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This brief report presents preliminary data on the attitudes of judges on the sentencing of offenders with High Functioning Autism (HFA). Semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted with twenty-one California Superior Court Judges. Interviews were qualitatively coded and constant comparative analysis was utilized. Findings revealed that judges consider HFA as both a mitigating and aggravating factor in sentencing, and knowledge of an offender’s disorder could potentially help judges understand why a criminal action might have been committed. Judges voiced concerns about the criminal justice system being able to effectively help or offer sentencing options for offenders with HFA. Finally, judges reported that they are focused on using their judicial powers and influence to provide treatment and other resources during sentencing.

As the philosophy of Neoliberalism etches itself into the economic, political and social landscape, studying its effects on those least capable of protecting themselves must become a focal concern. This article reviews literature on the various ways neoliberal shifts in the economy, social policy, and culture affect youth crime and its control by examining critical scholarship in three overlapping areas: juvenile justice, education, and consumerism. Following the review of current literature, this article discusses the important work of several social justice organizations whose work unsettles the very notions of the neoliberal project, providing hope that youth can be the 'igniters of political change'. Although the challenges brought about by neoliberal trends are formidable, the existence of these organizations suggests that collective and democratic avenues for change have not been foreclosed. Neoliberalism is a debated term that can be used to define a number of macro-level shifts occurring in today's globalized world. Adapted from the source document.

Jane Addams (1860–1935) was a major reformer of the American Progressive Era (1890 to 1920) whose ideas about social justice continue to engage contemporary scholars. This article contributes to the recent examination of her feminist insights by investigating a source of her voice of social critique. Situating Addams in the first generation of white women to have access to both secondary and tertiary education, I use a feminist developmental lens to attend to a repeated figure in her earliest public addresses, “the college woman.” By highlighting parallels between Addams's presentation of “the college woman” and the developmental strengths, struggles, and resistance of contemporary girls and adolescents, I offer a reading of her motivations that brings into focus the socially transformative potential of young women.

This study examines the characteristics of Texas youth designated as 'most difficult to place' recipients of service under the \"Exceptional Care Pilot Project\" (N = 46). Findings include, among others, high levels of comorbid psychiatric disturbance (> 3 diagnostic groupings), physical (78.3%) and sexual (88%) maltreatment, and placement breakdowns (m = 4.8 therapeutic placements). This initial profile of the population provides a base for helping other states identify and plan for the needs of their most troubled youth.

As discussed above, adulthood is understood to be a position of rationality, intentionality and maturity. A designation of adulthood thus succeeds as a rhetorical strategy to justify harsher treatment, constructing young people involved in crime quite differently than those involved in prostitution. As [David Young] argued in the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Issues (2001), these young people are to be held accountable for their serious crimes, suggesting that they have gained adult responsibility and understanding of the consequences of their actions. Steinberg and Cauffman (2000) argue, however, that determining transfers based on seriousness of crime is problematic, as it undermines young peoples' developmental location as the rationale for youth court. They argue that, \"there is no evidence that a 14-year-old who commits a 'transferable' crime is more mature or responsible than others his [sic] age, or less amenable to treatment\" ([Jefferey Pagan] and [Franklin E. Zimring], 2000b, p. 4). Roberts asks why the seriousness of the offence should be sufficient \"to repudiate the young person's claim to diminished culpability as a juvenile\" (2004, p. 315). Further, while the description of \"adult\" may achieve certain political ends, young offenders do not in turn gamer the independence, responsibility or status of being adults. Rather, in the moment of \"adult time for adult crime,\" these young people acquire the new master status of criminal. As Christie Barren states, \"It appears that violent youths fall between the protectionist realm of 'childness' and the rights discourse of 'adultness' and [are] therefore disentitled to the securities afforded to either\" (2000, p.38). In such an instance, as in the case of young prostitutes, the structural conditions defining the backgrounds of these young offenders are also downplayed in favour of individual accountability. [Sangster] (2001) reminds us that the development of modern, middle-class notions of family arose through their distinction from working-class sexuality. This distinction was also linked to race. In the inter-war years, for example, JJ. Heagerty, chief of Venereal Disease Control for Canada suggested that women who became prostitutes had an undeveloped mentality akin to promiscuous, \"primitive and semi-civilized races\" (in Sangster, 2001, p. 90) and there was particular concern with a \"commingling of the races\" ([Strange], 1995, p. 112). In this context, native women were seen as especially likely to be promiscuous, especially with white men, and consequently \"in need of paternalist protection\" (p. 122). As Barman states, a \"wildness associated with Aboriginal sexuality had permeated settler consciousness\" (1997/98, p. 244) and led to various strategies aimed at controlling native women's sexual autonomy, including the establishment of '\"Girls' Homes\" in British Columbia to rescue and protect them. Today this historical legacy of racism continues to affect the experiences of young native women involved in prostitution; for example, \"Stolen Sisters,\" Amnesty International's recent report on violence against native women, points out that the disappearance and murder of native women in Canada is in dire and belated need of state attention (Amnesty International, 2004). One of the more prominent cases discussed in the report is the high number of native women working as prostitutes who were murdered on EC's west coast between 1996 and 2002.

The temptation to engage in de facto corporal punishment is reinforced by the wide range of high-tech, non-lethal weaponry available to correctional personnel: electronic stunning devices (some of which are capable of delivering 50,000 volts and can be used with shields, darts, and probes),4 sting shot rubber bullets, stun guns (canvas bags filled with lead shot, canisters filled with wood blocks, or rubber pellets fired from a 37 millimeter gas gun), pepper spray (a type of teargas made from cayenne peppers developed in Canada to control bears), and a variety of restraint devices such as the restraint chair and the Body Guard (advertised as a revolutionary new design that allows officers to safely restrain and immobilize combative subjects without facing the complications and dangers associated with the traditional restraint methods such as hogtying). The contribution of high-tech (and some low-tech) weaponry to patterns of de facto corporal punishment is illustrated by a federal district court decision rendered in 1995 involving one of the nation's most modern supermax facilities.