Following the enactment of the Organic Law 1 / 2004 on comprehensive protection measures against gender violence, intervention programs for both batterers serving in prison who later access to a semi-free period and for those with suspension of the sentence enforcement who work in community services have become necessary. Herein, we describe, maintain, and go further in rehabilitation of batterers in order to prevent further episodes of violence and protect and guarantee battered women's safety.

Maximization of pleasure (hedonicity) is a major mechanism in human decision-making by optimizing behavior, as previous research has shown on both sensory pleasure and purely mental pleasure (such as playing videogames or solving mathematical problems). Our group also documented that pleasure is a major factor in decision-making in social situations related to interpersonal aggression: people tend to make aggressive behavioral decisions as a function of the resulting pleasure. The present study tried to verify whether this trend was also found in inmates. To our knowledge, this is the first investigation on the relationship between pleasure and aggression performed in a prison. Fifty three male inmates in a Spanish prison condemned for severe legal transgressions and serving long detention were compared with seventy five male university students who served as controls. They responded to self-reported questionnaires devised to examine how hedonicity influences decision-making in the case of aggressiveness. Socially conflictive situations were described, with four alternative options ranging from passive to highly aggressive response. A similar bell-shaped trend was present in both populations -aggressive behaviors of medium intensity were rated as significantly less unpleasant than the most passive and most aggressive behaviors-, even though the degree of hedonicity was significantly higher in the inmates, who rated mild and moderate aggressive responses as pleasurable. Inmates also voted for an unexpected lower of aggressiveness than controls, which may be explained by social desirability. Conclusion: the sametrend is found in both populations: mild aggressive behavior may be pleasurable to the aggressor, but only up to a certain level. But this seems to be stronger in inmates: they showed hedonicity when experiencing higher level of aggression. Such a result is consistent with a fundamental role of hedonicity in decision making.

This study is the first attempt to measure reactive and proactive aggression in 1,203 youths aged between 11 and 20 from Hong Kong, mainland China, Spain, and Uruguay using the reactive‐proactive aggression questionnaire (RPQ). The two‐factor RPQ construct was found to exhibit an excellent model fit for all subsamples, and the measurement and structural invariance across the four regions was also revealed. After controlling for age, the youth in Uruguay exhibited the highest levels of general, reactive, and proactive aggression, followed by Spain, Hong Kong, and mainland China. Reactive, proactive, and general aggression increased with age in the total sample, but the effects differed among regions. Boys were found to exhibit higher levels of general, reactive, and proactive aggression than girls only in Uruguayan sample. These findings confirmed the cross‐cultural generalizability of the two‐factor RPQ model, and suggested culture, age, and gender to be significant determinants of youth aggression.

Abstract:To a large degree, humans use pleasure (hedonicity) maximization to guide decision making, thereby optimizing their behaviour, as shown by research on either sensory or purely mental pleasure (e.g., pleasure from video-game playing or mathematical problem-solving). Our group has now found that pleasure determines decision making in situations of interpersonal aggression, i.e., people tend to behave aggressively in proportion to the resulting pleasure. In the present study, two groups of inmates in a Spanish prison were compared: those serving long sentences and those being held in preventive detention. All participants answered self-administered questionnaires that had been devised to examine how hedonicity influences decision making in the case of aggressive behaviour. The questionnaires described social conflict situations and offered four options ranging from a passive response to a highly aggressive response. Previous research showed similar results between inmates serving long terms and a non-delinquent population, even though the degree of hedonicity was higher in the inmates: increasingly aggressive behavior is increasingly pleasurable to the aggressor, but only up to a certain level.. In contrast, this paper shows that inmates in preventive detention did not rate any of the aggressive responses as pleasant. Such a difference was present in males only and may have been caused by a desire for social acceptance.

Abstract:The degree of acceptance of various forms of aggression in different situations was analyzed by administering self-report questionnaires. Previous studies on justification of interpersonal aggression, in 'normal' adult populations, in quite different cultures, have shown overall similar, but not identical, features. A similar trend of justification, but at a higher level, was expected in special 'deviant' populations, such as prisoners and psychiatric patients. The present study focuses on the way in which young re-offenders serving in reformatories justify different types of interpersonal aggression in a variety of settings. As a control population, a sample of students of similar age living in the same area was used. Results: the young delinquent population justified aggression at a higher level than 'normal' teenagers of similar age in all situations, except 'when communication breaks down'. Specifically their justification of physical aggression as well as of threatening was also higher, whereas no significant differences were found related to passive aggression (hindering) or verbal emotional acts (shouting, being furious, or showing rage). In certain situations a rather striking prevalence among girls was observed. In conclusion, young delinquents showed a higher justification of aggression, notably of its most drastic physical forms, in virtually all situations.

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This study reports the degrees of approval for different aggressive acts in a number of instrumental and emotional situations. A nationally-adapted version of the Lagerspetz and Westman questionnaire [1] was administered to 332 university students of both sexes in Spain and Hong Kong. Respondents had to indicate levels of justification of several aggressive acts of different quality and intensity in the context of different social justifications. Our results replicated the general findings of previous research in other cultures: in both samples, more drastic forms of aggression (e.g., killing, torture) were less accepted than non-dangerous forms of such behavior (e.g., hindering, being ironic); aggressive acts more socially justified (in terms of protection of self or other) were clearly more accepted than others with no such justification (problems of communication); and instrumental-motivated aggression was higher justified than emotional-motivated aggression. Some differences in the level of acceptance according to the sex of the participants were found: women were more prone to a higher acceptance of acts and situations more related to emotion. Although both sexes justified aggression in a higher degree for instrumentally motivated situations than for emotional ones, males showed a higher acceptance than females for instrumental situations and a lower one than females for emotional ones. There were also some minor culturally bound differences in these attitudes: Spaniards accepted less than HK students aggression in emotional situations, specially for the cases of punishment and lack of communication, but more emotional acts, such as rage and shouting. Thus, patterns of moral approval of various kinds of aggressive acts are in a large part common to both cultures. Findings also confirmed a two-factor solution and the respective predictive power of justifications for aggression in instrumental vs. emotional motivated situations. The reliability and validity of this brief self-report have been further established by the present study, paving the way for future studies to measure instrumental and emotional aggression.