Suicidal ideation in a United States jail: demographic and psychiatric correlates

Suicidal behavior is a significant problem in United States jails. Suicidal ideation (SI) is an established precursor to suicidal behavior in incarcerated populations. No studies to date have examined the prevalence of SI or its correlates in a mixed-gender U.S. jail sample. The purpose of the present study was to document rates of SI in a mixed-gender jail sample and examine socio-demographic and psychiatric correlates. This study of 511 jail inmates found that approximately 16% of participants reported clinically significant SI upon incarceration. White participants, suicide attempters, and those with a psychiatric diagnosis history endorsed greater SI. Reported SI did not differ by sex and was not correlated with age. Clinically, results indicate that screening for SI in jail samples is necessary to identify high-risk individuals for intervention to prevent suicidal behavior.     

Parenting in Families of Low Socioeconomic Status: A Review with Implications for Child Welfare Practice

Families involved in the child welfare system overwhelmingly draw from low socioeconomic (SES) populations. Impoverished children are placed in foster care at disproportionate rates. Addressing this dynamic requires understanding the adaptations low‐income families make when parenting under adversity so that accurate assessments of their needs occur. This article focuses on two aspects of child welfare practice: the evaluation of parenting capacity and service delivery. It examines, in particular, how well current practices and guidelines, as outlined in the literature, fit with more general research on families and parenting in low‐SES environments and offers suggestions for improving practice.     

PowerPlex 16 HS: Internal validation of a new tool for genetic analysis of forensic and parentage testing

Forensic human identification requires powerful and efficient tools to obtain useful results in a minimum timeframe. In this study several forensic and parentage samples that could not be analyzed with others kits were studied using the recently available PowerPlex^® 16 HS kit (Promega). DNA was extracted using four different methods, depending upon the particular sample, and the PCR products were run on an ABI 3130XL Sequencer. The resultant DNA profiles were analyzed using Gene Mapper ID v 3.2 Analysis Software (ABI). Of 30 samples processed with the PowerPlex^® 16 HS system, genetic analysis was successful in 18 (60%). The results obtained show that the PowerPlex^® 16 HS is a valuable tool for forensic identification and parentage testing that is particularly useful for difficult samples that have not yielded adequate results with other methods.     

All in Favour? Attitudes of Stakeholders and Drug Users Towards Judicial Alternatives

Different judicial alternative sanctions and measures exist on the three levels of the criminal justice system. These alternative sanctions and measures can be applied to a specific target group, namely drug users. The current study is a qualitative assessment of the application and execution of alternative measures and sanctions for drug users, based on semi-structured face-to-face interviews in which stakeholders (magistrates, judicial assistants and social workers) and drug users were asked for their attitudes towards these sanctions and the factors that influence them in their convictions and beliefs. In conclusion we can state that the interviews have increased the insight in the attitudes of decision makers, social assistants, judicial assistants and drug users towards alternative sanctioning. From the interviews we learn that there are strong similarities between the three profiles, which provide for a strong basis for the continued functioning of alternative sanctioning.

Physical and property victimization behind bars: a multilevel examination

The majority of the extant literature on inmate victimization considers only one level of analysis, thus ignoring the interaction effects between inmate- and prison-level variables. To extend this literature, multilevel modeling techniques were used to analyze self-report data from more than 1,000 inmates and 30 prisons in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio. Results revealed that demographic variables were strong predictors of physical victimization (i.e., race and assaultive behavior). Also, security level had a contextual direct effect on physical victimization. Property victimization was best explained with an integrated model including inmate (i.e., race, assaultive behavior, prior education, prior employment, and time served), contextual (i.e., security level and proportion non-White), and micro-macro interaction variables (i.e., Race x Security Level). Policy implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Susceptibility of Current Adaptive Behavior Measures to Feigned Deficits

The current study examined the susceptibility of the Adaptive Behavior Assessment System—2nd edition (ABAS-II; Harrison & Oakland, 2003) and the Scales of Independent Behavior—Revised (S1B-R; Bruininks, Woodcock, Weatherman, & Hill, 1996) to the feigning of adaptive functioning deficits. Using four different instruction sets, the authors evaluated whether the provision of diagnostic information (a form of coaching) improved participants’ ability to simulate adaptive deficits commensurate with a diagnosis of mental retardation. The authors found that the ABAS-II was quite vulnerable to believable manipulation by raters, while the SIB-R was not. In fact, exaggeration on the SIB-R was easily detected regardless of the information provided. Implications regarding the use of these measures in Atkins mental retardation evaluations are discussed.

Intelligence expertise in the age of information sharing: public–private ‘collection’ and its challenges to democratic control and accountability

The emergence of a more elusive and uncertain threat environment has transformed the nature of intelligence, increasing its reliance on civil society partners. Once the work of an insular and carefully select few, intelligence production is now a networked, partially open and extensively public–private enterprise. Most poignantly, new practices of public–private ‘collection’ face Western intelligence services with novel questions about control and accountability – questions to which the services have responded with hopes that by standardizing ‘methodologies’, central command may be retained. Suggesting a more complex picture, this article argues that ‘managing uncertainty’ imply forms of interpretation and choices which cannot be pre-empted by rule-regulation: more than Weber’s ideal of the procedural and rule-bound, it may be his (once central, yet largely marginalized) emphasis on institutional and individual capacities for critical ‘judgment’ that is of relevance today.     

Confronting Urban Crisis and Opportunity in the 1990s: An Insiders’ View on How Fannie Mae’s Housing Research Helped Reset Policy and Remade Cities

In response to the urban crisis of the early 1990s, the government-sponsored enterprise known as Fannie Mae used what would become the Annual Housing Conference (AHC) to influence urban and housing policy. This article traces the history of the AHC in relation to Housing Policy Debate as part of a concerted effort of Fannie Mae to invest in and upgrade the quality of urban and housing policy research during the 1990s. The impact of these conferences on the policy community in universities, Washington DC, the states, and indeed the world is analyzed by highlighting some of work that came out of the more influential conferences including the 1991 Homeless Conference, the 1994 Access to Opportunity Conference, and the 1997 Social Capital Conference. The article is concluded with an appraisal of the AHC’s legacy.