The referral decision scale with mentally disordered inmates

Correctional facilities are increasingly burdened with mentally disordered offenders and are faced with the formidable task of effectively screening inmates for major mental disorders and suicide potential. Teplin and Swartz (1989) developed the Referral Decision Scale (RDS) as a rapid screen for schizophrenia and major mood disorders in jail populations. However, more recent research by Hart, Roesch, Corrado, and Cox (1993) has called into question the effectiveness of the RDS. In this study, we examined the convergent and discriminant validity of the RDS with the Schedule of Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia—Change Version (SADS-C) and the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) on a sample of 108 mentally disordered inmates. The RDS provided moderate evidence of convergent validity but failed to demonstrate acceptable discriminant validity, because of high intercorrelations on RDS subscales (heterotrait-monomethod coefficients). In comparison, the SADS-C yielded similar evidence of convergent validity and excellent discriminant validity.The authors would like to thank the Research Opportunities Program, University of North Texas for its grant support and Captain James Moore for his active cooperation.Tarrant County Mental Health and Mental Retardation Services.     

The interplay between economic and political logics: path dependency in health care in England

The purpose of this article is to use the ideas of path dependency to understand why policies implemented by governments for health care in England were and are suboptimal in terms of the control of total costs, the equitable distribution of hospital services, and efficiency in delivery. We do this by relating the economic logic of achieving these objectives to the political logic of a state-hierarchical system in which ministers are accountable for the effects of policies and doctors largely decide the supply and demand of health care. The initial policy path of the National Health Service (NHS) controlled costs but lacked systems to achieve equity and efficiency in the funding of hospitals. Policies were introduced to achieve equity, but not efficiency, in the 1970s. The Thatcher government sought efficiency through a budgetary squeeze in the 1980s, which culminated in the NHS funding crisis of 1987 - 1988. The result was the policies of the NHS internal market, which promised efficiency by introducing a purchaser-provider split and a system of provider competition in which money would follow the patient. These promises justified an injection of extra funds for three years, but only a pallid model of the internal market was implemented. The Blair government abandoned the rhetoric of competition but maintained the purchaser-provider split and continued to constrain total NHS costs, which resulted in the funding crisis of 1998 - 1999. Current policies are to substantially increase spending on health care and reintroduce a system of provider competition in which money will follow the patient.     

Validation of the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory for Axis II Disorders: Does It Meet the Daubert Standard?

Law and Human Behavior - Relevant to forensic practice, the Supreme Court in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (1993) established the boundaries for the admissibility of scientific...     

A Comparison of Forensic and Nonforensic Malingerers: A Prototypical Analysis of Explanatory Models

Explanatory models of malingering strive to understand the primary motivation underlying attempts to feign. Rogers, Sewell, and Goldstein (1994) provided empirical support for the conceptualization of pathogenic, criminological, and adaptational models. In the current study, a prototypical analysis of 221 forensic experts results in a slightly refined formulation: the adaptational model was decomposed into its two broad dimensions (cost–benefit analysis and adversarial setting). An important finding is that the factor structure for the explanatory models remained stable when applied to both forensic and nonforensic cases. As a first investigation, significant differences were observed in prototypical cases of malingering by the category of referral (forensic or nonforensic) and by type of feigning (mental disorders, cognitive impairment, and medical syndromes). Surprisingly, the feigning of medical syndromes appeared to play a relatively prominent role in both forensic and nonforensic cases and to be influenced by the apparent adversarial context of the assessment. Finally, important gender differences were observed, especially with nonforensic prototypical cases of malingering.     

Constitutional Irregularities in the British Imperial Courts of Vice Admiralty during the Mid-Nineteenth Century

During the mid-nineteenth century there were between forty and fifty courts of vice admiralty located in colonies across the British empire. They were imperial institutions, whose officers were supposed to be appointed by the High Court of Admiralty in London. However, the complexity and obscurity of the official process, combined with the lack of priority given to the courts by imperial and colonial officials alike meant that many of these courts experienced unfilled vacancies and irregular appointments. This article discusses the shortcomings of the vice admiralty system that gave rise to these irregularities, and led to the passage of the Vice Admiralty Courts Act in 1863. It demonstrates that the courts were ineffective instruments of imperial authority, and that by the time the 1863 Act was passed their integration into the regular colonial courts was inevitable.     

An Analysis of Miranda Warnings and Waivers: Comprehension and Coverage

Miranda warnings enshrine the constitutional rights of custodial suspects against self-incrimination. However, the wording and sentence complexity of Miranda warnings and waivers vary dramatically from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. This study is the first extensive investigation of Miranda warning variations examining 560 Miranda warnings from across the United States. With Flesch-Kincaid reading comprehension as a useful metric, Miranda warnings varied from very simple comprehension (i.e., grade 2.8) to requiring postgraduate education. Miranda warnings are composed of five components (e.g., silence and evidence against you); marked variations were also observed in the comprehensibility of individual components. On average, the Miranda warning component on "continuing rights" requires a reading comprehension level six grades higher than the comparatively simple expression of the right to silence. Similar analyses were conducted on Miranda waivers. The content of these warnings differed on such issues as communicating (a) when access to an attorney would be granted (e.g., 45.9% specified only "during questioning") and (b) explicitly that indigent legal services were free (e.g., 31.8% directly informed suspects). Finally, the study identified representative Miranda components at different levels of reading comprehension as a template for further research.     

Representation,agendas and institutions

Dynamic agenda representation can be understood through the transmission of the priorities of the public onto the policy priorities of government. The pattern of representation in policy agendas is mediated through institutions due to friction (i.e., organisational and cognitive costs imposed on change) in decision making and variation in the scarcity of policy makers' attention. This article builds on extant studies of the correspondence between public priorities and the policy activities of government, undertaking time‐series analyses using data for the United States and the United Kingdom, from 1951 to 2003, relating to executive speeches, laws and budgets in combination with data on public opinion about the ‘most important problem’. The results show that the responsiveness of policy agendas to public priorities is greater when institutions are subject to less friction (i.e., executive speeches subject to few formal rules and involving a limited number of actors) and declines as friction against policy change increases (i.e., laws and budgets subject to a greater number of veto points and political interests/coalitions).     

An application of Megargee's Algebra of aggression to the case of theodore bundy

The case of Theodore Robert Bundy, a young man allegedly responsible for the murders of more than 36 women in five states, has captured the imagination of many people in current society. The killer resembles the “boynext-door” stereotype of an attractive, articulate young man. The women were most often college co-eds abducted from crowded areas or struck down while they were alone. The crimes themselves were brutal sexual assaults, with the bodies of the victims often discovered months later in uninhabited areas. Such crimes demand efforts on the part of crminologists and psychologists toward an understanding and, ultimately control of potential future behavior, Megargee's Algebra of Aggression, in which he attributes the propensity to commit violent acts to specific factors, offers one such framework of understanding. While theoretical and after-the-fact, it may aid comprehension of crimes which are currently incomprehensible. This paper applies Megargee's Algebra of Aggression to the crimes of Theodore Robert Bundy. It seeks to explain Bundy's actions in terms of his instigation to aggression, habit strengths which encouraged continued violent acts, inhibitions which may have limited some of his activity, and situational factors which fostered violence as an acceptable response. It is based on a review of the literature deading with Bundy and the author's own involvement as an investigator in one of Bundy's crimes, the Chi Omega murders at Florida State University.