The fourth biennial international VGT conference held in Sydney closed on Friday and saw VGT senior board members from the eight international partner agencies reiterate the importance of a multi-faceted approach to the fight against online child sexual abuse and removing children from harm.

The VGT approach into the future will not only involve law enforcement, but industry, key international non-government organisations, academia and continue working with today’s youth. This will build on the need to constantly involve children and their parents, teachers and carers to raise awareness on how to remain safe online.

VGT Chair and Australian Federal Police Assistant Commissioner National Manager of High, Tech Crime Operations Neil Gaughan said he was impressed with the outcomes of the conference which paved the way forward for the VGT in combating internet facilitated child exploitation.

“From the partnerships, commitments and key recommendations made over the last two days, the VGT board of management have agreed on several vital resolutions for the future of stamping out internet facilitated crime against children.

“This includes VGT partners building stronger alliances and expanding VGT membership with organisations outside of law enforcement. Collaboration is the key and all children, no matter where they are in the world, have the right to be happy, safe and enjoy their experiences in both the real and virtual world and the VGT acknowledges that law enforcement agencies can not do this alone.

“Over the next 12 months and beyond, the VGT will work with the 96 countries that do not currently have child protection laws, as required by the United Nations Convention, to assist in the development appropriate legislation to continue to protect children from exploitation.

“We will work towards developing an effective method for the exchange of information and evidence with overseas partners, including sharing international hash set values given to identify every child abuse image seized. We will continue to break down the digital divide in the fight against online crime against children.

Through the conference, the Virtual Global Taskforce has fostered new working relationships with a number of industry partners to overcome some of the technological challenges that law enforcement currently face when dealing with online child sexual exploitation.

Courtesy of Virtual Global Taskforce’s latest conference in December 2010 there are some new tactics for tackling online sexual predators that need to be considered. Feel free to examine what they discussed below:

“The Virtual Global Taskforce is committed to taking forward these outcomes in collaboration with international partners in all sectors.

“In the fight against online child sexual exploitation we have seen the escalation of the internet but regardless of this technology, this crime will continue to occur. VGT partners will continue to use this technology to help fight this heinous crime and kept today’s children safe,” Assistant Commissioner Gaughan said.

The VGT Conference held on 2-3 December 2010 encapsulated the theme ‘Global Child Protection in Tomorrow’s Virtual World’. The conference, hosted by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) for the first time, brought together 240 international delegates from 23 countries including Russia, Germany, South Africa, Brazil, Malaysia, Iran, and Vietnam and spanned over 50 agencies to address child safety in the online environment.

The VGT was established in 2003 to combat the increasingly prevalent crime of online child sexual abuse. The AFP has been a member since the VGT was established, and in December 2009 assumed the responsibility as the VGT Chair and Secretariat for a three-year period.

The full article can be obtained at the Australian Federal Police’s Media Centre

First, one shall provide a brief history of the field, covering other influential works before introducing the methods and findings of the aforementioned study. Both its strengths and weaknesses will be critically discussed as well as what this particular paper adds to our knowledge of the field. Further research suggestions including ways to overcome methodological limitations are also presented.

It will be concluded at the summation of this paper that Caldwell, Skeem, Salekin and Van Rybroek (2006) have provided adequate evidence to support the notion that serious and violent juvenile offenders can benefit from intense treatment in an attempt to reduce their likelihood of violently recidivating.

For many years attaching the label of psychopathy to children or adolescence was considered taboo given developmental differences between adults and this group (Salekin, Rosenbaum, Lee & Lester, 2009). However considerable research has, and continues to be conducted, into a vast number of research questions that not only lend support to the idea of the downward extension of psychopathy to children and adolescence but also that this idea has a considerable amount of reliability and construct validity (Kosson, Cyterski, Steuerwald, Neumann & Walker-Matthews, 2002).

While the concept of child or adolescent psychopathy can be traced back to as early as the 1940’s (Cleckley, 1955) it was some half a century before child psychopathy tools became available. Items such as an adapted version of the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (Hare, 1991) and the Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory (Andershed, Kerr, Stattin & Levander, 2002) have been developed in an attempt to measure levels of psychopathy in children and adolescence. These developments sparked many ground breaking research contributions including attempts to understand correlates of psychopathy in youth as well as the ability to differentiate psychopathic traits and behaviours from psychopathological disorders such as conduct disorder (Lynam, Caspi, Moffitt, Loeber & Stouthamer-Loeber, 2007; Salekin, Leistico, Neumann, DiCicco & Duros, 2004).

Further to this, research into the efficacy of treatment has found that those with higher levels of psychopathy are also more likely to disrupt therapy or treatment and make less progress than those with lower psychopathy scores (Falkenbach, Pythress & Heide, 2003; Spain, Douglas, Poythress & Epsetin, 2004). These are important findings that need to be considered in future treatment research as it is possible that one could target those with higher psychopathy scores with a more intensive treatment program to overcome these shortcomings. In addition, other research that has been completed thus far has had further inadequacies such as the lack of a comparison group (Rogers, Johansen, Chang & Salekin, 1997; O’Neill, Lidz & Heilbrun, 2003).

This brings us to our target article by Caldwell, Skeem, Salekin and Van Rybroek (2006) in which they not only conducted initial interviews and generated records of each individual before treatment started but they also included a comparison group to allow them to disentangle resistance to treatment from actual psychopathic traits.
The primary purpose of their study was to investigate whether an intensive program of treatment was able to significantly decrease recidivism rates of adolescent boys with psychopathy traits that were considered pronounced. After being transferred from standard juvenile corrections institutions (JCIs) to the Mendota Juvenile Treatment Center (MJTC) for escalating acts of violence and illegal behaviour in response to deterrent measures put in place by the JCIs, individuals were assigned to either the intensive treatment group or treatment-as-usual group based on a number of criteria including a cut score of 27 on the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (PCL:YV, Forth, Kosson & Hare, 2003).

