First Person Accounts and Sociological Explanations of Delinquency*

Cinquante‐six garçons du secondaire ont expliqué pourquoi ils avaient perpétré ou non certains actes de délinquance (combat, vandalisme, vol à l'étalage, usage de drogues). Ils ont aussi ciblé des théories sociologiques de la délinquance qui s'appliquent à leur comportement. Leurs réponses montrent que les deux types de données se recoupent beaucoup. L'effort, la théorie gánérate, les pairs, le contrôle social, les techniques de neutralisation et la prévention sont importants, mais non l'étiquetage ni l'imitation des médias. Une théorie de contingence de la délinquance est proposée. Fifty‐six high school boys were asked to explain in their own words why they had engaged in or refrained from certain delinquencies: fighting, vandalism, petty theft, truancy and drug use. They were also given the opportunity, via a checklist, to tell whether selected sociological theories applied to their behaviour. Their responses revealed considerable overlap in the two forms of data. Strain, general theory, peers, social control, techniques of neutralization and deterrence are important in varying combinations. Labelling and media imitation are not. A contingency theory of delinquency is proposed.     

Sequence Independent Lifting in Mixed Integer Programming

We investigate lifting, i.e., the process of taking a valid inequality for a polyhedron and extending it to a valid inequality in a higher dimensional space. Lifting is usually applied sequentially, that is, variables in a set are lifted one after the other. This may be computationally unattractive since it involves the solution of an optimization problem to compute a lifting coefficient for each variable. To relieve this computational burden, we study sequence independent lifting, which only involves the solution of one optimization problem. We show that if a certain lifting function is superadditive, then the lifting coefficients are independent of the lifting sequence. We introduce the idea of valid superadditive lifting functions to obtain good aproximations to maximum lifting. We apply these results to strengthen Balas' lifting theorem for cover inequalities and to produce lifted flow cover inequalities for a single node flow problem.     

Modeling heavy-tailed,skewed and peaked uncertainty phenomena with bounded support

A prevalence of heavy-tailed, peaked and skewed uncertainty phenomena have been cited in literature dealing with economic, physics, and engineering data. This fact has invigorated the search for continuous distributions of this nature. In this paper we shall generalize the two-sided framework presented in Kotz and van Dorp (Beyond beta: other continuous families of distributions with bounded support and applications. World Scientific Press, Singapore, 2004) for the construction of families of distributions with bounded support via a mixture technique utilizing two generating densities instead of one. The family of Elevated Two-Sided Power (ETSP) distributions is studied as an instance of this generalized framework. Through a moment ratio diagram comparison, we demonstrate that the ETSP family allows for a remarkable flexibility when modeling heavy-tailed and peaked, but skewed, uncertainty phenomena. We shall demonstrate its applicability via an illustrative example utilizing 2008 US income data.     

Reviews

R. H. Hilton, The English Peasantry in the Later Middle Ages (1975), 256 (Clarendon Press, Oxford, £6.50).

Colin Platt, The English Medieval Town (1976), 219 (Seeker and Warburg, £6.00).

James Axtell, The School Upon A Hill. Education and Society In Colonial New England (1974), xxi+298 (Yale University Press, New Haven, £7.50).

Kenneth A. Lockridge, Literacy in Colonial New England. An Enquiry Into The Social Context of Literacy in the Early Modern West (1974), 164 (W. W. Norton and Co., New‐York, $6.95).

Jean‐Claude Perrot, Genèse d'une ville moderns. Caen au XVIII'siècle (1975), 2 vols, 1157 (Mouton: Paris, the Hague, 250 fr.).

Douglas Hay, Peter Linebaugh and E. P. Thompson (eds.), Albion's Fatal Tree (1975), 344+15 illustrations (Allen Lane, £7.50).

E. P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters (1975), 300+17 illustrations (Allen Lane, £6.50).

Arthur E. Imhof (ed.), Historische Demographie als Sozialgeschichte. Giessen und Umgebung (1975), 2 vols, 626+495 (Historische Kommission für Hessen, Darmstadt und Marburg, DM 48).

Historical Demography as Social History. Giessen and Surrounding District.¹

Alan Forrest, Society and Politics in Revolutionary Bordeaux (1975), xi+300 (Oxford University Press, £8.00).

Richard Hunter and Ida Macalpine, Psychiatry for the Poor (1974), 264 (Dawsons of Pall Mall, £4.50, paperback £1.50).

Vieda Skultans, Madness and Morals. Ideas on Insanity in the Nineteenth Century (197 5), xv+260 (Routledge and Kegan Paul, £5.50).

Thomas S. Szasz, The Age of Madness, The History of Involuntary Mental Hospitalization Presented in Selected Texts (1973), xxi+372 (Routledge and Kegan Paul, £5.95).

Harald Runblom and Hans Norman (eds.), From Sweden to America: a History of the Migration (1976), 391 (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, and University of Uppsala).

