Geophysical variables and behavior: XXIX. Impact of atmospheric conditions on occurrences of individual violence among Canadian penitentiary populations

This project studied the effects of weather variables and size of the population on minor and major violence rates within six prisons in the Kingston, Ontario, Canada area from January, 1980 through December, 1983. While weather variables have been studied in relation to mood changes within the general population, this study was the first to analyze the impact of weather variables on rates of violence within the prison setting using forward inclusion multiple regression. Analysis showed that population size consistently appeared positively correlated with assaults on other inmates among the male medium-security prisoners during the summer months. In the summer months, temperature tended to be positively related to some minor kinds of offenses, but in the winter months the relationship was negative. Humidity, rain, sunshine hours, snow, and snow on the ground were not consistently related to incidences of minor and major violence. Indices of geomagnetic disturbances had statistically significant inverse relationships with attempted suicide/self-inflicted injury rates among the male prisoners during the summer months. Over 12 months, wind was generally negatively correlated with incidences of major and minor violence among the male inmates. For 6-mo. periods, wind was generally positively correlated with violence rates during the winter months and negatively correlated during the summer months among the male inmates. The findings relating weather variables to violence rates in the women's prison were consistently in opposition to those found for male prisoners during the 4-yr. period.     

Aktuelle Aspekte des Gefängnissuizids

Suicides present a major complication during imprisonment and contribute essentially to the high mortality rate of prisoners. All international studies found increased suicide rates among prisoners in comparison to the general population. This article reviews general and individual risk factors for suicide in prison and possible contributing specific stress factors during imprisonment. The main results of the analysis of the European Annual Prison Statistics from 1997 to 2007 are presented referring to macrostructural determining risk factors for suicide in prison. Measurements and prevention strategies are briefly discussed.     

Zusammenhang zwischen Art der strafbaren Handlung und Suizid in Haftanstalten der USA

Does the nature of the criminal charge or conviction influence whether a jail or prison inmate will take his life? In the United States several nationwide surveys provide relevant information for answering this question. Studies of jail suicides in 1979, 1985 and 1986 respectively indicated that most inmates who committed suicide were charged with nonviolent offenses including drug related or minor offenses. In more recent national surveys the rate of suicide among jail inmates charged with violent offenses was triple that for those charged with nonviolent offenses. Offenses with the highest rates of suicide were kidnapping, rape and homicide. In prisons, where the rate of suicide is much lower than in jails, the rate of suicide for violent prisoners was twice that for nonviolent prisoners. Violent offenses with the highest rates of suicide in prisons included kidnapping, homicide, sexual assault and assault. Discussion addresses the discrepant results between the early surveys of jail suicides and the more recent surveys of suicides in jails and prisons. Further explored are possible explanations for the earlier predominance of nonviolent offenses among suicide victims, the recently elevated rates among violent offenses, and the elevated rates among specific criminal offenses. Commentary is also given to the practical implications of these findings.     

A comparison of the risk‐taking behaviors of prisoners and non‐prisoners

Do prisoners and non‐prisoners differ in their risk‐taking behavior and the domains where they take risks? Surprisingly little psychological research has addressed these questions, despite the well‐established paradigms and extensive literature on risk taking among non‐prison populations. To fill this gap, we used the Domain‐Specific Risk‐Taking Scale to compare 75 male prisoners' and 75 male non‐prisoners' risk‐taking behavior, risk perception, and risk benefit in five domains (ethical, financial, health, recreational, and social). Our results show that prisoners and non‐prisoners did not differ in their risk‐taking behavior in the ethical, financial, recreational, or social domains. In the health domain, however, prisoners exhibited significantly higher risk‐taking tendencies. With regard to risk perception, prisoners perceived activities as significantly more risky than non‐prisoners, aside from the financial domain where non‐prisoners reported significantly higher risk perception. In all five domains, prisoners perceived risk‐taking activities as offering fewer benefits compared to the non‐prisoner sample. Our results also indicate that risk‐taking activities are better predicted by the expected benefits than by risk perception for both prisoners and non‐prisoners in the recreational, financial, and ethical domains. However, for prisoners, risk taking in the social domain increased with level of perceived benefit. In the health domain, prisoners' risk taking decreased with increasing level of perceived risk, whereas for non‐prisoners, perceived benefits, but not risk perception, predicted risk taking. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Counting blessings and sharing gratitude in a Chinese prisoner sample: Effects of gratitude-based interventions on subjective well-being and aggression

