PSYC39 – READINGS

CHAPTER 1 ~ An Introduction to Forensic Psychology

 Forensic psychology: a field of psychology that deals with all aspects of human
behaviour as it relates to the law or legal system
 A Brief History of Forensic Psychology
 Dates back to the late nineteenth century
 Originally this work wasn’t referred to as forensic psychology, and those
practicing it did not identify themselves as forensic psychologists
 Early Research on Testimony and Suggestibility
 Field originated with research in the US and Europe that had implications on the
legal system
 James Cattell at Columbia conducted experiments looking at the psychology of
eyewitness testimony
 Recollection of events people experience in their everyday lives
 Cattell found that students answers were often accurate and the
relationship between confidence and accuracy is imperfect
 Other psychologists studying testimony and suggestibility
 Binet demonstrated that asking children to report everything they saw (i.e.
free recall) resulted in the most accurate answers
 Highly misleading questions resulted in the least accurate answers
 William Stern – Reality Experiment
 Participants exposed to staged events and are then asked to provide
information about the event
 i.e. Two students arguing in a classroom  one student uses a revolver
(gun)
 Consistent with the findings of Cattell and Binet, Stern found that the
testimony of participants was often incorrect
 Recall was worst for portions of the event that were particularly exciting
(i.e. when the revolver was drawn)
 This led him to conclude that emotional arousal can have a negative
impact on the accuracy of a person’s testimony
 Court Cases in Europe
 When this research was being conducted, psychologists also started to appear as
experts in court – especially in Europe
 Given the research being conducted at the time, some of the testimony that
experts provided dealt with issues involving the accuracy of testimony
 Albert von Schrenck-Notzing – German physician, one of the first expert
witnesses to provide a testimony in court about pre-trial publicity on memory
 Schrenck testified that attention from the press could influence testimony
of people causing retroactive memory falsification
 Julian Varendonck – Belgian psychologist was an expert witness in a 1911 case
involving the murder of a young girl
 A young girl was killed and two of her friends provided testimonies that
shifted from not knowing what happened to accusing one of their fathers
  Varendonck was convinced of the defendant’s innocence and quickly
conducted studies showing the unreliability of children’s testimony
 Showed that children are easily led by suggestive questioning
 Advocates for Forensic Psychology in North America
 Hugo Munsterberg involved in several criminal cases
 Reviewed/analyzed the case of Richard Ivens, an intellectually disabled
man who confessed to raping and murdering a woman
 Munsterberg concluded that these confessions were untrue
 Reviewed the case of Harry Orchard who confessed to killing the former
governor of Idaho and several others under the orders of a union boss
 Munsterberg tested Orchard and found that what he was saying was true
 In both of these cases, courts paid little attention to Munsterberg’s findings
 The press strongly objected to Munsterberg’s involvement
 The press called psychology a “scientific fad for cheating justice” and that
it had “no effect except to make themselves and their science ridiculous”
 In response, Munsterberg published a book (On the Witness Stand)
arguing that psychology had much to offer the legal system
 i.e. Issues with eyewitness testimony, crime detection, false confessions,
suggestibility, hyponym, and even crime prevention
 Munsterberg’s writing style criticized the legal profession which made
them angry
 John Henry Wigmore, a well-respected law professor sued Munsterberg using
fabricated transcripts and found him guilty of claiming more than he could offer
 This slowed down the field of forensic psychology until the early 1900s
 In Europe, lots was happening in the field and eventually spread to North
America
 Psychologists were instrumental in
 Opening the first clinic for juvenile delinquents in 1909
 Developing labs to conduct pretrial assessments 1916
 Establishing psych testing for law enforcement selection purposes in 1917
 Biological, Sociological, and Psychological Theories of Crime
 Biological theories of crime
 Sheldon’s constitutional theory (1949): crime is largely a product of an
individual’s body build or somatotype, linked to temperament
 i.e. Obese  jolly; thin  introverted; muscular  bold
 Jacobs, Brunton, Melville, Brittain and McClemont’s Chromosomal theory
(1965): chromosomal irregularity is linked to criminal behaviour
 i.e. Men with two Y chromosomes  more masculine  more aggressive
 violent crimes
 Nevin’s (2000) theory of lead exposure: link between childhood lead exposure
(i.e. from paint and gasoline) and criminal behaviour
 Unclear why lead exposure and crime were related in early research
 Recent studies using neuroimaging suggest lead may impact brain
development such as areas for emotion regulation and impulse control
 Such deficits may also increase the probability that one exhibits antisocial
behaviour
 Sociological Theories of Crime
 Merton’s (1938) strain theory: crime is largely a product of the strain felt by
certain individuals in society
 Typically the lower class who has less access to legitimate means (i.e.
education) of achieving valued goals of success (i.e. status)
 Some individuals will be happy with lesser goals, while others will turn to
illegitimate means (i.e. crime) to achieve these valued goals
 Sutherland’s (1939) differential association theory: criminal behaviour is
learned through social interactions in which people are exposed to values
 Values can either be favourable or unfavourable to violations of the law
 People are likely to become involved in criminal activity when they learn
more values (i.e. attitudes) that are favourable to violations of the law than
values that are unfavourable to it
 Becker’s (1963) labelling theory: deviance (i.e. antisocial behaviour) is not
inherent to an act, but a label attached to an act by society
 Thus, a “criminal” results primarily from a process of society labelling an
individual as a criminal
 Labelling process promotes the individual’s deviant behaviour through a
self-fulfilling prophecy
 Psychological Theories of Crime
 Eysenck’s (1964) biosocial theory of crime: some individuals are born with
nervous systems that influence their ability to learn from consequences
 Especially the negative consequences experienced in childhood as part of
the socialization and conscience-building process
 i.e. Extraverts and neurotics  strong antisocial inclinations
 Aker’s (1973) social learning theory: crime is learned in the same way that
noncriminal behaviour is learned
 Likelihood of becoming a criminal increases when:
 One interacts with individuals who favour antisocial attitudes
 When one is exposed to role models (in person or symbolically) who
exhibit antisocial behaviour
 When one defines antisocial behaviour as justified in a particular situation
 When one has received (and expects to receive) a great degree of rewards
versus punishments for antisocial behaviour
 Gottfredson and Hirshi’s (1990) general theory of crime: low self-control,
internalized early in life, in the presence of criminal opportunity explains an
individual’s propensity to commit crimes
 Landmark Court Cases in the US
 Mid 1900s, psychologists in the US began to be more involved in the judicial
system as expert witnesses
 State v. Driver (1921)
 The driver case was only a partial victory for forensic psychology in
America
 Case involved attempted rape of a young girl and court accepted expert
evidence from a psychologist in the area of juvenile delinquency
  However, the court rejected the psychologist’s testimony that the young
girl was a “moron” and couldn’t be believed
 Court ruling said that it hasn’t been determined whether psychological and
medical tests are practical and will detect lies on the witness stand
 People v. Hawthorne (1940)
 A psychologist was permitted, on appeal, to provide an opinion about the
mental state of the defendant at the time of his offence
 Jenkins v. United States (1962)
 This case reinforced the view that psychologists could provide an
admissible opinion regarding a defendant’s mental health
 Jenkins trial involved charges of breaking and entering, assault, and intent
to rape
 Jenkins pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, and three psychologists
supported this defence on the basis that he had schizophrenia
 Trial judge instructed the jury to disregard the testimony from
psychologists because they’re not qualified to talk about mental illness
 This case was appealed and the APA stated that psychologists are
competent to provide opinions on mental illness
 The court reversed the conviction and ordered a new trial – stated that
some psychologists are qualified
 Currently in the US it is common for psychologists to testify on matters such as
fitness to stand trial and criminal responsibility
 As well as other issues such as risk assessment, treatment of TBI, factors
affecting eyewitness memory and jury decision making, impact of hostile
work environments, etc.
 Progress in Canada
 Forensic psychology has been in Canada since at least the mid-1990s
 History of Forensic Psychology in Canada
 
