This study aimed to examine the relationship of offenders' distress and responsibility with maladaptive personality traits, self-esteem, and offence-type. It also further validated the Distress and Responsibility Scale (DRS; Xuereb et al., 2009a, Pers. Individ. Diff., 46, 465). A new sub-scale measuring social desirability was included and assessed in the DRS. Maladaptive personality traits and self-esteem were measured in relation to the following predictions: (1) that maladaptive personality traits would positively correlate with distress (2) that self-esteem would negatively correlate with distress and acknowledging responsibility. The sample was 405 male sexual, violent, and general offenders from a UK prison. Participants anonymously completed a questionnaire measuring the variables under investigation. The factor-structure of the DRS was confirmed via Confirmatory Factor Analysis after minor changes. No significant differences in distress and denial of responsibility were found between sexual, violent, and general offenders. Maladaptive personality traits positively correlated with chronic and offence-related distress, chronic self-blame, and minimization of offence harm. Chronic and offence-related distress and responsibility negatively related to self-esteem. The study concludes that the DRS has reached stability, and that the social desirability scale increases the measure's validity. Assessment and treatment for offence-related distress and denial of responsibility should be offered to all offence groups. Offenders would benefit from structured interventions to manage difficulties associated with maladaptive personality traits, including chronic distress and self-blame. Finally, it was concluded that self-esteem might serve a self-defensive function for offenders.
]]>The risk assessment of sex offenders has evolved rapidly over a 20-year period. However, there is still disparity between empirically evaluated approaches and the needs within the applied context. This article discusses the division between the current needs in the applied setting of sex offender risk assessment, and the existing approaches to risk assessment. It highlights key needs that ought to be responded to, to continue the evolution of sex offender risk assessment (i.e., increased automation of processes, additional emphasis on early identification and prevention, and the targeting of resources towards risk). A new risk assessment model termed the Threat Matrix is introduced as a proposed response to these needs. The new model uses information derived from police systems to make proactive assessments of those who may pose a risk of sexual violence, but who have not been convicted of sexual offences. The practical and ethical implications of implementing and testing this model are discussed.
]]>Although it is easy to assume that individuals who have been wrongfully convicted are stigmatized, research has not systematically examined this issue. This research compares perceptions of individuals who have been wrongfully convicted to perceptions of offenders to investigate the stigma that wrongfully convicted persons report.
Participants were randomly assigned to complete surveys regarding their attitudes, stereotypes, and discrimination tendencies towards one of three different groups: individuals who were wrongfully convicted of a crime, actual offenders, or people in general (control).
Results suggested contemptuous prejudice towards offenders and wrongfully convicted persons. In comparison to the control group, individuals who had been wrongfully convicted were stereotyped more negatively, elicited more negative emotions, and were held at a greater social distance. Although participants did report greater pity for wrongfully convicted persons than others, this pity did not translate into greater assistance or support.
Perceptions of wrongfully convicted persons appear similar to negative, stigmatized views of offenders. Individuals faced stigma and discrimination even after exoneration.
Deception research regarding insurance claims is rare but relevant given the financial loss in terms of fraud. In Study 1, a field study in a large multinational insurance fraud detection company, truth telling mock claimants (N = 19) and lying mock claimants (N = 21) were interviewed by insurance company telephone operators. These operators classified correctly only 50% of these truthful and lying claimants, but their task was particularly challenging: Claimants said little, and truthful and deceptive statements did not differ in quality (measured with Criteria-Based Content Analysis [CBCA]) or plausibility. In Study 2, a laboratory experiment, participants in the experimental condition (N = 43) were exposed to an audiotaped truthful and detailed account of an event that was unrelated to insurance claims (a day at the motor races). The number of words, quality of the statement (measured with CBCA), and plausibility of the participants' accounts were compared with participants who were not given a model statement (N = 40). The participants who had listened to the model statement provided longer statements than control participants, truth tellers obtained higher CBCA scores than liars, and only in the model statement condition did truth tellers sound more plausible than liars. Providing participants with a model statement is thus an innovative and successful tool to elicit cues to deception. Providing such a model has the potential to enhance performance in insurance call interviews, and, as we argue, in many other interview settings.
]]>Research examining detection of verbal deception reveals that lay observers generally perform at chance. Yet, in the criminal justice system, laypersons that have not undergone specialist investigative training are frequently called upon to make veracity judgements (e.g., solicitors; magistrates; juries). We sought to improve performance by manipulating the timing of information revelation during investigative interviews. A total of 151 participants played an interactive computer game as either a truth-teller or a deceiver, and were interviewed afterwards. Game information known to the interviewer was revealed either early, at the end of the interview, or gradually throughout. Subsequently, 30 laypersons individually viewed a random selection of interviews (five deceivers and five truth-tellers from each condition), and made veracity and confidence judgements. Veracity judgements were most accurate in the gradual condition, p < .001, η2 = .97 (above chance), and observers were more confident in those judgements, p < .001, η2 = .99. Deceptive interviewees reported the gradual interviews to be the most cognitively demanding, p < .001; η2 = .24. Our findings suggest that the detection of verbal deception by non-expert observers can be enhanced by employing interview techniques that maximize deceivers' cognitive load, while allowing truth-tellers the opportunity to respond to evidence incrementally.
]]>The gathering of human intelligence (HUMINT) is of utmost importance, yet the scientific literature is silent with respect to the effectiveness of different information elicitation techniques. Our aim was to remedy this by conducting the first scientific test of the so-called Scharff technique (named after the successful German WWII interrogator).
We developed a new experimental paradigm, mirroring some main features of a typical HUMINT situation. The participants (N = 93) were given information on a planned terrorist attack, and were instructed to strike a balance between not revealing too much or too little information in an upcoming interview. One third was interviewed with the Scharff technique (conceptualized to include four different tactics), one-third was asked open questions only, and the final third was asked specific questions only. The effectiveness of the three techniques was assessed by a novel set of objective and subjective measures.
Our main findings show that (1) the three techniques did not differ with respect to the objective amount of new information gathered; (2) the participants in the Scharff condition perceived (as predicted) that it was more difficult to read the interviewer's information objectives; and (3) the participants in the Scharff- and the Open-question condition (incorrectly) perceived to have revealed significantly less information than the participants in the Specific question condition.
We presented a new experimental paradigm, and new dependent measures, for studying the effectiveness of different information elicitation techniques. We consider the outcome for the Scharff technique as rather promising, but future refinements are needed.
This study was designed to evaluate whether two features of antisocial cognition, short-term goals, and physically hedonistic values mediate the past-crime–future-crime relationship.
Data from 395 members of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth–Child Data (NLSY-C) were used to test this hypothesis. A path analysis was performed, with past crime serving as the independent (predictor) variable, future crime serving as the dependent (outcome) variable, and short-term goals and physically hedonistic values serving as mediating variables.
The results of a structured equation modelling path analysis revealed a significant mediating effect for hedonistic values but not for short-term goals, when both variables were included in the same analysis. A causal mediation analysis was then conducted on the past crime → physically hedonistic values → future crime relationship, the results of which disclosed the presence of a partially mediated effect of physically hedonistic values on the past-crime–future-crime relationship after controlling for age, race, gender, and low self-control. When short-term goals were analysed separately, they also partially mediated the past-crime–future-crime relationship, although the effect was weaker than when physically hedonistic values served as the mediator.
