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Issues of validity and reliability of legal identity measures used to develop a new ethnic identity construct are examined. Legal identity measures are those found within law and used within public policy yet are somewhat different from those found and well-discussed within psychometric literature, for example. Data gathered from a Native American Indian tribe (N = 667) during the Southern Ute Indian Community Safety Survey conducted in 2001 in which survey respondents were asked about their ethnic identities were compared with a female prisoner population (N = 596) incarcerated in the Ohio Reformatory for Women in 1998, in which survey respondents were asked the same questions. Using paired-samples t-tests and principal component analysis some support was found to use these legal measures in an ethnic identity construct. Providing an ethnic identity construct has the potential to aid understanding of the etiology of deviance, as well as aid other areas of social science.

Public attitudes towards conjugal visitation programs remain an understudied topic in the literature on corrections. The current exploratory study was undertaken to investigate college student’ attitudes toward conjugal visitation programs in American correctional settings. A survey was conducted of 147 students enrolled in a criminology course in an American public university. The data show that 85.7% of respondents agreed with the statement that conjugal visitation was good for the inmate; 91.2% agreed with the statement that conjugal visitation was good for the spouses of incarcerated inmates; 81% said their home state which did not have conjugal visitation, should adopt conjugal visitation programs for incarcerated inmates.

Keywords: conjugal visitation, correctional inmates, correctional institutions, inmate rights, prisons, attitudes of college students.

This study is the first research that examines psychopathy in Malta and establish its rate amongst incarcerated offenders. The research sought to determine potential cultural differences in the incidence and manifestation of psychopathy. It was expected that 1) higher psychopathy scores are associated with a greater presence of historical risk factors, and 2) higher psychopathy scores are associated with a greater incompliance to correctional care-plans or treatment interventions and have more incidents of institutional misconduct. This study utilized a retrospective design analyzing data from randomly selected 123 files of Maltese offenders convicted and serving a sentence of incarceration between 2020 and 2022. All sentenced inmates were included in the study, inmates on remand and foreign nationals were excluded from this study. To test for associations and strength of the relationships between these variables, cross tabulations and Cramer V statistic to test for strength of relationships were utilized. Findings revealed that this sample consisted of a highly  recidivist and persistent group of offenders with a total of 86.2% of the sample having a previous conviction with almost 80% being incarcerated two or more times. A total 38.2% of the sample had scores that exceeded the cut off on the PCL:SV, indicating a highly psychopathic group of offenders. Moderate associations were found for most of the distal risk factors commonly associated with offending behavior such as; recidivism; poor employment and educational history; substance misuse; poor relationships and social detachment; and criminal attitudes and having higher psychopathic traits. Stronger associations were observed between psychopathy and proximal variables of treatment incompliance and disciplinary misconduct. Although, these relationships replicate findings from international studies, the high incidence of psychopathy might indicate a cultural difference. This high incidence and care-plan inadherence implies a need to develop specialized programs for these offenders.

Keywords: Psychopathy, Recidivism, Treatment Adherence, Disciplinary Misconduct

Digital romance scams are a global threat and have been increasing exponentially in numbers of scammers and amounts stolen over recent years. With digital dating, worldwide internet access, and emotion-based schemes, no person or nation is safe from the impact of romance fraud and cybercriminals. Offenders use identified tactics and justifications for their actions. Victims have differing characteristics but the impact of the exploitation always includes psychological and financial damage. Several researchers have been investigating this topic with increased attention since 2020. Current challenges and future trends that are interconnected with online romance scams include human trafficking, face to face ploys, the digital cloud, and artificial intelligence technology. These new iterations can create a physical danger that has not been associated with cyber romance scams before. Nations, corporations, and law enforcement agencies have devoted resources and personnel to try to stem the tide of cyberfraud including online romance scams. Links to many of these global resources are provided as well as recommendations from researchers in an attempt to reduce, and hopefully, eliminate digital romance scams as a transnational threat.

Keywords: digital romance scams, online scams, transnational scams, global cyberfraud, cyberfraud prevention

Many urban areas in the United States saw increased crime during the COVID-19 pandemic.  City leaders and criminal justice scholars have shown interest in exploring the connections between the pandemic and crime rates, seeking to identify potential preventive strategies for the future. Toward having such insight, this study examined crimes and signs of disorder during the strictest lockdown year of 2020 in the United States’s most diverse and fourth-largest city, Houston. It focused on certain neighborhood characteristics that are indicative of social disorganization and how such characteristics were predictive of changes in crime and disorder; the extent to which guardianship, which is inherent in routine activity theory, was predictive of crime and disorder and to what extent different segments of the population experienced crime and disorder early in the pandemic? Using Houston Police Department’s publicly available crime statistics and comparison data from other public community profile sources Negative Binomial Models were run and the data were further examined via geographic information systems mapping. The findings suggest situational crime prevention strategies may be effective. Specifically, prevention policies should include a) an understanding of the lives and motivations of those most likely to be perpetrators and, or victims of crimes and b) an understanding of the ecological dynamics that are likely to bring perpetrators into the realm of opportunities for crime that they are likely to exploit.