Neuropsychological and Criminological Features of Female Homicide Offenders

Few studies have examined life history and cognitive characteristics unique to female homicide offenders. Understanding these characteristics could aid in risk assessment for extreme violence in this group of offenders. The current study utilized t‐tests or chi‐square tests to compare 27 female and 81 male homicide offenders on psychiatric, neurologic, criminal, and cognitive characteristics. Additionally, we explored the role of abuse history in female offenders through Kruskal–Wallis or Fisher's exact tests. Results indicate that in comparison with male counterparts, females are more likely to have history of mood disorder, borderline personality disorder, and abuse. Cognitively, female homicide offenders exhibit circumscribed cognitive impairment in verbal abilities and perform similarly to male homicide offenders across most cognitive tasks. Within the female offender group, history of sexual abuse is associated with higher rates of impulsive homicide and poorer verbal abilities. These findings provide preliminary evidence for distinct factors associated with homicide in women.     

Cyberbullying in Portuguese Schools: Prevalence and Characteristics

This study examined the extent and nature of cyberbullying in 23 Portuguese schools. A sample of 3,525 sixth-, eighth-, and eleventh-grade students completed a self-response questionnaire assessing their perceptions and experiences of cyberbullying. The findings showed that 7.6% of students have been victimized, and 3.9% have bullied others at least once over the last year. The incidences of victimization were higher for females and for the older students. In contrast, more boys reported having bullied others in the eleventh grade. The most frequent medium of cyberbullying was via websites, whilst sending offensive messages was the most widely reported type of behavior. Telling someone about cyberbullying is among the most frequent coping strategies used by cybervictims, who usually chose to tell their friends rather than adults. Implications of these findings for students, schools, and parents are discussed.     

Participatory appraisal in the UK urban health sector

Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA) and Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) emerged in the context of working with rural communities in developing countries. But the principles of participation and of action-oriented research are equally valid for development work in the urban sector, and in industrialised countries. This article describes the use of participatory appraisal techniques in disadvantaged communities in the UK, in the fields of health and social welfare. Drawing on a case-study of her work, the author looks at the practical, organisational, and political difficulties inherent in bringing together multi-agency professionals and public-sector workers, and members of local communities, and in developing a functional consensus between them.     

Reform of the stability and growth pact: Looking beyond the commission's proposal

Policymakers, military strategists and academics all increasingly hail climate change as a security issue. This article revisits the (comparatively) long-standing “environmental security debate” and asks what lessons that earlier debate holds for the push towards making climate change a security issue. Two important claims are made. First, the emerging climate security debate is in many ways a re-run of the earlier dispute. It features many of the same proponents and many of the same disagreements. These disagreements concern, amongst other things, the nature of the threat, the referent object of security and the appropriate policy responses. Second, given its many different interpretations, from an environmentalist perspective, securitisation of the climate is not necessarily a positive development.     

From colonization to reconciliation: Increasing the collaborative capacity of public servants

In call to action 57, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission calls upon federal, provincial and territorial governments to enhance the skills and knowledge of public servants. Leveraging collaboration theory and collaborative capacity, this article delves deeper into the skills, attitudes and knowledge required of public servants who regularly work with First Nations organizations and governments. Using findings from a health care collaboration between First Nations, federal and provincial governments in Alberta with 25 mid- to senior-level leaders, this participatory action research highlights the importance of member capacity to strong collaboration as Canada embarks on the journey from colonization to reconciliation.     

Attitude to personality disorder among prison officers working in a dangerous and severe personality disorder unit

BACKGROUND: It is well established that staff attitudes to personality disordered patients are commonly negative, characterised by pessimism and rejection. A recent study in forensic psychiatric hospitals has described the psychological and social factors underlying positive attitudes, and suggested that staff with more positive attitudes perform better and are less stressed. AIM: To assess whether it is possible to predict which staff will adjust positively to working with personality disordered people. More specifically to confirm links between attitude to personality disorder and: job performance; perception of managers; personal well-being; burnout; and interaction rates with inmates. METHODS: The opening of a new Dangerous and Severe Personality Disorder unit within a UK prison allowed a longitudinal study of prison officers to be performed, in which a number of measures, including the Attitude to Personality Disorder Questionnaire (APDQ), were collected at three fixed points (at baseline, eight and sixteen months after the opening of the unit). RESULTS: Attitude to Personality Disorder varied over the course of the study, and changes in attitude were linked to events experienced by individual officers. More positive attitude to personality disorder was associated with improved general health and job performance, decreased burnout, and favourable perception of managers. CONCLUSIONS: Attitude to Personality Disorder has important outcomes, and is responsive to the psychosocial environment. Its measurement is not useful for staff selection, because of low stability over lengthy time periods. The APDQ has been demonstrated to be valid measure of attitude to PD, and potentially useful for outcome studies, or benchmarking between units.     