Abstract

Gratitude-based interventions are effective for increasing individuals’ subjective well-being (SWB); however, they have not been validated among prisoners, especially for negative states (i.e. aggression). Furthermore, as a social emotion, gratitude might be nurtured via practice within a social group. Therefore, we developed a weekly group-based sharing gratitude exercise, and examined its effect along with that of daily blessing-counting among prisoners in China. Ninety-six male violent prisoners were assigned randomly to three conditions (gratitude-sharing, blessing-counting, and control). Interventions took place over five weeks. Both interventions improved SWB and decreased aggression compared to controls. Additionally, the improvement in gratitude mediated the relationship between the two forms of intervention and SWB. These findings indicate that gratitude-based interventions can be implemented among male prisoners to help further the psychological corrective function of prisons in China.     

From a terror management perspective: The efficacy of self-affirmation on organ donation-related thoughts and intentions in China

ABSTRACT

In 2015, the Chinese government officially abolished the practice of harvesting organs from executed prisoners. However, the voluntary donor registration rate among the Chinese population is approximately 2% as of January 2020. Guided by self-affirmation theory and terror management theory, the present investigation examined a number of variables that may be related to donor registration intentions and a method to mitigate death thoughts and misconceptions. An online experiment was conducted in which 352 Chinese participants were randomly assigned to either a self-affirmation (i.e., affirming values that are important to the participants) or a no-affirmation condition. Results revealed that self-affirmation lowered death thoughts among the participants, which in turn were positively related to organ donation misperceptions. Inconsistent with terror management theory, the level of death thoughts was not directly related to participants’ intentions to register as organ donors. Instead, the relationship between the two was mediated by misperceptions toward organ donation.     

Detection of malingering in psychiatric unit and general population prison inmates: a comparison of the PAI, SIMS, and SIRS

In this study, we compared the utility of three instruments, the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI; Morey, 1991), the Structured Inventory of Malingered Symptomatology (Smith & Burger, 1997), and the Structured Interview of Reported Symptoms (SIRS; Rogers, Bagby, & Dickens, 1992) to detect malingering among prisoners. We examined 4 inmate samples: (a) prisoners instructed to malinger, (b) "suspected malingerers" identified by psychiatric staff, (c) general population control inmates, and (d) psychiatric patients. Intercorrelations among the measures for the total sample (N = 115) were quite high, and receiver operating characteristic analyses suggested similar rates of overall predictive accuracy across the measures. Despite this, commonly recommended cut scores for these measures resulted in widely differing rates of sensitivity and specificity across the subsamples. Moreover, although all instruments performed well in the nonpsychiatric samples (i.e., simulators and controls), classification accuracy was noticeably poorer when attempting to differentiate between psychiatric patients and suspected malingerers, with only 2 PAI indicators significantly discriminating between them.     

Sexual behavior and drug abuse in homosexuals,prostitutes and prisoners in Tijuana,Mexico

Results are presented of a sociodemographic and epidemiologic survey conducted between July-October 1988 in Tijuana, Mexico, among 3 subgroups believed to be at high risk of HIV infection. 383 female and 32 male prostitutes recruited at the Municipal Medical Services clinic in Tijuana, 376 male and 34 female prisoners recruited ate the State Penitentiary, 233 male homosexuals and bisexuals recruited in bars and other meeting places, and 11 drug addicts treated at a detoxification program were successfully interviewed. Although only 11 iv drug addicts were located and agreed to participate, 5 prostitutes, 85 prisoners, and 5 homosexual/bisexual reported histories of iv drug use. The homosexual/bisexual group was relatively younger and better educated,and had higher incomes than the other groups. The average age was 25.6 for homosexual/bisexuals, 29.5 for prostitutes, and 29 for prisoners. 82.7% of homosexual/bisexuals, 46.3% of prostitutes, and 44.4% of prisoners were single. Among prostitutes and prisoners, respectively, 6.5 and 25.9% were married and 22.2 and 18/5% were in consensual unions. The average number of years of schooling were 10.3 for homosexual/bisexuals, 5.6 for prostitutes, and 6.3 for prisoners. Male prostitutes reported the highest average number of sexual partners in the past year (261 +or- 341), prisoners reported the greatest frequency of iv drug users as sexual partners, and homosexual/bisexuals reported the highest frequency of receptive anal intercourse. 35% of respondents reported a history of sexually transmitted diseases. 36% of female prostitutes and 4% of prisoners reported using condoms regularly during vaginal intercourse. 25% of homosexual/bisexuals reported using condom regularly during anal intercourse. 31% of respondents reported having been tested previously for HIV antibodies,but only 41% of those knew the results. 72 homosexual/bisexuals, 56 prostitutes, and 126 prisoners reported having had sexual relations in the US. 80% of respondents reported consuming alcohol, 64% cigarettes, and 28% illegal drugs. The most frequently used illegal drug was marijuana. 68% of the 106 identified iv drug users continued to use drugs. The rest reported having used them since 1978. The introduction of HIV into these subpopulations has been slow but steady. Infection rates in this sample were .5% for prostitutes, 1.2% for prisoners, 11.6% for homosexual/bisexuals, and 1.9% for the 106 iv drug users.     