Over the course of the study a large number of different data was gathered and coded into a database for storage. This included items such as demographic information as well as legal history where variables included age when behavioural problems were first evident, the juveniles age when he committed his first crime and was first arrested, the worst injury that he had inflicted on another individual and how many misconduct reports had been filed against them in the previous 12 weeks prior to being shipped out of their JCIs to the MJTC.

In addition to this information, clinical assessments were also done utilising MJTC records as well as face to face interviews to establish the offender’s intelligence quotient (Wechsler, 1991) as well as other important factors such as whether they met Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV) criteria for conduct disorder or substance abuse (American Psychiatric Association, 1994).

The authors also kept track of the number of days individuals were incarcerated for, where they were released to i.e. unlocked community facilities and the number and type of charges filed against juveniles in the 2 years (730 days) after their release. The results, it must be said, are extremely promising with the youth treated as part of the intensive program while at MJTC being significantly less likely to recidivate during the follow up period (57%) when compared with the treatment-as-usual group (78%). Moreover, violent recidivism was also significant in nature with MJTC treated juveniles recidivating 21% of the time versus nearly half of the treatment-as-usual group (49%).

Further to this it was found that the type of community placement after release was not significantly related to violent recidivism at all. That is, both supervised and unsupervised community placements engaged in acts of violence at similar rates in both groups, results echoed elsewhere (Pardini & Loeber, 2008). Importantly, after controlling for the non-random assignment of individuals to the treatment group, the results were still significant and in the desired direction.

As such, the authors concluded that those who participated in the intensive MJTC treatment program had significantly lower rates of violent recidivism and also spent significantly more time in the community before recidivating than those in the treatment-as-usual group. To phrase it another way, those who participated in the MJTC treatment program were 2.7 times less likely to become violent once released back into the community than those who did not take part.

This particular study has a lot to offer the field of psychopathy treatment in children and adolescence and has a large number of strengths when compared to previous work in the area. Firstly, it is a longitudinal design where they conducted assessments before treatment and followed the individuals through to a full two years after release; something previous studies have not focused on. Secondly, it utilised the services of a comparison group which allowed the authors to gain real insight into recidivism rates. Given the method that individuals were assigned to each of the treatment groups has alone demonstrated that juveniles with psychopathic traits are malleable to treatment, as those with higher scores were assigned and subsequently had better outcomes than those with lower scores in the treatment-as-usual group. It has been a long held assumption that psychopathy in adults is not treatable and that permanent management or medication is the only way to get any results (Cleckley, 1988; Karpman, 1946; Gacono, 2000), however the debate continues. Thirdly, it differs from previous studies of treatment outcomes in youth by being specifically designed to target violence while also studying offenders who scored at or near traditional levels for defining psychopathy on other commonly used instruments. Lastly, they also attempted to keep all individuals assigned to the intensive treatment group, no matter their behaviour whilst there, choosing to respond with continuous intensive treatment in an attempt to overcome behavioural problems. Approaches of this type need to continue to be pursued else the ability to obtain real world results and further develop treatment programs will be impaired.

The most important thing to take away from Caldwell, Skeem, Salekin and Van Rybroek’s (2006) paper is that children and adolescence with psychopathic features are prone to advances in functioning when submitted to adequately designed and implemented intensive treatment programs and while the authors are not forthcoming with what the intensive treatment program actually involved, it is likely to have been based around cognitive behavioural therapy, and to a lesser extent social learning theory. However it does have some limitations that will need to be addressed in future studies.

The first dilemma that jumps to mind is the non-random assignment to the intensive treatment group which could create selection bias, although the authors have attempted to control for this using score analyses (Rosenbaum & Rubin, 1983; Rubin, 1997). In addition to this, it would be advantageous to continue the longitudinal design to encompass a further period beyond two years as depending on the age of individuals when released one wonders whether the effects are long lasting i.e. continue into adulthood or whether juveniles begin to slip back into their old ways the further they continue through their life course.

Also there appears to be a racial disparity with a large proportion of those involved being of African-American descent (59%); this could in turn limit the generalizability to other races only due to the social and community environments that they are brought up in. Another limitation to consider is the lack of impact that the intensive treatment program had on general and nonviolent misdemeanour type offenses (Caldwell, Skeem, Salekin & Van Rybroek, 2006). It appears that social forces and environmental conditions such as life circumstances (i.e. low socioeconomic status) may have larger control over these types of criminality, and as such are not influenced by this particular treatment program, which was geared towards antagonistic interactions and the prevention of interpersonal violence.

Future research should also focus on factors that prevent psychopathic traits from manifesting further and also what variables can influence the maintenance of said traits. It is important to identify these so that further treatment programs can be designed and implemented as there are likely both genetic and environmental conditions that play a role in psychopathy. Multi-systemic approaches that incorporate biological analyses would also be advantageous in an attempt to examine whether the reported changes in recidivism are being affected at a conscious or unconscious level as there is ample evidence to suggest cognitive processing differences among psychopathic personalities when compared to non-psychopathic individuals (Patrick, Bradley & Lang, 1993; Loney, 2001; Wallace, Schmitt, Vitale & Newman, 2000).

Lastly, a point the authors seem to have overlooked whether by accident or on purpose is whether those in the intensive treatment group were being medicated at all at any stage before, during or after treatment and release. They mention in passing that individuals at the MJTC saw a psychiatrist for ‘medication assessments’ but do not elaborate at any stage whether any juvenile either in the intensive treatment group, or the treatment-as-usual group, were actually prescribed anything.

In closing, while the field of psychopathy research in children and adolescence is showing promising signs of maturity a vast number of methodological issues still stand in the way and these need to be addressed before a clearer picture can coalesce. The study conducted by Caldwell, Skeem, Salekin and Van Rybroek (2006) has taken the first steps toward this new line of research by eliminating some of the issues faced by previous studies on the subject, however it still has issues of its own. The move to longitudinal designs, the use of comparison groups and the focus of intensive treatment programs on lowering violent recidivism is exactly what this particular field of research needed but other methods still need to be incorporated such as identifying the means by which psychopathy is maintained or dissolved, whether medication is of use in limiting psychopathic acts or behaviour, multi-systemic approaches to ascertain conscious or unconscious results as well as standard approaches such as non-random assignment to groups before adequate generalizable results can be obtained and treatment programs taken to the next level. Due to the scope of the aforementioned study however, some of these issues are benign to a certain extent as every research study has its limitations. Therefore, one can’t help but agree with the authors findings and accept that their results support their hypotheses of intensive treatment being able to significantly lower the violent recidivism rates of young offenders. Hopefully though, sometime in the near future we will be able to identify children and adolescence with psychopathic tendencies and intervene while they are still in their developmental stage to prevent them from advancing into adult psychopathy and a theorised life of crime.

