Good practice in eliciting disclosures from sex offenders

Abstract

Eliciting useful and reliable disclosures from sex offenders is imperative for effective risk management. Responsiveness to accurate self-report by sexual offenders of their risky thinking and problematic behaviours ensures that offenders are dealt with at the correct risk level. This requires practitioners to use a range of constructive strategies and techniques for eliciting disclosures. Drawing on a recent study that investigated the nature and usefulness of disclosures, this paper explores the inherent challenges and identifies best practice in this important area of work.     

Working with sex offenders in a climate of public blame and anxiety: How to make defensible decisions for risk

Abstract

Work with sex offenders takes place in a climate of public blame and anxiety. This requires practitioners to adopt the highest standards of practice to ensure that defensible decisions are made. These are decisions that must withstand hindsight scrutiny in the light of a risk management failure. This paper reviews the key practice points that will assist practitioners in making defensible decisions, and the key challenges for practitioners in this challenging area of work.     

Second-order effects plus pan-European political swings: An analysis of European Parliament elections across time

After seven waves of European Parliament elections and European Union enlargement to 27 states, the time is ripe to analyse the temporal robustness of the second-order model. We pool all the elections in a single evaluation and also look at election-by-election variations. We analyse changes in party performance over time in all EU states as well as in the ‘original 10’, to see whether any cross-time changes are driven by the changing composition of the EU. We also look for pan-European trends in each election, as a way identifying ‘European effects’ distinct from second-order effects. There are few consistent winners and losers, although socialist parties performed worse in the last three elections than their size and government status would predict.     

Interviewing to Detect Deception: When to Disclose the Evidence?

Research shows that there are few objective cues to deception. However, it may be possible to create such cues by strategic interviewing techniques. Strategic Use of Evidence (SUE) is one such technique. The basic premise of the SUE technique is that liars and truth tellers employ different counter-interrogation strategies, and that the evidence against the suspect can be used to exploit these differences in strategies. This study examined the effect of the timing of evidence disclosure (early vs. late vs. gradual) on verbal cues to deception. We predicted that late disclosure would be most effective in differentiating between liars and truth-tellers, and that cues to deception in the gradual disclosure condition would progressively disappear due to the suspects’ realization that evidence against them exists. That is, we expected that liars in the gradual presentation condition would become more consistent with the evidence over time. A sample of 86 undergraduate students went through a mock-terrorism paradigm (half innocent, half guilty), and were subsequently interviewed using one of three disclosure strategies: early, gradual, and late disclosure. We measured statement-evidence inconsistencies as cues to deception . Results supported our predictions in that cues to deception were most pronounced in the late disclosure condition. Contrary to our expectations, the results suggested that presenting the evidence gradually may put innocent suspects at a higher risk of misclassification as they seem to adopt a strategy that is more similar to guilty suspects.     

Hidden Law‐Making in the Province of Medical Jurisprudence

Judges articulate their role in controversial cases of medical ethics in terms of deference to Parliament, lest their personal morality be improperly brought to bear. This hides a wide range of law‐making activities, as parliamentary sovereignty is diffused by ‘intermediate law‐makers’, and judicial activity is more subtle than the deference account implies. The nature of litigation raises questions about the contributions of other legal personnel and also the nature of the parties' interests in test‐cases. While judges demonstrate an awareness of some of these issues and anxiety about the constitutional legitimacy of their work, a more nuanced account is needed of their proper role. This may be built on Austin's theory of tacit legislation. It may draw from human rights law. However, considerable work is required before the complexities of hidden law‐making can be properly incorporated into the province of medical jurisprudence.     

Policy networks and the GM crops issue: assessing the utility of a dialectical model of policy networks

A dialectical model of policy networks is deployed to analyse policy change in the area of GM crops in the UK. The model uses an analysis of the interaction between agents and structure, network and context and network and outcomes to understand and explain how policy change has occurred. A key advantage of the model is that it increases understanding of network transformation, explanation of which has been an alleged weakness of the policy network approach. However, this case study does throw up some weaknesses with the model, including the tendency of the model to emphasize the role of 'insider' agents and downplay the role of 'outsiders' in the policy process.     

Anxiety overflow: Implications of the IVF surrogacy case and the ethical and moral limits of reproductive technologies in Britain

The findings of research into a self-help organisation for surrogacy are discussed. Initial theoretical framework of “medicalisation” changed when no evidence to support cooptation was found. Research into the patterns of development of commercial surrogacy revealed expansion in the 1980s, followed by contraction in the 1990s revealing a lack of consensus within patriarchy regarding its implementation. My explanation for this trend and central thesis is, “anxiety overflow.” Recent trends in the National Health Service (NHS) and decisions by the Human Fertilisation and Embryo Authority are considered, and I suggest that, ethically, morally, and pragmatically, a ceiling has been reached regarding the social acceptability of some contentious technologies. The implications of these findings are used as a backdrop to discuss fears held by some feminists regarding the escalation of techniques used in assisted reproduction.