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De inclusie van ‘oudere gedetineerden’ voorbij het integratie-segregatie debat getild
... Hierbij is het echter belangrijk dat er grondig wordt nagedacht over hoe we een penitentiaire ouderenzorg op een kwaliteitsvolle manier gaan organiseren, waarbij de betrokkenen zelf ook worden gehoord. De meeste oudere gedetineerden verkiezen zelf echter een meer gemengde populatie wat leeftijd betreft (Humblet, 2018;Humblet & De Smet, 2019). ...
Inleiding
In tegenstelling tot wat men zou verwachten, worden onze gevangenissen wel degelijk ook bevolkt door een oudere populatie. Dit is zelfs in steeds toenemende mate het geval. Hoewel ouderen nog steeds een minderheid uitmaken van de gevangenisbevolking, zien we hen de laatste jaren steeds meer in de gevangenisstatistieken opduiken. Deze groeiende tendens maakt dat onze gevangenissen niet langer op dezelfde manier of voor dezelfde populatie als in het verleden een invulling kunnen geven aan de detentie. De toename brengt immers een verhoogde nood aan aandacht met zich mee voor zowel de fysieke, psychische, sociale als spirituele behoeften van deze groep gedetineerden. Het recht op een menswaardig bestaan is fundamenteel en onvervreemdbaar, ongeacht de strafrechtelijke context. Hoewel gedetineerden hun vrijheid verliezen, behouden zij net als iedere burger het recht om een menswaardig leven te leiden (zie onder meer art. 23 Grondwet en art. 5 Basiswet, 2005). Doordat de vrijheidsberoving op zichzelf al leed berokkent, is het elementair dat er geen bijkomend leed wordt opgelegd aan gedetineerden (Basiswet, 2005). Gedetineerden worden ten gevolge van een rechterlijke beslissing opgesloten in instituten die door de overheid daartoe speciaal zijn opgericht. Dit schept voor de overheid ook meteen de plicht om de basisrechten van alle personen binnen deze instituties te garanderen. Uit de gegevens die we aan de hand van kwalitatieve studies 2 in Belgische gevangenissen hebben verzameld over de manier waarop we de detentie uitvoeren blijkt dat men een slecht begrip heeft van de specifieke noden en behoeften van oudere gedetineerden, waardoor zij in de praktijk soms verstoken blijven van deze basisrechten. Oudere gedetineerden kunnen zich binnen deze instituties echter extra beknot zien in hun vrijheid doordat het instituut weinig tot geen rekening houdt met een lichaam en geest die onderhevig zijn aan verandering. Ten gevolge van verouderingsprocessen kunnen ouderen zich als het ware gevangen voelen in, of door, het eigen lichaam. We zien dat de gevangenis dit fenomeen nog eerder versterkt dan remedieert. Veroudering voegt met andere woorden iets toe aan detentie doordat ze er een extra laag bovenop legt en die laag onttrekt op haar beurt weer iets aan de detentie doordat zij de totaliteit ervan verbergt. Dit is wat men in de literatuur aanduidt als 'verborgen verwondingen', die door het gevangenissysteem onopzettelijk ('institutionale onnadenkendheid') worden toegebracht bij ouderen en vaak onopgemerkt blijven door buitenstaanders (Crawley, 2005; Crawley & Sparks, 2005). Hieruit vloeien er een aantal belangrijke bezorgdheden voort in het kader van een menswaardige opsluiting van een oudere populatie. Deze bijdrage vertrekt vanuit de ontmoetingen met oudere gedetineerden, die ons helpen te begrijpen wat nodig is om een humane detentie voor deze groep te waarborgen. In wat volgt schenken we aandacht aan de impact van de groeiende vergrijzing op het Belgische gevangeniswezen. Aan de hand hiervan leggen we een aantal pijnpunten bloot van het huidige gevangenissysteem, maar willen we vooral ook oog hebben voor de opportuniteit om een degelijk penitentiair ouderenbeleid uit te werken. 1 Diete Humblet is master in de rechten, master en doctor in de criminologische wetenschappen. Op heden is ze als postdoctoraal onderzoeker verbonden aan de Onderzoeksgroep Crime & Society, vakgroep Criminologie aan de Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Daarenboven is ze als onderzoeker verbonden aan het Expertisecentrum Ouderenzorg aan hogeschool Odisee. Ze maakt deel uit van een denktank die de situatie van oudere gedetineerden verder opvolgt en tracht te verbeteren. Ze verrichtte fundamenteel onderzoek naar de betekenis van detentie op latere leeftijd en leidt momenteel een praktijkgericht wetenschappelijk onderzoek naar de professionalisering van penitentiaire ouderenzorg (Corresp.: diete.humblet@vub.be; diete.humblet@odisee.be). 2 De auteur verzamelde deze gegevens aan de hand van opeenvolgende studies waarbij gebruik werd gemaakt van briefwisseling met 57 oudere gedetineerden uit verschillende Vlaamse en Brusselse gevangenissen (65+, overwegend mannen) (Humblet, 2012; Humblet & Decorte, 2013) en van participerende observaties en gesprekken met minstens 20 oudere gedetineerden (65+, overwegend mannen) en minstens 40 personeelsleden tijdens een éénjarig durend etnografisch onderzoek uitgevoerd in twee Vlaamse gevangenissen (Humblet, 2018). De geïnteresseerde lezer wordt voor meer methodologische informatie verwezen naar de respectievelijke studies.