In this paper one will first introduce Social Learning Theory (SLT), before examining the case of Nigel, a 19 year old male who is currently serving a six year custodial sentence for assault and robbery and identifying the maladaptive behaviour patterns Nigel is exhibiting before conceptualising them in the vein of SLT. Further to this a rehabilitation program shall be discussed which will include the reasons for a SLT approach, the objectives of the program in regards to Nigel and finally how we would measure positive and negative outcomes. Lastly, before concluding the essay, one will examine current research in the field and establish how successful the rehabilitation program is likely to be in Nigel’s situation.

While Social Learning Theory was first conceptualised by Miller and Dollard (1941) it is a Canadian psychologist by the name of Albert Bandura whose writings are envisioned to be the most appropriate and in depth for analysis of this case. Having been working in the field for over four decades, Bandura has written extensively on SLT in general, but has also focused a significant amount of his attention on aggressive behaviour and by extension criminal behaviour. To successfully identify and target the antisocial behaviours that Nigel exhibits it is important to first explain the acquisition, instigation and maintenance of behaviour within a Social Learning Theory framework. To this end there are three main sections within SLT that will be introduced and explained, before we move on to Nigel’s individual case, as outlined in Bandura (1976) and they are; how behaviour is attained (acquisition), why these behaviours are executed (instigation) and lastly why these actions continue to be displayed (maintenance).

Within behaviour acquisition there are two facets that need to be explained; observational learning, which includes familial and subcultural influences as well as symbolic modeling, and learning by direct exposure. Familial influences are those from within an individual’s family such as parents, sisters, brothers etc. while subcultural influences are those such as peer groups. Peer groups could be anything from your group of friends to the church you belong to or even a government or military organisation. Further to this symbolic modeling is another method through which behaviour is acquired and this is where an individual acquires behaviour through the media i.e. by watching television or reading about others actions in the newspaper. Lastly, learning via direct exposure is theorised to affect behaviour acquisition which is a simple idea that does not require further explanation.

Behaviour instigation is the next element of SLT that needs to be described and it contains items such as aversive treatment, incentive inducement, instructional control and delusional control. Aversive treatment is any action committed against an individual that causes frustration levels to rise and these can include physical assaults, verbal threats and insults, the thwarting of behaviour that is directed towards an individual’s goals as well as adverse reductions in reinforcement levels. Furthermore, incentive inducement is where behaviour is motivated by the pull of expected rewards, where the reward could be something tangible or symbolic i.e. money from a theft or social status within a peer group respectively. Lastly, both instructional and delusional control can affect behaviour instigation; this is where social obedience is rewarded and dissention punished while delusional control is where an individual can have internalised delusions that somehow control their reasoning, resulting in overt actions.

Lastly how behaviour is maintained will be discussed and this final section of SLT has three main multifaceted sections which include direct external reinforcement, vicarious or observed reinforcement and self-reinforcement. Within direct external reinforcement there are four subcategories that need to be explained and these are tangible rewards where behaviours such as theft are maintained by the actual item being stolen i.e. those that steal and benefit from it are likely to continue this behaviour. It also includes social and status rewards where the individual gains social standing or a higher status within their relevant peer group as well as expressions of injury where an individual continues to commit certain actions due to the behavioural reinforcement received from witnessing signs of suffering in those being persecuted. Alleviation of aversive treatment is the last method of direct external reinforcement and this is where an individual who is being exposed to distressing or dangerous situations externalises certain behaviour in an attempt to eliminate said exposures i.e. an individual who finally fights back against a bully is likely to have their behaviour reinforced.

Vicarious or observed reinforcement is the next element of maintenance and it is a much simpler concept compared with the aforementioned as it only has one facet that needs consideration. Actions are maintained in this situation by watching the actions of others and not only learning from their behaviours but by examining the outcomes and whether the person was punished, rewarded or ignored.

Self-reinforcement is the last method by which behaviour maintenance is hypothesised to occur and this includes three individual, yet broad, components. Firstly, self-reward maintains behaviour, where the reward can be something as simple as personal pride or praise from an authority figure, and secondly self-punishment can have a similar effect where self-contempt, remorse or even fear of reprisal can preserve learnt actions. Thirdly, disengagement of self-deterring consequences is theorised to maintain behaviour and this in itself has a large number of subcategories all of which are important. First to consider is that of reconstruing aggression by palliative comparison where an individual defends their behaviour by pointing to more extreme examples of the behaviour they have instigated. Second off the mark is justification of behaviour in terms of higher principles where a person, for example, tries to put the onus for their actions on a message from God. Thirdly, displacement of responsibility needs to be considered where an individual attributes blame to an authority figure by stating they were ‘Just following orders’ while number four, diffusion of responsibility, is where an individual attempts to avoid their responsibility by division of decision making and labour or acting as a group. Fifth and sixth are dehumanisation of, and attribution of blame to victims, where a person ignores individual characteristics of another applying a stereotypical image and claiming to have been forced into action by a villainous person or adversary who is often the victim themselves, respectively. The final two aspects that need consideration in the maintenance of behaviour are misrepresentation of consequences and graduated desensitisation. This is where an individual tends to overlook or deny the injurious consequences of their actions focusing their attention to the positive outcomes and desensitisation over an extended period of time where the individual rarely realises the cognitive behavioural changes that have occurred within them.

Now that we have a solid explanation of how SLT theorises behaviour is acquired, instigated and maintained it is time to examine the maladaptive behaviours that Nigel has been exhibiting and conceptualise them within the SLT framework to enable us to establish what the treatment program needs to address.

