5,044 research outputs found
An Independent Evaluation of the SToMP (Supporting Transition of Military Personnel) Project
Get PDFExecutive summaryThe SToMP (Supporting Transition of Military Personnel) project was formed in 2016, with a large grant from the Covenant Fund. The project aims to improve access to appropriate services for ex - armed services personnel (ex-ASP) within the criminal justice system (CJS), with a particular focus on identification and collaborative working practices. This report was commissioned by the SToMP project to evaluate its impact after two years of being operational.The data for this evaluation were largely collected in tandem with a prior research project, also commissioned by SToMP, which examined the barriers to identification of ex-ASP within the CJS and access to services (Davies & Davies, 2019). Qualitative, quantitative and ethnographic data, from both primary and secondary sources, were collated across the CJS and third sector. Additional documents generated by the SToMP team, and data in relation to SToMP hosted multi-agency meetings, were also examined.The findings highlight the progress made by SToMP – particularly within the prison system – in improving identification and awareness of ex-ASP issues. Feedback from ex-ASP ‘champions’ within the probation services was also particularly positive regarding the support and assistance they had received from the project. More recently, SToMP’s work with the police has made some very progressive steps with collaboration across the four forces. Indeed, SToMP has made a consistent effort to enhance collaborative working across all the statutory agencies involved and the third sector; it has also commissioned and collaborated on several research projects. The key recommendations from this report mainly focus on a improvement to routine data collection and monitoring, in order to continue to evaluate the impact of SToMP across the Criminal Justice System
An optimal trauma-informed pathway for PTSD, complex PTSD and other mental health and psychosocial impacts of trauma in prisons: an expert consensus statement
Get PDFPeople in prisons have high levels of trauma exposure throughout their lives. Presentations are often complex, with a high prevalence of PTSD and CPTSD and other mental health comorbidities. Prisons themselves can be stressful and traumatising environments. There are challenges in the delivery of effective treatments for PTSD and CPTSD. There is a need for the development of effective clinical pathways for these conditions that are embedded within trauma-informed organisational approaches. Responding to this need, this report is the result of a multidisciplinary expert consensus meeting and review of the research literature on PTSD, CPTSD, associated comorbidities and optimal approaches to trauma-informed practice. The group consisted of 24 expert representatives from psychology, psychiatry, healthcare, academia, social care and Welsh Government. The meeting commenced with presentations on various aspects of the clinical pathway for PTSD and complex PTSD in prisons, and of applications of trauma-informed practice within prisons. Small sub-groups then provided practical recommendations and solutions relevant to their assigned topic. Findings were presented to all meeting attendees for another round of discussion and debate, until consensus was reached. The resulting recommendations provide guidance to improve identification, treatment and support for people living in prison who have experienced trauma
The Barriers to Disclosure and Access to Specialist Services for Ex-Armed Services Personnel in the Criminal Justice System in Wales
Get PDFExecutive SummaryThis study was designed to evaluate the barriers to identification and access to specialist services for ex-armed services personnel (ex-ASP) within the criminal justice system (CJS) in Wales. This evaluation was commissioned by IOM Cymru SToMP and independently conducted by researchers at the University of Swansea.The research was conducted between August – December 2018 across police, probation and prison services throughout Wales, as well as with relevant third sector organisations. Primary research included quantitative, qualitative and observational methods and secondary quantitative data was also used. Data included every police force, every prison and a geographically spread number of probation services across Wales. In terms of formal qualitative data, a total of 58 individuals were interviewed across these sectors. This included both staff and service users. Many others were spoken to informally through visits to institutions and attendance at meetings.The data highlighted specific issues within each sector, as well as broader ranging barriers across the criminal justice system. Operational factors were the key barrier to identification, particularly across police and probation services where, in the majority of services, service users were not directly asked if they had ever served in the armed forces. Greater availability of information, for both staff and service users, was also highlighted as a key operational issue. This was particularly shown to be the case for service users who may choose not to identify themselves. Other potentially disadvantaged groups in terms of identification and accessing specialist services were women; individuals convicted of sexual offences; individuals serving short custodial sentences or on remand and those serving community orders. Access to services was largely location dependent, both in terms of the help available and the support offered to access it. There also appeared to be a disparity between the provision offered by the third sector in prison, when compared to the experiences of individuals who had tried to access this help once back in the community. Overall, there was a clear need for greater collaborative working between the CJS and third sector, as well as for a substantial improvement in data recording and monitoring across the board