Prison populations across the world are increasing. In the United Kingdom, numbers have doubled in the last two decades, and older prisoners now constitute the fastest growing section of the prison population. One key reason for this shifting prisoner demographic is the growing numbers of men convicted of 'historic' sexual offences, many of whom are imprisoned for the first time in old age, and housed in prisons not suited to their needs. These demographic changes have profound consequences, including increased demand for health and social care in prison, and rising numbers of anticipated deaths in custody. Using the findings from a recently completed study of palliative care in prison, this paper proposes that older prisoners face a 'double burden' when incarcerated. This double burden means that as well as being deprived of their liberty, older people experience additional suffering by not having their health and wellbeing needs met. For some, this double burden includes a 'de facto life sentence', whereby because of their advanced age and the likelihood that they will die in prison, they effectively receive a life sentence for a crime that would not normally carry a life sentence. There has been little popular or academic debate concerning the ethical and justice questions that this double burden raises. Drawing on the work of Wacquant and others, the paper proposes that these changes are best understood as unplanned but reasonably foreseeable consequences of neoliberal penal policies. Although the paper focuses on the UK (which by comparison with other European countries has high rates of imprisonment), many of the challenges discussed are emerging in other countries across the world. This paper illustrates starkly how neoliberal policies and discourses have shaped the expansion and composition of the prison population with its consequent implications for health and justice.
Background
The number of older adults in the criminal justice system is rapidly increasing. While this population is thought to experience an early onset of aging-related health conditions (“accelerated aging”), studies have not directly compared rates of geriatric conditions in this population to those found in the general population. The aims of this study were to compare the burden of geriatric conditions among older adults in jail to rates found in an age-matched nationally representative sample of community dwelling older adults. Methods
This cross sectional study compared 238 older jail inmates age 55 or older to 6871 older adults in the national Health and Retirement Study (HRS). We used an age-adjusted analysis, accounting for the difference in age distributions between the two groups, to compare sociodemographics, chronic conditions, and geriatric conditions (functional, sensory, and mobility impairment). A second age-adjusted analysis compared those in jail to HRS participants in the lowest quintile of wealth. ResultsAll geriatric conditions were significantly more common in jail-based participants than in HRS participants overall and HRS participants in the lowest quintile of net worth. Jail-based participants (average age of 59) experienced four out of six geriatric conditions at rates similar to those found in HRS participants age 75 or older. Conclusions
Geriatric conditions are prevalent in older adults in jail at significantly younger ages than non-incarcerated older adults suggesting that geriatric assessment and geriatric-focused care are needed for older adults cycling through jail in their 50s and that correctional clinicians require knowledge about geriatric assessment and care.
An existing hiatus in empirical research related to the use of ‘juju’ rituals as a spiritual or psychological control mechanism by perpetrators to subjugate victims of human trafficking for sexual exploitation has underscored the need for this exploratory study. The phenomenon is shrouded in secrecy and little is known about what juju entails and how it is used to subdue victims. The aim of this article is to explore juju as a phenomenon, whilst illuminating some of the multi-layered complexities associated with its use as a control mechanism. The available literature and in-depth interviews with local and international actors in the field contributed to the unveiling of this phenomenon in the South African and broader counter-trafficking context. The research confirmed that juju is in fact a reality that numerous victims of Nigerian traffickers have to contend with. The article clarifies how traffickers use juju rituals as an effective control mechanism and catalyst to instil profound fear amongst victims, whilst compounding efforts by response agencies and criminal justice practitioners to combat human trafficking. Finally, suggestions for a more informed counter-trafficking response and recommendations for future research are offered which include the need for a variety of perspectives to be incorporated in the quest for a better understanding of juju and the human trafficking nexus.
This meta-analysis synthesizes research on interrater reliability of Criteria-Based Content Analysis (CBCA). CBCA is an important component of Statement Validity Assessment (SVA), a forensic procedure used in many countries to evaluate whether statements (e.g., of sexual abuse) are based on experienced or fabricated events. CBCA contains 19 verbal content criteria, which are frequently adapted for research on detecting deception. A total of k = 82 hypothesis tests revealed acceptable interrater reliabilities for most CBCA criteria, as measured with various indices (except Cohen’s kappa). However, results were largely heterogeneous, necessitating moderator analyses. Blocking analyses and meta-regression analyses on Pearson’s r resulted in significant moderators for research paradigm, intensity of rater training, type of rating scale used, and the frequency of occurrence (base rates) for some CBCA criteria. The use of CBCA summary scores is discouraged. Implications for research vs. field settings, for future research and for forensic practice in the United States and Europe are discussed.
