Attitudes towards abortion and decision-making capacity of pregnant adolescents: perspectives of medicine, midwifery and law students in Accra, Ghana.

Objectives: Because medical, midwifery and law students in Ghana constitute the next generation of health care and legal practitioners, this study aimed to evaluate their attitudes towards abortion and their perceptions of the decision-making capacity of pregnant adolescents.Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional survey among 340 medical, midwifery and law students. A pretested and validated questionnaire was used to collect relevant data on respondents' sociodemographic characteristics, attitudes towards abortion and the perceived capacity and rationality of pregnant adolescents' decisions. The χ2 test of independency and Fischer's exact test were used where appropriate.Results: We retained 331 completed questionnaires for analysis. Respondents' mean age was 21.0 ± 2.9 years and the majority (95.5%) were of the Christian faith. Women made up 77.9% (n = 258) of the sample. Most students (70.1%) were strongly in favour of abortion if it was for health reasons. More than three-quarters (78.0%) of the students strongly disagreed on the use of abortion for the purposes of sex selection. Most respondents (89.0%) were not in favour of legislation to make abortion available on request for pregnant adolescents, with medical students expressing a more negative attitude compared with law and midwifery students (p < 0.001). Over half of the midwifery students (52.6%) believed that adolescents should have full decision-making capacity regarding their pregnancy outcome, compared with law and medical students (p < 0.001).Conclusion: Tensions between adolescent reproductive autonomy, the accepted culture of third party involvement (parents and partners), and the current abortion law may require keen reflection if an improvement in access to safe abortion services is envisioned.

Preparing Children for Court: Effects of a Model Court Education Program on Children's Anticipatory Anxiety.

The current study examined whether a pretrial preparation program, consisting of legal knowledge education, stress inoculation training, and a mock trial, is associated with decreased anticipatory anxiety of child witnesses. One hundred and ninety-three 4- to 17-year-olds who were awaiting impending legal proceedings attended Kids' Court School in Las Vegas, NV, one to two weeks before their court appearances. Participants completed a measure of anticipatory court-related anxiety before and after the intervention. As predicted, children's anticipatory anxiety decreased significantly from pretest to posttest. Results demonstrate the promise of a brief, unbiased, standardized program for reducing system-induced stress on child witnesses, while maintaining the integrity of the legal process. This study serves as a springboard to guide future research, practice, policy, and implementation on a larger scale.

Race and imprisonments: vigilante violence, minority threat, and racial politics.

The effects of lynchings on criminal justice outcomes have seldom been examined. Recent findings also are inconsistent about the effects of race on imprisonments. This study uses a pooled time-series design to assess lynching and racial threat effects on state imprisonments from 1972 to 2000. After controlling for Republican strength, conservatism, and other factors, lynch rates explain the growth in admission rates. The findings also show that increases in black residents produce subsequent expansions in imprisonments that likely are attributable to white reactions to this purported menace. But after the percentage of blacks reaches a substantial threshold­and the potential black vote becomes large enough to begin to reduce these harsh punishments­reductions in prison admissions occur. These results also confirm a political version of racial threat theory by indicating that increased Republican political strength produces additional imprisonments.

Watching the detectives: crime programming, fear of crime, and attitudes about the criminal justice system.

Research demonstrates a complex relationship between television viewing and fear of crime. Social critics assert that media depictions perpetuate the dominant cultural ideology about crime and criminal justice. This article examines whether program type differentially affects fear of crime and perceptions of the crime rate. Next, it tests whether such programming differentially affects viewers' attitudes about the criminal justice system, and if these relationships are mediated by fear. Results indicated that fear mediated the relationship between viewing nonfictional shows and lack of support for the justice system. Viewing crime dramas predicted support for the death penalty, but this relationship was not mediated by fear. News viewership was unrelated to either fear or attitudes. The results support the idea that program type matters when it comes to understanding people's fear of crime and their attitudes about criminal justice.

The effect of the deliberation process and jurors' prior legal knowledge on the sentence: the role of psychological expertise and crime scene photo.