Hedonistic values and, to a lesser extent, short-term goals appear to mediate crime continuity, perhaps by establishing a state of psychological inertia, whereby certain psychological processes help maintain negative behavioural patterns like crime.
Closing the eyes during recall can help witnesses remember more about a witnessed event. This study examined the effectiveness of eye-closure in a repeated recall paradigm with immediate free recall followed 1 week later by both free and cued recall. We examined whether eye-closure was more or less effective during the second free-recall attempt compared with the first, whether eye-closure during the first recall attempt had an impact on subsequent free- and cued-recall performance, and whether eye-closure during the second free recall could facilitate the recall of new, previously unreported, information (reminiscence).
Participants witnessed a videotaped event and participated in a first free-recall attempt (with eyes open or closed) a few minutes later. After a week, they provided another free recall, followed by a cued-recall interview (with eyes open or closed).
Eye-closure during the first free-recall attempt had no significant effect on performance during any of the recall attempts. However, eye-closure during the second session increased the amount of correct visual information reported in that session by 36.7% in free recall and by 35.3% in cued recall, without harming testimonial accuracy. Crucially, eye-closure also facilitated the recall of new, previously unreported visual information.
The findings extend previous research in showing that the eye-closure instruction can still be effective when witnesses are interviewed repeatedly, and that it can facilitate the elicitation of new information. Thus, the eye-closure instruction constitutes a simple and time-efficient interview tool for police interviewers.
In many jurisdictions child witnesses who testify in court about their own sexual abuse are cross-examined by a defence attorney. Children find this process to be distressing, and despite recent child-focussed modifications to other aspects of the legal process, cross-examination has remained largely unaltered. This lack of modification is due, in part, to the assumption that cross-examination promotes truthful testimony (Wigmore, 1974 Evidence in trials at common law). However, little empirical research has investigated the effects of cross-examination questions on children's reports of neutral and transgressive events. To examine these effects a laboratory-based study was conducted.
One hundred and twenty kindergarten (M = 6 years) and grade 2 (M = 8 years) students participated individually in a staged event. Children witnessed an adult commit a transgression and were then interviewed twice about it. Children first underwent a direct-examination interview followed by either a direct- or cross-examination interview.
Children's reports of neutral events were significantly less accurate in Interview 2 cross-examination, than they were in Interview 1 direct-examination, whereas children interviewed twice with direct-examination were equally accurate in Interviews 1 and 2. Furthermore, children whose second interview involved cross-examination were less accurate in their reports of neutral events than were children whose second interview was a direct examination. Cross-examination also affected some children's disclosures of a witnessed transgression. More of the older children provided truthful disclosures of the transgression in the initial direct examination compared with the Interview 2 cross-examination.
Findings suggest that cross-examination as used in this study may not be the most effective procedure for eliciting truthful testimony for both neutral and transgressive events from children aged between 5 and 8 years.
The search for objective markers of a true versus false confession is an important but under-researched area. In the first study of its kind, we examined the utility of expressions of remorse as a marker of a true compared with a false oral versus written confession.
We elicited both written and oral false confessional statements and true accounts from 85 participants.
Results showed that the proportion of remorseful words that participants produced was significantly higher in their true compared with their false confessions, in both oral and written confession modalities. Furthermore, an acoustic analysis of oral confessions revealed that participants' remorseful utterances were significantly louder in their true compared with their false confessions.
These findings suggest that the presence and nature of remorseful utterances in oral and written statements are useful in the identification of true versus false confessions.
The present study investigated whether mock jurors judged the coerciveness of an interrogation differently based on whether or not a confession led to the discovery of corroborating evidence. Specifically, we examined whether jurors were likely to overlook tactics they would otherwise find objectionable if they were confident that the defendant was guilty.
A 2 × 2 between-subjects design was used to examine the influence of interrogation techniques (low pressure or high pressure) and level of guilt corroboration (uncorroborated or corroborated) on mock jurors' verdicts and ratings of an interrogation. Two hundred and two jury-eligible participants read a case summary, watched a realistic video recording of an interrogation that included a confession, and read prosecution and defence closing arguments. Participants then decided on a verdict and answered a series of questions about the interrogation and confession.
The interrogation was rated as significantly less coercive when the confession led to the discovery of corroborating evidence than when corroborating evidence was not found. Furthermore, participants who viewed a high-pressure interrogation rated it as less coercive when the confession was corroborated by additional evidence than when it was not. There was no difference between the corroborated and uncorroborated conditions for the low-pressure interrogation.
The present findings support the idea that more extreme tactics may be considered less coercive when they produce a greater certainty that the defendant is guilty. The results can be explained in terms of self-presentation theories.
To compare characteristics of sex offenders with an intellectual disability (ID) referred to community-based and different levels of secure services. To identify those characteristics, which predict referrals to community-based or secure services.
A total of 131 cases of sex offenders with ID referred to an ID service in a number of health board regions in the UK in 2002 (and 2003 for high secure referrals) were reviewed. Data were collected on demographic information, ethnicity, level of learning disability, possible medical diagnoses, psychiatric diagnoses, abuse experienced in childhood, living circumstances, employment or occupation, referring agent, legal status on day of referral, index behaviour, age at time of index behaviour, charges, legal status on day of index behaviour, previous problematic behaviour, and previous offending. Data were entered into a binomial logistic regression model in an attempt to predict the referrals to community-based services.
Numerous characteristics were found to be associated with the different levels of service security, but only two predictor variables retained a strong association with community or secure referrals in the model. The likelihood of the offender being referred to a community-based service increased if they were based in the community at the time of the index behaviour and decreased as the diversity of problematic behaviour exhibited by the offenders increased.
Given the relatively high proportion of referrals to community-based services and the fact that many of these referrals had a complicated offence history, it is important that community-based services are properly equipped and resourced to deal with such referrals. In particular, the case is made that services for sexual offenders with ID at all levels of security should at least have available interventions directed at aggression.
It is well established that not all investigative interviewers adhere to ‘best-practice’ interview guidelines (i.e., the use of open-ended questions) when interviewing child witnesses about abuse. However, little research has examined the sub skills associated with open question usage. In this article, we examined the association between investigative interviewers' ability to identify various types of questions and adherence to open-ended questions in a standardized mock interview. Study 1, incorporating 27 trainee police interviewers, revealed positive associations between open-ended question usage and two tasks; a recognition task where trainees used a structured protocol to guide their response and a recall task where they generated examples of open-ended questions from memory. In Study 2, incorporating a more heterogeneous sample of 40 professionals and a different training format and range of tests, positive relationships between interviewers' identification of questions and adherence to best-practice interviewing was consistently revealed. A measure of interviewer knowledge about what constitutes best-practice investigative (as opposed to knowledge of question types) showed no association with interviewer performance. The implications of these findings for interviewer training programs are discussed.
]]>The process model presented here was developed as part of safety seminars to help participants recognize criminal preferences and tactics.
The assessing phase of the model identifies circumstances and target characteristics that thieves find favourable. The approaching phase identifies manipulative and deceptive tactics that thieves use to bait, distract, and control their targets.
Theft is often the end result of a dynamic set of highly visible, purposeful, and progressively aggressive interactions between criminals and their targets.
While many thieves are highly skilled, individuals can reduce their risk of selection by limiting criminal opportunity and accessibility. Those targets that identify and respond promptly and effectively to criminal approaches may cause the thieves to withdraw.
