Does Treatment Quality Matter?

Research Summary

The Florida Department of Juvenile Justice has implemented a process to evaluate the treatment quality of interventions provided statewide in all long‐term residential programs. In the current study, we examine the predictive validity of this treatment quality component in the prediction of recidivism of youth (N = 2,397) who completed juvenile justice residential programs from July 1, 2013 to June 30, 2014. We use hierarchical linear modeling to assess the effects of treatment quality (as youth are nested within programs), controlling for demographic and criminal history factors. The results indicate that higher average treatment quality scores of interventions received within a residential program decreased the likelihood of subsequent arrest, conviction, and reincarceration, whereas the highest treatment quality score of any specific intervention provided within the program decreased the odds of reincarceration only.

Policy Implications

In this study, we confirm the importance of fidelity and implementation quality in the provision of crime prevention treatment interventions to serious, deep‐end juvenile offenders. Additionally, our results shed light on the ability of a juvenile justice agency to measure treatment quality in a substantively meaningful way with the use of limited additional resources. The services provided to keep communities safe, prevent future offending, and rehabilitate juvenile offenders must be held accountable for producing such outcomes, and one method of measuring such compliance is to evaluate the quality of the interventions with respect to staff training, fidelity adherence, evaluation, and corrective action processes.     

Gillick v West Norfolk and Wisbech Area Health Authority

England's Court of Appeal, Civil Division, ruled that parents had the right to prevent a physician at the local health authority from prescribing contraceptives to girls under the age of 16 without parental consent. Since a girl was legally incapable of giving valid consent in other matters before that age, neither could she give valid consent to contraception or abortion. A doctor who provided contraception or abortion treatment to a girl under 16, except in an emergency or with permission of the court, would infringe on the legal rights of the parents. An appeal was taken to the House of Lords.     

The Attitudes Towards Dating Violence Scales: Development and Initial Validation

This study describes the development and validation of three Attitudes Towards Male Dating Violence (AMDV) Scales and three Attitudes Towards Female Dating Violence (AFDV) Scales. These scales measure attitudes toward use of psychological, physical, and sexual dating violence, respectively, by boys and by girls. Eight hundred twenty-three students from grades 7, 9, and 11 participated in the validation study. All six scales have good internal consistencies. As predicted, students were more accepting of girls' use of violence than of boys' use of violence, and boys were more accepting of violence than were girls. The six scales were positively correlated with traditional attitudes toward gender roles and with each other, providing evidence for their construct validity. Higher scores on the AMDV Scales were related to boys' past use of violence in dating relationships and to their having aggressive friends, supporting their criterion-related validity. Higher scores on the AFDV Scales were associated with girls' past use of dating violence but not with their having aggressive friends, providing partial support for their criterion-related validity. Singly or in combination, the Attitudes Towards Dating Violence Scales can be used to increase our understanding of the development and maintenance of violence-supportive attitudes in adolescents of all ages.     

Digital dilemmas: the unintended consequences of election technology

Digital technologies are increasingly used in elections around the world. Where the resources and capacity of the state are limited, some have argued that such technologies make it possible to rapidly “leapfrog” to cleaner and more credible elections. This article argues that the growing use of these technologies has been driven by the fetishization of technology rather than by rigorous assessment of their effectiveness; that they may create significant opportunities for corruption that (among other things) vitiate their potential impact; and that they carry significant opportunity costs. Indeed, precisely because new technology tends to deflect attention away from more “traditional” strategies, the failure of digital checks and balances often renders an electoral process even more vulnerable to rigging than it was before. These observations are not intended as a manifesto against the digitization of elections; apart from anything else, we argue that the drivers of the adoption of these new methods are too powerful to resist. But the analysis draws attention to the importance of more careful assessments of the problems, as well as the benefits, of such technologies – and to the need for more careful planning in their deployment.     

Civil Affairs Authorities Bent on Protecting People s Basic Rights

In response to the global financial crisis,China's civil affairs au-thorities redoubled their effort in 2009 to improve the livelihood of the Chinese people and protect their basic rights and interests under the constitutional principle of respectingand protecting human rights.     

MDS use with crime scene data replicates poorly: response to Goodwill,Alison, and Humann (this issue) and Davis (this issue)

Abstract

Examinations of treatment attrition form an important – although sometimes neglected – component of evaluating a correctional programme's effectiveness in reducing recidivism. Previous research has identified offender characteristics that predict non-completion. This study investigated non-completion in 138 high-risk, violent male prisoners attending an intensive cognitive–behavioural programme. Almost one-third of men who commenced it did not complete the 7-month programme. Most asked to leave of their own accord, or were removed for ongoing offending. In contrast to previous research, no support was found for the hypothesis that those who terminated treatment prematurely were more in need of intervention than those who completed the programme; non-completers did not differ from completers on static estimates of criminal risk, PCL-R scores, demographic variables or self-report scales measuring dynamic risk factors. It was concluded that successful prediction using variables related to criminal risk and criminogenic need depends both on the characteristics of programme participants, and on contextual factors such as programme policies: when high-risk high needs offenders are a programme's target clientele, variables related to risk and need will have limited predictive utility. From a practice perspective, the programme was successful in retaining through to completion a relatively untreatable group: high-risk offenders with moderate to high PCL-R scores.     

The chief financial officers act of 1990: a new approach to solving federal financial management problems

The Chief Financial Officers (CFO) Act of 1990 (Public Law 101-576) promises to be a new era not only in federal management and accountability, but also in efforts to gain financial control of government operations. The CFO Act provides for broad reforms that will (1) properly organize the financial management function in government agencies, (2) provide the necessary systems and control to manage government programs, and (3) measure performance through financial statements, cost information, and other data, so that prompt corrective actions can be taken.

The CFO Act is expected to bring fundamental change to the federal government's weak, outdated, and inefficient financial systems. Meeting the CFO Act's challenge will be difficult, but should result in (1) improved financial systems and information with which to manage government operations, (2) better ability to foresee problems, and thus deal with them, and (3) greater accountability by those managing government programs.     

商标注册不得侵犯在先权利之姓名权——易建联公司与“易建联”商标注册争议纠纷案解析

一、引言 在现代市场经济社会中，商标是连接消费者和厂商之间的桥梁和纽带。商标作为识别不同厂商之间生产经营的商品或者服务的区别性标记，也是厂商确立商业信誉，赢得消费者青睐，从而建立市场竞争优势的重要武器。商标保护的本质就是厂商在商标上负载的商业信誉和商品声誉。为了使消费者建立正确的排他性认知，商标法通过相应制度的构建来保...     

A Systematic Approach to Domestic Abuse–Informed Child Custody Decision Making in Family Law Cases

This article introduces an approach to domestic violence–informed decision making developed under the auspices of the National Child Custody Differentiation Project, a cooperative undertaking among the Battered Women's Justice Project, the Association of Family & Conciliation Courts, the National Council of Juvenile & Family Court Judges, Praxis International, and the U.S. Department of Justice Office on Violence Against Women. This approach has four essential elements: (1) identifying domestic abuse; (2) understanding the nature and context of domestic abuse; (3) determining the implications of abuse; and (4) accounting for the nature, context, and implications of abuse in all custody‐related recommendations and decisions.

Key Points for the Family Court Community:
• Applying a systematic approach to domestic violence can help practitioners identify, understand, and account for abuse in family law cases.
• The approach recommended here is suitable for use by anyone who is involved in a contested child custody case at any stage of the proceeding.
• The specific application of the recommended approach will vary depending upon the practitioner's role and function in the case, relationship to the parties, and access to information, as well as the nature of the proceeding and the issues to be decided.