Predictive Validity of the HCR-20V3 With Incarcerated Males in Mexico City

This prospective study investigated the predictive validity of the Historical-Clinical-Risk Management–20, Version 3 (HCR-20V3) in a sample of incarcerated males in a Mexico City prison. Data were collected from 114 male adults incarcerated in a medium-security prison in Mexico City. Participants were an average of 36.86 years old ( SD = 9.93 years) and were all born in Mexico. Data collection for HCR-20V3 ratings involved clinical interviews and a review of institutional documents. Aggressive incidents for a 3-month period following each completed risk assessment were collected through document review, self-report follow-up interviews, and guard reports. Participants who engaged in institutional violence during the 3-month follow-up period were given significantly higher summary risk ratings and had higher HCR-20 total scores than the participants who did not engage in violence (area under the curve [AUC] ranged from .71 to .77). The study demonstrated support for the cross-cultural utility of the HCR-20V3 for institutional violence in a Mexican prison.

Pretending to Be Better Than They Are? Emotional Manipulation in Imprisoned Fraudsters

Fraud can cause severe financial losses and affect the physical and mental health of victims. This study aimed to explore the manipulative characteristics of fraudsters and their relationship with other psychological variables. Thirty-four fraudsters were selected from a medium-security prison in China, and thirty-one healthy participants were recruited online. Both groups completed an emotional face-recognition task and self-report measures assaying emotional manipulation, psychopathy, emotion recognition, and empathy. Results showed that imprisoned fraudsters had higher accuracy in identifying fear and surprise faces but lower accuracy in identifying happiness than controls (t = 5.26, p < 0.001; t = 2.38, p < 0.05; t = 3.75, p < 0.001). Significantly lower scores on non-prosocial factors on the Managing the Emotions of Others scale (MEOS) were found for imprisoned fraudsters, relative to controls (t = 3.21, p < 0.01). Imprisoned fraudsters had low scores in the assessment of psychopathy than the control group, especially Factor 1 (t = 2.04, p = 0.05). For empathy, imprisoned fraudsters had significantly higher scores in perspective-taking than controls (t = 2.03, p = 0.05). Correlation analyses revealed that psychopathic traits were positively correlated with non-prosocial factors in both groups. However, the relationships between emotional manipulation and emotional recognition and empathy were not consistent across the groups. The results suggest that fraudsters may pretend to be as prosocial as healthy controls, who had lower antisocial tendencies, normal empathy ability, and would like to manipulate others’ emotions positively during social interaction.

Use of SHDM in commutative watermarking encryption

SHDM stands for Sphere-Hardening Dither Modulation and is a watermarking algorithm based on quantizing the norm of a vector extracted from the cover work. We show how SHDM can be integrated into a fully commutative watermarking-encryption scheme and investigate implementations in the spatial, DCT, and DWT domain with respect to their fidelity, robustness, capacity, and security of encryption. The watermarking scheme, when applied in the DCT or DWT domain, proves to be very robust against JPEG/JPEG2000 compression. On the other hand, the spatial domain-based approach offers a large capacity. The increased robustness of the watermarking schemes, however, comes at the cost of rather weak encryption primitives, making the proposed CWE scheme suited for low to medium security applications with high robustness requirements.

