Criminal Justice and Behavior

Accuracy of dangerousness predictions are typically assessed by subsequent violence related arrests and/or hospitalizations, yet evidence suggests the sole use of these measures excludes all but a small fraction of actual subject violence. As a result, forensic professionals are perceived as poor predictors of violence, perhaps wrongly. Expansion of criterion measures of violence is suggested, and methods for detecting subject distortion of past violence are proffered. Utilization of fake-good/fake-bad assessment methods for uncovering dishonest interview behavior, and concealment of past violence in particular, seems warranted.

Photographs and biographical descriptions of female deputy strangers were used to examine the effects of feminity and competence on male deputy attraction to and work acceptance of female deputies. Repeated measures were obtained for patrol work acceptance, staff work acceptance, and personal attraction. Four different but equally attractive females were employed to yield four experimental condition categories: feminine-competent, feminine-incompetent, masculine-competent, and masculine-in-competent. Each female was used in all photo-biograph combinations, though male subjects were only exposed to one combination. Results indicated that effects of pose and biograph were significantly different in each of the repeated measurements. Findings included an attraction preference for feminine-competent female deputies, and greater tolerance of feminine-incompetent female deputies for staff work than for patrol work.

A group training program for teaching social skills was conducted with 13 court-adjudicated youths on probation with a juvenile court. The program taught eight skills—giving positive feedback, giving negative feedback, accepting negative feedback, resisting peer pressure, problem-solving, negotiation, following instructions, and conversation. The youths were divided into three groups, two of which had a homenote procedure that required the youths to practice the skill at home during the week. The skills were trained in a multiple-baseline design across skills using skill explanation and rationales, modeling, and behavioral rehearsal with feedback. Behavioral role-play results showed substantial skill increases for the youths in all the groups with the youths in the two homenote groups showing more rapid increases in skill levels. Folow-up testing eight months later showed good retention of the majority of the skills. Self-report questionnaires showed that the majority of the youths viewed themselves as more competent following the training.

Michigan's Department of Corrections recently completed an evaluation of Project JOLT, a “Scared Straight” type of program. The evaluation was unable to uncover any benefits to juveniles from the program, and therefore the department recommended its cancellation. This, in turn, resulted in a public hearing at which this recommendation was challenged by raising a number of considerations that went beyond the evaluation study. This article clarifies the debate between the two sides and raises some theoretical, methodological, and political issues surrounding the Scared Straight approach.

Watson's (1972) ethical behavior scale was administered to 168 offenders who were undergoing felonly presentence evaluation, and these scores were compared with those that had been obtained during a previous study in which similar subjects were instructed to create favorable versus unfavorable impressions. This comparison, coupled with analyses of MMPI and selected criminological correlates of performance on the scale, suggested that responses were partially, though not totally, determined by impression management motives. In addition, ethical self-presentation was found to be unidimensional, both in its associations with other variables and with respect to the correlations among ethical choice scores. The results were seen to be generally supportive of the validity of Watson's scale when used with appropriate precaution to detect attempts at dissimulation.

This study describes sources of occupational stress in the prison officer's job and investigates their relationships with tedium—defined as a general experience of physical, emotional, and attitudinal exhaustion. Custodial personnel from four maximum security Israeli prisons participated in the study (N = 201). The measured sources of stress incude role conflicts of several types, fear and danger, role overload, role ambiguity, job scope, working conditions, and several types of social support. The variables making the largest unique contributions to the variance in tedium are role overload, management support, and societal support. The relationships between job tenure, sources of stress, and tedium are also explored, and the practical implications of the findings are discussed.

Shifting correctional philosophies and institutional policies have contributed to what psychiatrist Humphry Osmond calls the “model muddle.” The present article, based on analysis and speculation of a few investigations in the field of sexually integrated prisons (co-corrections), finds that co-correctional institutions suffer from a unique muddle of programmatic and nonprogrammatic models that clash over institutional goals to value the male-female relationship on the one hand and to serve system needs on the other.

This study investigated the validity of the Vocabulary-Block Design short form as an estimate of Full Scale IQ in a clinical population of 78 adjudicated white female delinquents. The mean age was 14-10. The difference between the means of the short form and the Full Scale IQ was small and nonsignificant. The correlation between the short form and Full Scale IQ was .87 and accounted for 76% of the variance shared by the measures. The short form was found to classify correctly not quite two-thirds of the subjects by intelligence category. About two-thirds of the subjects matched Vocabulary-Block Design discrepancy direction with Verbal-Performance IQ discrepancy direction. The short form was found to be useful as a screening device but inadequate for making individual treatment program decisions or identifying potential recidivists.