Welcome back to part 2 of our
review of the ATSA conference, this week myself and David Prescott will discuss
some of the material that we think might be of interest to the wider SAJRT
community.
An area of research that I
(Kieran) have been involved in for a while is SORN, particularly the public
notification aspect of it, and as such I attended a session looking at
preliminary data from a National Institute of Justice funded study looking at
law enforcement attitudes to it (Jill
Levenson, Andy Harris & Chris Lobanov-Rostovsky). The data that was
discussed was based on approximately 100 interviews with law enforcement
officers across four states (California, Massachusetts, Florida & Colorado)
each with a different approach to sex offender registration and notification.
The preliminary data indicates that law enforcement believes that registration
can have its benefits in enabling them to do their job effectively but that the
data and the computer systems being used currently are problematic, unhelpful
and do not map together well. In addition, it was felt that in the main the
majority of sex offenders complied with their registration requirements and
when they did not it was not necessarily a purposive breach indicating a return
to offending, but rather individual human error and/or carelessness. The
authors will be discussing this research again in a more expanded fashion over
the next couple of years and it will be interesting to see what else it brings
to light. (KM)
One of the benefits of this
structure of ATSA this year (i.e., that there was only one plenary on the
Thursday and Friday morning) was that there were more research, as well as
treatment, papers to attend and often times these papers where allowed more
space for discussion. I attended a session on the health and social cost of
prevention and heard two radically different papers, one on the cost of sexual
abuse in the UK (Carol McNaughton
Nicholls) and one on trauma informed treatment (Liam Marshall). At first these two papers may seem to be poles
apart but in reality they talked to the same pertinent issue, which the
negative impact is being a victim of sexual abuse has you individually and how
this impacts your future mental, physical as well as emotional health. Both
papers talked to the importance of recognizing abuse early on people’s lives
and intervening to prevent it from continuing as well as enabling the victim to
start the healing process before the abuse severely impacts their long term
development. In addition the two papers, but particularly McNaughton Nicholls,
talked about the inter-relationship between different types of vulnerability
and being a victim of abuse suggesting that we could maximize the limited
resources that we have in a more effective interrelated approach. (KM)
The past two decades have seen
dramatic changes to our understanding of psychopathy. With the first waves of
higher-quality research, concerns emerged about whether or not treatment had
any effect on criminal re-offense, or whether it would actually make matters
worse. A study by Seto and Barbaree (1999) came to prominent international
attention, suggesting that treatment could make matters worse. A follow-up
investigation by the same authors with Calvin Langton using more sophisticated
techniques, a longer follow-up, and expanded sample found less reason for alarm
and yet did not garner the same amount of attention. At around the same time,
many professionals became concerned that the marketing efforts of measures of
psychopathy were outpacing the actual accumulation of knowledge, and that
extending the construct to juveniles could do more harm than good. This year, Paul Frick, Michael Caldwell, and Mark Olver offered fascinating
perspectives on people with high levels of psychopathic traits across the
lifespan. (DP)
An entertaining presenter, Paul Frick summarized years of research
on callous/unemotional traits in children. He noted that although response to
treatment can be a challenge among these children, reward-oriented parenting
approaches, cognitive-behavioral treatment, and interventions targeting social
skills appear to be promising. Michael
Caldwell then described the treatment of adolescents with high levels of
psychopathic traits at the Mendota Juvenile Treatment Center in Madison,
Wisconsin. Caldwell’s research in this area has been compelling, with
significant reductions in violence. Finally, Mark Olver presented the current state of research on the treatment
of adults who score high on the PCL-R and concluded that there is currently no
evidence that appropriate
correctional treatment makes psychopathic offenders worse, that risk reduction
assessed during treatment is linked to reduced sexual and violent recidivism,
and that risk reductions can be found among offenders with significant
psychopathic traits. (DP)
The findings of each of these
presenters are important for a number of reasons. The first is that there is
increased reason for optimism that the right treatment can work under the right
conditions for even the most challenging of clients in treatment. While much
more research is needed, Frick, Caldwell, and Olver have certainly added to our
knowledge and practice. (DP)
This completes the SAJRT brief
review of the ATSA conference. This review is by no means comprehensive or
extensive so please have a look at the conference brochure on the ATSA website
to see what some of the other interesting and informative papers were.
Kieran McCartan & David Prescott
Great post!
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