The Criminogenic,Clinical, and Social Problems of Forensic and Civil Psychiatric Patients

Forensic psychiatric patients consume an increasing proportion of mental health resources in Canada and the United States. To inform mental health policy and practice, we compared the criminogenic, clinical, and social problems of forensic patients to those of civilly committed psychiatric patients in two Canadian studies. We predicted that forensic patients would score higher on criminogenic problems and lower on clinical and social problems than civil patients in two studies: one comparing 83 forensic and 189 civil inpatients on a clinician-completed form, the Resident Assessment Instrument--Mental Health, at an urban mental health center, and the second comparing 423 forensic and 178 civil patients assessed at different times using the Patient Problem Survey. The two studies were quite similar in their findings, despite differences in their samples, measures, and data collection methods. In both studies, forensic patients were similar to or lower than civil psychiatric patients in all criminogenic, clinical, and social problems. We conclude that forensic mental health services would benefit greatly by drawing from knowledge accumulated in the general psychiatric literature. This finding also supports the idea that many forensic patients can be appropriately diverted to nonforensic mental health services.     

Canada: coroner's inquest into the methadone-related death of a prisoner

A coroner's jury made 14 recommendations at the conclusion of an inquest into the death of Sonia Faith Keepness, a 37-year-old inmate at Prince Grove Correction Centre in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan.     

Training young americans for the new-manufacturing jobs

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Training young americans for the new-manufacturing jobs     

Value Conflict, Group Affect, and the Issue of Campaign Finance

The issue of campaign finance reform creates a potential conflict between the democratic values of expression and equality. Using a unique experiment embedded in a national survey of the American electorate, we examine the extent to which group affect influences citizens' commitment to these values and how it contributes to the resolution of value conflict. We find that citizens' commitment to the values of expression and equality in the campaign finance system is structured by their feelings toward those whose rights and influence are perceived to be at stake. Our analysis further shows that the effects of group affect are conditioned by issue frame. The effects of group affect are less pronounced when campaign finance is framed as an issue of political expression and rights than when it is framed in terms of political equality and influence. Finally, we find that affective information contributes to the resolution of value conflict by helping citizens to make tradeoffs between competing values in judgment situations.