Exploring the Relationship Between Domestic Violence Perpetration and Suicidal Behavior in Male Prisoners
Get PDFThis study is the first to explore the relationship between domestic violence perpetration and suicidal behavior in prisoners in England and Wales. The nature of this relationship is unclear, however, understanding and reducing suicide in prisons is a critical issue for frontline staff and policy makers. Eight participants with a history of suicide attempts and domestic violence perpetration were interviewed. Five key themes were identified through thematic analysis; “Trauma, victimization and life struggles,” “Relationship ideals versus relationship reality”, “Explaining domestic violence”, “The impact of prison” and “Suicide as a coping strategy”. This study shows that the relationship between domestic violence and suicide risk in prisoners may be better understood through a pathway of experiences rather than individual risk factors. Further research is needed to test the replicability of this pathway in other samples
Rescuing Complementarity With Little Drama
Get PDFThe AMPS paradox challenges black hole complementarity by apparently
constructing a way for an observer to bring information from the outside of the
black hole into its interior if there is no drama at its horizon, making
manifest a violation of monogamy of entanglement. We propose a new resolution
to the paradox: this violation cannot be explicitly checked by an infalling
observer in the finite proper time they have to live after crossing the
horizon. Our resolution depends on a weak relaxation of the no-drama condition
(we call it "little drama") which is the "complementarity dual" of scrambling
of information on the stretched horizon. When translated to the description of
the black hole interior, this implies that the fine-grained quantum information
of infalling matter is rapidly diffused across the entire interior while
classical observables and coarse-grained geometry remain unaffected. Under the
assumption that information has diffused throughout the interior, we consider
the difficulty of the information-theoretic task that an observer must perform
after crossing the event horizon of a Schwarzschild black hole in order to
verify a violation of monogamy of entanglement. We find that the time required
to complete a necessary subroutine of this task, namely the decoding of Bell
pairs from the interior and the late radiation, takes longer than the maximum
amount of time that an observer can spend inside the black hole before hitting
the singularity. Therefore, an infalling observer cannot observe monogamy
violation before encountering the singularity.Comment: 26 pages, 3 figures - v2: added references, small tweaks - v3:
corrected typos to reflect final published versio
Navigating later life transitions: An evaluation of emotional and psychological interventions
Get PDFTransitions in later life, for instance retiring from paid work, changing career, ending or starting a relationship, can have a major impact on people’s lives and their wellbeing. Recognising a gap in preventative support for transitions such as these, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (CGF; UK Branch) has funded a number of projects that provide group-based psychological and emotional support as part of its Transitions in Later Life (TiLL) programme. CGF and the Centre for Ageing Better partnered on the evaluation of two of these courses — Working Longer and Living Life to the Full, a two-day course run by Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (CWP) and Changing Gears, a three-day course run by Age & Opportunity in Dublin, Ireland. The aim of the evaluation was to find out what impact the courses had on individual attributes that would help people be better prepared for later life transitions; what changes people make as a result of the courses; and what practice, resources or processes in the organisations are important in ensuring their implementation and efficacy
Identifying ILI Cases from Chief Complaints: Comparing the Accuracy of Keyword and Support Vector Machine Methods
Get PDFWe compared the accuracy of two methods of identifying ILI cases from chief complaints. We found that a support vector machine method was more accurate than a keyword method
Branches of the Black Hole Wave Function Need Not Contain Firewalls
Get PDFWe discuss the branching structure of the quantum-gravitational wave function
that describes the evaporation of a black hole. A global wave function which
initially describes a classical Schwarzschild geometry is continually decohered
into distinct semiclassical branches by the emission of Hawking radiation. The
laws of quantum mechanics dictate that the wave function evolves unitarily, but
this unitary evolution is only manifest when considering the global description
of the wave function; it is not implemented by time evolution on a single
semiclassical branch. Conversely, geometric notions like the position or
smoothness of a horizon only make sense on the level of individual branches. We
consider the implications of this picture for probes of black holes by
classical observers in definite geometries, like those involved in the AMPS
construction. We argue that individual branches can describe semiclassical
geometries free of firewalls, even as the global wave function evolves
unitarily. We show that the pointer states of infalling detectors that are
robust under Hamiltonian evolution are distinct from, and incompatible with,
those of exterior detectors stationary with respect to the black hole horizon,
in the sense that the pointer bases are related to each other via nontrivial
transformations that mix the system, apparatus, and environment. This result
describes a Hilbert-space version of black hole complementarity.Comment: 25 pages, 2 figures; v2 added citations; v3 fixed a typo in sec 2.5 +
1 citation; v4 expanded discussion in sec 2, more citations; v5 small typo
fixes to reflect published versio
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