Ashlee Curtis, Keith R. McVilly, Andrew Day, William R. Lindsay, John L. Taylor and Todd E. Hogue
Fire setters who have an intellectual disability (ID) are often identified as posing a particular danger to the community although relatively little is known about their…
Abstract
Purpose
Fire setters who have an intellectual disability (ID) are often identified as posing a particular danger to the community although relatively little is known about their characteristics, treatment and support needs. The paper aims to discuss this issue.
Design/methodology/approach
This study describes the characteristics of 134 residents of low, medium and high security ID facilities in the UK who have either an index offence of arson, a violent index offence or a sexual index offence.
Findings
Index arson offenders who had an ID had multiple prior convictions, a history of violent offending and a high likelihood of having a comorbid mental disorder. There were many shared characteristics across the three groups.
Practical implications
The current study suggests that offenders who have ID who set fires have treatment needs that are similar to those of violent and sex offenders. It follows that fire setters who have an ID may also benefit from participating in more established offending behaviour treatment programs, such as cognitive behaviour therapy programs, developed for other types of offender.
Originality/value
This study is one of the few which has investigated the characteristics and treatment needs of persons who have an ID who set fires. In particular, it is one of the first to compare the characteristics and treatment needs for persons with ID who set fires, to those who have committed violent and sexual offences.
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William R. Lindsay, Anne van Logten, Robert Didden, Lesley Steptoe, John L. Taylor and Todd E. Hogue
Over the last ten years, there has been greater interest in the diagnosis of personality disorder (PD) in people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). One…
Abstract
Purpose
Over the last ten years, there has been greater interest in the diagnosis of personality disorder (PD) in people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). One important characteristic of a diagnostic system is that it should have validity as a contribution to utility. PD has been found to have a predictive relationship with violence and the purpose of this paper is to review two methods for the diagnosis of PD in offenders with IDD in order to evaluate the utility of the diagnoses.
Design/methodology/approach
In total, 212 offenders with ID were recruited from three settings – maximum-security, medium/low security and community services. Diagnoses of PD in the case files were compared with a structured system of diagnosis based on DSM-IV traits.
Findings
There were significant differences between the two systems with a significantly higher frequency of PD diagnosis in the community forensic setting in the structured assessment system. There was no relationship between the case files diagnosis of PD and future violence but there was a significant predictive relationship between the structured diagnosis of PD and future violence with an AUC=0.62.
Research limitations/implications
As with all such studies, the research is limited by the quality of the case files available to the researchers.
Practical implications
Only the structured assessment of PD had utility for the prediction of violence. Reasons for the differences between the systems are discussed and suggestions made on how a diagnosis of PD can be structured for the busy clinician.
Social implications
The accurate diagnosis of PD has important implications since the PD is a crucial addition to any violence risk evaluation.
Originality/value
This study is the first of its kind to review the way in which clinicians assess PD.
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Amy Izycky, Louise Braham, Lisa Williams and Todd Hogue
Measures of risk employed in mental health settings in the last 20 years have consisted of clinical scales that comprise both historical and clinical factors. Examples of such…
Abstract
Measures of risk employed in mental health settings in the last 20 years have consisted of clinical scales that comprise both historical and clinical factors. Examples of such tools include the widely used HCR‐20 (Webster et al, 1997), SVR‐20 (Boer et al, 1997) and VRS (Wong & Gordon, 2000). Such tools are time‐intensive and, in the main, completed by an independent rater. At present there is a lack of systems to guide teams to investigate salient risk factors related to mental state and violent offending that inform treatment effectiveness, change and, ultimately, risk assessment decisions. This paper describes the application of such a system. The Standard Goal Attainment Scaling for Sex Offenders (GAS‐S) (Hogue, 1994) has been modified for use with violent offenders and is presented herewith. Application of the tool to the Violent Offender Treatment Programme (VOTP) is discussed, alongside its potential usefulness in informing risk assessment and the effectiveness of treatment intervention.
