Can 14,737 women be wrong? A meta‐analysis of the LSI‐R and recidivism for female offenders*

Research Summary Over the past two decades, researchers have been increasingly interested in measuring the risk of offender recidivism as a means of advancing public safety and of directing treatment interventions. In this context, one instrument widely used in assessing offenders is the Level of Service Inventory‐Revised (LSI‐R). Recently, however, the LSI‐R has been criticized for being a male‐specific assessment instrument that is a weak predictor of criminal behavior in females. Through the use of meta‐analytic techniques, we assessed this assertion. A total of 27 effect sizes yielded an average r value of .35 ([confidence interval] CI = .34 to .36) for the relationship of the LSI‐R with recidivism for female offenders (N= 14,737). When available, we also made within‐sample comparisons based on gender. These comparisons produced effect sizes for males and females that were statistically similar. Policy Implications These results are consistent with those generated in previous research on the LSI‐R. They call into question prevailing critiques that the LSI‐R has predictive validity for male but not for female offenders. At this stage, it seems that corrections officials should be advised that the LSI‐R remains an important instrument for assessing all offenders as a prelude to the delivery of treatment services, especially those based on the principles of effective intervention. Critics should be encouraged, however, to construct and validate through research additional gender‐specific instruments that revise, if not rival, the LSI‐R.     

Opening the door to enforcement of foreign non-monetary judgments in Jersey: Brunei and Bandone v Fidelis and Others [2008] JRC152

The common law rule preventing the enforcement of foreign non-moneyjudgments (set out in Rule 35(1) of Dicey, Morris & Collins)("Dicey") has been amended in Jersey. The Courts now have adiscretion to enforce foreign non-monetary judgments, includingequitable orders such as specific performance, and injunctiveor declaratory relief, which are so vital to effective modernday remedies. In doing so, the Jersey Courts have adopted theapproach taken in the Canadian and Caymanian Courts.     

Rediscovering Buchanan’s rediscovery: non-market exchange versus antiseptic allocation

Public Choice - While Buchanan is best known for the economics of politics and constitutions, his seminal contributions to this field are but one branch of his more underlying methodology and...     

The WikiLeaks Cables: How the United States Exploits the World,in Detail,from an Internal Perspective, 2001–2010

The disclosure of more than 250,000 American diplomatic cables by the dissident media organisation WikiLeaks in 2010–2011 gained much attention in the American mass media but generated little interest for diplomatic historians. A small number of scholars explored small parts of the archive, but diplomatic historians and political scientists largely dismissed the cables as insignificant source material. These scholars overlooked important primary sources. The cables provide important revelations about American actions in every region of the world, especially between 2001 and 2010. Although United States officials and their supporters in the American mass media insisted that the cables showed American diplomats performing admirable work, the cables reveal how the United States exploits the world.     

Conclusion: Is competency management a passing fad?

Is competency management a passing fad; is it a catch‐all term to cover diverse national patterns of development or a symptom of wider changes within bureaucracies? As the papers published here suggest, it is more likely to be a passing fad in Europe than the USA. Competency management addresses rather different agendas in different countries and while it does not embrace as diverse a collection of activities as ‘new public management’, there is substantial range in the issues it does address. European experience suggests competency is more likely to be ephemeral and concerned with repackaging rather than bringing something substantially new to personnel management in the upper reaches of civil services. Without taking too rosy a view of US experience, there may be a stronger case for arguing that contemporary competency management approaches there have brought something new to a longer standing debate in public and private management.     

Dangerousness

Saleem Shah played a major role in the development of both policy and research concerning the prediction of dangerousness to others over two decades. During that period his commitment to the welfare of people with mental illness led him first to challenge the legitimacy of such predictions and later to support research to improve them. His ideas were central to most of the research that has been done in this area. This article suggests a direction for future research concerning the prediction of dangerousness to others that elaborates and extends his thinking by focusing on the research necessary to help individuals with mental illnesses to minimize their involvement in violence.     

The Preference for Indirect Harm

We presented subjects pairs of hypothetical scenarios. The action in each scenario harmed some people in order to aid others. In one member of the pair, the harm was a direct result of the action. In the other member, it was an indirect byproduct. Subjects preferred the indirect harm to the direct harm. This result could not be fully explained in terms of differences in judgments about which option was more active, more intentional, more likely to cause harm, or more subject to the disapproval of others. Taken together, these findings provide evidence for a new bias in judgment, a tendency to favor indirectly harmful options over directly harmful alternatives, irrespective of the associated outcomes, intentions, or self-presentational concerns. We speculate that this bias could originate from the use of a typical but somewhat unreliable property of harmful acts, their directness, as a cue to moral evaluation. We discuss the implications of the bias for a range of social issues, including the distinction between passive and active euthanasia, legal deterrence, and the rhetoric of affirmative action.     

Précis of The Mismeasure of Desire: The Science,Theory and Ethics of Sexual Orientation

Law and Philosophy -