Recommendations for the elder abuse, health, and justice fields about medical forensic issues related to elder abuse and neglect

Increased interest in pursuing criminal and civil actions against alleged perpetrators of elder abuse and neglect has revealed that efforts to assist victims and hold perpetrators accountable are often hampered by the lack of knowledge about the detection and diagnosis of elder abuse and neglect and by the lack of resources for development of research and assistance in these matters. This report sets forth recommendations for the elder abuse, health, and justice fields about medical forensic issues related to elder abuse and neglect. The recommendations were developed by a "working group" of experts representing an array of disciplines that address the problem of elder abuse and neglect pursuant to a grant project funded by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), the research, development, and evaluation agency of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). The project was conducted by the American Bar Association Commission on Law and Aging, with the assistance of the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine. This was the final project report submitted to NIJ; it has been updated to include information about the availability of reports and products from other grant projects that are discussed in the report.     

Recommendations for the elder abuse, health, and justice fields about medical forensic issues related to elder abuse and neglect

Increased interest in pursuing criminal and civil actions against alleged perpetrators of elder abuse and neglect has revealed that efforts to assist victims and hold perpetrators accountable are often hampered by the lack of knowledge about the detection and diagnosis of elder abuse and neglect and by the lack of resources for development of research and assistance in these matters. This report sets forth recommendations for the elder abuse, health, and justice fields about medical forensic issues related to elder abuse and neglect. The recommendations were developed by a "working group" of experts representing an array of disciplines that address the problem of elder abuse and neglect pursuant to a grant project funded by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), the research, development, and evaluation agency of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). The project was conducted by the American Bar Association Commission on Law and Aging, with the assistance of the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine. This was the final project report submitted to NIJ; it has been updated to include information about the availability of reports and products from other grant projects that are discussed in the report.     

The Collaborative Research Education Partnership

Abstract

This article discusses the founding and operation of the Emmett J. and Mary Martha Doerr Center for Social Justice Education and Research, an endowed nonprofit organization located within the School of Social Service at Saint Louis University. The nonprofit Center provides a creative mechanism for facilitating university-community agency research. The Research Education Partnership (REP) model creates a partnership among students, community agency personnel, and faculty in funded practice research and program evaluation. Four collaborations, their benefits and challenges, are described. Students are prepared to integrate research into practice. The Center promotes and supports faculty-community partnerships for social justice.     

Integrating research,policy, and practice in juvenile justice education

This article provides an overview of the history and context leading to Florida's efforts to implement an evaluation-driven research and associated quality assurance system for its juvenile justice education policies and practices. The Juvenile Justice Educational Enhancement Program began implementing Florida's evaluation research and quality assurance system to juvenile justice education in 1998. The article includes a brief summary of articles comprising this special issue of Evaluation Review that address the Juvenile Justice Educational Enhancement Program's various functions, methodological components, data, preliminary findings, continuing evaluation research efforts, and impediments.     

Focusing on the family in the treatment of substance abusing criminal offenders.

Aftercare services are acknowledged in the criminal justice system as critical to enabling drug offenders to avoid relapse and reincarceration, but the content too often is unsupported through research. One program funded under the Department of Justice in Maryland interviewed 150 inmates after three months in the community to determine what environmental influences were having the greatest impact on drug reuse. Findings suggest that more emphasis is needed on family relationships before and after release since satisfaction with family life is strongly correlated with drug abuse.     

Data integration in the evaluation of juvenile justice education

This article discusses the Juvenile Justice Educational Enhancement Program's evaluation of juvenile justice education through the integration of multiple data sources. Validation of best practices and the corresponding effect of these practices on community reintegration require the development of a comprehensive database of program-level and individual-level indicators from several sources. These sources include the Florida Department of Education, the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the Florida Department of Corrections, and the Juvenile Justice Educational Enhancement Program's own educational quality assurance and pre-/posttest data. This article examines the methodological, political, and bureaucratic obstacles encountered in this effort. Evaluation research analyses are also explored with an emphasis on the meaning of outcome measures relative to causal issues of time order, the modeling of events, and analytic strategy. The article provides a framework for future juvenile justice educational evaluation and a critical examination of problems encountered in integrating data sources for the purpose of outcome evaluation.     