This study examined the effects of note taking on juror recall of trial information and, specifically, investigated whether providing mock jurors with a pre-structured Trial-Ordered Notebook (TON) was more beneficial for subsequent recall than freestyle note taking by jurors. Previous research has demonstrated some benefits of freestyle note taking. However, drawing on theories relating to note taking developed in educational contexts, we predicted that providing jurors with a note taking aid designed to follow the trial structure would facilitate enhanced performance on a subsequent recall task.
Community-based participants served as mock jurors in a criminal trial and were permitted to take notes during the trial, using either the structured TON or plain paper (‘freestyle’ note taking) although participants in a control condition were not permitted to take notes. After watching the trial video, all participants reached an individual verdict and responded to cued recall questions concerning details of the trial.
Mock jurors using the TON to take notes correctly recorded significantly more legally relevant details during the trial and reported more correct information in the post-trial recall task than participants who took unaided notes (or those who made no notes at all). TON participants also reported more relevant legal information correctly in the recall task and evaluated their experience of note taking more positively than those in the free note taking condition.
The findings are discussed in relation to differences in individual experience of taking notes and the benefits that may accrue from an innovative juror aid such as the Trial-Ordered Notebook.
Current knowledge suggests that the psychopathy construct is multifaceted in nature, and reflects different underlying pathological mechanisms, including neurobiological dysfunction and maladaptive cognitions. Although many contemporary studies focus on neurobiological aspects of psychopathy, few have addressed the maladaptive cognitions.
In this study, we examined facets of Hare's psychopathy construct in terms of their associations with maladaptive cognitions, as defined by Young's cognitive theory of Early Maladaptive Schemas (EMS). Personality disordered offenders (N = 124) were assessed with the PCL-R and the Young Schema Questionnaire.
The PCL-R Lifestyle and Antisocial Facets were significantly related to EMS Mistrust/Abuse and Insufficient Self-Control, consistent with our hypotheses, and were significantly, but negatively, related to EMS Subjugation. Also as hypothesized, EMS showed no associations with the PCL-R Affective and Interpersonal facets. Contrary to our expectation, EMS did not predict institutional violence.
Our findings suggest that schemas relating to mistrust, inadequate self-control/low frustration tolerance, and autonomy/dominance, play a role in the impulsive lifestyle and antisocial behaviour features of psychopathy. Treatments that focus on ameliorating these schemas may lead to better outcomes in psychopathic offenders.
The purpose of this research was to determine if child eyewitnesses are seen as more or less credible compared with older eyewitnesses and to determine whether the number of descriptive errors made while recalling the appearance of a perpetrator has an influence on perceived credibility of the witness. Mock jurors were given a mock trial that presented a positive identification by an eyewitness where age of the eyewitness (4-, 12-, 20-year-old) and the number of perpetrator descriptor errors (i.e., 0, 3, 6) made by the eyewitness were manipulated. Perceived levels of credibility, accuracy, and determinations of guilt were compared using a self-report questionnaire. Results support the hypothesis that mock jurors perceive eyewitnesses who make fewer errors in descriptions with more integrity (i.e., more credible, reliable, and accurate) and perceive the evidence presented by them (i.e., description of perpetrator and description of events) as more reliable. Overall, adult eyewitnesses are perceived with more integrity than child eyewitnesses.
]]>To our knowledge this was the first experiment that examined response trends over the course of a Symptom Validity Test (SVT). We predicted that the guilty group would avoid being associated with potentially incriminating information, and that they would do this more at the beginning of the test than towards the end.
The 86 participants of the guilty group carried out an illegal activity in a room and were instructed to deny having been in that room in a subsequent interview. The 82 innocent participants had never been in that particular room. During the interview the guilty and innocent groups were exposed to a 12-item SVT.
As predicted, the guilty participants selected fewer correct (crime related) items than innocents, and this tendency to avoid selecting the correct items was the strongest during the first half of the SVT. The implications of the findings for using an SVT in real life are discussed.
We examined the hypothesis that liars will report their activities strategically and will, if possible, avoid mentioning details that can be verified by the investigator.
A total of 38 participants wrote a statement in which they told the truth or lied about their activities during a recent 30-minute period. Two coders counted the frequency of occurrence of details that can be verified and that cannot be verified.
Liars, compared with truth tellers, included fewer details that can be verified and an equal number of details that cannot be verified in their statement, and the ratio between verifiable and unverifiable details was smaller in liars compared with truth tellers. High percentages of truth tellers and liars were classified correctly based on the frequency counting of verifiable details (79%) or the ratio between verifiable and unverifiable details (71%). Those percentages were higher than the percentage that could be classified correctly (63%) based on verifiable and unverifiable detail combined. We compared our verifiability approach with other theoretical approaches as to why differences in detail between truth tellers and liars emerge.
Offence paralleling behaviour (OPB) is a relatively new concept that emphasizes the assessment and modification of behavioural patterns that parallel criminal offending. Extant empirical research into OPB has typically focussed on the similarity between aggressive behaviours observed in custody and violent index offences perpetrated in the community; the results of these studies have been inconsistent, with the degree of similarity varying within subjects and across studies; (Daffern, Howells, Stacey, Hogue, & Mooney, 2008; Daffern, Howells, Mannion, & Tonkin, 2009). The aim of this study was to establish the level of similarity between OPB predictions and actual in-patient aggressive behaviours.
This prospective pilot study used a novel practice algorithm (Jones, 2010a) to develop a reference formulation from which OPBs and Pro-social alternate behaviours (PABs), the pro-social variants of OPBs, were predicted. Participants were five mentally disordered offenders resident in a UK medium secure psychiatric unit. Following generation of a reference formulation and OPB and PAB predictions the participants were monitored for 6 months. The degree of similarity between predicted and actual OPBs and PABs was calculated using Jaccard's coefficient.
Results indicated considerable similarity between matched (pairing predictions and their corresponding actual behaviours) OPBs, which were also more similar than random pairs (pairing randomly selected predictions and aggressive behaviours).
This study revealed the existence of OPB in mentally disordered offenders and has provided the first test of a novel practice algorithm, revealing its potential to guide OPB formulations.
It is hypothesized that individuals who play different roles in terrorist organizations will have different psychological processes underlying their activities. An innovative examination of the personal construct systems of terrorists explored this. As part of a larger study, three individuals convicted of Islamic-related terrorist violence in India were interviewed using a semi-structured life narrative procedure enhanced by a Repertory Grid (Kelly, 1955/1991). One was a senior leader of a terrorist group, one a subordinate, the third a person who planted a bomb without full knowledge of the larger design he was part of. Principal component analyses of these grids informed by comments from the life narratives were used to elaborate each man's conceptual system and how it related to his commitment to violence. Important differences among the three individuals' in their construct systems were found. This demonstrated that the forms of Jihadi commitment is embedded in the individual's personal construct system. So, although these three case studies can only be taken as providing indicative results, they do point to aspects of construct systems that reveal the potential for disengagement, being most likely present in the lower echelons of terrorist organizations. Those who are unable to reconstrue themselves as having a non-terrorist future are unlikely to disengage. This is probably typical of those who lead these organizations. The results therefore contribute to the growing literature arguing for significant differences in terrorists' understanding of themselves and their roles and provide an original methodology for assessing a person's potential for deradicalization.
]]>Deliberate self-harming behaviour is more prevalent within the prison environment than in community samples, with those in the first weeks of imprisonment at greatest risk. Research in this area has been largely atheoretical and a unifying model may improve the predictability of assessment and the development of intervention approaches. This study applied William and Pollock's (2001) Cry of Pain model as the theoretical process of deliberate self-harm in the early stages of imprisonment.
