Brazil's tourist-jammed cities are some of the most violent on the planet. A considerable number of the country's 43,000 annual murders occur on the streets of Sao Paulo, Recife, and Rio de Janeiro. And Brazilian cities are not alone in what might be called a bad neighborhood. The fact is that most major Latin American and Caribbean cities are today plagued by an epidemic of violence. With more than 20 murders per 100,000 people, the regional homicide rate is roughly three times the global average. Many of the larger urban centers -- from Caracas and Ciudad Juarez to Kingston and Port-of-Spain -- register the highest rates of lethal violence in the world.
Across several countries (including the UK and U.S.) people of black (African-Caribbean) origin are overrepresented in secure psychiatric services. Risk assessment instruments for predicting violence are often used, but their accuracy is not known for ethnic minority patients. We therefore aimed: 1) to test the accuracy of two leading instruments in patients from a black ethnic minority, and 2) to compare the levels of risk as defined by these instruments. Risk assessment scores were slightly lower for black patients, but there were no significant differences in reconviction rates for either violent or general offences post discharge.
Examines how post-earthquake conditions in Haiti have left women and girls in a heightened state of vulnerability as well as the ineffectiveness of the U.N. and government to uphold obligations under international law to include grassroots women's leadership in the planning and implementation sessions to address sexual violence in displacement camps.
