Recognizing Perspectives on Community Reentry From Offenders With Mental Illness: Using the Afrocentric Framework and Concept Mapping with Adult Detainees

By using concept mapping techniques and incorporating the Afrocentric framework, the study demonstrated that people with mental illnesses, when asked and provided the means to participate, can engage in meaningful identification of their needs, service conceptualization and prioritization. They provided 13 service area needs that included 104 indicators of their success when returning to the community. The identification of these indicators of success is helpful to program developers so that they can address the challenges of the consumer and move offenders with mental illness toward independent living. Implications of the findings for social workers and public health professionals working in the corrections field were explored and discussed.     

Attachment Models in Incarcerated Sex Offenders: A Preliminary Italian Study Using the Adult Attachment Interview

A group of sex offenders (clinical group: n = 19) was compared to a nonclinical sample matched by age, years of education, and gender (control group A: n = 19) to verify a higher incidence of insecure attachment models among sex offenders. In addition, we tested whether sex offenders were characterized by specific childhood experiences, compared to control adults (control group B: n = 19) with the same secure/insecure attachment classification. Results showed significant differences between offenders and control adults on both the AAI continuous score and the distribution of the two-way attachment classifications. Furthermore, sex offenders reported more intense experiences of rejection by the father figure and abuse in the family context during early childhood compared to not offenders subjects with the same attachment classification.     

Using Outcome Measurement to Promote Continuous Quality Improvement for Children in Foster Care

Continuous Quality Improvement is the term used to measure progress toward achieving safety, permanency, and well‐being for children in foster care. This report highlights the results of a 2014 survey conducted by the National Resource Center on Legal and Judicial Issues asking states to identify how they are using performance measures to improve the lives of children in care, which measures are being used, whether the newly‐created well‐being measures are being integrated into the original set of court performance measures, and how performance measures are being used to support Continuous Quality Improvement. Although there is much more to do, the number of performance measures being used, the number of states sharing data between courts and child welfare agencies, and the number of documented examples of improvement in lives of abuse and neglected children are all encouraging signs.     

Sentencing Juvenile Offenders to Life in Prison: The Political Sociology of Juvenile Punishment

Sentencing juvenile offenders to life in prison is the most severe criminal penalty available, yet we know little about the factors that produce jurisdictional differences in the use of such sanctions. Political explanations emphasize conservative values and the strength of more conservative political parties. Threat accounts suggest that this sentence will be more likely in jurisdictions with larger minority populations. After controlling for many explanations using count models, the results show that larger numbers of juvenile life sentences are handed out in more politically conservative states with a stronger Republican Party. Findings also show that racial politics is a factor in juvenile life sentences. Those jurisdictions that have the most blacks and have judicial elections sentence the most juveniles to life terms. By highlighting the explanatory power of public ideologies, these findings support political explanations for the harshest criminal punishment directed towards juveniles.     

Law Enforcement Advocate Program: An Interagency Collaboration to Enhance Community‐Police Relations and Improve Outcomes for Substance‐Using Offenders

Justice system involvement is highly correlated with substance‐use issues. Untreated, substance‐using offenders are likely to continue to use drugs, commit crimes, and pose a public safety risk. Strategies to address substance use in the criminal justice system often fall short in terms of integrating services and sustaining engagement among high‐risk adult and juvenile populations. Law enforcement can help to bridge identified gaps by offering a community‐based solution to the interrelated challenges of substance use, crime, and recidivism for offenders. The Law Enforcement Advocate Program has been effective in improving probationer compliance and outcomes, facilitating problem solving and interagency coordination, and improving community‐police relations.     

Using Computer Simulations to Measure the Effect of Gerrymandering on Electoral Competition in the U.S. Congress

Recent research has leveraged computer simulations to identify the effect of gerrymandering on partisan bias in U.S. legislatures. As a result of this method, researchers are able to distinguish between the intentional partisan bias caused by gerrymandering and the natural partisan bias that stems from the geographic sorting of partisan voters. However, this research has yet to explore the effect of gerrymandering on other biases like reduced electoral competition and incumbency protection. Using a computer algorithm to design a set of districts without political intent, I measure the extent to which the current districts have been gerrymandered to produce safer seats in Congress. I find that gerrymandering only has a minor effect on the average district, but does produce a number of safe seats for both Democrats and Republicans. Moreover, these safe seats tend to be located in states where a single party controls the districting process.     

From Learning to Labour to Learning to Self-Control: The Paradigmatic Change in Swedish Prison Policy

This article has been written from the position that we fail to understand the character of the changes in prison policy in the last decades if we concentrate too much on the new emphasis on control and security. By making use of Thomas Kuhn's paradigm model, the article argues that it is fertile to see the changes in Swedish prison policy during the last decades as a paradigm shift. Although the new emphasis on control and security is important, it is only one feature in a larger transformation which concerns changing perceptions of the criminal subject, new theoretical understandings, new treatment methods, as well as a new role for the prison in penal policy in general. The article conceptualizes the policy that has developed inside the Swedish Prison and Probation Service during the last decades as the developing of a new paradigm in contrast to the old prison policy paradigm of the welfare state. The article especially discusses the significance of the development of so-called evidence-based knowledge as well as the creation of a Scientific Council inside the Swedish Prison and Probation Service which have led to a re-pathologization of the criminal subject. Other features that make up the new paradigm are the numerous programmes built on cognitive therapy and the emphasis on individual risk assessments. On a general level, the new paradigm has developed during, and is congruent with, the dominance of a neo-liberal regime.     

