Finding our way: early learning from the Compass Project,an Intensive Intervention Risk Management service for women

Abstract

Intensive Intervention Risk Management (IIRM) services are commissioned under the Offender Personality Disorder strategy to contribute to a psychologically informed pathway by supporting individuals ‘through the gate’. This paper reports some of the learning from the first IIRM service for women and outlines how those involved have sought to understand the challenges that were faced by this project in its early days. This paper argues that these challenges help to clarify the role of IIRM services for women and that the ambition for these services should be to facilitate coherent, holistic management. We suggest that IIRM services for women offenders are likely to be most effective if they are well integrated and responsive to the social context, underpinned by a partnership approach and have clear processes for service delivery. Finally, we argue that IIRM services for women should be characterised by a commitment to involvement at every level.     

Assessing the Effectiveness of NICHD Protocol Training Focused on Episodic Memory Training and Rapport-Building: a Study of Korean Police Officers

The present study examined the effectiveness of 2-day training programs utilizing the NICHD Protocol, with a particular focus on the episodic memory training and rapport-building phases. Ninety-seven police officers were allocated to one of four training conditions (protocol only, protocol and rapport-building, protocol and memory training, protocol and other interview issues), and mock interviews were conducted both before and after the training. The results showed that the proportions of invitations and directive questions asked significantly increased after training, whereas the proportions of option-posing and suggestive questions decreased. Although the different training programs changed interviewing behavior similarly, college students interviewed by police officers who had additional training in rapport-building and episodic memory training were more satisfied with their interviewers than those who were interviewed by police officers in the other conditions.     

Fast LC-MS/MS method for the determination of amphetamine, methamphetamine, MDA, MDMA, MDEA, MBDB and PMA in urine

A fast method was designed for the simultaneous determination of amphetamine (A), methamphetamine (MA), PMA, MDA, MDMA, MDEA and MBDB in urine. The drugs were analysed by LC (ESI)-MS/MS, after a simple liquid-liquid extraction in the presence of the deuterated analogues. Reverse phase separation on an Atlantis dC18 Intelligent Speed column was achieved in less than 4 min under gradient conditions, and the total run time was 8 min. The method was fully validated, including linearity (1-1000 ng/mL for A, MDMA, MDEA and MBDB; 2-1000 ng/mL for MDA and PMA; 1-200 ng/mL for MA; r2>0.99 for all compounds), recovery (>80%), within-day and between-day precision and accuracy (CV and MRE<12.7% for intermediate level and ULOQ, and <17.2% for LLOQ), limit of detection (0.2 ng/mL for MDMA, MDEA and MBDB; 0.5 ng/mL for A, MA and PMA; 1 ng/mL for MDA) and quantitation (1 ng/mL for A, MA, MDMA, MDEA and MBDB; 2 ng/mL for MDA and PMA) and relative ion intensities. No matrix effect was observed. The procedure proved to be sensitive, specific and rapid, and was applied to real forensic cases.     

Cyberbullying in Portuguese Schools: Prevalence and Characteristics

This study examined the extent and nature of cyberbullying in 23 Portuguese schools. A sample of 3,525 sixth-, eighth-, and eleventh-grade students completed a self-response questionnaire assessing their perceptions and experiences of cyberbullying. The findings showed that 7.6% of students have been victimized, and 3.9% have bullied others at least once over the last year. The incidences of victimization were higher for females and for the older students. In contrast, more boys reported having bullied others in the eleventh grade. The most frequent medium of cyberbullying was via websites, whilst sending offensive messages was the most widely reported type of behavior. Telling someone about cyberbullying is among the most frequent coping strategies used by cybervictims, who usually chose to tell their friends rather than adults. Implications of these findings for students, schools, and parents are discussed.     

Vertical transfers and the appropriation of resources by the bureaucracy: the case of Brazilian state governments

The purpose of this study is to explore whether the transfers received by state governments in Brazil are being appropriated by the bureaucracy as wages. The wage differential between the public and private sectors was used as a measure of this appropriation, following the technique for wage decomposition proposed by Oaxaca. Our results show that transfers stimulate appropriation by the bureaucracy, but that private groups existing within the states contend for these resources. The results also indicate that the resources appropriated are distributed uniformly between the various groups composing the bureaucracy.     

Moving to the Gulf: an empirical analysis of the patterns and drivers of migration to the GCC countries, 1960–2013

The migration system in the Persian (Arabian) Gulf is among the largest such systems in the world. This article identifies the major interacting elements of this system, which primarily includes countries in South Asia and the Middle East, and discusses its generating forces and developments over the past five and a half decades. Departing from panel data from the World Bank and the UN’s population database, which hitherto have been largely under-analysed, we investigate the dynamics of migrations in the period 1960–2013. The panel data are combined with cross-sectional outlooks of contemporary trends and are related to political and economic developments in the region. It is suggested that the patterns of migrations in the Gulf may be explained with reference to the economic, political and demographic idiosyncrasies of the system, and to the migration policies of the GCC countries. In short, the key drivers of GCC migration patterns include: (1) socio-economic realities, in particular income differentials between migrant senders and migrant receivers as well as impressive growth rates in the Gulf region; (2) historical, cultural and institutional proximity among the constituent states in the system; and (3) the particularities of the Gulf states’ liberal labour-migrant regimes, which contrast starkly with their restrictive refugee and naturalisation policies.     

Post-Soviet Civil Society Development in the Russian Federation: The Impact of the NGO Law

The passing of the Russian NGO Law in mid-2006 set clear parameters for Russian NGO activity and civil society development. In this paper we assess the impact of the NGO Law on both NGOs and Russian civil society. Our findings illustrate that the NGO Law has led to a reduction in NGO activity and curtailment of civil society development. We conclude that Russian civil society appears to be dominated by groups funded and thus controlled by the state. This has implications for Russia's on-going democratic development.     

‘Quite the opposite of a feminist’: Phyllis McGinley,Betty Friedan and discourses of gender in mid-century American culture

This article examines the relationship between feminist and anti-feminist discourses in the period between World War II and the publication of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963). It takes as its primary focus the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning ‘housewife poet’ and self-proclaimed anti-feminist, Phyllis McGinley. McGinley was a successful poet who has disappeared from the record since the publication in 1964 of Sixpence in her Shoe—her best-selling retort to The Feminine Mystique. Her example is important because it gives voice to the much-maligned suburban housewife and offers a spirited alternative to Friedan's reading of white, middle-class domesticity as always and inevitably oppressive. The article offers a close reading of McGinley's work and situates it in relation to its historical and cultural contexts (specifically the highly charged domain of suburban domesticity) and to its wider readership. It compares her anti-feminism with that of other anti-feminist writers of the period, thereby illuminating the tensions and contradictions in contemporary debates.