The public health implications of United Kingdom offender healthcare policy: a holistic approach to achieve individual and societal gains

In 2009, two seminal documents were published by the United Kingdom (UK) government concerning healthcare services for offenders. The Bradley review into diversion for people with mental health problems and learning disabilities emphasised a need to improve offender health, not least because of the high economic costs to society as a whole resulting from unresolved mental illness, physical ill-health and substance abuse problems commonly experienced by offenders. The Bradley review made wide-reaching recommendations for change, requiring strong partnership between health and justice agencies at both central government and local levels. A framework for the delivery of Bradley's recommendations has been set out in Improving health, supporting justice, the Department of Health's offender health strategy which sets out the direction of travel for the next 10 years.This paper discusses the reality of working toward improving health services for this marginalised group in the context of the influence of the current straitened financial climate on the allocation of resources to publically funded healthcare in the UK; it examines the historically based, and widely held, belief in the principle of “less eligibility” within our society, whereby there is much public and media resistance to allocating resources to improving care for offenders when other, more “deserving”, groups are perceived to be in continuing need.     

The Political Ecology of Opinion in Big-Donor Neighborhoods

Major campaign donors are highly concentrated geographically. A relative handful of neighborhoods accounts for the bulk of all money contributed to political campaigns. Public opinion in these elite neighborhoods is very different from that in the country as a whole and in low-donor areas. On a number of prominent political issues, the prevailing viewpoint in high-donor neighborhoods can be characterized as cosmopolitan and libertarian, rather than populist or moralistic. Merging Federal Election Commission contribution data with three recent large-scale national surveys, we find that these opinion differences are not solely the result of big-donor areas’ high concentration of wealthy and educated individuals. Instead, these neighborhoods have a distinctive political ecology that likely reinforces and intensifies biases in opinion. Given that these locales are the origin for the lion’s share of campaign donations, they may steer the national political agenda in unrepresentative directions.     

Public Eyewitness Confidence Can Be Influenced by the Presence of Other Witnesses

Four experiments were conducted to examine whether witnesses' public confidence ratings differ from their private ratings when there are social pressures to use confidence as an impression-management tool. In all four experiments, participants answered questions about a source event (a series of faces in the first three experiments and a simulated crime scene in the fourth). Half of the responses and confidence ratings were given privately and anonymously, and half were given publicly in front of one or more mock jurors. Two central findings emerged from the results. First, public confidence differed from private confidence only when there was more than one witness; when there were no other witnesses, public and private confidence were the same. Second, the direction of the change in public confidence in the multiple-witness settings was influenced by whether or not there was a possibility of being contradicted by the other witnesses. When there was no chance that the participants' responses could be contradicted, they raised their confidence ratings in public; when there was a chance that the other witnesses might contradict them, the participants lowered their public confidence ratings. The results are discussed in terms of self-presentation theory and implications for the legal system.     

Navya-Nyāya on Subject–Predicate and Related Pairs

This paper focuses on the relevance of Indian epistemology and the philosophy of language to contemporary Western philosophy. Hence it discusses (1) how perceptual, inferential and verbal cognitions are related to the same object, (2) how to draw the distinction in meaning between transformationally equivalent sentences, such as ‘Brutus killed Caesar’ and ‘Caesar was killed by Brutus’, and (3) why the predicate-expression is to be considered as unsaturated but the subjectexpression as saturated. In order to answer these questions the Nyāya philosophers have discussed the distinction between several pairs of terms, such as ‘subject–predicate’, ‘qualificand–qualifier’ and ‘the first term–the second term’. This paper also deals with the Nyāya conception of inference for others, and the interpretations of the premise called ‘upanaya’ (‘application’) or the cognition called ‘parāmar?a’ (‘operation’).     