ANSIEDADE E DEPRESSÃO EM DETENTOS

No sistema carcerário, os seres humanos se tornam um número, perdem a individualidade, autonomia e ainda podem desenvolver, transtornos mentais. Por serem privados de liberdade e do convívio social e estarem em um ambiente hostil, podem ter desencadeadas reações de risco para sua saúde mental. O homem é um ser complexo que está em constante transformação e os detentos, como tal, ao serem tratados com dignidade e humanização têm uma chance maior de ressocialização. Esta é uma pesquisa quantitativa descritiva que tem como objetivo investigar a prevalência dos níveis de sintomas depressivos e ansiosos desenvolvidos por 13 detentos do sexo masculino com faixa etária entre 20 e 60 anos, que sabem ler e escrever, e cumprem pena em regime fechado em um estabelecimento penal de segurança média de um município localizado no interior do Mato Grosso do Sul, bem como contextualizar transtornos depressivos e transtornos ansiosos através de revisão integrativa e caracterização do indivíduo pesquisado. Essa pesquisa foi realizada através de visitas ao estabelecimento penal e com aplicação de questionário sócio demográfico para levantamento de dados da população pesquisada, e aplicação das Escalas de Aaron Beck: BDI - Inventário Beck de Depressão e BAI - Inventário Beck de Ansiedade. O resultado obtido pela população no protocolo BDI foi de 38,46% nível mínimo e 30,77% nível leve, no protocolo BAI 69,23% nível mínimo e 23,08% um nível leve. A pesquisa realizada aponta que é mínima a prevalência de sintomas depressivos e ansiosos na referida população carcerária. ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION DISORDERS IN INMATES ABSTRACT In the prison system, the human being becomes a number, they lose their individuality, autonomy and in addition, they may develop mental disorders. As long as they are deprived of their freedom and social living, inserted in a hostile environment, risk reactions to their mental health may be triggered. The man is a complex being passing through constant changes and so the inmates when they are decently and humanely treated they have a greater chance of rehabilitation. This is a descriptive quantitative research that aims at investigating the prevalence of anxiety and depression symptoms levels developed by 13 male inmates, aged between 20 and 60 years old, literate, and serve a sentence in a closed system at a medium-security prison, in a municipality in the countryside of Mato Grosso do Sul, as well as contextualizing anxiety and depression disorders through an integrative review, and also the individual's profile. This research was carried out through field visits to the prison and socio-demographic questionnaires in order to obtain data about the population researched, and the application of Aaron Beck Scales: Beck Depression Inventory- BDI and Beck Anxiety Inventory- BAI. The result obtained from the population for the protocol BDI was 38,46% at a severe level, and 30,77% at a mild level, for the BAI protocol, it was 69,23% at a minimal level and 23,08% at a mild level. The research highlights that the prevalence of anxiety and depression symptoms is minimal for the aforementioned prison population. Descriptors: Anxiety. Depression. Inmates.

CLUSTER ANALYSIS FOR GROUPING OF PRISONER PERSONALITY IN THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 4.0 ERA

Industrial revolution 4.0 has affected all fields, including Indonesian Ministry of Law and Human Rights whose conducting a revitalization of correctional service where capacity was the main point of clustering is now changing into clustering based on change in behavior of the prisoners, which then used as recommendation for placing prisoners into Minimum Security, Medium Security and Maximum Security Prison. Prisoner’s Personality will show a prisoner’s tendency to behave and to think. Personality can be measured through Big Five Personality Model consisting of Openness to Experience, Concientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism. To simplify the placement process, the K-Means Clustering method is used. Of 137 prisoners assessed from Rangkasbitung and Serang Prison, 27 prisoners being placed to Medium Security prison, 52 prisoners to Maximum Security prison, and 58 prisoners to Minimum Security prison.

Depression and experience of incarceration in North Central Nigeria: a situation analysis at Makurdi medium security prison

Background Human rights watchdogs have described conditions in Nigerian correctional facilities and detention centers as damaging to the physical and mental health of inmates. While the prevalence of mental disorders is high, access to appropriate healthcare is grossly inadequate. Understanding the current state of prison inmates’ mental health and well-being is an essential first step to addressing this important issue. This study aims to document the mental health and experiences of incarceration of inmates of the largest medium security prison in Nigeria’s Benue State. Methods A cross-sectional survey and descriptive analysis was carried out with a random sample of 381 prison inmates of Benue State Makurdi Medium Security Prison. Survey tools included: (1) a structured questionnaire on participants’ experiences in prison, and (2) the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9), a screening tool for depression. Results Most participants were young men (95.5%, mean age 27.95) and had completed secondary school (63.5%). While prison authorities had identified only 27 participants as having a mental disorder, 144 (37.8%) screened positive for depression. Twenty six had received professional counseling while in prison. Of the six participants who were already taking a psychotropic medication at the time of imprisonment, four received medication after being imprisoned. Approximately half, (52%) of participants were dissatisfied with prison health care. Conclusions Despite the high prevalence of depression among prison inmates, few cases are detected and treated. Prison staff may not recognize depression as a mental disorder, and the mental health care available is generally poor. Inadequate mental health and social care not only affects prison inmates’ well-being, but may also impact recidivism and health outcomes upon release. Prison inmates should be screened routinely for depression and other less-commonly recognized mental health conditions, and appropriate treatment made available.