Health, well-being, and social indicators among monks, prisoners, and other adult members of an Open University Cohort in Thailand

This study has brought together two seemingly socially extreme population subgroups to compare their health and social well-being. These groups had in common restricted living arrangements and aspirational enrollment. As well, they are part of the population-based Thai Cohort Study (TCS) of 87,134 adult Open University students residing throughout the country. Analysis was restricted to men aged 20–39 years resulting in 711 monks, 195 prisoners and 29,713 other cohort members. For physical health, we have found certain conditions such as tuberculosis or malaria much more common among prisoners, while goiter and liver diseases were more common among monks. This could be due to prison living arrangements for the former and region of residence for the latter. For other social outcomes, lower trust, higher economic stress and lower personal well-being was noted for prisoners compared to other groups. Findings here with regard to spirituality and religion are encouraging with almost no difference reported between prisoners and other cohort members implying that trust-building and other social intervention for prisoners could be activated through prevalent religious beliefs and practices and with continuing support from Thai prison authorities.     

"i hope someone murders your mother!": an exploration of extreme support for the death penalty

Although general support for the death penalty is decreasing, a segment of the pro-death penalty population continues to support capital punishment with great vehemence. Extreme support for the death penalty is expressed through angry, confrontational, and sometimes threatening verbal attacks against condemned prisoners and opponents of capital punishment. Expressions of this support are especially strong around the time of highly publicized executions. This paper explores extreme support for capital punishment in the months before and after Tennessee's first execution in 40 years, using data gathered from newspaper reports, letters to the editor, interviews with death penalty opponents, and the authors' own experiences. Linking Bowers and Pierce's brutalization theory with community psychology theory, we explore ways in which highly publicized executions seem to unleash of hatred and violent intention among a number of death penalty supporters and how this behavior may illuminate research of increases in homicide after highly executions.     

Psychometric properties of Scheier and Carver's Life Orientation Test in a sample of Australian prisoners

The psychometric properties of Scheier and Carver's 1985 Life Orientation Test (LOT), which is a measure of optimism, were examined as part of a study of education, training, work experience, and expectations of sentenced adult prisoners in Western Australia. All prisoners at five metropolitan public prisons were invited to participate and 453 accepted. This represented a response rate overall of about 41%, with response rates at each of the individual prisons ranging from 13% to 90%. The average age of the prisoner sample was 34.4 yr. (SD = 10.2 yr.). The proportion of men in the sample was 79.7%. Mean sentence length was 66.9 mo. (58.5 for women and 69.2 for men), and the number of months of sentence remaining averaged 44.4 mo. (41.0 for women and 45.3 for men). Means and standard deviations of the LOT scores for prisoners were similar to those of other groups, and demographic differences between prisoners were not statistically significantly related to scores. The internal reliability of the LOT scores was acceptable. Confirmatory factor analyses indicated that the two-factor item-keying model fitted the prisoner data better than a one-factor model. However, the two factors did not simply reflect underlying optimism and pessimism constructs but were substantially affected by item keying.     

Prospects behind bars: Analyzing decisions under risk in a prison population

Criminal activity often involves considerable risks. It is therefore not surprising that criminals have been speculated to differ from noncriminals in risk attitude. Yet, few data exist to support this assumption. Moreover, the psychological underpinnings of differences in risk attitude are currently little understood. We presented prisoners and controls with sets of risky decision tasks and modeled their responses using cumulative prospect theory (CPT). The two groups showed several differences. Prisoners were more risk seeking than nonprisoners in lotteries involving losses, but they were less risk seeking in lotteries involving high-probability gains. Bestfitting CPT parameters indicated a reduced sensitivity to outcomes, for both gains and losses, and a stronger loss aversion among prisoners. In addition, prisoners showed a diminished sensitivity to the probability of gains. Our results contribute to a better understanding of prisoners’ risk attitudes and the underlying mechanisms that distinguish prisoners from nonprisoners and may thus help improve interventions designed to prevent crime.     