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Olga Soares Cunha and Rui Abrunhosa Gonçalves
Police officers’ attitudes toward criminals are critical to the justice system’s response to crime. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the attitudes toward offenders…
Abstract
Purpose
Police officers’ attitudes toward criminals are critical to the justice system’s response to crime. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the attitudes toward offenders (ATOs) among police officers.
Design/methodology/approach
To assess police officers ATOs, the authors adapted the Attitudes Toward Prisoner scale to produce the ATO scale. The scale was completed by 431 male police officers in a Portuguese police institution.
Findings
The results revealed that police officers hold more negative ATOs than correctional officers and graduate students. Moreover, the results revealed significant differences in average ATO scores according to police officers’ age, years of service, marital status and education; namely, police officers who were older, married, less educated, and with more years of police service had more positive ATOs. However, the results revealed that these demographic factors had a limited value in predicting attitudes, as none of them emerged as a predictor of ATOs.
Originality/value
Nonetheless, considering the relevance of attitudes in law enforcement procedures, the implications for training police officers are provided, specifically using critical incident technique strategies.
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Ting‐Peng Liang and Shin‐Yuan Hung
In the past several decades, Taiwanese companies have been successful in the world market. However, knowledge about how these firms use information technology is very limited…
Abstract
In the past several decades, Taiwanese companies have been successful in the world market. However, knowledge about how these firms use information technology is very limited. Investigates the application of decision support systems (DSS) and executive information systems (EIS) in Taiwan. Two mail surveys were conducted to explore who used the system, where the systems were applied, what decision models were used and reasons for not using these systems. The results indicate that: more than 20 per cent of the firms already used DSS or EIS and an additional 37 per cent had plans to adopt them shortly; 87 per cent of the firms considered DSS and EIS to be important to their competitiveness; middle‐ and lower‐level managers were major DSS and EIS users; half of them used the system every day; the most troublesome problem in developing DSS/EIS was the difficulty in determining information requirements; and information aggregation and what‐if analysis were major functions for decision support. Furthermore, quantitative models were employed only in large and old companies. The most popular models included linear programming, PERT/CPM, and regression analysis, whereas the most popular domains for application were finance and production management.
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This bibliography is offered as a practical guide to published papers, conference proceedings papers and theses/dissertations on the finite element (FE) and boundary element (BE…
Abstract
This bibliography is offered as a practical guide to published papers, conference proceedings papers and theses/dissertations on the finite element (FE) and boundary element (BE) applications in different fields of biomechanics between 1976 and 1991. The aim of this paper is to help the users of FE and BE techniques to get better value from a large collection of papers on the subjects. Categories in biomechanics included in this survey are: orthopaedic mechanics, dental mechanics, cardiovascular mechanics, soft tissue mechanics, biological flow, impact injury, and other fields of applications. More than 900 references are listed.
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Todd Kuethe, Chad Fiechter and David Oppedahl
This study examines agricultural lending by commercial banks and the competition they face from the Farm Credit System (FCS) and non-traditional lenders, including merchants…
Abstract
Purpose
This study examines agricultural lending by commercial banks and the competition they face from the Farm Credit System (FCS) and non-traditional lenders, including merchants, dealers and other input suppliers.
Design/methodology/approach
We construct a measure of commercial banks' perceived competition with FCS or non-traditional lenders using the individual responses to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago's Land Values and Credit Conditions Survey between 1999 and 2019. Through regression analysis of an unbalanced panel of survey responses, we present a number of stylized facts on the relationship between perceived competition and farm loan rate spreads, collateral requirements, loan delinquencies and expected lending volumes.
Findings
Our analysis shows that the two sources of competition have very different effects on commercial bank lending terms, loan portfolio riskiness and expected loan volumes. With these results in mind, we offer a number of suggestions for future research.
Originality/value
We leverage the unique characteristics of the Land Values and Credit Conditions Survey to examine the competition with non-traditional lenders that cannot be observed using administrative data.