Users as Citizens: Collective Action and the Local Governance of Welfare

Self-organization amongst users of community care services preceded the consumerist developments of the 1980s and early 1990s, but can be considered to have been "legitimized" by top-down objectives relating to "user involvement". Nevertheless, the objectives and value bases of disabled people's organizations and organizations of users (or survivors) of mental health services have not always been consistent with those of consumerism, and user groups have experienced tensions in determining the extent to which they should respond to official agendas. Drawing on theories of new social movements and of citizenship, this paper considers the developing place of user organizations within systems of local governance. It looks at the way in which groups have sought to assert the legitimacy both of experiential knowledge and of their position as citizens in the face of official responses which have constructed them as self-interested pressure groups. It draws on empirical research investigating local groups of disabled people and of mental health service users conducted in the first part of the 1990s. It discusses the significance of shared identity as a basis for collective action alongside more pragmatic motivations to influence the nature of health and social care services. In the context of appeals to "community" and "partnership" which are starting to replace the discourse of markets and contracts as the key metaphor for both policy-making and service delivery, the article considers likely future roles for groups comprising people often excluded from community.     

Marriage and Desistance From Crime: A Consideration of Gene–Environment Correlation

An impressive body of research has examined the effect of marriage on desistance from a criminal career. Although extensive efforts have been made to control for potential confounders, almost no research has considered the role that genetic influences play in the relationship. In this study, the authors revisited the marriage–desistance connection by analyzing sibling data drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health; Ns ranged between 2,224 and 3,745 siblings) and by using a statistical design that controls for confounding genetic influences. The findings revealed that both marriage and desistance were under genetic influence (h² = .56 and .49, respectively). In addition, before controlling for shared genetic influences, marriage was predictive of desistance. After genetic influences were controlled, the marriage effect remained statistically significant but was reduced by 60%. The implications of these findings for life course criminology are considered.     

Implementing the Verbal Behavior Milestones Assessment and Placement Program (VB-MAPP): Teaching Assessment Techniques

The Verbal Behavior Milestones Assessment and Placement Program (VB-MAPP) is an assessment tool used with individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and other language delays (Sundberg 2008). The milestones assessment section of the VB-MAPP is used to determine an individual’s current skill level. The results of the milestones assessment can be used to identify instructional goals and objectives. The current study examined the effects of behavioral skills training (BST) on the administration of the milestones assessment by two educational professionals. The BST intervention resulted in immediate increases in performance for both participants.     

Reducing Risk for Youth Violence by Promoting Healthy Development with Pyramid Mentoring: A Proposal for a Culturally Centered Group Mentoring

This article proposes ways to promote healthy psychosocial development among at-risk young African American males with a multigenerational culturally centered group mentoring intervention. The potential for addressing commonalities of risk factors for both internalized and externalized responses to environment stressors is discussed. The authors propose an innovative group intervention that is influenced by social learning theory, the triadic theory of influence, identity, and cognitive development theory. The article also highlights research that suggests benefits of culturally and therapeutically centered group mentoring. The focus of the proposed intervention is on psychosocial assets that are utilized to nurture life skills developed within the framework of a culturally centered multigenerational group mentoring process called pyramid mentoring.     

Do psychologists understand honor cultures when they operationalize them?

This paper brings the thought of philosopher and world-class chemist Michael Polanyi to bear on psychologists' study of honor cultures. After reviewing some fundamentals of Polanyi's outlook on science and persons, the paper develops a heuristic involving two dimensions to the process of knowing others—one that is integrative, another that is affective—in which seeing with honor cultures only characterizes one side of the intersection between these dimensions. This leads on to consideration of the Honor Ideology for Manhood scale (Barnes, Brown, & Osterman, 2012), an operationalization of honor in the southern U.S. that misses understanding because of impairments it naturally suffers as an instrument of detachment. The possibility follows that understanding as seeing with another culture most readily succeeds when that culture's way of life is personally indwelt so that the psychologist directly encounters what its members can speak of and only convey by showing. The distinction Polanyi makes between explicit and tacit knowledge informs this proposal, and his vision of apprenticing—such as occurs between masters and pupils in the training of a science or an art—is presented as an exemplary form of such encounters.     

