Policing people with sexual convictions using strengths-based approaches

Purpose – Effective risk management planning ought to include strategies that help control and mitigate risk, as well as develop and strengthen client’s protective factors. The active risk management system (ARMS) is a structured risk assessment and management planning tool designed to assess both dynamic factors known to be related to sexual recidivism, along with protective factors that might support the desistance process. The tool was recently implemented across all police forces in England and Wales. The purpose of this paper is to examine police practitioner’s experience of the tool, their attitudes towards risk assessment, risk management planning, interviewing clients for the assessment and their perspective on strengths-based approaches in general. Design/methodology/approach – A mixed method approach is adopted including one attitudinal measure: community attitudes towards sexual offender-revised (CATSO-R); and four focus groups, analysed using interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA). Findings – CATSO-R results indicate that when compared to other populations, police officers appear to perceive sex offenders as dangerous, requiring severe punishment. These findings are supported in the IPA analysis where three themes highlight the following: principles and practices of the ARMS tool are incongruent with traditional policing; the negative values officers hold conflicts with a role that supports a process of reintegration and Training and supervision is insufficient to equip management of sexual offenders and violent offender’s with the skills and knowledge needed. Originality/value – Only one study exists in which ARMS training and its pilot test were examined, this is the first empirical examination of its application in practice. Findings are therefore, of relevance to practitioners and academics alike

Faith-Based Intervention: Prison, Prayer, and Perseverance

This qualitative article explores the impact of faith-based interventions through the lens of a self-identified practicing Christian: Joanna. For over a decade, Joanna has visited several prisons in the United Kingdom in a faith-based capacity: supporting prisoners, families, and prison chaplaincies. Joanna professes the role of faith and religiosity to be a positive and influential component in the lives of those imprisoned. This paper explores Joanna’s journey of supporting individuals within the prison walls, reflecting on the impact of labels, imprisonment, faith-based intervention, and religiosity. Much of the current research pertaining to faith-based interventions are limited; therefore, the experiences of those who volunteer within prisons in a faith-based capacity is often overlooked. Yet, faith-based intervention and religiosity within a criminal justice context provides several benefits which impact on those in prison, their families, and people working within a prison environment

Outliers from the Mass--Metallicity Relation II: A Sample of Massive Metal-Poor Galaxies from SDSS

We present a sample of 42 high-mass low-metallicity outliers from the mass--metallicity relation of star-forming galaxies. These galaxies have stellar masses that span log(M_*/M_sun) ~9.4 to 11.1 and are offset from the mass--metallicity relation by -0.3 to -0.85 dex in 12+log(O/H). In general, they are extremely blue, have high star formation rates for their masses, and are morphologically disturbed. Tidal interactions are expected to induce large-scale gas inflow to the galaxies' central regions, and we find that these galaxies' gas-phase oxygen abundances are consistent with large quantities of low-metallicity gas from large galactocentric radii diluting the central metal-rich gas. We conclude with implications for deducing gas-phase metallicities of individual galaxies based solely on their luminosities, specifically in the case of long gamma-ray burst host galaxies.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ; 11 pages, 11 figure

Gas-Phase Oxygen Gradients in Strongly Interacting Galaxies: I. Early-Stage Interactions

A consensus is emerging that interacting galaxies show depressed nuclear gas metallicities compared to isolated star-forming galaxies. Simulations suggest that this nuclear underabundance is caused by interaction-induced inflow of metal-poor gas, and that this inflow concurrently flattens the radial metallicity gradients in strongly interacting galaxies. We present metallicities of over 300 HII regions in a sample of 16 spirals that are members of strongly interacting galaxy pairs with mass ratio near unity. The deprojected radial gradients in these galaxies are about half of those in a control sample of isolated, late-type spirals. Detailed comparison of the gradients with simulations show remarkable agreement in gradient distributions, the relationship between gradients and nuclear underabundances, and the shape of profile deviations from a straight line. Taken together, this evidence conclusively demonstrates that strongly interacting galaxies at the present day undergo nuclear metal dilution due to gas inflow, as well as significant flattening of their gas-phase metallicity gradients, and that current simulations can robustly reproduce this behavior at a statistical level.Comment: Accepted for publication in Ap

The development of the active risk management system

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to detail the development and implementation process of a risk management tool that includes the assessment of static and dynamic factors, as well as factors that are both risk related and protective. Design/methodology/approach – Active Risk Assessment System (ARMS) is a tool used to help criminal justice practitioners as they work to support the safe reintegration of those with sexual convictions back into the community. Findings – The tool was developed for use by the police, probation and prison services across England and Wales and this paper outlines the following: the process adopted by the development team in designing the tool, the theoretical principles considered and adopted by the team, and a summary of the early evaluation and recommendations made. Originality/value – This paper includes some further recommendations for both the developers of the tool and for the police service in England and Wales

Examining the role of faith community groups with sexual offenders: A systematic review

The aim of this paper is to examine the role of faith-based communities and activities in helping those convicted of sexual offending to desist from crime and reintegrate back into their communities. It was found that much of the current research is limited to non-offending juvenile populations. Where research has been carried out on adult offenders, these tend to be custodial cases and exclude those convicted of sexual offending. The role of religious and spiritual groups in helping people convicted of sexual offending to desist from crime, while reintegrating into the community is, therefore, unknown. A number of parallels between the factors needed to promote desistance from sexual offending and the conditions encountered when engaged with a faith community are outlined. We would note that a religious and spiritual environment can: promote motivation to change, provide access to pro-social peers, offer moral guidance, provide a support network, and help bring meaning into people's lives. The potential for people to use faith-based communities or organizations to facilitate offending are also considered. Finally, implications for probation work and future research are also discussed

An Integral Field Study of Abundance Gradients in Nearby LIRGs

We present for the first time metallicity maps generated using data from the Wide Field Spectrograph (WiFeS) on the ANU 2.3m of 9 Luminous Infrared Galaxies (LIRGs) and discuss the abundance gradients and distribution of metals in these systems. We have carried out optical integral field spectroscopy (IFS) of several several LIRGs in various merger phases to investigate the merger process. In a major merger of two spiral galaxies with preexisting disk abundance gradients, the changing distribution of metals can be used as a tracer of gas flows in the merging system as low metallicity gas is transported from the outskirts of each galaxy to their nuclei. We employ this fact to probe merger properties by using the emission lines in our IFS data to calculate the gas-phase metallicity in each system. We create abundance maps and subsequently derive a metallicity gradient from each map. We compare our measured gradients to merger stage as well as several possible tracers of merger progress and observed nuclear abundances. We discuss our work in the context of previous abundance gradient observations and compare our results to new galaxy merger models which trace metallicity gradient. Our results agree with the observed flattening of metallicity gradients as a merger progresses. We compare our results with new theoretical predictions that include chemical enrichment. Our data show remarkable agreement with these simulations.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ. 26 pages, 18 figure