To start with, Nigel has been in trouble with the police since his early teens and has spent time in juvenile institutions for a variety of offences, many of which include violence. This isn’t particularly surprising given both his parents were alcoholics and he was subjected to frequent physical and psychological abuse. Such influences would fall within the familial group and likely helped him to acquire his own behaviours of excess in regards to alcohol. Further to this, Nigel’s father has also spent time in prison and although it is not clear what the offences were that landed him there it is likely they were similarly violent acts. Given this, it has been shown that Nigel’s chances of growing up his own behaviours of excess as well as with maladaptive violent behaviour are significantly higher than those not exposed to the same levels of violence (Ireland & Smith, 2009) and that such exposures would lead Nigel to have aggressive ways of responding in social problem solving arenas (Gale, 2003).

In addition to the fact that Nigel has obviously learnt maladaptive behaviours that involved excessive use of alcohol and general violence the psychological trauma he has been exposed to by his parents has helped breed a personality that appears callous, sullen and uncooperative. There is evidence in the field that suggests children as well as adolescence who are subjected to parental maltreatment are significantly more likely to have not only interpersonal relationship problems but also maladaptive socioemotional and psychosocial responses. Furthermore, those that are exposed to such neglect before their fifth birthday generally have larger and more conspicuous signs of social dissociation (Ethier & Milot, 2009; Morrel, Dubowitz, Kerr & Black, 2003). Due to this persona coupled with aggressive modes of responding Nigel also has poor social skills and states that he can’t stand people looking down on him. It is likely his peer group are all similarly troubled individuals who influence his acquisition, instigation and maintenance of behaviour as he would not only gain social status within his group for his violent offending but also garner a sense of satisfaction when inflicting physical pain on other individuals.

From a SLT perspective, once Nigel had acquired his personality traits and modes of behaviour there are a large number of different avenues that could be maintaining his actions. There are direct external reinforcement avenues such as the previously mentioned social or status rewards as well as expressions of injury in the individuals he is persecuting but also self-reinforcement including personal pride for smiting his ‘foe’. It is envisioned that there are three main actions that need to be addressed in the case of Nigel to alleviate some, if not all, of his offensive behaviour. Firstly his aggressive behaviour, in particular his social problem solving skills, i.e. his method of responding needs to change to nonviolent approaches. Secondly, his behaviours of excess need to be addressed as his drinking is likely linked to not only aggressive outbursts but also to his social skills and possibly his criminal acts. Lastly it would be ideal if cognitive change could be implemented also as Nigel appears to have a number of faulty cognitions that have been bred into him by familial influences that prevent him from acting in socially appropriate ways.
This leads us to the most pertinent line of questioning discussed thus far; what sort of treatment or rehabilitation program should Nigel be on and why? It also by extension leads one to remark on the objectives of said program and discuss how positive and negative outcomes will be measured.

As Nigel presents with a sullen and uncooperative personality a rehabilitation program modeled on SLT framework is likely to give him the greatest chance of undergoing change and this is for a number of reasons. The primary reason is that Nigel is unlikely to benefit from any sort of insight-oriented psychotherapy as individuals who partake in such treatment firstly have to be willing to change and due to this they cooperate with the therapist. The second reason is that Nigel is unlikely to have the cognitive abilities required to actually have insight into his own problems and behaviour and is more likely to deny that he has any problems. Traditional treatments simply fail to engage with these types of people and that includes those with ritualised, aggressive or addictive behaviour patterns.

For this reason a sophisticated token economy approach is theorised to be the most appropriate rehabilitation or treatment tool available for individuals such as Nigel as it has had a large number of positive effects on an array of persons ranging from the mentally ill to adolescence and children (Hollin, 1994; Hall & Baker, 1973; Hall, Baker & Hutchinson, 1977; Kazdin & Bootzin, 1972). In Nigel’s case one theorises that a token economy similar to that used in the ‘Achievement Place’ residential program designed by Phillips, Phillips, Wolf and Fixsen (1973) would be most effective in modifying his behaviour. This particular token economy awarded points on a daily basis when individuals first began participating, before awarding points on a weekly basis only and then the final stage where all privileges became free. If persons in this study were able to successfully handle the final stage of this program they were deemed ready to return home.

In this instance given the length of sentence that Nigel has been given it would be fairly easy to implement a program similar to this that could run for an extended period of time, preferably in such a manner that the three stages of the program were stretched over a period of time leading up to his earliest possible parole date. Ideally once paroled, if Nigel were able to be placed in some sort of residential facility where his behaviour could continue to be monitored for a period of time, his chances of behavioural change would be at their highest.

While this particular approach will work with even the most uncooperative of individuals the objectives of any treatment or rehabilitative program needs to be tailored to each offender’s personal situation and requirements. In Nigel’s case there are both primary objectives and secondary objectives which are important but some will follow on from others. Ideally from a behavioural change standpoint one would like to see Nigel’s aggression levels drop dramatically and this would be seen as a primary objective. Further to this his abuse of alcohol needs to be addressed as a primary objective as this is not only linked to violent outbursts but likely to his criminal behaviour in general. If these two objectives can be obtained then Nigel’s social skills should improve by extension as it is more likely for him to have positive social experiences where he doesn’t feel the urge to lash out violently.

When it comes to actually measuring the outcomes the best approach will be to use a number of different methods including self-report questionnaires, prison employee observations and official reports of indiscretions Nigel has committed and while the official reports are straightforward the other two elements need to be carefully thought through. In the case of the prison employee observations it will be necessary to develop a series of questions relating to Nigel’s behaviour before treatment begins with follow up questions to note any changes. Ideally follow up interview sessions with prison employees would take a very small amount of time and be administered on a monthly basis to add an extra level of observation.

