Simulating Emotional Responses in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: An fMRI Study

This study tested the extent to which coached participants can simulate the neural responses of participants with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) when they are presented with signals of fear. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to study blood oxygenation level-dependent signal during the presentations of fearful and neutral faces under both conscious and nonconscious (masked) conditions. Participants comprised 12 patients with PTSD and 12 trauma-exposed controls who were instructed to simulate PTSD. During conscious fear processing, simulators showed greater activation in the left amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) than PTSD participants. By contrast, during nonconscious processing, PTSD participants had greater MPFC activation than simulators. These findings suggest that coached simulators produce a profile of ‘over-responding’ to fear when controlled conscious processing is possible, but are not able to simulate the exaggerated medial prefrontal responses observed in PTSD participants under conditions of nonconscious processing.     

Trepidation among the “keepers”: Gendered Perceptions of Fear and Risk of Victimization among Corrections Officers

Determining the attitudes of correctional officers relative to their level of fear and risk of victimization is important to investigate due to the relationship of the conditions of confinement and the care and custody of offenders. Furthermore, consideration of such attitudes by gender may uncover differences because of the unique obstacles female corrections officers face. This study examines the level of fear and risk of both inmate and staff related victimization by gender through administering a survey to all corrections officers employed in the adult prisons within one-state. The overall analysis indicated some level of apprehension among officers regarding their fear and risk of victimization for inmate-precipitated victimization more than staff-to-staff victimization. Female officers were also more likely to demonstrate a higher level of perceived fear and risk of inmate-precipitated and staff-precipitated victimization. In addition, race and security level were shown to be significant as predictors of both fear and perceived risk of victimization among officers.     

Bargaining in the shadow of the ballot box: causes and consequences of local voter initiatives

This paper provides one of the first empirical analyses of the local voter initiative. Using a unique and comprehensive dataset from California, it analyzes determinants of local initiatives and effects of these measures on municipal finances. Results indicate that initiatives occur more frequently in large and diverse jurisdictions with more recent movers, voters unaffiliated with a major political party, and public employees. Effects of city size are partly offset by district- or ward-level elections. Contrary to previous research on statewide initiatives, this study detects a positive and weakly significant relationship between local initiative use and own-source revenues per capita and no association between initiatives and the proportion of funds raised from fees. These divergent findings may reflect distinctive features of the local context, including greater latitude for political bargaining and the centrality of land use, as well as potential constraining effects of statewide initiatives in California.     

The impact of sentencing options on recidivism among domestic violence offenders: A case study

Past domestic violence research has tended to focus on issues related to law enforcement responses. More recently, the focus has shifted to other components of the criminal justice system, such as prosecution and correctional responses, to determine the best way to reduce domestic violence. This project is a case study of 177 male convicted domestic violence offenders who were sentenced to one of five options: community corrections; jail; a suspended sentence; private counseling, a fine, or restitution; and advisement. The focus of this inquiry is on the likelihood of each sanction reducing future arrests and convictions for domestic violence. The results reveal that no one sanction is more effective than the other options. A draft of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Criminal Justice Association, Chattanooga, TN, 1999. The authors would like to thank the editor and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this paper. This work stems from a project started by Chesterfield County and Melissa Gross to complete her Master of Social Work degree requirements. The primary authors of this piece are Jill A. Gordon and Laura J. Moriarty. The ordering of names are alphabetical after Melissa Gross.     

Effects of personality,interrogation techniques and plausibility in an experimental false confession paradigm