A prospective study of new arrivals at an adult male prison. Participants (n = 181) completed questionnaires and it was hypothesized that the factors derived from the model (perceived stress, defeat, entrapment, and absence of rescue factors) would be predictive of future deliberate self-harm. Prisoners with active psychosis and non-English speakers were excluded. All participants were followed up for 4 months for instances of self-harm. Eighteen participants engaged in self-harm during this period.
The Cry of Pain model was supported in the analysis. Hierarchical binary logistic regression confirmed that all features of the model were supported as predictive of future self-harm in prison, even after controlling for previous self-harm, depression, and hopelessness.
The Cry of Pain model is supported as a predictive model for deliberate self-harm in prison. Suggestions are offered as to the impact on assessment and intervention directions in prison.
Parole board members (PBMs) decide whether to release inmates on parole. Decisions may be affected by in-group bias or stereotypes regarding religion and race. Two experiments investigated whether religious conversions/secular lifestyle changes and race affect mock PBMs' release decisions, emotions, and perceptions. Mock PBMs read a case file of an inmate who was eligible for parole and decided whether to grant parole. Study 1 manipulated whether the inmate had converted to Christianity or Islam, had a secular lifestyle change, or had no lifestyle change. Study 2 also varied race (African American or Caucasian). Race was not a significant factor, possibly because the manipulation was not strong enough to influence participants or because participants did not want to appear racist. Conversions to Islam and Christianity impacted the parole decision, and effects were mediated by believability of the conversion. Secular lifestyle changes affected release decisions and were mediated by perceptions of the inmate and beliefs about his likelihood of recidivism. Such inmates were the most likely to be released and were perceived most positively; their conversions were the most believable. Inmates who made no changes were perceived least positively, indicating that any lifestyle change is better than none. Importantly, no bias towards either religion (Islam, Christianity) was found. Furthermore, conversion type affected how scared PBMs were of the inmate, but this fear did not impact release decisions.
]]>In this experiment we examined whether an unanticipated spatial task could increase the differences between lying and truth telling groups of adolescents. In addition, we explored whether there are some elements of such a spatial task that elicit more diagnostic cues to deception than others.
In groups of three, adolescents (N = 150, aged 13–14) either experienced (‘truth tellers’) or imagined (‘liars’) an event. In subsequent individual interviews, the adolescents were asked to provide both a general verbal description of the event (the anticipated task), and a spatial description by making marks on a sketch (the unanticipated task). Next, adults (N = 200) rated the degree of consistency between either the general descriptions or the spatial descriptions from the adolescents in each triad.
The differences between liars and truth tellers were larger for the spatial markings (the unanticipated task) than for the general verbal descriptions (the anticipated task). Importantly, as predicted, the difference between lying and truth-telling triads was most manifest for markings of salient (vs. non-salient) aspects of the event.
The results suggests that (a) using spatial tasks may be a useful tool for detecting deception in adolescents, but that (b) the assessment of credibility should only draw on the salient aspects of the unanticipated spatial task.
The current study seeks to expand the deception detection literature by using real-world pre-interrogative interviews to discern differences in how novices (students) versus experts (police officers) make judgments about truths and lies.
Videotapes of routine traffic stops depicting either liars (incriminating evidence was found in the car) or truth-tellers (no evidence was found in the car) were edited so the final car search was cut out. Novices and experts watched the tapes and made truth or lie judgments about the subject in each video.
Overall accuracy of detecting truths and lies for students was 63%, while overall accuracy for police was 60%. The difference between the groups was not significant. These results were then compared with previously published rates (Bond & DePaulo, 2006). Students' overall accuracy rates in this study were higher than previously published accuracy rates. However, police officers' accuracy rates were not higher than previously published accuracy rates.
Realistic stimulus materials seem to increase overall accuracy rates for students. However, despite differences in experience, there was no difference between novice and expert truth and lie accuracy.
Purpose. The aim of this study is to propose and test a comprehensive model of compliance with environmental law (EL). The legal and psychosocial peculiarities of environmental transgressions suggest that the nature and relative impact of the determinants of ordinary people's compliance with EL may differ from those involved in compliance with ordinary laws.
Method. A total of 439 university students of Law, Psychology, Pedagogy, and Speech Therapy majors, aged between 18 and 58, took part in the study. Participants answered a questionnaire assessing illegal anti-ecological behaviour (IAEB), legal-sanction-related variables, injunctive and prescriptive social norms, personal norms, and sustainability attitudes. The data from all participants were processed using structural equation analysis to test the hypothesized model.
Results. The main antecedents of IAEB are personal norms and, to a lesser extent, sustainability attitudes and descriptive social norms. Personal norms on IAEB are influenced by injunctive social norms and also by sustainability attitudes. Legal-sanction-related variables affect personal norms and IAEB, but only by indirectly influencing social norms.
Conclusions. Although legal-sanction-related variables and norms have been traditionally used to explain illegal behaviour, the legal and psychosocial peculiarities of IAEB are reflected in the process of compliance with environmental protection laws. Results allow for a refinement of the relationship between personal and social norms, showing that the main determinants of IAEB is personal norm, but that descriptive social norms also directly affect behaviour, and that sustainability attitudes play an unquestionable role in compliance with ELs.
Background. We examined the effect of a second interviewer's demeanour on cues to deception. We predicted that a supportive demeanour would be the most beneficial for eliciting verbal cues to deceit, as it would encourage truth tellers, but not liars, to say more. In addition, we examined the extent to which interviewees deliberately made eye contact with the interviewers. Liars take their credibility less for granted than truth tellers, and therefore have a greater drive to be convincing. Liars are thus more likely to monitor the interviewer to determine if the interviewer appears to believe them.
Method. Participants appeared before two interviewers: the first asked all the questions and the second remained silent. The second interviewer exhibited either a supportive, neutral, or a suspicious demeanour.
Results. Truth tellers provided significantly more detail than liars, but only in the supportive second interviewer condition. The effect of a second interviewer's demeanour on detail was perhaps remarkable given that the interviewees hardly looked at the second interviewer (less than 10% of the time). Liars displayed more deliberate eye contact (with the first interviewer) than truth tellers did.
Conclusions. A supportive second interviewer has a positive effect on interviewing. We discuss this finding in the wider contexts of investigative interviewing and interviewing to detect deception.
Purpose. Ward (2000) has hypothesized that sexual offenders hold offence supportive implicit theories (ITs) or schemata that function to facilitate or maintain offending behaviour. The present research aimed to determine whether rape-prone men hold the same offence supportive ITs as those that have been identified in rapists.
Method. This study adopted both an explicit measure of ITs and also an implicit measure of ITs (an interpretative bias task). In the implicit task, participants viewed ambiguous stimuli (one-sentence statements) that may be interpreted in either a rape-supportive manner, or a non-rape-supportive manner. Participant's interpretation of the stimuli was assessed via a memory recognition task. We predicted that men higher on proclivity to rape – who presumably hold strong mental representations of rape-supportive themes – would be more likely to interpret stimuli in a rape-supportive manner relative to non-rape-supportive stimuli compared to men lower on rape proclivity.
Results. Using multiple regression to determine the relative contributions of both explicit and implicit measures for predicting rape proclivity, we found that only the explicit, self-report questionnaire and one of the ITs, ‘women are sex objects’ (as measured by the interpretative bias task), was significantly related to a person's rape proclivity score.
