RISE OF THE DISLOYAL: INCREASING RESENTMENT IN NORTH KOREA

Why has loyalty to the Kim Family Regime and the Worker’s Party diminished over the past twenty years despite a rise in the average standard of living, greater social mobility, and a regime policy of benign neglect towards marketization? Unthinkable in the Kim Il Sung era, the increase in expressions of resentment toward the North Korean authorities represents a shift in the ideology, behavior, and motivation of the population. Four critical factors have heightened tensions between state and society in North Korea, leading to a reduction in loyalty among the general population. The author considers the impact of labor mobilizations, the declining importance of party membership, the influence of foreign media, and the rise of rent seeking and extractive policies. While all play a role, it is important and possible to identify the primary cause. Extractive policies and rent-seeking position the regime and the people in a directly adversarial relationship. All tiers and agencies of the government have become complicit in efforts to siphon off profits, control market actors through crony capitalism, rent seek, over-regulate, and compete against private market actors, causing the residents to express frustration and resentment towards a government that does not have their interests at heart.     

Addiction and Responsibility: An Introduction

Law and Philosophy -     

Psychopathic traits and offending trajectories from early adolescence to adulthood

Purpose

Measures of adolescent psychopathy have yet to be examined in offending trajectory studies. This may explain why identifying etiological differences between individuals following high-rate and moderate-rate offending trajectories has remained elusive. The current study used the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (PCL:YV) to examine psychopathic traits and offending trajectories within a sample of incarcerated offenders.

Methods

Convictions were measured for Canadian male (n = 243) and female (n = 64) offenders at each year between ages 12 and 28. Semi-parametric group based modeling identified four unique trajectories: adolescence-limited (AL) (27.3% of sample), explosive-onset fast desister (EOFD) (30.6%), high-rate slow desister (HRSD) (14.6%), and high frequency chronic (HFC) (27.5%).

Findings

Both a three and a four factor model of psychopathy were tested, and both factor structures were positively and significantly associated with the HRSD and HFC trajectories. Regarding individual factors of psychopathy, the ‘Antisocial’ factor of the PCL:YV was the only individual dimension significantly associated with membership in high-rate compared to moderate-rate offending trajectories.

Conclusions

Psychopathic traits appear more commonly present amongst individuals who follow chronic versus moderate offending trajectories. Implications for early intervention and risk management of offenders are discussed.     

The persistence of early childhood physical aggression: Examining maternal delinquency and offending,mental health,and cultural differences

Purpose

To examine the persistence of physical aggression in preschoolers and associated correlates (i.e., socio-demographic, socioeconomic, criminality, parenting practices, maternal mental health).

Methods

One-year follow-ups are completed with 240 mothers and their preschool children (boys and girls) from the Vancouver Longitudinal Study on the Psychosocial Development of Children. A series of structural equation models are examined.

Results

Maternal psychological symptoms, juvenile delinquency, and adult offending are associated with higher levels of physical aggression in their offspring. Children of non-Caucasian mothers and those born outside of North are less physically aggressive. Cultural differences in the correlates of physical aggression were identified.

Conclusions

Maternal past delinquency, current adult offending, and mental health are important factors in the development of children’s physical aggression. The findings suggest that there are multiple pathways leading to chronic physical aggression, which may be culturally-based. Cultural differences should be taken into account when developing programs and intervening with families of children with behavioral problems.     

A Criminal Career Study of the Continuity and Discontinuity of Sex Offending during the Adolescence-Adulthood Transition: A Prospective Longitudinal Study of Incarcerated Youth

Longitudinal research has seriously challenged assumptions that juvenile sex offenders (JSO) are characterized by high level of dangerousness, mental health problems, and crime specialization in sex offenses. The current study examines the longitudinal pattern of offending among a sample of JSO and a sample of juvenile nonsex offenders. The research design includes longitudinal data over a nine-year period allowing the examination of offending patterns and the crime mix from age 12 to age 23. The findings highlight that, while JSO are prone to persist offending in adulthood, there is limited continuity of sex offending. Further, the findings stress the importance of taking into account nonsexual juvenile delinquency, more specifically, youth violence, to make a better assessment of early adult offending outcomes of JSO.     

A comparative model of the psychological effects on the victims of state and anti-state terrorism

This paper has examined and compared the psychological impact of both state and anti-state terrorism on the victim. In this regard, three dimensions to this issue were discussed: (a) the effects that are common to anti-state terror and state-terror; (b) the effects that are unique to anti-state terror; and (c) the psychological effects and sequelae specifically associated with state-terror. Given the paucity of empirical research together with the complexity of the subject matter, definitive statements are difficult to advance. Despite this, however, a number of tentative conclusions can be made. With respect to psychological reactions during the incident, many similarities seem to hold for victims of a hostage-taking, concentration camps, and torture. That is, the incident begins with a period of initial shock accompanied by extreme fear and anxiety. This is followed by a phase characterized by outward acceptance of the perpetrator's control while inside the victim is experiencing extreme fright. Gradually, a period of adaptation sets in, whereby the victim may resort to a number of coping strategies. Although similarities continue after the incident--the post-traumatic stress syndrome, for example--the intensity and duration of psychological sequelae appear to be much greater in victims of state-terror. Given the extreme brutality that invariably accompanies state-terror, this is not surprising. While the methods of anti-state terrorists may take a number of different forms, usually their resources and techniques are limited in comparison to state-terror. It is only more recently in the Middle East that anti-state terrorists more routinely are engaging in long-term detention and torture of victims. On the other hand, regimes that employ state-terror have a wide range of violent techniques at their disposal, most importantly concentration camps. It appears that prolonged physical and emotional violence combined with little hope of relief or escape is critical to understanding why victims of state terrorism are more likely to suffer more serious mental disorders than victims of anti-state terrorism.     

Free Will,Punishment, and the Burden of Proof

Justifying state punishment presents a difficulty for those who deny that human actions are free in the sense required by moral responsibility. The argument I make in this article, following work done by Double, Vilhauer, and Sehon, is that those who believe that human beings do sometimes act freely face exactly the same difficulty, for no current account of freedom has the sort of evidentiary support that condemning a person to punishment requires; no current account could meet even the most minimal burden of proof. Recourse to purely preventive methods, such as are proposed for a system of quarantine of dangerous individuals, seems undesirable because of the absence of limits under such a system, limits like the requirements of proportionality and guilt. That same objection holds as well against proposals of non-retributive punishment. The adoption of a system of punishment, understood retributively or non-retributively, does not preclude the state even in theory from also adopting a system of preventive measures. The answer that I suggest is a system of limited deprivations of freedom justified in much the way the doctrine of takings is justified, along with the specific exclusion of purely preventive methods for competent individuals.