 Most significant contributions by psychologists in Canada have been in the area
of corrections
 i.e. Constructing better risk-assessment tools and developing effective
treatment approaches
 Dr. Stephen Wormith played an important role in this area of research
and practice
 Canadian courts have been arguably slower than the US to open their doors to
psychologists on certain topics
 In the US, psychologists have been permitted to conduct assessments of
fitness to stand trial and criminal responsibility since the mid-1990s
 Canadian courts tend to rely primarily on physicians (primarily
psychiatrists) for this purpose
 This could be due to the fact that some Canadian provinces and territories
require only a master’s degree to become a licensed psychologist
 But Canadians have allowed forensic psychologists to provide testimony
on a wide range of other issues
 Canadian Researcher Profile: Dr. Stephen Wormith
 Started in the field of correctional psychology in the 1970s by accident
 Worked at Carleton University in the field of child development
 Met Dr. Donald Andrews who was teaching a course in criminal
behaviour and they started working together
 Applying the principles of reinforcement, behavioural analysis, and
Bandura’s social learning theory to offenders
 Dr. Wormith completed his PhD at the University of Ottawa where he designed,
delivered, and studied and offender treatment program
 Carried out follow-up evaluation of participants’ recidivism some years
later
  Study was based on his observations from the Rideau Correcitonal Centre
 Found that some offenders sincerely didn’t want to return to a life of
crime, but 6 months later they would show up again in the institution
 Some offenders seemed to have numerous intellectual and social skills but
no real motivation to change, and they too would return to prison
 These observations are consistent with “The will and the skill”
perspective of offender rehabilitation
 He worked with Dr. Andrews and Dr. James Bonita to update and extend their
risk assessment tool (the Level of Service Inventory-Revised)
 Updated to meet demands of clinicians and probation officers for a more
sophisticated tool to address statis and dynamic risk (criminogenic need),
 As well as client strengths, and noncriminogenic factors and offender
responsivity
 Then forged a link between offender assessment, case planning, and
service delivery
 Dr. Wormith was an advocate the risk/need/responsivity (RNR) model of offender
rehabilitation
 A Legitimate Field of Psychology
 Forensic psychology is now an established discipline
 A growing number of high-quality textbooks in this area
 Particularly in the US and Canada
 Numerous academic journals dedicated to various aspects of the field
 More mainstream psychology journals publish research from the forensic
domain at a regular rate
 Large number of psychologists conducting research in this area
 Many professional organizations have been developed to represent the interests of
forensic psychologists and to promote research and practice in this area
 i.e. American Psychology-Law Society (AP-LS)
 i.e. Criminal Justice Section of the CPA
 New training opportunities in forensic psychology at the undergraduate and
graduate level in North America
 Growing number of training programs in Canada
 APA formally recognized forensic psychology as a specialty discipline in 2001
 Forensic Psychology Today
 There is debate as to how forensic psychology should be defined in modern times
 It is sometimes referred to as legal psychology or criminological
psychology in some parts of the world
 Narrow definitions of forensic psychology focus on certain aspects of the field
while ignoring other potentially important aspects
 i.e. Focusing on clinical aspects while ignoring experimental research
 Many leading psychologists and professional associations define the
discipline this way
 Many psychologists prefer to define the field of forensic psychology more
broadly – one that doesn’t focus solely on the application of psychology
 The research endeavour that examines aspects of human behaviour
directly related to the legal process
  The professional practice of psychology within or in consultation with a
legal system that embraces both criminal and civil law and the intersection
 The Roles of a Forensic Psychologist
 The Forensic Psychologist as Clinician
 Clinical forensic psychologists: psychologists who are broadly concerned with
the assessment and treatment of mental health issues as they pertain to the law or
legal system
 They work in a variety of settings including private practice, prisons, and
hospitals
 A frequent task may involve assessing an offender to determine if they are
likely to pose a risk to the community if released from prison
 Issues that clinical forensic psychologists are currently interested in include
 Conducting divorce and child custody mediation
 Providing expert testimony on questions of a psychological nature
 Carrying out personnel selection (i.e. for law enforcement agencies)
 Running critical incident stress debriefings with police officers
 Facilitating treatment programs for offenders
 A clinical forensic psychologist practising in Canada must be a licensed clinical
psychologist who has specialized in forensics
 Graduate level training is required (master’s or PhD)
 A comprehensive exam with an oral component is also required
 Forensic psychiatry: a field of medicine that deals with all aspects of human
behaviour as it relates to the law or legal system
 Both clinical forensic psychology and psychiatry have overlap
 Both deal with assessment and treatment of individuals with mental health
problems who come into contact with the law
 Both are involved in nearly component of the criminal justice system
 Differences between forensic psychology and psychiatry
 Psychiatrists are MDs, they can prescribe medication
 The Forensic Psychologist as Researcher
 Experimental forensic psychologists: broadly concerned with the study of
human behaviour as it related to the legal system
 Experimenter/researcher
 Research interests of interest to forensic psychologists include
 Examining the effectiveness of risk-assessment strategies
 Determining what factors influence jury decision making
 Developing and testing better ways to conduct eyewitness lineups
 Evaluating offender and victim treatment programs
 Studying the effect of stress management interventions on police officers
 Forensic psychologists interested primarily in research will have undergone PhD-
level graduate training in one of many types of experimental graduate programs
 No internship required
 Only some graduate programs will be devoted solely to forensic
psychology, others will be programs in social, personality, cognitive, etc.
 The individual’s graduate research will be focused primarily on a topic
related to forensic psychology supervised by a faculty member in forensics
 The Forensic Psychologist as Legal Scholar
 Less common
 SFU Psychology and Law program allows students to obtain a PhD in psychology
and their LLB in law
 Produces forensic psychologists who are more informed about the legal
process and legal system
 SFU Mental Health, Law, and Policy institute created in 1991
 Promotes interdisciplinary collaboration inresearch and training in areas
related to mental health law and policy
 Other Forensic Disciplines
 Forensic anthropology: examine the remains of deceased individuals to help
determine their identity and how they might have died
 Forensic biology: apply knowledge of life sciences (i.e. entomology, genetics,
botany, etc.) to legal investigations
 i.e. Forensic entomologists are concerned with how insects can assist with
criminal investigations – they can determine when someone died based on
an analysis of insect presence/development on a decomposing body
 Forensic odontology: studying the dental aspects of criminal activity
 i.e. Assisting the policy in identifying deceased individuals through an
examination of dental records, or determining who left bite marks
 Forensic pathology: MDs who examine injuries or the remains of dead bodies in
an attempt to determine the time and cause of death through physical autopsy
 Aka coroners
 Forensic toxicology: study the effects of drugs and other chemicals on people
within the context of the law
 i.e. They might be consulted to determine if drugs played a part in a
person’s death
 The Relationship Between Psychology and Law
 Psychology and the law: the use of psychology to examine the operation of the
legal system
 Psychology in the law: the use of psychology in the legal system as that system
operates
 Psychology of the law: the use of psychology to examine the law itself
 Clinical and experimental forensic psychologists are typically involved in the first
two relationships more than in the third
 Psychology of the law is largely the domain of the legal scholar role
 Psychology and the Law
 Psychology is viewed as a separate discipline to the law, examining and analyzing
various components of the law/legal system from a psychological perspective
 Research in this category examines assumptions made by the law/legal system
 i.e. Are eyewitnesses accurate
 i.e. Do certain interrogation techniques cause people to falsely confess?
 i.e. Are judges fair in the way they hand down sentences?
 i.e. Is it possible to accurately predict whether an offender will be violent
when released from prison?
 Psychology in the Law
  Involves the use of psychological knowledge in the legal system
 May consist of a psychologist in a court providing expert testimony
 i.e. Based on their understanding of eyewitness research, how certain
factors can influence the accuracy of identifications from a police lineup
 May consist of a psychologist using their knowledge in a police investigation to
assist the police in developing and effective and ethical strategy for interrogation
 Psychology of the Law
 Involves the use of psychology to study the law itself
 i.e. Does the law reduce the amount of crime in our society?
 i.e. Why is it important to allow for discretionary decision making in the
Canadian criminal justice system?
 i.e. What impact should court rulings have on the field of forensic psychology?
 The challenge is that in order to address these questions, a set of skills from
multiple disciplines is often important crucial
 Influential Court Cases in the Field of Forensic Psychology
