Psychopathy and Female Gender: Phenotypic Expression and Comorbidity; A Study Comparing a Sample of Women Hospitalized in Italy's Maximum Security Facility with Women Who were Criminally Sentenced and Imprisoned,

Various studies have shown that women with psychopathy tend to commit crimes that are less violent than those of psychopathic men. The present study was designed to address the influence of psychopathy on the crimes committed by female offenders. A national sample of female offenders found NGRI or of diminished responsibility and at risk for criminal recidivism (OPG patients) was compared with a sample of female offenders who were convicted and imprisoned. Results of this comparison between the two groups of female offenders indicate that psychopathy is a transversal psychopathological dimension which may or may not be associated with other mental disorders. In both samples, the most commonly reported offenses among women with high PCL‐R scores were minor offenses, not particularly violent, but they appear to be related to typical psychopathic features such as superficial charm, pathological lying, and manipulation.     

SCHOOLS AS COMMUNITIES: THE RELATIONSHIPS AMONG COMMUNAL SCHOOL ORGANIZATION,STUDENT BONDING,AND SCHOOL DISORDER*

Research has indicated that school factors such as communal school organization and student bonding are predictive of school disorder, with greater communal organization and greater student bonding leading to less delinquency and victimization. Data from a nationally representative sample of 254 public, nonalternative, secondary schools were used to examine structural equation models representing hypothesized relationships among communal school organization, student bonding, and school disorder. The hypothesis that communally organized schools would have less disorder held true for teacher victimization and student delinquency, but not for student victimization. In addition, the hypothesis that the relationship between communal school organization and school disorder would be mediated by student bonding was supported for student delinquency, but not for teacher victimization.     

WOMEN,RACE, AND CRIME *

This paper explores the capacity of alternative theoretical perspectives to explain the self-reported criminality of black and white young adult females. When criminal involvement is regressed on the theory operation-alizations separately by race, a key difference emerges: For white women, significant effects are clustered in the social-psychological theory groups (bonding, attitudes, and maturation), but for the black women the social-psychological variables have only scattered and inconsistent eflects. Instead, for black women structural indicators emerge as the important predictors of criminal involvement.     

Rules,Institutions, Transformations. Considerations on the “Evolution of Law” Paradigm

The article's main objective is to test the merits of the evolutionary paradigm as it has been applied first to social phenomena and then more specifically to the legal domain. In a preliminary move, a set of the available concepts of law is worked out. A discussion of the idea of evolution and of its use in the social sciences follows. Functionalism and systems theory are scrutinized, with a close eye to the new doctrine of “autopoiesis.” Once an institutional and normative concept of law is agreed upon, attempts to introduce an “evolutionary” paradigm are deemed—the article contends—to be unfruitful. The article concludes that, if law needs a metaphysics, it should be one which allows for change, transformation and the emergence of the radically new. A social universe without gaps, all possible forms of which are determined from the beginning, will end up as the opposite of what we are used to considering as the practice of law.     

Are there environmental factors influencing the choice of death by drowning as a means of suicide in the Geneva canton?

123 out of 850 suicides that occurred in the Canton of Geneva between 1980 and 1989 were suicides by submersion. 75 women and 48 men committed this kind of suicide. 89 victims (57 women and 32 men) were older than 40 years. In all cases the spatial distance between the residence of the suicides and the nearest river or lake was determined; a correlation with the tendency to commit suicide by drowning was not evident. More than geographical factors, the psychological influences have to be considered.