Before you open the doors: ten lessons from Florida's Faith and Community-Based Delinquency Treatment Initiative

In 2003, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) provided Florida's Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) with a $3.5 million grant to design and implement a faith- and community-based program for incarcerated juveniles. Florida's experience developing a completely new program has provided valuable lessons regarding important issues to consider and address before clients are referred to the program. This article enumerates 10 key lessons from Florida's experience that can provide important guidance to other sites across the country hoping to develop faith-related services for youths in institutions.     

Sexuality and school shootings: what role does teasing play in school massacres?

Conventional explanations - lax gun control laws, media violence, single and working parents - do not adequately explain the recent spate of school shootings, and neither does bullying by itself, an explanation recently gaining more traction. A certain type of bullying, however, is revealed as particularly culpable. Many of the recent shootings share a disturbing component: The perpetrators were repeatedly, even relentlessly, accused by "preps and jocks" of being gay. Gay harassment is proposed as a point of departure for understanding the causes of school shootings. When boys who believe on some level that they warrant privilege, are instead harassed, they may feel driven to avenge the "wrong," and re-assert a more dominant, powerful, and victorious masculinity. These circumstances call for a cultural transformation such that "boys will be boys" is no longer used as an alibi for violence. The author presents implications for school-based social work practice, teacher and administrator interventions, as well as other prevention strategies.     

Foreign-born emigration: A new approach and estimates based on matched CPS files

The utility of postcensal population estimates depends on the adequate measurement of four major components of demographic change: fertility, mortality, immigration, and emigration. Of the four components, emigration, especially of the foreign-born, has proved the most difficult to gauge. Without "direct" methods (i.e., methods identifying who emigrates and when), demographers have relied on indirect approaches, such as residual methods. Residual estimates, however are sensitive to inaccuracies in their constituent parts and are particularly ill-suited for measuring the emigration of recent arrivals. Here we introduce a new method for estimating foreign-born emigration that takes advantage of the sample design of the Current Population Survey (CPS): repeated interviews of persons in the same housing units over a period of 16 months. Individuals appearing in a first March Supplement to the CPS but not the next include those who died in the intervening year, those who moved within the country, and those who emigrated. We use statistical methods to estimate the proportion of emigrants among those not present in the follow-up interview. Our method produces emigration estimates that are comparable to those from residual methods in the case of longer-term residents (immigrants who arrived more than 10 years ago), but yields higher--and what appear to be more accurate--estimates for recent arrivals. Although somewhat constrained by sample size, we also generate estimates by age, sex, region of birth, and duration of residence in the United States.     

Factors associated with 'feeling suicidal': the role of sexual identity

This paper examines factors associated with feeling suicidal in a large sample of urban men in Sydney and Melbourne, aged 18-50, including heterosexual, gay and bisexual men, HIV antibody positive and HIV antibody negative. As in previous research, sexuality (being homosexual or bisexual) was found to be a major predictor of suicidality. The research went some way towards explaining the close relationship between feeling suicidal and sexual orientation. Sexuality interacts with feeling bad in that, once men feel moderately bad/depressed, they are more likely to feel suicidal if they are homosexual or bisexual than if they are heterosexual. In addition, the research found that experience of verbal abuse and physical assault (harassment) increased feeling suicidal for both heterosexual and gay/bisexual men, not just for homosexual men as suggested by previous research, and that social isolation in the form of living alone is a further risk factor. Seeking counseling help and taking sexual risks were also independently associated with feeling suicidal. These actions may result from feeling suicidal rather than the reverse, and their association with feeling suicidal warrants further research. Many of the 46 independent variables examined in the research, including HIV antibody status and closeness to the HIV/ AIDS epidemic, were related to feeling suicidal only through their association with being gay/bisexual. Celibacy and general risk taking were not related to feeling suicidal in this study.     

Doing it from your heart: the role of older women as informal volunteers

This paper explores the contributions made by older women to the community as informal volunteers. It argues that ageing policy is not gender neutral and tends to ignore the contributions made by women outside paid work. As well as being ignored in policy, women's unpaid roles have been denigrated by some feminist commentators, who suggest that these roles subordinate the position of women. The aim of the present paper is to explore the lived experiences of older women in relation to their informal volunteer roles, using role identity theory as a framework. The study utilizes data from a qualitative study using focus group methodology. Findings demonstrate that informal volunteering contributes to the women's identity and gives their lives meaning. These findings suggest that a more positive policy framework around ageing is needed to ensure that the worth of these contributions is recognised.     

人类的自救

在这个过于巨大和复杂的世界中,对数量庞大、形色各异的人群进行有效和严格的控制是行不通的.尽管我们有着最好的专家学者和最精密的电脑辅助,自然灾害仍超出了人类的理解范围.     

亚洲的HIV/AIDS水平将达到撒哈拉以南非洲的水平吗?

尽管对于任何一种致数百万人死亡的疾病都应竭尽所能地予以斗争,对本文标题所提出问题的简短回答却是:"不".我10年以前在<社会科学与医学>(Social Science and Medicine)杂志的社论中第一次阐述了这个问题,至今这一观点没有发生变化,它所依据的是近期的一些相关报告.