Psychosocial functioning among inmates in prison-based drug treatment: results from Project BRITE

Objective

To assess the impact of a positive behavioral reinforcement intervention on psychosocial functioning of inmates over the course of treatment and on post-treatment self-reported measures of treatment participation, progress, and satisfaction.

Method

Male (n?=?187) and female (n?=?143) inmates participating in 12-week prison-based intensive outpatient (IOP) drug treatment were randomly assigned to receive standard treatment (ST) or standard treatment plus positive behavioral reinforcement (BR) for engaging in targeted activities and behaviors. Participants were assessed for psychosocial functioning at baseline and at the conclusion of treatment (post-treatment). Self-reported measures of treatment participation, treatment progress, and treatment satisfaction were also captured at post-treatment.

Results

The intervention affected female and male subjects differently and not always in a way that favored BR subjects, as compared to the ST subjects, most notably on measures of depression and criminal thinking.

Conclusions

Possible explanations for the results include differences in the male and female custody environments combined with the procedures that study participants had to follow to earn and/or receive positive reinforcement at the two study sites, as well as baseline differences between the genders and a possible floor effect among females on measures of criminality. Limitations of the study included the inability to make study participants blind to the study conditions and the possible over-branding of the study, which may have influenced the results.     

Speaking the truth

Suspicion regarding the notion of truth is a characteristic feature of much contemporary thought. Often this suspicion is based in a view that takes truth to be a notion associated with a discredited view of knowledge or with an oppressive and exclusionary politics. That the very possibility of knowledge, and so of our access to the truth, can be put in question and that truth itself always operates within a political dimension are not, of course, claims that can be denied. Nor can it be denied that knowledge, truth and power are closely tied together. But these considerations should prompt us to a reappraisal of the notion of truth that sees it as more, not less, significant. This paper is an attempt to begin such a reappraisal and to attend, not merely to the truth. Speaking the truth is not something the successful achievement of which can, in every case, be guaranteed in advance; yet neither is it something that we can abandon or ignore.     

What's at stake? A veto-player theory of voter turnout

Turnout is theorized to reflect elections' policy stakes. All else equal, a highly constrained policymaking context is expected to lower the potential policy stakes of a given election. This study tests if such contexts, which are characterized by multiple veto players, reduce electoral participation. According to time-series cross-sectional autoregressive dynamic lag models of turnout in 311 elections in 21 advanced industrialized democracies, additional veto players decrease turnout in both the short and long run. Moreover, the results suggest veto players conceptually fine-tune and empirically contribute to existing models of cross-national turnout. Hence this study has crucial implications for the students of electoral participation and scholars interested in the democratic outcomes of institutional design.     

LEGAL CONSUMERS AS COPRODUCERS

Although the extent of unbundling among private legal practitioners in the changing Australian marketplace remains uncertain, there is a shift in thinking about the appropriate role of consumers in accessing everyday legal services. This is evident in the delivery of legal services other than those provided by private practitioners, where the consumer's role in legal service delivery arrangements is gradually being transformed. Among those institutions that are responding positively, if not inevitably, to the rising tide of legal self-helpers is the Family Court of Australia. The court's activities in attempting to meet the needs of its pro se consumers is simultaneously creating opportunities for unbundled legal service delivery, at least for those lawyers willing to seize these opportunities. It would appear that family law disputes, together with the large numbers of voluntary and involuntary legal self-helpers that these disputes generate, is fertile terrain for the development of alternative forms of legal service delivery.     

The Justiciability of Resource Allocation

A perennial problem in public law is how courts ought to deal with legal challenges to the allocation of public resources. This article explains and renders more coherent the varied approaches of English courts to the justiciability of resource allocation disputes in administrative and tort law. It draws a distinction between 'discretionary allocative decision-making' and 'allocative impact.' The non-justiciability doctrine in R v Cambridge Health Authority , ex p B is concerned with the former only. By contrast, allocative impact is a justiciable matter, but can still ultimately defeat a claim. This distinction, however, does not guide judicial approaches under the Human Rights Act 1998, where courts have chosen mostly to eschew the non-justiciability doctrine in favour of more flexibly applied notions of judicial deference. Thus while the non-justiciability doctrine has a relatively narrow scope in administrative and tort law, it has nearly disappeared under human rights law.     

Needle exchange programs and drug infection behavior.

This study examines how drug injection and needle sharing propensities respond when a needle exchange program (NEP) is introduced into a city. I analyze 1989-1995 Drug Use Forecasting data on adult male arrestees from 24 large U.S. cities, in nine of which NEPs opened during the sample period. After controlling for cocaine and heroin prices, AIDS prevalence, fixed effects for cities and years and city-specific time trends, the model indicates that the presence of a NEP is associated with declines of 13 percent in drug injection and 20 percent in needle sharing among drug injectors.     

Changes and Fluctuations in Issue Ownership: The Case of Sweden, 1979–2010

Issue ownership (IO) has been an important concept in the analysis of party behaviour, party strategy and party competition for several decades. More recently, it has also been of growing interest for research on voting behaviour. Traditionally, IO has been regarded as a stable phenomenon where parties have different issue profiles and are advantaged by different political issues or issue‐areas. Recently, however, many studies have reported change and fluctuations of IO, and the same studies also makes it clear that we know surprisingly little about what might cause, or facilitate, change in issue ownership. In fact, we do not even have systematic studies of how stable issue ownership is, or how frequent shifts in issue ownership actually are. The aim of this article is to explore the extent of change and stability in issue ownership in Sweden. For this purpose, the Swedish national election studies from 1979 to 2010 are utilised. Although recent research has indicated that changes in IO have increased over time, this is not supported in the Swedish case. Instead, issue ownership seems never to have been a particularly stable phenomenon. However, in line with our theoretical expectations, we show that ownership of economic issues is more volatile compared to ownership of other issues.     

The future of terrorism research: a review essay

This essay sets forth a research agenda to begin filling some key gaps in terrorism studies. Since the September 2001 Al Qaeda attacks against the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon that claimed over 3000 lives, interest in terrorism research has increased. After these attacks, the United States and other governments prioritized the scientific study of the causes of and responses to terrorism. Importantly though, our review of the terrorism literature demonstrates that despite this progress, intriguing questions remain underexplored or altogether unexplored. This essay identifies four gaps in terrorism studies: (1) employing non-terrorist comparison groups, (2) broadening the dependent variable (focus of study), (3) exploring exceptions/anomalies to “established” findings, and (4) engaging measurement issues. We discuss these issues and outline a research agenda that could begin to fill these gaps.