Editorial

Citation

Gredecki, C.A.I.a.N. (2014), "Editorial", The Journal of Forensic Practice, Vol. 16 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/JFP-04-2013-0028

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Forensic Practice, Volume 16, Issue 1

We start this issue with an invited paper by L.C. Miccio-Fonseca, exploring factors relating to abuse risk variables in sexually offending youth. Miccio-Fonseca introduces the “Family Lovemap paradigm”. This draws on key literature exploring intimacy deficits and other factors related to relationships: both effective and ineffective. The paper focuses on family generational patterns in terms of relationships, considering patterns in youths with a history of sexually harmful behaviour in an effort to provide background and understanding to such presentations. As such it offers some carefully considered arguments in terms of a comprehensive ecological assessment, encouraging the clinician to consider the wide range of potential variables in terms of sexually harmful behaviour risk, and how they may inter-link.

The following paper maintains the theme of sexual aggression, yet this time addresses the victim’s characteristics. Rogers, Boardman and Lowe investigate the impact of victim symptomology, victim resistance and respondent gender on attributions of blame, credibility and perceived severity of assault. Using a substantial sample they noted that participants judged the female victim as more truthful if they displayed negative symptomology, with a resistant victim being noted as more truthful than one who offered no resistance. Adult males also viewed an adolescent female victim of sexual assault less reliable and more culpable for her own abuse than adult women, with men being particularly mistrustful of the young female victim if she was non-resistant and later failed to display any negative, post-abuse symptomology. Their study offers a helpful addition to exploring attributions of blame.

A paper from Julia Kelly then introduces an outline and initial evaluation of a Thinking Skills Programme for adults with learning disabilities, and who are at risk of offending. Whilst a small sample with no opportunity for a control group, it does, however, offer some helpful data and consideration in terms of self-report. They discuss how their programme was evaluated over three years using self-report clinical measures related to treatment targets and feedback from participants. Despite a small sample, they demonstrated a statistically significant improvement in general empathy and perspective taking, yet any improvements in impulsivity and locus of control were not noted. Whilst any self-report should be considered in terms of its potential limitations, they note that feedback from service users was positive. They tentatively argue their findings to be suggestive of thinking skills programmes offering some value to this population. In particular they argue well the importance of addressing treatment needs that are not directly regarded by the client as offence-specific, and which can then lead to the more overt offence-focused interventions.

Cobb and Farrants then present an engaging and valuable qualitative paper, exploring male prisoners’ constructions of help-seeking. They determine the nature of help-seeking behaviours, and which are fundamental to mental health and well-being. Using a theoretical grounding, they use discourse analysis on nine male prisoners. From this they noted three overarching themes: “man-up and deal with it”, “solidarity” and “authoritarian”. They summarise that male prisoners would resist formal help due to a perceived injustice in the system, disrespect for staff and feeling helpless when they are “bombarded with medication to keep quiet”. They further consider aspects that encourage more formal help-seeking behaviours, and summarise that male prisoners are more motivated to engage with informal help-seeking behaviours with each other. This was an engaging and thought provoking study that allowed lots of opportunity for reflection.

A feasibility study in exploring a clinical database for measuring outcomes in a low-secure service is then presented by Edworthy and Khalifa. They skilfully and carefully present arguments for sustaining a clinical database, and how such data can be used to promote service development. They argue such development in three domains: what patients are like before admission, how we support them whilst they are in hospital and what happens to them when they are discharged. They argue that the maintaining of a clinical database is an invaluable source of data that all mental health services should endeavour to develop, whilst being mindful of ethical and legal issues. From this they note a range of implications for practice. This includes the importance of ensuring that service-users data is recorded accurately and consistently to maximise data collection and analysis for meaningful service evaluations, and by doing so, the service-users experience and quality of life can be maximised.

Following is a research paper examining cognitive behavioural therapy for schizophrenia in a forensic mental health setting by Williams, Ferrito and Tapp. They argue the lack of research for such therapy in secure mental health settings. Drawing on a sample of male forensic patients undertaking manualised cognitive-behavioural therapy group, they compared these on primary and secondary outcomes to patients receiving treatment as usual. Their results indicated that the cognitive-behavioural therapy participants showed improvement on negative symptoms in comparison, as well as reductions in delusions, hallucinations and in overall interpersonal problems. They argue that cognitive behavioural therapy for schizophrenia can be effective with clients in secure forensic mental health settings, with improvements in negative symptoms and interpersonal functioning appearing to be particular gains.

Ending this issue is a paper focusing on the broad theme of assessment and Andy Inett and colleagues explore the assessment of dynamic risk factors amongst offenders with intellectual disability (ID) by exploring the predictive validity of The Short Term Assessment of Risk and Treatability (START) in a male sample. This is the first attempt to examine the predictive validity of the START with ID offenders. The findings indicate a significant predictive relationship with START risk scores and incidents of physical aggression and property damage, thus offering clinicians a preliminary evidence base supporting its use in low-secure settings. Whilst this paper uses a small sample size, which in turn limits the generalisability of the findings, it provides a progressive step towards understanding dynamic risk factors for violence in this population.

Carol A. Ireland and Neil Gredecki