Effective Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment in Juvenile Justice Settings: Practice and Policy Recommendations

Juvenile justice—increasingly the service delivery point for adolescents with substance abuse and co-occurring problems lacking resources for other assistance—can be a model for improved and expanded, yet cost-effective, adolescent substance abuse treatment. An emergent standard of care challenges systemic inequities; a new service array facilitates dialogue among justice and treatment professionals, families, and the youth themselves. Such evidence-based practice—and the policy to implement it—have the power to transform disconnected laws, programs and professionals into an effective, efficient and successful community of responders, helping youth reclaim their lives while improving public health and public safety.

Victims of the Genocidal Mind: Societal Indicators and Individual Case Treatment Considerations

This paper uses the theoretical lens of object relations and takes the position that the paranoid-schizoid position and the related mechanism of projective identification—cornerstone pathology found in the phenomenon of fascism and totalitarianism—are not atypical, but rather live within the seemingly normal individual. Using Rwanda as a case example, the author illustrates the continuum of beliefs and actions that can result in genocide, and then describes some of the treatment considerations facing the clinician dealing with victims of genocide.

Do Professional Sports Unions Fit the Standard Model of Traditional Unionism?

Current literature generally highlights the unique differences between sports and traditional unions. In particular, the contrast between the two types of unions’ approaches to the free market when it comes to wage determination—sports unions fought the “reserve clause” to obtain free market outcomes while traditional unions fought to circumvent the market for wages—has been widely cited. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the hitherto neglected comparisons between sports and traditional unions. With respect to both economic and non-economic issues, professional sports unions share far more in common with their traditional counterparts than the labor and sports economics literatures would lead one to believe.

The Place of Framing: Multiple Audiences and Antiwar Protests near Fort Bragg

Social movement leaders regularly invoke geographic places—such as cities, parks, and monuments—as symbols in strategic efforts to frame social movement activity. This article examines how place affects framing processes inside a movement and counterprotester responses with an ethnography of anti-Iraq War protests in Fayetteville, North Carolina. We show how place attracts the attention of movement leaders, creates opportunities for local community members to assert their interests, suppresses some frames within the movement, and encourages opponents to co-opt the meaning of place for their own ends. The multiple meanings of place can broaden the scope of conflict and reduce a movement leader’s ability unilaterally to define a movement’s agenda and public image.

Knowledge Sharing is Power

Nowadays we can talk about a “Knowledge Revolution” because managing of information plays a crucial role in our society, both in public and private sphere. After a brief introduction—aimed at underling the main points we will debate on—the first part of the article focus on Knowledge Management techniques and knowledge-based government (k-Government) and the great potential in respect to the public sector transformation. The second part takes into account the social dimension of knowledge managing and the ethical relevance that social networking is progressively acquiring. After that, we have chosen to focus on global warming, indeed, the last session is a detailed analysis of a real case study related to China’s energy security. In the end, a wise use of Knowledge resources, trough the comparison with past experiences, turn out to be the powerful device that will let us provide some useful suggestion for a significant public action.

Reduced prizes and increased effort in contests

We study the general class of two-player public-policy contests and specify the asymmetry condition under which a more restrained government intervention that reduces the contestants’ prizes has the “perverse” effect of increasing their aggregate lobbying efforts.

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Religion and high-school graduation: a comparative analysis of patterns for white and black young women

This paper examines how two dimensions of childhood religion—affiliation and participation—are related to the probability of graduating from high school. Hypotheses derived from a human capital model are tested with data on non-Hispanic white and black women from the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth. The empirical findings are generally consistent with the hypotheses, revealing sizeable differentials in the likelihood of obtaining a high-school diploma by affiliation and participation. The results suggest that the convergence of Catholics to the mainline Protestant pattern for non-Hispanic whites found here, and supported by many previous studies, has not taken place in the black population. In other respects, the relationships between religion and high-school graduation are similar for the two racial groups.

