Associations between parental relocation following separation in childhood and maladjustment in adolescence and young adulthood.
Petitions by custodial parents to relocate children away from noncustodial parents present difficult choices for family courts. In the current study, the sample (N = 81) was randomly recruited through the children’s schools according to the following criteria: Children were 12 years old and at the time resided primarily with their mothers and mothers had been living with a male partner “acting in a father role” for at least the previous year. Thirty-eight children had been separated by more than an hour’s drive from their biological fathers because of either their mothers or fathers relocating. The data were collec...
Source: Psychology, Public Policy, and Law - May 24, 2018 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
A novel paradigm for examining alibi corroboration and evidence interaction: Does a confession affect the likelihood of alibi corroboration for friends and strangers?
We examined the possibility that hearing about a confession could influence potentially exonerating information proffered by a familiar or unfamiliar alibi corroborator. College students (N = 268) brought a friend to a team building session. After the team building session, we asked participants to corroborate an alibi for either their friend or a stranger accused of theft. We also manipulated whether the suspect confessed and the timing of when the confession information was presented to participants. Friends were more likely than strangers to be alibi corroborators across multiple scales and dependent measures. Further, ...
Source: Psychology, Public Policy, and Law - May 14, 2018 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
All is not as it seems: Avoidable pitfalls in the interpretation of lineup field data.
Archival data from a Chicago field study were examined to determine how lineup structure, presentation, and documentation may unfold in police cases and to consider the uses or pitfalls of field data for evaluating lineup procedure (system factor) effectiveness. A primary question concerned the anomalous low rate of filler selections by eyewitnesses for Chicago lineups. These data alert researchers to 2 primary pathways for distortion of descriptive archival data. Biased lineup procedures (lineup structure and presentation) can move witnesses toward the suspect. Biased documentation can enhance reports that maintain the po...
Source: Psychology, Public Policy, and Law - May 14, 2018 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
Can reduced homelessness help explain public safety benefits of mental health court?
This study evaluated the association between reduction in homelessness and violence risk in an MHC. Homelessness is common among justice-involved persons with mental illness, is a risk factor for recidivism, and may be reduced by MHC participation. This study compared rates of homelessness and violence over time for 88 participants who entered an MHC and 81 individuals who received treatment as usual (TAU), and evaluated homelessness as a mediator underlying public safety outcomes of MHC. Although the two groups had similar rates of homelessness at baseline, MHC participants were significantly less likely to be homeless at...
Source: Psychology, Public Policy, and Law - May 14, 2018 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
Objectivity is a myth for you but not for me or police: A bias blind spot for viewing and remembering criminal events.
We examined these beliefs by asking participants to imagine that they themselves, an average American or an average police officer, viewed a criminal event live, with police body-worn camera (BWC) footage or with surveillance footage. Participants provided ratings for each observer’s susceptibility to bias. Importantly, we found a bias blind spot (Pronin, Lin, & Ross, 2002) for people’s ratings of themselves and—depending on participants’ attitudes toward police—police officers. People denied that biases would influence their own and officers’ inferences and memory for a criminal encounter, but they did not giv...
Source: Psychology, Public Policy, and Law - May 14, 2018 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
Youth-perpetrated child sexual abuse: The effects of age at court on legal outcomes.
Drawing from a database of 4,237 cases of child sexual abuse (CSA) heard between 1986 and 2012, we examined 152 cases of youth-perpetrated CSA. We investigated differences in legal outcomes between accused that went to court when they were adults for CSA committed in adolescence, and accused who were juveniles at court. Results indicated that accused who went to court when they were juveniles were less likely to be convicted and received shorter average incarceration sentences than accused who were adults at court. Using a vignette design, we then conducted an experiment with 144 male and female undergraduates to test seve...
Source: Psychology, Public Policy, and Law - May 14, 2018 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
Bluffed by the dealer: Distinguishing false pleas from false confessions.
In conclusion, the current research provides some support for the psychological differences between pleas and confessions, while also highlighting the need for new paradigms that are specifically designed to study plea decision making. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psychology, Public Policy, and Law)
Source: Psychology, Public Policy, and Law - May 14, 2018 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
Deciphering the guilty plea: Where research can inform policy.
Introduces this special section of Psychology, Public Policy, and Law on the topic of guilty pleas. In this special section the editors have assembled six rigorous research and analytical papers that deepen the understanding of guilty pleas and introduce a number of important policy implications. Together, these studies examined the impact of multiple variables on the decision to plead guilty. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psychology, Public Policy, and Law)
Source: Psychology, Public Policy, and Law - May 14, 2018 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
NICHD-protocol investigations of individuals with intellectual disability: A descriptive analysis.
