Prisoners\u27 Use of Social Support

Manuscript 1: It is generally acknowledged that prison is often a stressful environment, yet little is known of the coping processes employed by prisoners. This paper aims to examine the question of what facilitates and frustrates prisoners\u27 use of social support whilst imprisoned. This question is examined with regards to both informal (family and friends, other prisoners) and \u27formal sources of support (professional support services, peer support prisoners, prison officers). The conclusion that was drawn from this review of the literature is that the role of social support in correctional environments is largely unknown and current thinking is based primarily on anecdotal evidence. Future research should examine prisoners\u27 evaluations of support sources so that services can be directed to best meet prisoners\u27 needs. Manuscript 2: Obtaining support is an important aspect of coping with stress. The purpose of this study was to determine whether prisoners\u27 perceptions of the quality of support differed across support sources. Seventy male sentenced prisoners provided ratings of a perceived support for each of nine potential sources of support. Family members were perceived as providing the highest quality of support with prison officers the lowest. Family members were most often used for support and were perceived as the most helpful. Support from other prisoners, family, and workshop instructors were perceived as the most accessible. The data support the intuitive notion that prisoners\u27 access to family is crucial. The data also question the viability of unit management

Professional views on the management of sex offenders in the community

Sex offender registration and community notification schemes form an increasingly important part of public policy relevant to the management of known sex offenders in the community. Critics of these policies not only point to the lack of empirical evidence that is currently available to support their impact on reoffending, but also the disproportionate and potentially iatrogenic effects that they have on offenders. However, there have been few attempts to understand these issues from the perspective of those practitioners who work on a daily basis with sex offenders in the community. These professionals are uniquely placed to contribute to an understanding of effective risk management and, as such, this article presents an analysis of the perspectives of a group of experienced practitioners and how this practice-based wisdom might inform the development of sex offender public policy

Development and evaluation of rapid data-enabled access to routine clinical information to enhance early recruitment to the national clinical platform trial of COVID-19 community treatments.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has presented unique challenges for rapidly designing, initiating, and delivering therapeutic clinical trials. PRINCIPLE (Platform Randomised Trial of Treatments in the Community for Epidemic and Pandemic Illnesses) is the UK national platform investigating repurposed therapies for COVID-19 treatment of older people in the community at high risk of complications. Standard methods of patient recruitment were failing to meet the required pace and scale of enrolment. This paper describes the development and appraisal of a near real-time, data-driven, ethical approach for enhancing recruitment in community care by contacting people with a recent COVID-19 positive test result from the central NHS Test and Trace service within approximately 24-48 h of their test result. METHODS: A multi-disciplinary team was formed to solve the technical, ethical, public perception, logistical and information governance issues required to provide a near-real time (approximately within 24-48 h of receiving a positive test) feed of potential trial participants from test result data to the research team. PRINCIPLE was also given unique access to the Summary Care Record (SCR) to ensure safe prescribing, and to enable the trial team to quickly and safely bring consented patients into the trial. A survey of the public was used to understand public perceptions of the use of test data for this proposed methodology. RESULTS: Prior to establishing the data service, PRINCIPLE registered on average 87 participants per week. This increased by up to 87 additional people registered per week from the test data, contributing to an increase from 1013 recruits to PRINCIPLE at the start of October 2020 to 2802 recruits by 20 December 2020. Whilst procedural caveats were identified by the public consultation, out of 2639 people contacted by PRINCIPLE following a positive test result, no one raised a concern about being approached. CONCLUSIONS: This paper describes a novel approach to using near-real time NHS operational data to recruit community-based patients within a few days of presentation with acute illness. This approach increased recruitment and reduced time between positive test and randomisation, allowing more rapid evaluation of treatments and increased safety for participants. End-to-end public and patient involvement in the design of the approach provided evidence to inform information governance decisions. TRIAL REGISTRATION: PRINCIPLE is funded by UK Research and Innovation and the Department of Health and Social Care through the National Institute for Health Research. EudraCT number: 2020-001209-22 . 26/03/2020 ISRCTN registry: ISRCTN86534580 . 20/03/2020 REC number: 20/SC/058 IRAS number: 281958

Dangerous sexual offenders: Judicial decision-making and professional practice

This thesis provides insight into the operation and understanding of legislation targeting dangerous sexual offenders. This research identified that these offenders are largely a high risk recidivist population, where the legislation used by Judges lacks clarity in the criteria to determine dangerousness and that professionals working with sexual offenders differ in their understanding of risk and dangerousness

The management of sex offenders in the community: from policy to practice

This paper provides an overview of the most significant public policy initiatives that apply to known sexual offenders who live in the community. It is argued that while registration schemes, community notification, and offender residency restrictions have become a prominent feature of contemporary sex offender policy, the evidence base supporting their implementation is, at best, limited. There is a need to develop policies which are more tailored to the needs of individual offenders and which are explicitly designed to manage risk. Policies which mandate and facilitate interagency and partnership working represent one way in which individualised and research-informed approaches can be developed. It is suggested that the implementation of this type of approach may ultimately lead to more effective community responses to preventing sexual reoffending than those which rely solely on monitoring and supervision

The intensity and timing of sex offender treatment

Current evidence about the impact of specialized sex offender treatment on reoffending remains inconsistent, drawing attention to the need to focus more on those program characteristics that potentially moderate outcome. This review considers current professional perspectives and evidence on two defining aspects of treatment: its intensity and timing. It is concluded that insufficient evidence currently exists to articulate best practice in this area and there is a pressing need to collect empirical evidence about the effectiveness of different intensity treatments offered at different stages of sentence