"Health & Medical News"

Better vigilance is needed to ensure medical research on human subjects is not flawed by financial conflicts of interest, according to the Assn. of American Medical Colleges and the Assn. of American Universities.

In March, the two organizations issued a report that calls on medical schools and research universities to put into place conflict-of-interest policies within two years. Such policies should cover how to identify, evaluate and manage financial conflicts, the report said.

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Raising the specter of convicted crack-cocaine offenders being released from prison due to sentencing reform, Bush administration Attorney General Michael Mukasey asked Congress to appropriate $200 million to help cities fight violent crime, the Washington Post reported Jan. 25.

In an address before the U.S. Conference of Mayors — which last year unanimously adopted a resolution calling the War on Drugs a failure — Mukasey cited the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s decision to retroactively equalize penalties for crack and powdered cocaine in warning that “a sudden influx of criminals from federal prison into your communities could lead to a surge in new victims as a tragic, but predictable, result.”

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A Texas middle-school student found sniffing a teacher’s alcohol-based hand sanitizer was not committing a crime, prosecutors in Denton County have ruled.

The Dallas Morning News reported Jan. 26 that the 15-year-old seventh-grader at Killian Middle School in Lewisville picked up a bottle of hand sanitizer from a teacher’s desk, rubbed it on his hands, and sniffed it. The boy was sent to the principal’s office, subjected to in-school suspension, and then referred to police on suspicion that he was inhaling the gel to get high.

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Los Angeles’ Safer City initiative has cut crime on the city’s infamous Skid Row but also put more homeless people in jail for minor offenses, the Los Angeles Times reported Oct. 3.

A new UCLA study found that serious crimes declined 35 percent since the plan was implemented last year. Safer City saw 50 more police officers assigned to Skid Row, with an emphasis on enforcing laws against even miniscule infractions like jaywalking. The number of homeless people living on the streets also has declined.

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The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program said that homicides, rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults increase about 2 percent last year, but that the property-crime rate fell 1.9 percent, the Los Angeles Times reported Sept. 25.

The overall crime rate is at its lowest point in 30 years, and some experts downplayed the increase in violent crime. “To some extent, the rise that we saw this year and last has been because we’re at a relative low point,” said James Alan Fox, a criminal-justice professor at Northeastern University. “When you’re that low, the only way to go is up.”

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Juvenile-justice systems need to involve communities and family members in connecting youth to mentors, jobs, and community services to prevent crime and addiction, according to a new report from the Reclaiming Futures project.

The report, Moving Toward Equal Ground, suggests ways to improve treatment services and outcomes in the juvenile-justice system. “Families and community members have the right to be involved and need to be involved in all aspects of helping youth in the justice system who struggle with alcohol and drug use,” said Laura Nissen, Ph.D., national program director of Reclaiming Futures. “They can shape the way the system treats these youth, and provide the positive social opportunities needed to keep them out of trouble.”

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