Appropriations update: DOJ and ONDCP now funded

President Trump has signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2019, which funds the agencies that weren't funded in last fall's spending bill, which included the Department of Health and Human Services. In particular, for ADAW readers, the spending bill signed Feb. 15 includes the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), and the Food and Drug Administration, which weren't funded before due to the government shutdown.     

Evaluation research,policy, and politics

This article discusses the role of politics in the Juvenile Justice Educational Enhancement Program's effort to use evaluation research data to inform Florida's juvenile justice education policies and practices. Through consideration of the Juvenile Justice Education Enhancement Program's experiences with privatization and the tough love and economy of scale rationales for larger and more custodial juvenile institutions, the variable role of politics is examined. Although the two examples are different, the discussion demonstrates that by maintaining an overriding commitment to its evaluation research purpose, the Juvenile Justice Educational Enhancement Program has been able to continue its data-driven policy efforts despite operating in a politically charged environment.     

Church suppers,pony tails and mentors: Developing a program for street kids

Increasing number of teens are leaving their homes to live on the street, and communities are often confused as to how best to provide services for them. This article describes one community's response to this and the lessons learned. The program, its development, the services and the communication with other agencies are described.This research was funded in part by grants from the Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention Funds.Ms. Roloff is affiliated with the program, Crosswalk.     

Exploring the implementation of justice-based alcohol and drug intervention strategies with juvenile offenders: Reclaiming Futures,enhanced adolescent substance abuse treatment,and juvenile drug courts

There is a need for practice models to match young people in the juvenile justice system with timely and effective alcohol and drug intervention services. This paper reports on a new demonstration effort in which three practice approaches currently operating in the United States are being combined to maximize the potential of each. This public–private partnership combines juvenile drug courts (funded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention), adolescent treatment improvement efforts (funded by the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment) and the Reclaiming Futures initiative (funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation). Benefits of combining the three strategies are discussed, emergent implementation challenges and lessons are presented, and suggestions for further evolution are provided.     

In Dispraise of Justice

Ancient and modern theories of justice are analyzed for the purpose of beginning to develop a new theory which is consistent with the symbolic interaction research tradition and the lived experiences of interactionists. The Reflexive Theory of Justice emphasizes lived emotions, meaningful interpretations, social process, the reality of gender and other structured categories of interpretation, the primacy of pragmatic context, and the personal nature of justice. Justice is an inevitable and ongoing struggle for each individual life.     

A new coat of paint: The bluewashing of justice reinvestment and realignment to community reinvestment

Justice reinvestment has been hailed as a solution to mass incarceration across the United States for nearly 20 years. It suggests that inefficiencies in the criminal justice system can be eliminated to reinvest money in high-incarceration communities to reduce the correlates of crime. However, the implementations have focused on reinvesting criminal justice funds back into public safety, which has led to the “bluewashing” of justice reinvestment. Introduced here, bluewashing occurs when a justice agency that has historically poor social justice performance communicates positive justice performance after implementing a theoretically supported reform in name only. In actuality, the reform has been modified to suit their own continuance. A realignment of the logic and theoretical support of justice reinvestment is critical to produce reforms that can provide relief for states, agencies, and citizens that are promised by justice reinvestment. This work directly connects the justice reinvestment thesis with the spatial interconnectedness of poverty, education, employment, and housing with crime and recidivism. It argues that justice reinvestment is a crime prevention policy that can simultaneously reduce mass incarceration and empower millions of American citizens living in the United States' most brutal conditions.     

A Faith-Based Alternative Youth Education Program

Abstract

Community-based and faith-based programs are on-going partners in the social welfare mix which characterizes U.S. welfare provision. In the face of calls for more rigorous research on the capacity and impact of faith-based and community-based programs which use public funds, the research community must gain sophistication in addressing methodological issues inherent in participatory designs for the study of such programs. This article describes concerns which arose while implementing participatory research during a federally-funded, intensive 10-month long case study of a faith-based alternative education program for at risk youth. The project was funded through the Department of Health and Humans Services, Administration for Children and Family. The challenges to data collection are presented and suggestions for doing participatory research in similar settings are discussed.     

