Law and Human Behavior最新文献

Objective: We aimed to review research on recidivism risk assessment tools with individuals convicted of child sexual exploitation material (CSEM) offenses and make recommendations for use in forensic, correctional, and legal settings.

Hypotheses: Multiple tools would be defensible to use with individuals convicted of CSEM offenses.

Method: We discuss a minimum threshold of predictive accuracy to justify using a risk tool as an improvement on the typical level of accuracy expected from unstructured professional judgment. Beyond this minimum threshold, we offer additional considerations that researchers and practitioners can use in evaluating and selecting risk tools.

Results: We identified nine risk assessment tools with predictive accuracy research on individuals convicted of CSEM offenses: Child Pornography Offender Risk Tool (CPORT), Risk Matrix 2000/Sex (RM2000/S), OASys Sexual Reoffending Predictor-Indecent Images (OSP/I), Static-99R, STABLE-2007, ACUTE-2007, Post Conviction Risk Assessment (PCRA), Level of Service Inventory-Ontario Revision (LSI-OR), and Offender Group Reconviction Scale 3 (OGRS3).

Conclusion: The CPORT, RM2000/S, STABLE-2007, and ACUTE-2007 (in conjunction with the STABLE-2007) are all defensible tools to use for assessing risk of any sexual recidivism or CSEM recidivism, specifically. The OSP/I consists of a single risk factor and considers risk of CSEM recidivism among all individuals convicted of sexual offenses, not only among individuals convicted of CSEM offenses. There is some support for Static-99R and the OGRS3, but they are not recommended options at this time, for different reasons. The PCRA and LSI-OR general recidivism risk tools have some empirical support in predicting general recidivism among CSEM samples (and sexual recidivism for the PCRA), with limitations noted. The use of multiple tools may have value in assessing risk and structuring management in CSEM cases; however, how they are best combined for these samples is still unclear. We expect research in this area to increase rapidly. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Wrongful conviction databases have shed light on the fact that innocent people can be induced to confess to crimes they did not commit. Drawing on police practices, core principles of psychology, and forensic studies involving multiple methodologies, this article updates the original Scientific Review Paper (Kassin et al., 2010) on the causes, consequences, and remedies for police-induced false confessions. First, we describe the situational and personal risk factors that lead innocent people to confess and the collateral consequences that follow-including the corruptive effects of confession on other evidence, the increased likelihood of conviction at trial, the increased tendency to plead guilty despite innocence, the stigma that shadows false confessors even after exoneration, and the failure of Miranda to serve as a safeguard. Next, we propose the following remedies: (1) mandate the video recording of all suspect interviews and interrogations in their entirety and from a neutral camera angle; (2) require that police have an evidence-based suspicion as a predicate for commencing interrogation; (3) impose limits on confrontational interrogations, namely with regard to detention time, presentations of false evidence, and minimization themes that imply leniency; (4) adopt a science-based model of investigative interviewing; (5) protect youthful suspects and vulnerable adults by mandating the presence of defense attorneys during interrogation, and a suitable appropriate adult where required; (6) shield lay witnesses and forensic examiners from confessions to ensure the independence of their judgments; and (7) abolish contributory clauses from compensation statutes that penalize innocent persons who were induced to confess and/or plead guilty. These recommendations should help to prevent confession-based wrongful convictions and improve the administration of justice for all concerned. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Objective: There is an increasing recognition of the necessity to establish the predictive validity of risk assessment scores within specific population subgroups, particularly those (including Indigenous peoples) who are overrepresented in the criminal justice system. I compared measures of discrimination and calibration of the Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory (YLS/CMI) in Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth probationers in Ontario, Canada.

Hypotheses: Compared with non-Indigenous youth, Indigenous youth would have higher risk scores and reoffense rates. The YLS/CMI would predict reoffending and time to reoffense significantly and comparably for Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth, but there would be group difference discrimination (sensitivity, specificity) and calibration (positive predictive value, negative predictive value).

Method: Justice ministry-supplied data on 400 Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth (330 male, 70 female) individually matched on key background variables were analyzed to provide measures of discrimination and calibration of the YLS/CMI, with 3-year recidivism as the primary outcome.

Results: Indigenous youth were assessed at significantly higher risk than non-Indigenous youth (d = .60); 70% of Indigenous youth and 46% of non-Indigenous youth reoffended (ϕ = .24). Overall measures of discrimination (area under the curve) and calibration (logistic regression) were significant and did not differ across groups. Cross-area under the curve results indicated that the YLS/CMI discriminated Indigenous recidivists from non-Indigenous nonrecidivists but differentiated Indigenous nonrecidivists from non-Indigenous recidivists at chance level. In addition, recidivism was underestimated for low-risk Indigenous youth compared with non-Indigenous youth, but specificity was also low; only 28% of Indigenous youth who did not reoffend were assessed as low risk. Results were largely consistent across male and female youth.

Conclusions: Examining subgroup predictive validity using multiple indices provides important information that should inform policy and practice discussions regarding fair use of risk assessment tools. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Objective: Existing literature has yet to conceptualize and consolidate research on psychological essentialism and its relation to the criminal legal system, particularly in terms of explaining how individuals with justice involvement have been and could be differentially impacted across contexts. This article explores essentialism in the criminal legal system, including its potential consequences for inequity.

