reoffending than those who completed treatment. The predictors of nonsexual violent recidivism and general (any) recidivism were similar to those predictors found among nonsexual criminals (e.g., prior violent offenses, age, juvenile deliquency). Our results suggest that applied risk assessments of sexual offenders should consider separately the offender's risk for sexual and nonsexual recidivism. Assessing chronicity is crucial for clients whose sexual behaviors have brought them into conflict with the law. Many exceptional criminal justice policies, such as postsentence detention (e.g., Anderson & Masters, 1992), lifetime community supervision, and community notification, target those sexual offenders likely to reoffend. Clinicians need to judge whether the client's behaviors are truly atypical of the individual (as the client would like us to believe) or whether the client merits a virtually permanent label as a sexual offender.

/pdf/predicting-relapse-a-meta-analysis-of-sexual-offender-ml492rgh0h.pdf

Predicting relapse: a meta-analysis of sexual offender recidivism studies.

A meta-analysis of 82 recidivism studies (1,620 findings from 29,450 sexual offenders) identified deviant sexual preferences and antisocial orientation as the major predictors of sexual recidivism for both adult and adolescent sexual offenders. Antisocial orientation was the major predictor of violent recidivism and general (any) recidivism. The review also identified some dynamic risk factors that have the potential of being useful treatment targets (e.g., sexual preoccupations, general self-regulation problems). Many of the variables commonly addressed in sex offender treatment programs (e.g., psychological distress, denial of sex crime, victim empathy, stated motivation for treatment) had little or no relationship with sexual or violent recidivism.

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The Characteristics of Persistent Sexual Offenders: A Meta-Analysis of Recidivism Studies.

Self-determination theory posits that the degree to which a prosocial act is volitional or autonomous predicts its effect on well-being and that psychological need satisfaction mediates this relation. Four studies tested the impact of autonomous and controlled motivation for helping others on well-being and explored effects on other outcomes of helping for both helpers and recipients. Study 1 used a diary method to assess daily relations between prosocial behaviors and helper well-being and tested mediating effects of basic psychological need satisfaction. Study 2 examined the effect of choice on motivation and consequences of autonomous versus controlled helping using an experimental design. Study 3 examined the consequences of autonomous versus controlled helping for both helpers and recipients in a dyadic task. Finally, Study 4 manipulated motivation to predict helper and recipient outcomes. Findings support the idea that autonomous motivation for helping yields benefits for both helper and recipient through greater need satisfaction. Limitations and implications are discussed.

When helping helps: autonomous motivation for prosocial behavior and its influence on well-being for the helper and recipient.

The increasing recognition of the large number of people victimized by sexual assault has focused considerable attention on methods for deterring its perpetrators. In particular, law enforcement and mental health professions alike seek ways to prevent sex offenders from repeating their criminal behavior. Some evidence suggests sex offenders often continue offending even after incarceration or clinical treatment. However, recidivism rates for sex offenders are unusually hard to establish, owing to gross underreporting of sex crimes. This article presents a comprehensive review of empirical studies of sex offender recidivism. It brings together data from a wide variety of studies on both treated and untreated sex offenders of all types. Because of the variety and gravity of methodological problems in these studies, guidelines are discussed for sample selection and description, study design, criterion assessment, and data analysis. With these methodological principles in mind, the results of some 42 studies are examined for what they can tell us about sex offender recidivism and efforts to reduce it.

Sex offender recidivism: A review.

To date, analyses of differences between adolescents' and adults' judgment have emphasized age differences in cognitive factors presumed to affect decision making. In contrast, this article examines research and theory on threepsychosocial aspects of maturity of judgment: responsibility, temperance, and perspective. For several psychosocial dimensions of maturity that are likely to affect judgment, the existing pvidence, while indirect and imperfect, indicates that the greatest differences are found in comparisons between early adolescents versus middle and late adolescents. Developmental research on maturity that focuses specifically on mid-and late adolescence, that simultaneously examines both cognitive and noncognitive factors, and that investigates the relation between these factors and the ability to make good decisions is greatly needed.

https://psycnet.apa.org/journals/lhb/20/3/249.pdf

Maturity of judgment in adolescence: Psychosocial factors in adolescent decision making.

