Suchergebnisse

The theory of civil commitment holds that while some drug users are motivated for treatment, most are not. For these, there must be some lever for diverting them into treatment. The New York experience with compulsory treatment is especially interesting, and much of what happened was never reported in the literature. The New York Parole Project was deemed a success, but for a variety of reasons the data on which the Program was evaluated were tainted. New York's Narcotic Addiction Control Commission (NACC), reportedly the largest and costliest civil commitment program in history was doomed to failure from its inception because of mismanagement and misrepresentation. First, it was founded, in part, on biased research findings. Second, its treatment facilities were former prisons having general environments that were unconducive to behavioral change. Third, treatment facility directors were for the most part political appointees with little or no administrative and/or clinical experience. Fourth, NACC's aftercare program was incapable of influencing or controlling the behavior of its charges. Finally, NACC lost public support through a number of Watergate-like coverups.

Fraud in science is an issue that has been rarely discussed in the literature, due, primarily, to the belief that it rarely occurs and to the difficulties in its detection. Yet fraud does occur through the suppression, manipulation, and fabrication of data. The fabrication of data is seemingly the most serious form of fraud since it involves the outright production of fictitious information. In the natural and experimental sciences, fraud may be detected through replication, but in the social sciences alternative findings do not necessarily suggest fraud. In some types of survey research involving studies of self-reported deviant behavior, fraud has occurred through the fabrication of data by dishonest interviewers. In an attempt to detect such data fabrication, an experiment was performed comparing valid and fictitious data, resulting in statistical differences between the two types.

AbstractIt can be argued that any objective reexamination of the marijuana laws and reformulation of public policy should necessarily be undertaken within some type of cost/ benefit perspective. As such, a paradigm might be structured which could examine the costs and benefits of the criminalization of marijuana vs. the benefits and costs of its decriminalization. On the one hand, there are the psychosocial costs of marijuana use which include any effects which might flow from the use of the drug. What the benefits of marijuana use might be, beyond the euphoric states and feelings of well being it offers, are yet to be fully determined. Yet by contrast. there are the human, social, and economic costs which flow from the criminalization of marijuana use. It is argued in this commentary that this paradigm can be used as a guide for decriminalization research. A variety of data sets and historical issues are briefly examined which fall within the parameters of this paradigm, and a series of research protocols which flow from the paradigm are addressed.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Brazil ranked second only to the United States in the number of reported cases of AIDS. Because Brazil's extensive poverty and inequality, its fragile economic situation, and its limited network of health services, the scarce prevention/intervention resources targeted only the most visible at risk populations -- gay men, sailors, prostitutes, and street children. Virtually forgotten were Brazil's hidden drug users, as well as the tens of millions of individuals living in the country's thousands of favelas, or shantytowns, which are a characteristic part of almost every Brazilian city. In Sex, Drugs, and HIV/AIDS in Brazil the authors examine the emergence of AIDS in Brazil, its linkages to drug use and the sexual culture, and its epidemiology in such populations as cocaine users, "street children," and male transvestite prostitutes. Special attention is focused on an HIV/AIDS community outreach program established in Rio de Janeiro, which represented the first such prevention/intervention program in all of Brazil targeting indigent cocaine users. This 6-year initiative was funded by the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse, and carried out by the authors of this book. The research combines anthropological, sociological, and biological perspectives; all data were gathered through empirical and ethnographic techniques.