Despite increased awareness of sex trafficking of minors in the U.S., prosecution of traffickers remains difficult, in part because of victim uncooperativeness. There are questions about how that uncooperativeness is expressed, whether it is evident in successfully prosecuted cases, and whether it is unique to trafficked minors or it emerges in similar age victims of sexual abuse. To provide insight relevant to these questions, we compared appellate opinions in two types of successfully prosecuted criminal cases: sex trafficking and sexual abuse of adolescent victims. In the trafficking opinions, victims were rarely described as disclosing on their own or as knowing their trafficker before the victimization. The opinions also often alluded to the trafficking victims’ uncooperativeness and delinquency history, and frequently mentioned electronic evidence and prosecution experts. The sexual abuse opinions, in contrast, tended to suggest that victims’ own disclosures initiated the case, perpetrators were known and trusted adults, and caregiver support during the case was common. Finally, the sexual abuse opinions never explicitly mentioned victim uncooperativeness or electronic evidence and rarely mentioned expert testimony or delinquency. The different characterizations of the two case types highlight the need for improved education concerning effective prosecution of sex crimes against minors.
Purpose Official criminal justice statistics (e.g. arrest rates) underestimate the frequency of crime because not all crime gets reported to authorities, a phenomenon known as the “dark figure of crime.” The present study aims to examine the dark figure of violence committed by discharged psychiatric patients. Design/methodology/approach Multiple reporting modalities permitted a direct comparison between patients whose violence was officially detected to those whose violence was self-reported but not officially detected, along with differences in the nature of violent acts. Findings Only 5% of violent individuals were officially detected, 26% of violent individuals were both officially detected and self-reported their violent behavior, while 68% of violent individuals self-reported their violent behavior and were not officially detected. The type of violent acts did not vary as a function of whether they were officially detected or self-reported. However, differences were observed for the location of violence, the relationship to the victim and whether an injury resulted. Older individuals, those with prior arrests and those with higher psychopathy scores are some of the factors associated with an increased likelihood of officially detected violence. Research limitations/implications The data were collected from three sites in the USA. Generalizing the specific findings to other locations and countries ought to be done cautiously. Practical implications Studies ought to include multiple methods to measure violence. Self-report seems to be especially important to the extent one is concerned with measuring actual violence rather than violence that gets detected by legal authorities. Originality/value This study highlights an important limitation of relying exclusively on official criminal justice statistics when studying violence or recidivism in the community.
Objective: Anger rumination and imagined violence, in the context of anger/aggression proclivity, are examined for their direct and conjoint associations with violent behavior by psychiatric patients. Method: A secondary analysis of data from the MacArthur Violence Risk Study was conducted with 1136 acute civil commitment patients, assessed during hospitalization and after hospital discharge. Anger/aggression proclivity was assessed with the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale hostility subscale, anger rumination was indexed using items from the Novaco Anger Scale, and imagined violence was measured with Grisso's Schedule of Imagined Violence. Violence, prehospitalization and posthospitalization, was indexed by the MacArthur project measure.Results: Correlational analyses, mediation analyses, and moderated mediation analyses were conducted. Anger rumination significantly predicted pre-and posthospitalization violence, when controlling for age, sex, race, childhood physical abuse, and anger/aggression proclivity; and it partially mediated the relation between anger/aggression proclivity and violence.Imagined violence and anger rumination were highly interrelated. When imagined violence was added to the regression model, it was a significant predictor of prehospitalization violence; however, it did not moderate the association of anger rumination with pre-or posthospitalization violence.
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