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The present meta-analysis explored the relationship between psychopathy and instrumental and reactive violence with a focus on factor and facet scores. A total of 53 studies (reporting on 55 unique samples, N = 8,753) from both published and unpublished sources were included. Results from random-effects analyses indicated moderate and significant relationships between psychopathy and both instrumental and reactive violence. There was some evidence that the Interpersonal facet was more important for instrumental violence, while Factor 2 (social deviance) was more important for reactive violence. The Lifestyle facet appeared important in explaining both violent outcomes. Effect sizes were significantly smaller for clinical rating scales compared with informant and self-report scales. Significant between-study variability was partly explained by mean age of the sample and type of outcome measure. The current findings do not support the conclusion that psychopathy is more related to instrumental violence as opposed to reactive violence.

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Children who are bullied are often told to 'solve the problems themselves'; however, when bullying is repeated over time, it becomes increasingly difficult for victimized children to stop the torment because of their relative lack of power. We examine the ways in which children respond to bullying and their evaluations of the effectiveness of various strategies in reducing their bullying problems. One thousand eight hundred and fifty-two Canadian children and youth, ranging in age from 4-to 19-years-old (mean 12.6, SD 2.4) responded to a web-based questionnaire. Few respondents indicated that they were motivated by public education campaigns or information about bullying. Participants indicated they were motivated to do something to stop bullying by their own need to exert control and be assertive and by their emotional reactions to bullying. A significant group of youth responded that they did nothing to stop bullying. Finally, the longer the bullying had been ongoing, the less effective students perceived their own strategies. The results highlight the importance of adults supporting students. Similarly, it is important to provide children and youth with strategies that are effective, as they are most likely to implement strategies that are only going to increase the victimization over time. KEY WORDS: aggression; bullying; coping; strategies; victimization Bullying is a form of abuse at the hands of peers that can take different forms at different ages. Bullying is defined as repeated aggression in which there is a power differential (Juvonen and Graham, 2001;Olweus, 1991;Pepler and Craig, 2000). Two elements of bullying are key to understanding its complexity. First, bullying is a form of aggressive behaviour imposed from a position of power: children who bully have more power than the children they victimize. This power can derive from a physical advantage such as size and strength, but also through a social advantage such as a dominant social role (e.g. teacher compared to a student), higher social status in a peer group (e.g. popular versus rejected student), strength in numbers (e.g. group of children bullying a solitary child) or through systemic power (e.g. racial or cultural groups, sexual minorities, economic disadvantage, disability). Power can also be achieved by knowing another's vulnerability (e.g. obesity, stuttering, learning problem, sexual orientation, family background) and using that knowledge to cause distress. The second key element is that bullying is repeated over time. With each repeated bullying incident, the power relations become consolidated: as children bully and repeatedly cause distress for others, they increase in power over time, whereas the children who are being victimized lose power in that relationship.Bullying can take many forms. It can be physical (e.g. hits, pushes, tripping, spitting), verbal (e.g. threats, insults, put-downs), social (e.g. social exclusion, malicious gossip) or cyber-bullying (e.g. threats, insults, demeaning messages spread through the i...

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The goal of this study was to compare the risk assessment reports of prosecution-retained (n = 43) and court-appointed experts (n = 68) within the context of preventative detention hearings on variables ranging from the information within the assessment reports (e.g., length) to the conclusions drawn in terms of risk and treatment amenability (e.g., categorical statements of risk). A separate section also focused specifically on psychopathy. Court-appointed expert assessments were significantly longer (d = 0.40, 95% confidence interval [CI] [0.01, 0.78]) and contained more information pertaining to risk factors (odds ratio [OR] = 4.48, 95% CI [1.21, 16.61]) and risk management (OR = 3.15, 95% CI [1.20, 8.25]). Both types of experts communicated risk assessment results in categorical terms and were highly likely to utilize actuarial scales. Less than half of all assessments contained information on dynamic or protective factors. Other than providing a total psychopathy score, the assessments contained very little additional information about the implications of this score for risk management or treatment amenability. Although the results indicate that risk assessment reports between prosecution-retained and court-appointed experts were more similar than they were different, it is also evident that, overall, reports should contain more information on dynamic risk factors and risk management in order to be useful in the context of preventative detention hearings.

There is much concern about the extent to which risk assessment tools designed to predict recidivism are equally valid for both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal offenders. The current study compared Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal male sex offenders on items and total scores of the original and revised Static-99 and Static-2002 scales. The study included five independent Canadian samples with Static-99 and Static-99R scores (319 Aboriginals and 1,269 non-Aboriginals), three of which also had Static-2002 and Static-2002R scores (209 Aboriginals and 955 non-Aboriginals). Aboriginal sex offenders scored significantly higher than non-Aboriginal sex offenders on total scores and items indicative of general criminality and tended to score lower on items indicative of sexual deviancy. Static-99/R total scores and items generally predicted sexual recidivism with similar accuracy for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal sex offenders. In contrast, significant differences were found for Static-2002/R total scores and several of their items, with lower predictive accuracy for Aboriginals. The results suggest that at least some items of the Static scales are not as predictive for Aboriginal as for non-Aboriginal sex offenders, with differences found on Static-2002/R rather than Static-99/R scales.

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