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Adolescence has traditionally been considered a time of substantial turmoil in the life course, as youth struggle with establishing self-images, finding appropriate and supportive peer groups, and begin their psychological, emotional, and, in some cases, physical separation from their parents. Among the many factors that have been thought to exacerbate adolescent adjustment during this often-difficult period are residential mobility and the school changes that frequently accompany these geographic relocations. Numerous recent studies have found statistically significant and substantively important effects of residential mobility and school changes on problematic adolescent behaviors. Although the observed strength of the association varies across studies and outcomes, recent investigations have reported significant effects of residential mobility and/or school changes on poor academic performance (Ingersoll, Scamman, & Eckerling, 1989; Kerbow, 1996; Pribesh & Downey, 1999), school dropout and low educational attainment (Astone & McLanahan, 1994; Entwisle, Alexander, & Olson, 1997; Hagan, MacMillan, & Wheaton, 1996; Haveman, Wolfe, & Spaulding, 1991; McLanahan & Sandefur, 1994; Rumberger, 1995; Swanson & Schneider, 1999; Teachman, Paasch, & Carver, 1996), drug and alcohol abuse (Hoffman & Johnson, 1998), risky sexual activity, including early sexual initiation and numerous sex partners (Baumer & South, 2001; Stack, 1994), premarital childbearing (South & Baumer, 2000; Sucoff & Upchurch, 1998), and other behavioral problems (Tucker, Marx, & Long, 1998; Wood, Halfon, Scarlata, Newacheck, & Nessim, 1993).

Physical victimization at school is little studied in impoverished developing country contexts. Moreover, the role of school and classroom contexts as risk factors remains poorly understood.

The aim of the study is to investigate the prevalence of physical victimization in rural Chinese middle schools as well as the individual, teacher/classroom, and school-level risk factors associated with experiencing physical victimization.

We use two waves of longitudinal, representative survey data to perform a multilevel logistic regression analysis (MLRA) of physical victimization among middle school students from 100 villages in one of China’s poorest provinces. We focus on a subset of questionnaire items that were gathered from students when the sampled children were 13–16 years old. We also utilize student data from the first wave of the survey to control for prior internalizing problems and academic achievement. Finally, we link matched data collected from principal and teacher questionnaires to examine the risk factors for physical victimization associated with students’ microclimates and the wider school environment.

A substantial proportion of middle school students (40%) reported having been beaten by classmates. Elevated risk was found among males; students with prior poor performance in language; students with past internalizing problems; students of female teachers and teachers evaluated as low performing; students in disruptive classrooms; and students in classrooms undergoing mandated reforms.

These findings suggest that efforts to reduce school violence should not only focus on the deficits of individual students, but rather should target practices to alter the within school risk factors associated with microclimates.

Research suggests social exclusion is linked to violence. To expand what is known about risk factors for violence, this study investigates links between having a parent with a history of incarceration and experiencing social exclusion. Data from waves 1 and 4 of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health were used to conduct regression analyses to assess associations between parental incarceration and social exclusion adjusting for child, parent, and family factors. Results indicate that compared to individuals whose parents had never been incarcerated, those who reported a parent had been incarcerated were at greater risk of experiencing material exclusion, incarceration, and multiple forms of exclusion. When assessing differences by parent gender, results indicate that those who reported their mother had been incarcerated compared to those who reported their father had been incarcerated had higher risk of being incarcerated themselves and experiencing multiple forms of exclusion. Since research suggests social exclusion increases violence risk, studies are needed (1) to identify mechanisms linking parental incarceration to offspring social exclusion and (2) to increase understanding around differential impact by parent gender. Such studies can inform development of interventions to promote better outcomes in this vulnerable sub-population of children.

The past quarter-century has seen research on the economic impacts of mental illness flourish. Innovations in measurement and the release of several community-based and often nationally representative data sets containing valid and reliable diagnostic information have enabled researchers to make substantial advances in understanding the myriad ways that mental illness impacts the economic lives of the ill and their families. Among the most interesting and persistent findings in this literature is that mental illness affects women and men differently. Not only do women and men have very different rates of prevalence for various diseases, but mental illness is also commonly found to have different effects in their economic lives.