An experiment with simulated juries (N = 198) tested the impact of the deliberation process and two extra legal variables on the determination of sentence. Participants were either social science students without prior instruction in criminal law (prior legal knowledge: low-level group) or future professional magistrates completing their final year of training (high-level group). We manipulated the presence versus absence of (i) a non-diagnostic observation of the defendant by a psychology expert and (ii) a realistic crime scene photograph. After controlling for participants' gender and age, our results show that the high-level group was both less sensitive to the manipulated variables and more severe in their sentence than low-level jurors. We observed a post-deliberation increase in pre-deliberation bias such that the non-diagnostic psychological expertise had a stronger post-deliberation impact on the sentence. Finally, an unexpected effect showed that aggressive responses during the psychological observation tended to operate as exculpatory rather than accusatory evidence. Our results are discussed on the basis of previous research and proposals for future research are made.

"Screen and intervene": governing risky brains.

This article argues that a new diagram is emerging in the criminal justice system as it encounters developments in the neurosciences. This does not take the form that concerns many "neuroethicists" -- it does not entail a challenge to doctrines of free will and the notion of the autonomous legal subject -- but is developing around the themes of susceptibility, risk, pre-emption and precaution. I term this diagram "screen and intervene" and in this article I attempt to trace out this new configuration and consider some of the consequences.

Dissolving the stiff upper lip: Opportunities and challenges for the mainstreaming of therapeutic jurisprudence in the United Kingdom.

Although therapeutic jurisprudence ("TJ") is increasingly well-established internationally, particularly within the United States of America ("US"), to date it remains relatively unacknowledged within the United Kingdom ("UK"). This article will explore the opportunities presented within contemporary UK society for the greater promotion, and eventual mainstreaming, of TJ. It will also consider the challenges faced during this process and how best to overcome these. Its first key area of focus will be upon the potential role of legal education in the UK in educating law students (and academics) about TJ, considering which approaches are likely to be most effective in incorporating TJ perspectives, at what stage this should occur and to what extent TJ is likely to impact on the existing curricula at a time when proposed changes relating to entry into the legal profession are heavily influencing the work of Law Schools. The article will then move on to consider the receptiveness of the UK legal profession to the TJ paradigm in light of recent attempts to move to a competency-based approach to practice and to reconceptualise professionalism to meet the challenges of increasing fragmentation and corporatisation. The third key area it will explore is the UK's recent plans to reintroduce problem-solving courts ("PSCs") into its criminal justice system. The authors will discuss the downfall of the six UK Drug Court ("DC") pilots originally established in 2005 theorising upon their failures and reflecting upon whether the current UK criminal justice system is truly able to support a fresh round of PSC initiatives. The article will end with recommendations for ways in which the international TJ community should begin the process of mainstreaming TJ within the UK. It will conclude that there are currently significant opportunities to be utilised, but that this requires significant commitment and mobilisation amongst existing TJ scholars and practitioners.

It's Not the CSI Effect: Criminal Justice Students' Choice of Major and Career Goals.

The media tends to influence public perceptions of the criminal justice system. The media's impact, known as the CSI Effect, is not well documented in criminal justice majors. The present study adds to a small body of literature regarding the impact of media on criminal justice students' decisions, and seeks to identify the factors that influence students' choices, regarding their major/career goals. Based on the results from surveys administered at an urban university in the United States, most criminal justice students reported that they were not influenced by the media, yet the vast majority believed this to be true of their fellow majors. These students chose criminal justice because they found the subject matter interesting and relevant to the real world, and they wanted to work in a field in which they could be a problem solver. Upon graduation, these students overwhelmingly reported an interest in pursuing a career in federal law enforcement. Unfortunately, corrections, a field dedicated to working with offenders, was the lowest preferred profession among criminal justice students.

A National Survey of Medical School Curricula on Criminal Justice and Health.

The number of U.S. medical schools that provide clinical training in correctional facilities or classroom-based training in criminal justice-related issues is unknown. This study consisted of an online survey of deans of education at U.S. schools granting an MD degree to assess teaching regarding criminal justice and health, and clinical training in correctional settings. We compared perceptions of such training and perceptions of graduate preparedness between programs with and without correctional health curricula. Institutions that offered instruction in correctional health were significantly more likely to agree that their graduates believe incarceration to be a social determinant of health and that their graduates are prepared to care for incarcerated patients. A substantial number of U.S. medical schools offer teaching that links health and criminal justice, though the extent of curricula varies significantly.

