What we know and what we still need to learn

Research has changed the conceptualization of the causes and consequences of violence. Yet some questions remain unanswered. Infants and young children have largely been overlooked, and intraethnic and cultural group variations have not been addressed. There is still a need to address macro-level systematic discrimination in the health care system along with the intrapersonal physiological changes that result from exposure to violence. Fortunately, studies are beginning to show how longitudinal and intervention research can be safely conducted.     

To tell what we know or wait for Godot?

The evidence that death-qualified jurors are more likely than excluded jurors to convict is consistent, robust, and directly relevant to the issues of representativeness and conviction proneness that were before the Supreme Court inLockhart v. McCree. There are exactly the circumstances in which anamicus brief from the APA is most appropriate. In science the search for knowledge is never complete; to keep silent until our understanding is perfect is to keep silent forever.     

Can we believe what we see, if we see what we believe?--expert disagreement.

Forensic experts often disagree. The possible sources of such disagreements are analyzed and possible avenues of resolution indicated. The logic of interpreting scenes, and pattern injuries such as bitemarks, is explained to locate potential sources for interpretive error, and to recommend strategies to avoid compounding such errors when preparing cases. In one sense, two observers may not see the same thing, although their eyesight is normal and they are aware of the same artifact. Cases show that both practical and theoretical investigative expectations affect what count as observations. These expectations confer evidential status on the artifact. When two observers' expectations conflict, they do not see the same thing, so are not presented with the same evidence. Expectations can be either appropriate or inappropriate. These senses are clearly distinguished using illustrative cases. When inappropriate, they cause observational errors of a unique sort supplying one source for disagreement. When inferences are made from these inappropriately sanctioned observations,interpretive errors are compounded and resolutions of disagreement become difficult. These observational and inferential errors are explained, described, and illustrated with cases, along with recommendations for recognizing and avoiding them.     

Intimate partner violence and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms in women: what we know and need to know

This article presents a review of knowledge regarding post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in women experiencing intimate partner violence. Knowledge related to the prevalence and predictors of PTSD in battered women, the association between PTSD and physical health, and the emerging science regarding PTSD and physiological and immune parameters is addressed. Primary recommendations for future research includes the need for longitudinal and intervention research that incorporates a range of psychosocial and physiologic health outcomes.     

The psychological effects of solitary confinement on prisoners in supermax units: reviewing what we know and recommending what should change

This article examines the psychological consequences of short- and long-term solitary confinement for prisoners in the United States subjected to administrative or disciplinary segregation. Particular attention is paid to the use of secure housing units, alternatively known as control units or supermax units. These correctional entities allow for the isolation of convicts under conditions that offer little sensory stimulation and minimal opportunities for interaction with other people. The circumstances typically found in these units and the heightened potential for the abuse of prisoners are described. The connections between internment and mental illness-as well as isolation and race, gender, and class-are explored. A set of recommendations for the reform of secure housing is presented.     

We all want it, but we don't know what it is: toward a standard of affordability for health insurance premiums

The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (P.L. 111-148), or ACA, requires that U.S. citizens either purchase health insurance or pay a fine. To offset the financial burden for lower-income households, it also provides subsidies to ensure that health insurance premiums are affordable. However, relatively little work has been done on how such affordability standards should be set. The existing literature on affordability is not grounded in social norms and has methodological and theoretical flaws. To address these issues, we developed a series of hypothetical vignettes in which individual and household sociodemographic characteristics were varied. We then convened a panel of eighteen experts with extensive experience in affordability standards to evaluate the extent to which each vignette character could afford to pay for one of two health insurance plans. The panel varied with respect to political ideology and discipline. We find that there was considerable disagreement about how affordability is defined. There was also disagreement about what might be included in an affordability standard, with substantive debate surrounding whether savings, debt, education, or single parenthood is relevant. There was also substantial variation in experts' assessed affordability scores. Nevertheless, median expert affordability assessments were not far from those of ACA.     