 R. v. Hubbert (1975) – Ontario Court of Appeal states that jurors are presumed to
be impartial and numerous safeguards are in place to ensure this
 i.e. Limitations on what the press can report before a trial starts
 R. v. Sophonow (1986) – Manitoba Court of Appeal overturns the murder
conviction of Thomas Sophonow because of errors in the law
 Many of which related to problems with eyewitness evidence collected by
the police during their investigation
 R. v. Lavallee (1990) – Supreme Court of Canada sets guidelines for when and
how expert testimony should be used in cases of battered women syndrome
 Expert testimony in cases of battered women who kill has been increased
 Wenden v. Trikha (1991) – Alberta Court of Queen’s bench rules that mental
health professionals have a duty to warn a third party if they believe a client
intends to harm that individual
 R. v. Swain (1991) – Supreme Court of Canada makes a ruling that results in
changes to the insanity defence standard in Canada
 Including the name of the defence, when the defence can be raised, and for
how long insanity acquittees can be detained
 R. v. Mohan (1994) – Supreme Court of Canada establishes formal criteria for
determining when expert testimony should be admitted into court
 R. v. Williams (1998) – Supreme court of Canada formally acknowledges that
jurors can be biased by numerous sources ranging from community sentiment to
direct involvement with a case
 R. v. Gladue (1999) – Supreme Court of Canada rules that prison sentences are
being relied on too often by judges to deal with criminal behaviour
 Especially for Aboriginal offenders
 R. v. Oickle (2000) – Supreme Court of Canada rules that police interrogation
techniques which consist of psychological coercion are acceptable
 And that confessions extracted through their use are admissible in court
 R. v. LTH (2008) – Supreme Court of Canada makes a ruling that when
determining the admissibility of a statement made by a young person to the
 police, the prosecution doesn’t have to prove that the young person understood
their legal rights as explained by the police
 But they do have to prove that these rights were explained to the young
person using language appropriate to their age and understanding
 Modern-Day Debates: Psychological Experts in Court
 The Function of the Expert Witness
 Expert witness: a witness who provides the court with information (often
an opinion) that assists the court in understanding an issue of relevance
 Expert witnesses provide assistance to either the judge or a jury
 In contrast to other witnesses who can testify only about what they have
directly observed, expert witnesses can provide personal opinions
 These opinions must always fall within the limits of expert witnesses’
areas of expertise and testimony must be deemed reliable and helpful
 The Challenges of Providing Expert Testimony
 It is challenging because there is so much for the expert witness to know,
not only about their own testimony but their role in the court proceedings
 Witnesses need to be knowledge about their area of expertise, relevant
rules of legal procedure, cross-examination strategies, and
communication/persuasion
 Providing effective testimony is challenging because of inherent
differences and conflicts between psychology and law
 Differences between psychology and law
 Epistemology: psychologists assume that it is possible to uncover hidden
objective truths if the appropriate experiments are conducted
 Truth in law is defined subjectively based on who can provide the most
convincing story of what really happened that is consistent with the law
 Nature of Law: goal in psych is to describe how and why people behave the way
they do (psychology is descriptive)
 Law is prescriptive, telling people how they should behave and providing
means to punish those for not following the law
 Knowledge: in psychology it is based on empirical, nomothetic (group-based)
data collected using various research methodologies
 In the law, knowledge comes from the idiographic analysis of court cases
 And the rational application of logic to establish facts of the case and
connections to other cases that have set legal precedent
 Criterion: psychologists are relatively cautious in their willingness to accept
something as true (i.e. p<0.05)
 In the law, guilt is determined using various criteria (i.e. beyond a
reasonable doubt)
 Principles: Psychologists take an exploratory approach that conders multiple
explanations for research findings
 Lawyers adopt a conservative approach, explanations predominate based
on its coherence with facts and precedent-setting cases
 Latitude of courtroom behaviour: behaviour of psychologists as an expert
witness is severely limited by court
  i.e. Testimony provided by a psychologist is restricted by rules of
evidence
 The law imposes fewer restrictions on the behaviour of lawyers
 Criteria for Accepting Expert Testimony
 In order for forensic psychs to provide expert testimony in court, they must meet
certain criteria
 i.e. In the US, the admissibility of expert testimony in the US was based
on a decision handed down by courts in Frye v. US (1923)
 Court didn’t allow Frye to admit the results from a polygraph exam or to
allow a polygraph expert to present evidence on Frye’s behalf
 Court indicated that for novel scientific evidence to be admissible in court,
it must be established that the procedures used are generally accepted in
the scientific community (general acceptance test)
 General acceptance test: a standard for accepting expert testimony
 Expert testimony will be admissible in court if the basis of the testimony is
generally accepted within the relevant scientific community
 Criticism – vague definition of general acceptance
 The issue of vagueness was addressed in the US Supreme Court decision handed down in
Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals Inc (1993)
 Daubert sued Dow over a morning sickness drug that could lead to birth defects
 State and appeal court both rejected Daubert’s expert testimonies because
the methods weren’t generally accepted by the scientific community
 Daubert’s lawyers appealed and challenged the interpretation of “general
acceptance”
 US supreme court stated that for scientific evidence to be admitted into court it
must
 Be provided by a qualified expert
 Be relevant
 Be reliable  Daubert Criteria
 Daubert criteria: an American standard for accepting expert testimony, which
states that scientific evidence is valid if the research
 Has been peer reviewed
 Is testable (i.e. falsifiable through experimentation)
 Has a recognized rate of error
 Adheres to professional standards
 A similar set of criteria are used in Canada, laid out in R. v. Mohan (1994)
 Mohan was a pediatrician charged with sexually assaulting several teenage female
patients
 Mohan wanted to provide expert testimony from a psychiatrist who was
prepared to testify that typical offenders are pedophiles and in his opinion,
Mohan was not a pedophile
 Trial judge ruled the testimony was inadmissible
 Mohan criteria: a Canadian standard for accepting expert testimony, states that
expert testimony will be admissible in court:
 If the testimony is relevant
 Is necessary for assessing the trier of fact
  Does not violate any exclusionary rules (i.e. rules that would otherwise
exclude the admissibility of evidence such as creating prejudice)
 Is provided by a qualified expert
 Since the Mohan ruling, additional criteria have been added to the list of issues that
judges can or should consider when ruling on the admissibility of expert testimony
 i.e. White Burgess Langille Inman v. Abbott and Haliburton Co (2015)
 Supreme Court of Canada ruled that in addition to the Mohan criteria,
experts must also be independent and impartial
 The Challenges of Applying the Mohan Criteria: The Case of R. v. D.D. (2000)
 This case involved a young girl who claimed she was sexually assaulted by the
accused (who was living with the girl’s mother at the time) at age 5-6
 The girl didn’t report the abuse at the time the alleged assaults occurred,
accusations came to light 2.5 years later and the trial started at age 10
 Defence lawyers argued that delay in reporting indicated the young girl wasn’t
telling the truth
 Trial judge admitted expert testimony from a psychologist explaining the
delays in reporting abuse which do not necessarily indicate lying
 i.e. Embarrassment, fear of getting people in trouble, etc.
 Trial judge admitted the expert evidence and the jury found the accused
guilty
 Case was appealed and the Court of Appeal determined that the expert testimony
of the psychologist shouldn’t have been admitted at trial
 Court argued it wasn’t relevant (related to the girl’s credibility which the
Court of Appeal argued wasn’t a fact in issue)
 Court also argued that the testimony wasn’t necessary for assisting the
triers of fact
 A new trial was ordered
 Basically the Mohan criteria is subjective and interpreted differently by people
 Myths Associated with the Field of Forensic Psychology
 Forensic psychologists and forensic scientists perform the same tasks
 The both examine issues relevant to the law or legal system
 Forensic psychologists use their knowledge of behavioural or social
sciences while forensic scientists use knowledge of “hard” sciences
 Different training and expertise basically
 Forensic psychologists spend much of their time helping the police with criminal
investigations
 Some forensic psychs help the police with investigations
 But few spend a significant amount of time doing this and even fewer are
involved with investigative abilities such as criminal profiling
 There is no typical job profile for forensic psychs, but it is more common
in Canada to see them in research
 To become a researcher in the field of forensic psych, one must earn a graduate
degree in forensic psych
 Most full-time researchers will have a grad degree, but not necessarily in
forensic psych
  Most researchers have done forensic coursework and done graduate
research on a forensic topic, supervised by an expert in forensic psych
 For you to be admitted as an expert witness in court, you require a law degree
 It’s helpful to understand trial procedures and the role of experts in court
proceedings, but there is no requirement to have a law degree
 Psychologists without formal legal training regularly present expert
evidence in courts