Meta-analytic findings indicate that people, including police officers, are generally poor at detecting low-stakes deception. Related to this, investigations of behaviours that people reportedly use to make truth or lie judgements tend to conclude that people rely on incorrect stereotypes. However, consistent findings suggest that police officers are able to detect high-stakes deception; this implies that, at least in some contexts, police officers utilise reliable cues to deception. The research presented here was an investigation of cues to deception used by police officers (N = 69), when making veracity decisions about real world, high-stakes communications. Data were collected on both free report cues, and also prescribed cues that were known (from previous research), to discriminate between liars and truth-tellers in the communications that the police officers observed. Officers free reported using cues related to verbal content, emotion, body language, eyes, vocal cues, and external cues. Most prescribed cues were self-reportedly used correctly by large majorities of the officers, suggesting that they may not rely on inaccurate stereotypes. Self-report use of categories of free report cues, and prescribed cues, was not related to accuracy in detecting deception. As people may not always be aware of the behaviours on which their judgements are based, the relationships between some of the behaviours actually displayed in the communications, and group accuracy in detecting deception in those communications, were also investigated. Group accuracy was related to the presence of subjective, emotion-related cues in the communications.
: The article is based on 48 Belgian judicial files (27 Nigerian and 21 Moroccan ones), that concern the practices that created victims of human trafficking from Nigeria and Morocco in Belgium and some neighbouring countries. We discover that the most efficient criminal entrepreneurs are the very flexible ones, who continuously adapt, learn, dare to diversify, and sometimes also to internationalize (but mostly with African partners). An important difference with the Eastern European criminals whom we studied in former research, is that the Africans most of the time do not look for coverage of their practices through legal firms. Their learning practice remains re-active; until 2012 it does not really become pro-active. There is no pro-active longer term vision and no intention to create legal structures that hide their praxis.
Although a number of methods have been proposed to control for word-count differences between truthful and deceptive accounts, there is no uniformity amongst researchers using the Reality Monitoring criteria as to when, why or how to standardise for word-count differences. Another factor that also has received little attention in the literature is whether the number of others present when a person is providing an account alters the lexical profile of accounts such that Reality Monitoring scores are affected. To investigate these issues, 62 autobiographical statements, 31 truthful and 31 deceptive, were generated under three conditions, no person present, one, and two persons present, and were analysed before and after standardisation for word-count and duration. Results showed that the criteria successfully discriminated between truthful and deceptive accounts when no attempt to control for word-count was made and, to a lesser extent, when accounts were standardised for duration; however, they failed to discriminate after accounts had been standardised for length. The presence of others did not affect the ability to distinguish between truthful and deceptive accounts. The results highlight the difficulties involved in developing normative standardisation criteria which could be used in the field to classify individual or small numbers of cases.
Full text at: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/MXIJBTKSqWxFWCFUvVCg/full
Wij zijn verheugd over het debat dat is ontstaan over de vraag wat verhoorders moeten weten over de werking van het geheugen. Het startpunt van dit debat is een onderzoek dat vorig jaar in het Tijdschrift voor Criminologie is gepubliceerd (Odinot e.a., 2015). Wij vroegen in deze studie 143 verhoorspecialisten van de Nederlandse politie een lijst in te vullen met stellingen over de werking van het episodisch geheugen en over enkele verhooronderwerpen. De conclusie van dit onderzoek was dat het kennisniveau van de verhoorspecialisten op deze gebieden beperkt is: zij beschikten op slechts drie van de achttien stellingen over voldoende kennis. Ook bleek dat de verhoorspecialisten er enkele ongegronde overtuigingen op na houden. Zo aanvaardden ze de aanname dat mensen traumatische ervarin‐ gen jarenlang geheel kunnen vergeten en ze later weer herinneren, terwijl deze stelling in de psychologie al tientallen jaren lang als ongegrond wordt beschouwd. Imke Rispens en Adri van Amelsvoort, auteurs van de Handleiding Verhoor voor de Nederlandse politie, schreven een uitgebreide reactie op deze studie. Hierin stel‐ len zij de interessante vraag wat een verhoorder over de werking van het geheu‐ gen zou moeten weten om zijn taak adequaat te kunnen uitvoeren. In dit artikel gaan wij hierop in en bespreken we enkele aanbevelingen van de auteurs over het bewaken van de verhoorkwaliteit in Nederland. Eerst zullen we ingaan op de opmerkingen die geplaatst zijn bij de door ons gebruikte onderzoeksmethoden. Onderzoeksmethode: stellingenlijst Rispens en Van Amelsvoort hebben uitgebreide kritiek op de onderzoeksme‐ thode, met als voornaamste punt dat volgens hen kennis onvoldoende kan wor‐ den getoetst door het voorleggen van een stellingenlijst. Hierbij wordt met name het gebrek aan volledige consensus over enkele gebruikte stellingen als struikel‐ blok genoemd. De auteurs betogen dat volledige consensus over een onderwerp een vereiste is, voordat kennis erover zinvol kan worden getoetst. Hierin maken zij een fundamentele denkfout. Kennis is zelden absoluut en wordt in de weten‐ schapsfilosofie vaak beschouwd als een proces. In de loop der jaren wordt steeds meer kennis vergaard, die tot nieuwe inzichten kan leiden. Wetenschappelijke consensus is dus aan verandering onderhevig. Hierdoor zullen we het te allen tijde moeten doen met de kennis van nu. Op bepaalde onderwerpen is op dit moment binnen de psychologie geen volledige, maar wel degelijk voldoende con‐ sensus aanwezig om de kennis ervan toe te kunnen passen in de opsporingsprak‐ tijk en de rechtszaal (zie bijv.