When considering the self-report questionnaires however it would be advisable to use three measures; one to measure personality and emotional variables, one to measure level of dependence on alcohol and addictive behaviour and one to measure levels of aggression and aggressive behaviours. For this purpose the three psychometric tests envisioned to be the most valid are the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2; Butcher, Dahlstrom, Graham, Tellegen & Kaemmer, 1989), the Structured Addictions Assessment Interview for Selecting Treatment (ASIST; Addiction Research Foundation, 1990) and the Aggression Questionnaire (AQ; Buss & Durkee, 1957; Buss & Perry, 1992; Buss & Warren, 2000).
When considering when to utilise these measures ideally all three would be administered before the token economy began, or if Nigel initially refused to partake directly after the token economy had been introduced. Every second month after the introduction of the token economy Nigel would then be submitted to only the ASIST and AQ measures while the MMPI-2 would be administered at the start of each new stage of the rehabilitation program and once more before he was paroled. This would enable adequate baseline numbers to be collected and also allow one to establish when changes in aggressive and addictive behaviour and the like have been implemented.

To add credence to this particular approach it is important to have a brief look at other research into token economies and how successful or unsuccessful they have been. While those such as Milan, Wood and McKee (1979) had success introducing a token economy approach with incarcerated felons their joy was short lived as all participants stopped their educational courses once the token economy ceased. However this is more a failing of the type of change they were trying to implement rather than the token economy approach itself, something the authors seem to have picked up on as they stated the plan requires re-evaluation.

Others such as LeBlanc, Hagopian and Maglieri (2000) found that by utilising a token economy with a mildly retarded individual who had inappropriate social interactions and aggressive behaviour they were able to implement behavioural modification to the point that when they started scaling back the reinforcement stages the behavioural change remained. In other settings similar results were able to be found such as LePage (1999) whose token economy approach with psychiatric patients between the ages of 18 and 20 found that the use of a token economy reduced negative events such as violence by a significant 43%. Lastly, while the research is not the most recent, Walls and Nicholas (1973) found positive results for psychiatric patients, mentally and socially retarded individuals as well as juvenile and adult offenders in their review of 31 token economy approaches.

In closing, Nigel’s case is unlikely to be a unique one in the true sense of the word as there are likely many an individual who is incarcerated that has similar, if not the same, maladaptive behaviour patterns. However given his young age it may be possible for permanent behavioural change to be implemented given an adequate level of treatment, preferably including residential placement after being paroled. Phillips, Phillips, Wolf and Fixsen (1973) found in their token economy rehabilitation program that those who partook recidivated 19% of the time while those that didn’t recidivated 53% of the time – a substantial and significant difference that brings hope to this field. While token economy programs within corrections institutions are difficult to implement and design successfully, they are envisioned to be a distinctly powerful tool when it comes to behaviour modification and further research including longitudinal designs needs to be executed to develop such approaches in order to maximise benefits for not only the incarcerated individuals but for the safety and wellbeing of fellow inmates, corrections officers, police officers and the general community.

I do assure you however that the website has not been abandoned, and that this website as well as others in my ‘Blogroll’ at the bottom of the page are being added to and updated when possible. Any questions or comments please feel free to email or comment on any page, i would especially love to hear from anybody living in Melbourne, Australia (as i moved there recently) and anybody interested in forensic psychology or forensic related fields.

Why do i say their father should not have been a police officer? In addition to frequently beating his children, for real and imagined reasons, James Rolling used to capture stray cats from around the neighbourhood which he would then torture to death, enjoying their screams of pain as they suffered.

His mother was of no help having made excuses for her husband’s extremely strange and violent behaviours, while never supporting either of her sons. When Danny was 9 years old she suffered a nervous breakdown and was not a part of their lives from that point on. This bout of trouble also contributed to Danny failing the 3rd grade

In high school both children had psychological dilemmas and were described by school counsellors as having an inferiority complex and problems with anger management and poor impulse control. By the time he was in his early adolescence Danny had become a heavy drinker and at one stage was caught red handed by his father who handcuffed and arrested him. Courtesy of this he served two weeks in Shreveport’s local jail and not surprisingly upon release he ran away from home after yet another argument with dad.

This pattern of coming and going from the family home would continue for the rest of his life, more prominently during his high school years and due to this he also failed his Sophomore year before dropping out and joining the United States Air Force at the age of 17. Unfortunately for Danny Rolling though his chronic drug and alcohol abuse continued once he was in the USAF and he subsequently served time in a military prison. In 1973 he was given a premature dishonourable discharge along with being diagnosed with an unspecified personality disorder.

Back in Shreveport he was constantly drunk or stoned yet somehow found religion at a local Pentecostal church. Here he met a 19 year old girl by the name of Mather Halko and they married in September 1974. This seemed to settle Rolling down for a period of time although by the following year when they had their first child the marriage was already on the rocks and she left him in 1977.

Resuming his former life of crime Rolling began committing armed robberies and stealing cars. In August 1979 he was convicted and sentenced to 6 years in prison for robbery of a store in Columbus, Georgia and an escape attempt once incarcerated added another year to his sentence. For a reason i have not been able to establish from my research, a public defender advised Rolling to confess to another armed robbery he had committed in July 1979 in Alabama. This netted him an additional 10 year custodial sentence that he would have to serve consecutively as it was committed in a different state to the one he was currently incarcerated in. He started serving this sentence in June 1982 but was for unknown reasons paroled in 1984, only 2 years later.

Once again he returned to Shreveport to live with his father, who was now retired. However home was still a raging battleground and he hit the road again. In July 1985 he robbed a store in Clinton, Mississippi and was arrested the next day in a stolen car. For this indiscretion he was given a 15 year sentence, of which again he only served a very small amount and was paroled in July 1988 after barely 3 years on the inside. And yes, again he returned to Shreveport where he was able to obtain stable employment as an electrician’s apprentice.

By this stage though, Danny Rolling’s dreams had grown increasingly strange and violent. Then on November 6, 1989, Tom Grissom, his 24 yr old daughter Julie and his 8 yr old grandson Sean were found murdered inside their Shreveport home. All had been repeatedly stabbed with a long bladed knife but Julie was quite obviously the killer’s intended or main target. She had been slashed and mutilated, both pre and post-mortem, was covered in bite marks, had been washed down with soap in an attempt to remove any trace evidence and had been posed in a sexually explicit manner.