CHAPTER 2 ~ Police Psychology

 Police selection procedures: a set of procedures used by the police to either screen out
undesirable candidates or select in desirable candidates
 Police work is complex, demanding, stressful, and potentially dangerous
 Requires people that are intelligent, creative, patient, ethical, caring, and hard-
working


 A Brief History of Police Selection
 Psychologists have been involved in police selection since the early 20th century
 Lewis Terman used the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test to assist with
police selection in California in 1917
 Terman tested the IQ of 30 police and firefighter applicants  led to the
recommendation of a minimum IQ of 80 for future applicants
 By the mid-1950s, psychological/psychiatric screening of police applicants
became a standard part of the selection process
 Police selection research is not as common in Canada as it is in the US
 Many of the selection procedures are the same in the US and Canada
 i.e. Canadian police agencies conduct background checks of their
applicants and require medical exams
 Most Canadian police agencies also test cognitive ability and personality
 The RCMP Regular Member Selection Process
 The process to become an RCMP officer is a rigorous one
 Job Requirements
 Canadian citizen, 19+, driver’s license, prepared to carry a firearm, and
willing to relocate anywhere in Canada
 No criminal convictions that haven’t been pardoned and no criminal
activity involvement within 1 year of their application date
 Physical Abilities Requirement Evaluation (PARE)
 Vision and Hearing Assessments
 Online Submission
 RCMP Entrance Exam
  Six factor personality questionnaire (RPAB) assesses personality qualities
deemed important for the job (i.e. conscientiousness)
 RCMP police aptitude test (RPAT) assesses cognitive aptitude (i.e.
composition, comprehension, judgement, observation, logic, computation)
 Applicants with a university bachelor’s degree are exempt from this the
RPAB
 Forms Package
 Regular Member Selection Interview
 RCMP member selection interview (RMSI) to assess qualities such as
being a team player, communication skills, problem solving, etc.
 Pre-employment Polygraph
 Applicants who rank high on the RMSI undergo a pre-employment
polygraph exam
 Assesses applicants’ suitability for police work, and questions focus on
topics covered in the Application Questionnaire
 Health Assessment
 Field Investigation and Security Clearance
 Cadet Training
 Applicants who successfully make it through the selection process enroll
in the cadet training program (24-week program)
 Developing Police Selection Instruments
 Stage one – job analysis stage
 Knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) of a “good” police officer must be
identified and carefully defined
 Stage two – construction and validation stage
 Instrument must be developed for measuring the extent to which
applicants possess a relevant KSA
 Attempt must also be made to determine the instrument’s validity (extent
to which scores on the instrument relate to actual job performance)
 Conducting a Job Analysis
 Job analysis: a procedure for identifying the knowledge, skills, and abilities that
make a good police officer
 Usually conducted by an organizational psychologist working in
conjunction with a police agency using a range of techniques
 At other times, a job analysis can be conducted more informally by asking
members of a police agency to list the qualities they feel are essential
 Conducting a job analysis can be complicated
 The KSAs of a good police officer may not be stable over time which makes it
difficult to determine what selections procedures should test for
 i.e. After 2 years of service, police officers that are enthusiastic are rated
as the best, but after 4 years officers who are responsible are rated highest
 Different types of police officers (or different policing jobs) will likely be
characterized by different KSAs
 i.e. Police constables vs police managers have different KSAs
 Individuals may also disagree over which KSAs are important
 i.e. Some prefer a sense of humour, others do not
 Constructing and Validating Selection Instruments
 Goals in stage two of the police selection process
 Develop a selection instrument for measuring the extent to which police
applicants possess relevant KSAs (construction)
 Ensure that this instrument relates to measures of police performance
(validation)
 Predictive validity: the extent to which scores on a test (i.e. cognitive ability test)
predict scores on some other measure (i.e. supervisor ratings of police
performance)
 Tells us if there is a relationship between scores obtained from a selection
instrument and measures of actual job performance
 Involves collecting data from police applicants using a selection
instrument, results are compared with a measure of job performance
 Predictive validity is determined by calculating validity coefficients
ranging from +1.00 to -1.00 indicating strength and direction
 One challenge is that there is no answer to how police performance is measured
 Little evidence to suggest that any of these measures (i.e. exam scores,
number of complaints, etc.) is better than another
 Research suggests that a different picture of performance can emerge
depending on what measure is used
 The Validity of Police Selection Instruments
 Selection interview: in recruiting police officers, an interview used by the police to
determine the extent to which an applicant possesses the KTAs deemed important for the
job
 One of the most common selection instruments used by police
 Typically a semi-structured interview with a preset list of questions asked to each
applicant
 There is little research examining the predictive validity of the selection interview
in the policing context
 Existing research suggests that interviews can sometimes predict job
performance but not always
 Mixed research – it is clear that interviews should be used with caution
 Changing how an interview is conducted can impact its validity
 Psychological Tests
 Commonly used by police agencies to select suitable officers
 There is general agreement among police researchers that psychological tests are
useful in deciding whether a person possesses certain attributes
 This knowledge can be helpful to some extent in selecting applicants to
become police officers
 Cognitive ability tests: procedure for measuring, verbal, mathematical, memory,
and reasoning ability
 i.e. RPAT test used by the RCMP
 Seven core skills considered essential in performing the duties of an
RCMP officer – composition, comprehension, memory, judgement,
observation, logic, and computation
  Reliance on cognitive ability tests for police selection purposes is
supported to some extent by empirical research
 These tests tend to be better at predicting performance during police
academy training compared with future on-the-job performance
 Personality tests
 Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory: an assessment
instrument for identifying people with psychopathological problems
 Meta analysis revealed that the MMPI possesses little power in predicting
academy or on-the-job performance
 Low levels of predictive validity associated with the MMPI tests may be
due to the fact that they were never developed as police selection
instruments
 Inwald Personality Inventory: an assessment instrument used to identify
police applicants who are suitable for police work by measuring their
personality attributes and behaviour patterns
 IPI was developed specifically for the law enforcement community
 Assessment centre: a facility in which the behaviour of police applicants can be
observed in a number of situations by multiple observers
 Situational test: a simulation of a real-world policing task
 Trained observers evaluate how applicants perform during these tasks, and
the performance appraisals are used for the purpose of selection
 Situational tests in assessment centres attempt to tap into KSAs identified
as part of a job analysis to identify candidates who will be successful
police officers
 Some research suggests these tests have modest levels of predictive
validity
 Police discretion: the freedom that a police officer often has for deciding what should be
done in any given situation
 i.e. What street should I patrol tonight? Should I stop that vehicle for a traffic
violation? Etc.
 Why is police discretion necessary?
 No manual or rule book can take into consideration every possible situation a
police offer may face in their daily duties
 Even when it comes to enforcing the law, there are many arguments for why
police discretion is necessary


 Cases in Forensic Psychology – The Supreme Court of Canada Rules on Investigative
Discretion in Beaudry v. The Queen (2007)
  Sergeant Beaudry accused of obstructing justice when he deliberately failed to
give a breathalyzer test to a fellow police officer
 During the trial, Sergeant Beaudry argued that this was proper police discretion
 Areas where police discretion is used
 Individuals with Mental Illnesses
 Most encounters between police officers and people with a mental illness resolve
without serious incident
 Some encounters can be very serious
 i.e. Tim McLean stabbed to death and decapitated by Vince Li, RCMP
officers at the scene called for a negotiating team instead of intervening
 Deinstitutionalizing individuals who have a mental illness has increased the
likelihood of encounters between police and people with mental illness
 Formal policies are often put in place specifying how police officers should deal
with individuals who have a mental illness
 Policies usually instruct officers to apprehend individuals when they pose
a danger to themselves or others, or are causing a serious disturbance
 Still requires police discretion
 When officers encounter an individual with a mental illness who is creating a
disturbance they have three options
 Transport the person to a psychiatric institution
 Arrest the person and take them to jail
 Resolve the matter informally


 People who definitely had a mental illness (PMI-Definite) more likely to
interact with the police than people with no mental illness (NPMI)
 People with a mental illness more likely to be charged and arrested
compared to those without a mental illness (10% more likely)
 Use-of-Force Situations
 Police officers in North America are granted the right to use force to protect the
general public and themselves – requires lots of discretion
 This is laid out in tour Criminal Code
 In court cases involving use-of-force decisions, difficulties arise because of the
ambiguity of terms such as “reasonable grounds” and “as is necessary”
 Study on use-of-force in Canada
 
 Canadian Researcher Profile – Dr. Dorothy Cotton
 PhD in social psychology
 Worked as a clinical neuropsychologist
 Associate member of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP)
 Research on programs linking police services and mental health services
 In the Media – The Death of Sammy Yatim
 Shot and killed by a Toronto Police Officer in 2013
 Yatim was on a street car in Toronto, drew a switchblade and started acting
aggressively to passengers
 Police arrived on the scene
 Constable James Forcillo called for a taser but one wasn’t available so he
shot him 9 times
 Charged with attempted murder
 Controlling Police Discretion
 Guidelines have been established
 Charter of Rights and Freedoms can be seen as a guideline to control police
discretion because it makes it clear to treat everyone fairly and equally
 Departmental Policies
 Implemented by police departments
 i.e. Use-of-force options
 Use-of-Force Models
 These models may not directly restrict the use of force
 But may indirectly control force by increasing likelihood officers carefully
assess and evaluate situations
 RCMP’s Incident Management/Intervention Model developed to assist
RCMP officers in decision making in potential use-of-force situations
 Forensic Psychology in the Spotlight – RCMP’s Incident Management/Intervention
Model (IMIM)
 Use-of-Force framework developed by the RCMP
 A visual aid to help officers envision an event and explain
why certain intervention methods were employed
 Helps officers choose the appropriate intervention option
based on the subject’s behaviour and the totality of the
situation
 Promotes continuous risk assessment
 Centers on the RCMP problem solving model known
as CAPRA
 Five basic options
  Officer presence is the least forceful, followed by verbal/nonverbal
communication, physical control, weapons, and lethal force
 Police Stress
 Many police psychologists consider policing to be one of the most stressful
occupations
 They are exposed to many stressful events that can negatively impact
officers and their families, as well as the organizations they work for
 Sources of Police Stress
 Depends on officers’ individual background, personalities, expectations, law
experience, years on the job, type of work, and access to coping resources
 Organizational stressors, occupational stressors, criminal justice stressors, and
public stressors