从元认知到自我调节：学习策略研究的新进展

学习策略是学习者主动寻求的,旨在有效提高学习和信息加工效率的规则系统.20世纪80年代以来,学习策略始终是教育心理学,特别是学习心理学研究的核心问题之一.元认知和自我调节学习构成了学习策略的核心或监控层面.学习策略研究从初期单纯强调元认知到强调包括元认知、动机在内的自我调节学习反映了学习心理学领域一种新的整合趋势,同时也表明学习策略研究日益强调课堂干预和应用.     

One Step at a Time: A Latent Transitional Analysis on Changes in Substance Use,Exposure to Violence,and HIV/AIDS Risk Behaviors among Female Offenders

The aim of this analysis is to identify latent subgroups of women based on substance use, exposure to violence, and risky sexual behaviors and quantify discrete stages of behavior change over time. Data comes from 317 women recruited from a Municipal Drug Court System in the Midwest. All participants were interviewed regarding their substance use and sexual behaviors, as well as their exposure to violence at baseline, a 4th-month follow-up, and an 8th-month follow-up. A latent transitional analysis (LTA), a longitudinal extension of a latent class analysis (LCA), was used to quantify discrete stages of behavior change. The results of our analyses revealed 4 distinct behavioral profiles in our sample: 1) women with high probabilities of risky sexual behaviors, exposure to violence, and crack/cocaine use, 2) women with a high probability of exposure to violence, and moderate sexual risk taking, 3) women characterized solely by a high probability of crack/cocaine use, 4) women with low probabilities of all factors. The proportion of women in latent statuses characterized by a high probability of crack/cocaine use did not substantially decrease over time. Women who experienced child sexual abuse, had a greater number of lifetime arrests, were older, and believed they had risky drug using behavior that needed changing at baseline were significantly more likely to be in higher-risk latent statuses. Targeted interventions tailored to crack/cocaine users, as well as a wide-spread need for trauma-informed interventions among females involved in the criminal justice system, are needed.     

Firearm Ownership in High-Conflict Families: Differences According to State Laws Restricting Firearms to Misdemeanor Crimes of Domestic Violence Offenders

This study examines the association between state laws that prohibit firearm ownership for offenders convicted of misdemeanor crimes of domestic violence (MCDV) and firearm ownership in two-parent families with high-conflict male partners with arrest histories. Mixed effects logistic regression models applied to data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth cohort (n?= 5350) determined that living in a state with laws that prohibited firearm ownership for convicted MCDV offenders decreased the likelihood of firearm ownership among families with high-conflict males by 62%. The length of the time limit on firearm prohibition was correlated with incremental decreases in firearm ownership in such families, with the probability of firearm ownership among families with high-conflict males decreasing from 30% in states with no MCDV laws restricting access from firearms to 12% in states with permanent prohibition on firearm ownership. These findings have significance for public health policy aimed at decreasing intimate-partner homicide.     

Using Spaced Learning Principles to Translate Knowledge into Behavior: Evidence from Investigative Interviews of Alleged Child Abuse Victims

The present study assessed the progress of 13 investigative interviewers (child protection workers and police officers) before, during, and after an intensive training program (n = 132 interviews). Training began with a 2-day workshop covering the principles of child development and child-friendly interviewing. Interviewers then submitted interviews on a bi-weekly basis to which they received written and verbal feedback over an 8-month period. A refresher session took place two months into training. Interestingly, improvements were observed only after the refresher session. Interviews conducted post-refresher training contained proportionally more open-ended questions, more child details in response to open-ended questions, and proportionally fewer closed questions than interviews conducted prior to training and in the first half of the training program. The need for ‘spaced learning’ may underlie why so many training programs have had little effect on practice.     

New Formulas to Estimate Age at Death in Maya Populations Using Histomorphological Changes in the Fourth Human Rib*

Abstract: This study develops new histomorphological algorithms for Maya populations’ human ribs and tests the applicability of published algorithms. Thin sections from the fourth rib of 36 individuals of known age were analyzed under polarized light microscopy. Osteon population density (OPD, the concentration of intact and fragmented osteons per mm²), cortical area (CA), and osteon size (OS) were recorded. Seven algorithms were calculated, using all combinations of variables, and compared to the performance of published formulas. The OPD‐based formulas deviate from the known age 8.7 years on average, while those from OS and CA deviate between 10.7 and 12.8 years. In comparison, our OPD‐based algorithms perform better than the one by Stout and Paine and much better than Cho et al. In conclusion, algorithms should be developed using OPD for different ethnic groups; although Stout and Paine’s can be used for Maya and maybe Mesoamerican individuals.