Purpose This study aims to explore how confidentiality is experienced and negotiated within prison mental healthcare in the Maldives and examine the implications of these experiences for correctional practice, institutional trust and service delivery within a small-island prison system. Design/methodology/approach This study used an exploratory qualitative design and semistructured interviews with 37 participants, including incarcerated individuals (n = 30) and mental health professionals (n = 7) within the Maldives Correctional Service. Data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Findings Confidentiality was experienced as a negotiated, context-dependent process shaped by institutional surveillance, custodial responsibilities and social interconnectedness. Four themes emerged: confidentiality under conditions of institutional surveillance; negotiating ethical practice under dual loyalty obligations; social proximity and relational vulnerability in a small-island context; and strengthening ethical confidentiality practices. These dynamics may influence perceptions of privacy, therapeutic willingness and systemic trust. Research limitations/implications Although the findings are drawn from a single correctional system, they offer insights relevant to other socially interconnected correctional settings and highlight the need for clearer confidentiality policies, ethical guidance and professional support to strengthen institutional trust and service engagement. Practical implications This study develops clear institutional policies outlining confidentiality boundaries, documentation practices and circumstances under which information may be shared within correctional settings; strengthens ethical supervision, training and professional support for correctional mental health personnel to address dual-loyalty conflicts and ethical decision-making; establishes dedicated private spaces for mental health consultations to enhance privacy, trust and therapeutic engagement; implements context-specific guidelines addressing overlapping relationships, post-release interactions and digital professionalism in socially interconnected communities; and promotes transparent communication and voluntary participation in mental health services, which may contribute to institutional trust and support open disclosure and engagement with rehabilitation and reintegration. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to examine confidentiality within correctional mental health services in the Maldives. This study contributes to the limited literature on correctional mental healthcare in the prison systems of small-island developing states.
Purpose Observational studies of “incel” communities document an increasingly violent discourse, raising concerns of online radicalisation. This study aims to examine whether incel identity is associated with a greater endorsement and proclivity for violence compared to non-incels, and whether attachment, emotion regulation and social competence predict incel identity. Design/methodology/approach An online cross-sectional survey was conducted with 222 male participants. Using two vignettes; one portraying intimate partner violence (IPV) and the other a mass shooting, participants were asked to what extent they endorsed the actions portrayed and whether they would act similarly if they knew they would not be caught (proclivity). Findings Attachment avoidance and poor emotional regulation significantly predicted incel identity, with the former increasing odds by 48% (OR = 1.48), and the latter by 5% (OR = 1.05). Attachment anxiety and social competence were not significant predictors. Self-identified incels were significantly more likely to endorse extremist violence (EV), but not IPV. They also reported greater proclivity towards IPV and EV. Research limitations/implications Whilst proclivity may not translate into real-world violence, and the small number of self-identified incels limits generalisability, future research should explore the potential benefits of targeting attachment and emotion-regulation in interventions with incels. Given incel communities operate globally, these psychological risk factors have important international relevance for prevention measures. Practical implications The findings have possible implications for informing interventions and prevention strategies for incels. Originality/value By distinguishing the type of insecure attachment style associated with incel identity and highlighting incels’ propensity for violence, this study contributes to a growing body of literature recognising incels as an online extremist group.
Purpose Research consistently indicates that race and ethnicity, as well as the nature of police encounters, are associated with differences in how individuals evaluate police behaviour and the degree of trust they place in law enforcement. Marginalised communities, often characterised by lower socioeconomic status, reduced social capital and minority status, tend to report less favourable experiences and lower levels of trust. However, most studies focus on police-initiated stops, despite policing being largely reactive and centred on citizen-initiated service calls. This study aims to shift attention to these encounters in Amsterdam to examine whether disparities in perceived procedural justice persist when citizens actively seek assistance. This study also assesses whether the relationship between procedural justice and institutional trust varies across social groups.Design/methodology/approach This study uses open-access survey data from the 2019 Ethnic Profiling Monitor in Amsterdam. The geographically stratified data set ensures representativeness and includes 186 respondents who initiated police contact. Social group membership is operationalised through a binary "Western/non-Western" classification based on ethnic and racial background. This reflects a dominant Dutch classificatory framework that structures social hierarchies according to perceived proximity to Dutch or European norms and often functions as a mechanism of othering, superseding more specific ethnic or racial identities. The analysis examines disparities in perceived procedural justice and whether its relationship with institutional trust varies across groups, using ANCOVA and moderation models while controlling for age, gender, economic status and contact frequency.Findings Procedural justice emerges as a strong and consistent predictor of trust: perceptions of fairness, respect and attentiveness are associated with higher institutional trust across all respondents. Initial estimates show lower perceived procedural justice among non-Western participants, but