Posts tagged forensic psych

Study Finds ‘Unattractive Harshness Effect’ for Uglier Defendants

“These jurors, who tend to process information based on emotions and personal experience, were 22 percent more likely to convict the less attractive defendants than jurors with a rational style of decision-making, the study’s lead author, Justin Gunnell, tells the ABA Journal. These experiential jurors also gave the looks-challenged defendants sentences that were on average 22 months longer than sentences given to more attractive people. The study called the phenomenon an “unattractive harshness effect,” the Cornell Daily Sun reports.”

Inmate on death row for nearly 30 years

Howard, now 61, remains incarcerated at Ely State Prison. Nevada provides him free room, board and medical care, even flying him by helicopter to University Medical Center in Las Vegas when he slipped into a coma in 1991. Howard is one of 80 male prisoners on death row at the Ely prison. Twenty-nine of them were given death sentences before 1990. Seven have been on death row longer than Howard.

Lessons from former inmates I used to work with: a  “covered wagon” is when sheets are put over the double and triple stacked bunk beds in an overcrowded gym type rooms so no one can see whats going on inside, or when the beds are moved in a circle to block whats going on in between them. Usually associated with prison rape, gang bangs or the occasional love affair.

Lessons from former inmates I used to work with: a  “covered wagon” is when sheets are put over the double and triple stacked bunk beds in an overcrowded gym type rooms so no one can see whats going on inside, or when the beds are moved in a circle to block whats going on in between them. Usually associated with prison rape, gang bangs or the occasional love affair.

More on:11yo Charged With Murder May Be Tried as Adult

I’ve post about this before, here is the parent’s interview.

photographyprison: What Obama’s Budget Looks Like From a Prison Cell “This is what Obama’s 2011 budget looks like from here in a Taft, CA prison: disappointing. In particular, I was disheartened to read that the President’s 2011 budget calls for a $528 million infusion into the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). Should the budget pass, that means the BOP’s budget — already exorbitant — will rise to $6.8 billion in the 2011 fiscal year. I’ve long maintained that we need prison reforms in the federal system to help do just the opposite, and lower taxpayer costs by eliminating policies that warehouse non-violent offenders for decades. But it seems that so far, the president isn’t yet on the same page.”

photographyprison:

What Obama’s Budget Looks Like From a Prison Cell

“This is what Obama’s 2011 budget looks like from here in a Taft, CA prison: disappointing.

In particular, I was disheartened to read that the President’s 2011 budget calls for a $528 million infusion into the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). Should the budget pass, that means the BOP’s budget — already exorbitant — will rise to $6.8 billion in the 2011 fiscal year. I’ve long maintained that we need prison reforms in the federal system to help do just the opposite, and lower taxpayer costs by eliminating policies that warehouse non-violent offenders for decades. But it seems that so far, the president isn’t yet on the same page.”

16 Things Your Lawyer Won't Tell You - unless you ask

i.e. template billing, paralegal rates, and area of specialty (especially these days when a lot of attorneys I know wont turn down a job) 50% of practice for 5 year good rule of thumb and everything is negotiable.

Narcissistic familicide

“Christian Longo was a “successful businessman” who fell on bad times/spent too much money.  Too ashamed to admit to his wife he was failing, he tried credit and then theft/forgery/counterfeiting to maintain the image.  When he knew the cops were on to him, he did the obvious thing: he strangled his wife while she was on top of him during sex; then strangled his 2 year old daughter who was sleeping on the floor beside their bed; stuffed their bodies in suitcases; then put his other two sleeping kids into their car seats and drove them to a bridge, tied rocks to their feet, and threw them in the river.  Then he went to Cancun.”

How can people do that?

” A narcissist can’t feel guilt because, while he admits to external rules (religion, ethics, etc) those rules are always secondary to his identity.  As long as the identity is intact, you didn’t do anything really wrong.  There’s no internal conflict with your sense of self because your identity has one superseding rule: self preservation. “

Sex offenders and civil commitment after serving prison terms

The question of can sex offenders be held after serving criminal sentences by way of civil commitment, goes before the U.S. Supreme court. Seems like a no-brainer, lock ‘em up. But: “Constitutionally, it might be possible,” to extend the rationale for civil commitment to other kinds of crimes, McAllister says. “I don’t have a constitutionally limiting line for what kinds of mental disorders might be permissible and what [might] not. If they lead to danger to others, potentially, they could be covered under such a law.”

