Assessment and management of risk for intimate partner violence by police officers using the Spousal Assault Risk Assessment Guide

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a crime that is present in all countries, seriously impacts victims, and demands a great deal of time and resources from the criminal justice system. The current study examined the use of the Spousal Assault Risk Assessment Guide, 2nd ed. (SARA; Kropp, Hart, Webster, & Eaves, 1995), a structured professional judgment risk assessment and management tool for IPV, by police officers in Sweden over a follow-up of 18 months. SARA risk assessments had significant predictive validity with respect to risk management recommendations made by police, as well as with recidivism as indexed by subsequent contacts with police. Risk management mediated the association between risk assessment and recidivism: High levels of intervention were associated with decreased recidivism in high risk cases, but with increased recidivism in low risk cases. The findings support the potential utility of police-based risk assessment and management of IPV, and in particular the belief that appropriately structured risk assessment and management decisions can prevent violence.     

Screening for intimate partner violence in orthopedic patients: a comparison of three screening tools

Accurately identifying victims of intimate partner violence (IPV) can be a challenge for clinicians and clinical researchers. Multiple instruments have been developed and validated to identify IPV in patients presenting to health care practitioners, including the Woman Abuse Screening Tool (WAST) and the Partner Violence Screen (PVS). The purpose of the current study is to determine if female patients attending an outpatient orthopaedic fracture clinic who screen positive for IPV using three direct questions (direct questioning) also screen positive on the WAST and PVS. We conducted a prevalence study at two Level I trauma centres to determine the prevalence of IPV in female patients presenting to orthopaedic fracture clinics for treatment of injuries. We used three methods to determine the prevalence of IPV; 1) direct questioning, 2) WAST, and 3) PVS. We compared the prevalence rates across the three screening tools. Ninety-four women screened positive for IPV using any method. The prevalence of IPV was 30.5% when a direct questioning approach was utilized, 12.4% using the WAST, and 9.2% using the PVS. The WAST identified 37.2% (35/94) of the IPV victims detected and the PVS identified 27.7% (53/94) of the IPV victims detected, whereas direct questioning identified 89.4% of the IPV victims. Identification of IPV may be under-estimated by the WAST and PVS screening tools. Our findings suggest direct questioning may increase the frequency of disclosure of IPV among women attending outpatient orthopaedic clinics.     

The Impact of Anger on the Intimate Partner Violence Decision-Making Process

McFall’s (1982, 1989) Social Information Processing (SIP) model outlines different stages in cognitive processing and decision-making that may be deficient in men who engage in interpersonal violence (IPV). A decision-making task was developed to assess the utility of abusive and nonabusive behaviors among 32 men who engage in mild IPV, 32 maritally distressed men, and 32 nondistressed men. Because anger impacts appraisal and decision-making (e.g., Lerner and Tiedens in Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 19, 115-137, 2006), all participants were randomly assigned to an anger induction or neutral induction condition. As hypothesized, the perceived utility for abusive behavior was greater for angry abusive men and the perceived utility of control appeared to significantly contribute to this difference. Specific deficits in the IPV group were found, supporting a SIP model of IPV, aiding in understanding the function of violent behavior. Despite study limitations, these findings have implications for enhancing specific skill training components of treatment for abusive men.     

Psychological Empowerment and the Pursuit of Social Change: Outcomes of Foster Youth Engagement

Youth aging out of foster care are assumed to embody a disempowered group, for whom civic engagement opportunities are rare. Utilizing a targeted initiative, this study explores individual- and community-level outcomes derived from foster youth civic engagement. Data were collected via: (a) interview and survey research with foster youth advisory board leaders; (b) interview and survey research with civic youth workers; and, (c) non-participant observation of five foster youth advisory board meetings. Directed content analysis revealed three emergent themes, which transcended the data inductively (Opportunity through Access; Positive Conceptions of New Jersey's Department of Children and Families; and, Participatory Competence). These themes support and extend our current understanding of empowering outcomes for this population. Implications for research, policy, and practice are discussed.     

Entropy and the trajectory of world politics: why polarity has become less meaningful

The random and indeterminate nature of the current unipolar world suggests a condition of increasing entropy. There are two reasons for this claim. First, relative capability advantages under unipolarity do not translate as easily as they once did into power and influence over others. Second, systemic constraint is a property that limits actors' freedom of action by imposing costs and benefits on certain kinds of actions. Unlike past multipolar and bipolar systems, the current unipolar system exerts only weak, if any, systemic constraints on the unipolar power and all other actors as well. Thus, polarity has become a largely meaningless concept. Today, system process rather than structure best explains international politics, and this process is one of entropy. Finally, I suggest two pathways from unipolarity to a more balanced system: one is fairly consistent with standard balance-of-power realism but adds an ideational component; the other restores equilibrium by means of entropy.     

Race,Place, and Police-Caused Homicide in U.S. Municipalities

We test structural hypotheses regarding police-caused homicides of minorities. Past research has tested minority threat and community violence hypotheses. The former maintains that relatively large minority populations are subjectively perceived as threats and experience a higher incidence of police-caused homicide than whites do, the latter that higher rates of violent crime among minorities create objective threats that explain these disparities. That research has largely ignored some important issues, including: alternative specifications of the minority threat hypothesis; the place hypothesis, which maintains highly segregated minority populations are perceived as especially threatening by police; and police-caused homicide in the Hispanic population. Using data for large U.S. cities, we conducted total-incidence and group-specific analyses to address these issues. A curvilinear minority threat hypothesis was supported by the Hispanic group-specific findings, whereas the place hypothesis found strong support in both total and group-specific analyses. These results provide new insights into patterns of police-caused homicide.     

Physical,Social, and Perceived Availabilities of Alcohol and Last Month Alcohol Use in Rural and Small Urban Communities

This study seeks to provide a greater understanding of the factors that determine the perceived availability of alcohol and its role in predicting adolescents’ alcohol use. Participants were 151,703 7th–12th grade students (50% female) from a sample of 219 rural communities across the United States, with oversampling for predominantly Mexican-American and African-American communities. Multilevel analysis was used to estimate the perceived availability of alcohol as a function of physical and social availability measures and individual and community-level control variables. Physical availability was measured as the number of alcohol outlets in the community and whether beer and wine were sold in non-liquor stores. Social availability measured the availability of alcohol from social or family groups. Last month alcohol use was then estimated as a function of physical, social and perceived availabilities and control variables. Physical availability had little relationship to perceived availability or recent alcohol use while social availability was a strong predictor of both. Perceived availabilities at the individual and community levels were significant in predicting last month alcohol use. The findings suggest that altering both perceived and actual availability of alcohol can potentially have strong effects on the levels of adolescent alcohol use.