 Occupational stressors: stressors relating to the job itself
 Organizational stressors: stressors relating to organizational issues
 Many police researchers believe they have evidence to show these
stressors more strongly affect officers than occupational stressors
 Work-Life Balance and Police Officer Well-Being in Canada
 Police stress research isn’t as common in Canada as the US
 30-40%work rotating shifts, are married with children, and care for elderly
dependents
 78% work more than 45 hours a week and can’t get all their work during regular
work hours (i.e. they take their work home)
 97% spend their time during the work day reading and responding to emails and
79% also do this on non-work days
 Impact of these factors
 11% think of leaving their current police force several times a week or
more
 Absenteeism form work is high
 22% of respondents indicate work-life challenges
 1/5 report poor physical health, high stress and high levels of depressed
mood
 Recommendations
 Changing police culture so that work doesn’t take priority over family
 Managers have to be supportive of their subordinates
 Police organizations need to commit to creating supportive managers and
provide managers with training and tools
 Police organizations need to find a way to increase perceived flexibility on
the part of their workers
 Consequences of Police Stress
 Physical health problems
 More than 32% of police officers in a study had digestive disorders
(higher than the prevalence rate in the civilian population)
 Death rates due to cancer higher than general population
 2x more likely than other occupations to develop CVD
 Retired officers die significantly younger than other retired city employees
and have shorter retirements prior to death
 High BP, cholesterol, stomach ulcers, respiratory problems, weight gain,
and diabetes have also been studied
 Hard to know how many of these issues are due to stressful events officers
are exposed to vs lifestyle habits adopted by officers
 Psychological and Personal Problems
 i.e. Depression, PTSD, drug and alcohol abuse, marital problems, and
suicide can occur when officers are exposed to stressful situations
 research in this area can be contradictory
 i.e. Many studies suggest high alcohol use among officers but other
studies say it’s not greater than rates for nurses, firefighters, etc.
 Some studies say stressors  mental health issues like depression but
others don’t find elevated levels of these problems in officers
 Studies on suicide rates are also contradictory
 Divorce rates
 Job Performance Problems
 Often the direct result of psychical and psychological problems
 i.e. Decreased work efficiency and productivity, absenteeism and
tardiness, and early retirement
 Myths Associated with Police Psychology
 We can predict which applicant will become a successful officer with a high
degree of accuracy
 Officers are required to enforce every law on the books
 Officers are much more likely than the general public to get divorced and commit
suicide
 The effort that has been put into dealing with police stress in Canada has allowed
police agencies to get the problems under control
 Preventing and Managing Police Stress
 Resiliency training: training delivered to police officers to improve their ability
to effectively adapt to stress and adversity
 Focuses on mental preparedness through psychoeducation about the
psychological and physiological effects of extreme stress/trauma
 Some studies have shown this training can improve performance in job-
related tasks and health/general wellbeing
 Psychological Debriefing: a psychologically oriented intervention given to police
officers following exposure to an event that resulted in psychological distress and
an impairment of normal functioning
 Usually part of a larger crisis intervention program
  Group/individual meeting aimed at mitigating emotional distress and
preventing long-term psychopathology
 Involves social support and ventilation of emotions through discussion
 Facilitators education participants about stress responses and coping
mechanisms
 Confusion remains as to whether this actually works

CHAPTER 3 ~ The Psychology of Police Investigations

 Police interrogation: a process whereby the police interview a suspect for the purpose of
gathering evidence and obtaining a confession
 Confession evidence is often viewed as a prosecutor’s “most potent weapon” and
police officers will often go to great lengths to secure such evidence
 In some countries, a confession is enough for a conviction
 In North America a confession usually has to be backed up by some other
form of evidence
 People who confess are more likely to be prosecuted and convicted than
those who do not
 In the past, physical coercion tactics were often used to extract confessions from
suspects (i.e. whipping)
 These have been replaced with more subtle, psychologically based
interrogation techniques
 i.e. Lying about evidence, promising lenient treatment, and implying
threats to loved ones
 Some police officers view these tactics as a necessary evil to obtain
confessions
 The Mr. Big Technique
 Involves undercover officers posing as members of a criminal organization who
attempt to lure the suspect into the gang
 The suspect is made to commit to some minor crimes for which they may be
rewarded
 Once committed to the organization, the suspect is “interviewed” for a
higher-level job
 Before the suspect can seal the deal with the boss (Mr. Big) they must confess to a
serious crime as “insurance” for the gang in case the suspect turns on them
 Once a confession is elicited, it is used against the suspect in their trial
 This technique is used quite often (prior to 2004 it was used at least 350 times)
 75% success rate and 95% conviction rate
 Ethical and legal questions
 i.e. Was the person induced to commit an illegal act they otherwise
wouldn’t commit
 Mr. Big technique isn’t entrapment because confessions are given for
crimes that had already been committed
 It’s not considered coercion by the court, it’s “reasonable trickery”
 Supreme Court of Canada has taken a more critical approach, likely tightening the
parameters of future Mr. Big operations but not forbidding their use altogether
 The Reid Model of Interrogation: a nine-step model of interrogation used frequently in
North America to extract confessions from suspects
 Police in England and Wales are trained to use interrogation techniques that are
far less coercive than those used in North America
 England and Wales are recognizing some of the problems associated with
coercive interrogation practices such as false confessions
 Reid Model used in North America
 First stage – gather evidence related to the crime and interview witnesses
and victims
 Second stage – conduct a non-accusatorial interview to assess any
evidence of deception
 Third stage – conduct an accusatorial interrogation of the suspect
 Stage three involves nine steps
 Suspect is immediately confronted with their guilt, even if there is no
evidence it is implied to the suspect that there is
 Psychological themes (i.e. a murderer being told that the interrogators
understand and can justify the crime – “he had it coming”)
 Interrogator interrupts statements of denial to ensure the suspect doesn’t
get the upper hand in the interrogation
 Interrogator overcomes the suspect’s objections to the charges
 If suspect becomes withdrawn, interrogator ensures that they have their
attention by reducing distance (i.e. physically moving closer)
 Interrogator exhibits sympathy and understanding, and the suspect is urged
to come clean (i.e. appealing to sense of decency)
 Suspect is offered explanations for the crime which makes self-
incrimination easier to achieve (i.e. “this was an argument that just went
wrong”)
 Once the suspect accepts responsibility, the interrogator develops this into
a full confession for the crime
 Interrogator gets the suspect to write and sign a full confession
 Other techniques involve using a plainly decorated interrogation room, having the
evidence folder in your hand, and making sure the suspect is alone
 Reid Model is based on the idea that people make choices that they think will maximize
their well-being given the constraints they face
 Assumed that during the accusatory phase, the suspect’s fear of confessing
outweighs their anxiety caused by remaining deceptive
 Model uses psychological tactics to reverse this to make the consequences of
confessing more desirable than the anxiety related to deception
 Maximization techniques: soft sell tactics used by police interrogators that are
designed to lull the suspect into a false sense of security
 i.e. “You did everyone a favour”, “they had it coming”
 Maximization techniques: scare tactics used by police interrogators that are
designed to intimidate a suspect believed to be guilty
 i.e. Making accusations, interrupting denials, overriding objections
 The Use of the Reid Model in Actual Interrogations
  The Reid model is commonly taught to police in North America but they don’t
always use it in practice
 Study surveyed 631 officers about their interrogation practices
 Many techniques included in the Reid model are used but the frequency
varies
 i.e. Isolating suspects from friends and family and trying to establish
rapport are almost always used
 Less frequently used techniques involve confronting suspects with guilt
and appealing to their self-interest, justifying crimes, threatening, etc.
 Objective analysis of police investigations


