Predicting the Prison Misconducts of Women Offenders: The Importance of Gender-Responsive Needs

The needs of women offenders may be qualitatively different than the needs of male offenders. The “pathways” and “gender-responsive” perspectives of female offending have recently garnered attention in both practitioner and scholarly arenas. The pathways perspective focuses attention on the co-occurrence and effects of trauma, substance abuse, dysfunctional relationships, and mental illness on female offending, while the gender-responsive perspective also suggests that problems related to parenting, childcare, and self-concept issues are important needs of women offenders. Few studies have examined whether or not these are risk factors for poor prison adjustment. With a sample of 272 incarcerated women offenders in Missouri, we examine how each gender-responsive need is related to six- and twelve-month prison misconducts, and whether the inclusion of such needs to traditional static custody classification items increases the predictive validity of such tools. Results suggest that women offenders do, in fact, display gender-responsive risk factors in prison

Gender-Responsive Lessons Learned and Policy Implications for Women in Prison: A Review

The authors review evidence of gender-responsive factors for women in prisons. Some gender-responsive needs function as risk factors in prison settings and contribute to women’s maladjustment to prison; guided by these findings, the authors outline ways in which prison management, staff members, and programming can better serve female prisoners by being more gender informed. The authors suggest that prisons provide treatment and programming services aimed at reducing women’s criminogenic need factors, use gendered assessments to place women into appropriate interventions and to appropriately plan for women’s successful reentry into the community, and train staff members to be gender responsive

Women’s Risk Factors and Their Contributions to Existing Risk/Needs Assessment: The Current Status of a Gender-Responsive Supplement

A growing body of scholarship faults existing risk/needs assessment models for neglecting the risk factors most relevant to women offenders. In response, a series of gender-responsive assessment models were tested for their contributions to widely used gender-neutral risk needs assessments. In six of eight samples studied, subsets of the gender-responsive scales achieved statistically significant contributions to gender-neutral models. Promising results were found for the following: (a) parental stress, family support, self-efficacy, educational assets, housing safety, anger/hostility, and current mental health factors in probation samples; (b) child abuse, anger/hostility, relationship dysfunction, family support, and current mental health factors among prisoners; and (c) adult victimization, anger/hostility, educational assets, and family support among released inmates. The predictive validity of gender-neutral assessments was strong in seven of eight samples studied. However, findings for both gender-neutral and gender-responsive domains suggested different treatment priorities for women from those currently put forward in correctional theory and policy

A comparative study of eight serological methods shows that spike protein-based ELISAs are the most accurate tests for serodiagnosing SARS-CoV-2 infections in cats and dogs

IntroductionCoronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious zoonotic disease caused by SARS-CoV-2. Monitoring the infection in pets is recommended for human disease surveillance, prevention, and control since the virus can spread from people to animals during close contact. Several diagnostic tests have been adapted from humans to animals, but limited data on the validation process are available.MethodsHerein, the first comparative study of six “in house” and two commercial serological tests developed to monitor SARS-CoV-2 infection in pets was performed with a well-coded panel of sera (61 cat sera and 74 dog sera) with a conservative criterion (viral seroneutralisation and/or RT–qPCR results) as a reference. Four “in house” tests based on either the RBD fragment of the spike protein (RBD-S) or the N-terminal fragment of the nucleoprotein (N) were developed for the first time. The analytical specificity (ASp) of those tests that showed the best diagnostic performance was assessed. The validation included the analysis of a panel of sera obtained pre-pandemic from cats and dogs infected with other coronaviruses to determine the analytical Sp (17 cat sera and 41 dog sera).Results and discussionELISAS based on the S protein are recommended in serosurveillance studies for cats (RBD-S SALUVET ELISA, ELISA COVID UNIZAR and INgezim® COVID 19 S VET) and dogs (INgezim® COVID 19 S VET and RBD-S SALUVET ELISA). These tests showed higher diagnostic sensitivity (Se) and DSp in cats (>90%) than in dogs. When sera obtained prior to the pandemic and from animals infected with other coronaviruses were analyzed by RBD-S and N SALUVET ELISAs and INgezim® COVID 19 S VET, a few cross reactors or no cross reactions were detected when dog and cat sera were analyzed by tests based on the S protein, respectively. In contrast, the number of cross reactions increased when the test was based on the N protein. Thus, the use of tests based on the N protein was discarded for serodiagnosis purposes. The results obtained revealed the most accurate serological tests for each species. Further studies should attempt to improve the diagnostic performance of serological tests developed for dogs

Values and Evaluation: Assessing Processes and Outcomes of Restorative Justice Programs

Increased interest in the restorative justice programs is accompanied by concern for whether they work andthrough what basic processes. Yet the task of evaluating restorative justice programs is a daunting one because they are so diverse, pursuing unique andmultiple objectives. Restorative justice is guidedby values that emphasize healing andsocial well-being of those affectedby crime. These values must guide program evaluation. The authors explore ways to conceptualize andmeasure program inputs and outputs for the purpose of assessing both processes and outcomes of restorative justice programs

Recidivism Among a White-Collar Sample: Does Personality Matter?

With the exception of correctional research, the role of personality has been understudied in criminology in general and in the study of white-collar crime in particular. The usefulness of personality has typically been restricted to use as a diagnostic tool in differentiating among offenders for correctional classification purposes. The current research focuses on a sample of white-collar offenders who were convicted in federal courts to explain what role personality plays in explaining their rates of recidivism. Using the Jesness Inventory as a measure of personality, findings reveal that personality type is a significant predictor of offender recidivism with neurotic personality type significantly predicting probability of rearrest