This review integrates and builds linkages among existing theoretical and empirical literature from across disciplines to further broaden our understanding of the relationship between inequality, imprisonment, and health for black men. The review examines the health impact of prisons through an ecological theoretical perspective to understand how factors at multiple levels of the social ecology interact with prisons to potentially contribute to deleterious health effects and the exacerbation of race/ethnic health disparities.

This review finds that there are documented health disparities between inmates and non-inmates, but the casual mechanisms explaining this relationship are not well-understood. Prisons may interact with other societal systems – such as the family (microsystem), education, and healthcare systems (meso/exosystems), and systems of racial oppression (macrosystem) – to influence individual and population health.

The review also finds that research needs to move the discussion of the race effects in health and crime/justice disparities beyond the mere documentation of such differences toward a better understanding of their causes and effects at the level of individuals, communities, and other social ecologies.

The chapter is based on studies that explored the consideration of motherhood as a mitigating factor when sentencing women to imprisonment in criminal courts in England and Wales. Drawing upon two studies I conducted, it examines the way in which motherhood has been constructed by the courts and the difficulties in centring women's experiences within sentencing. It demonstrates how only by moving to a focus on children's rights has it been possible to ensure sentencers consider the implications of a defendant's motherhood.

The chapter outlines the parameters within which a sentencer can consider motherhood and explores some of the findings from the qualitative research I undertook with Crown Court judges, as part of a larger study in which I also interviewed children whose mother was at the time of interview in prison and the adults providing care to the children in her absence. The studies found that there was inconsistent understanding of a sentencer's duty to consider the impact of any sentence upon dependent children, coupled with a lack of understanding of the consequences of maternal imprisonment for a child. The ways in which this contravenes the Human Rights Act, 1998 and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989 are identified.

The resources which have been developed for sentencing professionals as a consequence of that work are discussed before considering the lack of concern for women's motherhood when imprisoning women on remand or recall. The chapter concludes with a call for motherhood, and not just children's rights, to be centred in sentencing decisions.

Using data from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study, this study examines the structural relationships between negative school social relationships, school safety, educational expectation, and academic achievement of Latino immigrant students. Results from multilevel structural equation modeling show that discrimination, unhelpful school social relationships, and experiences of unsafe school environments influence Latino immigrant adolescents’ academic achievement indirectly and directly through their educational expectations. Specifically, this study explores how noncognitive and contextual factors embedded in different structural layers of school organization influence Latino immigrant adolescents’ academic achievement. It draws attention to the impact of negative school factors such as discriminatory and unsupportive school social relationships, and negative and unsafe school structures that undermine school life. Based on our findings, we argue that as Latino immigrant students internalize negative experiences from their school experiences during the critical period of adolescence, such accumulated negative internalization may reinforce negative self-perceptions and inaccurate stereotypes. Not only discrimination but also other negative school features such as the absence of academic supporters, nonacademically oriented friends, and unsafe learning environments inhibit them from navigating positive school opportunities and ultimately, successful school achievement. Implications for the social organization of U.S. public secondary schools with a focus on Latino immigrant adolescents’ academic achievement are discussed.

Mental illness, in its various forms, is common in the United States. Tens of millions of Americans are afflicted by an episode of mental illness every year. Estimates of the 12-month prevalence of mental disorders in the U.S. (including alcohol and substance abuse or dependence) indicate that 22–30 persons per 100 in the adult population are afflicted each year.¹ An episode of a psychiatric disorder, like a physical disorder, is debilitating – often disrupting the ability of the afflicted to carry on normal personal, social, and work activities. Mental illness also commonly results in large medical expenses. In addition, a number of recent papers have found that mental illness imposes large labor market losses on the ill, decreasing the likelihood of employment and limiting earnings for the employed.² In particular, research by two of the authors indicates that depressive disorders cause significant reductions in the labor force participation of women and the earnings of both men and women.³

Exploration of District Level Household Survey 4 data show that among the selected states, Karnataka, West Bengal, Meghalaya, Tripura, Telengana, Arunachal Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh show higher rates of school dropout of girls compared to the all India level. Using multilevel probit technique, the study shows that the incidence of school dropout of girls decreases if the first born of the parents is male and mother is more educated than father while it increases with lower asset endowment, land-holding and high spousal age-gap between parents. Further it is high among the Muslim religion and schedule caste category.