Investigators were at a loss as to suspects and Rolling was never even on their list. Nonetheless Danny encountered yet more trouble at home and on May 17, 1990 a violent altercation erupted over an amazingly trivial subject – should car windows be rolled up or left down when it is raining? The senior Rolling pulled out a hand gun in a misguided attempt to settle the question but Danny relinquished his father of the pistol before shooting him in the stomach and head. Fearing he had just murdered his father he fled the scene and headed for Louisiana, strangely though his father survived.

Eventually he ended up in Gainesville, Florida and on August 26, 1990 two bodies were discovered in an apartment complex. The victims were those of Sonja Larsen, 18, and Christina Powell, 17 – they had been deceased for approximately 2 days, had both been mutilated with nipples cut off one victim while the other had been sodomised.

At 1:30am the next day Christa Hoyt, an 18 year old student that was a part time employee of the local Sheriff’s office was found murdered in her home. Her naked body had been washed with liquid soap and once again posed in a sexually explicit manner. Further to this she had been decapitated and her severed head was being proudly displayed on her bookshelf, surrounded by mirrors so that the gruesome image projected out her window.

A day later again on August 28, 1990 Tracy Paules and Manual Taboada were both stabbed repeatedly to death. Tracy had been sodomised but apart from that there were no ritualistic overtones from the earlier killings. All three crime scenes had been wiped clean of fingerprints while there was also evidence of blood being removed from the scene – the motive of which was never established.

Social panic took flight as students left Gainesville in droves only 2 weeks into the semester while investigators were focusing their attention to a list of 7 suspects. The spotlight was currently on Edward Humphrey, a local 18 year old that was a diagnosed bipolar sufferer and he also had a history of admission to psychiatric facilities. Known to skip his medication at times he believed Satan was pursuing him – a sign of a paranoid delusions that some sufferers of bipolar are known to endure (the more common type is simply delusions of grandiosity). He had attempted suicide twice, was often involved in physical altercations and was fascinated with ninjas and knives.

His neighbour was a police officer who called him a ‘goddamned weirdo who’s always acting mental’ and odd behaviour seemed to worsen around the time of the murders with him threatening employees at a local bar with slitting their throats for refusing him service on August 24th (the proposed day the first two victims were murdered).

On August 30 he had a violent altercation with his grandmother and was arrested; while in custody police delved deeper into his movements at the time of the killings and could not find any hard evidence to connect him to any of the crimes. Nonetheless he was convicted of assaulting his grandmother on October 10, 1990 and was sentenced to inpatient treatment in Chattahoochee State Hospital.

Danny Rolling though, as usual, was in trouble; he continued committing burglaries and narrowly escaped capture a number of times with police suspecting he was a pusher (drug dealer). He also boasted to acquaintances that he had robbed a local bank but no evidence of this ever came to light. In an attempt to escape some of the heat around him in Gainesville he drove to Tampa in a stolen car and robbed a supermarket there on September 1, 1990. After a number of other burglaries he committed yet another robbery, this time in Ocala on September 7. Police were quick to respond and a high speed pursuit ensued with Rolling eventually crashing his getaway car and fleeing on foot, leaving his $4700 loot behind. He was eventually discovered by police on patrol in the area hiding behind a garbage dumpster and arrested.
Back in Gainesville detectives were examining records of similar murders across the USA courtesy of the ViCAP system which had been in existence since 1985 when the computer gave them the details of the Grissom triple homicide in Shreveport – it cited similar weapons, post-mortem mutilation, washing of the bodies to remove evidence, posing of the corpse and the petite brunette victims as all similar to the homicides they were investigating. Shortly after this it was discovered that Rolling, who was still in custody, was from Shreveport and in addition was wanted for the shooting assault of his father. Pubic hair and tools were then recovered from a camp site where Rolling was living and a substantial material and biological link was established between him and all the murders in Gainesville. DNA was also found to match semen found inside the sodomised victims.

Between September 25 and October 19 of 1991 detectives continued to build their murder case, while Rolling was being convicted of three burglaries and, given his lengthy criminal record, he was given an extremely long custodial sentence – a relief no doubt to detectives.

In November they finally had enough evidence to obtain an indictment on all 5 murders committed in Gainesville and rolling agreed to talk about the killings.

He immediately began to blame his urge to kill on a split personality that he called Gemini. This alter ego apparently loved to make people suffer and Gemini told each individual victim what was planned for them – mutilations, everything – while they were still alive before the ‘festivities’ began.

On February 15, 1994 jury selection finally began after long case related delays but Rolling automatically changed his plea to guilty in a vain attempt to receive some mercy in his sentencing. On April 20, 1994 he was sentenced to die in Florida’s electric chair and he was finally executed on October 25, 2006 by lethal injection due to the abolishment of the electric chair. He was pronounced dead at 6:13pm local time.

Firstly, the relationship to the deceased i.e. brother, mother, friend is likely to affect the level of grief experienced. Secondly, the nature of the attachment; this includes attachment strength and security, ambivalence in the relationship, past conflicts with the deceased and the level of dependency the bereaved had on the deceased.

Thirdly, the mode of death is proposed to affect grief level. This factor includes items such as sudden or unexpected death, violent or traumatic death, the proximity to the deceased, multiple deaths at one time or whether the death is perceived as preventable. It also includes stigmatised death in that deaths from things such as AIDS or suicide usually have a certain social stigma attached to them and ambivalent death i.e. a soldier missing in action.

The fourth mediator is that of historical antecedents where a person’s mental health background and previous losses they have experienced could influence how the current death is handled. Unresolved issues from previous losses are likely to compound and exacerbate the current one.

Personality differences are yet another mediator, age and gender, as well as coping and cognitive style (how well a person handles stress and whether they are an optimistic or pessimistic person) are hypothesised to affect a person’s grief response. Other sub-items include the mourners’ attachment style, their ego strength and assumptive world beliefs and values.

The sixth mediator suggested is that of social variables; perceived social and emotional supports as well as satisfaction with the calibre and level of this support are but two sub-items within this group. On a slightly different tangent but still within this mediator a bereaved person’s social role and whether they have another one to fulfil as well as religious beliefs and any ethnic group expectations can also influence how a person grieves.

