‘Their life in your hands’: the experiences of prison-based psychologists conducting risk assessments with indeterminate sentenced prisoners in the United Kingdom

ABSTRACT

Assessing prisoners’ risk of recidivism and making risk-management recommendations is central to the work of prison-based psychologists. Risk assessment is particularly crucial when it involves indeterminate sentenced prisoners: psychologists’ recommendations have potentially significant consequences both for prisoners and the public. However, little is known about psychologists’ experiences of conducting such high stakes risk assessments. This paper reports the results of an exploration of psychologists’ experiences, via interviews and discussions with qualified, prison-based psychologists. Analysis using Grounded Theory methods identified one super-ordinate category of meaning, namely The Challenging Context of Risk Assessment, which comprised two sub-categories: (1) pressure of limited resources and (2) pressure of the environment. An additional major category, Risk Assessment as a Weighty Task, comprised three sub-categories: psychologists described (1) a weight of responsibility relating to the magnitude and range of their responsibilities; (2) a weight of expectation from colleagues to provide solutions, and (3) the trainee dilemma associated with the need to balance development of trainee psychologists’ competence in risk assessment with being held accountable for their work. Understanding qualified psychologists’ experiences of undertaking risk assessments with indeterminate sentenced prisoners can facilitate improvements and build on areas of existing good practice.     

The Future of Staatsrecht: Dominance,Demise or Demystification?

The relationship between the national and the European legal orders is affected by the way it is theorised by the national constitutional traditions. This article will explore the opposing constitutional assumptions in Germany that underlie two interpretations of what in Anglo-Saxon countries is known as constitutional law: Staatsrecht and Verfassungsrecht. The two contending visions are generated from different conceptions of the European Union and, especially, the state. The origins of the German constitutional traditions will be historically reconstructed. Although Staatsrecht has historically offered the dominant interpretation of public law, Verfassungsrecht has 'de-mystified' the state. To continue to offer a coherent interpretation Staatsrecht need not abandon the state as its central concept, but will need to re-examine the content of the concept in light of modern forms of constitutionalism and European integration.     

The maternity care needs of refugee and asylum seeking women in Ireland

This article presents some of the findings from the original research carried out with asylum seeking and refugee women in Ireland who were pregnant or who had recently given birth. The explosion in numbers in Ireland from 1998 onwards has been such that this group now comprises more than one in five of every birth in the country's three major maternity hospitals, all based in Dublin. The article explores the background reasons for the major increase in recent years of this group of women. It discusses the difficult circumstances encountered by women who must engage with a system of maternity care unused to such complex needs, amidst a general policy climate of uncertainty and even hostility towards asylum seekers. The research findings contribute to the feminist literature on maternity and challenge us to examine the way in which globalization is impacting on women as mothers and the need for challenging Western states anew on the development of a more coherent model of maternity care in response to the needs of such women.