Conclusions. This result indicates that rape-prone men may not share the same beliefs as convicted rapists, which could be a key difference between men at risk of offending, and those who have been convicted of a sexual offence.
Purpose. Showups are common, yet little research has investigated the biasing factors that may influence showup identifications. We investigated the effects of cross-race conditions and clothing bias on showup identification decisions. Additionally, we explored identification decisions made in a subsequent lineup dependent on race, clothing, and showup-target-presence.
Methods. Participants watched a mock crime and were presented with a showup in which suspect race, target-presence, and the clothing worn by the suspect were varied. Following a delay, participants viewed a target-present or -absent lineup and were asked to make a second identification decision.
Results. Presentation of the suspect in the clothing worn by the perpetrator increased choosing rates in both own-race and other-race conditions. Despite this, differential patterns of decision response latencies indicated that eyewitnesses may use clothing information differently when making own-race compared to other-race identification decisions. No evidence for an own-race bias in showup identifications was found; however, other-race lineup identifications were less accurate than own-race lineup identifications. Further, participants in own-race and other-race conditions differed in the extent to which they were affected by multiple identification procedures. Viewing an own-race innocent suspect in a showup increased subsequent false lineup identifications, while choosing the innocent suspect from the showup was necessary to increase false lineup identifications in other-race conditions.
Conclusions. Different situational factors may affect the identification accuracy of eyewitnesses in own-race and other-race conditions for both showup and lineup procedures. Particular caution is advised when showups are clothing-biased and multiple identification procedures are used.
Purpose. The release on licence of prisoners who have committed serious violent and/or sexual offences requires rigorous risk assessment and risk management. This study evaluates the ADViSOR project, designed to examine the contribution of prison behaviour monitoring to community supervision of a sample of the highest risk offenders released in England and Wales under Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA).
Method. The offence-related behaviour of a total group (n= 25) of MAPPA prisoners in one prison, due for release in the following year to two adjacent probation trust areas, was monitored. Their behaviours in the community were followed up for 1 year. A comparison group (n= 36) was formed of the total number of MAPPA prisoners released from prisons nationally to the same two probation trusts.
Results. The frequencies of ADViSOR negative behaviours in prison and the community were strongly correlated, rs (25) = .55, p= .004, as were positive behaviours, rs (25) = .56, p= .004. No statistically significant correlations were found either under usual MAPPA processes in the ADViSOR prison or comparison group prisons. The frequency of ADViSOR negative behaviours statistically significantly predicted, with 92% accuracy, the offenders who would reoffend or be recalled to prison (n= 8). Statistically significant similarities in types of behaviour were also identified.
Conclusion. Results are discussed in terms of the contribution of behavioural monitoring to risk prediction with high-risk offenders, consistency of cross-situational behaviours, and implications for policy and practice.
Purpose. Line-up administrators’ expectations have been shown to influence eyewitnesses’ identification decisions. Expectations may also influence administrators’ willingness to record witnesses’ decisions as positive identifications.
Methods. Single- and double-blind participant administrators presented a line-up to a confederate witness, who identified either the suspect or a filler.
Results. A hierarchical log-linear analysis revealed an interaction effect of blindness and witness choice on participants’ recording of the identification: Single-blind administrators were more likely to record the confederate's choice as a positive identification when the witness chose the suspect (vs. a filler), whereas double-blind administrators’ records were not influenced by the witness's choice. An interaction between blindness and witness choice also emerged for participant administrators’ witness evaluations. Single-blind administrators rated confederates who chose a filler as significantly less credible than those who chose a suspect; double-blind administrators’ ratings were consistent across photo selection.
Conclusions. Blindness influenced line-up administrators’ record of line-up outcomes. These results add to the growing body of research supporting the use of double-blind line-up administration.
Purpose. There is major disagreement about the existence of individual differences in deception detection or naturally gifted detection ‘wizards’ (see O'Sullivan & Ekman, 2004 vs. Bond & Uysal, 2007). This study aimed to elucidate the role of a specific, and seemingly relevant individual difference – emotional intelligence (EI) and its subcomponents – in detecting high-stakes, emotional deception.
Methods. Participants (N= 116) viewed a sample of 20 international videos of individuals emotionally pleading for the safe return of their missing family member, half of whom were responsible for the missing person's disappearance/murder. Participants judged whether the pleas were honest or deceptive, provided confidence ratings, reported the cues they utilized, and rated their emotional response to each plea.
Results. EI was associated with overconfidence in assessing the sincerity of the pleas and greater self-reported sympathetic feelings to deceptive targets (enhanced gullibility). Although total EI was not associated with discrimination of truths and lies, the ability to perceive and express emotion (a component of EI), specifically, was negatively related to detecting deceptive targets (lower sensitivity [d′]). Combined, these patterns contributed negatively to the ability to spot emotional lies.
Conclusions. These findings collectively suggest that features of EI, and subsequent decision-making processes, paradoxically may impair one's ability to detect deceit.
Purpose. Do criminal offenders discount future rewards more rapidly than non-offenders? Theories of criminality assume that impulsivity is a key predictor of offending and suggest an affirmative answer, but there are no prior relevant studies with adult offenders and the only previous study with juveniles failed to find that offenders discounted delayed rewards more steeply than controls (Wilson & Daly, 2006).
Method. We measured rates of delay discounting for adult offenders incarcerated in two medium-security facilities in New Zealand (n= 63) and non-offender controls (n= 70) using a questionnaire which asked participants to nominate an indifference point – an amount of money to be received after a delay that was equal in value to an immediate amount – for immediate rewards varying from $500 to $4,000. Indifference points were converted to annual discounting rates. Self-reported measures of alcohol and drug abuse were also obtained.
Results. Offenders discounted future rewards substantially more than non-offenders, and rates varied systematically with amount and delay for both groups, consistent with previous research. The difference in delay discounting between offenders and controls remained significant after controlling for self-reported drug and alcohol use. There were no significant gender differences.
Conclusions. These results suggest that offenders have a deficit in delay discounting, likely appearing in late adolescence or early adulthood, which may lead them to make suboptimal choices.
Purpose. Supporting Offenders through Restoration Inside (SORI) is a programme that aims to: increase victim empathy in offenders; motivate offenders to change their offending behaviour; and to take personal responsibility for the harm that he has caused. A 5-day course based on the SORI principles has been piloted across seven prison sites in the UK. The aim of the study reported here was to evaluate the effectiveness of the programme across these sites.
Methods. Three psychometric questionnaires [Victim Concerns, Locus of Control, and Stages of Change (SoC) scales] were administered to the participants immediately before and after the programme had taken place (data were available for 131 participants for the Victim Concern Scale, 82 participants for the Locus of Control measure, and 96 participants for the SoC questionnaire). These psychometric measures were the primary research outcome. Statistical analyses were employed to assess whether any changes had been effected by the programme.
Results. The results of this study found that: participants had an enhanced victim concern for all types of victims, were more motivated to change their offending behaviours, and were more willing to take responsibility for their actions, after completion of the course. No change was found in terms of participants seeing themselves as being more in control of their actions/environment.
Conclusions. The results lend support for the notion that the 5-day SORI course is effective in increasing participants’ levels of victim concern and motivation to change, while not really impacting upon levels of ownership for one's ownership for one's actions. Suggestions for future research and limitations of the study are discussed in the paper.
Purpose. Although forensic services are often regarded as highly stressful environments, there has been a surprising lack of research into the phenomena of occupational stress among forensic health care professionals (FHCP) in the United Kingdom. This study investigated stress, coping, and psychological well-being among FHCP employed within inpatient settings.
