On Oct 11th 2023, Dr Ross Bartels gave an invited talk at the 4th DISPAX World conference on Unruly Airline Passenger Management & Restraint. This two-day conference explored the causes of disruptive behaviour on aircrafts, the responses available, and the legal issues. Speakers and delegates included aircrew, regulatory authorities, industry associations, and law enforcement.
Ross’ talk was entitled “Understanding Frotteurism & Toucherism: Paraphilia in the Aircraft Cabin“, in which he discussed the prevalence of in-flight sexual offences, the potential role of frotteurism and toucherism, the facilitatory factors, and possible prevention methods. The talk was well-received and opened up important lines of conversation afterwards.
On the 5th October, Dr Phil Willmot presented at the BPS Division of Forensic Psychology Scotland on “Trauma-informed Forensic Practice: Challenges and Opportunities”.
On Friday 29th September, Dr Lauren Smith, Dr Niko Kargas, and Rachael Mason (FCRG member from Health and Social Care) delivered a session to the HMPPS Insights Festival on the project (led by Niko Kargas) entitled ‘Meeting the Needs of Autistic Adults and Adults with Learning Disability in Midlands Prisons’.
The session was attended by 80 HMPPS staff, predominantly psychologists.
Also, on Thursday 5th October, Lauren contributed to a session on the HMPPS Insights Festival (led by The Howard League) on crime and gambling harms. She talked about the work developed in HMP Lincoln to address gambling-related harms. The HMP Lincoln ‘whole prison approach’ was developed in response to findings from research by Lauren, as well as by Prof Amanda Roberts
Dr Lauren Smith and colleagues in the prison governor well-being team have contributed to a newly published special edition of The Prison Service Journal on prison staff well-being.
The full edition (September 2023, No 268) can be accessed here:
Smith, L. (2023). Losing Faith in the Service: A path to disenchantment among Governor Grades.
Ward, S & Smith, L. (2023). Burnout Among UK Prison officers: The relationship with PTSD, depression and resilience. Sydney Ward is a current MSc student who has had a summary of her UG dissertation published.
Smith, L. (2023). Promoting Staff Wellbeing within HMPPS: Interview with Chris Jennings. Chris Jennings is an Executive Director for HMPPS with portfolio responsibility for the wellbeing of prison staff.
FCRG member Phil Willmot, along with ex-MSc student Alex Mason, has published a new study in the Journal of Forensic Psychiatry and Psychology entitled ‘Institutional Firesetting in a Forensic Inpatient Population’
In the study, the characteristics and firesetting histories of 32 patients with histories of institutional firesetting in a secure psychiatric unit in the UK were examined. Only six patients (18.8%) had a prior conviction for firesetting, while a further eight (25.0%) had a history of firesetting but no conviction. All institutional firesetting was carried out alone, most commonly in a cell or bedroom. Institutional firesetting was significantly more common among patients with a diagnosis of personality disorder than among those with a diagnosis of mental illness.
The results are consistent with the M-TTAF trajectories model of firesetting. Different patterns of firesetting may emerge in institutional settings because firesetting may be one of an extremely limited repertoire of problem solving strategies and may be inadvertently reinforced in these settings. These results suggest that there may be a subgroup of institutional firesetters with no previous history of firesetting and this is a group that merits more detailed study.
In March 2023, DrHannah Merdian and Dr Lauren Smith (FCRG deputy),along with other colleagues, have received funding from the Lincoln Policy Hub to support a project entitled “Tackling Online Harms: Rapid Evidence Assessment on Parental or Parental-Supported interventions”. The project is part of an existing partnership with Lincolnshire Safeguarding Children Partnership.
FCRG members Lauren Smith, Todd Hogue, and Tochukwu Onwuegbusi, along with colleagues in the School of Law , Health and Social Care, and the Lincoln International Business School have been awarded just over £154,000 for a HMPPS contract to evaluate Commissioned Rehabilitative Services, valued at just over £150,000!
Tochukwu Onwuegbusi (Tochs), Lauren Smith, and Todd Hogue from the FCRG recently attended and presented several papers at the European Association of Psychology and Law (EAPL) conference in Cluj-Napoca, Romania (3-8th July, 2023).
Tochs presented some quantitative data of their ARC project
Lauren presented about a project on meeting the needs of autistic adults and adults with learning disabilities in Midlands (UK)
Tochs, Lauren, and Todd gave fascinating on Assisting Rehabilitation through Collaboration: A review
On June June 5th 2023, FCRG member Dr Hannah Merdian presented an invited online talk entitled “OnlinePROTECT – Pathways of Risk and Offender Typologies in the Exploitation of Children via Technologies” to the Medical School Berlin.
The presentation provided an overview of OnlinePROTECT’s research programme, focusing in particular on two current research projects: (1) Circles UK is an international organization providing rehabilitation and rehabilitation services for sex offenders. This offer has now also been extended to online offenders. (2) StopitNow UK provides intervention and prevention work for online offenders, including through an anonymous hotline and therapeutic and psychoeducational offerings.
FCRG members, Dr Tochukwu Onwuegbusi and Prof Todd Hogue (along with Prof Amanda Roberts and an ex-Lincoln colleague) have a published a new paper entitled “An Eye Tracking Investigation of Young People’s Gaze Behaviour to Gambling and Non-Gambling Moving Adverts” in the journal European Addiction Research.
The study involved applying a novel data-driven methodology (that directly tracks eye movements) to reveal attentional biases towards gambling adverts and promotions by examining differences in young people’s eye gaze behaviour when watching gambling and non-gambling (control) moving adverts. The results showed that the new data-driven method can: (1) isolate video clips that best distinguish people on the low-high craving spectrum, (2) reveal the type of each video clip with the largest group differences, and (3) accurately predict young people’s gambling craving on the basis of eye movement patterns.
