The Fitness to stand trial Interview Test: how four professions rate videotaped fitness interviews

The results of this study provide some preliminary support for the use of the FIT as a method for providing structure to interviewers. The FIT may be particularly useful as a guide for making initial decisions about fitness. It was suggested that a screening evaluation based on the FIT could be completed by any properly trained individual with some professional background. The more difficult cases can be referred for lengthier evaluations. Of course, further research on the use of the FIT with actual defendants in real assessments will need to occur before such a procedure can be used as a matter of routine. Finally, the FIT promises to be an effective research tool for isolating professional group differences in definitions of fitness and the importance of different aspects of it, from both a legal and a mental health perspective.     

The measurement and influence of child sexual abuse supportive beliefs

Abstract

The identification of offence-related cognition is a major target of most cognitive–behavioural treatment programmes for sexual offenders, and a number of measures are available for this purpose. This study assessed the psychometric properties of a brief measure of beliefs that support and justify child sexual abuse: the Sex With Children (SWCH) scale. Factor analysis revealed two distinct types of belief: that sex with children is harmless, and that children actively provoke adults into having sex with them. The SWCH was also found to have good internal consistency, test–retest reliability and concurrent validity. Child molesters scored significantly more highly on the SWCH than did rapists or non-offenders, and high-risk child molesters reported more entrenched offence-supportive beliefs than lower risk child molesters. A relationship was also observed between general offence-supportive beliefs as measured by SWCH and offence-specific cognitions ascribing responsibility or enjoyment to the offender's victim. The SWCH subscales appeared to closely match two of the implicit theories hypothesized by Ward and Keenan (1999 Ward, T. and Keenan, T. 1999. Child molesters’ implicit theories. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 14: 821–838. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) to be related to child molestation. Sex offender treatment providers need to be aware of the relationship between underlying implicit theories and offence-specific distorted cognitions about the victim's experience.     

Who reads Navajo poetry and what are they reading? Exploring the semiotic functions of contemporary written Navajo

This paper analyzes contemporary written Navajo in public signs, newspapers, and poetry. While the number of public space displays of written Navajo has increased in recent years, this has not met with an increase in either Navajo literacy or in the number of Navajo speakers. This paper argues that much written Navajo is read not for semantico-referential content, but either as icons and indexes of Navajo spaces and identity or as icons and indexes of fidelity to an orthographic norm. Contemporary written Navajo poetry is not normally read as poetry but as a success or failure to align with the orthographic norm. This mirrors nothing so much as how many Navajos were taught English literacy in the boarding schools.     

Drug use and criminal activity among rural probationers with DUI histories

The present study examined whether ever being arrested for driving under the influence (DUI) was associated with higher levels of substance use and criminal activity in a sample of 800 probationers. Lifetime and 30-day histories of substance use and criminal activity were compared across three groups of probationers from rural Kentucky: those with a single DUI arrest, those with two or more DUI arrests, and those with no DUI arrests. A larger percentage of probationers with a DUI arrest reported lifetime and 30-day substance use than non-DUI offenders in almost all drug and alcohol categories. Higher prevalence of criminal activity was limited primarily to the multiple DUI arrest group. Findings add to the literature on rural substance abusers and indicate that DUI may be used as a marker to help identify opportunities for targeted substance abuse interventions.     

The danger assessment: validation of a lethality risk assessment instrument for intimate partner femicide

The Danger Assessment (DA) is an instrument designed to assess the likelihood of lethality or near lethality occurring in a case of intimate partner violence. This article describes the development, psychometric validation, and suggestions for use of the DA. An 11-city study of intimate partner femicide used multivariate analysis to test the predictive validity of the risk factors on the DA from intimate partner femicide cases (N = 310) compared with 324 abused women in the same cities (controls). The results were used to revise the DA (four items added; one "double-barreled" item divided into two), and the calculated weights (adjusted odds ratios) used to develop a scoring algorithm with levels of risk. These levels of risk were then tested with an independent sample of attempted femicides (N = 194) with a final outcome of .90 of the cases included in the area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve.     

Pathways to sexual offense recidivism following treatment: an examination of the Ward and Hudson self-regulation model of relapse

Ward and Hudson (1998, 2000) proposed a self-regulation model of relapse in sexual offenders, which classifies offenders into one of four pathways. This study examined the validity of the model, whether sexual recidivists are characterized by one predominant pathway and offense type, and whether participants would change pathway pre- to posttreatment intervention. Twenty-five sexual offenders who had participated in a comprehensive cognitive-behavioral treatment program during a prison sentence, but committed a further sexual offense on their release from custody, participated in the study. Results supported the content validity of the model. The predominant pathway pre- and posttreatment was approach explicit. The hypothesis that participants would change pathway posttreatment was not supported. These results may have implications for the efficacy of treatment of approach-explicit sexual offenders.     

The Zong in the Context of the Eighteenth-Century Slave Trade

This contribution places the Zong tragedy in the wider context of the eighteenth-century Atlantic slave trade, a global business venture which from 1750 to 1807 was dominated by British ships. Evidence for ‘jettison’ within the British slave trade is examined, and the uniqueness of this aspect of the Zong case is emphasised. Attention is given to the role of the Zong hearings of 1783 in bringing together individuals who would go on to play a leading role in the British anti-slavery movement, established in 1787. Finally, this article examines the impact of the Zong incident upon eighteenth-century maritime insurance law relating to ‘human cargoes’, and on the passage of the ‘Dolben Act’ (the first Act to regulate British slave shipping) in 1788.