Effecting change in the aftermath of school shootings.

School shootings energize pro-gun advocates but better organized and more enduring gun control efforts could affect legislative change after such tragedies.

Medical Marijuana Laws and Suicide.

In the current study we use a synthetic control group design to estimate the causal effect of a medical marijuana initiative on suicide risk. In 1996, California legalized marijuana use for medical purposes. Implementation was abrupt and uniform, presenting a "natural experiment." Utilizing a panel dataset containing annual frequencies of Total, gun, and non-gun suicides aggregated by state for the years 1970-2004, we construct a control time series for California as a weighted combination of the 41 states that did not legalize marijuana during the analysis period. Post-intervention differences for California and its constructed control time series can be interpreted as the effects of the medical marijuana law on suicide. Significance of the effects were assessed with permutation tests. Our findings suggest that California's 1996 legalization resulted in statistically significant (p<.05) reductions in suicides and gun suicides, but only a non-significant reduction in non-gun suicides (p≥.488). Since the effect for non-gun suicides was indistinguishable from chance, we infer that the overall causal effect was realized through gun suicides. The mechanism could not be determined, however. Participation in the medical marijuana program legally disqualifies participants from purchasing guns. But since most suicides involve guns, it is possible that the effect on total suicide is driven by gun suicide alone.

Controlling Gun Violence: Assessing the Impact of Australia's Gun Buyback Program Using a Synthetic Control Group Experiment.

Gun Buyback programs have been implemented in various forms in countries such as the UK, USA, Brazil, Australia, and Argentina. Whether or not these programs are an effective approach for reducing national violent crime and homicides, however, remains unclear. Much of the uncertainty is due to the different ways in which Gun Buyback programs have been implemented. The Australian Gun Buyback program is distinguished from Gun Buyback programs in other countries by its abrupt implementation, its narrow focus on a particular class of firearms, and its broad application across the entire population. We assess the impact of Australia's 1996 Gun Buyback program on national homicide rates using a synthetic control group quasi-experimental design, comparing the results to suicide and motor vehicle fatality trends to test for plausible alternative hypotheses. Results suggest that the Gun Buyback program significantly reduced Australia's homicide rate in the decade following the intervention (1997-2007).

Length of stay for 25,791 California patients found incompetent to stand trial.

Referrals and admissions to state psychiatric hospitals of criminal defendants found Incompetent to Stand Trial (IST) are on the rise in the state of California and other parts of the country. Studies of treatment outcomes of this population have primarily focused on factors that determine competency and/or restorability. However, as IST patients place an increasing resource burden on state psychiatric hospital systems, other outcomes such as length of stay (LOS) are becoming increasingly important for practitioners and policy makers to understand. This study employs the largest sample of IST patients in the literature; it includes all IST patients admitted to California's state psychiatric hospitals between 2003 and 2016. This study analyzes demographics, clinical diagnoses, and hospital placement as predictors of LOS. Results suggest that demographics, with the exception of age, are poor predictors of LOS. However, diagnoses, especially of severe mental disorders (e.g., schizophrenia) were strongly related to LOS. Hospital placement was the strongest predictor of LOS. Explanations of these results and implications for forensic practitioners are discussed.

Characteristics of Forensic Patients in California With Dementia/Alzheimer's Disease.

Criminal defendants found incompetent to stand trial (IST) are sent to state hospitals for treatment to be restored to competency. IST patients diagnosed with dementia and related disorders present a particular challenge to clinicians, because they must be restored successfully within a statutorily mandated time frame (e.g., 3 years in California for defendants charged with a felony offense). This study examined a comprehensive data set that included all forensic patients served by California's Department of State Hospitals from September 2003 to February 2016. The findings revealed that, although most IST patients with a dementia diagnosis were restored to competency within the statutory time frames, they spent, on average, over twice as long confined than IST patients without a dementia diagnosis and were less likely than the latter group to be successfully restored. One implication of these findings is that forensic clinicians ought to assess whether IST patients diagnosed with dementia are likely to be restored or not as early as possible in the evaluation and triage process and report to the court any IST patients with a dementia diagnosis who are unlikely to be restored successfully. This would both prevent such patients from gratuitous confinement as well as free up treatment resources for other patients.