A review of questionnaire measures for assessing the social climate in prisons and forensic psychiatric hospital settings

Significant time and resources are devoted to the monitoring of social climate in secure settings. However, if these efforts are to help (rather than hinder) attempts to improve the functioning of such units, the monitoring of social climate must be based on sound psychometric methods. The aim of this review was to determine what questionnaires exist to measure the social climate in secure settings and what evidence exists regarding their psychometric properties. Twelve questionnaire-based measures of social climate were identified. The Essen Climate Evaluation Schema has received the most consistent empirical support, but this questionnaire does not provide as much of an in-depth, detailed insight into social climate as that provided by other social climate questionnaires. Although more extensive measures of climate exist, they have not yet received sufficient validation to justify their routine use in practice. Nevertheless, there is growing evidence that some questionnaire-based measures can provide a reliable and valid assessment of the social climate in secure settings, which has important clinical and theoretical implications

Crime Linkage Practice in New Zealand

Purpose: To understand: (i)how crime linkage is currently performed with residential burglaries in New Zealand; (ii)the factors that promote/hinder accurate crime linkage ; (iii)whether computerised decision-support tools might assist crime linkage practice.Methodology: Thirty-nine New Zealand Police staff completed a questionnaire/interview/focus group relating to the process, challenges, products and uses of crime linkage with residential burglary in New Zealand. These data (alongside four redacted crime linkage reports) were subjected to thematic analysis.Findings: The data clearly indicated wide variation in crime linkage process, methods and products (Theme One). Furthermore, a number of factors were identified that impacted on crime linkage practice (Theme Two).Research Implications: Future research should develop computerised crime linkage decision-support tools and evaluate their ability to enhance crime linkage practice. Also, researchers should explore the use of crime linkage in court proceedings.Practical Implications: To overcome the barriers identified in the current study, greater training in and understanding of crime linkage is needed. Moreover, efforts to enhance the quality of crime data recorded by the police will only serve to enhance crime linkage practice.Social Implications: By enhancing crime linkage practice, opportunities to reduce crime, protect the public and deliver justice for victims will be maximised.Originality/Value: The practice of crime linkage is under-researched, which makes it difficult to determine if/how existing empirical research can be used to support ongoing police investigations. The current project fills that gap by providing a national overview of crime linkage practice in New Zealand; a country where crime linkage is regularly conducted by the Police but no published linkage research exists.</p

Perceptions of social climate and aggressive behaviour in forensic services: A systematic review

Social climate is a term used to describe the environment of a particular setting which may influence the moods and behaviors of the people inhabiting that setting. This review explores perceptions of social climate in secure forensic services and the associations with aggression. Article searches were conducted using electronic databases, hand-searching reference lists, and contacting experts. Inclusion/exclusion criteria were applied to each study, and quality screens conducted on the remaining articles to establish those for inclusion. A total of seven studies were identified. Factors which were found to have an association with aggression included patients’ perceptions of safety, the level of cohesion between patients, the atmosphere of the environment, and an open group climate. It is argued that services which create positive social climates for both staff and patients are more likely to observe lower levels of aggression

Receiver operating characteristic curves in the crime linkage context: Benefits, limitations, and recommendations

Deciding whether two crimes have been committed by the same offender or different offenders is an important investigative task. Crime linkage researchers commonly use receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis to assess the accuracy of linkage decisions. Accuracy metrics derived from ROC analysis—such as the area under the curve (AUC)—offer certain advantages, but also have limitations. This paper describes the benefits that crime linkage researchers attribute to the AUC. We also discuss several limitations in crime linkage papers that rely on the AUC. We end by presenting suggestions for researchers who use ROC analysis to report on crime linkage. These suggestions aim to enhance the information presented to readers, derive more meaningful conclusions from analyses, and propose more informed recommendations for practitioners involved in crime linkage tasks. Our reflections may also benefit researchers from other areas of psychology who use ROC analysis in a wide range of prediction tasks.</p