The Scientific Content Analysis (SCAN) is a verbal veracity assessment method that is currently used worldwide by investigative authorities. Yet, research investigating the accuracy of SCAN is scarce. The present study tested whether SCAN was able to accurately discriminate between true and fabricated statements. To this end, 117 participants were asked to write down one true and one fabricated statement about a recent negative event that happened in their lives. All statements were analyzed using 11 criteria derived from SCAN. Results indicated that SCAN was not able to correctly classify true and fabricated statements. Lacking empirical support, the application of SCAN in its current form should be discouraged.
Employee theft is one of the most harmful crimes committed against small businesses. In response the owners of victimized businesses can be expected to make organizational changes intended to prevent future victimizations. This study uses grounded theory techniques to analyze data obtained from interviews with small business owners regarding their experiences with employee theft. Results indicate that the decision to address employee theft was based on the owner’s perception of the severity of the theft, their perception that something could be done about the theft, and an assessment of organizational weaknesses and opportunities of future employee thefts. When theft was perceived to be significant, small business owners responded by making changes to the organization that fit with traditionally established techniques of situational crime prevention. However, the choice of techniques(s) was not random, but rather reflected a desire to achieve functional redundancy.
This study is a content analysis of wiretapped conversations and police interviews concerning the criminal case of ‘Operation Koolvis’: an investigation into a Nigerian human trafficking ring for sexual exploitation in Western Europe. The criminal network traffics women from Nigeria, via the Netherlands as a transit country, to become street prostitutes in Italy. The aim is to explore the role of ‘voodoo’ in the functioning of the organization, applying transaction cost economics and rational choice theory. Four main categories of voodoo use were found. Firstly, voodoo is a coercive mechanism. Secondly, it is used cynically in cooperation between traffickers. Thirdly, there is non-cynical mention of voodoo as a belief system. A fourth category concerns voodoo priests as independent enforcers of contracts.
This study investigated longitudinal relationships between fathers’ involvement, as measured by reading, and child socioemotional behavior between infancy and age 7 in 9,238 intact two-parent families from the U.K. Millennium Cohort Study, a national cohort of British children born between 2000 and 2002. Once a variety of covariates and the potential bidirectional nature of relationships were taken into account, a path model showed that fathers’ involvement with their children in infancy significantly predicted better socioemotional behavior at age 3, although the relationship was not strong. Fathers’ reading with their children between ages 3 and 7 was not significantly associated with child socioemotional behavior, but mothers’ reading with their children at age 3 was significantly associated with improved child socioemotional behavior at ages 3 and 5. Results also suggested that parenting in the 21st-century British context remains fairly gendered. Both mothers and fathers were more likely to engage in physical activities with their sons and artistic activities with their daughters. Fathers’ reading was socially patterned in predicted directions.
This study examined whether people can detect deception after the fact if they initially accept someone's behaviour at face value but then learn that they have been duped. Fifty-four groups composed of four to six mutual friends engaged in a group discussion with a financial incentive for arriving at a correct decision. One member of each group was secretly assigned to sabotage the decision. Although none of the participants noticed the deception when it was committed, they showed substantial accuracy in identifying the saboteur once they were told that a deception had occurred. Nevertheless, interrogation did not increase the accuracy of their detection of deception. Participants showed a significant positive relationship between confidence and accuracy. Finally, participants also showed better-than-chance accuracy in their judgments of who believed them during the interrogation and who did not. These results suggest that the detection of deception might often be accomplished using information gained after the fact to reinterpret behaviours that were not initially suspected.
West Africa has become notorious for instability and armed conflict and is increasingly known for transnational criminal networks. Free movement across borders creates security threats in the sub-region. Smugglers, traffickers, terrorists and armed robbers traverse the sub-regional borders without major challenge. Neo-liberal discourses promoting globalisation prioritise economic interconnectedness at the expense of border control. This study examines the factors behind cross-border crime at the Nigeria–Benin border, and police efforts to combat it. This is an important case study for two reasons. First, this zone is among the most significant for cross-border crime and trafficking in the region. Second, the two countries, both members of the Economic Community of West African States, exhibit the two dominant modes of policing in the region, associated with British and French colonial histories. Semi-structured interviews with n=260 police officers in Nigeria and Benin are used. The study finds evidence to support Findlay’s contention that globalisation is crimogenic and that globalisation and crime are mutually constituted but that outcomes are also subject to localised factors. The study makes recommendations for improved police cooperation to improve security.