Methods. One hundred and thirty-five FHCP were recruited from four Medium Secure Units in the United Kingdom. A postal research pack was used to collect background information and measures of psychological well-being, burnout, occupational stress, work satisfaction, and coping.
Results. The study found that a substantial proportion of FHCP experienced elevated levels of occupational stress and psychological distress, while moderate levels of burnout were demonstrated in terms of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment. The findings confirmed that FHCP utilized a range of problem-focused (e.g., positive), emotion-focused (e.g., religious, negative, and supported), and palliative coping strategies (e.g., excessive smoking and drinking).
Conclusions. The results appeared to support the commonly held assertion that forensic services are an inherently stressful and dangerous working environment, which can cause FHCP to experience marked levels of psychological distress, burnout, and occupational stress.
Purpose. Interrogative suggestibility, as measured by the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scales (GSS), is an independent form of suggestibility arising in the forensic/legal context. So far, an unresolved issue that may have different implications when measuring suggestibility is to what extent the scales measure internalization of suggested materials or just compliance with the interrogator.
Methods. Internalization of suggested materials and compliance were here measured using a source identification task. In Experiment 1, participants were administered the GSS2 and immediately afterwards asked to perform the source identification task on the items presented in the scale. In Experiment 2, half of the participants were administered the source identification task immediately and half after a 24-hr delay.
Results. In both experiments a higher proportion of compliant responses were found. Participants internalized more suggested information after questioning (Yield 1) and made more compliant responses after negative feedback (Shift). In Experiment 2, participants in the delayed condition internalized less material than those in the immediate condition.
Conclusions: Different processes appear to underlie Yield 1 and Shift scores in the GSS2. The former may include both internalization of suggested materials and compliance, while the second appears to be mostly due to compliance with the interrogator. When administering the GSS2 in a forensic/legal context as vulnerability predictor for making false confessions, or proneness to develop false memories through the internalization of suggested material, including a source identification task may provide additional information on the type of coping style and memory characteristics of the examinee.
Purpose. Research on real-life suspect interviews shows that disclosure of evidence is a very common tactic and that it occurs in all phases of the interview. It is therefore remarkable that there is hardly any research on the effectiveness of different disclosure tactics. The aim of this study was to examine the effects of three different disclosure tactics: presenting the evidence early and two versions of the Strategic Use of Evidence (SUE) technique.
Methods. For the SUE-Basic technique (SUE-B), the evidence was disclosed late in the interview. For the SUE-Incremental technique (SUE-I), we used a stepwise disclosure tactic derived from the so-called Evidence Framing Matrix. The tactic consists of revealing evidence of increasing strength and precision. A mock-theft scenario was employed with 195 participants who were randomly allocated to one of six conditions: guilty or innocent suspects were interviewed with one of the three techniques. Two measures of inconsistency were used as dependent variables: statement-evidence inconsistency and the newly developed within-statement inconsistency.
Results. By interviewing with SUE-I, strong cues to deception were elicited, especially for the statement-evidence inconsistency variable. For the SUE-B, significant but smaller differences between guilty and innocent suspects were obtained.
Conclusions. We found that both when and how the evidence was disclosed moderated the effectiveness of disclosure. With respect to when, it was more effective to disclose the evidence late (vs. early), and with respect to how, it was more effective to disclose the evidence in a stepwise (vs. direct) manner. The tactical aspects of evidence disclosure are discussed.
Purpose. To examine whether choice blindness occurs for auditory stimuli, namely voices.
Methods. One hundred participants listened to three pairs of voices and had to decide each time which one they found more sympathetic or sounded more criminal. After they made a choice, participants were presented with the chosen voice again and had to match it to a face. However, during the second trial, participants were actually presented with the voice they had previously not chosen.
Results. Only 19% of the participants detected this change concurrently, an additional 10% detected it retrospectively. This indicates that choice blindness transfers to auditory stimuli. Whether participants had previously evaluated sympathy or criminality of the voices had no effect on choice blindness.
Conclusions. The study shows that choice blindness is a robust phenomenon that can also be elicited when auditory stimuli are employed. Implications for earwitness testimony and expert witnesses in the context of forensic speech analysis are discussed.
Purpose. Interrogative suggestibility has been shown to vary according to cognitive and personality factors and if reliably measured may predict performance in real forensic interviews. It is therefore of both theoretical and practical interest to identify which psychological factors are most closely related to suggestible responding. This study examines the extent to which individual differences in negative emotional states predict performance on a measure of interrogative suggestibility and also tests the assumption that self-reports of negative life events are associated with suggestibility.
Method. A non-clinical sample (N= 80) of participants was administered the brief form of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS-21), the Life Experiences Survey (LES), and the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale (GSS-1).
Results. Negative emotional states were found to correlate positively, although moderately, with all of the suggestibility measures. Multiple regression analyses found significant predictive models emerged for Yield 1, Yield 2, and Total Suggestibility. Each of these predicted a small proportion of the variance. Negative life event impact ratings were not associated with interrogative suggestibility.
Conclusions. The findings suggest that brief self-report measures of negative emotional states are limited as predictors of interrogative suggestibility. The results also call into question the predictive utility of traditional checklist measures of life adversity for forensic purposes.
Purpose. The blaming of rape victims can cause secondary victimization. It is of importance to investigate factor that might lead to victim blaming. This study investigated the effect of belief in a just world (BJW), gender of participant, and level of relationship closeness between victim and perpetrator on attributions of both victim and perpetrator blame.
Methods. In a between-subjects experiment, a community sample (N= 166) answered questions of victim blame and perpetrator blame after reading one of four scenarios, each depicting a different level of relationship between the victim and the perpetrator (strangers, acquaintances, dating, or married).
Results. Overall, high levels of perpetrator blame and low levels of victim blame were found. Contrary to previous research, the victim of a stranger rape was blamed more than when the perpetrator was known to the victim. Furthermore, participants high on BJW attributed higher levels of victim blame and lower levels of perpetrator blame. Specifically, female participants high on BJW attributed most blame to a victim of stranger rape.
Conclusions. In conclusion, BJW was a significant predictor of blame attributions, and relationship type is a variable that merits further research.
Purpose. The study extends research by Santtila et al. (2008) by investigating the effectiveness of linking cases of serial homicide using behavioural patterns of offenders, analysed through Bayesian reasoning. The study also investigates the informative value of individual behavioural variables in the linking process.
Methods. Offender behaviour was coded from official documents relating to 116 solved homicide cases belonging to 19 separate series. The basis of the linkage analyses was 92 behaviours coded as present or absent in the case based on investigator observations on the crime scene. We developed a Bayesian method for linking crime cases and judged its accuracy using cross-validation. We explored the information added by individual behavioural variables, first, by testing if the variable represented purely noise with respect to classification, and second, by excluding variables from the original model, one by one, by choosing the behaviour that had the smallest effect on classification accuracy.
Results. The model achieved a classification accuracy of 83.6% whereas chance expectancy was 5.3%. In simulated scenarios of only one and two known cases in a series, the accuracy was 59.0 and 69.2%, respectively. No behavioural variable represented pure noise but the same level of accuracy was achieved by analysing a set of 15, as analysing all 92 variables.
Conclusion. The study illustrates the utility of analysing individual behavioural variables through Bayesian reasoning for crime linking. Feasible applied use of the approach is illustrated by the effectiveness of analysing a small set of carefully chosen variables.