 Investigators don’t always adhere to the core components of the Reid
model of interrogation
 Few coercive strategies were observed
 More Reid techniques  more confessions
 Potential problems with the Reid Model of interrogation
 Detecting deception
 Interrogator beliefs
 Coercive/suggestive nature of certain interrogation practices
 Deception detection: detecting when someone is being deceptive
 Issues of whether investigators are effective deception detectors, especially since
in the Reid model, interrogations begin only after an initial interview
 Decision to commence a full-blown police interrogation therefore relies on
an accurate assessment of whether the suspect is being deceptive
 There is very little evidence to support the view that anyone (police
officers included) can detect deception with any degree of accuracy – even
after specialized training
 Most deception detection training (including Reid training) focuses on informing
people about objective (empirically validated) cues to deception
 Meta-analyses suggest this training approach is limited
 Lie-catchers tend to focus on objective cues that are too weak to be of
value when distinguishing between truth-tellers and liars
  Teaching people about increasing behavioural differences between truth-tellers
and liars so that deception cues become more pronounced may help
 For now, interrogation may be based on an incorrect determination that the
suspect is guilty
 Procedural safeguards are in place to protect an individual during the transition to
the interrogation phase of the Reid model
 Miranda rights: the rights of suspects included in the Charter of Rights and
Freedoms, including the right to silence and legal counsel
 Only when suspects knowingly and voluntarily waive these rights can
their statements be used as evidence against them
 These rights may not provide the protection that they are assumed to
provide
 One problem is that many individuals don’t understand their rights when
they are presented to them
 Presenting rights in written format, one element at a time, allowed for a greater
degree of comprehension in a study of undergrads
 Self-reported confidence is not a good predictor of a participant’s degree
of comprehension
 Demographic variables such as group status (student vs police recruit) not
related to comprehension
 Myths about Police Interrogations
 Police officers often use the sorts of physically coercive interrogation tactics seen
in good detective shows on TV
 By law, police officers aren’t allowed to use trickery in their interrogations for the
purpose of extracting a confession
 There is no need for people to worry about being interrogated by the police
 Individuals in Canada must be read their legal rights and this provides all
the protection they need
 If someone confesses to a crime, that indicates that the person did in fact commit
the crime
 Canadian Researcher Profile: Dr. Joseph Eastwood
 UOIT professor of forensic psychology
 Research involves increasing the comprehension of interrogation rights by
interviewees
 Adult interrogation rights are written in a very complex manner and
people struggle to understand them
 Making linguistic and structural changes to rights (i.e. simplifying
wording and repeating each right multiple times) can help
 The wording of interrogation rights delivered to youth can cause
comprehension problems, simplifying delivery can help
 Research on enhancing the ability of interviewers to gather accurate and complete
accounts from eyewitnesses
 Having interviewees draw out the account is effective in producing more
details than simple verbal recall (i.e. drawing out details of an event)
 Research on the role of alibis within the criminal justice system
  i.e. Factors that police officers attend to when trying to decide whether an
alibi is true or not
 Having multiple people to corroborate an alibi, particularly when they
have no personal connection leads to more believable alibis
 Looking at the ability of innocent suspects to create an alibi that would be
seen as more believable
 Investigator bias: bias that can result when police officers enter an interrogation setting
already believing that the suspect is guilty
 The problem is that when people form a belief about something before they entera
situation, they seek out/interpret situations that verifies their initial belief
 Can occur unknowingly
 Study where interrogators were led to believe that a suspect is guilty of a mock
crime or innocent – in reality, some were guilty and some were innocent
 Interrogators with guilty expectations asked more questions that indicated
their belief in the suspect’s guilt
 Interrogators with guilty expectations had a higher frequency of
interrogation techniques compared to those with innocent expectations
 Interrogators with guilty expectations judged more suspects to be guilty,
regardless of whether the suspect was actually guilty
 Interrogators indicated that they exerted more pressure on suspects to
confess when, unbeknownst to them, the suspect was innocent
 Suspects had fairly accurate perceptions of interrogator behaviour (i.e.
innocent suspects believed their interrogators were exerting more
pressure)
 Neutral observers viewed interrogators with guilty expectations as more
coercive, especially against innocent subjects, and viewed suspects in the
guilty expectation condition as more defensive
 Findings indicate that investigative biases lead to coercive interrogations that
cause suspects to appear guiltier to interrogators and neutral observers
 Even when the suspect has committed no crime
 Interrogation Practices and the Courts
 The decision to admit confession evidence into court rests on the shoulders of the
trial judge
 Judge must consider whether the confession was made voluntarily and
whether the defendant was competent when they provided the confession
 Involuntary confessions and those provided when one’s mind is unstable are more
likely to be unreliable
 Confessions extracted through overt forms of coercion (i.e. physical force) are
inadmissible but subtle coercion is complicated
 i.e. Reid technique with psychological coercion to extract confessions
 Cases in Forensic Psychology – The Admissibility of Confession Evidence: Court
Rulings in R. v. Oickle (2000) and R. v. Chapple (2012)
 Oickle confessed to 7 counts of arson
 Confession was obtained after a police interrogation with several
questionable interrogation techniques
  i.e. Exaggerating the infallibility of a polygraph exam, implying that
psychiatric help would be provided, and minimizing seriousness of crime
 Judge deemed Oickle’s confession admissible and convicted him on all counts
 Court of Appeal subsequently deemed confession evidence inadmissible
and entered an acquittal
 On appeal before the Supreme Court of Canada, a ruling was handed
down that stated this confession was properly admitted by the judge
 Thus this conviction should stand, despite the interrogation techniques
used by the police
 Supreme Court laid out a 4-point framework for determining whether a
confession should be deemed voluntary
 Court must consider whether the police made any threats or promises
 Court must look for an atmosphere of oppression (unjust or inhumane
treatment)
 The court must consider whether the suspect had an “operating mind” in
that they were aware of what they were saying and who they’re talking to
 Court must consider the degree of police trickery that was used to extract
the confession (trickery is allowed but shouldn’t “shock the community”)
 The case of R. v. Chapple (2012) harshly criticized the interrogation tactics used
by a Calgary interrogator and deemed the suspect’s confession inadmissible
 Chapple was a self-employed daycare operator who was accused of being
responsible for serious head injuries in one of her daycare kids’ heads
 She was interrogated for over 8 hours despite asserting her right to remain
silent on 24 separate occasions during the interrogation
 Interrogator also criticized the legal advice given to Chapple and lied
saying that the medical advice only supported one conclusion (guilty)
 Judge found that Chapple’s free will was compromised as a result of the
interrogation tactics and she simply told the police what they wanted to hear
 Judge stated that even though the Reid technique is legal, it extinguished
the individual’s sacred legal rights (innocent until proven guilty)
 An Alternative to the Reid Model
 Police Agencies in England and Wales use the PEACE model to guide their
interrogations
 Planning and preparation, Engage and explain, Account, Closure, and
Evaluation
 Provides a framework within which to conduct police interrogations
 Based on an interview method known as conversation management which
encourages information gathering more than securing a confession
 Police agencies in England and Wales don’t call them interrogations anymore 
investigative interviewing
 Not much research on the impact of the PEACE model
 A decrease in the use of coercive interrogation tactics doesn’t necessarily
result in a substantial reduction in the number of confessions obtained
 i.e. Before the PEACE model was introduced, about 50% of all suspects
confessed to crimes already
 Call from Canadian researchers to use the PEACE model in Canada
  This would shift the priorities of Canadian police interrogations
 Focusing on obtaining complete and accurate information rather than
extracting confessions
 Recent Canadian study
 Canadian interrogators rarely rely on questioning practices that allow them
to maximize the amount of complete and accurate information collected
 It is unlikely that Canadian interrogators will switch to the PEACE model
basically
 i.e. Open-ended questions used less frequently than close-ended questions
in interviews
 Some change is occurring
 i.e. Royal Newfoundland Constabulary is committing to reforming police
interrogation practices (switching to PEACE model)
 But some police officers in Canada still rely on coercion
 False confession: a confession that is either intentionally fabricated or is not based on
actual knowledge of the facts that form its content
 Retracted confession: a confession that the confessor later declares to be false
 Doesn’t necessarily mean the confession is actually false but they’re
saying it is
 Disputed confession: a confession that is later disputed at trial
 May occur due to legal technicalities or the suspect disputes the
confession was ever made
 The Frequency of False Confessions
 No one knows how frequently false confessions are made
 It can be difficult to determine whether a confession is actually false
 The fact that a confession is coerced doesn’t mean the confession is false, just as a
conviction based on confession evidence does not mean the confession is true
 Researchers come up with drastically different estimates of how often false
confessions occur
 One popular approach is to examine the cases of wrongful convictions
 Files of people exonerated for their crimes are examined to determine if a
false confession was to blame for the wrongful conviction
 Findings vary from this study
 i.e. Out of 241 cases exonerated through DNA testing, 24.48% of the cases
contained false confessions as the cause of wrongful conviction
 Different Types of False Confessions
 Voluntary false confession: a false confession that is provided without any elicitation
from the police
 Voluntary false confessions may arise out of
 A morbid desire for notoriety
 The person being unable to distinguish fact from fantasy
 The need to make up for pathological feelings of guilty by receiving
punishment
 A desire to protect somebody else from harm (which may be particularly
prevalent among juveniles)
 Highly publicized cases do occasionally result in voluntary false confessions
  i.e. Kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh’s baby son had around
200 people falsely confessing
 Coerced-compliant false confession: a confession that results from a desire to escape a
coercive interrogation environment or gain a benefit promised by the police
 Coerced-compliant confessions may be given so the suspect can
 Escape further interrogation
 Gain a promised benefit
 Avoid a threatened punishment
 A Coerced-Compliant False Confession in a Canadian Child Abuse Case
 R. v. MJS (2000), MJS was accused of aggravated assault on his baby son JS
 He gave the police a written confession and was charged
 JS was 1-3 months old at the time the abuse was supposed to have happened
 The boy was admitted to hospital with a chest infection and x-rays
revealed the baby had several rib fractures which were unusual
 The pediatrician notified child welfare, police investigation began
 MJS and his wife cooperated, and on four occasions the police used techniques
similar to the Reid model of interrogation which led the accused to confess
 Interrogations were videotaped which allowed courts to decide if the
confession was coerced
 The officers used psychological themes to justify the crime and lied to the
accused saying that they had spoken to everyone else involved
 In ruling on the confession evidence, the judge stated that the alleged confession
in this case was extracted by threats and implied promises
 The techniques were coercive and the accused confessed to the crime to
escape the oppressive atmosphere
 Coerced-internalized false confession: a confession that results from suggestive
interrogation techniques, whereby the confessor actually comes to believe they
committed the crime
 Vulnerability factors associated with this type of false confession
 History of substance abuse or interference with brain function
 Inability to detect discrepancies between what they observed and what has
been erroneously suggested to them
 Factors associated with mental state (i.e. severe anxiety, confusion, or
feelings of guilt)
 i.e. Billy Wayne Cope in South Carolina was convicted for the rape and murder of
his 12-year-old daughter
 He woke up to find his daughter dead, lying facedown on her bed
 The police treated him as a suspect and convinced him that he did it
 DNA test revealed that it was actually a sex offender who raped and killed
his daughter
 Studying False Confessions in the Lab
 No REB would allow research participants to be led to believe they had
committed crimes such as the ones Billy Wayne Cope was accused of
 Classic study by Kassin and Kiechel (1996)
 Testing whether people will confess to a crime they didn’t commit
  Participants participate in a task where they’re told hitting the ALT key
will lose all the data, the computer automatically crashes
 Researcher accuses the participant of hitting the key
 Participant vulnerability (participant’s certainty concerning their own
innocence) and whether false evidence was presented were evaluated