Hidden Consumer Loans: An Analysis of Implicit Interest Rates on Bounced Checks

Payday lending attracts attention for its high interest rates, but bounce protection loans are much more expensive. Bounce protection is a program where consumers overdraft—write checks in excess of the checking account balance—and the bank pays the check allowing the account balance to be negative. For this service/loan, banks charge the standard non-sufficient funds (NSF) fee. When the amount borrowed is low and the time outstanding is short, the effective interest rate paid on this loan can be quite high. Using a unique data set we were able to quantify how high the interest rate is. We found that the median implicit interest paid by consumers is over 4,000%.

Appropriating the city: space,theory, and bike messengers

Over the last 30 years, social theorists have increasingly emphasized the importance of space. However, in empirical research, the dialectical relationship between social interaction and the physical environment is still a largely neglected issue. Using the theory of structuration, I provide a concrete example of why and how space matters in the cultural analysis of an urban social world. I argue that bike messengers—individuals who deliver time-sensitive materials in downtown cores of major cities—cannot be understood outside an analysis of space. Specifically, I connect the cultural significance of messenger practices to the emplacement of those practices inside the urban environment.

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Black Gold and Blue Gold: The Importance of Energy in the New Power Policy of the Russian Federation

After having been forced to face a decade of economic and political difficulties, the Russian Federation is regaining a position of prestige on the international stage thanks to an astute utilization of its huge reserves of oil and natural gas. With the coming to power of Vladimir Putin—and in particular from 2004—the State has changed its policy in the energy field, aiming to come back to exert a strict control over the main companies and assets. One of the most significant consequences of this change has been the outbreak of disputes with Ukraine and Belarus about the selling price of gas, which caused fears among the entire Europe about the reliability of Russia as a supplier of that resource. Moreover, the quarrels forced many Western analysts to condemn the way Moscow is acting to try and become an “energy superpower”.

From Market to State Networking: The Case of a Norwegian Voluntary Organization

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate and explain how a Norwegian voluntary, faith-based organization—the Gospel Centre of Norway (Pinsevennenes Evangeliesenter)—successfully substituted a “network” for “market” strategy vis-à-vis the public sector in order to obtain organizational legitimacy and financial security. During the first decade of its existence it obtained a unique position in its relationship with the state, as a separate item in the budget of the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs. The organization operates in the field of substance abuse rehabilitation, i.e., in a situation where instrumental effectiveness is difficult to assess. In such a situation ritual or other institutional criteria may replace effectiveness criteria and impression management is shown to be a successful strategy. Attention is paid to the relevant environmental conditions under which this organizational change of strategy was successful.

Credit Constraints and Human Capital Investment in College Education

Using data from the Health and Retirement Study 2001 Human Capital Investment Survey, this article examines the impact of credit market constraints on investment in college education. The effect of family income on college attendance may not be as big as perceived in some previous studies. The interest rates faced by children from middle families are the lowest in the credit market. The research suggests that various government programs aiming to help children from poor families may be effective, but only at the extensive margin—by improving their access to college education. For those who get into college, underinvestment by students from poor families remains a significant problem.

Evaluating the Problem Gambling Severity Index

A large, integrated survey data set provided by the Ontario Problem Gambling Centre was used to investigate psychometric properties of the Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI). This nine-item self-report instrument was designed to measure a single, problem gambling construct. Unlike its nearest competitor—the South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS)—the PGSI was designed specifically for use with a general population rather than in a clinical context. The present analyses demonstrated that the PGSI does assess a single, underlying, factor, but that this is complicated by different, multiple factor structures for respondents with differing levels of problem gambling severity. The PGSI also demonstrated small to moderate correlations with measures of gambling frequency and faulty cognitions. Overall, the PGSI presents a viable alternative to the SOGS for assessing degrees of problem gambling severity in a non-clinical context.

Afghanistan: A Change of Course?

