The percentage of children who are in social care and continue their education into high school is increasing annually. The dropout rate for alumni from these social care facilities is higher than it is for children in normal families. In particular, there is no nationwide data that has been collected concerning the alumni of children’s self-reliance support facilities; additionally, very few studies have been conducted on this topic. Thus, using the Trajectory Equifinality Model (TEM), this study has conducted a qualitative analysis of the social adaptation process of alumni of children’s self-reliance support facilities who have advanced to high school. The TEM was created based on the interviews of four alumni; two were high school graduates and others were high school dropouts. As the results, three important points for continuing high school were clear. First, high school graduates needed to find the comfortable place for themselves on the early stage in the new high school life. Second, they needed skills to get help from teachers or friends when they had some problems in taking their classes. The last, they confided in their homeroom teacher.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of mindfulness and goal-setting focused cognitive behavioral group therapy (MGF) on the amphetamine use relapse risk of recidivist prisoners. As a group treatment, MGF combines cognitive behavioral group therapy, the body scan practice, and life map creation to develop emotion regulation and to increase motivation in life. A 2-group repeated-measures design was used, comparing the effects of MGF and treatment as usual (TAU; Nomura et al., 2014) on the amphetamine use relapse risk. Twenty-five men were screened for eligibility. Twelve participants received the MGF program. Thirteen participants received TAU. The Correctional Stimulant Relapse Risk Scale (Yamamoto et al., 2011) was completed twice (pre and post intervention) by the participants during the treatment program. The results revealed that scores on “emotional and motivational problems” showed significantly greater improvements in the MGF group than in the TAU group. Both groups showed improvements in scores on “impulsive and urgent for drug use,” “positive expectancy for drug use,” “lack of control over drug and crime,” and “lack of negative expectancy for drug use.” In particular, in both groups, individuals with lower reoffending rates showed large improvements in scores on “lack of negative expectancy for drug use.”

An important methodological issue in practical psychology research, including forensic settings, is creation of an appropriate control group in order to elucidate the characteristics of a clinical group. The present study compared the Monte Carlo simulation to the matching method to examine the advantages of the former over the limitations of the conventionally used matching method. First, the Wechsler Intelligencer Scale for Children-fourth edition (WISC-IV) profiles of abused children (n＝137) were compared to the profiles of a group (n＝137) matched for gender, age, and IQ level. Data for both groups were collected from the archives of child guidance centers. Next, the Monte Carlo simulation was used to generate 500,000 random numbers as a theoretical population. The simulated group, adjusted for IQ levels equivalent to the abused group, was repeatedly compared (1,000 times) with the abused group through the resampling procedure. From the results of the analysis, it was possible to detect deficits in the matched group in the form of imbalances in the WISC-IV profile. Thus, a more appropriate control group in psychological research would be one created using the Monte Carlo simulation.

Effects of the number of crime locations on geographic profiling models were investigated. The data of 55 serial residential burglaries comprised of up to 15 burglaries committed by each burglar were sampled. The accuracy of 3 geographic profiling models: center of the circle, spatial mean, and CMD models were compared in each of 3 to 15 crime locations. The error distance was used for measuring the accuracy of the models. Multiple comparisons showed that CMD method had shorter error distances than center of the circle method when seven, or more crime locations were used. These results suggested that the number of crime locations differentially affected the accuracy of each model.