The current study followed investigative interviews with individuals with mild and moderate intellectual disability (ID) and observed both the types of prompts addressed to them and the nature of their responses. The sample comprised 200 alleged victims, in 4 equal and matched groups: individuals with mild ID and their mental-age (MA) matches, and individuals with moderate ID and their MA matches. All alleged victims were interviewed by trained investigators who followed the protocol of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, known to promote developmentally sensitive interviews. A descriptive analysi...
Source: Psychology, Public Policy, and Law - May 10, 2018 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
Abuse history and culpability judgments: Implications for battered spouse syndrome.
The United States legal system has accepted Battered Spouse Syndrome (BSS) and by extension Battered Woman Syndrome (BWS) as defenses available to women on trial for taking violent action against an abusive partner. According to syndrome theorists, abuse victims are more likely than nonvictims to perceive fear of imminent harm. The current research tested the link between history of abuse and women’s judgments of another woman accused of killing her abusive husband with a national online sample of women (N = 644). The study examined verdicts in proguilty versus proacquittal fact patterns in which the killer either shot h...
Source: Psychology, Public Policy, and Law - May 10, 2018 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
Extraordinary and compelling: The use of compassionate release laws in the United States.
As the United States’ prison population has increased in size and aged, the number of older inmates in deteriorating health has grown markedly. In 1984, federal compassionate release laws were established, allowing for the release of inmates given “extraordinary and compelling circumstances” not present at sentencing. Many states established similar laws. Despite possible financial and ethical benefits of compassionate release, few inmates have been released under these laws. This research explored why. In Study 1, to assess the scope of this legislation, we provided a compendium of relevant laws, including informati...
Source: Psychology, Public Policy, and Law - February 5, 2018 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
Freedom now or a future later: Pitting the lasting implications of collateral consequences against pretrial detention in decisions to plead guilty.
With a criminal conviction comes numerous restrictions on rights, and often these collateral consequences are not adequately communicated to a defendant accepting a plea deal. The question we posed was whether or not informing individuals of collateral consequences would alter their decisions to plead. Using prospect theory (Kahneman & Tversky, 1984) and the theory of temporal discounting (Ainslie, 1975), we hypothesized that the delayed nature of collateral consequences—especially if the consequences were competing with overly enticing immediate rewards to accepting a plea deal, namely the ability to be released from pr...
Source: Psychology, Public Policy, and Law - February 5, 2018 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
Public support for harsh criminal justice policy and its moral and ideological tides.
From the late 1970s on, penal populism, or the tendency for the public to support harsh criminal justice policies, has been recognized as a driving force of socially and economically costly punitive trends in the Western world. This support has traditionally been attributed to political leanings and related ideological systems. A competing view is that policy preferences reflect deep-seated individualizing and binding moral systems. However, each view has difficulty refuting the other in empirical and theoretical terms. Using a structural equation modeling approach, this study applies 2 competing theoretical models to inve...
Source: Psychology, Public Policy, and Law - December 21, 2017 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
How defense attorneys consult with juvenile clients about plea bargains.
Despite recent research attention, a lack of information still plagues the most common conviction process in the United States: the plea bargain. Further, even less is known about how juvenile defendants make plea bargain decisions. Juvenile plea bargaining is unique due to juveniles being considered independent minors while simultaneously being held to adult competency standards in court. Unfortunately, juvenile defendants are less likely than adults to have the necessary capacities for adjudicative competence. Given defense attorneys’ role in the plea bargain process, it is possible that they may be able to increase th...
Source: Psychology, Public Policy, and Law - December 21, 2017 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
Too young to plead? Risk, rationality, and plea bargaining’s innocence problem in adolescents.
The overwhelming majority of both adult and adolescent convictions occur as the result of guilty pleas rather than trial. This means that convictions are often the result of decisions made by defendants rather than jurors. It is therefore important to study decision making in defendants to ensure convictions are occurring in a fair and principled way. Research suggests that the current plea-bargaining system is leading innocent defendants to systematically plead guilty to crimes that they did not commit, and that this may be more widespread in adolescents than adults. The current study uses fuzzy-trace theory to develop an...
Source: Psychology, Public Policy, and Law - December 21, 2017 Category: Medical Law Source Type: research
