title: Acute Assessment of Aggression: Using the Dynamic Appraisal of Situational Aggression (DASA) with New Zealand Offenders

authors: Lang, Veronika

subjects: Aggression

abstract: Institutional violence in prisons and other corrections settings is a hazard to the security and wellbeing of staff and other offenders.  However, the ability to systematically assess for acute, day-to-day aggression in these settings has not been widely developed. Staff assessing aggression in institutional settings ought to use risk assessment measures to aid professional judgement, and this research suggests a need for dynamic, acute risk assessment for aggression amongst New Zealand offenders. The Dynamic Appraisal of Situational Aggression (DASA; Ogloff & Daffern, 2006) was created originally for use amongst psychiatric inpatients. This research aimed to evaluate the use of the DASA for custodial staff in acute risk assessment and offender treatment in different prison units for its potential to fill this niche.
Predictive accuracy of the measure in relation to aggressive behaviour was examined, and custodial staff were surveyed on the ease of administration, their perception of the measure’s effectiveness with their unit, and whether its addition improved offender management. Staff consisted of prison officers and a principle correctional officer in each of the three prison-based units, and custodial management staff at Tai Aroha. These staff nominated offenders (N = 19) on agreement of them being of highest management concern.
Results found the DASA to demonstrate moderate predictive validity, with survival analyses showing high scores on the DASA were associated with highly aggressive offenders. Most staff identified the DASA as assisting in identifying those offenders that were a high risk for aggression. Implications for practice in corrections settings are discussed.

text: Acute Assessment of Aggression: Using the Dynamic Appraisal of Situational Aggression (DASA) with New Zealand Offenders Institutional violence in prisons and other corrections settings is a hazard to the security and wellbeing of staff and other offenders.  However, the ability to systematically assess for acute, day-to-day aggression in these settings has not been widely developed. Staff assessing aggression in institutional settings ought to use risk assessment measures to aid professional judgement, and this research suggests a need for dynamic, acute risk assessment for aggression amongst New Zealand offenders. The Dynamic Appraisal of Situational Aggression (DASA; Ogloff & Daffern, 2006) was created originally for use amongst psychiatric inpatients. This research aimed to evaluate the use of the DASA for custodial staff in acute risk assessment and offender treatment in different prison units for its potential to fill this niche.
Predictive accuracy of the measure in relation to aggressive behaviour was examined, and custodial staff were surveyed on the ease of administration, their perception of the measure’s effectiveness with their unit, and whether its addition improved offender management. Staff consisted of prison officers and a principle correctional officer in each of the three prison-based units, and custodial management staff at Tai Aroha. These staff nominated offenders (N = 19) on agreement of them being of highest management concern.
Results found the DASA to demonstrate moderate predictive validity, with survival analyses showing high scores on the DASA were associated with highly aggressive offenders. Most staff identified the DASA as assisting in identifying those offenders that were a high risk for aggression. Implications for practice in corrections settings are discussed.

year: 2015

title: Secure voting in the cloud using homomorphic encryption and mobile agents

authors: Will, Mark Antony

abstract: While governments are transitioning to the cloud to leverage efficiency, transparency and accessibility advantages, public opinion - the backbone of democracy - is being left behind. Statistics show that traditional paper voting is failing to reach the technological-savvy generation, with voter turnout decreasing every election for many first-world countries. Remote electronic voting is a possible solution facilitator to this problem, but it still faces several security, privacy and accountability concerns. This paper introduces a practical application of partially homomorphic encryption to help address these challenges. We describe a cloud-based mobile electronic voting scheme, evaluating its security against a list of requirements, and benchmarking performance on the cloud and mobile devices. In order to protect voter privacy, we propose moving away from a public bulletin board so that no individual cipher votes are saved, while still allowing vote verification. As the majority of the security threats faced by electronic voting are from the underlying system, we also introduce the novel concept of using a dedicated hardware server for homomorphic tallying and decryption.

text: Secure voting in the cloud using homomorphic encryption and mobile agents While governments are transitioning to the cloud to leverage efficiency, transparency and accessibility advantages, public opinion - the backbone of democracy - is being left behind. Statistics show that traditional paper voting is failing to reach the technological-savvy generation, with voter turnout decreasing every election for many first-world countries. Remote electronic voting is a possible solution facilitator to this problem, but it still faces several security, privacy and accountability concerns. This paper introduces a practical application of partially homomorphic encryption to help address these challenges. We describe a cloud-based mobile electronic voting scheme, evaluating its security against a list of requirements, and benchmarking performance on the cloud and mobile devices. In order to protect voter privacy, we propose moving away from a public bulletin board so that no individual cipher votes are saved, while still allowing vote verification. As the majority of the security threats faced by electronic voting are from the underlying system, we also introduce the novel concept of using a dedicated hardware server for homomorphic tallying and decryption.

year: 2015

title: Protecting hapū data privacy: A Ngāti Tiipa case study of technology considerations

authors: Clark, Vanessa

abstract: This brief is a part of a series, produced for the Tikanga in Technology (TiNT) research programme, that provides a hapū perspective on data sovereignty, data governance, and data privacy. In this brief we focus on the Ngāti Tiipa ‘layer cake’ technology approach and assess it against the values of the TiNT Māori Data Privacy Framework. This brief should be read in conjunction with TiNT Brief #3 The Māori Data Privacy Framework: How useful is it for hapū?

text: Protecting hapū data privacy: A Ngāti Tiipa case study of technology considerations This brief is a part of a series, produced for the Tikanga in Technology (TiNT) research programme, that provides a hapū perspective on data sovereignty, data governance, and data privacy. In this brief we focus on the Ngāti Tiipa ‘layer cake’ technology approach and assess it against the values of the TiNT Māori Data Privacy Framework. This brief should be read in conjunction with TiNT Brief #3 The Māori Data Privacy Framework: How useful is it for hapū?

year: 2025-02-11