Umweltgerechtigkeit als Forschungsparadigma der Soziologie

This paper discusses Environmental Justice to be a probably new area of research for environmental sociology. In order to reveal the complex structure of Environmental Justice related discourses and to promote more research on that topic, an analytical framework is elaborated, based on a distinction between the US-American experiences and recent European debates. Environmental Justice is understood here as a mutual process of negotiating conflicts of interests rather than a fixed state. Several “decision spots” will be carved out, which have to be considered in environmental-political regulations which are challenged by perceptions of social justice. The analytical framework will finally be illustrated by the empirical example of the new airport for Berlin, “Berlin-Brandenburg International”.     

Caught in the Cross Fire: Children’s Right to Education During Conflict — The Case of Nepal 1996–2006

The article focuses on the impact on children, schools and education during the 10 year conflict in Nepal and raises questions for further research on schooling in the post‐conflict era. The article is based on research undertaken as part of a British Council funded Higher Education Link. Focus group discussions and interviews were conducted with school children, parents, teachers and community leaders between 2004 and 2006 and draws on informal discussions and observations with NGOs and teachers in the post‐conflict period, including NGOs visual methods to enable children’s voices to be heard in the peace process.     

Ist mein Einkommen gerecht?

Based on the “Status-Value-Theory”, “A New Theory of Distributive Justice” and the exchange theories it can be concluded that individuals evaluate their own income as being just or unjust according to the average reference incomes, income inequality and their social position within an income hierarchy. In order to analyze this issue, a web-based survey with an integrated experimental set-up was carried out in the beginning of 2012. The analysis of the experimental data of 906 participants shows that the respondents based their income justice evaluations on average incomes of people with same professional qualifications and supports the “Status-Value-Theory”. Evidence for the impact of the income distribution among the reference group on justice evaluations, as stated by “A New Theory of Distributive Justice”, could only be found for respondents ranked at the lower end of the income scale. A similar pattern could be found for the effect of a respondent’s social position on his or her income justice evaluations that was expected on the basis of the exchange theories. The social position affects the income justice evaluations only in case that incomes are sufficiently unequally distributed. This article may also be of interest to readers who are rather interested in methodological issues than in the topic of income justice. The stimuli used in this study were designed by taking into account the information provided by the respondents (dynamic stimuli).     

Female Perceptions of Organizational Justice

This study examines women's conceptualization of the pervasive construct of organizational justice. A comprehensive four factor model was used to represent organizational justice while outcome variables were the important employee attitudes of job satisfaction, organizational commitment and turnover intentions. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse responses from 301 male and 147 female respondents. Differences were found for procedural, interpersonal and informational justices. It would appear female and male employees have differing responses to perceptions of justice. Justice had a diffuse effect for males, but not for females. For men, interpersonal justice predicted an increase in organizational commitment while procedural justice predicted a decrease in turnover intentions. For female employees, informational justice was found to increase commitment and reduce turnover intentions. The study highlights the need for all justice factors to be considered and for sex differences to be considered in future justice research.     

Environmental Justice Is a Social Justice Issue: Incorporating Environmental Justice Into Social Work Practice Curricula

Social justice education for social work practice is concerned with addressing issues of power and oppression as they impact intersections of identity, experience, and the social environment. However, little focus is directed toward the physical and natural environment despite overwhelming evidence that traditionally marginalized groups bear the burden of environmental problems. In this article, we discuss environmental disaster impacts on marginalized communities, presence of environmental justice in social work literature, and opportunities for integrating environmental justice into social work’s mandated disciplinary competencies. We conclude with an example of a module implemented in a foundation Social Justice for Social Work Practice course using place-based education principles as an illustration of concrete strategies for incorporating environmental justice into social justice curricula.     

If Love Then Justice

Love belongs to the personal realm, while justice belongs to the public. Love originated evolutionarily in the subjective parent-child relationship. Justice originated in the objective perception of our social relationships. Both concepts have deep roots in our feelings. Although justice and love are interdependent, love is a prerequisite to justice. Most of those who love would behave justly to their loved ones, but not vice versa. Laws and norms try unsuccessfully to enhance love among us. However, they would hardly attain justice. With love we do not need laws or armies. Justice would necessarily prevail, and much more. Intuitively and psychologically, love is more basic than justice for our existence. Research shows that in our pursuit of happiness, love plays a central role, while justice does not. For many, love is also a goal of our existence.
"The long demand for justice exhausts the love which nevertheless gave it birth." (source unknown)