Linking solved and unsolved crimes using offender behaviour

Offender behaviour is used to distinguish between crimes committed by the same person (linked crimes) and crimes committed by different people (unlinked crimes) through behavioural case linkage. There is growing evidence to support the use of behavioural case linkage by investigative organisations such as the police, but this research is typically limited to samples of solved crime that do not reflect how this procedure is used in real life. The current paper extends previous research by testing the potential for behavioural case linkage in a sample containing both solved and unsolved crimes. Discrimination accuracy is examined across crime categories (e.g. a crime pair containing a car theft and a residential burglary), across crime types (e.g. a crime pair containing a residential burglary and a commercial burglary), and within crime types (e.g. a crime pair containing two residential burglaries) using the number of kilometres (intercrime distance) and the number of days (temporal proximity) between offences to distinguish between linked and unlinked crimes. The intercrime distance and/or the temporal proximity were able to achieve statistically significant levels of discrimination accuracy across crime categories, across crime types, and within crime types as measured by Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analysis. This suggests that behavioural case linkage can be used to assist the investigation, detection and prosecution of prolific and versatile serial offenders

Ward climate within a high secure forensic psychiatric hospital: Perceptions of patients and nursing staff and the role of patient characteristics

Within this study the relationship between patient characteristics (age, length of stay, risk, psychopathy) and individual perceived ward climate (n = 83), and differences between staff's and patient perceptions of climate (n = 185) was investigated within a high secure forensic hospital. Results show that therapeutic hold was rated higher among staff compared to patients, while patients held a more favorable view on patient cohesion and experienced safety. Furthermore, patient characteristics (age, risk and psychopathy) were found to be related with individual ratings of ward climate. The findings underline the importance of assessing ward climate among both patients and staff in clinical practice. Ward climate is an important factor within the treatment of inpatients in secure settings and has been studied for almost 50 years. Ward climate can be seen as a multifactorial construct including the material, social, and emotional conditions of a given ward and the interaction between these factors (Moos, 1989 and Tonkin, 2015). Ward climate is found to play a role in therapeutic outcomes like drop out-, release-, and re-admission rates (Moos, Shelton, & Petty, 1973), patient satisfaction (Bressington et al., 2011, Middelboe et al., 2001, Nesset et al., 2009 and Røssberg and Friis, 2004), motivation for treatment (van der Helm, Beunk, Stams, & van der Laan, 2014), treatment engagement and therapeutic alliance (Long et al., 2011). Climate can be seen as an aspect of program responsivity that enhances treatment effects (Beech and Hamilton-Giachritsis, 2005, Howells and Day, 2003 and Ward et al., 2004). Ward climate has also found to be a determinant of staff wellbeing, playing a role in staff performance and morale (Moos & Schaefer, 1987), job satisfaction (Bressington et al., 2011, Middelboe et al., 2001 and Røssberg and Friis, 2004), and occupational stress (Kirby & Pollock, 1995). The relationship between ward climate and organizational- and therapeutic outcomes underlines the importance of establishing and maintaining an environment in which therapeutic progress is encouraged and that supports staff ability to deliver responsible high quality care to their patients. However, creating an optimal climate within a high security forensic setting can be very challenging due to the complex patient population, involuntary admission within a closed setting and the balance between security needs and treatment goals (Burrows, 1991, Campling et al., 2004 and Howells et al., 2007). Moreover, patients and staff members working within forensic psychiatric settings seem to evaluate ward climate differently (Caplan, 1993, Day et al., 2011, Dickens et al., 2014, Howells et al., 2009, Livingston et al., 2012, Long et al., 2011, Moos, 1975, Morrison et al., 1997, Røssberg and Friis, 2004 and Schalast et al., 2008). For instance, Howells et al. (2009) found that patients in a high secure hospital service in the United Kingdom (UK) evaluated cohesion among patients more favorably than staff members. Another study found that patients in open, low and medium secure wards of a psychiatric hospital in the UK evaluated the ward climate as safer than staff members (Dickens et al., 2014). In both studies, staff members evaluated the therapeutic hold (how much the environment is supportive of therapy and therapeutic change) more favorably compared to patients. Caplan (1993) found that staff and patient perceptions differed with regard to several scales of the Ward Atmosphere Scale (WAS; Moos and Houts, 1968, Moos, 1989 and Moos, 1974), including order and organization, program clarity and staff control. Possible explanations given in previous research for the divergent perceptions between nursing staff and patients are, the different roles and functions that staff and patients have within a forensic institution (Caplan, 1993, Goffman, 1961 and Røssberg and Friis, 2004), and the restrictions to the liberty and personal freedom of incarcerated patients (Langdon, Cosgrave, & Tranah, 2004). Patients' restricted liberty could also be a potential explanation for the finding that the