The credibility of a testimony is a crucial component of judicial decision-making. Checklists of testimony credibility criteria are extensively used by forensic psychologists to assess the credibility of a testimony, and in many countries they are admitted as valid scientific evidence in a court of law. These checklists are based on the Undeutsch hypothesis asserting that statements derived from the memory of real-life experiences differ significantly in content and quality from fabricated or fictitious accounts. Notwithstanding, there is considerable controversy regarding the degree to which these checklists comply with the legal standards for scientific evidence to be admitted in a court of law (e.g., Daubert standards). In several countries, these
checklists are not admitted as valid evidence in court, particularly in view of the inconsistent results reported
in the scientific literature. Bearing in mind these issues, a meta-analysis was designed to test the Undeutsch hypothesis using the CBCA Checklist of criteria to discern between memories of self-experienced real-life events and fabricated or fictitious accounts. As the original hypothesis was formulated for populations of children, only quantitative studies with samples of children were considered for this study. In line with the Undeutsch hypothesis, the results showed a significant positive effect size that is generalizable to the total CBCA score, δ = 0.79. Moreover, a significant positive effect size was observed in each and all of the credibility criteria. In conclusion, the results corroborated the validity of the Undeutsch hypothesis and the CBCA criteria for discriminating between the memory of real self-experienced events and false or invented accounts. The results are discussed in terms of the implications for forensic practice.
In 1989, Steller and Kohnken presented a systematic compilation of content characteristics for distinguishing between truthful and fabricated testimonies (criteria-based content analysis – CBCA) designed to be applied within a more comprehensive overall diagnostic procedure known as statement validity assessment (SVA; Steller, 1989). The subsequent 25 years have seen a marked increase in knowledge about the distinction between experience-based and non-experience-based statements. This supports the SVA approach and permits a better explanation of the underlying processes. The rationale of CBCA is that a true statement differs in content quality from a fabricated account because (a) a truth teller can draw on an episodic autobiographical representation containing a multitude of details, whereas a liar has to relate to scripts containing only general details of an event; and (b) a liar is busier with strategic self-presentation than a truth teller. The present article proposes a modified model of content cha...
Although human trafficking for sexual exploitation is a frequently discussed area in current research, especially on the way that human traffickers control their victims, a recurrent problem is the lack of empirical basis. The present study examines control methods (or conditions) used against 137 victims of human trafficking for sexual exploitation. A multidimensional scaling analysis (smallest space analysis (SSA-I)) of 23 control methods (and conditions) derived from a content analysis of police files from the Netherlands revealed three distinct forms of control. These could be interpreted in terms of Canter’s Victim Role model that has been the basis for differentiating offending styles in other violent interpersonal offences. Further analysis showed a relationship between these control styles and different types of prostitution. The three Victim as Object, Victim as Vehicle and Victim as Person modes are consistent with different control methods identified in previous research.
Trade in human beings, and Nigeria's role in it, is a contested area. This article first sets out to provide an integrated picture, from the varied academic and policy output, of human trafficking and smuggling, focused on a market picture that is able to incorporate both genders and diverse forms of exploitation, i.e., forced labour, prostitution and domestic servitude. It then outlines how organised crime operates under this model in the specific Nigerian context. Finally, the article reports the main results of a small exploratory study carried out with Nigerian law enforcement officers who work on the front line in tackling trafficking and smuggling.
AbstrAct The phenomenon of the trafficking of women, especially of young girls and women into exploitative sexual and commercial labor, has recently begun to attract local, national and international attention from world leaders, academics, the mass media, advocacy groups, the clergy and humanity in general. This is against the back drop of the fact that the trafficking of women has a number of far-reaching socio-economic, health and political consequences. Several factors, among them poverty, unemployment, ignorance and family size have been implicated as being reasons why women fall easy preys to the antics of traffickers. From available statistics, we can say that about 500,000 women are brought into the United States of America and Europe yearly for sexual and domestic servitude. Of the over 70,000 African victims of women trafficking, Nigerian women account for 70 percent of those trafficked to Italy alone. Fighting the menace requires a coordinated and concerted push from all stakeholders. This paper presents the causes and consequences of the trafficking of women from Nigeria to America and Europe. Empirical evidence indicates that the activities of traffickers, corrupt embassy officials, the country's porous borders, poverty, refusal of victims to expose traffickers, delay in prosecuting apprehended culprits and biting youth unemployment have "conspired" to undermine the battle against the illicit trade. The paper makes far-reaching recommendations about how to mitigate the identified obstacles.
Scientific Content Analysis (SCAN) is increasingly used by investigative authorities to evaluate the credibility of statements made by witnesses and suspects. SCAN, however, lacks a well-defined list of criteria, and does not involve a standardised scoring system. In the current study, we investigated which SCAN criteria are represented in actual statements. To this end, we analysed 82 sexual abuse cases of the Dutch police in which SCAN had been applied. Two independent coders scored the presence of various SCAN criteria in the: (1) written statements from victims, suspects, and witnesses; and also looked at the (2) recommendations for follow-up investigations that were derived from SCAN. Results showed that SCAN is primarily driven by 12 criteria. Results also indicated a low inter-rater agreement for most SCAN criteria, suggesting SCAN is insufficiently developed as a forensic tool. Still, the 12 criteria can be used as a starting point for future research on their psychometric properties.