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The Modern Misunderstanding of Original Intent

Those who argue that the Constitution was intended to give Congress the "preeminent role ... in the formulation of foreign policy," and that the modern Presidential role in foreign policy formulation and execution is a departure from the Founders' intent and precedent, must repudiate or distinguish away most of what the Supreme Court appears to have said on the subject. Further, proponents of the "congressional-primacy" interpretation of the Constitution ignore numerous historical precedents that refute their claim that formulation of foreign policy by the Executive is a recent development. The Founders' own practice and debate in this area displayed a rich mixture of textual, structural, prudential, and precedential arguments that amounts to a deliberate embrace of legal complexity, and should, therefore, make modern scholars wary of simplistic and unprecedented interpretations of the president's authority over foreign affairs.

The Founders and the President's Authority over Foreign Affairs

Making It Up as We Go Along

The conventional wisdom in recent scholarship is that the President exercises far greater power over foreign affairs than the Constitution authorizes. "The unmistakable trend toward executive domination of U.S. foreign affairs in the past sixty years represents a dramatic departure from the basic scheme of the Constitution.... The president is vested with only modest authority in this realm and is clearly only of secondary importance."(1) The Constitution was intended to give Congress the "preeminent role ... in the formulation of foreign policy."(2) Proponents of this view (which I shall term the "congressional-primacy" interpretation of the Constitution) sometimes disagree on details of how we are to construe the relationship between Congress and the President in the execution of foreign policy.(3) They are united, however, in their rejection of any interpretation of the Constitution that accords the President primary constitutional responsibility for the formulation of United States foreign policy.(4) One requirement of adopting the congressional-primacy view is that one repudiate or distinguish away most of what the Supreme Court appears to have said on the subject, for the Court often has spoken approvingly of "`the generally accepted view that foreign policy [is] the province and responsibility of the Executive.'"(5) This is, to be sure, a task that the proponents of congressional primacy have been willing to undertake, at times with remarkable alacrity.(6) In turn, however, the sheer weight of inconvenient judicial comment to be dismissed(7) demands a proportionately greater emphasis on other sources of constitutional argument. It is no surprise, therefore, that proponents of congressional primacy assert that for most of the Republic's history, the primacy of Congress's authority over foreign affairs was recognized, not least by both political branches themselves. Whatever its roots, they typically assert, the idea that the President has a legitimate, lawful claim to primacy in foreign affairs--including the formulation of foreign policy--is a twentieth-century innovation in fundamental opposition to our constitutional history, just as it is to constitutional text and original intent.(8) "None of [the early] presidents ever claimed that he possessed inherent constitutional powers as chief executive or commander-in-chief that lay beyond legislative control,"(9) and, a fortiori, neither Congress nor the courts ever entertained such a claim. If this point is correct--that is, if during the formative era of our constitutional history the words and actions of the three branches repudiated (implicitly or explicitly) any presidential claim to independent authority--congressional primacy has at least one solid basis of support. The congressional-primacy interpretation of the Constitution is, I think, an error. On balance, and despite many difficulties of interpretation and application, the Constitution is best read--as in fact it generally has been read by the courts and the executive--to accord the President exactly what congressional-primacy proponents deny: "inherent constitutional powers," some of which are "beyond legislative control," to formulate and pursue foreign policy. This Article, however, does not attempt to make this broader argument.(10) Instead, it examines the assumption of the advocates of congressional primacy that the constitutional thought and practice of the Founding era are devoid of support for the executive-responsibility view. I attempt to show that this assumption is clearly mistaken. In fact, the argument that the President possesses significant independent constitutional authority over foreign affairs is no invention of twentieth-century executive branch apologists,(11) but can be found in carefully considered statements of principle articulated by distinguished Founding-era constitutionalists in the exercise of their duties as officials or officers of the United States government. …

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The Founders and The President's Authority over Foreign Affairs

/pdf/parchment-matters-a-meditation-on-the-constitution-as-text-ofqe7v8llx.pdf

H. Jefferson Powell

Papers

The Modern Misunderstanding of Original Intent

The Founders and the President's Authority over Foreign Affairs

Making It Up as We Go Along

The Founders and The President's Authority over Foreign Affairs

Parchment Matters: A Meditation on the Constitution as Text