Diagnostic profiles of civilly committed sexual offenders in Illinois and other reporting jurisdictions: what we know so far

The records of 377 men civilly committed under Illinois' Sexually Violent Persons Act were compared with similar published samples from seven other states. Civilly committed sexual offenders in Illinois were more likely to be diagnosed with any personality disorder and more likely to exceed the cutoff score for psychopathy than similar offenders in other states. The authors then present a national composite of demographic, victim, and diagnostic information on men referred or pursued for civil commitment in eight states to better understand how these individuals differ from sex offender populations in correctional settings. Results suggest that there may be less victim specificity in sexually violent person (SVP) populations, as although nearly 50% of SVPs are diagnosed with pedophilia, 80% had committed at least one sexual offense against a child or adolescent victim. Across all samples, 72.7% of SVPs were diagnosed with a personality disorder, with antisocial personality disorder the most prevalent.     

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): what we have learned and what we still have not found out

This article discusses the biomedical and the social constructionist models applied to response to trauma, presents the prevalence and the etiology of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and describes its biological and psychological correlates in children and adults. It concludes that future research might benefit from investigating factors that may protect people who have been exposed to an event likely to be traumatic from presenting with PTSD symptoms, and factors that may affect the longitudinal course of PTSD and treatment effectiveness.     

Abortion, information & the law: what every doctor needs to know

1. Before commencing any treatment, doctors must inform patients of all material risks of the treatment (Rogers v. Whitaker, 1992). 2. It is not up to the professional judgment of doctors to decide how much information to give to patients (Rogers v. Whitaker, 1992). 3. The same duty to inform applies to abortion ("Ellen's Case," 1998). 4. GPs and counsellors who refer for abortion also have a legal duty to inform women of risks, because everyone who gives specialized or professional advice may be sued for negligence if that advice is given without due care (Evatt's Care, 1969). 5. Doctors have been inadequately informed on the medical risks of abortion, by writers seeking to present abortion as a risk-free procedure. 6. Abortion may increase the risk of cancer. 7. Abortion carries risks of injury and illness. 8. Abortion caries risks of future reproduction. 9. Abortion may have adverse psychological and psychiatric sequelae. In some women, these sequelae are severe and intractable, and may occur irrespective of a woman's personal attitudes towards abortion (Melinda Tankard Reist, Giving Sorrow Words: Women's Stories of Grief After Abortion, Sydney, Duffy & Snellgrove, 2000). 10. Women still die in Australia from abortion. 11. It has not been proved that pregnancy and delivery are more dangerous than abortion. 12. The risks of mortality and morbidity in carrying a pregnancy to term are often exaggerated, in an effort to make abortion appear safer. 13. Doctors are not required to refer for abortion. On the other hand, doctors do have a duty to inform themselves of the professional competence of any practitioner to whom they refer any patient for any procedure. Doctors who are referring for abortion can avoid legal jeopardy by informing women fully of the risks, and by keeping very comprehensive records of the information they have given. Alternatively, doctors can avoid legal liability by declining to refer for abortion. There are compelling medical reasons for treating abortion as a social, non-therapeutic, potentially harmful procedure with which conscientious doctors would choose not to involve themselves.     

Police cynicism: What we know from the Niederhoffer scale

The Niederhoffer cynicism scale has been applied to many samples of police officers. Sometimes the scale itself has been the focus of attention; other times the correlates of cynicism have been the principal concern. This article reviews the police cynicism literature, describing the kinds of analyses undertaken and the generalizations apparent in the literature, and it draws several conclusions regarding police cynicism. The primary conclusion is that measurement of cynicism using the Niederhoffer scale is highly suspect; hence, the veracity of conclusions founded on the cynicism scale are questionable.     

Governing budgetary commons: what can we learn from Elinor Ostrom?

This article discusses the insights that Elinor Ostrom’s work on common-pool resources and governing the commons can provide for the literature on fiscal commons. Institutional approaches to public finance often employ the metaphor of ‘budgetary commons’. Although intuitively appealing, the notion of budgetary commons faces the danger of becoming a catch-all term that is simply taken as a starting point for an inquiry, without scrutinising the fit between the metaphor and the actual setting. In addressing this shortcoming, the literature on budgetary commons can learn from Elinor Ostrom and the analytical approaches she has advocated in her research on natural commons. This article brings out insights from Ostrom’s work that would be particularly useful for institutional analysis of budgeting. It shows that institutional approaches to public finance can draw on Ostrom’s work with regard to the general approach for examining institutional configurations and their evolution over time, the analytical structures she uses for conceptualising the problems occurring on the commons, the desire to understand institutional complexity in real-life settings, and her scepticism of over-simplified models that are often used for describing and understanding the problems of common-pool resources.