The situation in Afghanistan today is not what the international community was planning it to be, 7 years ago when the Bonn Agreement was signed. Deterioration of security, weak governance, corruption, high narcotic production and trade, slow reconstruction process and consequent people’s disappointment are some of the features of that situation. Kabul and its international partners had a very little success in restoring peace and security, and a new phase of strategic re-thinking is in process. This article analyzes the different aspects of Afghan reconstruction and military intervention, their strengths and weaknesses, and outlines some urgent actions to be taken by all concerned actors.

The Monster Within: Countertransference Reflections on a Gay Adolescent’s Struggle with Sexual Identity

This paper concerns the author’s countertransference reflections on her work with a gay adolescent who identifies with powerfully destructive internal objects, including Hitler and the Monster. The author describes her countertransference inquiry through which she experiences her own potential destructiveness in order to help accommodate her adolescent patient’s rejected and disowned self states.

Social Capital,Volunteering, and Charitable Giving

This paper explores the impact of social capital—measured by social trust and social networks—on individual charitable giving to religious and secular organizations. Using United States data from the national sample of the 2000 Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, we find that social trust, bridging social network, and civic engagement increase the amount of giving to both religious and secular causes. In contrast, organizational activism only affects secular giving. Volunteering activity, and human and financial capital indicators positively affect both religious and secular giving. Finally, those who are happy about their lives and those who are religious give more to religious causes, but these factors do not affect secular giving. We find evidence of important differences in the determinants of religious and secular giving, suggesting the need to distinguish these two types of charitable giving in future work.

Chinese Contract Law and the Economic Reform

China’s previous contract laws had many contradictions and failed to meet the needs of China’s developing market economy. Although some problems still need to be dealt with, the unified contract law is more advanced, systematic and plays an important role in fostering and encouraging transactions.

The inverse plurality rule—an axiomatization

Under the ‘inverse plurality rule’, voters specify only their least preferred alternative. Our first result establishes that this rule is the only scoring rule that satisfies the minimal veto condition (MV). We then prove that the inverse plurality rule is characterized by MV and the four well known conditions that characterize scoring rules; namely, Anonymity (A), Neutrality (N), Reinforcement (RE) and Continuity (CO). Our new characterization result is related to the characterizations of approval voting and of the widely used plurality rule. We finally show how the axiomatization of the inverse plurality rule can be extended to the axiomatization of elementary scoring rules (vote for t-alternatives scoring rules). We are indebted to two anonymous referees for their most useful comments.

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From Global Cities to the Lands’ End: The Relocation of Corporate Headquarters and the New Company Towns of Rural America

Since the 1970s, a number of major corporations have located their corporate headquarters in rural and non-metropolitan areas. I interrogate this phenomenon, based on a case study of Lands’ End, a global apparel firm in Wisconsin. Much research has exposed how firms insulate themselves from claims made by workers and communities through organizational and spatial distance (i.e. global sourcing, casualization of employment structures). Corporate headquarters relocation presents a paradox, bringing key decision-makers in the global economy into new, face-to-face relationships with workers and communities. Negotiated against a radical transformation of local class structure, I argue that new forms of social regulation are emerging—in particular, a hybrid version of the Fordist-era company towns.

The Institutional and Technical Structuring of Nonprofit Ventures: Case Study of a U.S. Hybrid Organization Caught Between Two Fields

This paper engages the concept of the organizational field to explore the status of a growing set of organizations referred to as social enterprises, nonprofit ventures, and social purpose businesses. The argument is developed through an ethnographic case study of a nonprofit hybrid organization (in the United States) that is training welfare recipients in their own in-house businesses. First, this paper provides an overview of the commercial trends in the nonprofit sector and the rise of social purpose enterprises. Then, employing key concepts from neo-institutional theory, the author proposes framing nonprofit-business hybrids as organizations positioned in two different organizational fields—each necessitating different internal organizational technologies—to elucidate the structural tensions that can emerge inside these new hybrid models. Internal organizational tensions identified in the case study are highlighted. Finally, the proposed use of organizational field theory developed from the case analysis is discussed in terms of social enterprise more generally.