The Growth,Scope, and Spatial Distribution of People With Felony Records in the United States, 1948–2010

The steep rise in U.S. criminal punishment in recent decades has spurred scholarship on the collateral consequences of imprisonment for individuals, families, and communities. Several excellent studies have estimated the number of people who have been incarcerated and the collateral consequences they face, but far less is known about the size and scope of the total U.S. population with felony convictions beyond prison walls, including those who serve their sentences on probation or in jail. This article develops state-level estimates based on demographic life tables and extends previous national estimates of the number of people with felony convictions to 2010. We estimate that 3 % of the total U.S. adult population and 15 % of the African American adult male population has ever been to prison; people with felony convictions account for 8 % of all adults and 33 % of the African American adult male population. We discuss the far-reaching consequences of the spatial concentration and immense growth of these groups since 1980.     

Exact Goodness‐of‐Fit Testing for the Ising Model

The Ising model is one of the simplest and most famous models of interacting systems. It was originally proposed to model ferromagnetic interactions in statistical physics and is now widely used to model spatial processes in many areas such as ecology, sociology, and genetics, usually without testing its goodness of fit. Here, we propose various test statistics and an exact goodness‐of‐fit test for the finite‐lattice Ising model. The theory of Markov bases has been developed in algebraic statistics for exact goodness‐of‐fit testing using a Monte Carlo approach. However, finding a Markov basis is often computationally intractable. Thus, we develop a Monte Carlo method for exact goodness‐of‐fit testing for the Ising model that avoids computing a Markov basis and also leads to a better connectivity of the Markov chain and hence to a faster convergence. We show how this method can be applied to analyze the spatial organization of receptors on the cell membrane.     

Government cuts to Disabled Students’ Allowances must be resisted

Cuts to essential grant funding for disabled students in England will put disabled students’ studies at risk. Proposed cuts to Disabled Students’ Allowances (DSAs) in 2015 will redefine disability and damage the validity of equality indicators. As a result, the needs of many disabled students may be systematically overlooked, leading to unequal outcomes for students, academia and wider society.     

Popularity: Does it magnify associations between popularity prioritization and the bullying and defending behavior of early adolescent boys and girls?

We investigated the contribution of popularity, popularity prioritization, and gender to the explanation of bullying and defending behavior. Participants were 191 early adolescents (124 girls and 67 boys), aged from 10.9 to 13.6 years. Results revealed that adolescents high on popularity were more likely to bully others. Greater popularity prioritization was also associated with more bullying among boys with high levels, and girls with low levels, of popularity. In addition, popularity was positively related to defending among girls, but not boys. Lower popularity prioritization also contributed to greater defending overall. The implications of these findings for understanding bullying and defending are discussed.     

An Annotated Bibliography of Verbal Behavior Articles Published Outside of The Analysis of Verbal Behavior: 2015

An annotated bibliography is provided that summarizes journal articles on verbal behavior published outside of The Analysis of Verbal Behavior in 2015, the primary journal for scholarship in this area. Thirty such articles were identified and annotated as a resource for practitioners, researchers, and educators.

     

Drinking places: Young people and cultures of alcohol consumption in rural environments

This paper focuses on the contemporary British moral panic about young people and the consumption of alcohol in public space. Most of this public debate has focused on binge drinking in urban areas as a social problem. Here, we consider instead the role of alcohol in rural communities, and in particular alcohol consumption in domestic and informal spaces, as well as the formal drinking landscape of pubs and bars. Drawing on empirical work (including a survey, interviews and participant observation) in rural Cumbria, UK we explore the specific socio-spatial nature of local attitudes to alcohol consumption and its regulation. In doing so, we reflect on the nature of rural lifestyles, community spaces and intergenerational relations. The paper concludes by highlighting some of the implications for health promotion professionals of the generally positive attitude towards young people's drinking in the rural area where the research was conducted. It also draws attention to the need for academics to pay closer attention to the ways that moral panics about binge drinking are implicitly producing a monolithic image of alcohol consumption in urban areas that fails to acknowledge the socio-spatially differentiated nature of practices of alcohol consumption and regulation.     

Advances in the Conceptualization of Personality Disorders: Issues Affecting Social Work Practice and Research

This article provides a review of the research that has informed the proposed changes to the DSM-5 conceptualization of personality psychopathology with a focus on implications for social work practice and research. A paradigm shift to a dimensional model is likely to replace the current categorical model of personality disorders and will have profound implications for the profession. While establishing a diagnostic system that is grounded in empirical knowledge is the primary benefit, this tool will also be more consistent with social work’s orienting theories and values. Social workers should gain knowledge about the proposed changes and actively participate in the review process.     

Rural Parentage and Labor Market Disadvantage in a Sub‐Saharan Setting: Sources and Trends

Abstract High unemployment in many developing countries is intensifying job competition and raising concern for the employment prospects of vulnerable groups, including children of rural parents. This paper examines the trends and sources in employment disadvantage associated with rural parentage in Cameroon. In documenting the sources of inequality, the study moves beyond a “consensus versus conflict” dichotomy, and instead uses regression decomposition to estimate the relative contributions of both perspectives. It also uses fixed‐effects methods to examine the importance of unobserved family influences that have been understudied in previous research. In documenting historical change in rural disadvantage, the study distinguishes between long‐term trends and shorter‐term economic fluctuations. Findings show that although rural parentage does not create a disadvantage in off‐farm employment as a whole, it does so within the formal sector. This disadvantage is predominantly due to rural‐urban differences in returns to schooling rather than levels of schooling. Disadvantage in schooling has been declining over time but, interestingly, these gains may stall during prosperous times, as these tend to inordinately benefit urban children.