 Compliance: a tendency to go along with demands made by people perceived to
be in authority, even though the person may not agree with them
 Many accepted responsibility for the crime despite the fact that they were
innocent, particularly vulnerable participants given false evidence
 Internalization: the acceptance of guilty for an act, even if the person did not
actually commit the act
 Many participants internalized their confession, especially vulnerable
participants given false evidence
 Confabulation: the reporting of events that never actually happened
 i.e. Participants making up details to fit with their confession
 Kassin and Kiechel’s paradigm shows that it’s possible to have people admit to
acts they aren’t responsible for and come to believe their guilty and confabulate
 Limitations of Kassin and Kiechel’s paradigm
 Participants in the study had nothing to lose if they couldn’t convince
others of their innocence – in court the stakes are higher
 All participants in the study were actually innocent, but not all suspects in
real interrogations are
 Participants could have easily been confused about their guilt (i.e. maybe I
did hit that key), but real suspects aren’t confused about their involvement
 Another Canadian study showed that out of 30 participants told they committed a
crime as a teenager, 71% developed a false memory of the crime
 The Consequences of Falsely Confessing
 People getting convicted of crimes they didn’t commit
 Jurors may be likely to convict a suspect based on evidence even when the jurors
are aware that the suspect’s confession resulted from a coercive interrogation
 i.e. Participants shown a transcript in which the defendant immediately
confessed vs the person being handcuffed and threatened
 Participants presented with a confession obtained with handcuffs/threats,
they recognized it was involuntary and said it won’t affect their decisions
 However, when a confession was present, it significantly increased the
conviction rate, even for those in who had learned about the
handcuffs/threats
 Many genuine false confessions are likely to be viewed as evidence of guilty by
potential jurors – three possible reasons
 Common sense – jurors are unlikely to believe that a person would be
willing to make statements that counter self-interest
  Issues with deception detection – people unlikely to accurate distinguish
between true and false confessions
 False confessions are often very similar to true confessions with respect
their form and content
 Confession evidence, even false confessions, can taint other evidence presented in
a trial
 Making other evidence appear more corroborative than it really is
 Improper use of forensic science, eyewitness identifications, and
snitches/informants are more likely in cases with false confessions
 In cases with multiple errors associated with evidence, a false confession
is most likely to be obtained first (confession skews subsequent work)
 Consequences to the police and the public
 False confessions divert the police down a false trail while the true
offender remains free
 i.e. Yorkshire Ripper serial killer in England ‘70s – officers used up
valuable resources investigating fake tapes
 Criminal Profiling: an investigative technique for identifying the major personality and
behavioural characteristics of an individual based upon an analysis of the crimes they
have committed
 Originally used to help the police identify the criminal by narrowing down a list
of suspects
 Purposes of criminal profiling
 Help set traps to flush out an offender
 Determine whether a threatening note should be taken seriously
 Give advice on how to best interrogate a suspect
 Tell prosecutors how to break down defendants in cross-examination
 Many agencies no longer refer to the work they do as “profiling”
 i.e. RCMP calls it criminal investigative analysis which suggests a
broader focus than just profiling
 i.e. Job title changed from criminal profiler  behavioural investigative
advisor or criminal investigative analysts
 Every criminal profile will be similar containing information on personal,
behaviour, demographics
 i.e. Age, sex, race, level of intelligence, education, hobbies, family,
residential location, criminal history, employment, psychosexual
development, and post-offence behaviour
 Sometimes these predictions are made by forensic psychologists and
psychiatrists with clinical research experience with offenders
 The Origins of Criminal Profiling
 Early Attempts at Criminal Profiling
 In 1888, murders committed in East London in Whitechapel
 Victims were all women and mutilated by the offender (Jack the Ripper)
 Police surgeon involved engaged in a form of criminal profiling
 Created a reconstruction of various crime scenes and described the
wounds of the victims to gain insight into offender’s psyche
 NYC’s Mad Bomber in 1940 who left bombs in public spaces
  Forensic psychiatrist examined the actions of the bomber to develop a
profile including their age, personality, psyche, marital status, etc.
 The FBI and Beyond
 Criminal profiling program developed in the 1970s
 First time profiles were produced in a systematic way by a law
enforcement agency
 First time training was provided on how to construct criminal profiles
 FBI’s Behavioural Sciences Unit and National Center for the Analysis of
Violent Crime were both opened in the 70s
 Similar units now found worldwide including Canada, Germany, and
England
 Investigative Psychology
 Since the early 90s, David Canter founded the field of investigative
psychology
 Canter was called in by Scotland Yard to provide a file of an unknown
offender (John Duffy the railway rapist)
 Used his knowledge of human behaviour gained as an academic
psychologist
 The RCMP’s Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System (ViCLAS)
 ViCLAS: developed by the RCMP to collect and analyze information on serious
crimes from across Canada
 Developed in the mid 90s
 Linkage blindness: an inability on the part of the police to link geographically
dispersed serial crimes committed by the same offender
 Due to a lack of information sharing among police agencies
 ViCLAS developed partially to prevent linkage blindness
 Questions in the ViCLAS booklet capture crucial information on crimes of a
serious nature such as homicides, sexual assaults, missing people and abductions
 This booklet is the backbone of ViCLAS
 Contains 100+ questions about offender’s behaviour, the victim, and any
available forensic information
 Specially trained ViCLAS analysts determine if there are any possible crime
linkages which are then highlighted and relevant agencies are notified
 Some of the assumptions underlying ViCLAS have been questioned recently
 Concerns with reliability of data in the system
 Anecdotal evidence suggests the system holds promise and have earned ViCLAS
a reputation in policing as one of the best crime linkage analysis systems ever
 Used worldwide including England, Australia, and Germany
 How is a criminal profile constructed?
 Constructed differently by different profilers
 “schools” of profiling now exist which guide the profile construction process
 Relatively little is known about the profiling process
 Deductive criminal profiling: profiling the background characteristics of an
unknown offender based on evidence left at the crime scenes by them
 Relies on logical reasoning
  i.e. Having long nails on the left hand and short nails on the right hand
makes the offender likely to be a guitar player
 Inductive criminal profiling: profiling the background characteristics of an
unknown offender based on what we know about other solved cases
 Based on the premise that similar crimes are committed by people that
share some personality traits in common
 Relies largely on a determination of how likely an offender will possess
certain background characteristics
 i.e. Analyzing crimes involving murdered kids to predict how likely it is
that the offender will know the victim, have a previous conviction, etc.
 Both methods can be used when creating a profile
 Organized-disorganized model: a profiling model used by the FBI that assumes the
crime scenes and background of serial offenders can be categorized as organized or
disorganized
 Model developed through interviews with incarcerated offenders
 Suggests that an offender’s crime scene can be classified as either organized or
disorganized
 i.e. Organized crime scene behaviours reflect a well-planned and
controlled crime
 i.e. Disorganized crimes are impulsive and chaotic


 When encountering a disorganized crime scene, the investigator should profile the
background characteristics of a disorganized offender and vice-versa
 Little research examining whether this model is valid, some research raises
serious doubts about this model
 Investigative psychology approaches to profiling
 Approaches are similar to inductive approaches like the organized- disorganized
model as they rely on solved cases to develop a framework
 Unlike other models, investigative psychologists place more emphasis on
rigorously testing the validity of the categorized proposed
 And linkage between crime scene behaviours and background
characteristics


 i.e. Using a statistical technique called cluster analysis to identify different ways
that sex offenders search for crimes revealed three clusters
  Offenders who predominantly target adult females with specific physical
features (telio specific)
 Offenders who predominantly target child and adolescent victims with
specific physical features (pedo/hebe specific)
 Offenders who don’t appear to have a preferred victim type (non-specific)
 Cluster analysis also used to identify different clusters of background
characteristics
 Social competed offender
 Anti-social generalist offender
 Sexually deviant offender
 Using the results of these cluster analyses to do a multiple correspondence
analysis (MCA) to examine inter-relationships between clusters


 Offenders who adopt a hunter search strategy (actively seek victims within a short
distance from home)
 Are telio specific (adult females with specific physical features)
 Use the home intruder approach style (often assaulting the victim in their
home)
 Employ an assault strategy based on violence and control
 These offenders are likely to be sexually deviant with one of the following
 Socially isolated, persistent sexually deviant fantasies, voyeurism in
adulthood, poor self-image in adulthood, etc.
 The Validity of Criminal Profiling
 Profilers claim their profiles have been successful and police officers hold
generally positive (although somewhat cautious) views of profiling
 Most Canadian officers feel that profiling is a valuable investigative tool
 But they also recognized limitations including that it shouldn’t be used as
evidence in court, or for all crimes, and can be misleading
 Criticisms from researchers
 Many forms of profiling appear to be based on a theoretical model of
personality that lacks strong empirical support
 Core psychological assumptions underlying profiling currently lack strong
empirical support
  Many profiles contain information so vague and ambiguous they can
potentially fit many suspects
 Professional profilers may be no better than untrained individuals at
constructing accurate profiles
 Does profiling have a strong theoretical base?
 Relies on a classic trait model of personality
 Model of personality that assumes the primary determinants of behaviour
are stable, internal traits
 This consistency is thought to persist across an offender’s crimes and into the
offender’s noncriminal lifestyle
 Some believe this model provides a solid basis for criminal profiling,
while other researchers disagree
 Personality psychology shows that traits are not the only determinant of
behaviour, situational factors can create behavioural inconsistencies
 Is there empirical support for profiling assumptions?
 Two assumptions have been tested by researchers
 Offenders behave in a stable fashion across the crimes they commit
 Reliable relationships exist between the way in which offenders commit
their crimes and their background characteristics
 Research has only provided partial support for the first assumption
 Consistent with the classic trait model, moderate levels of behavioural
consistency in crimes by serial offenders depending on the behaviour
 Less support for the second assumption
 A recent review concluded that majority of studies provide no support or
little support for this
 Canadian research is revealing new results that provide some support for certain
profiling assumptions
 i.e. Previous profiling research may have oversimplified the profiling
process
 What is the impact of ambiguous profiles?
 Many profiles are so ambiguous that they can fit many suspects
 One study examined the content of 21 profiling reports for major investigations
and found almost 24% of the profiling opinions could be considered ambiguous
 i.e. Different interpretations by different people
 How accurate are professional profilers?
 Criticism that professional profilers may be no more accurate than those with no
specialized training
 Performance of self-labelled profilers compared to groups across a variety of
prediction categories (i.e. cognition, physical attributes, offence behaviours, etc.)
 Results suggest that self-labelled profilers perform better than the
comparison groups across all measures
 Differences were relatively small
 Geographic profiling: an investigative technique that uses crime scene locations to
predict the most likely area where an offender resides
 Used most often in crimes involving lots of violence (i.e. serial robbery, arson,
and burglary)
  Basic assumption is that most serial offenders don’t travel far from home to
commit their crime
 Research supports this assumption
 Serial offenders tend to be consistent in their crime site selection choices, often
committing their crimes very close to where they reside
 Geographic profiling isn’t useful for those that travel to commit crimes
 One of the first cases was the Yorkshire Ripper in England
 Plotted 17 of his murders on a map and calculated the centre of gravity for
the points
 Figured out where he lived and eventually arrested him
 Geographic profiling systems: computer systems that use mathematical models
of offender spatial behaviour to make predictions about where unknown serial
offenders are likely to reside

