Donald M. Thomson

Self-harm in prison : manipulators can also be suicide attempters

This study sought to determine whether self-harm incidents classified as manipulative would also be classified as low suicidal intent and low risk to life. Seventy-four prisoners who had self-harmed were interviewed within 3 days of the incident. Measures were obtained of the degree of suicidal intent (Suicide Intent Scale), the degree to which the incident posed a risk to life (assessed by medical staff), and the principal motive for self-harming (open-ended question). The data did not support the notion that manipulators and suicide attempters are mutually exclusive groups. Only 6 of the 18 participants who reported manipulative motives displayed low suicidal intent, and 3 of the 18 enacted self-harm that posed at least a moderate risk to life. Prison staff cannot assume that prisoners who appear manipulative or report manipulative motives were not suicidal at the time of self-harming.

Identifying stalking: The relevance of intent in commonsense reasoning.

One method of distinguishing stalking from law-abiding behavior is to determine whether the accused intended to cause fear or harm to the target. However, this distinction may not capture community concerns regarding intrusive or harassing behavior. The present research examines the effect of intent, persistence, relationship, and consequences on community perceptions of stalking. Responses of 1,080 members of the community to a series of scenarios indicated that the presence of explicit evidence of intent was not the only way stalking behavior was identified. Behavior was also identified as stalking as a greater degree of persistence was depicted. Females more often than males perceived the behavior as stalking and inferred intent to cause fear or harm. Most participants who identified the behavior as stalking also indicated that it should be illegal. These results may assist in guiding ongoing debates over appropriate stalking legislation and strategies to reduce the incidence of stalking, as well as indicating whether education regarding stalking laws is required.

Contrasting memory for temporal-source and memory for content in children's discrimination of repeated events

The current studies examined the separate roles that memory of temporal-source and memory of content play in childrens discrimination of occurrences of a repeated event. The studies were also designed to determine the impact of age and retention interval on each of these components. In Experiment One, 4- to 5- versus 6- to 8-year-old children experienced six occurrences of a repeated event; each occurrence had the same underlying structure; however, a different version or instantiation of each item was included in each occurrence of the event. At either 1 or 6 week delay, the children were asked to recall which instantiation of the item was included in the final occurrence. In Experiment Two, children were required to recall as many instantiations as they could, prior to making a decision about which instantiation was included in the final occurrence. The results indicated that: (a) childrens capacity to correctly identify the final instantiation declined over time and increased with age; (b) childrens capacity to provide an instantiation that was temporally close to the final occurrence declined over time and increased with age; and (c) childrens ability to remember the source of an instantiation decreased over time irrespective of any loss of memory for content. The results were discussed in relation to current theories of memory and childrens eyewitness memory.

Community perceptions of stalking: What are the fundamental concerns?

The present study sought to examine community conceptions of what constitutes stalking by manipulating the role of intent to cause harm or fear (present or absent), consequences to the victim (extreme fear, moderate fear, no fear) and offender‐victim relationship (stranger, ex‐intimate, acquaintance) in an alleged stalking scenario. 540 participants from the Melbourne (Australia) community read a vignette detailing persistent and potentially harassing conduct by a male directed towards a female. Results indicated that participants classified stalking according to the actions of the accused, such as following, telephoning and watching the target The presence or absence of intentions to cause harm or fear, the consequences to the victim, and the relationship of the target to the accused played no role in the identification of behaviour as stalking. Results are discussed in terms of the fundamental concems of the community and the scope of the criminal law, particularly stalking legislation.

Should victim impact influence sentences? Understanding the community's justice reasoning

Victim impact statements have been introduced in response to growing community concern about apparent neglect of victims in the criminal justice system. Their use in sentencing is a contentious issue, because victim characteristics such as resilience or fragility can contribute to impacts. Is it appropriate for sentences to be influenced by consequences arising from chance victim circumstances unforeseeable by the offender? In the interest of achieving an optimal fit between the justice system and community expectations, this research examined a neglected question: how does the public reason about the issue? Using offense vignettes presented to 260 people in Western Australia, sentencing decisions were found to vary according to consequences arising from victim characteristics. There was little to indicate participants fully appreciated the issue; thus, further research is needed to clarify how justice reasoning principles are used, and to ascertain whether different decisions are taken when people are informed about the problem.

