'Gender folly in women's jails' Sunday Times, Jeremy Coid Emeritus professor of forensic psychiatry Queen Mary University of London

[frazzled1]

Letters page: Prison staff are powerless to oppose policies that defy logic and common sense.

Thank you professor Coid . Wonder if you tried writing to The Observer?....

Also this re funding of forensic psychiatry and risks of privatising the the NHS www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-dangers-of-a-privatised-nhs-cmq2mgqll3d

That's very interesting seafret. (I have a Times sub, but still haven't worked out how to do share tokens, I'm afraid).

I'm sorry I said "reward" The Times - it sounds really weird - I meant thank but couldnlt thin of what i was trying to say. Must go sleep

FermatsTheorem
For the share token - look for the little envelope - usually top left under the photo / image. Click on that and it takes you to an email - just cut and paste the link in the email and you're away!

No due diligence has been done. WHY?
I really try and avoid tin hat conspiracies, but it's becoming increasingly harder to ignore the suspicion that something really sinister is going on here. I get the same instinct when I read about judges handing out very low sentences to convicted sex offenders, particularly those commited against children. It's almost as if they sympathise with the criminals...

Thank you scepticalwoman.

I cant work out a sare token either. no sign of any instructions :(

extracts from the article by Hannah Devlin October 2 2013, 1:01am, The Times, said

"Psychopaths are being released from prison without rigorous risk assessments, according to a leading forensic psychiatrist. Jeremy Coid, of Queen Mary University of London, said that simple questionnaires used by parole boards to measure the chance of re-offending performed poorly for certain groups of prisoners".

“If you apply these to a psychopath they are utterly useless,” Professor Coid said. “You might as well toss a coin.”

He said that an assessment of delusional beliefs could predict the risk in patients with mental illness.

Dr Fin Larkin, a consultant forensic psychiatrist at Broadmoor Hospital, said: “These instruments don’t fit this group because psychopaths don’t fit the mould. They are often well-behaved institutionally, but cause a lot of harm in society.”

That fits the two Karens to a T doesn't it?

Thank you scepticalwoman!!

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/psychopath-tests-futile-for-safety-say-scientists-c5m2hwnzbbz?shareToken=71ba5544882ef242c4ee49da69c0a448

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-dangers-of-a-privatised-nhs-cmq2mgqll3d?shareToken=cac02588f878ce5884cff4f4f2ba7059

no due dilligence

My thinking is that psychopaths in power benefit from other psychopaths in power so the non-violent ones will be prepared to tolerate and work with other psychopaths and narcissists because it serves them well overall... and they propbably don't mind a little dip into cross dresing, BDSM or padophilia either. They don't understand or care about boundaries. They need the extreme feelz to feel anything

He said that new research suggested that an assessment of delusional beliefs, which are not included in current tools, could predict the risk of re-offending in patients with mental illness.

Wow.

Just wow.

Oppositional Defiance Disorder is not wholly unrelated to anti social personality disorder (sociopahty/psycholpathy) in adults. mentioning no name AC.

WOKERS need to wake the hell up

He said that new research suggested that an assessment of delusional beliefs, which are not included in current tools, could predict the risk of re-offending in patients with mental illness.

Yes exactly RedToothBrush seems like he may have been sidelined somewhat by the privatisation of the NHS and prison system.

Privatisation has allowed the less credible a foot inthe door - thinking of that evil Dr who supported one the many TW sex offenders to get into a women;s prsion.Arghhhhhhhh

I also think that something that smells as bad as this does, with the links between these lobby groups, charities, local and national gvet, political parties and the police IS a conspiracy. I have been trying to get an investigative journalist on board.

Wow indeed

They don't understand or care about boundaries. They need the extreme feelz to feel anything

Lightbulb moment, seafret. I have a family member who is a psychopath (not my armchair diagnosis: that's the actual diagnosis of the criminal psychologist on his offender management team), so I've done quite a bit of reading round this. Psychopaths are often into adrenaline sports, for instance, because they need things to give them a buzz. They're into risk taking. But I'd never quite clicked that that is also why they're into extreme paraphilias and fetishes. It's not just that they're psychopaths who happen to have weird sexual fetishes, it's that the very extremeness of the sexual fetishes is part of their psychopathy, part of the drive to thrill seeking.

This also with reference to repeat offenders

"Professor Coid cited the example of a man who had served time for killing his wife and later went on to kill his girlfriend in very similar circumstances.

“He would have scored zero on pretty much every violent risk assessment,” he said. “He had a severe depressive episode and killed again in almost identical circumstances when his mental health deteriorated very rapidly.”

Men like this and need to be fully mentally scrutinised, and especially because they are trans

I want to reclaim the accusation of transphobia, because actually between the rapists, murderers, padophiles, pathologica misogynists, general violent offenders, trageted behind the scenes networking, performing and entrenching of porny and feminine gender stereotyoes, gaslighting, ignoring of biology and those 'benign' transwomen like Debbie who 'only' sneak force themsleves into women's spaces, I would say being frightened of what they may do to women and girls (and boys) is entirely rational.