“I changed and hid my old ways”: How social rejection and social identities shape well‐being among ex‐prisoners

Being a member of a rejected group negatively affects well‐being but can also increase group identification, which can have positive effects on well‐being. However, this rejection‐identification model has never been investigated among the highly stigmatized group of ex‐prisoners. Furthermore, the potential buffering role of multiple group memberships has never been investigated within the rejection‐identification model. We conduct a novel investigation of a combined rejection‐identification and social cure model of group‐based rejection among ex‐prisoners. A survey of 199 ex‐prisoners found that experiencing group‐based rejection was associated with poorer well‐being and increased ex‐prisoner identification. However, identification as an ex‐prisoner magnified, rather than buffered, the relationship between rejection and reduced well‐being. Furthermore, the negative relationship between rejection and well‐being was particularly pronounced among ex‐prisoners with a higher number of group memberships. Ex‐prisoners with a greater number of group memberships experienced greater levels of rejection, suggesting group memberships increase their exposure to rejection. We therefore provide evidence of a boundary condition for the social cure properties of groups. Among members of strongly rejected social groups, multiple group memberships can be a social curse rather than social cure.     

Suicides in the Nazi concentration camps

On the basis of psychiatric interviews with 69 former prisoners of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, this paper describes the circumstances, motives, and ways of committing suicide in the camp. The interview made it clear that thousands of prisoners perished by suicide. The number of committed suicides was larger than that of attempted suicides. The most frequent types of suicide victims were prisoners of Jewish descent, foreigners, white-collar workers, and old people. The most common motives of suicides were depressive reactions; anxiety; somatic illnesses; the threat of death; emotional motives; loss of emotional support; beatings and tortures; and patriotic and altruistic motives. The most common methods of committing suicide were flinging oneself onto the electrified wires surrounding the camp, hanging, poisoning, cutting one's veins, and drowning. There were also cases of mass suicides, chiefly in the women's camp. Suicides committed from patriotic or altruistic motives testified to the fact that human beings were able to preserve their dignity even in the face of death.     

Profiles of meaning and search for meaning among prisoners

Meaning in life and searching for meaning are central in how people organize their lives and deal with various challenges during them. Studies on meaning and the search for meaning among prisoners are virtually nonexistent. Based on the presence of meaning in their lives and on their search for meaning, we discovered four different profiles in a sample of 365 prisoners: High Presence High Search, High Presence Low Search, Low Presence High Search, and Low Presence Low Search. Compared to prisoners with low meaning profiles, those whose profiles were marked by higher levels of meaning displayed less distress, more positive world assumptions, and higher levels of self-worth. They also show more empathy for others. Older prisoners and prisoners who were sexually abused during childhood were more represented in the profile that was marked by extremely low levels of meaning and low levels of search for meaning.     

The relationship between traumatic experiences, dissociation, and borderline personality pathology among male forensic patients and prisoners

In the present study the relationship between traumatic experiences, dissociation, and borderline personality disorder pathology is examined in a group of 39 male forensic patients and 192 male prisoners. Sexual and emotional abuse are significantly more common among forensic patients than among prisoners. Patients also report a broader range of different kinds of traumas. Prisoners report significantly more dissociative symptoms. Analyses of the relationship of type of trauma on the one hand and dissociation and borderline personality pathology on the other show that sexual abuse is significantly associated with borderline personality pathology but not with dissociation among the patients. In the prison sample these associations are found only for familial but not extrafamilial sexual abuse. When the subjects are grouped on account of presence or absence of a borderline personality disorder, highly significant differences on dissociation are found between both groups. The results from this study lend support to the hypothesis that sexual abuse is not related to dissociative symptoms but merely to borderline personality pathology. Because most subjects in this study are not patients, these findings are not likely to be confounded by false memories of traumatic events that are recovered by psychotherapy. Furthermore, dissociative symptoms are found to be related to borderline personality pathology and not to the experience of traumatic events.     

Risk‐Taking Tendencies in Prisoners and Nonprisoners: Does Gender Matter?

