Use of the MMPI-2 Restructured Clinical (RC) Scales in Detecting Criminal Malingering

The purpose of the present study was to assess the effects of criminal malingering on the MMPI-2 Restructured Clinical (RC) scales. Sixty undergraduate students were given the MMPI-2 twice. One administration was conducted according to the MMPI-2 manual, and the other was given with a special set of malingering instructions specific to a prison setting. The two MMPI-2 profiles for each participant were scored for both the Basic and RC scales. Eight participants were eliminated from the data analysis due to validity (VRIN or TRIN) concerns. Data from the remaining 52 participants were analyzed using a 2 × 2 repeated measures ANOVA. Results showed that, as expected, the participants achieved higher MMPI-2 scores in the malingering condition. Also, participants achieved higher scores overall on the Basic scales and a significant interaction showed that participants achieved higher scores on the Basic Scales in the malingering condition than on the RC scales in that condition. These results supported prior research, indicating that malingerers produce elevated RC profiles. However, the present results also suggest that the Basic scales may be more effective in actually detecting malingerers, mainly due to the much lower ceiling on the RC scaled scores. Further implications of these findings for research and clinical work are also discussed.     

What do students really know about criminal justice?

This survey of three hundred and twenty undergraduate students attempted to determine their knowledge of crime and punishment in North Carolina. Respondents answered a series of open- and closed-ended questions regarding various legal topics, such as statutory rape and the legal ages for tobacco and alcohol use. The participants were also asked to list punishments for various offenses, such as possession of marijuana, driving while intoxicated, and rape. They were then asked to define certain legal terms such as larceny. The results indicated that most students were unable to provide correct corresponding punishments for many offenses. They were also unable to accurately define various legal terms, such as robbery or rape. The implications for stronger education in the area of criminal justice are discussed.     

Singapore justice

Singapore was brought to the world's attention in the spring of 1994, when it sentenced Michael Fay to six lashes with a cane. Many debated the issues presented by that case and there were many half‐truths released about Singapore and the eighteen year old male from Ohio. This research does not raise the issues of caning or corporal punishment. Rather, the research was done to explore ‘'Justice in Singapore'’ and how its system of justice really operates.

More specifically, this research will focus on this city‐state consisting of many divergent peoples, races, cultures, languages, and its thriving economy. The major part of the research focuses on crime related matters. The research compares U.S. and Singapore crime rates, and has found the overall U.S. rates to be 200% to 380% higher in the 1980s. Violent crime rates for ten years were also compared, and the U.S. rates range from 749% to 1,405% higher than Singapore. The paper also examines the ‘'drug problem'’ in Singapore and its response to it.

The last section of this paper explores why there is generally very strong support for police in Singapore (little corruption and few acts of police brutality). The court structure was also explored and an analysis has been done on how it functions. Lastly, the prison system is examined and its operations are presented. Justice in Singapore works very well, but it is also very different from other nations of the world.     

“We All Have to Eat”: Experiential Learning in Courses on Food and Hunger

Community-based learning offers students the opportunity to understand important concepts through their own experiences. Two courses on food and hunger in society, one a first-year seminar of 12 students and one an upper-level psychology course of 20 students, made site visits to local farms, markets, and a soup kitchen while reading about the issues and discussing them in class. At the end of the semester, each student wrote a short self-evaluation in which they were invited to discuss the aspects of the course that affected them most. Student responses suggest that the experiential component of the course was disproportionately powerful, impelling many of them to make changes in their lives as a result.     

Moving Beyond North–South Theatre

The North–South divide is counterproductive to the generation of norms and policies geared toward ensuring human security in a globalising world. Moreover, developing countries productively abandon Southern solidarity when it is in their perceived interests to do so. This article provides an historical overview of the origins of the geographical labels attached to the two main groups of countries and examines how the various constructed roles on the international stage in the global theatre are played by actors from the two major troupes, North and South. It concludes with some encouraging examples of changed stances within the supposedly ironclad categories.     

The future UN development agenda: contrasting visions,contrasting operations

‘Sustainable development’ – as currently and politically correctly formulated – provides an inappropriate basis on which to frame a future-oriented UN agenda, and risks perpetuating patterns of assistance in which most UN organisations perform poorly and in the shadow of alternative and more able multilateral and bilateral sources. UN operations should take as their point of departure the comprehensive agenda outlined by the two world summits of 2000 and 2005. This agenda recognises the value-based UN as the only universal-membership organisation, which combines the concerns of satisfying human needs while ensuring security, human rights, justice and sound governance. The post-2015 agenda should not look only at development and environment but aspire to what a million global voices canvassed by the UN in ‘the world we want’ campaign are clamouring for.     

Kenya: succession,customary law

This article seeks to explore the idea that a health care professional who becomes aware that a patient has a genetic linked disorder should in some circumstances owe a duty to inform blood relatives of that fact, and that failure to so inform should be redressed through the law of negligence. This is a contention which has appeared in medical literature ¹ 1 Lucassen, A. (2007), Should families own genetic information? Yes, BMJ, 335(July), p. 22. and been the subject of litigation in American jurisprudence. ² 2 Pate v Threlkel (1995) 661 S0 2d (SC Florida); Safer v Puck (1996) 677 2d 1188 (SC, NJ). Given that medical researchers have identified the genetic causes of many human diseases through more sophisticated methods of DNA sequencing, and have confirmed the hereditary nature of many of these conditions, the disclosure of screening results is a serious and contentious issue. This is particularly so given the increasing importance of preventative medicine as a means of dealing with disease. ³ 3 See Seigler, M. (1982) Confidentiality in medicine – a decrepit concept, N‐Engl J Med, 307, p. 1518, where he refers to medicine expanding ‘from a narrow, disease‐based model to a model that encompasses psychological, social and economic problems’. Also note the increasing emphasis now given to the prevention of diabetes and obesity through lifestyle education. The article suggests, by reference to ethical discourse, and particularly Levinas' theory on responsibility, ⁴ 4 See Levinas, E. (1961) Totality and Infinity, trans. A. Lingus 1969 (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press); Levinas, E. (1974) Otherwise Than Being, or Beyond Essence, trans. A. Lingus 1981 (The Hague: Martinus Mijhoff). that health professionals do owe a duty of care to a patient's relatives, but that this duty may be discharged in ways which do not necessarily involve the disclosure of the information to those parties, and that it is only in certain, specified circumstances that a duty to disclose the information exists.