Behavioral Sciences & the Law最新文献

Mental health courts (MHCs) are a growing component of the U.S. criminal justice system's response to individuals with mental illness. Yet, key aspects of contemporary MHC practices, such as eligibility criteria, assessment of risk-need-responsivity principles, integration of trauma-informed care, use of sanctions and incentives, and access to community resources, remain understudied. In response, we conducted a survey study of 70 U.S. adult MHCs to explore these domains. Our findings indicate broadened eligibility criteria, with increases in acceptance of violent offenses and greater inclusion of non-traditional primary diagnoses (e.g., developmental disabilities and traumatic brain injuries). Fewer than a quarter of respondents reported bilingual MHC staff and translated program materials. Most MHCs employed at least one risk assessment tool. Just over 90% of MHCs included jail sanctions on their menu of options, with the majority incarcerating participants for 6 days or less on average. Tailored sanctions and incentives were perceived as being most effective, but expansion of available incentives is hindered by lack of funding. MHCs identified housing, inpatient psychiatric units, and co-occurring disorders resources as the most needed resources for participants. Our findings highlight the differences across MHCs that persist across jurisdictions.

Bankruptcy and financial distress commonly precipitate suicidal crises, putting bankruptcy attorneys in potentially difficult situations with clients. This qualitative study explored attorneys' experiences with clients' risk for suicide and attorneys' recommendations for suicide prevention. Bankruptcy attorneys and trustees (n = 11) were recruited via outreach to attorney groups (e.g., National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys). Semi-structured interviews explored clients' distress, responses to clients' suicidal disclosures, and previous suicide prevention training. The research team established a codebook from transcribed interviews within Dedoose software, using peer debriefing and consensus building to iteratively identify themes. Nearly all attorneys had experiences with clients discussing suicide, but most did not know how to intervene. Common themes included clients' co-occurring stressors (e.g., divorce, unemployment), destigmatizing the bankruptcy process, and navigating attorney-client privilege. Major themes for prevention were correcting misconceptions about and destigmatizing bankruptcy and suicide prevention training that is sensitive to the context of the legal profession.

This study examined the effectiveness of a brief educational intervention designed to reduce sex trafficking (ST) myth acceptance. Using a 2 × 2 mixed design, participants (N = 189) viewed either an educational video addressing common ST myths or a control video on human memory. Measures of ST myth acceptance and victim empathy were collected before, immediately after, and 1 month following the intervention. Participants also evaluated a vignette describing an alleged ST case and responded to items assessing empathy, victim blaming, and perceptions of the defendant's guilt. The intervention did not significantly reduce ST myth acceptance or influence vignette-based judgements, which may reflect a ceiling effect given participants' already supportive baseline attitudes. However, a protective effect emerged over time: participants in the intervention condition maintained supportive victim attitudes at follow-up, whereas control participants demonstrated increased victim blaming and decreased empathy.

The aim of this study was to better understand juror decision-making in a less typical rape trial scenario where even prior acquaintance is disputed. Adopting an improved mock trial paradigm including a video-recorded recreation of a genuine rape allegation and jury-group deliberation, 156 jury-eligible participants took part in 1 of 13 identical 12-person mock trials. Pre-trial, a psychosocial questionnaire was conducted and post-trial, juries deliberated attempting to reach a unanimous verdict. Regression analyses revealed that male jurors, those with greater belief in rape myths and lower scores in interpersonal manipulation were most likely to return not guilty verdicts pre-deliberation. Post-deliberation, increased self-esteem and rape myth acceptance scores were associated with not guilty verdict selections. Female and Caucasian jurors were most likely to change their decision following group-deliberation. This research has important implications for understanding the role that juror biases can have on rape trial outcomes with jury reform initiatives discussed.

We compared the performance of large language models (LLMs) and humans with various levels of expertise in child investigative interviewing on tasks related to question formulation. Two tasks were employed: a static Interview Excerpt Task where participants (60 psychologists, 60 naive participants, GPT-4, and Llama-2) formulated follow-up questions to 100 interview excerpts, and a dynamic Avatar Interviewing Task where participants (32 professionals, 32 students, and GPT-4) conducted 10-min interviews with AI-driven child avatars. In the dynamic task, LLMs used fewer recommended questions (M = 8.69 vs. 18.75) and more non-recommended questions (M = 17.69 vs. 6.81) than professionals. Conversely, in the static task, GPT-4 outperformed psychologists, using more invitations (67.8% vs. 5.4%) and fewer option-posing questions (3.7% vs. 31.4%). While LLMs demonstrated strong question formulation skills in controlled environments, they struggled with adaptive dialogs.

Adolescent affiliation with delinquent peers can lead to offline delinquent behaviors; however, less is known about its effect on online delinquent behaviors, particularly cyberbullying perpetration. Furthermore, it is unclear whether the delinquent peer effect on cyberbullying perpetration can be reversed by reducing affiliation with delinquent peers. Using novel asymmetric fixed-effects regression with two-wave follow-up data from Hong Kong (N = 356) to control for observed time-variant and observed and unobserved time-invariant confounders, we found that increased affiliation with delinquent peers was associated with increased cyberbullying perpetration, whereas decreased affiliation with delinquent peers was not associated with cyberbullying perpetration. Additionally, improving student–teacher relationships mitigated the effect of increased affiliation with delinquent peers on cyberbullying perpetration. Therefore, the effect of affiliation with delinquent peers on cyberbullying perpetration may be irreversible. Nevertheless, interventions and policies can aim to enhance student–teacher relationships to alleviate the delinquent peer effect on cyberbullying perpetration.

Attitudes toward sexual violence and victim-blaming are culturally dependent and should be examined within specific social and legal contexts. The present study sought to compare Israeli police officers' (N = 220) and students' (N = 230) perceptions toward sex working rape victims. Participants were presented with a vignette describing a rape, where the victim was either identified as a sex worker or not. They then provided ratings of blame and sentencing, along with assessments of victim resistance and harm and their emotional responses toward the victim. Significant differences emerged between the groups. Although overall victim-blaming was relatively low, police officers attributed more blame when the victim was identified as a sex worker, while students' blame attribution remained unaffected by the victim's status. Similarly, police officers were more lenient toward the perpetrator than students regarding punishment, particularly when the victim was identified as a sex worker. These differences also appeared in emotional responses and evaluations of victim resistance and harm, indicating that police officers held more stereotypical and skeptical attitudes compared to students. The findings suggest that law enforcement attitudes may reflect a unique institutional perspective, shaped by organizational norms within the police force, the broader legal discourse, and police officers' work-related exposure.

This paper examines how secondary victimization is interactionally produced during courtroom cross-examinations of women who have experienced sexual violence. Drawing on Ethnomethodology, Conversation Analysis and Membership Categorization Analysis, the study investigates how defense attorneys invoke rape myths and gendered stereotypes to challenge victims' credibility and moral character. Using the extracts of two cross-examinations from the celebrity trial CA v. Winslow II (2019), the results highlight how interactional features of questioning reproduce cultural assumptions that legitimate secondary victimization, constructing victims as unreliable or complicit. The findings highlight the “double bind” faced by women in sexual assault trials: they must appear both emotionally credible and rationally composed to be believed, yet any deviation from this ideal invites disbelief. Methodologically, the paper underscores the underutilized potential of EMCA in legal-linguistic research to reveal how institutional talk reproduces gendered injustice through ordinary conversational practices.