UNCOMMON LAW
Courts for chronic offenders with psychiatric disabilities, so-called mental health courts (MHC), have now been around for twenty years. MHC judges are expected to practice law as a healing profession, and not just as common law arbiters, to divert individuals from the criminal justice system to community-based treatment. Most new judges who preside over the 300+ courts in the US still have little training or experience implementing the legal and clinical procedures at their disposal for such problem-solving justice. This qualitative study offers portraits of four such “alternative” courtrooms and analyzes judges’ patterned responses to allegations of client misconduct.
PrEP-PING FOR NEW PROBLEMS
The recent availability of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) has decreased the risk of HIV infection after sex without condoms. With lessened worries about acquiring HIV, HIV-negative men who have sex with men (MSM), the primary users of PrEP, might have more unprotected sex and increase their risk of other sexually transmitted infections such as syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia that are already common among MSM. A study from Boston confirms this worry. Men who used PrEP were more than twice as likely to have one of these other infections than MSM who were not using PrEP. Willingness to engage in condomless sex has wide public health implications for MSM even when the risk of HIV is reduced with PrEP.
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GUN LAWS REDUCE FATAL SHOOTINGS BY POLICE
States with stricter firearm legislation have fewer fatal police shootings—defined as the rate of people killed by law enforcement agencies—according to research in the American Journal of Public Health.
The authors used two sources of data to show this relationship. First, the Brady Center’s legislative scorecard for firearm laws was used to determine the strength of state-level legislation. The scorecard highlights seven categories of laws, such as background checks, duty to retreat, and banning guns from public places. The higher the score, the stronger the firearm legislation is within that state.
Second, The Counted, an online database by The Guardian, was used to assess the number of fatal police shootings. A total of 2,021 fatal police encounters occurred in the United States between January 2015 and October 2016. Firearms were responsible for 1,835 of these deaths.
The analysis showed that even after controlling for age, education, violent crime rates, and household gun ownership, states with the strongest firearm legislation had a 51% lower incidence of fatal police shootings compared to states with the weakest firearm laws.
Laws that strengthen background checks, promote child and consumer safety, and reduce gun trafficking are linked to lower rates of fatal police shootings.
Graphic: Aaron J. Kivisto, Bradley Ray, Peter L. Phalen, “Firearm Legislation and Fatal Police Shootings in the United States,” American Journal of Public Health 107, no. 7 (July 1, 2017): pp. 1068-1075.
DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2017.303770
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