Several investigations have found that prisoners are more likely than nonprisoners to engage in risky behavior, which may contribute to their propensity to commit criminal offenses. However, this research has been limited by an almost exclusive focus on male samples. Given the established link between risk taking and gender, it is thus unclear how findings on the risk‐taking propensities of prisoners also hold in women. The present study uses both a self‐report questionnaire (Domain‐Specific Risk Taking scale, DOSPERT) and a behavioral task (Balloon Analogue Risk Task, BART) to investigate risk‐taking tendencies in a Chinese prisoner group and a nonprisoner control group with balanced gender proportions. Across both genders, prisoners both indicated a higher risk‐taking tendency on the DOSPERT and showed more risk‐taking behavior on the BART than did nonprisoners. Importantly, the differences were considerably more pronounced in women than in men. Relative to nonprisoners, gender differences in risk taking were substantially smaller, or even reversed, in prisoners. Computational modeling of respondents' behavior in the BART revealed that the prisoners had higher reward sensitivity and lower response consistency than the nonprisoners; these differences were again more pronounced among women. Our results suggest that previous studies based primarily on male prisoners may have underestimated differences in risk taking between prisoners and nonprisoners, and that female prisoners may represent an even more extreme subpopulation than male prisoners. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

儿童期逆境与基因对男性服刑人员攻击性的影响

暴力再犯危险性评估是当今再犯危险性评估工作中的重点, 其中, 攻击性是服刑人员暴力再犯行为稳定的个体因素。对攻击性进行研究, 有助于预防和降低服刑人员在假释或出狱后的暴力再犯行为风险, 关系社会的长治久安。研究表明, 遭受儿童期逆境和携带易感基因(如MAOA-uVNTR低活性等位基因)是导致攻击行为的重要因素。但在现有的研究中, 儿童期逆境的计分方式局限于简单的线性加总, 或所依据的统计模型忽略逆境各维度之间的交互作用和非线性关系; 在服刑人员攻击性的评估中未考虑攻击性的亚类, 而且多使用自报告的量表测评, 这些问题制约了评估的有效预测力。本研究拟通过建立潜在类别模型, 分析男性服刑人员和普通成年人群在儿童期逆境上的亚类; 以实验与问卷测量结果、司法行为记录作为攻击性指标, 揭示儿童期逆境如何影响个体的主动性攻击、反应性攻击及暴力犯罪行为, 重点探讨儿童期逆境潜在类别对主动性攻击和反应性攻击的影响, 以及MAOA-uVNTR、COMT Val158Met、5-HTTLPR基因多态性在其中的调节作用。研究结果有助于找出高攻击性个体的生物遗传指标, 从而发现受儿童期逆境经历影响的易感人群, 为暴力行为的风险预测以及针对暴力攻击行为的行为矫正和相关药物设计提供理论和实证参考, 提高相关工作的效率。     

Beyond emotional labour: Emotions and peer support in a Canadian prison

Little research has examined the emotional labour of prisoners working in the prison. Drawing from interviews with members of the Peer Offender Prevention Service (POPS) at a Canadian prison, which is an initiative whereby some prisoners trained in suicide prevention serve as mentors and guides for other prisoners experiencing distress, this paper examines how the work of POPS involves management of one's own emotions as well as the emotions of other prisoners. We reveal how this emotional labour happens in specific areas and spaces of the prison. However, drawing from other trends in the sociology of emotions, we also show how there are emotions beyond emotion management in the prison, which entails analyzing trust and confidence among POPS members, and exploring community and communal emotional climates. The paper makes an empirical contribution by adding to literature on emotions and prison conditions, as well as a conceptual contribution by advancing literature on emotional labour.     

The impact of Gacaca tribunals in Rwanda: Psychosocial effects of participation in a truth and reconciliation process after a genocide

Victims (N = 200) of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and prisoners (N = 184) accused of genocidal acts reported their genocide‐related emotions and outgroup perceptions before and after their participation to Truth and Reconciliation Gacaca trials. So did control groups of victims (N = 195) and prisoners (N = 176) not yet exposed to Gacaca. The data supported Durkheim's model of social rituals as cultural tools for transforming emotions, reasserting norms, and enhancing cohesion. Specifically, participation entailed the general reactivation of resignation negative emotions, the enhancement of shame among prisoners, and the decrease of shame among victims, whereas the opposite pattern occurred for antagonist emotions. Participation also enhanced social integration by reducing perceived outgroup homogeneity, decreasing ingroup self‐categorization, and increasing positive stereotypes among both victim and prisoner participants. Moreover, the increase in genocide‐related emotions resulting from participation was associated to positive changes outcomes, suggesting that the increase of negative emotions is an important mechanism at work in collective events of this type. Enhancement of the perception of a positive emotional climate (solidarity and trust) was limited to perpetrator participants. Together, these findings show that Durkheim's model can be extended to restorative justice trials involving both victims and perpetrators. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.