Exploring gender differences in dating violence/harassment prevention programming in middle schools: results from a randomized experiment

In this study, we randomly assigned 123 sixth and seventh grade classrooms from seven middle schools in the greater Cleveland area to one of two five-session curricula addressing gender violence/sexual harassment (GV/SH) or to a no-treatment control group. A baseline survey and two follow-up surveys were administered immediately after the treatment (Wave 2) and about six months post-treatment (Wave 3). In an earlier paper, we demonstrated the effectiveness of two approaches to youth GV/SH prevention programming (a fact-based, law and justice curriculum and an interaction-based curriculum). In this paper, we explored whether these largely positive findings remain for both girls and boys, including whether girls experience higher levels of GV/SH than boys. Most of our statistical models proved to be non-statistically significant. However, in 2 of our 48 victimization/perpetration (any violence, sexual violence and non-sexual violence) models (across two post-intervention follow-up points), we observed that the interventions reduced peer (male or female, non-dating partner) sexual violence victimization and reduced peer perpetration, but another outcome model indicated that the interventions increased dating perpetration. These mixed findings will need to be explored further in future research. Regarding our primary research question, we observed no statistically significant differences for the treatment multiplied by gender interaction terms for any of the perpetration or victimization outcome models, suggesting that the treatment had similar effects on girls and boys. However, we did observe that boys are more involved in violence than girls: both as victims and perpetrators. Boys experienced significantly more of three types of victimization from peers and dating partners compared to what girls experienced at the hands of their peers and dating partners. As perpetrators, boys committed more sexual victimization against peers (immediately post-intervention only) and more sexual victimization against dating partners than girls. The implications of these results are discussed.     

The mental health and substance misuse needs of male ex-armed forces personnel in prison

Ex-armed forces personnel constitute the largest known occupational group in prison but there is little evidence regarding their mental health, or substance misuse, needs. A total of 105 participants were interviewed and measures assessing symptoms of common mental health (CMH) problems and substance misuse were completed along with a review of their health care records. Forty (38%) participants screened for current CMH problems (CCMH) and high levels of dual symptomology and alcohol misuse were assessed. Thirty-nine (37%) had a mental health diagnosis recorded, most commonly for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression and personality disorder. Those who screened for a CCMH problem were more likely to have pre-service vulnerability to negative health outcomes and those with dual symptomology were more likely to have experienced deployment during their service. Findings suggest the mental health needs of this group are similar to the general prison population. Potentially higher prevalences of PTSD and alcohol misuse may direct service provision.     

Older Youth in Extended Out-of-home Care

The purpose of this study is to examine the permanency experiences of older youth, age 18–21 in out-of-home placements and placement characteristics that influence age of exit from child welfare. Findings suggest a difference between age groups with more 18-year old youth exiting to emancipation than youth who exit at age 21. A higher number of spells in care and a higher number of placement changes during the last spell were associated with exit to emancipation. Additional study findings suggests that youth who leave care before the age of 21 may be more vulnerable than youth who stay through age 21. Implications for practice are discussed.     

Are the misinformed more punitive? Beliefs and misconceptions in forensic psychology

Misconceptions about psycho-legal issues are widespread and threaten the fabric of our legal system. The present study examines how misconception endorsement is related to tough-on-crime beliefs and sentencing decisions. Two hundred and fifty-six students completed a 50-item questionnaire assessing misconceptions related to forensic psychology and determined sentences in four mock-jury scenarios at the beginning and end of an introductory forensic psychology course. Misconception endorsement decreased significantly from 32% to 21%, with every subscale (police and interrogations, service provision, mental illness, memory and cognition, tough on crime) experiencing a significant decrease from pre-test to post-test. This drop in endorsement is meaningful, as misconceptions and beliefs are typically very difficult to change. Additionally, misconception endorsement was positively correlated with tough-on-crime beliefs and punitive (mock) sentencing. This study provides a valuable resource for endorsement rates of psycho-legal misconceptions and the propensity of individual misconceptions to change. It also makes a strong argument for the usefulness of psychology and law courses in reducing potentially harmful misconceptions and tough-on-crime beliefs.