perception of climate differs as a function of the level of security (Dickens et al., 2014, Long et al., 2011 and Milsom et al., 2014). It follows that gaining insight into patients' and staff's perception of ward climate is highly informative and promotes the discovery of potentially meaningful discrepancies between the groups. Friis (1986) has argued that the patient's perception of the ward milieu can be seen as a most important indicator of how the milieu affects the patient. When striving to keep patients in a responsive therapeutic environment which is designed to address their needs (in order to enhance treatment efficacy), it is important to have insight in how the climate is actually perceived by patients. Forensic nurses could use this information in their daily work, actively discussing the different views on ward climate within their team and with their patient group. Together they could identify different needs, create opportunities for improvement of the treatment milieu and subsequently improve treatment success. Importantly, however, ward climate perception is also dependent on other factors. Recent research by Dickens et al. (2014) revealed associations between patient characteristics and mean evaluation scores of ward climate. They found that female gender positively predicted patient cohesion and perceived safety measured with the Essen Climate Evaluation Scale (EssenCES; Schalast et al., 2008) among patients residing in open, low and medium secure forensic settings. Furthermore, higher perceived risk measured with the Historical, Clinical and Risk Management 20 (HCR-20; Webster, Douglas, Eaves, & Hart, 1997) was associated with lower perceived patient cohesion, a diagnosis of personality disorder or psychosis according to the ICD-10 (WHO, 2010) was related to higher experienced safety, and higher levels of engagement (i.e., the number of programmed therapeutic sessions attended over a two-week period) was associated with greater therapeutic hold. While not accounting for all relationships presented above, the relationship between ward climate and various environmental, social and individual characteristics might reflect the interplay between patients' (security) needs and climate. Hence, individuals at high risk of showing violence or who are suffering from severe psychiatric problems might have higher security needs, leading them to be more exposed to physical, procedural and relational security, ultimately influencing their (perception of) ward climate. Norton (2004) describes how five functional properties of a ward (containment, support, structure, involvement and validation) can also reflect the patient's changing needs, and how the emphasis on these factors can change during a treatment process (and during crisis situations). In contrast to Dickens et al. (2014) there is also research showing that patient characteristics have a small or no impact on ward climate (Moos, 1997 and Pedersen and Karterud, 2007). Pedersen and Karterud (2007) found no substantial associations between patient characteristics (gender, age, level of education, self reported symptom distress, interpersonal problems, diagnosis) and individual ratings of treatment milieu. Data were collected from patients (71% women) suffering mainly from personality, mood and anxiety disorders who had been admitted to day-treatment units. Pedersen and Karterud (2007) argue that since differences between patients' views on ward climate cannot be attributed to patient characteristics they must be largely idiosyncratic. Alternative explanations for the discrepant findings with regard to the role of patient characteristics might be found in differences in methodology (using the EssenCES versus the WAS for assessing climate), and different clinical setting/samples used in the studies of Dickens et al. (2014) and Pedersen and Karterud (2007). Contradictory findings highlight the importance of conducting more research in order to disentangle the possible relationships between patient characteristics and ward climate within secure forensic settings. Gaining more knowledge about these relationships could be beneficial for clinical practice by providing guidance for active management of ward climate. Hence, when striving to keep patients in a therapeutic environment designed to address their needs, taking into account individual patient characteristics is essential. In order to do so, more research is needed, demonstrating whether or not certain personal characteristics are related to the perception of ward climate. When relationships and underlying mechanisms are clearer, this knowledge could be used to guide assessment, evaluation, assignment to specific wards, composing patient groups and staff training. Since there are very few studies of the relationship between ward climate and patient characteristics this study contributes to an under-explored but important area. The aim of this current study is to provide more insight into the relationship between patient characteristics and perceived ward climate. Based on previous findings, the demographic characteristics that might be related to perception of ward climate targeted in the present study were patients' age (Campbell et al., 2014, Middelboe et al., 2001 and Pedersen and Karterud, 2007), length of stay within the facility (van der Helm et al., 2014), and risk of violence (Dickens et al., 2014). With respect to pathological personality features, there are reports that psychopathy may be a key determinant of climate in forensic therapeutic settings (Harkins, Beech, & Thornton, 2012). Psychopathy is a severe condition characterized by a combination of personality characteristics entailing disturbed interpersonal-affective functioning combined with high anti-sociality (Neumann, Hare, & Newman, 2007). Therefore, the imp

