Using civil representation to reduce delinquency among troubled youth

Team Child is designed to provide civil legal representation for very troubled delinquent youth to improve their access to needed education programs, mental health services, and family services. Better provision of these services is intended to reduce delinquency and potentially avoid the long-term incarceration of these youth. This article uses an incidental truncation model to evaluate two Team Child programs in Florida. The authors find the programs not to be effective in reducing recidivism among the youth but to be effective in reducing the arrest rate of the recidivating juveniles. The results indicate a reduction of 11% to 23% of arrests after treatment for the Team Child group.     

Child maltreatment, revictimization, and violent behavior

The study investigates the cumulative impact of child maltreatment and victimization in adolescence on violent behavior in young adulthood in a nonclinical high-risk sample. The sample consists of 1,526 incarcerated young men (14 to 24 years) who were interviewed with standardized instruments during their prison term. Violent and nonviolent offenders with and without repeated victimization experiences throughout the life cycle were compared. Results show that child maltreatment doubles the risk for violent victimization in adolescence. Repeated victimization experiences in adolescence heighten the risk for later violent offending. This is the case for officially registered violence and self-reported violent behavior. In addition, child maltreatment increased the probability of self-reported violence as well. However, the interaction effect of victimization in childhood and victimization in early adolescence counteracted the main effects. Being repeatedly victimized throughout the early life cycle slightly reduced the probability of being a frequent offender.     

Structured Coupling of Probability Loss Distributions: Assessing Joint Flood Risk in Multiple River Basins

Losses due to natural hazard events can be extraordinarily high and difficult to cope with. Therefore, there is considerable interest to estimate the potential impact of current and future extreme events at all scales in as much detail as possible. As hazards typically spread over wider areas, risk assessment must take into account interrelations between regions. Neglecting such interdependencies can lead to a severe underestimation of potential losses, especially for extreme events. This underestimation of extreme risk can lead to the failure of riskmanagement strategies when they are most needed, namely, in times of unprecedented events. In this article, we suggest a methodology to incorporate such interdependencies in risk via the use of copulas. We demonstrate that by coupling losses, dependencies can be incorporated in risk analysis, avoiding the underestimation of risk. Based on maximum discharge data of river basins and stream networks, we present and discuss different ways to couple loss distributions of basins while explicitly incorporating tail dependencies. We distinguish between coupling methods that require river structure data for the analysis and those that do not. For the later approach we propose a minimax algorithm to choose coupled basin pairs so that the underestimation of risk is avoided and the use of river structure data is not needed. The proposed methodology is especially useful for large‐scale analysis and we motivate and apply our method using the case of Romania. The approach can be easily extended to other countries and natural hazards.     

Robust estimation in the multivariate normal model with variance components

Fisher consistent and Fréchet differentiable statistical functionals have been already used by Bednarski and Zontek [Robust estimation of parameters in a mixed unbalanced model. Ann Statist. 1996;24(4):1493–1510] to get a robust estimator of parameters in a two-way crossed classification mixed model. This way of robust estimation appears also in the variance components model with a commutative covariance matrix [Zmy?lony, Zontek. Robust M-estimator of parameters in variance components model. Discuss Math Probab Stat. 2002;22:61–71]. In this paper it is shown that a modification of this method does not involve any assumptions about commutation of covariance matrix. The theoretical results have been completed with computer simulation studies. Robustness of considered estimator and possibility of approximation of the estimator's distribution with some multivariate normal distribution for both model and contaminated data have been confirmed there.     

Broadening the Scope of Benchmarking: Radar Charts and Employment Systems

Over the last few years, ‘benchmarking’ advanced to a key word in organizational development and change management. Originally a tool in business studies to search for best practice that led to superior performance, increasingly benchmarking also became practice in non-profit and public institutions. Notably, the European Commission uses benchmarking as an instrument to monitor its employment guidelines. The radar chart approach is one of a number of special analytical tools that has been developed in this connection. The paper discusses the advantages and limits of benchmarking labour market performance by radar charts, recommends a broadening of the scope by using the employment systems approach and provides, in both cases, examples of application.     

Level and change of group-focused enmity in Germany: unconditional and conditional latent growth curve models with four panel waves

In this study, we investigate and explain the level and change of six elements of group-focused enmity (GFE; see Zick et al. in J. Soc. Issues 64(2):363–383, 2008) in Germany between 2002 and 2006: racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, homophobia, exclusion of homeless people and support for rights of the established. For the data analysis, a representative 4-year panel study of the adult non-immigrant German population collected during the years 2002–2006 is used, and the development of each GFE component is tested by using an unconditional second-order latent growth curve model (LGM) (with full information maximum likelihood, FIML). We find that the level of 5 of the 6 components (racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, homophobia, exclusion of homeless people) displays an increase at the beginning of the observed period followed by a decrease. However, the sixth aspect, rights of the established, displays a continuous linear increase over time. The different developmental pattern stands in contrast to Allport’s (The nature of prejudice. Perseus Books, Cambridge, 1954) hypothesis for the strong link between the components and their development over time. We try to explain this different developmental pattern by several sociodemographic characteristics. This is performed by using a conditional second-order latent growth curve model.     

Coaching in der Pastoral der Diözese Speyer

Coaching in the pastoral of the diocese of Speyer. Internal coaching between office and independence A lack of priests and changes in social conditions are forcing the Diocese of Speyer to employ people on an honorary basis in executive functions of spiritual welfare. The permanent staff of the bishopric are now to coach those volunteers in order to accompany the process. For this they need a great deal of independence as ?new coaches“, which can however put their loyalty to the ecclesiastical office into question, as long as they fail to acquire appropriate forms of communicative plausibility. No one can on any account escape from the momentum sparked off through the use of coaching in a hierarchically structured operation — neither the operation nor the coaches.     

An Empirical Analysis of the Decision to Train Apprentices

Abstract. It is a widely held belief that apprenticeship training represents a net investment for training firms, the cost of which needs to be recouped after the training period. A new firm‐level data set for Switzerland reveals large variation in net costs across firms and, remarkably, negative net costs for 60 per cent of all firms. We use these data to estimate the effect of net costs on the number of apprentices hired by a firm. The results show that the costs have a significant impact on the training decision but no significant influence on the number of apprentices, once the firm has decided to train. For policy purposes, these results indicate that subsidies for firms that already train apprentices would not boost the number of available training places.     

Accommodation,empowerment and disinvestment—Typical second-language learning trajectories of Syrian refugees in Germany

This paper asks how refugees' second-language learning processes are embedded in their lives in host countries. To address this question, the paper proposes the concept of second-language learning trajectories. These trajectories explain refugees' second-language learning as closely intertwined with learners' self-understanding, experiences and positioning in host countries. Using longitudinal narrative interview data from Syrian refugees in Germany, the paper identifies three different types of second-language learning trajectories, that is empowerment, accommodation and disinvestment. These trajectories have vastly diverse outcomes, not only in terms of second-language proficiency but also in terms of learning motivation, self-views and future prospects. Moreover, second-language learning trajectories evolve based on self-reinforcing dynamics that make switching between trajectories increasingly difficult over time. This is particularly detrimental to refugees on the disinvestment trajectory, which entails social decline and exclusion. The paper also identifies institutional regulations in Germany that compound refugees' struggles to gain a foothold in their host country.