University Students' Relationship-Based Mentoring in School Settings.

How university students perform the tasks of mentoring, and the kinds of activities that are successful and unsuccessful in relationship-based mentoring interactions when mentors are instructed to "first establish relationships and then use the relationship to promote prosocial thinking and behaviors," remains an unfamiliar area of youth mentoring. Thus, the purpose of this study is to develop some understanding of steps criminal justice majors took and the behavioral goals and objectives they pursued during their semester-long mentoring interactions with primary, middle, and high school pupils within a local school district. Conventional content analysis methods were used to systematically identify, classify, and code themes and patterns of self-reported activities. Results show that student-mentors overwhelmingly engaged in activities that addressed known risk factors associated with antisocial thinking, attitudes, and behaviors. The results provide insights into the dynamics of this form of mentoring that emphasizes the importance of healthy relationships between protégés and mentors and advance reasons for further investigation of the effectiveness of a relationship-based mentoring approach.

A true denial or a false confession? Assessing veracity of suspects' statements using MASAM and SVA.

Previous research on statement analysis has mainly concerned accounts by witnesses and plaintiffs. In our studies we examined true and false statements as told by offenders. It was hypothesized that SVA and MASAM techniques would enhance the ability to discriminate between true and false offenders' statements. Truthful and deceptive statements (confessions and denials) were collected from Swedish and Polish criminal case files. In Experiment 1, Swedish law students (N = 39) were asked to assess the veracity of statements either after training in and usage of MASAM or without any training and using their own judgements. In Experiment 2, Polish psychology students (N = 34) assessed veracity after training in and usage of either MASAM or SVA or without prior training using their own judgements. The veracity assessments of participants who used MASAM and SVA were significantly more correct than the assessments of participants that used their own judgements. Results show, that trained coders are much better at distinguishing between truths and lies than lay evaluators. There were significant difference between total scores of truthful and false statements for both total SVA and MASAM and it can be concluded that both veracity assessment techniques are useful in assessing veracity. It was also found, that the content criteria most strongly associated with correct assessments were: logical structure, contextual embedding, self-depreciation, volume of statement, contextual setting and descriptions of relations. The results are discussed in relation to statement analysis of offenders' accounts.

Psychopathic traits in nursing and criminal justice majors: a pilot study.

Prior findings suggest presence of psychopathic personality traits may be prevalent outside of the criminal sphere, such as in the business world. It is possible that particular work environments are attractive to individuals with higher psychopathic personality traits. To test this hypothesis, the current study investigated whether psychopathic personality scores could predict students' choices between two university majors, criminal justice or nursing (N= 174; 53 men, 121 women). Nursing education espouses nurturance and care, while criminal justice education teaches students informal and formal social control. Given these two educational mandates, it was predicted that students who scored higher on a scale of psychopathy would tend to enter criminal justice rather than nursing. Using logistic regression, results showed students with higher overall scores on the Psychopathic Personality Inventory, specifically higher scores on the subscale Machiavellian Egocentricity, were more likely to have chosen to major in criminal justice than nursing. Effects were generally weak but significant, accounting for between 5% to 25% of the variance in choice of major. Furthermore, this finding was not due to sex differences.

Reentry Program and Social Work Education: Training the Next Generation of Criminal Justice Social Workers.

PURPOSE: Social work plays a marginal role in opposing the trend of mass incarceration and high rates of recidivism, and social work education offers limited opportunities for students to specialize in working with people who are currently or were previously incarcerated. How to train students of social work to work against mass-incarceration is still challenging. METHODS: The authors devised and implemented an in-school social service agency devoted to working with people pre and post release from a prison system. The agency is a field practicum setting where interested students study and practice reentry work. In this article, the authors describe and assess the educational merit of this in-school agency. RESULTS: Findings from surveys of students and alumni suggest that the program attained its educational goals of connecting classroom education to practice experience and training students for careers in the criminal justice system. The authors also discuss pending challenges. DISCUSSION: The experience of the Goldring Reentry Initiative suggests that by developing their own social work agencies, the authors may be able to heighten their students educational experience and expand their contribution to social work practice broadly.

