The typification of Hispanics as criminals and support for punitive crime control policies

The Hispanic population is now the largest and fastest growing minority in the United States, so it is not surprising that ethnic threat linked to Hispanics has been associated with harsher crime control. While minority threat research has found that individuals who associate blacks with crime are more likely to support harsh criminal policies, the possibility that this relationship exists for those who typify Hispanics as criminal has yet to be examined. Using a national random sample, this study is the first to use HLM to find that perceptions of Hispanics as criminals do increase support for punitive crime control measures, controlling for various individual and state influences. Moderated and contextual analyses indicate this relationship is most applicable for individuals who are less apt to typify criminals as black, less prejudiced, less fearful of victimization, politically liberal or moderate, not parents, and living in states with relatively fewer Latin American immigrants.     

“Hookups”: Characteristics and correlates of college students' spontaneous and anonymous sexual experiences

This study focused on a specific risky practice common among contemporary college students: the hookup. Hookups are defined as a sexual encounter which may or may not include sexual intercourse, usually occurring on only one occasion between two people who are strangers or brief acquaintances. The aim of this study was to determine the relative importance of a variety of social and psychological predictors in understanding differences among undergraduate students who had never hooked up, those who had hooked up without sexual intercourse, and those who had hooked up with sexual intercourse. Analyses revealed that, as predicted, social, individual, and relational psychological variables helped to explain the variance among college students' varied hookup experiences. By examining the full range of sexual involvement characteristic of the casual sexual phenomenon of hooking up within a multivariate model, we were able to achieve a more differentiated understanding of college students' casual sexual experimentation.     

Review article: Slavery and slavishness in Russia and America

Hellie, Richard, Slavery in Russia 1450–1725. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. xix, 776 pp.

Kolchin, Peter. Unfree Labor: American Slavery and Russian Serfdom. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987. xiv, 517 pp.     

Implementation issues for consumer-directed programs: comparing views of policy experts, consumers, and representatives

An increasing number of aging community providers and consumers support consumer-direction (CD) in long-term care services. In regard to devolution, consumer-direction goes beyond the usual approach of shifting responsibilities from the federal government to state governments to bring programs "closer to the people." Consumer-direction goes even further by placing resources directly in the hands of consumers. Yet, many questions remain unanswered regarding how to implement CD personal assistance services in general, and especially for older persons. This article describes the importance of examining views from multiple key stakeholders involved in implementing CD programs. We report on three background studies that have informed the Cash and Counseling Demonstration and Evaluation (CCDE) design and implementation-policy expert interviews as well as surveys and focus groups with consumers and representatives. As a fourth data source, we drew upon experiences in designing the CCDE and initial results from the first year of implementation. Each of the three studies on its own provided essential information for planning the CCDE. However, when we examined the studies together, and added CCDE design and implementation experiences, views expressed by the different stakeholders formed a type of multi-perspective "dialogue" that expanded our knowledge about implementing CD services. We hope this increased knowledge will help expand the availability of such services for consumers of any age who want to direct their own care.     

'You have neither neighbours nor privacy' : ambiguities in the experience of emotional well being of women in farming families

This paper explores findings from an ethnographic study of relations of dependency within agricultural communities in the Northern region. Using a life course perspective it focuses on the cultural strategies which women draw upon to deal with the changing constraints, emotional stresses and loneliness of marrying into a farming family. Accounts from women occupying different generational positions demonstrate how they manage to achieve personal wellbeing through creative resolution of the different ambiguities involved in being a‘country girl', a ‘farmer's wife’ and a‘gran'.