Competition, Race, and the Measurement of Female Labor Activity

Not all groups compete equally in the labor market. Here, we focus on women's competition with men for jobs. This competition assumes that women's employment is affected by men's, and vice versa. We use two statistics—female labor force participation and share—to uncover this competition. 1990 U.S. census data on 281 metropolitan statistical areas were analyzed using weighted least squares regression. Supply-side explanations of female labor activity (education, children, household headship, and government assistance) receive more support than demand-side explanations (poverty, industrial mix, and region). Evidence of competition along gender and race lines is found. Men's employment is buttressed in metropolitan areas by higher wages, less poverty, and more women with children. Welfare benefits (AFDC) and deindustrialization lower black women's employment, while only white women benefit from advanced education and a "feminized" occupational structure. Implications for future research and policy are discussed.     

Forecasting murder within a population of probationers and parolees: a high stakes application of statistical learning

Summary.  Forecasts of future dangerousness are often used to inform the sentencing decisions of convicted offenders. For individuals who are sentenced to probation or paroled to community supervision, such forecasts affect the conditions under which they are to be supervised. The statistical criterion for these forecasts is commonly called recidivism, which is defined as a charge or conviction for any new offence, no matter how minor. Only rarely do such forecasts make distinctions on the basis of the seriousness of offences. Yet seriousness may be central to public concerns, and judges are increasingly required by law and sentencing guidelines to make assessments of seriousness. At the very least, information about seriousness is essential for allocating scarce resources for community supervision of convicted offenders. The paper focuses only on murderous conduct by individuals on probation or parole. Using data on a population of over 60000 cases from Philadelphia's Adult Probation and Parole Department, we forecast whether each offender will be charged with a homicide or attempted homicide within 2 years of beginning community supervision. We use a statistical learning approach that makes no assumptions about how predictors are related to the outcome. We also build in the costs of false negative and false positive charges and use half of the data to build the forecasting model, and the other half of the data to evaluate the quality of the forecasts. Forecasts that are based on this approach offer the possibility of concentrating rehabilitation, treatment and surveillance resources on a small subset of convicted offenders who may be in greatest need, and who pose the greatest risk to society.     

The Microfoundations of Corporatist Intervention: Dairying's Collective Action Problems in Canada and England during the 1930s Depression*

Dans cet article, nous démontrons l'utilité d'une approche microfondamentale dans la compréhension de phénomènes sociaux de plus grande ampleur. Grâce à l'analyse des questions de recours collectifs, qui se sont posées aux différents acteurs, au Canada et en Angleterre, nous établissons un lien informel entre la macrovariable de « structure de l'industrie » et les formes divergentes de réglementation corporatiste instaurées dans les années 1930. Après avoir expliqué les caracteéristiques centrales de l'approche microfondamentale et souligné les aspects importants de la théorie des jeux et du concept de choix rationnel, nous examinons les témoignages élaborés, présentés dans le cadre de commissions et de comités du gouvernement. Ces données comparatives et historiques fournissent les bases qui permettent de comprendre la manière dont les différentes structures de l'industrie ont causé des problèmes de réglementation uniques pour les gouvernements canadien et britannique. This paper argues for the utility of a microfoundational approach to understanding larger social phenomena. Through an analysis of the collective action problems experienced by the various actors in both Canada and England, I wish to establish a causal link between the macro‐level variable “industry structure” and the divergent forms of corporatist regulation instituted in the 1930s. After clarifying the central features of my microfoundational approach and highlighting important aspects of game theory and rational choice explanations, I review the extensive sets of testimonies given before governmental commissions and committees. These comparative and historical data provide the foundations for understanding how distinct industry structures produced unique sets of regulatory problems for the Canadian and British governments.