Charlotte Erickson (ed.), Emigration from Europe 1815–1914: Select Documents (1976), 320 (A. and C. Black, £6.50).

T. J. Nossiter, Influence, Opinion and Political Idioms in Reformed England: Case Studies from the North‐East, 1832–1874 (1975), xii+255 (Harvester, £7.50).

Robert J. Bezucha, The Lyon Uprising of 1834: Social and Political Conflict in the Early July Monarchy (1974), xviii+271 (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, £6.25).

Lawrence Schofer, The Formation of a Modern Labour Force. Upper Silesia, 1865–1914 (1975), xvi+213 (University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, £7.80).

Léon Poliakov, The History of Anti‐Semitism. Volume III. From Voltaire to Wagner (1975), x+582 (Routledge and Kegan Paul, no price given).

Reinhard Rürup, Emanzipation und Antisemitismus. Studien zur ‘Judenfrage’ der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft (1975), 208 (Vandenhoeck and Rupprecht, Göttingen, paperback DM 28).

Uriel Tal, Christians and Jews in Germany. Religion, Politics and Ideology in the Second Reich, 1870–1914 (1975), 359 (Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London, £10.70).

Richard S. Levy, The Downfall of the Anti‐Semitic Political Parties in Imperial Germany (1975), 335 (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, no price given).

Andrew G. Whiteside, The Socialism of Fools. Georg Ritter von Schönerer and Austrian Pan‐Germanism (1975), x+404 (University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, £15.75).

Paul Thompson, The Edwardians: the remaking of British society (1975), xi+382 (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, £10.00).

Marc Fried, The World of the Urban Working Class (1975), x+410 (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, £6.50).

Philip Gabriel Eidelberg, The Great Rumanian Peasant Revolt of 1907 (1974), xii+260 (E. J. Brill, Leiden, 64 guilders).

Peter H. Mcrkl, Political Violence under the Swastika: 581 Early Nazis (1975), xiv+735 (Princeton University Press, Princeton, $17.50, paper $6.30).     

Testing for lack of fit in linear multiresponse models based on exact or near replicates

Three procedures for testing the adequacy of a proposed linear multiresponse regression model against unspecified general alternatives are considered. The model has an error structure with a matrix normal distribution which allows the vector of responses for a particular run to have an unknown covariance matrix while the responses for different runs are uncorrelated. Furthermore, each response variable may be modeled by a separate design matrix. Multivariate statistics corresponding to the classical univariate lack of fit and pure error sums of squares are defined and used to determine the multivariate lack of fit tests. A simulation study was performed to compare the power functions of the test procedures in the case of replication. Generalizations of the tests for the case in which there are no independent replicates on all responses are also presented.     

THE PROCESS OF CHANGE IN COUPLES THERAPY: A QUALITATIVE INVESTIGATION

Open-ended interviews with 24 couples therapy clients regarding their experience of the process of change revealed shifts in clusters of affect, communication, and cognition. Six additional contextual preconditions for change were also identified. The change process within couples was uniformly reported to be gradual.     

Population,Development and Global Warming: Averting the Tragedy of the Climate Commons

Carbon emissions from fossil fuel use and other human activity are predicted to cause a significant warming of the global climate, according to a growing consensus of scientists. Global warming would have substantial negative effects on the world environment and economy. Human population and economic growth continue to drive both energy use and carbon emissions. While the developed countries are the largest source of present and past emissions, developing countries are rapidly catching up. China will probably surpass the United States as the largest carbon emitter early in the next century. The global warming treaty signed in Rio in 1992 relies entirely on voluntary emission caps for developed countries and has had little or no apparent effect on emissions. Much stronger steps must be taken to avoid or lessen potential climate change. A globally determined but nationally imposed carbon tax should be adopted to internalize the future costs of carbon emissions into the present cost of fossil fuel and other carbon sources. This would allow the maximum use of free market forces and individual choice to determine how carbon emission reductions are achieved. In addition, national emission caps for all countries should be established. International trade mechanisms can be used to support universal implementation of these measures. Where possible, global warming policy should include strong but equitable incentives for sustainable development and population stabilization, important goals in themselves regardless of the extent of future climate change.     

The Continued Importance of Quality Parent–Adolescent Relationships During Late Adolescence

The quality of adolescents' relationships with residential parents has been found to predict many different health and behavioral youth outcomes; strong associations have also been found between these outcomes and family processes, and between relationship quality and family processes. Data from Rounds 1–5 of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997 were used to examine hypotheses about the influence of the parent–adolescent relationship on subsequent adolescent mental well‐being and delinquency, as mediated by family processes. Using structural equation modeling, we found that the influence of a positive residential parent–adolescent relationship on better mental well‐being and fewer delinquency was entirely mediated by family routines, parental monitoring, and parental supportiveness, net of sociodemographic controls.