Informing the Understudied R: Exploring and Advancing Typological Research

Creating offender typologies has become a growing interest and a potential method of improving understanding of programming needs and potential placements. Most typological research has only explored and described potential offender types. Relatively few studies have attempted to confirm the existence of created typologies or examine how offenders in each type predict important outcomes. Utilizing a large sample (N = 37,111) of reentering male offenders from Washington State Department of Corrections, we computed both an exploratory and confirmatory latent class analysis. After the confirmation of six offender types, we examined each type’s likelihood of several recidivistic outcomes. We anticipate that the described typology will assist case management, prioritizing offender needs, optimizing treatment services, and determining sequencing of multiple treatment types.     

Initial Findings from a Feasibility Trial Examining the SafeCare Dad to Kids Program with Marginalized Fathers

Few studies have explored the direct impact of behavioral parent training programs on child maltreatment behaviors among marginalized, at-risk fathers. This feasibility study examined SafeCare® Dad to Kids (Dad2K), an augmented version of the evidence-based child maltreatment prevention program SafeCare, to determine the acceptability and initial efficacy of the program for improving father parenting skills and reducing maltreatment risk. Ninety-nine fathers were enrolled in the study and randomized to the SafeCare Dad2K Intervention (n?=?51) or comparison (n?=?48). Intervention fathers participated in 6 home visiting sessions and comparison fathers received parenting materials via mail. All fathers participating in the study completed a baseline and 8-week assessment (post-intervention) of maltreatment behaviors. In addition, intervention fathers completed feasibility and parenting skill measures. A significant main effect emerged indicating decreases for both groups in psychologically aggressive behaviors. No significant group by time findings emerged for child maltreatment behaviors. Father intervention completers endorsed high satisfaction ratings for the program and demonstrated significant improvements in targeted father-child interaction skills. Based on the high rates of acceptability and initial improvement in positive parenting skills, findings demonstrate the feasibility for involving at-risk fathers in behavioral parent training programs targeting child maltreatment prevention.     

Discrimination and Mexican-Origin Adolescents’ Adjustment: The Moderating Roles of Adolescents’, Mothers’, and Fathers’ Cultural Orientations and Values

Drawing on García Coll et al.’s integrative framework and the risk and resilience model, this study examined the relationships between adolescents’ perceived discrimination and psychosocial adjustment and the moderating roles of adolescents’, mothers’, and fathers’ cultural orientations and values, and adolescent gender in a sample of 246 Mexican-origin families. Using multilevel modeling with data from mothers, fathers, seventh graders (M _age = 12.8 years; SD = .57 year) and older siblings (M _age = 15.7 years; SD = 1.5 years), findings revealed that perceived discrimination was positively related to depression, risky behaviors, and deviant peer affiliations. In addition, parents’ cultural orientations and values and adolescent gender moderated the relationships between perceived discrimination and some indicators of adjustment. These findings suggest that parents’ cultural orientations and values can serve as protective and vulnerability factors in the associations between Mexican-origin adolescents’ perceived discrimination and their psychosocial adjustment.     

The "other diseases" of the Millennium Development Goals: rhetoric and reality of free drug distribution to cure the poor's parasites

The sixth MDG aims 'to combat HIV/AIDS, TB, malaria and other diseases'. The residual category of 'other diseases' has become the focus of intense interest, partly because it has provided an opportunity to increase resources for the control of the mostly parasitic 'neglected tropical diseases' (NTDs). Intense lobbying has secured large amounts of funding from donors, as well as generous donations of medicines from the major drug companies. A massive programme is now underway to treat the parasites of the poor in Africa via integrated vertical interventions of mass drug administration in endemic areas. The approach has been hailed as remarkably effective, with claims that there is now a real prospect of complete control and, for some NTDs, even elimination. However, a closer look at evaluation and research data reveals that much less is known about what is being achieved than is suggested. Competition between implementing organisations is leading to potentially counterproductive exaggerations about treatment coverage. Detailed local-level research in Uganda and Tanzania shows that actual rates of drug take-up among target populations are often lower than is necessary to effectively control the diseases, and that methods of drug distribution may even lead to active resistance to treatment. If current trends are not corrected, declining rates of NTD infection will not be sustained. Much more rigorous and effective monitoring is essential.     

