crime Prevention Program (NCPP) on the level of crime in Finland. The research design involves comparisons between municipalities that vary in terms of their participation in the NCPP. Is this characteristic related to improvements in community safety? The analyses utilize data from victim surveys as well as police statistics. Findings from each type of analysis suggest that active participation in the national initiative has not resulted in reduced levels of crime and violence. The study concludes with a set of recommendations for improving the effectiveness of the NCPP.     

Fiscal Explanations for Inflation: Any Evidence from Transition Economies?

Recent arguments, motivated partly by the new fiscal theory of price level, suggest that fiscal deficits undermine price stability in transition economies. This paper addresses these claims by examining vector-autoregressive models of inflation for three transition economies (Bulgaria, Romania and Russia). The results indicate that fiscal deficits have increased inflation in Bulgaria and Romania but not in the case of Russia. In Bulgaria and Romania, money aggregates and exchange rate have also been more influential to inflation than fiscal deficits. The analysis based on this method therefore suggests that while fiscal deficits have some influence on inflation, monetary factors mostly determine inflation in these three countries.     

Using Bayes’ theorem in behavioural crime linking of serial homicide

Purpose. The study extends research by Santtila et al. (2008) by investigating the effectiveness of linking cases of serial homicide using behavioural patterns of offenders, analysed through Bayesian reasoning. The study also investigates the informative value of individual behavioural variables in the linking process. Methods. Offender behaviour was coded from official documents relating to 116 solved homicide cases belonging to 19 separate series. The basis of the linkage analyses was 92 behaviours coded as present or absent in the case based on investigator observations on the crime scene. We developed a Bayesian method for linking crime cases and judged its accuracy using cross‐validation. We explored the information added by individual behavioural variables, first, by testing if the variable represented purely noise with respect to classification, and second, by excluding variables from the original model, one by one, by choosing the behaviour that had the smallest effect on classification accuracy. Results. The model achieved a classification accuracy of 83.6% whereas chance expectancy was 5.3%. In simulated scenarios of only one and two known cases in a series, the accuracy was 59.0 and 69.2%, respectively. No behavioural variable represented pure noise but the same level of accuracy was achieved by analysing a set of 15, as analysing all 92 variables. Conclusion. The study illustrates the utility of analysing individual behavioural variables through Bayesian reasoning for crime linking. Feasible applied use of the approach is illustrated by the effectiveness of analysing a small set of carefully chosen variables.     

No Evidence of Specific Deterrence under Penal Moderation: Imprisonment and Recidivism in Finland

International literature on prison effects on recidivism tends to find little evidence of specific deterrence. If anything, imprisonment seems more likely to increase than decrease rates of offending. The present study adds to this literature by examining imprisonment and recidivism in Finland, a nation characterized by an exceptionally moderate penal culture. It has been suggested that severe sanctions need to be imposed selectively in order for them to be effective. In this research, we estimated the impact of first imprisonment on recidivism in comparison with offenders sentenced to either suspended imprisonment or community service. Using data from government population registries, we controlled for a large number of legal and extra-legal confounding factors, including criminal history and socio-demographic characteristics. We found no evidence of reduced recidivism as a result of imprisonment. Instead, consistent with prior research, we find evidence of increased recidivism in certain offender categories. We conclude with a discussion of policy implications.     

On the road to serfdom? An analysis of Friedrich Hayek's socio-political manifesto as a pending narrative

In this article, I analyse Friedrich Hayek's (1944) book The Road to Serfdom by arguing that it is founded upon the pending narrative. The pending narrative is a semiotic macrostructure that is used to arouse passion for a specific goal of action. The rhetorical force of the pending narrative comes from its sudden interruption: as soon as identities have been established for the actors involved in the action, the narrative is brought to a halt. However, to leave the story open does not alone guarantee the force of the pending narrative. Its impetus is also based on the rhetorically capable use of three discursive elements: truth discourse, morally loaded binary discourse, and ‘utopian’ discourse.     

Matricide and Two Sexual Femicides by a Male Strangler with a Transgender Sadomasochistic Identity

Abstract: While violence against sexual minorities is a well‐known phenomenon, sexual homicides committed by men with cross‐dressing or transsexual identity are not, because they are relatively few. We report a 23‐year follow‐up of the case of a transvestite, possibly transsexual, man who killed his mother by strangulation at the age of 20, and later in two separate cases strangled a female victim towards whom he felt sexual desire. He reported being sexually aroused by being strangled himself. The case raises questions concerning legislation which does not allow life‐long control of criminals.