Self-Inflicted Injury and Coping Behaviours in Prison

Previous research (Bonner & Rich, 1990; Liebling, 1992; Liebling & Krarup, 1993) has suggested that self-harming prisoners are “poor copers,” but has not provided detail as to how they differ from other prisoners in terms of their actual coping behaviour. Liebling (1992) found that self-harmers were more likely to have serious difficulties with other prisoners, less likely to have outside supports (either family or probation), spent more time in their cell (partly through being on restrictive regime and partly because they were hiding from teasing and intimidation), and were less able to articulate constructive ways of filling their time. Liebling concluded that “inmates with the fewest opportunities to occupy themselves (for whatever reason, some self-induced) were those who were least able to cope with the isolation and boredom of confinement to a cell for long periods of time” (p. 144). Essentially, however, poor coping ability was inferred from the greater levels of distress and disorder reported and there was no direct assessment of coping behaviour. It is yet to be determined whether prisoners who self-harm differ from other prisoners in terms of their coping behaviour. A more specific test of Liebling’s assertion would be to examine whether prisoners who self-harm are less likely to employ effective coping strategies or are more likely to employ ineffective or counter-productive strategies. It is not clear, however, what constitutes an effective coping strategy. Aldwin and Revenson (1987) remarked that “we are far from describing a “magic bullet” coping strategy that can instantly solve problems and restore emotional equilibrium” (p. 338). Nearly a decade later, Steed (1995) undertook an extensive review of the coping literature and concluded that “there are no strategies which can generally be regarded as more effective than others, rather, it depends on the nature of the stressor, particularly its controllability” (p. 100). On a more general level, however, studies have consistently found that problem-

Improving children's recall of an occurrence of a repeated event: is it a matter of helping them to generate options?

Three experiments were conducted to explore whether childrens recall of an occurrence of a repeated event could be improved by encouraging them to consider various details that occurred across a series of events prior to making a judgement about which details were included in the target (to-be-recalled) occurrence. Experiment 1 explored whether childrens recall of the target occurrence was better after the interviewer presented all the items from the series prior to the child identifying the final item. Experiment 2 explored whether having the children generate all the items facilitated their subsequent recall of the target occurrence. Finally, Experiment 3 directly compared the effectiveness of the above 2 procedures. Regardless of the childrens age, the retention interval, or the type of item, childrens capacity to identify which details were included in a target occurrence was enhanced when they were initially provided with all the possible details from the series of events. However, without relying on the interviewer to generate the options, the benefit of the technique was directly contingent on the childrens ability to generate content details; this was a distinct source of difficulty for the children. Indeed, having children generate options had no beneficial effect on decisions about the temporal position of items unless performance was made conditional on the childrens ability to remember the relevant details in the first place. The implications of the findings for the legal setting and for future research are discussed.

The effect of contextual cues on children's ability to remember an occurrence of a repeated event

Purpose. This study examined the usefulness of contextual cues in enhancing the accuracy of childrens narrative accounts of an occurrence of a repeated event. Method. Children aged 6 to 7 years took part in the same staged event four times whereby 16 target details varied in each occurrence (e.g. the colour of a cloak varied each time). Three days later, the childrens free recall of the final occurrence was elicited. This occurrence was identified in one of two ways. Either it was identified via the temporal term ‘last’, or else the term ‘last’ was combined with a feature related to the environmental context or setting that was unique to the occurrence (i.e., the interviewer referred to a new object that was worn throughout the occurrence or a new person who carried out the event). For each condition, performance was compared to that of children who experienced the event only once. Results. Childrens memory of details specific to the target occurrence was better after the single than the repeated event. However for both event types, children who were given the contextual and temporal cue performed better than those who were given the temporal cue only. The benefit of using a contextual cue did not result in an increase in errors. Conclusion. Contextual cues (generated by an interviewer) can facilitate childrens recall of an occurrence of an event. However, further research needs to determine whether this finding would generalize to a more practical situation where the child (rather than the interviewer) generates the cues.

The effect of a suggestive interview on children's memory of a repeated event: Does it matter whether suggestions are linked to a particular incident?

This study examined the impact of linking misleading information to a particular occurrence of a repeated event Children aged 5‐ to 6‐years took part in the same staged event four times and 16 target details varied in each occurrence (e.g., the colour of a cloak varied each time). Three days or three weeks later they were asked questions, some of which included false information, about the final occurrence. The next day, the children were required to recall what happened in the final occurrence. Compared to children whose biasing interview was not focused on any particular occurrence of the repeated event linking the biasing interview to the final occurrence increased the number of suggested details that were reported. Interestingly, the children whose biasing interview was not focused on any occurrence were also less likely to report the false suggestions than another group of children who had only experienced the event once and whose biasing interview was linked to that single occurrence. These findings have implications for how lawyers and investigative interviewers question children about multiple incidents.

Management style and its effect on prison officers’ stress

This study investigates the impact of the work environment on the level of perceived job stress in prison officers. Two models of prison administration were assessed in an attempt to identify the organizational structures and processes which were related to level of occupational stress. To identify the impact of occupational stress on prison officers, the bureaucratic and unit management models of prison administration are compared with respect to officer job characteristics and management processes. The Occupational Role Questionnaire and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory were administered to 112 prison officers. A multivariate analysis identified a significant main effect for prison management type. On all measures, prison officers from the bureaucratic management model (Pentridge Prison) scored higher than officers from a unit management model (Barwon Prison). Role boundary, physical environment, and trait anxiety were the most salient discriminators between officers from Pentridge and Barwon.