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Recent trends toward a more punitive approach to juvenile crime have been heavily influenced by a body of review literature that reports that the traditional treatment approach is ineffective. The opinion that “nothing works” is largely based on reviews of the treatment literature. These reviews generally fail to document the amount of change associated with treatment. A meta-analysis of the primary research literature produced since 1960 was undertaken to assess the amount of change associated with various treatments of adjudicated delinquents. There were 111 studies identified that used a comparison group or pre-post design. Results indicated that treatment of adjudicated delinquents resulted in a positive change of .37 standard deviations. No consistent evidence on the relative efficacy of behavioral versus psychodynamic approaches was found. Recidivism was modestly reduced; institutional adjustment, psychological adjustment, and academic performance were all improved following treatment. The results of the meta-analysis suggest that treatment of adjudicated delinquents in an institutional or community residential setting does “work.”

ABSTRACT. Objective. Child fatality review teams have emerged across the United States in the past decade to address the concern that systems of child protection, law enforcement, criminal justice, and medicine do not adequately assess the circumstances surrounding child fatality as a result of maltreatment.Methods. We compared data collected by a multidisciplinary child fatality review team with vital records for all children who were aged birth to 16 years and died in Colorado between January 1, 1990, and December 1, 1998. Odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals for ascertainment by the death certificate were estimated using logistic regression.Results. Only half of the children who died as a result of maltreatment had death certificates that were coded consistently with maltreatment. Black race and female gender were associated with higher ascertainment, whereas death in a rural county was associated with lower ascertainment. Deaths resulting from violent causes (eg, shaking, blunt force trauma, striking) were more likely to be ascertained than those that involved acts of omission (eg, neglect and abandonment, drowning, fire). The most common perpetrators of maltreatment were parents. However, maltreatment by an unrelated perpetrator was 8.71 times (95% confidence interval: 3.52-21.55) more likely to be ascertained than maltreatment by a parent.Conclusions. The degree of underascertainment found in this study is of concern because most national estimates of child maltreatment fatality in the United States are derived from coding on death certificates. In addition, the patterns recognized in this study raise concern about systematic underascertainment that may affect children of specific sociodemographic groups. Pediatrics 2002;110(2). URL: http://www.pediatrics.org/ cgi/content/full/110/2/e18; child abuse, death certificates, vital statistics, mortality, infant mortality, data collection, public health, records, logistic models, statistical models, cause of death, child welfare, battered child syndrome, child advocacy, infanticide.ABBREVIATIONS. CFRC, child fatality review committee; ICD, International Classification of Diseases; SES, socioeconomic status. T here has long been concern regarding the adequacy of death certificates in determining the magnitude of fatalities from child abuse and neglect. Previous studies have estimated that between 52% and 85% of maltreatment fatalities are misidentified as attributable to accidents, natural causes, or other unknown causes. [1][2][3][4] In 1993, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded that death certificates were an uncertain source of data on child maltreatment fatalities and recommended modifying the system to make identification easier. 3 However, these changes have not occurred. The inability of any one system of child protection, law enforcement, health, or criminal justice to recognize, track, and assess the circumstances of child maltreatment deaths has led to the development of interagency multidisciplinary child fatality review teams ac...

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Five hundred and eleven fourth, fifth, and sixth grade students and their parents from six schools in northwest Arkansas participated in this study. Students were blocked on school and grade level, then assigned randomly by class to either the intervention Keep A Clear Mind (KACM) program or a waiting list control. KACM students received four weekly correspondence lessons designed to be completed at home with a parent. KACM students reported significantly less perceived peer use of alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana, as well as significantly less peer pressure susceptibility to experiment with cigarettes. Mothers in the KACM program reported significantly more recent and frequent communication with their children about refusing drugs, and significantly greater discussions with their children regarding how to resist peer pressure to use alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana. Intervention program fathers reported significantly more communication with their children concerning how to resist peer pressure to drink alcohol and use tobacco, and significantly greater motivation to help their children avoid drug use. No significant differences were found between groups on student intentions to use drugs. These data suggest a print medium that emphasizes parent-child activities holds promise for accessing families and enhancing drug prevention communication.

Black rot, caused by Xanthomonas campestris pv. campestris, is the most important and potentially destructive disease of cabbage. The objectives of this study were to select plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) strains and to form strain mixtures with the capacity to elicit induced systemic resistance or to increase plant growth in Chinese cabbage. In preliminary screening, 10 of 12 tested individual PGPR strains (AP136, AP188, AP209, AP213, AP217, AP218, AP219, AP282, AP295, and AP305) reduced the number of foliar lesions, and 2 PGPR strains (AP7 and AP18) increased all tested parameters of plant growth promotion, including shoot fresh weight, shoot dry weight, root fresh weight, root dry weight and plant diameter. In advanced tests, four individual stains (AP136, AP209, AP282 and AP305) were combined into mixture-1. Mixture-2 contained all strains in mixture one plus three additional stains (AP7, AP18 and AP218). Both mixtures and three individual strains (AP136, AP209 and AP305) significantly reduced the number of black rot lesions, and mixture-2 increased shoot dry weight and root dry weight in greenhouse tests. In a field test, all the tested treatments significantly reduced disease incidence on whole plants at three weeks after transplanting and reduced head disease severity at harvest time. All treatments also increased marketable yield compared to the nonbacterized control. These results demonstrated that specific individual PGPR strains and strain mixtures induced systemic resistance to black rot in the greenhouse and field.