Fear Appeals in Anti-Knife Carrying Campaigns: Successful or Counter-Productive?

In the UK, knife crime continues to be a persistent and worrying concern. Media campaigns are often used by police and anti-knife crime organisations in an attempt to discourage young people from picking up a weapon. Many focus on the potentially devastating consequences associated with carrying a weapon, with the aim of provoking fear and thus a deterrent effect.

Do Triarchic Psychopathy Components of New Zealand High-Risk Parolees Predict Probation Officer Relationship Quality, Quality of Life on Parole, and Recidivism?

The Triarchic Psychopathy Measure (TriPM) is a self-report scale based on the Triarchic Model that has been little used in research in the criminal justice system. We sought to examine associations between pre-release TriPM components, probation officer relationships, and parolee quality of life, both measured after 2 months in the community, and reconviction 12 months after release. Using data from 234 New Zealand male high-risk prisoners, we tested four multivariate models each across three timepoints.

Artificial fairness? Trust in algorithmic police decision-making.

Objectives: Test whether (1) people view a policing decision made by an algorithm as more or less trustworthy than when an officer makes the same decision; (2) people who are presented with a specific instance of algorithmic policing have greater or lesser support for the general use of algorithmic policing in general; and (3) people use trust as a heuristic through which to make sense of an unfamiliar technology like algorithmic policing.

Methods: An online experiment tested whether different decision-making methods, outcomes and scenario types affect judgements about the appropriateness and fairness of decision-making and the general acceptability of police use of this particular technology.

Results: People see a decision as less fair and less appropriate when an algorithm decides, compared to when an officer decides.

Functional and dysfunctional fear of COVID-19: a classification scheme.

Worry about COVID-19 is a central topic of research into the social and economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this paper, we present a new way of measuring worry about catching COVID-19 that distinguishes between worry as a negative experience that damages people's quality of life (dysfunctional) and worry as an adaptive experience that directs people's attention to potential problems (functional). Drawing on work into fear of crime, our classification divides people into three groups: (1) the unworried, (2) the functionally worried (where worry motivates proactive behaviours that help people to manage their sense of risk) and (3) the dysfunctionally worried (where quality of life is damaged by worry and/or precautionary behaviour).

Life on parole: The quality of experiences soon after release contributes to a conviction-free re-entry.

Background: People returning to the community after prison face many challenges, including finding suitable accommodation and employment, and accessing good social support. The prospects are particularly poor for high-risk offenders with up to a third of those released in New Zealand returning to prison within 100 days.

Aims/hypotheses: We developed the Parole Experiences Measure (PEM) to quantify the quality of men's life experiences during the first weeks of re-entry from prison.

A Fresh Start or the Devil You Know? Examining Relationships Between Release Location Choices, Community Experiences, and Recidivism for High-Risk Parolees.

This study investigated the effects of residential relocation in a sample of 282 high-risk male offenders paroled from New Zealand prisons. Initially we compared those returning to their old neighborhoods () and those released to a new location (). This second category was then further divided: those released to a new location voluntarily () versus those forced to start anew at the behest of the parole board that was releasing them ().

How Does Offender Rehabilitation Actually Work? Exploring Mechanisms of Change in High-Risk Treated Parolees.

Offender rehabilitation is typically thought to have been successful if a higher proportion of a sample of treatment completers avoids being reconvicted for an offence than a comparison sample. Yet, this type of evaluation design tells us little about what brings about these outcomes. In this study, we test whether change in dynamic risk factors during treatment is a recidivism-reducing mechanism in a sample of high-risk offenders.

Using information from the violence risk scale to understand different patterns of change: an exploratory investigation of intensively treated life-sentenced prisoners.

Research rarely has shown that in-program change in correctional rehabilitation is related to long-term outcome (i.e., recidivism), and surprisingly little is known about what happens to progress after treatment, especially for "lifers" whose release may not be imminent.

Repetition, not number of sources, increases both susceptibility to misinformation and confidence in the accuracy of eyewitnesses.

Are claims more credible when made by multiple sources, or is it the repetition of claims that matters? Some research suggests that claims have more credibility when independent sources make them. Yet, other research suggests that simply repeating information makes it more accessible and encourages reliance on automatic processes-factors known to change people's judgments. In Experiment 1, people took part in a "misinformation" study: people first watched a video of a crime and later read eyewitness reports attributed to one or three different eyewitnesses who made misleading claims in either one report or repeated the same misleading claims across all three reports.