Purpose. This study was designed to compare expert consultant trainers and less experienced, in-house trainers in providing basic training in motivational interviewing (MI) for juvenile corrections employees.
Methods. Trainees (n= 1,552) attended a 3-day workshop administered by either a member of the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers (MINT) or a corrections staff member who had been trained by a MINT trainer.
Results. Pre- to post-test MI knowledge and skill gains did not vary between MINT expert and internal trainers, and increased for both groups. MINT trainees were more motivated to learn MI and expected it to be more effective in their work compared with those trained by corrections staff. MINT trainers were perceived as more knowledgeable about the topic, whereas corrections staff trainers were rated as better at utilizing handouts and visual aids. The groups did not differ on other measures of trainee satisfaction.
Conclusions. These data suggest that a train-the-trainers model, in which expert consultants provide initial trainings to develop a pool of staff to provide subsequent trainings, may be as effective as a model that relies exclusively on expert trainers.
Purpose. The present research investigated the relationship between underlying justice and vengeance motivations and sentencing recommendations made by expert clinicians, semi-experts, and lay-people. It was hypothesized that the semi-experts would recommend significantly different sentence lengths from those recommended by the expert and lay-person groups, in line with previous research findings. It was also hypothesized that justice and vengeance motivations would be related to punitive sentencing recommendations, and that these would not be the same across the three levels of expertise.
Method. An independent groups design was utilized in the main analysis, with participants belonging to three distinct levels of clinical experience (experts, semi-experts, and lay-people). A questionnaire was administered, with participants being measured on levels of justice and vengeance motivations, and asked to recommend appropriate sentence lengths based on nine separate crime-scenarios. These covariables were correlated and the correlation coefficients were compared across the three levels of expertise.
Results. The former hypothesis was not upheld. Findings do, however, support the latter hypothesis, with the key finding indicating that for both justice and vengeance motivations in punitive judgement, it is the lay-participants who appear distinct from the experts and semi-experts.
Conclusions. The current findings emphasize that while expert and lay-person judgements may often appear to be the same, different processes and motivations underlying clinical judgements are occurring at the different stages of expertise. With the differences in the relationships between justice and vengeance motivations and judgements found in the current research, it is argued that expert and lay judgements that appear to be the same are, in fact, distinguishable and are related to quite different underlying motivations and decision-making processes.
Purpose. Victims of rape are often attributed a certain amount of responsibility, which is often translated into reduced victim credibility and fewer convictions in the courtroom. The purpose of the present study was to apply Weiner's attribution model to the literature on rape blame to understand why victim blame impacts credibility and verdict. Weiner's model posits that perceptions of a target's responsibility will lead to less sympathy and therefore reduced willingness to help the target. In line with this model, it was hypothesized that sympathy for a rape victim mediates the relationship between victim responsibility and: (a) willingness to help the victim, (b) credibility, and (c) verdict.
Methods. Participants read a 1,000-word transcript of a rape trial and made judgements regarding the victim's responsibility for the rape, sympathy for the victim, willingness to help the victim, perceived witness credibility, and verdict. The victim's responsibility for the rape was manipulated between subjects.
Results. The hypotheses were supported: sympathy mediated the relationships between perceived victim responsibility and: (a) willingness to help the victim, (b) credibility, and (c) verdict. Using EQS, two models are presented (one hypothesized and one modified) that further delineate these relationships.
Conclusions. The present study applied a well-established theory in social psychology to further understand the relationship between victim blame, willingness to help, victim credibility, and verdict. In line with Weiner's attribution model, sympathy for the victim played a key role in those relationships. Implications of these findings for legal professionals are discussed.
Objectives. To document criminality, psychiatric difficulty, IQ, EQ, and EI amongst Irish, male juvenile detainees (Detainee Group). To compare their IQ, EQ, and EI to non-offending boys attending a child psychiatry clinic (Psychiatric Group) and boys without offending or psychiatric problems (Community Group). To compare psychiatric morbidity between the detainee and psychiatric groups.
Method. Criminality levels of 30 detainees were evaluated using official court charge sheets. Psychiatric status was assessed through structured clinical interview (DISC-IV); IQ through an individually administered IQ-scale (WASI); EQ using the BarOn EQi:Youth Version (EQi:YV); and EI using the MSCEIT: Youth Version – Research Edition (MSCEIT:YV-RE). IQ, EQ, and EI levels in the psychiatric and community groups were compared. Psychiatric morbidity between detainee and psychiatric groups were compared.
Results. A total of 335 crimes led to the detention of detainees. Eighty-three percent of detainees had a psychiatric disorder compared to 60% of young people in the psychiatric group. Detainees had 3.1 disorders each compared to 1.4 disorders in the psychiatric group. A total of 63.3% of detainees had an externalizing problem, 37.9% an internalizing problem, and 66.7% a substance dependency or use problem. A total of 21.4% of detainees had an IQ score below 70. The detainee and psychiatric groups had similar deficits in EI and significantly lower EI than the community groups.
Conclusions. Serious levels of criminality and psychiatric disorder exist amongst Irish detainees. They have significantly lower IQ than young people attending a psychiatry clinic and both share deficits in the ability to accurately identify emotions, use emotions to guide thought processes and to prioritize thinking and to effectively regulate emotions.
Purpose. Enhanced Thinking Skills (ETS) has been the most widely delivered cognitive skills programme in the prisons of England and Wales. Four quasi-experimental outcome studies have produced mixed results, a qualitative survey of offenders’ and facilitators’ experience on the programme proved useful in programme refinement, and a study using random allocation provided evidence that ETS impacts significantly and positively on short-term attitudinal change. This study aims to make a further contribution, using another methodology, to the accumulation of evidence.
Methods. This was a real-world evaluation, comparing the reconviction outcomes of the population of 17,047 ETS participants in custody from 2000 to 2005 with a national cohort of 19,792 prisoners released over the same period.
Results. Overall, prisoners who had attended ETS were found to reoffend at a rate 6.4 percentage points less than the cohort (rising to 7.5 percentage points for programme completers) and 9.5 percentage points less than the predicted rate. In all but the very highest risk group and in every sentence length band, the reoffending outcomes for ETS participants were significantly better than for prisoners in the cohort.
Conclusions. It is argued that this non-experimental methodology makes a contribution to the ‘What Works’ evidence.
Purpose. Critically important to effectively treating and managing sexual offending is the identification or validation of an offender's deviant sexual interests as the nature of their sexual interests is what demarcates repetitive sexual offenders from non-offenders and lower risk offenders. As an alternative or verification to self-report or phallometric measures, focus has turned to attention-based measures. These measures assess sexual content-induced delay (SCID), a specific form of attentional bias associated with preferred sexual content (images or text). Viewing time (VT) and choice reaction time (CRT) were developed and utilized to assess sexual interest via SCID (Geer & Bellard, 1996) and examine the measures’ clinical utility via estimates of sensitivity and specificity.
Method. Participants were 44 youth non-sexual offenders, 60 university students, and 22 adult sexual offenders. Differences between groups were examined on various sub-scores and receiver operator characteristic curves provided information on clinical utility.
Results. The VT and CRT measures produced subtest scores with high reliability in all three samples. There were significant differences in VT between the adult sexual offenders and the youth non-sexual offenders, but not between the youth non-sexual offenders and the university students. Some of the VT subtests demonstrated good clinical utility in their ability to differentiate adult heterosexual sexual offenders from non-sexual offenders (e.g., area under the curve (AUC) = 0.87 female mature images, 0.88 male child images). Interestingly, the VT and CRT measures provided significantly different results.
