Valerio Baćak’s research while affiliated with Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey and other places

Fairness in the criminal legal system is unattainable without effective legal representation of indigent defendants, yet we know little about the experience of attorneys who do this critical work. Using semi-structured interviews, our study investigated occupational stress in a sample of 78 attorneys representing indigent clients across the United States. We show how the chronic stressors experienced at work culminate in what we define as the stress of injustice: the social and psychological demands of working in a punitive system with laws and practices that target and punish those who are the most disadvantaged. Respondents positioned their professional stress around structural, not individual, aspects of the American criminal legal system, specifically punitive excess, underfunding of indigent defense, and the criminalization of mental illness and substance use. Working within these interrelated structural constraints makes public defenders highly vulnerable to stress and attrition.

Aim: To assess the prevalence and dynamics of risky sexual behaviors among Croatian emerging adults in the 2005-2021 period. Methods: Three surveys were conducted on large-scale national samples of young adults aged 18-24 in 2005 (N=1092) and 18-25 in 2010 and 2021 (N=1005 and N=1210, respectively). The 2005 and 2010 studies were conducted with face-to-face interviews on stratified probabilistic samples. The 2021 study was conducted by computer-assisted web-interviewing on a quota-based random sample from the largest national online panel. Results: Compared with 2005 and 2010, the age at coital debut increased for both genders in 2021 (by a median of one year, to 18 years, and by a mean of half a year, to 17.5 years, in men and to 17.9 in women). In the 2005-2021 period, condom use increased by about 15% both at first intercourse (to 80%) and in consistent use (to 40% in women and 50% in men). When we controlled for basic socio-demographics, Cox and logistic regressions indicated that, for both genders, in 2005 and 2010 compared with 2021, the risks/odds were significantly higher for reporting an earlier sexual debut (adjusted hazard ratio 1.25-1.37), multiple sexual partners (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] 1.62-3.31), and concurrent relationships (AOR 3.36-4.64), while the odds were lower for condom use at first sexual intercourse (AOR 0.24-0.46) and consistently (AOR 0.51-0.64). Conclusion: Risky sexual behaviors decreased in the 2021 survey compared with the previous two waves, in both genders. Nonetheless, sexual risk-taking is still frequent among young Croatian adults. The introduction of sexuality education and other national-level public health interventions to reduce sexual risk-taking thus remains a public health imperative.

The “cycle of violence” perspective links the experience of being a victim of violence with later aggressive or violent behavior. While the association between victimization and aggression is relatively established, the mechanisms involved in the cycle of violence are less understood. The current study considered the role of mental health and delinquency on the pathway between sexual victimization and sexual aggression in two independent longitudinal samples of Croatian adolescents (Mage at baseline = 16 years). Using data from the first panel (six data waves, 2015–2018; n = 1289), structural equation modeling analysis pointed to a psychosocial mechanism, a combination of symptoms of depression/anxiety and delinquency, that mediated the link between the experience of sexual victimization and self-reported sexual aggression. We also observed a significant role of family environment in this psychosocial mechanism. The pattern of findings was partially replicated in the second panel with five waves of data (2015–2017; n = 750). The study’s results can help inform conversations around designing policies to prevent and address peer sexual violence among Croatian adolescents.

Objectives There is an increasing understanding that mental health may be a collateral consequence of joining a gang. The objective of the present study is to assess the effect of gang joining on a set of diverse mental health outcomes that include depression, anxiety, hostility, and paranoid ideation. Methods To reduce bias in our comparisons, we balance gang-joiner and gang-abstainer groups by applying the entropy balancing algorithm to longitudinal data from the Pathways to Desistance study. Results The results indicate that joining a gang is implicated in poor outcomes for all four measures of mental health considered in our analysis. The observed associations persist both at the first and second wave after joining a gang. Conclusions To understand more comprehensively both the short- and long-term consequences of gang joining, scholars of crime and justice must expand their focus to include mental health—not solely as a predictor of group offending but also as its consequence. Future studies should also consider mental health in the context of gang desistance.

The notion of law as sacred, and lawyers as righteous saviors, may seem anachronistic in the current context of heavy caseloads and expedited processing in the criminal justice system. Nevertheless, language reflecting these ideals still permeates defense attorneys’ descriptions of their roles, their legal practice, and their relationships to their colleagues and adversaries. We examine this language – specifically, attorneys’ quasi-religious rhetoric – to better understand courtroom dynamics: how attorneys see themselves, their work, their colleagues, and their legal adversaries. In this analysis of semi-structured interviews with 30 defense attorneys, we find that attorneys use of quasi-religious rhetoric manifests as a cultural practice that helps to establish and maintain professional identities, boundaries, and relationships. Our findings also suggest that young and novice public defenders are likely to express especially zealous views, which may compromise their efforts to collaborate within the adversarial system, as well as contribute to burnout.