While language production offers the commonly used window into individuals’ knowledge, it remains questionable whether oral or written language production allows for the better diagnostic content validity, for example in educational or legal settings. Existing results vary with respect to empirical evidence in favor of the oral or the written modality in knowledge assessment. However, for list-like organized knowledge domains (i.e., domains consisting of a definite number of uniform items), a Writing Superiority Effect (WSE) has been consistently observed. We present three experiments in which the WSE is replicated and generalized to hitherto untested knowledge domains and participant pools. To estimate the content validity of the verbal recall modes, free-recall performance is analyzed as a function of modality, taking into account cued-recall performance which is known to allow for a more complete knowledge recollection. Throughout all experiments, free-recall performance was better in the written than in the oral diagnosis of list-like knowledge. The results recommend written diagnosis at least for similarly structured knowledge domains. Future research should investigate to which degree writing superiority does also hold for other kinds of knowledge domains, and which language production and retrieval processes are responsible for the effect.
International trends in retail crime prevention practice include the global impact of retail crime, the difficulties of measuring retail loss prevention outputs, and the means by which retailers have innovated and invested in both technology and processes to inhibit crime. Crime issues facing retailers such as customer theft and employee deviance are long-established in the industry, but retailers also face growing problems from organised crime, cybercrime and frauds associated with the growth of e-commerce.
Advances in digital technology have led to new forms of employee crime and organizational risk. Employee collusion with external criminals engaged in theft is increasing in the digital age. Digital storage of company and customer information puts both at risk of hacking, which may be aided, or accidentally facilitated, by insiders. Both negligent and risk-taking employees may cause cyber-safety violations, leading to accidents whose scope is multiplied by digital interconnectivity. Prospective employees can use digital software and social media sites to misrepresent their identities while creating bogus credentials and the misleading appearance of a work history. Disgruntled employees can engage in cyber-sabotage of the organization, and cyber-harassment of co-workers. To address these emergent threats, new forms of personnel risk assessment can be developed and deployed. One such measure is the Reid Background Check Plus (RBCP). A meta-analysis of 39 studies supporting the five dimensions of the new RBCP produced encouraging construct and criterion-related validity evidence.
Over the past fifteen years, the Nigerian government has stopped many young migrant women from trying to leave the country, identifying them as victims of human trafficking and referring them to a federal antitrafficking agency for protection and rehabilitation. Relatively few women accept these interventions outright, due in part to ingrained suspicion of state officials and institutions. This article uses ethnographic research from one state-run shelter where these would-be migrant women were detained to examine how state counselors there justified their actions and how migrant women interpreted them. Where the moral authority of the state has been depleted, it shows how shelter staff urged residents to find trust in government through trust in God, and how women in turn made claims on the state through religious idioms of conversion and salvation. Ultimately, it demonstrates how ad hoc relationships of governance are forged in one fervently contested encounter between citizens and the state in Nigeria.
This exploratory study examines a seemingly unique method of control used to psychologically bind Nigerian women and children to their traffickers. In order to manipulate the victims’ fear of spiritual retribution, they initially undergo a juju ritual whereby they swear an oath to the spirit world, promising not to escape or disclose their exploitation to the authorities. The aim of this research was to explore how this process affects the victim and what considerations this phenomena raises for criminal investigators. The methodology employed qualitative data obtained through interviews with front-line practitioners from the United Kingdom. Results suggest the oath is one of several mechanisms used by traffickers to instil fear. Others include rape, physical threats, threats of deportation and perceptions of police corruption. The main recommendations are to empathise with the victim’s fear of spiritual retribution; develop trust and rapport; take a joint-agency approach and provide access to psychological and spiritual counselling.
Academic freedom is increasingly being threatened by a stifling culture of conformity in higher education that is restricting individual academics, the freedom of academic thought and the progress of knowledge – the very foundations upon which academia and universities are built.
Once, scholars demanded academic freedom to critique existing knowledge and to pursue new truths. Today, while fondness for the rhetoric of academic freedom remains, it is increasingly criticised as an outdated and elitist concept by students and lecturers alike and called into question by a number of political and intellectual trends such as feminism, critical theory and identity politics.
This provocative and compelling book traces the demise of academic freedom within the context of changing ideas about the purpose of the university and the nature of knowledge. The book argues that a challenge to this culture of conformity and censorship and a defence of academic free speech are needed for critique to be possible and for the intellectual project of evaluating existing knowledge and proposing new knowledge to be meaningful. This book is that challenge and a passionate call to arms for the power of academic thought today.
Recent communication research shows several paths to improving accuracy in deception detection. According to truth-default theory, one promising approach is diagnostic questioning. A sample of elite U.S. Customs agents participated in a deception detection task. Agents viewed senders who were interrogated with one of three different sets of questions that differed in diagnostic utility. The different questioning sets produced a 36-point swing in accuracy from 42% to 78% accuracy. These findings demonstrate that how someone is questioned can make a substantial difference in deception detection accuracy and that improved accuracy is possible with diagnostic questioning.