To Punish or Not to Punish-That Is the Question.

Attitudes toward punishment have long been of interest to policymakers, researchers, and criminal justice practitioners. The current study examined the relationship between academic education in criminology and attitudes toward punishment among 477 undergraduate students in three subgroups: police officers, correctional officers, and criminology students who were not employed by the criminal justice system (CJS). Our main findings concluded that (a) punitive attitudes of the correctional officers and police officers at the beginning of their academic studies were harsher than those of the criminology and criminal justice students who were not employed by the CJS, (b) punitive attitudes of the correctional officers at the end of their academic studies were less severe than their first-year counterparts, (c) fear of crime was higher among women than among men, and (d) the strongest predictor of punitive attitudes was a firm belief in the principles of the classical and labeling theories (beyond group). Implications of these results are discussed.

Simulations and Social Empathy: Domestic Violence Education in the New Millennium.

When teaching about domestic violence, we hope that our students will be moved to act and organize against it within a social justice framework. We argue that instructional simulations can be used to inspire students to do so. Instructional simulations and gaming tools have been part of higher education pedagogical tool kits since at least the 1960s. Yet it is only recently that a domestic violence resource exists that reflects the interdisciplinary, interactive, and empathy-building orientation of feminist pedagogy. Drawing on the concept of "social empathy," we analyze the potential of the instructional simulation "In Her Shoes," developed by the Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence, to help students gain knowledge of and empathy for the constrained choices facing battered women, understand the frequent disjuncture between leaving and safety, and close the gap between cultural perceptions and lived realities.

Models of Invisibility: Rendering Domestic and Other Gendered Violence Visible to Students Through Clinical Law Teaching.

The proliferation of university courses about domestic violence includes clinical courses in law schools in which students represent victims in their legal cases. This essay advocates for a broader approach to teaching about the problem. Using examples from their clinic cases, the authors show how teachers can overcome pedagogical challenges and render domestic and other forms of gendered violence, including state and community violence, more visible to students by intentionally raising and placing it within larger frameworks of structural inequality. In this way, students learn to identify and address gendered violence even when it is not the presenting problem.

Teaching Domestic Violence in the New Millennium: Intersectionality as a Framework for Social Change.

This article describes an intersectional approach to teaching about domestic violence (DV), which aims to empower students as critical thinkers and agents of change by merging theory, service learning, self-reflection, and activism. Three intersectional strategies and techniques for teaching about DV are discussed: promoting difference-consciousness, complicating gender-only power frameworks, and organizing for change. The author argues that to empower future generations to end violence, educators should put intersectionality into action through their use of scholarship, teaching methods, and pedagogical authority. Finally, the benefits and challenges of intersectional pedagogy for social justice education are considered.

Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders: Using Knowledge, Attitudes and Practice of Justice Professionals to Support their Educational Needs.

BACKGROUND: People with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD) can be involved in high risk, socially unacceptable and harmful behaviours and are at high risk of engaging with the justice system. OBJECTIVE: To obtain baseline data on Western Australian justice professionals' knowledge, attitudes and practice relating to FASD to inform the development of FASD resources. METHODS: Cross sectional study using on-line survey methods, descriptive analysis of quantitative data and content analysis methods for qualitative data. RESULTS: 1873 people were invited to complete the survey. A total of 427 (23%) judicial officers, lawyers, corrective services personnel and police completed the survey. The majority had heard of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (85%) but were less familiar with FASD (60%). Only 16% of respondents identified the key features of FASD as permanent and only 48.4% considered psychological difficulties as important. The majority of legal and judicial officers and approximately half the police officers considered that knowledge about FASD was very relevant to their work. CONCLUSION: There was widespread agreement of the need for more information and training about FASD to optimise outcomes for people with, or suspected of having a FASD, engaging with the justice system.