Predicting violence risk and recidivism in female parolees: A state-wide sample.

Historically, research on violence risk assessments has primarily focused on male psychiatric patients and/or inmates, with minimal attention given to female patients and/or inmates-two populations likely to differ with regard to violence risk conceptualization. To date, there is no known measure of violence risk specifically tailored to predicting risk for this population that is accurate, brief, and cost-effective. As such, the current study exclusively focused on the predictive ability of the Iowa Violence and Victimization Instrument (IVVI) for female parolees over a 30-month follow-up period. Results indicated not only was the IVVI comparable across genders, its predictive power was comparable to more established measures (i.e., Violence Risk Appraisal Guide-Revised, HCR-20 V3). Results also found the IVVI may have greater usefulness with prediction of violent and felony property offenses, but limited usefulness for predicting misdemeanor property and drug offenses. Taken together, findings gathered from the current study suggest while women are reoffending at lower rates than men, yet there are fewer gender differences in risk factors for engaging in violence than expected.

Psychopathy and heroism in first responders: Traits cut from the same cloth?

Some scholars have posited that certain traits associated with psychopathy-namely, fearlessness, boldness, and willingness to take risks-are associated with greater engagement in heroic and altruistic acts; nevertheless, this conjecture has received little empirical attention. We examined the relations among psychopathic traits, heroism, altruism, workplace deviance, and leadership in first-responder (n = 138) and civilian (n = 104) samples recruited by means of an online platform. Across samples, fearless dominance, boldness, sensation seeking, and several other psychopathy-related variables were positively and significantly associated with everyday heroism and altruism. First responders scored significantly higher than did civilians on measures of psychopathy, fearlessness, boldness, heroism, and altruism, and reported significantly greater workplace deviance and participation in leadership activities. Our results support previous suggestions of ties between psychopathic traits, especially fearlessness and heroism, although they leave unresolved the question of why certain antisocial and prosocial behaviors appear to covary. (PsycINFO Database Record

Military Versus Civilian Murder-Suicide.

Previous studies have implicated significant differences between military members and civilians with regard to violent behavior, including suicide, domestic violence, and harm to others, but none have examined military murder-suicide. This study sought to determine whether there were meaningful differences between military and civilian murder-suicide perpetrators. Using data from the Center for Disease Control's (CDC) National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS), military ( n = 259) and civilian ( n = 259) murder-suicide perpetrators were compared on a number of demographic, psychological, and contextual factors using chi-square analyses. Logistic regression was used to determine which variables predicted membership to the military or civilian perpetrator groups. Military murder-suicide perpetrators were more likely to be older, have physical health problems, be currently or formerly married, less likely to abuse substances, and to exhibit significantly different motives than civilian perpetrators. Logistic regression revealed that membership to the military, rather than the civilian, perpetrator group was predicted by age, physical health problems, and declining heath motive-reflecting the significance of a more than 15-year difference in mean age between the two groups. Findings point to the need to tailor suicide risk assessments to include questions specific to murder-suicide, to assess attitudes toward murder-suicide, and to the importance of assessing suicide and violence risk in older adult military populations.

Mining for Murder-Suicide: An Approach to Identifying Cases of Murder-Suicide in the National Violent Death Reporting System Restricted Access Database.

The National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) is a United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) database of violent deaths from 2003 to the present. The NVDRS collects information from 32 states on several types of violent deaths, including suicides, homicides, homicides followed by suicides, and deaths resulting from child maltreatment or intimate partner violence, as well as legal intervention and accidental firearm deaths. Despite the availability of data from police narratives, medical examiner reports, and other sources, reliably finding the cases of murder-suicide in the NVDRS has proven problematic due to the lack of a unique code for murder-suicide incidents and outdated descriptions of case-finding procedures from previous researchers. By providing a description of the methods used to access to the NVDRS and coding procedures used to decipher these data, the authors seek to assist future researchers in correctly identifying cases of murder-suicide deaths while avoiding false positives.