Individuals’ experiences of sexual offending therapy in a forensic psychiatric setting

There is a paucity of research exploring individuals’ experiences of sexual offending therapy, particularly in forensic psychiatric settings. This study qualitatively explored the perspectives of six male medium-secure patients regarding the treatment programme they completed to address their sexual offending behaviour. Thematic analysis of interviews generated two themes: the experience of transition through the programme and the experience of engagement. The importance of gaining service-user feedback and the implications for programme design and delivery are discussed.     

Fatal intoxication with a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, lorazepam, and codeine

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors were introduced in 1987 as an alternative treatment option for patients with depression or certain anxiety disorders. Unfortunately, this greater use has prompted a corresponding increase in reports of more severe side effects and fatalities, with a majority of fatalities occurring due to coingestion of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors with other substances or serotonergic drugs. We report a case which exemplifies one such fatality related to sertraline, lorazepam, and codeine coingestion. A brief discussion of the presumed mechanism by which death occurred will be offered.     

Oil, Rape and State Crime in Nigeria

This case study seeks first to explore the culpability of the state of Nigeria in regards to recent allegations of rape and sexual torture by security forces and, secondly, to question why these rapes continue to occur despite Nigeria’s responsibility to address them. Though exact rates of violence are impossible to ascertain, reports by the media and various non-governmental organizations describe the widespread abuse of women, specifically at the hands of military officials. Evidence suggests that, by failing to respond appropriately to these acts of violence, the state of Nigeria is in direct violation of international law. Moreover, the decentralized nature of the Nigerian legal system creates an environment in which those Nigerian laws that do address rape and/or torture are rendered ineffective. This paper argues that what is happening in Nigeria does in fact constitute a state crime and, thus far, has not received appropriate attention from the International Criminal Court, to which Nigeria is a party, or the international community at large. As no action has yet been taken, we consider the factors that create an environment in which international and national punitive measures, as they are currently practiced, are ineffective.

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THE NEW BEGINNINGS PROGRAM FOR DIVORCING AND SEPARATING FAMILIES: MOVING FROM EFFICACY TO EFFECTIVENESS

This article describes a program of research on effectively transporting the New Beginnings Program (NBP), a university-tested prevention program for divorced families, to community settings. The four steps in this research are described: (1) selecting a community partner, (2) developing effective methods of engaging parents, (3) redesigning the NBP to be easily delivered with high quality and fidelity in community agencies, and (4) adapting the NBP to meet the needs of the full population of divorcing families. The article concludes with a discussion of plans for an effectiveness trial to evaluate the NBP when delivered in community settings.     

Ideology and Polarization Among Women State Legislators

In early work on women in Congress, scholars consistently identified a tendency among women legislators to be more liberal roll‐call voters than male copartisans. Recent changes in Congress point to the polarization of women, where Democratic women remain more liberal than Democratic men but Republican women are no different from, or more conservative than, Republican men. We use newly available state legislative roll‐call data to determine whether women state legislators are more liberal or polarized than male copartisans. We find that while Democratic women state legislators remain consistently more liberal than male copartisans in most state chambers, Republican women legislators are growing more conservative. Thus, women state legislators are increasingly polarized in most U.S. states. Legislator replacement and increasing polarization among state legislators in office contribute to this effect. We argue that polarization among women legislators has implications for the representation of women in the states.     

Proactive Policing: a Summary of the Report of the National Academies of Sciences,Engineering, and Medicine

This paper provides a summary of our report for the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine on proactive policing. We find that there is sufficient scientific evidence to support the adoption of many proactive policing practices if the primary goal is to reduce crime, though the evidence base generally does not provide long-term or jurisdictional estimates. In turn, we conclude that crime prevention outcomes can often be obtained without producing negative community reactions. However, the most effective proactive policing strategies do not appear to have strong positive impacts on citizen perceptions of the police. At the same time, some community-based strategies have begun to show evidence of improving the relations between the police and public. We conclude that there are likely to be large racial disparities in the volume and nature of police–citizen encounters when police target high-risk people or high-risk places, as is common in many proactive policing programs. We could not conclude whether such disparities are due to statistical prediction, racial animus, implicit bias, or other causes.

     

Adding Security,but Subtracting Safety? Exploring Schools’ use of Multiple Visible Security Measures

In response to continued concerns over crime and violence, schools are increasingly employing visible security measures such as cameras, metal detectors, and security personnel. These security measures are not mutually exclusive, but few studies have considered the relationship between the use of multiple forms of security and youth’s exposure to drugs, fighting, property crime, and firearms at school. To address this issue, we analyzed nationally representative school administrator-reported data from the School Survey on Crime & Safety, using a quasi-experimental design with propensity scores to adjust for potential confounding factors. The results indicated that utilization of multiple security measures reduced the likelihood of exposure to property crime in high schools, but most other security utilization patterns were associated with poorer school safety outcomes. Our findings provide guidance to policymakers in considering whether to use – or expand – visible school security measures in schools.     

Legal Form and Temporal Rationalities in UK Work–Life Balance Law

Abstract

This article attempts to crack open the temporal assumptions in the goal of ‘balancing’ work and family, as it is mobilised in UK law. Within studies of gender and labour, ‘balance’, as a concept and a politico-legal objective, is worthy of much more scholarly attention than it has received to date. In the UK context, balance is understood as a means of achieving equilibrium, both at the level of the labour market and within the context of unpaid care. Specifically, mobilising the short horizon of a ‘reckonable present’, balance creates a paradigm or topos through which dilemmas of value and care can be played out and resolved. The specific qualities of the UK's right to request flexible work, for its part, indicate that law's temporal qualities can have specific regulatory functions, shifting scale and reframing responsibilities. By looking closely at legal technicalities, we can discern much about the conceptual logic that affects many of us through influential regulatory strategies. The political imperative of analysing work–life balance might, in this way, require us to return not only to time, but also, strangely, to legal form.