Method: We review research on essentialism as a psychological construct, its common applications to different social categorizations, and its trickle-down effects within the criminal legal system.

Results: Empirical work suggests that biases stemming from essentialism have the potential to severely affect individuals within the criminal legal system. Beyond assigning immutable properties across social groups, essentialism can give rise to biased attributions of responsibility and blame and affect decisions and behavior within three core domains of the criminal legal system: jury decision making, sentencing decisions, and public support for punitive policies.

Conclusions: We propose future policy recommendations to mitigate the adverse effects of essentialism in the criminal legal system, focusing especially on how using and adopting person-first language (focusing on people before characteristics) across society and policy can help to combat bias across criminal legal domains. Future research is needed on how to best address the adverse effects of essentialism and its biasing effects in the criminal legal system, as well as to examine the effects of essentialism in different legal contexts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Objective: Identification and implementation of effective methods for reducing racial/ethnic bias and disparities in legal settings are paramount in the United States and other countries. One procedure originally thought to reduce bias in legal decisions is the use of risk assessment instruments, which is now being heavily scrutinized. Measurement invariance, a latent trait technique, is a robust method for assessing one form of bias. Measurement invariance involves determining whether risk items in an instrument appear to be functioning the same between racial or other groups. Thus, the present study examined measurement invariance of the Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth (SAVRY) between non-Latino Black and White youths to examine racial bias.

Hypotheses: We expected the SAVRY to be invariant (lacking measurement bias) between Black and White youths.

Method: The sample included 687 Black and 361 White youths, and the study used a large, multistate data set of SAVRYs conducted by probation officers. We conducted measurement invariance testing in a series of hierarchical steps including testing configural and scalar invariance.

Results: The SAVRY demonstrated scalar invariance (equal thresholds for ratings from "low" to "moderate" and "moderate" to "high") for all items except one-community disorganization.

Conclusions: The findings lend further credibility to the SAVRY, and the structured professional judgment approach, as a method to assess violence risk and case planning needs among youths involved in the legal system. These findings provide more confidence that significant differences in SAVRY risk level or items between Black and White youths are not based in measurement bias, with the exception of the community disorganization item. Potential fixes discussed include eliminating or deemphasizing this item in final risk level ratings. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Objective: Field research increasingly reveals that forensic evaluators are not interchangeable. Instead, they tend to differ in their patterns of forensic opinions, in ways that likely reflect something about themselves, not just the persons evaluated. This study used data from sexually violent predator (SVP) evaluations to examine whether evaluator differences in making intermediate decisions (e.g., instrument scoring, assigning diagnoses) might explain their different patterns of final opinions.

Hypotheses: Although this study was generally exploratory and not strongly hypothesis driven, we expected that there might be evidence for a simple form of bias in which some evaluators would be more likely than others to consistently "find" indications of SVP status (i.e., consistently assigning higher risk scores and more SVP-relevant diagnoses) and, therefore, be more likely to find behavioral abnormality, the legal construct qualifying someone for commitment as an SVP.

Method: The study used data from 745 SVP evaluations conducted by 10 different evaluators who were assigned cases from the same referral stream. Potential evaluator difference variables included behavioral abnormality opinions, paraphilia and antisocial personality disorder diagnoses, and Psychopathy Checklist-Revised and Static-99 scores.

Results: Evaluator differences explained a statistically significant (p < .001) amount of variance in behavioral abnormality opinions (17%), paraphilia diagnoses (7%), and Psychopathy Checklist-Revised scores (16%). Contrary to our expectation of a simple tendency for some evaluators to find all indicators of SVP status more often than others, evaluators differed in the ways that underlying diagnoses and scores corresponded with their conclusions. The overall pattern was one in which different evaluators appeared to base their final opinions on different factors.

Conclusions: Findings reveal further evidence of substantial forensic evaluator differences in patterns of assigning instrument scores and reaching forensic conclusions. But these findings are the first to also reveal wide variability in their patterns of reaching forensic conclusions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Objective: The purpose of this study was to estimate the behavioral impacts of training police officers in implicit bias awareness and management.

Hypotheses: Training police in implicit bias reduces racial and ethnic disparities in stops, arrests, summonses, frisks, searches, and/or use of force.

Method: A cluster randomized controlled trial using the stepped wedge design was applied to 14,471 officers in the New York City Police Department, with a 1-day training delivered to clusters of police commands between May 2018 and April 2019 and outcomes measured with police records of individual events from April 2018 to May 2019. Police records were supplemented with survey data on 1,973 officers matched to administrative data. For each type of enforcement action, the likelihood that the action involved or was taken against Black or Hispanic suspects, respectively, relative to White suspects was estimated, controlling for potential confounders. Additional analysis allowed for estimating training effects of different magnitudes for Black, Hispanic, and White officers and for officers with greater motivation to act without prejudice or greater concern about discrimination.

Results: None of the estimated training effects achieved statistical significance at the .05 level.

Conclusions: Isolated and weak evidence of behavioral impacts of the training was detected. Several explanations for the null findings are considered. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).