Creating a State‐Academic Partnership to Advance a Forensic Teaching Service: Benefits and Barriers

In Washington State, like many states, there is a shortage of forensically trained mental health clinicians to work with criminal justice‐involved individuals. At the direction of the state legislature, a collaborative project was undertaken by the University of Washington, the state Department of Social and Health Services, and a state psychiatric hospital to develop a proposal for a jointly sponsored forensic teaching service. The authors reviewed the literature, surveyed and interviewed forensic psychiatry and psychology training directors, and conducted site visits of selected training programs that offer multidisciplinary training or have affiliations with state hospitals. The authors conducted focus groups of additional stakeholders, including clinicians and patients in forensic settings, to better understand the needs in Washington. The authors report on several common benefits and barriers to establishing forensic teaching services. Other states and forensic programs may find this article useful in identifying common considerations for forensic mental health teaching services.     

De Novo Advanced Adult‐Onset Offending: New Evidence from a Population of Federal Correctional Clients

Adult antisocial behavior is almost always predated by delinquency during childhood or adolescence; however, there is also evidence of adult‐onset criminal offending. This study examined this controversial subgroup of offenders using self‐reported and official data from a total population of federal correctional clients selected from the Midwestern United States. Difference of means t‐tests, chi‐square tests, and logistic regression models found that 11.7% of clients had an adult onset of offending and 2.7% of clients (n = 23) had an onset occurring at age 60 years or older. This group—introduced as de novo advanced adult‐onset offenders—had high socioeconomic status, mixed evidence of adverse childhood experiences, and virtually no usage of drugs with the exception of alcohol. These offenders were primarily convicted of social security and white‐collar crimes and evinced remarkably low psychopathology and criminal risk. More research is needed to replicate the phenomenon of de novo advanced adult‐onset offending.     

Does Treatment Quality Matter?

Research Summary

The Florida Department of Juvenile Justice has implemented a process to evaluate the treatment quality of interventions provided statewide in all long‐term residential programs. In the current study, we examine the predictive validity of this treatment quality component in the prediction of recidivism of youth (N = 2,397) who completed juvenile justice residential programs from July 1, 2013 to June 30, 2014. We use hierarchical linear modeling to assess the effects of treatment quality (as youth are nested within programs), controlling for demographic and criminal history factors. The results indicate that higher average treatment quality scores of interventions received within a residential program decreased the likelihood of subsequent arrest, conviction, and reincarceration, whereas the highest treatment quality score of any specific intervention provided within the program decreased the odds of reincarceration only.

Policy Implications

In this study, we confirm the importance of fidelity and implementation quality in the provision of crime prevention treatment interventions to serious, deep‐end juvenile offenders. Additionally, our results shed light on the ability of a juvenile justice agency to measure treatment quality in a substantively meaningful way with the use of limited additional resources. The services provided to keep communities safe, prevent future offending, and rehabilitate juvenile offenders must be held accountable for producing such outcomes, and one method of measuring such compliance is to evaluate the quality of the interventions with respect to staff training, fidelity adherence, evaluation, and corrective action processes.     

Fatal Complications of Aesthetic Techniques: The Gluteal Region

Cosmetic procedures are common and utilize many techniques to obtain aesthetically good outcomes for patient satisfaction with acceptable safety standards. Cosmetic procedures that involve the gluteal region are becoming increasingly popular as various procedures can target the gluteal region such as liposuction, tumescent liposuction, cosmetic filler injections, autologous fat transfer, depot drug delivery, and implants. Complications of cosmetic gluteal procedures can be localized or systemic with systemic complications being responsible for most deaths. These reported systemic complications include sepsis, thromboembolism, fat embolism with or without fat embolism syndrome, macroscopic fat embolism, anesthesia‐related and blood volume abnormalities. We herein report 10 deaths due to elective gluteal cosmetic procedures. Autologous fat transfer (fat grafting, lipoinjection) following liposuction resulted in 8 of 10 fatal outcomes of the gluteal aesthetic procedures. A comprehensive discussion of gluteal anatomy, gluteal contouring procedures, and the approach to such cases is presented along with the autopsy findings of the reported cases.     

“Second Generation” Voices: Queer Youth with Lesbian/Bisexual Mothers

Research on the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth with LGBTQ parents is absent in the social science literature. The present qualitative, exploratory study utilized a social constructionist and queer theoretical lens through which to explore the sexual/gender identity formation and disclosure experiences of 18 LGBTQ young adults with lesbian/bisexual mothers. Findings suggest that LGBTQ parents may have a uniquely positive influence on their LGBTQ children in regard to their sexual and gender identity development. However, some participants reported perceiving societal scrutiny related to their mothers’ lesbian/bisexual identities and, thus, felt pressure to be heterosexual and gender-conforming. Furthermore, some participants did not necessarily utilize or view their lesbian/bisexual mothers as sources of support in relation to their own sexual/gender identity formation. While much more research is needed that examines the experiences of LGBTQ children with LGBTQ parents, this study represents a first step in addressing the existing literature gap.