Lastly concurrent life stressors need to be considered when trying to evaluate the reasons behind a mourner’s level of grief. For example, the death might bring about other financial hardships within a family due to the loss of the primary salary earner and in turn could complicate and influence a person’s ability to deal with their grief in an auspicious manner.

Within such a vast field of study as that of grief, one finds literally hundreds of empirical research studies all with their own results, some of which support the aforementioned factors and others that minimise their impact or deny their affect completely. For example Bonanno et. al. found empirical support for a number of the factors thought to influence a person’s grief reaction. They found that chronic grievers were more likely to have been overly dependent on the deceased, evidence that has been replicated elsewhere (Opperman & Novello) and to have less emotional and social support.

However the idea that people with complicated grief reactions have less emotional and social support is contradicted by other evidence. This same Opperman and Novello paper suggesting there is no significant evidence to suggest that social or emotional support can influence a person’s grief level. Although the sample size in this study was extremely small the participants were all chronic grievers, of whom 77% claimed that the emotional and social support they received from family leading up to and after the burial was ample. Similarly, The Scott and White Grief Study found that the level of social support available had no significant correlation with grief level.

All this taken into consideration, it is likely that these social variables are still valid as there is plenty of other research to suggest that this mediator does make a difference. Curtis and Newman examined nine studies of childhood bereavement, and although the support was only moderate in nature, it was still positive. But as with Opperman and Novello’s study there are a number of contributing factors that bring the results integrity into question including extremely small sample sizes, no control group, high levels of attrition and the short time scales between pre and post-intervention tests.

Probably the largest and most prevalent factor observed in all the papers examined is the age of the decedent, with the onus that the younger a person is when they die, the more intense a bereaved person’s grief will be. Nowhere in any of the empirical studies perused was any contradictory evidence found.

Boyle, Vance, Najman and Thearle found that parents dealing with the loss of a young child are more likely to have an intense grief reaction than other groups. Likewise these results were mimicked in both Phase 1 and Phase 2 of The Scott and White Grief Study but across a range of domains rather than just parents who have lost young children.

The sense of outrage involved with this kind of ‘out of order’ death will be much harder for someone with a rigid world view that lacks plasticity, to assimilate the loss as a part of life, than someone who can accept it and attempt to deal with and move past the grief felt. A mother who loses her child from SIDS is more likely to react in a complicated manner than an elderly man who loses his brother to natural causes.

The age of the bereaved is another element that needs consideration; parentally bereaved children will all react differently based on their age, and significant gender differences have been found between males and females with men more likely to react in aggressive ways.

Another mediator that is quite prevalent in the literature is the mode of death which includes such sub-categories as traumatic, unexpected and stigmatised. Guilt, blame, desire for revenge are all emotions that can be felt by grievers and Weinberg found that the mode of death could influence these and a person’s ability to mourn the loss in a healthy fashion. Evidence suggests that those who experienced an unnatural death of a loved one, or who blamed themselves for the death, would take significantly longer to grieve and experience delayed recovery from bereavement compared with those whose loved one died naturally, or those who didn’t have any self-blame.

Other research also suggests that in children the mode of death of a parent can influence the amount of grief experienced . While in elderly people, Bonanno et. al. found them more likely to fall within the resilient group with 45.9% of their sample being included. It is hypothesised, and supported by the aforementioned paper, that not only do older people begin to mentally prepare themselves for the passing on of friends and family, but that natural deaths of old age are likely easier for people to assimilate and accept as ‘part of life’. This lends support to not only the mode of death mediator but also the idea that age plays a role in grief.

That being said, Gamino, Sewell and Easterling have had contradictory evidence emerge from their work with Phase 2 of their study having support for things in which Phase 1 had no support. Phase 1 found no significant empirical evidence to suggest that sudden, unexpected or traumatic loss would influence grief levels, nor would a lengthy illness, knowledge that death was imminent or believing the death was preventable. Phase 2 on the contrary found significant support for the idea that the traumatic or unexpected nature of a death, as well as the perception of preventability could both influence whether a person would develop chronic grief. Also, although the length of an illness was not significant in either report, in Phase 2 it fell just shy of statistical significance.

This is a prime example of some of the problems encountered in such a delicate field as research into people’s grief, as the problems previously mentioned could have influenced these studies in some way also.

When it comes to ambivalent relationships or relationships with negative connotations attached to them Bonanno et. al. found no significant evidence to support any difference between the chronic grievers and resilient group, however Gamino, Sewell and Easterling did find significant evidence to suggest that those with good quality relationships with the deceased are more likely to experience chronic grief than those without. More research is needed on this area as it is easy to hypothesise reasons why ambivalent relationships or those with negative connotations attached to them would either have difficulty or ease dealing with the death. Some may move on easily as they are, for lack of a better description, happy to see the person go, however others may have difficulty dealing with the situation because of the ambivalence in their relationship or the negative connotations, they may not be able to grieve properly because of the anger and other such emotions within their relationship and subsequently develop complicated grief.

As a final point, religion or having a spiritual nature as a coping tool has been proven to be significant. In reviewing 31 studies about grief and religion, Becker et. al. found that 28 of these studies reported significant positive effects on the bereavement process with only one study reporting a negative effect of religion or spirituality on a mourner’s level of grief.

In summation, all the research papers examined may not label mediators of grief exactly as laid out in this paper, but the labels they have assigned do quite easily integrate into the ones set out here. There are also a number of smaller mediators that have not been examined here, but are all still likely to influence the reasons why one person experiences chronic grief and another is resilient. We found an enormous amount of empirical research, with a large majority of it supporting the aforementioned mediators, and in cases where the evidence was negative in nature, a number of reasons put the validity of their results into question (small sample sizes, short periods between pre and post tests, large attrition rates to name but a few).