Women’s groups should be taking advice on judicial review on all of these decisions.

Yep fermats also this blurring of boundaries and identity/ mirroring women, I am you, you are me, I hate you, I hate me, anihilation stuff. Acting out what is inside.

I also believe that many were sexually and psychologically abused and shamed in very early childhood in quite particular ways that disrupted their self/ identity/ normal feelings eg the insitutional/ ritual type stuff plus parental/ caregiver failures/betrayals, and some sort of predisposition perhaps. That doesn't give them an excuse - it is part of why we must diagnose these things correctly and stop the cycles of abuses against children and why I think feminism must look out for boy children not just girls, even if that seems controversial.

Men looking for opportunity to get their kicks creates new victims all time male victims may go on to do the same again. (not all victims obviously by any means, but more sadly more likely in males.

I will try to cite osme of the things I have read and am reading but not go the brain pwer right now.

Just one last thought.... I think we have a vital opportunity here to bridge between 'what women know from painful experience' and the generally male dominated field of psychiatry with its limited perspectives (ie from a couch or interview room) and jargony intellectualiesed sometimes remote from real life theories.

Interviewing wives, girlfriends and family members of these men, and actually listening to women victims would tell Doctors so much that they do not get from the patient/ prisoner themselves or from the useless questionnaires.

We must keep on at this and try to find a way.

R0 and procrastinator - this is a very good guide to judicial review (JR)

One key element is that the party bringing the JR has to have a close association with the (possibly) perverse decision. So the women who were sexually assaulted in prison would be able to bring a JR, or possibly a close family member on their behalf, but as a random member of the public I couldn't.

I've said all along that it's a shame that the woman who came second to LM in the women's officer ballot didn't pursue this avenue, as she would be able to show a direct, personal impact as a result of the decision by the LP to allow LM to run. But it's too late now - the JR has to be brought within 3 months of the decision.

Rather than women's groups acting as entities, it would be more effective - IMHO - for them to support an individual woman who has been affected to bring a JR herself. Though it's worth noting that a successful JR doesn't necessarily change anything - the court may agree that the decision was wrong, but that the obvious remedy would also be unfair (for example, stripping someone of a political party position that they have held for some months). Or the court can simply require the public body to make the decision again, which can lead to the same outcome as initially, depending on the circumstances then and now.

olennaswimple and isn't this eactly what put a barrier up for women.
Abused, damaged, difficulties with legal aid and so with no representation (unlike the human rights lawyers who seem to ambulance chase trans cases and do them pro bono)

I read on this that there may be some exemption to the 3 month rule - could a case be made do you think that there are instituional/ structural barriers to women getting justice for themselves. Not least that they don't knwo they could/should get any. I think these barriers are recognised specifically in UN women's rights resolultions. Well a case could clearly be made, but would anyone listen!

I will contribute to a fund if anyone can find the legal people to do it.

Very interesting writing from Professor Coid

From AltogetherAndrews excellent post.

I think what he is getting at with the “uncertain sexual identity” is that when risk assessments are carried out on sex offenders, the presence of deviant interests or fetishes significantly increases the risk. This is based on a statistical analysis of those who sexually offend ie, if some one has committed a sexual offence has a fetish, then they are statistically more likely to reoffend than a man who does not have a fetish. A fetish for dressing in female clothing would therefore make an offender a higher risk.

Is it that having accepted as reality, one fantasy, some fetishists, (is there a link between fetishism and personality disorders?), find it easier to convince themselves that their predation is ok?

Once someone who isn’t their fantasy, believes they are a rabbit or a baby or a woman, finds it easier to excuse their behaviour because they’ve already internalised the big lie, unmoored themselves from reality.

So then it’s much easier to believe, “she asked for it”/“children are sexual beings”/“that sheep gave me the come-on” - which other people, with their reality anchors in place, recognise as deviant beliefs.

I don’t know if the mechanism by which it works if fully understood.
I would guess it’s something to do with positioning themselves out with the norm, that once they have convinced themselves that one set of rules for behaviour are nonsense and don’t apply to them, it becomes easier to accept that those other rules don’t apply either, and that they have transcended the rules that the boring people follow.
There’s also an issue with masturbation, where the deviant fantasy is reinforced with the reward of orgasm much like an addiction. It leaves the offender chasing the more extreme thrill, and needing a greater hit, which non deviant acts cannot meet.
I don’t know about whether there is a link between fetish and personality disorder, I suspect that many perfectly ordinary people, who never commit an offence have fetishes and kinks, it seems to me that when that fetish is linked with other ideas, about the value of women or children that it becomes a problem.

He said that new research suggested that an assessment of delusional beliefs, which are not included in current tools, could predict the risk of re-offending in patients with mental illness.

Why is a man who believes himself to be a woman not considered to be delusional?

Why is a belief that you are the opposite sex considered so differently from any other belief which is clearly untrue?