Purpose. The goal of the present study was to investigate the effects of personality variables, interrogation techniques and the plausibility level of an alleged transgression on the experimental elicitation of false confessions. Methods. Two hundred and nineteen undergraduate students assessed on measures of compliance, self‐esteem, locus of control and interrogative suggestibility participated in the Kassin and Kiechel (1996) paradigm. Experimental manipulations included minimization and maximization interrogation techniques and high and low plausibility of the alleged typing mistake to examine rates of false confession and internalization. Results. The overall false confession and internalization rates across all conditions were 43 and 10%, respectively. An increased likelihood of false confession behaviour was associated with higher Shift scores on the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale, the use of minimization interrogation techniques and an increase in the plausibility of the allegation. Females were more likely to falsely confess than males in the high plausibility condition, whereas Caucasian and Asian participants were equally likely to falsely confess. Personality variables, such as compliance, most influenced the behaviour of males and Asians. Conclusions. The results of this study offer insight into false confession behaviour, suggesting that individuals who have a tendency to change their responses in the face of negative feedback may be more prone to false confession behaviour. The findings also serve to highlight the dangers of using minimization interrogation techniques and elucidate the limited generalizability of the paradigm to situations in which the alleged transgression is less plausible.     

Regulating Law Firm Ethics Management: An Empirical Assessment of an Innovation in Regulation of the Legal Profession in New South Wales

The Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) was the first jurisdiction to fully deregulate law firm structure and allow alternative business structures in the legal profession. At the same time it also introduced an innovation in regulation of the legal profession, requiring that incorporated legal practices implement ‘appropriate management systems’ for ensuring the provision of legal services in compliance with professional ethical obligations. This paper presents a preliminary empirical evaluation of the impact of this attempt at ‘management‐based regulation’. We find that the NSW requirement that firms self‐assess their ethics management leads to a large and statistically significant drop in complaints. The (self‐assessed) level of implementation of ethics management infrastructure, however, does not make any difference. The relevance of these findings to debates about deprofessionalization, managerialism, and commercialism in the legal profession is discussed, and the NSW approach is distinguished from the more heavy‐handed English legal aid approach to regulating law firm quality management.     

Perceptions and Predictors of Children's Credibility of a Unique Event and an Instance of a Repeated Event

Perceptions of children's credibility were studied in two experiments wherein participants watched a videotape of a 4- to 5- or a 6- to 7-year old child report details of a play session that had been experienced once (single-event) or was the last in a series of four similar play sessions (repeat-event). The child's report was classified as high or low accurate. In Experiments 1 and 2, reports of repeat-event children were judged to be less believable on several measures. In Experiment 1, younger children were viewed as less credible than older children. In both experiments, neither undergraduates nor community members correctly discriminated between high- and low-accurate reports. Content analysis in Study 3 revealed the relationship between age and event frequency and children's credibility ratings was mediated by the internal consistency of children's reports. Recent research on children's reports of instances of repeated events has identified several challenges facing children who report repeated abuse. These data bring to light another potential difficulty for these children.     

The application of a reconnaissance strategy for identifying long-term problems for a Tanzanian farming systems project

Africa’s population is growing faster than its locally produced food supply. While some regions of the world wallow in production surpluses, neither the Green Revolution nor other production boosting strategies have sunk deep roots in Africa. As a result, there is an increasing food production shortfall and an ever larger dependence on outside food aid. In response, international development agencies are developing new strategies for tackling the seemingly intractable problems of African agriculture. One of these strategies is called the farming systems research and extension approach. This approach starts with the understanding that “African agriculture has probably been less affected by technology change in the past twenty years than agriculture on any other continent” (A.I.D., 1985). It continues by developing technical interventions which are advantageous within particular “recommendation domains” defined by both social and environmental conditions.     

Inhibition of bleach-induced luminol chemiluminescence

The luminol chemiluminescence presumptive test for blood is based on the mild peroxidase activity of hemoglobin in basic peroxide solution. However, this test is subject to interference by strong oxidants, certain transition metal ions, and true peroxidases. This paper reports methods for reducing the interference caused by hypochlorite-containing bleaches. Amines such as 1,2-diaminoethane react rapidly with hypochlorite without interfering significantly with the hemoglobin-catalyzed oxidation. Thus, addition of 0.1 mol/L 1,2-diaminoethane to a standard luminol-peroxide spray lead to almost complete inhibition of hypochlorite-induced chemiluminescence while satisfactory chemiluminescence was still observed from bloodstains. If time allows, an alternative method for reducing interference from hypochlorite bleach is to wait several days until the bloodstains have dried thoroughly, by which time the hypochlorite will have decomposed.