this difference becomes non-significant once economic status is included, indicating that socioeconomic position largely accounts for the gap. In contrast, a significant trust gap persists even after adjustments, with non-Western respondents reporting lower institutional trust. This pattern points to a residual "symbolic" trust gap not fully explained by immediate interactional experiences. Unadjusted models further suggest a stronger fairness-trust association among marginalised groups, though this moderating effect weakens when structural conditions are taken into account.Practical implications Disparities in perceptions of procedural justice and institutional trust remain a persistent challenge among marginalised communities in citizen-initiated police encounters. Police-citizen interactions should be understood as relational processes shaped by broader individual and collective histories. Addressing disparities, therefore, requires moving beyond interventions aimed solely at individual attitudes and towards structural reforms of the institutional and organisational conditions that shape routine encounters and reproduce symbolic inequalities in trust. Although individual encounters are unlikely to resolve these systemic divides independently, prioritising procedural justice during reactive service calls remains important, given that such interactions constitute the most common form of police-citizen contact. Their significance is further underscored by the stronger association between perceptions of procedural justice and institutional trust among non-Western respondents, a relationship that appears to be substantially mediated by socioeconomic status. Emphasising interactional fairness during these encounters may serve as a visible indicator of social recognition and institutional inclusion, thereby offering meaningful potential for strengthening institutional trust.Originality/value This study extends procedural justice research by examining ethnic and racial disparities in citizen-initiated police encounters, an underexplored but central part of everyday policing to study these disparities. This study analyses how perceived procedural justice relates to institutional trust in these interactions and contributes to the debate between the Invariance Thesis and the Asymmetry Hypothesis by assessing whether the fairness-trust relationship is consistent across groups or varies in the context of marginalisation, stigma and prior experiences that may shape sensitivity to respect and status cues. The findings of this study suggest that social categorisation processes commonly associated with police-initiated encounters may also be present in citizen-initiated contexts, despite their distinct origin in citizens' calls for state assistance under expectations of timely and appropriate response. Finally, this study critically engages with the Dutch "Western/non-Western" differentiation as a sociopolitical boundary, situating these dynamics within broader patterns of symbolic differentiation in an urban European context.
Purpose Fraudulent criminal behavior is relatively commonplace and affects millions of victims each year. Even so, many of these crimes are undetected and unreported and thus understanding the connection between committing a fraudulent crime and being processed through the criminal justice system has been difficult to ascertain. The current study aimed to address this gap in the literature by examining the association between self-reported involvement in credit card fraud and check fraud and being arrested and incarcerated.Design/methodology/approach The authors analyzed data drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, a nationally representative sample of American youth, to address these issues (N ranging between 10,322 and 12,445 across statistical models).Findings Overall, the results revealed a statistically significant association between all measures of fraudulent criminal behavior and the odds of being arrested and incarcerated.Research limitations/implications The authors conclude by discussing various interpretations of these results and offering suggestions for future research.Practical implications Engaging in fraudulent behavior increases the risk of being arrested. Engaging in fraudulent behavior increases the risk of being incarcerated. Although fraud is often under-reported and difficult to identify the perpetrators, fraudulent offenders are often processed through the criminal justice system. Understanding more about the nature of fraud and fraudsters may further enhance the effectiveness of identifying and processing these offenders.Originality/value To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study provides some of the first evidence on the connection between engaging in fraud and being processed through the criminal justice system when analyzing a longitudinal and nationally representative sample.
PurposeThis paper aims to explore the quality of assessments available where a child is felt to be vulnerable to child sexual exploitation (CSE). In particular it considers the preliminary reliability and validity of the Child Adolescent Sexual Exploitation Evaluation (CASEE, Ireland et al., 2025), which aims to consider vulnerability and protective factors in a child felt to be exposed to CSE concerns.Design/methodology/approachIt comprises of a Rapid Evidence Assessment (REA), followed by a study of 94 professionals who completed a two-day CASEE validation event (3 events in total).FindingsThe REA captured a continued absence of theoretical and empirical background to currently available CSE assessments for children, and a continued failure to consider a Structured Professional Judgement (SPJ) approach. Taking a SPJ approach to assessing CSE using the CASEE, this initial study demonstrated a good level of inter-rater reliability overall, with limited disagreements between raters.Practical implicationsThis paper argues the value of structured Professional Judgement Tools, such as the CASEE. The clear importance of using assessment tools that are theoretically and empirically driven is observed. The CASEE enhances the understanding of vulnerability and protective factors to support the young person. This paper showcases the value of detailed case formulation, which then maximises successful case management.Originality/valueThis paper argues the continued lack of CSE assessment tools that are empirically and theoretically developed, that take advantage of the SPJ robust approach, in addition to considerations of reliability and validity. The CASEE is outlined as an emerging example of an empirically informed SPJ tool able to begin to consider some of these gaps.