A Comparison of Logistic Regression and Classification Tree Analysis for Behavioural Case Linkage

Much previous research on behavioural case linkage has used binary logistic regression to build predictive models that can discriminate between linked and unlinked offences. However, classification tree analysis has recently been proposed as a potential alternative owing to its ability to build user-friendly and transparent predictive models. Building on previous research, the current study compares the relative ability of logistic regression analysis and classification tree analysis to construct predictive models for the purposes of case linkage. Two samples are utilised in this study: a sample of 376 serial car thefts committed in the UK and a sample of 160 serial residential burglaries committed in Finland. In both datasets, logistic regression and classification tree models achieve comparable levels of discrimination accuracy, but the classification tree models demonstrate problems in terms of reliability or usability that the logistic regression models do not. These findings suggest that future research is needed before classification tree analysis can be considered a viable alternative to logistic regression in behavioural case linkage

Lost in translation? Psychometric properties and construct validity of the English Essen Climate Evaluation Schema (EssenCES) social climate questionnaire.

The social climate of correctional (forensic) settings is likely to have a significant impact on the outcome of treatment and the overall functioning of these units. The Essen Climate Evaluation Schema (EssenCES) provides an objective way of measuring social climate that overcomes the content, length, and psychometric limitations of other measures. But the English translation of the EssenCES has yet to be sufficiently validated for use in forensic settings in the United Kingdom. The current study presents psychometric properties (factor structure and internal consistency) and an examination of construct validity with the English EssenCES. Satisfactory internal consistency was found for all EssenCES scales, and the expected three-factor structure was confirmed with both staff and residents and in prison and secure hospital settings using confirmatory factor analysis. Evidence to support construct validity was established using multilevel models, which showed statistically significant associations between scores on the EssenCES and scores on the Working Environment Scale, institutional aggression, and site security. Future validation work and potential practical applications of the EssenCES are discussed

“Gripping onto the last threads of sanity”: Transgender and non-binary prisoners’ mental health challenges during the Covid-19 pandemic

Background: Covid-19 has had an especially detrimental impact on mental health of people with intersectional marginalized identities. Yet, research evidence on this impact is lacking, with efforts to generate it stymied by pandemic restrictions. Aims: To explore how a socially excluded gender minority group—transgender and non-binary (TGNB) prisoners-experienced, and coped with, the pandemic stressors. Methods: The data were collected via correspondence with 15 TGNB prisoners in England and Wales in April-October 2020 using an exploratory person-centred qualitative longitudinal approach and examined using reflexive organic thematic analysis. Results: The pandemic and its restrictions to support structures and health care detrimentally impacted TGNB prisoners’ mental health and wellbeing. TGNB prisoners experienced added stressors associated with their intersecting incarceration and gender minority positions, including prolonged solitary confinement and reduced access to gender-affirming health care. Environmental resources for problem-focused, emotionfocused, socially supportive and disengagement coping were reduced by the prison pandemic regime, with adaptive coping through positive distraction and engagement with TGNB/LGBTQ community particularly affected. Conclusions: During a pandemic and beyond, greater support and innovative practices are needed to improve the TGNB prisoners’ access to gender-affirming care and to TGNB/LGBTQ community, to protect their mental health and wellbeing.</p