There are many good reasons for revisiting laws that make it too easy to try children as adults, the best being perhaps that it leads to higher recidivism rates when youth are released. Youth tried as adults are more likely to commit crimes upon release, they commit them sooner and their crimes are more violent. But another reason is that it creates too big a punishment gap between juvenile and adult court, a gap which gives prosecutors too much power to coerce guilty pleas from innocent suspects. One way to solve this problem is to take the decision of whether to transfer a minor out of the hands of prosecutors (whose decisions are unreviewable) and place it into the hands of judges. For those who are still transferred, the idea of “youth discounts” for juveniles sentenced in adult court, an automatic reduction of sentences for juvenile offenders which makes the court take their youth as a mitigating factor, is critical in reducing the punishment gap between juvenile and adult court, a gap which gives prosecutors too much power in plea negotiations and gives too strong an incentive for innocents to plead guilty. Such discounts would also except juveniles from life without parole, mandatory minimum sentences, and “truth in sentencing” schemes which have exacerbated the punishment gap between juvenile and adult sentencing. For juveniles sent to adult court, there must also be an opportunity to send the juvenile back to the court for trial sentencing — “a reverse waiver” option.
Steven Drizin is a Clinical Professor at Northwestern Law School and expert on false confessions. From here.
Twenty-five years ago, a group of psychologically healthy, normal college students (and several presumably mentally sound experimenters) were temporarily but dramatically transformed in the course of six days spent in a prison-like environment, in research that came to be known as the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE).
The outcome of that study was shocking and unexpected to us, our professional colleagues, and the general public. Otherwise emotionally strong college students who were randomly assigned to be mock-prisoners suffered acute psychological trauma and breakdowns. Some of the students begged to be released from the intense pains of less than a week of merely simulated imprisonment, whereas others adapted by becoming blindly obedient to the unjust authority of the guards.
The guards, too—who also had been carefully chosen on the basis of their normal–average scores on a variety of personality measures—quickly internalized their randomly assigned role. Many of these seemingly gentle and caring young men, some of whom had described themselves as pacifists or Vietnam War “doves,” soon began mistreating their peers and were indifferent to the obvious suffering that their actions produced. Several of them devised sadistically inventive ways to harass and degrade the prisoners, and none of the less actively cruel mock-guards ever intervened or complained about the abuses they witnessed. Most of the worst prisoner treatment came on the night shifts and other occasions when the guards thought they could avoid the surveillance and interference of the research team.
Our planned two-week experiment had to be aborted after only six days because the experience dramatically and painfully transformed most of the participants in ways we did not anticipate, prepare for, or predict.

The Stanford Prison Experiment

Haney, C., Banks, W., & Zimbardo, P. (1973). Interpersonal dynamics in a simulated prison. International Journal of Criminology and Penology, 1, 69–97.

This looks good…

Division of Law, Ethics, and Psychiatry

Department of Psychiatry

Columbia University Medical Center

Seminar series on Legal and Ethical Issues in Psychiatry and General Medicine

Liwen Grace Lee, MD

Medical Director, Division of Forensic Services

NYS Office of Mental Health

Assistant Professor of Psychiatry

College of Physicians & Surgeons, Columbia University

Insanity Acquittees in New York State

Tuesday, January 12th, 2009

4:00-5:15pm

Although the insanity defense intermittently attracts considerable public attention, the process that begins after a successful insanity plea is often less understood.  State systems seek to balance clinical needs with public safety and individual civil liberties.  The New York system of insanity acquittee management will be described and the implications of the process discussed.

A Conversation With Laurence Steinberg - Developmental Psychologist at Temple and Expert on Adolescents - Interview - NYTimes.com

willw2:

whole article is good. excerpt:

Teenagers are not crazy. They’re different.

When it comes to crime, they are less responsible for their behavior than adults. And typically, in the law, we don’t punish people as much who are less responsible. We know from our lab that adolescents are more impulsive, thrill-seeking, drawn to the rewards of a risky decision than adults. They tend to not focus very much on costs. They are more easily coerced to do things they know are wrong. These factors, under the law, make people less responsible for criminal acts. The issue is: as a class, should we treat adolescents differently?

Given the fact that we know that there will be a developmental change in most people, the science says that we should give them a chance to mature out of it. No one is saying that kids who commit horrific crimes shouldn’t be punished. But most in the scientific community think that we know that since this person is likely to change, why not revisit this when he’s an adult and see what he’s like?

“… but there are studies that say that adolescents are more likely than adults to give false confessions. There’s the Central Park jogger case, where it turned out a group of teenagers gave false confessions. Five were convicted. Several years later, an adult murderer and rapist confessed to the crime.”

Adolescents and psychological coercion v. cognitive development, one of my fav topics that I ‘ve mention before. Good article. 1) Looks like Temple will be accepting more doct. applicants as soon as that grant check is cashed (personal bitter remark) and 2) I like that someone (with the resources) is planning on expanding into cross cultural adolescent development.

Sexual offenders' abuse history (physical v. sexual) correlates to the type of sexual offender they become (adult v. child).

Results

“We observed a higher prevalence of sexual abuse history among adult sex offenders than among non-sex offenders. There was a significantly lower prevalence of sexual abuse history among sex offenders against adults compared to sex offenders against children, whereas the opposite was found for physical abuse”