Conclusion. The results of this study provide further evidence that measures of SCID are accurate and are useful as indications of sexual interest. Differences between measures suggest, however, that further work is required.
Purpose. Many studies have reported that professionals have a limited understanding of mental capacity issues. Implementation (in England and Wales) of the Mental Capacity Act (MCA) (2005) presents a challenge to services. The aim of this study was to evaluate the extent to which National Health Service (NHS) staff benefited from attending MCA training courses.
Methods. Participants were assessed before and after MCA training using a structured interview, which included three scenarios describing mental capacity dilemmas, four vignettes addressing the role of the Independent Mental Capacity Advocate (IMCA), and 16 true–false items.
Results. Interview performance improved post-training, but this could be largely ascribed to an increased awareness of mental capacity issues, with minimal improvements in the knowledge that would be needed to undertake the assessments. Nine areas were identified where there remained significant gaps in participants’ knowledge post-training. Participants with experience of dealing with mental capacity issues performed better than those without.
Conclusions. The results suggest that methods other than formal training events may be needed to prepare health staff to implement new legislation.
Purpose. This study used statistical text analysis to examine the features of crime narratives provided by psychopathic homicide offenders. Psychopathic speech was predicted to reflect an instrumental/predatory world view, unique socioemotional needs, and a poverty of affect.
Methods. Two text analysis tools were used to examine the crime narratives of 14 psychopathic and 38 non-psychopathic homicide offenders. Psychopathy was determined using the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R). The Wmatrix linguistic analysis tool (Rayson, 2008) was used to examine parts of speech and semantic content while the Dictionary of Affect and Language (DAL) tool (Whissell & Dewson, 1986) was used to examine the emotional characteristics of the narratives.
Results. Psychopaths (relative to their counterparts) included more rational cause-and-effect descriptors (e.g., ‘because’, ‘since’), focused on material needs (food, drink, money), and contained fewer references to social needs (family, religion/spirituality). Psychopaths’ speech contained a higher frequency of disfluencies (‘uh’, ‘um’) indicating that describing such a powerful, ‘emotional’ event to another person was relatively difficult for them. Finally, psychopaths used more past tense and less present tense verbs in their narrative, indicating a greater psychological detachment from the incident, and their language was less emotionally intense and pleasant.
Conclusions. These language differences, presumably beyond conscious control, support the notion that psychopaths operate on a primitive but rational level.
Purpose. We examined whether language proficiency had an impact on lie detection.
Methods. We collected video footage of 30 targets who spoke English as their native or second language and who lied or told the truth about a transgression. Undergraduate students (N = 51) then judged the veracity of these 30 clips and indicated how confident they were in their ratings.
Results. Participants were more confident when judging native-language truth-tellers than second-language truth-tellers. In addition, participants were more likely to exhibit a truth-bias when observing native-language speakers, whereas they were more likely to exhibit a lie-bias when viewing second-language speakers.
Conclusions. Given the difficulties and biases associated with second-language lie detection, further research is needed.
Purpose. When eyewitnesses to crime receive feedback about their choice of a suspect from a line-up (or post-identification feedback), such information can substantially alter their recollections of the witnessing experience. This study examined whether feedback exerts similar effects on investigators’ recollections of a suspect's behaviours.
Methods. Participant-investigators received training on speech cues that they were told, when present in a speaker's account, signal either honesty or deception. After hearing a suspect's account of a theft, participants decided whether the suspect was lying or telling the truth. One-third of participants subsequently received immediate confirming feedback about their performance, while another third received disconfirming feedback. The remaining one-third of participants did not receive feedback about their decision. Finally, participants rated the frequencies of speech cues that they had been instructed to detect in the suspect's account.
Results. Disconfirming feedback significantly altered retrospective judgments about the characteristics of the suspect's account. Specifically, when told that the decision they made about the speaker's credibility was incorrect, participants judged the speaker as having exhibited fewer behaviours consistent with the credibility decision they had made, relative to those who either received no feedback or confirming feedback.
Conclusions. Biases in recollections of a suspect may have consequences in real-world interrogations wherein investigators assess credibility on the basis of numerous behavioural cues. Results are discussed in light of findings of post-identification feedback studies on eyewitnesses.
Purpose. Most past research on detecting deception has relied on the assumption that liars often fabricate a story to account for their whereabouts, whereas truth tellers simply recall an autobiographical memory. However, little research has examined whether liars, when free to choose the topic of their own reports, will actually choose to fabricate information rather than use a different strategy for constructing their lies. We describe two studies that evaluated liars’ strategies for selecting the content of their lies when given the freedom to choose whatever content they desired.
Method. In Studies 1 (N= 35) and 2 (N= 22) participants (a) described a truthful story in order to identify a salient event, then (b) lied about the event, and finally (c) described their strategies for choosing the content of the reported lies.
Results. Liars overwhelmingly chose to report a previously experienced event for the time period they were to be deceptive about (67% and 86% in Studies 1 and 2, respectively). The majority of discrete details reported were experienced, occurred relatively frequently, occurred relatively recently, and were typical or routine.
Conclusions. These findings have significant implications for the development of cognitive-based interventions for detecting deception. In particular, some methods of deception that rely on content analysis may be ineffective if liars choose to report previous experiences rather than outright fabrications.
Purpose. Confidence inflation in eyewitnesses obscures a useful cue to identification accuracy and affects evaluations of eyewitnesses (e.g., Bradfield & McQuiston, 2004; Jones, Williams, & Brewer, 2008). We examine whether sensitivity to confidence inflation evidence is enhanced by seeing a videotape of the identification procedure.
Methods. Participants (N= 131) watched a videotaped trial in which the witness's original confidence statement was presented as part of a previously recorded videotaped identification procedure or read by the witness at trial. In addition, the witness's identification confidence was either consistently high or low at the time of the identification and high at the trial (i.e., it was inflated).
Results. Significant interactions demonstrated that confidence inflation evidence factored into judgments of the eyewitness and defendant guilt more strongly in the videotape condition compared with the read condition.
Conclusions. The present results support recommendations to collect immediate confidence reports and videotape identification procedures. Using videotape evidence may help innocent defendants convince jurors that the eyewitness's identification is not accurate.
Purpose. Much crime is witnessed by more than one eyewitness, and witnesses may learn information about other witness's decisions throughout the identification and trial process. The objective of this paper was to investigate whether hearing about a co-witness's type of lineup decision and subsequent confidence level affects another witness's type of lineup choice.
Methods. A total of 304 undergraduate students watched a crime video with a confederate co-witness. After the video, the witnesses completed an identification task. Prior to completing the task, the participant learned that the confederate co-witness either chose from or rejected the lineup and was subsequently confident or not confident in that decision (or heard no co-witness information). Participants completed the identification task using either a target present (TP) or target absent (TA) lineup.
Results. Overall, those who heard the co-witness chose from the lineup were more likely to choose from the lineup than those who heard no co-witness information or who heard the co-witness rejected the lineup. In addition, witnesses who chose from the lineup and heard the co-witness chose from or rejected the lineup expressed more confidence in that choice if the co-witness was more confident versus if the co-witness was less confident.
Conclusions. In cases of multiple witnesses, identification decisions may not be independent pieces of evidence. Therefore, it is important that police separate co-witnesses throughout the identification process.