Youth Justice and Education: A Typology of Educational Approaches to the Resocialisation of Young Offenders in Spain

The Young Offenders Act that entered Spanish law in 2000 represents a significant attempt to place personalised educational programmes for young people with social/criminal problems at the centre of policy and practice. This paper examines the teams and educational programmes designed to manage and implement the goal of ?re-socialisation? enshrined in the Act. This paper focuses on an analytical typology of the educational styles used at young offenders institutions in Spain. The analysis highlights the differences between styles in relation to the key underlying objectives of social reorientation and citizen empowerment. The wide range of models experimented with in different Spanish regions has great relevance to youth justice systems in other countries. For example, the typology we put forward has concrete implications for recent developments in England, in the light of moves towards establishing a national network of ?Secure Colleges? for convicted young people

A short proof of a matrix decomposition with applications

We give a very short proof of the main result of J. Benitez, A new decomposition for square matrices, Electron. J. Linear Algebra 20 (2010) 207-225. Also, we present some consequences of this result. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.The first author is supported by Work funded by Vicerrectorado de Investigacion U.P.V. PAID 06-2010-2285. The second author is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (11061005), the Ministry of Education Science and Grants (HCIC201103) of Guangxi Key Laboratory of Hybrid Computational and IC Design Analysis Open Fund.Benítez López, J.; Liu, X. (2013). A short proof of a matrix decomposition with applications. Linear Algebra and its Applications. 438(3):1398-1414. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.laa.2012.10.002S13981414438

Characterizations of {K, s + 1}-potent matrices and applications

Recently, situations where a matrix coincides with some of its powers have been studied. This kind of matrices is related to the generalized inverse matrices. On the other hand, it is possible to introduce another class of matrices that involve an involutory matrix, generalizing the well-known idempotent matrix, widely useful in many applications. In this paper, we introduce a new kind of matrices called {K,s+1}-potent, as an extension of the aforementioned ones. First, different properties of {K,s+1}-potent matrices have been developed. Later, the main result developed in this paper is the characterization of this kind of matrices from a spectral point of view, in terms of powers of the matrix, by means of the group inverse and, via a block representation of a matrix of index 1. Finally, an application of the above results to study linear combinations of {K,s+1}-potent matrices is derived

Relations between {K, s + 1}-potent matrices and different classes of complex matrices

In this paper, {K,s+1}-potent matrices are considered. A matrix A∈C^(n×n) is called {K,s+1}-potent when K A^(s+1) K = A where K is an involutory matrix and s∈{1,2,3,¿}. Specifically, {K,s+1}-potent matrices are analyzed considering their relations to different classes of complex matrices. These classes of matrices are: {s+1}-generalized projectors, {K}-Hermitian matrices, normal matrices, and matrices B∈C^(n×n) (anti-)commuting with K or such that KB is involutory, Hermitian or normal. In addition, some new relations for K-generalized centrosymmetric matrices have been derived

Impending U.S. Spending Bust? The Role of Housing Wealth as Borrowing Collateral

Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, this paper considers the mechanism by which changing house values impact U.S. household spending. The results suggest that house values affect consumption by serving as collateral for households to borrow against to smooth their spending. The results show that the consumption of households who need to borrow against their home equity increases by roughly 11 cents per $1.00 increase in their housing wealth. Changing house values, however, have little effect on the expenditures of households who do not need to borrow to finance their consumption. Based on these results, the paper further finds that declining housing wealth has a relatively small implied negative impact on aggregate consumption expenditures

State-building, war and violence : evidence from Latin America

In European history, war has played a major role in state‐building and the state monopoly on violence. But war is a very specific form of organized political violence, and it is decreasing on a global scale. Other patterns of armed violence now dominate, ones that seem to undermine state‐building, thus preventing the replication of European experiences. As a consequence, the main focus of the current state‐building debate is on fragility and a lack of violence control inside these states. Evidence from Latin American history shows that the specific patterns of the termination of both war and violence are more important than the specific patterns of their organization. Hence these patterns can be conceptualized as a critical juncture for state‐building. While military victories in war, the subordination of competing armed actors and the prosecution of perpetrators are conducive for state‐building, negotiated settlements, coexistence, and impunity produce instability due to competing patterns of authority, legitimacy, and social cohesion

Anti-tumour necrosis factor discontinuation in inflammatory bowel disease patients in remission: study protocol of a prospective, multicentre, randomized clinical trial

Background: Patients with inflammatory bowel disease who achieve remission with anti-tumour necrosis factor (anti-TNF) drugs may have treatment withdrawn due to safety concerns and cost considerations, but there is a lack of prospective, controlled data investigating this strategy. The primary study aim is to compare the rates of clinical remission at 1?year in patients who discontinue anti-TNF treatment versus those who continue treatment. Methods: This is an ongoing, prospective, double-blind, multicentre, randomized, placebo-controlled study in patients with Crohn?s disease or ulcerative colitis who have achieved clinical remission for ?6?months with an anti-TNF treatment and an immunosuppressant. Patients are being randomized 1:1 to discontinue anti-TNF therapy or continue therapy. Randomization stratifies patients by the type of inflammatory bowel disease and drug (infliximab versus adalimumab) at study inclusion. The primary endpoint of the study is sustained clinical remission at 1?year. Other endpoints include endoscopic and radiological activity, patient-reported outcomes (quality of life, work productivity), safety and predictive factors for relapse. The required sample size is 194 patients. In addition to the main analysis (discontinuation versus continuation), subanalyses will include stratification by type of inflammatory bowel disease, phenotype and previous treatment. Biological samples will be obtained to identify factors predictive of relapse after treatment withdrawal. Results: Enrolment began in 2016, and the study is expected to end in 2020. Conclusions: This study will contribute prospective, controlled data on outcomes and predictors of relapse in patients with inflammatory bowel disease after withdrawal of anti-TNF agents following achievement of clinical remission. Clinical trial reference number: EudraCT 2015-001410-1

Postoperative outcomes in oesophagectomy with trainee involvement

BACKGROUND: The complexity of oesophageal surgery and the significant risk of morbidity necessitates that oesophagectomy is predominantly performed by a consultant surgeon, or a senior trainee under their supervision. The aim of this study was to determine the impact of trainee involvement in oesophagectomy on postoperative outcomes in an international multicentre setting. METHODS: Data from the multicentre Oesophago-Gastric Anastomosis Study Group (OGAA) cohort study were analysed, which comprised prospectively collected data from patients undergoing oesophagectomy for oesophageal cancer between April 2018 and December 2018. Procedures were grouped by the level of trainee involvement, and univariable and multivariable analyses were performed to compare patient outcomes across groups. RESULTS: Of 2232 oesophagectomies from 137 centres in 41 countries, trainees were involved in 29.1 per cent of them (n = 650), performing only the abdominal phase in 230, only the chest and/or neck phases in 130, and all phases in 315 procedures. For procedures with a chest anastomosis, those with trainee involvement had similar 90-day mortality, complication and reoperation rates to consultant-performed oesophagectomies (P = 0.451, P = 0.318, and P = 0.382, respectively), while anastomotic leak rates were significantly lower in the trainee groups (P = 0.030). Procedures with a neck anastomosis had equivalent complication, anastomotic leak, and reoperation rates (P = 0.150, P = 0.430, and P = 0.632, respectively) in trainee-involved versus consultant-performed oesophagectomies, with significantly lower 90-day mortality in the trainee groups (P = 0.005). CONCLUSION: Trainee involvement was not found to be associated with significantly inferior postoperative outcomes for selected patients undergoing oesophagectomy. The results support continued supervised trainee involvement in oesophageal cancer surgery