CCWORK protocol: a longitudinal study of Canadian Correctional Workers' Well-being, Organizations, Roles and Knowledge.

INTRODUCTION: Knowledge about the factors that contribute to the correctional officer's (CO) mental health and well-being, or best practices for improving the mental health and well-being of COs, have been hampered by the dearth of rigorous longitudinal studies. In the current protocol, we share the approach used in the Canadian Correctional Workers' Well-being, Organizations, Roles and Knowledge study (CCWORK), designed to investigate several determinants of health and well-being among COs working in Canada's federal prison system. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: CCWORK is a multiyear longitudinal cohort design (2018-2023, with a 5-year renewal) to study 500 COs working in 43 Canadian federal prisons. We use quantitative and qualitative data collection instruments (ie, surveys, interviews and clinical assessments) to assess participants' mental health, correctional work experiences, correctional training experiences, views and perceptions of prison and prisoners, and career aspirations. Our baseline instruments comprise two surveys, one interview and a clinical assessment, which we administer when participants are still recruits in training. Our follow-up instruments refer to a survey, an interview and a clinical assessment, which are conducted yearly when participants have become COs, that is, in annual 'waves'. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: CCWORK has received approval from the Research Ethics Board of the Memorial University of Newfoundland (File No. 20190481). Participation is voluntary, and we will keep all responses confidential. We will disseminate our research findings through presentations, meetings and publications (e.g., journal articles and reports). Among CCWORK's expected scientific contributions, we highlight a detailed view of the operational, organizational and environmental stressors impacting CO mental health and well-being, and recommendations to prison administrators for improving CO well-being.

Condemnation of Statutory Rape Based on Respondent Race, Perpetrator Race, and Victim Race.

Race impacts perceptions of crimes, perpetrators, and victims. Although statutory rape generally receives little empirical or media attention, it has important implications for victims and offenders across the United States and appears to be enforced in a haphazard way. This study used a between-subjects experimental survey design at two universities (n = 1,370) to assess the impact of respondent race, perpetrator race, and victim race on attitudes toward statutory rape. Results of a repeated measures analysis of variance indicated that respondents viewed both White victims and their perpetrators as bad, blameworthy, deserving of punishment, harmed, and likely to commit crime in the future, judgments suggesting that the respondents take this sexual activity seriously. In contrast, analyses revealed that respondents were significantly less concerned about Black victims than White victims. Consistent with the liberation hypothesis, these differences in attitudes may contribute to the law being enforced inconsistently, providing differential access to justice based on a variable that is not legally relevant.

Religious Involvement and Marijuana Use for Medical and Recreational Purposes.

In this article, we use data from the 2016 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) to examine the association between religious involvement and marijuana use for medical and recreational purposes in U.S. adults (N = 41,517). We also consider whether the association between religious involvement and marijuana use varies according to personal health status. Our results show that adults who attend religious services more frequently and hold more salient religious beliefs tend to exhibit lower rates of medical and recreational marijuana use. We also find that these "protective effects" are less pronounced for adults in poor health. Although our findings confirm previous studies of recreational marijuana use, we are the first to examine the association between religious involvement and medical marijuana use. Our moderation analyses suggest that the morality and social control functions of religious involvement may be offset under the conditions of poor health.

Reducing the Harm of Criminal Victimization: The Role of Restitution.

Restitution is a court-ordered payment by offenders to their victims to cover the victims' economic losses resulting from the crime. These losses can be substantial and can harm victims and victims' families both directly and indirectly. But most victims do not receive reparation for their injuries, both because judges do not always impose restitution and because of problems with collecting restitution payments, even if there is a court order to do so. In this article, we review the literature on restitution and suggest that this compensatory mechanism is necessary to restore victims to where they were before the crime occurred. But monetary restitution alone is not sufficient. Making victims whole requires not only financial compensation from the offender but also procedural, informational, and interpersonal justice from the criminal justice system.

Religious variations in perceived infertility and inconsistent contraceptive use among unmarried young adults in the United States.

PURPOSE: In this paper, we examine associations among personal religiosity, perceived infertility, and inconsistent contraceptive use among unmarried young adults (ages 18-29). METHODS: The data for this investigation came from the National Survey of Reproductive and Contraceptive Knowledge (n = 1,695). We used multinomial logistic regression to model perceived infertility, adjusted probabilities to model rationales for perceived infertility, and binary logistic regression to model inconsistent contraceptive use. RESULTS: Evangelical Protestants were more likely than non-affiliates to believe that they were infertile. Among the young women who indicated some likelihood of infertility, evangelical Protestants were also more likely than their other Protestant or non-Christian faith counterparts to believe that they were infertile because they had unprotected sex without becoming pregnant. Although evangelical Protestants were more likely to exhibit inconsistent contraception use than non-affiliates, we were unable to attribute any portion of this difference to infertility perceptions. CONCLUSIONS: Whereas most studies of religion and health emphasize the salubrious role of personal religiosity, our results suggest that evangelical Protestants may be especially likely to hold misconceptions about their fertility. Because these misconceptions fail to explain higher rates of inconsistent contraception use among evangelical Protestants, additional research is needed to understand the principles and motives of this unique religious community.