Reviews

K. Post and P. Wright, Socialism and Underdevelopment. London and New York: Routledge, 1989, x+204 pp.

Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams. Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989, viii+307 pp., £26.00.

Henry S. Rowen and Charles Wolf Jr. eds., The Future of the Soviet Empire. foreword by Donald H. Rumsfeld. London: Macmillan Press, 1988, xx+368 pp., £27.50.

Alexander Shtromas and Morton A. Kaplan eds., The Soviet Union and the Challenge of the Future—Volume 1: Stasis and Change. New York: Paragon House Publishers, 1988, xx+555 pp., $29.95.

Alvin Z. Rubinstein, Moscow's Third World Strategy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989, xi+311 pp., $29.95.

Leo Cooper, The Political Economy of Soviet Military Power. London: Macmillan, 1989, xi+263 pp., £29.50.

Clive Archer ed., The Soviet Union and Northern Waters. London: Routledge for the Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1988, xvii+261 pp., £35.00.

Jeffry Klugman, The New Soviet Elite: How They Think and What They Want. New York: Praeger, 1989, 237 pp., $24.95.

Bruno Grancelli, Soviet Management and Labour Relations. London: Allen and Unwin, 1988, xvi+248 pp., £28.00.

Ellen Mickiewicz, Split Signals: Television and Politics in the Soviet Union. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988, xi+286 pp., £18.00.

William van den Bercken, Ideology and Atheism in the Soviet Union (Religion and Society 28). Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1989, viii+191 pp., DM 98.00.

Stephen White, The Origins of Detente: The Genoa Conference and Soviet‐Western Relations, 1921–1922. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, xv+255 pp., £25.00.

Anita Prazmowska, Britain, Poland and the Eastern Front, 1939. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, viii+231 pp., £25.00.

Ivo Banac, With Stalin against Tito: Cominformist Splits in Yugoslav Communism. London: Cornell University Press, 1988, XVI+294 pp., $35.75.

Harold Lydall, Yugoslavia in Crisis. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989, xii+255 pp., £25.00.

Josef C. Brada and Istvan Dobozi, eds., The Hungarian Economy in the 1980s: Reforming the System and Adjusting to External Shocks. London: JAI Press Inc., 1988, xv+277 pp., $58.50 (Instit), $35.10 (Indiv.).

J. C. Brada, E. A. Hewett & T. A. Wolf, eds., Economic Adjustment and Reform in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1988, xxv+428 pp., £54.00.

John P. Hardt and Carl H. McMillan, Planned Economies Confronting the Challenge of the 1980s. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, xiv+193 pp., £25.00.

Pedro Ramet, ed., Eastern Christianity and Politics in the Twentieth Century. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1988, viii+465 pp., $47.50.

Jan Zielonka, Political Ideas in Contemporary Poland. Avebury: Gower, 1989, ix+210 pp., £25.00.

A. J. Motyl, Will the Non‐Russians Rebel? State Ethnicity and Stability in the USSR. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, xii+188 pp., $27.45.

Mike Dennis, German Democratic Republic. Politics, Economics and Society. London and New York: Pinter, 1988, vii+223 pp., h/b £25.00, p/b £8.95.

Marilyn Rueschemeyer and Christiane Lemke eds., The Quality of Life in the German Democratic Republic. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1989, xiii+242 pp., $40.00.

Stephen F. Burant ed., East Germany: a Country Study. Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 1988, 3rd ed., xxxiii+433 pp.

Artemy Troitsky, Back in the USSR: The True Story of Rock in Russia. (Title of British edition: Tell Tchaikovsky the News...) Boston, MA, and London: Faber and Faber, 1988, 160 pp., $9.95 p/b.