This research furthers understanding of the factors that induce individuals to choose deception. Its goals were to expand and test a recent account of the cognition of deception, Activation–Decision–Construction–Action Theory (ADCAT), in a mock job interview inviting impromptu deception. Decisions to lie are hypothesized to depend on the truth and other information activated from long-term memory by the social context. Activated information then guides evaluation of the likely costs of truth telling and benefits of deception; 166 college students participated in the job interview, who learned about the position and then adopted the role of job applicants. Afterward, participants shared their thoughts when responding to five questions from the interview. The most important findings are that the negative expectations of sharing truths and the positive expectations of sharing deceptions each account for unique variance in deciding to lie. Implications for lie reduction and detection are considered.Copyright
A round-robin experiment unpacked message veracity, sender believability (demeanor), judge truth-bias, sender transparency, and judge deception detection accuracy. Generally, more variance was observed in senders than in judges. The data were suggestive of the existence of an unusually transparent liar, but the data were not consistent with a deception-general ability. The results highlight the importance of considering variability in addition to central tendency and the importance of individual differences in senders in deception detection.
When using a content-based lie detection tool, a decision regarding veracity is made by evaluating the presence of specific content criteria within the interviewee's account. This evaluation can be achieved either by counting the frequency of occurrence of the criteria (frequency counts; FC) or using a scale to rate the intensity at which they appear in the entire text (scale rates; SR). In the current study we compared these two coding methods with respect to their accuracy in determining veracity, and their intercoder and test-retest reliabilities. Fourteen coders coded the presence of perceptual and contextual details in true and false statements, each used the FC method for one set of 30 statements and the SR method for another set of 30 statements. One month later, eight of the coders recoded 28 statements, again using the two methods. Results showed a significant advantage for FC method over SR method. While the coders perceived the SR method as less time-consuming than the FC method, accuracy level as well as intercoder and test-retest reliabilities were higher for the FC than for the SR method. These findings suggest that when using a content-based lie detection tool, FC coding should be preferred over SR coding.
The confidential reporting of sexual assaults can play an important role in support processes for victim-survivors and has the potential to improve the rate of official reporting of sexual assault to police. However, the self-reporting forms currently used for this purpose are not developed in line with the research evidence regarding forensic interviewing techniques, and nor have they been trialled and evaluated for their effective use in sexual assault investigations. This situation leads to substantial inconsistencies between the information gathering practices used by police in formal interviews, and the information gathering practices used in confidential, self-reporting contexts. In this article, we engage in a conceptual and critical consideration of current forms used in response to sexual assault. Ultimately, we propose that a written-response interview protocol (WRIP), has potential to improve the completeness and accuracy of evidence, as well as the consistency and experiences of victim-survivors of sexual assault.
Organized retail crime (ORC) involves the large-scale theft of everyday consumer items and potentially has much broader implications. Organized groups of professional shoplifters, or "boosters," steal or fraudulently obtain merchandise that is then sold, or "fenced," to individuals and retailers through a variety of venues. In an increasingly globalized society, more and more transactions take place online rather than face-to-face. As such, in addition to relying on physical resale markets, organized retail thieves have turned to online marketplaces as means to fence their ill-gotten goods. ORC exposes the United States to costs and harms in the economic, public health, and domestic security arenas. The exact loss from ORC to the retail industry is unknown, but an often-cited estimate of this loss is 30 billion annually. The economic impact, however, extends beyond the manufacturing and retail industry and includes costs incurred by consumers and taxes lost by the states. The theft and resale of stolen consumable or health and beauty products such as infant formula (that may have been repackaged, relabeled, and subjected to altered expiration dates) poses potential safety concerns for individuals purchasing such goods from ORC fences. In addition, some industry experts and policy makers have expressed concern about the possibility that proceeds from ORC may be used to fund terrorist activities. Current efforts to combat ORC largely come from retailers, online marketplaces, and law enforcement alike. Retailers responding to the 2009 National Retail Security Survey spent an average of 0.37% of their annual sales on loss prevention measures. These loss prevention costs are ultimately born by the consumers in the form of higher prices on goods. Also, online marketplaces report taking various measures to combat the sale of stolen and fraudulently obtained goods on their websites, including educating sellers and consumers, monitoring suspicious activity, and partnering with retailers and law enforcement. Combating retail theft has traditionally been handled by state law enforcement under state criminal laws. Some, however, have begun to question whether state laws-which vary in the quantity of monetary losses that constitute major theft-are adequate to combat ORC. While many agree that ORC is a national problem, there is debate over the federal government's role in deterring ORC and sanctioning various actors that may be involved in committing or aiding these crimes. One policy issue facing Congress is whether criminalizing organized retail crime in the U.S. Code would allow for more effective investigation and prosecution of these criminals. Congress may also wish to consider whether regulating resale marketplaces (online markets, in particular), to require such entities to increase information sharing with retailers and law enforcement, would strengthen investigations and prosecutions of ORC as well as decrease the prevalence of retail thieves relying on legitimate online marketplaces to fence stolen goods.