Organised Criminals as “Agents of Obligation”: The Case of Ireland

Relying on Brown's (2005a, b) thesis that contemporary shifts in penal policy are best understood as a reprisal of colonial rationality, so that offenders become “non-citizens” or “agents of obligation”, this article argues, firstly, that this framework (with certain important refinements and extensions) finds support in developments in Irish criminal justice policy aimed at offenders suspected of involvement in “organised crime”. These offenders have found themselves reconstituted as “agents of obligation” with duties to furnish information about their property and movements, report to the police concerning their location and, importantly, refrain from criminal activity or face extraordinary sanctions. Secondly, it is submitted that this draconian approach to the control of organised crime is built on false premises; specifically the idea that “organised crime” as such exists and is best controlled through restrictions on the freedom of key groups or “core nominals”.     

The influence of rape myth acceptance,sexual attitudes,and belief in a just world on attributions of responsibility in a date rape scenario

Purpose. The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of rape myth acceptance, belief in a just world, and sexual attitudes on attributions of responsibility in a date rape scenario. We predicted that people higher in rape myth acceptance and those who more strongly believed in a just world, as well as those who held more conservative sexual attitudes, would attribute greater blame to the accuser than to the accused. Methods. One hundred seventy‐two undergraduates from a medium‐sized, Catholic university in the USA read a hypothetical date rape scenario and completed the Rape Myth Acceptance Scale, the Just World Scale, the Sexual Attitudes Scale, and a Judgment Questionnaire constructed for the current study. Results. Rape myth acceptance mediated the relationship between gender and judgments of responsibility for the accused and the accuser. Men were more likely to endorse rape myths and, consequently, assign less responsibility to the accused and more responsibility to the accuser than women. Conclusions. Pre‐existing beliefs regarding the nature of rape and the circumstances surrounding it may bias attributions of responsibility in date rape cases. There may be utility in addressing whether jurors hold such beliefs prior to the start of a trial.     

Influence of confidence inflation and explanations for changes in confidence on evaluations of eyewitness identification accuracy

Guidelines for conducting police line‐ups typically recommend immediate assessment of eyewitness confidence following identification. This confidence level can presumably be used to estimate accuracy even in the presence of subsequently inflated confidence. In this experiment, we examined students' perceptions of immediate and inflated confidence and whether their reliance on confidence varies as a function of the explanations given by the eyewitness for her inflated confidence. Each of 126 university students viewed one of five versions of a videotaped officer–eyewitness interaction depicting an eyewitness identification and follow‐up interview in which the eyewitness gave a (1) high or (2) moderate level of confidence or inflated her confidence and gave a (3) confidence epiphany, (4) memory contamination, or (5) no explanation for the inflation. The memory contamination and confidence epiphany explanations led to lower ratings of identification accuracy as compared to the high‐confidence control condition, supporting the immediate confidence recommendation but in some ways contradicting previous research on this issue. The results suggest the need for further research to understand the conditions under which confidence inflation influences juror evaluations of eyewitness identification.     

An experimental study of compressed work schedules in policing: advantages and disadvantages of various shift lengths

Objectives  

The objectives of this research were to test the impacts of three shift lengths (8-, 10-, and 12-hour) on performance, health, safety, quality of life, sleep, fatigue, alertness, off-duty employment, and overtime among police.     

The decision to lobby bureaucrats

Despite a good deal of interest in lobbyists?? tactics, virtually no research has been published examining the conditions under which interest groups lobby the bureaucracy rather than or in addition to the legislature. Using two comprehensive datasets, I show that lobbying increases in both branches when conflict is higher and when the lobbyist has professional or political connections to that venue. In addition, certain conditions cause lobbyists to specialize in one branch or a particular branch only, depending on the issue area being lobbied, the interest group type being represented, the lobbyist??s resources, and other factors.