Evaluation of the University of Denver's Center for Separating and Divorcing Families: The First Out‐of‐Court Divorce Option1

The Resource Center for Separating and Divorcing Families (RCSDF) is the first U.S. alternative dispute resolution model to provide legal dispute resolution, therapeutic, educational, and financial services to separating and divorcing families in a single location outside the courthouse. Data were collected on 82 families at entry and service completion: service utilization, process timeliness, family satisfaction, and outcomes. Parents were highly satisfied with the process and demonstrated significant improvements in personal well‐being, co‐parenting, parenting quality, and reported reductions in children's anxiety/depression. Community partners felt RCSDF was a positive innovation in their community. The RCSDF model represents a culture shift from an adversarial process to a cohesive alternative that supports the well‐being of all family members.     

Working with personality disordered women in secure care: the challenge of gender-based service delivery

Abstract

Working with women in secure services is an infrequent subject of research and discussion in the forensic mental health literature. There are several reasons for this, which will be considered in the introduction to this paper. However, a consequence of this situation is that there remains a lack of clarity in key areas of practice in relation to working with women in secure services, and working with women with personality disorder specifically: how women with personality disorder may present in secure services compared to men, therefore, the particular skills required of the practitioners who work with women and the main design features of the services within which they are managed. The body of this paper attempts to summarise important issues in each of these areas in order to inform future debate and developments in the field.     

Motivational maturity and helping behavior

This study was undertaken to examine the independent influences of conative development (the Maslow needs hierarchy) upon behavioral aspects of prosocial orientations. It provides a behavioral demonstration of conative effects in a helping paradigm, among college-age men. A comparison of the conative data across the ages of 15–22 provided a cross-sectional view of conative development itself. Conative maturity was found to be predictive of greater helping among college-age men. Situational demands were demonstrated which tended to mask, but not override, these predispositional influences on helping. The cross-sectional data on conative development point to probable movement to early esteem concerns among high school men who have reached the conative level of love and belonging. On the other hand, the stability across the years of 15–22 of proportion of safety concerns suggests fixation of such concerns in those exhibiting them in high school. Results are discussed in terms of conative growth for development of prosocial orientations.Ordering of author's names was determined by random procedure and is not indicative of disproportionate contribution to the overall research.Received his Ph. D. from the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle, specializing in developmental psychology. Current interests are child, clinical, and the development of prosocial behavior.Received his Ph.D. specializing in human development from the University of Chicago, Faculty of Educational Psychology. Current interests are the investigation of cognitive developmental approach to moral education, statistics, and prosocial behavior.     

Crime Places in Context: An Illustration of the Multilevel Nature of Hot Spot Development

Objectives

The present study provides an illustration of a statistical test of the Brantinghams’ theory about the formation of hotspots and the effects that nodes, paths, and environmental backcloth have on their development.

Methods

We used multilevel Poisson regression analysis to explain variation in the count of incidents at each address. Place-level proximity to nodes and paths was measured by using the Euclidian distance from each location to the closest carry-out liquor store, on-premises drinking establishment, and bus route. The broader environmental backcloth was represented by various census block-group characteristics, including density of commercial land use. A three-way place-level interaction as well as a cross-level interaction involving all four key independent variables were used to estimate the Brantinghams’ concept of the overlay of nodes, paths, and backcloth.

Results

The three-way interaction involving the distance to the closest on-premises liquor establishment, the distance to closest carry-out liquor facility, and the distance to the closest bus route was significantly and negatively related to place-level crime incidents. This three-way interaction had effects which varied across neighborhood contexts, with stronger negative effects on crime occurring in neighborhoods characterized by high levels of commercial density.

Conclusion

This study supported the notion of a multilevel theory of crime places and has implications for more effectively addressing crime. In particular, those places with multiple nodes and paths in their proximal environments and dense commercial land within their broader environments likely need additional crime prevention measures to get the same benefit relative to places with multiple nodes and paths in the proximal environments yet little commercial density within their broader environment.

     

Civil protective order outcomes: violations and perceptions of effectiveness

This study examined protective order (PO) outcomes for a period of 12 months for 698 women from multiple jurisdictions. Overall, results indicate that 2 out of 5 women did not experience violence after the PO was issued; however, 3 out of 5 women did experience ongoing violence. Two key risk factors were associated with PO violations and are examined. Further, only 9% of women dropped the order, and the vast majority of women perceived the PO was effective and that they felt safe. Results from this study suggest that POs are an important avenue for women's safety. However, results also suggest that PO effectiveness can be increased by attending to specific risk factors, crafting POs to meet individual needs, and by appropriate enforcement.     

Mental disorder in violent women in secure settings: Potential relevance to risk for future violence

The relevance to women of common violence risk factors identified in men has in many instances yet to be established. Consequently, there is a reluctance to accept without question the application to women of practices relating to violence risk assessment and management developed from research into men. This study examines mental disorder in women who are violent in order comment on its relevance to the practice of violence risk assessment and management. A sample of 95 violent women in high secure prison and forensic psychiatric care were assessed. Structured assessments of Axis I and II mental disorders and psychopathy were undertaken on all women and conviction histories were recorded. Very high levels of psychiatric morbidity were noted and patterns in comorbidity were detected. Among Axis I conditions, psychotic disorders and disorders of mood co-occurred at a very high rate. Among the Axis II conditions, dimensional ratings of borderline personality disorder (PD) correlated with dimensional ratings of avoidant, dependent and paranoid PDs while ratings of antisocial PD correlated with those of narcissistic, histrionic and obsessive–compulsive PDs. Women who had been incarcerated for a major violent offence were four times more likely to have a diagnosis of borderline PD than women whose index offence was one of minor violence. A number of the findings reported are in contrast to those reported in similar studies of men. Findings suggest that practitioners are right to question the application to women of knowledge derived from research into men. The practice of violence risk assessment and management with women should emphasise the development of individual risk formulations and responding to psychiatric comorbidity should be the rule rather than the exception with this population.     

Party Identification,Issue Attitudes,and the Dynamics of Political Debate

This article investigates whether media coverage of elite debate surrounding an issue moderates the relationship between individual‐level partisan identities and issue preferences. We posit that when the news media cover debate among partisan elites on a given issue, citizens update their party identities and issue attitudes. We test this proposition for a quartet of prominent issues debated during the first Clinton term: health care reform, welfare reform, gay rights, and affirmative action. Drawing on data from the Vanderbilt Television News Archives and the 1992‐93‐94‐96 NES panel, we demonstrate that when partisan debate on an important issue receives extensive media coverage, partisanship systematically affects—and is affected by—issue attitudes. When the issue is not being contested, dynamic updating between party ties and issue attitudes ceases.     

In Search of Equal Citizenship: the campaign for women magistrates in England and Wales, 1910–1939

In early 1920 women in England and Wales sat as Justices of the Peace (JPs) for the first time, becoming the first women to have any formal role in the country’s law courts. Less than thirty years later nearly a quarter of JPs were women, a proportion unparalleled in any other activity of civic and public life other than voting. Yet the legislation that admitted women to the magisterial bench—the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act—is usually pronounced a failure by historians. This article argues that the appointment of so many women to the magisterial bench in a relatively short period of time was a success for the women’s movement and that it was due very largely to the agency of some of the early women magistrates themselves and the efforts of the organisations to which they belonged, albeit working with the grain of reform in the criminal justice system. The article also maps the campaigners’ use of the twin concepts of ‘rights’ and ‘duties’ within their overall project for the advancement of equal citizenship.