Even with this mountain of research that has been conducted already, many questions still remain unanswered. In part due to these contradictory studies and statistical reliability problems that plague even the most experienced researcher, and in part to the nature of grief in and of itself making the process of studying it a very delicate one. However it is quite obvious, that while some factors will play a larger role in predicting chronic sufferers of grief versus resilient people, all the mediators mentioned do play some role. It is unlikely that any time in the near future we will formulate a step by step guide to dealing with grief; it will more likely need to be mouldable to each individuals reactions, like the plasticity these same individuals will need to move on with their lives.

Then, later that year on June 4th a brutal murder was discovered in Sydney at the Sydney Domain Baths beneath the dressing sheds. The body was that of Alfred Greenfield who was nude, had been stabbed more than 30 times and had had his genitals removed. Detectives almost immediately labelled it as a homosexual assault.

Later that same year yet another victim of the killer now labelled ‘The Mutilator’ was found in a public toilet in Moore Park. William Cobbin had been stabbed and had his body mutilated.

It wasn’t until 31st March, 1962 that MacDonald would strike again; at the time investigators on the case were scouring homosexual hangouts attempting to find leads and witnesses. Frank Gladstone McLean became the 4th victim of The Mutilator when he was found, mortally wounded in Darlinghurst. Although he was alive when found he died a short time later without having the chance to offer a description of his attacker to anybody.

By mid-November 1962 MacDonald had yet again given in to his self-confessed compulsion to kill although at first it was thought he had become a victim. Shop owners in the suburb of Concord filed official complaints of a rancid odour coming from William MacDonald’s recently purchased shop and when it was established he hadn’t been seen since November 4th searchers held grave fears for his safety. Eventually they located the body of a man under the shop floor, once again the victim had been stabbed to death with a total 41 stab wounds and had had his genitals slashed.

Eventually clothing beside the body was traced through a laundry mark on it and the victim was actually identified as Irishman Patrick Hackett. Subsequently the search for William MacDonald begun again.
On April 22nd 1963 a former co-worker of MacDonald’s spotted him on a Sydney street after an indentikit photo of him was released in the national press. By late May, although he had attempted to disguise himself he was traced to his new job in a Melbourne railway station under the alias of David Allan.
When he was interrogated MacDonald confessed not only his identity but to all the murders he had committed and he blamed it on an irresistible impulse to kill. The reason for this irresistible impulse though i hear you ask? As a teenager he had been raped by another man and as such chose homosexual men at random for slaughter in a misguided attempt to deal with his anger. Given a life sentence and sent to Long Bay Correctional Centre but was later transferred to Morriset Home for the Criminally Insane. Today he resides within Long Bay Hospital and is the labelled as the longest serving inmate in Australia’s correctional service history.

Here though we have on offer some of the art works that this demented and evil individual painted before his death. In the next few weeks we will write up a paper detailing everything that went on in the case as well as put up crime scene photos, transcripts from his interrogation and comments made by legendary FBI profiler Robert K Ressler (retired), who coincidentally is one of my favourite true crime writers and has personally been involved with hundreds of well known cases in his time. From memory, one of these art works was actually painted for Mr Ressler, i believe the self-portrait, but i will confirm that at a later stage.

However there are a large number of obstructions to overcome with the connectionist computational theory of mind, and although proponents of it want us to give up on rule-based systems of explanation such as the classicists version, these things need to be rectified before it can be considered a sufficient theory of mind.

Although the connectionist version has a viable approach to association processing it seems to fail on such tasks as language and reasoning. The hindrances range in magnitude from minute to monstrous and include quandaries such as problems with the concept of an individual, the problem of compositionality, the problem of quantification, recursive thoughts/propositional problems, trouble with commonsense questions and last but not least the problem of systematicity.

The problem with the concept of an individual is an painless point to understand but is not so easily solved. If we have a set of identical twins or even something a bit more general like two trees of the same species, height, age etc. the connectionist system is blind to the fact that they are actually separate entities. There are a number of proposed responses to this dilemma but none of them are adequate.

The archetypal property of all our languages is compositionality and this is where another predicament with the connectionist CTM occurs. Representations are built out of parts and have their meaning based on the meanings of all the parts and from the way they are combined. Subsequently, due to the fact that our thoughts are built out of concepts, and are not stored as whole entities within our mind, we encounter major problems and all the attempts to rectify them turn out to be substandard halfway measures. After all, babies eating slugs, and slugs eating babies are two very distinct ideas whose meanings are assembled on the fly using syntax, and even though you may never have seen either sentence before you can understand it with ease.

Systematicity on the other hand seems to be one of the more obtrusive problems the connectionist CTM must face, and was identified by Fodor & Pylyshyn (1988). It states that the ability to think/create/understand a sentence of a particular structure is intrinsically connected to the ability to think/create/understand a sentence that has a related structure, in that, there is no human that can understand the meaning of the sentence “Jason loves Ashley” but fails to understand the concept of “Ashley loves Jason”. Regrettably though, connectionist models, even once they have been trained to recognize one sentence of the previous example, still fail to recognize the second. Systematicity must be guaranteed to work in connectionist models for their theory of mind to be a viable option as this is a key component of human intelligence, and, according to Fodor & Pylyshyn, is a given in the classicists approach.

The connectionist computational theory of mind, although on distant inspection appears to be a much healthier option than other models, seems to have just as many drawbacks as them, and once again, cannot be considered a viable option for a complete theory of mind without at least some of these issues being overcome.

The ones we have discussed would be a good starting point but there are also other smaller, but still very relevant ones that must be addressed. Such as, the length of time it takes to train a connectionist model vs the length of time it takes a human to learn similar tasks, the fact that back propagation in connectionist models appears to ‘cheat’ as there is no evidence of our minds working in such ways and the fact that connectionist models fail to recognize our recursive thoughts i.e. a proposition embedded within another proposition. Until such times as these are solved, the connectionist CTM is promising, but still has a lot of work ahead of it.

The main purpose of studying said remains is to establish race, gender and age and also attempt to discover any trauma to the bone structure, that is, whether it has been cracked, smashed, has cut marks from a knife blade etc. This can be a very handy thing indeed as it can help prove mode of death as there is no flesh for a pathologist to conduct a traditional autopsy upon.

We will continue to add more articles to this section as time goes by regarding every aspect of forensic anthropology, so stay tuned!