Desistance should be the main ground for reentry policies for imprisoned offenders. However, theories on desistance are diverse, and they disagree about the key factors related to the origin, maintenance, and failures of the desistance process. This research considers three main theories of desistance-control, cognitive transformation, and strain-social support-to explain desistance in a sample of imprisoned men in Spain. The main finding of the research is that strain-social support theory may be of primary importance for understanding desistance because of its capacity to explain processes of change that begin during imprisonment and that continue upon release.
A recent study showed that specific linguistic and grammatical features of a technique commonly referred to as statement analysis are applicable across different language groups. One limitation of that study was that it used an eyewitness crime video paradigm, which might be different from writing a statement after committing an actual criminal act. We remedied that limitation by using a mock crime paradigm. In this study, three language groups (English, Spanish, and Chinese) produced statements after committing a mock crime, taking a check, in an experimental context. Certain linguistic features significantly discriminated truths from lies similarly across the different language groups, suggesting that statement analysis might be applicable as a reliable indicator of deception across languages. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
While the concept of sampling variation is well understood by most researchers in the field of deception detection, previous studies have failed to account for the multiple sources of sampling variation present in typical experimental designs and use participant-level data as the dependant measure in analyses. This aggregated data, however, contains inherent biases that can mislead researchers. We argue that to appropriately test hypotheses and make inferences beyond a particular sample of participants the decision-level data must be modelled directly. To illustrate how this can be achieved we provide an introduction to generalized linear mixed models (GLMM) for the analysis of deception data and present Monte Carlo simulations demonstrating both the seriousness of the inherent biases present in participant-level data and the benefits of the GLMM approach. These simulations suggest that the empirical Type 1 and Type 2 error rates associated with main effects testing in deception research may be as high as 35% when data is aggregated ‘by-judge’ and as high as 60% when data is aggregated ‘by-sender’, respectively. When decision-level data is modelled directly, however, these rates are likely to be close to nominal levels (6% and 28%, respectively). Implications for past and future research are discussed.
Being a professional is associated with having a significant degree of freedom in performing one's work; but social workers,
like many professional workers, tend to be employed within organisations in which they are bound by policies and rules. An
influential analysis of the relationship between social workers and the organisations within which they work has argued that
there has been a proliferation of managerial organisational rules and that these have eliminated social workers' discretion.
However, this article argues that, even in rule-saturated organisations, social workers retain significant freedom in their
work, and that the ways in which professionals relate to organisational rules is a key dimension of understanding discretion.
This article employs Oakeshott's idea of a dialectic of two attitudes to rules to explore the relationship between organisational
rules and professional freedom in adult social work in local authorities. It presents the findings of a qualitative study
that explores social workers' attitudes to the formal organisational rules that structure their practice in an English local
authority. The study suggests that, while workers split in how they approach organisations in line with Oakeshott's approach,
these perspectives are not mutually exclusive, but are adapted and changed for reasons of pragmatism and principled commitments.
Some Nigerian women entrepreneurs of the Italian sex market were trafficked women in the past who made a career in the trafficking hierarchy and its organized crime groups. The female mobility towards the organizational side of the trafficking offense represents the most striking characteristic of the Nigerian trade industry: in fact, the trafficking victims are driven by their persecutors to take an active part in the trafficking offenses over time. This criminal modus operandi explains why several difficulties arise in defining sharp dividing lines between trafficking victims and trafficking perpetrators. Facing such a distinctive issue, this paper wants to highlight the multiple roles that women hold in the trafficking industry by focusing on: a) the gray areas in the Nigerian trade industry; b) the intermediate roles that individuals hold within the victim/offender model; c) the female vertical mobility in the trafficking hierarchy. Thanks to such an analysis, the author wants to overcome dominant binary approaches (mostly based on the victim/perpetrator dichotomy) in the analysis of Nigerian trade industry.
Previous studies have found that motivation to detect deception impairs participants’ ability to do so when truthful/deceitful statements are presented via an audio-visual medium. However, the effect of motivation on detecting deception may be different if statements are presented via different medium. The present study explored how motivation influences accuracy in detecting deception in an audio-only context. Eighty-one participants (45 females) were randomly assigned to a high motivation or low motivation condition, and participants’ motivation was manipulated via a monetary reward. Participants were then asked to judge 10 audio-only statements about a traveling experience on a binary scale (truth or deceit). A 2 (motivation: high vs. low) × 2 (messages veracity: truth-accuracy vs. deception-accuracy) × 2 (participant gender) mixed model analysis of variance revealed that highly motivated participants performed better than less motivated participants did in terms of truth-accuracy and total-accuracy rates, but not in term of lie-accuracy rates. The theoretical and practical implications of the present results are discussed.
Verbal credibility assessment encompasses several methods used to evaluate the credibility of statements by examining their content. In two experiments, we tested to what extent these methods are sensitive to contextual bias. Four statements were presented, although their context was manipulated by confronting raters with extra-domain information that either enhanced or diminished the credibility of the statements. In Experiment 1, 32 police officers analysed the statements using scientific content analysis. In Experiment 2, 128 undergraduates analysed the statements using criteria derived from criteria-based content analysis, reality monitoring or scientific content analysis. Results showed that all three methods were equally vulnerable to contextual bias. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.