CHAPTER 5 ~ Eyewitness Testimony

 Eyewitness Testimony: The Role of Memory
 A large part of eyewitness testimony rests on memory
 Memory is a process with several stages
 Encoding stage: perceive and pay attention to details in the environment
 Short-term memory: limited capacity, makes room for new information
 Long-term memory: can be accessed or retrieved as needed
 Not all information goes through all the stages of memory and factors can
affect each stage
 Example of factors affecting memory
 Inattention, unexpectedness, amount of time to view environmental
details, hearing others describe the environment, wording of questions,
amount of time elapsed between witnessing the event and retrieval, type of
lineup procedure used, relationship between confidence and accuracy
 Memory is not like a video recording, it can change each time we retrieve the
event with different parts of the event embellished/guessed
 Recall memory: reporting details of a previously witnessed event or person
 Recognition memory: determining whether a previously seen item or person is
the same as what is currently being viewed
 Eyewitness Myths – Myths and Realities
 Memory is like a videotape, an exact representation of what occurred
 Memories can be influenced/changed by subsequent events
 i.e. The way questions are asked can affect memory
 The wording of a question does not influence an eyewitness’ response
 Suggestive/leading questioning can influence responses
 i.e. Changing just one word can lead to an increase in incorrect answers
 Greater stress improves an eyewitness’ memory
 High stress levels can actually result in poorer memory both for the
perpetrator’s appearance and other crime details
 The race of the eyewitness and perpetrator has no impact on identification
accuracy
  Cross-race effect: eyewitnesses are better able to correctly identify a
member of their own race than a member of a different race
 The presence of a weapon doesn’t impact an eyewitness’ memory
 If a weapon is present, witnesses often focus on that (weapon focus) and
therefore have a less reliable memory for other aspects of the crime
 Canada’s Witness Protection Program
 Canada offers a federal witness protection program administered by the RCMP
 Goal is to protect individuals who provide police with information in the
investigation and prosecution of crime
 Providing this information can place some people at risk for harm
 2012 – Introduction of the Safer Witness Act
 Makes it easier for witnesses in provincial programs to obtain new
identities
 Imposes new restrictions on the disclosure of information, helps make the
program more secure
 Increases amount of time emergency protection may be provided to
witnesses
 Makes the program available to individuals referred from National
Defence and CSIS
 Some individuals in the program have sued for improper treatment, while others
have been kicked out of the program
 34 individuals have been granted protection under the program in 2013-2014
 How do we study eyewitness issues?
 Archival data (i.e. police reports), naturalistic observation, laboratory simulations
 Laboratory simulation studies are the most common paradigm used to study
eyewitness issues
 The Laboratory Simulation
 Estimator variables: variables that are present at the time of the crime and
cannot be changed
 i.e. Age of witness, amount of lighting, presence of a weapon, etc.
 These variables can’t be controlled, and their effect on eyewitness
accuracy can be estimated only after the crime
 System variables: variables that can be manipulated to increase (or decrease)
eyewitness accuracy
 i.e. Type of procedure used to interview the witness, type of lineup
procedure
 Dependent Variables
 Three general DVs in eyewitness studies are recall of event/crime, recall
of the perpetrator, and recognition of the perpetrator
 Recall of the crime or perpetrator can take two formats
 Open-ended recall (free narrative): witnesses are asked to either write or
orally state all they remember about the event without the officer (or
experimenter) asking questions
 Direct question recall: witnesses asked a series of specific questions
about the crime or perpetrator
 Witness’s recall of the crime or perpetrator can be examined for the following
  Amount of information reported
 Type of information reported
 Accuracy of information reported
 Lineup: a set of people presented to the witness, who must state whether the
perpetrator is present and if so, which person it is
 People can be shown pictures, voices, clothing, etc.
 Witness’s recognition response can be examined for the following
 Accuracy of decision
 Types of errors made
 Recall Memory
 Primary goal for an officer interviewing an eyewitness is to extract information
from the witness  complete and accurate report
 Interviewing Eyewitnesses
 Fisher et al. (1987) found lots of variation in how police were conducting
eyewitness interviews
 Variation in introducing themselves, using an open-ended interview, and asking
direct questions to determine specific information (i.e. age of perpetrator)
 Problems with police techniques
 Interrupting eyewitnesses during open-ended recall which could distract
eyewitnesses
 Using short and specific questions which can prevent them from collecting
information beyond what they’re asking for
 Asking questions in a predetermined or random order that was inconsistent
with the information eyewitnesses were providing
 Asking leading questions that are suggestive
 Co-witnesses (witnesses contaminating each other with their reports)
 Memory conformity: when what one witness reports influences what another
witness reports
 The Leading Question: The Misinformation Effect
 Elizabeth Loftus – study asking how fast cars were going when they
smashed/collided/bumped/contacted with each other
 Word choice affecting how fast participants reported the cars were going
 One week later, asking participants if they saw glass (“smashed”  more
likely to recall glass)
 Misinformation effect (post-event information effect): phenomenon where a
witness who is presented with inaccurate information after an event will
incorporate that misinformation into a subsequent recall task
 Explaining the Misinformation Effect
 Misinformation acceptance hypothesis: incorrect information is
provided because the witness guesses what the officer or experimenter
wants their response to be
 Source misattribution hypothesis: the witness has two memories – the
original and the misinformation; however the witness can’t remember
where each memory originated or the source of each
 Memory impairment hypothesis: the original memory is replaced with
new, incorrect information
 Procedures that help police interview eyewitnesses
 Hypnosis
 Hypnosis can help people recall a greater amount of information (i.e. if they are
traumatized they may have trouble recalling information)
 Many forensic hypnosis experts feel that it can help witnesses remember crime
details
 Assumed that a person under hypnosis is able to retrieve memories that are
otherwise inaccessible
 Hypnotically refreshed memory: a hypnotized witness may be able to produce a
greater number of details than a non-hypnotized witness
 Age regression technique: witness goes back in time and re-experiences the
original event
 Television technique: witness imagines that they are watching an imaginary TV
screen with the events being played as they were witnessed
 Many reviews have found that people under hypnosis remember more details, but
these details are just as likely to be inaccurate as accurate
 Having individuals close their eyes  visual and auditory information is recalled
to a greater degree
 Hypnotized individuals seem to be more suggestible to subtle cues by the
interviewer than under normal conditions
 Hard to differentiate between accurate and inaccurate details when using
hypnosis
 Witnesses recall accurate and inaccurate details with the same degree of
confidence
 Canadian courts are aware of difficulties with hypnotically induced recall and
typically don’t permit information gained that way to be used as evidence
 The Cognitive Interview: interview procedure for use with eyewitnesses based on the
principles of memory storage and retrieval
 Four memory-retrieval techniques to increase recall
 Reinstating the context
 Reporting everything
 Reversing order
 Changing perspective
 The cognitive interview produced the greatest amount of accurate information
without an increase in inaccurate details
 Compared with the standard police interview and hypnosis
 Enhanced cognitive interview: includes various principles of social dynamics in
addition to the memory retrieval principles used in original cognitive interview
 Rapport building: an officer should spend time building rapport with the
witness and make them feel comfortable and supported
 Supportive interview behaviour: a witness’s free recall should not be
interrupted, pauses should be waited out by the officer
 Transfer of control: the witness, not the officer, should control the flow
of the interview
 Focused retrieval: questions should be open-ended and not leading or
suggestive; after free recall officer should use focused memory techniques
  Witness-compatible questioning: officer’s questions should match the
witness’s thinking (i.e. staying on topic)
 Enhanced and original cognitive interviews provide more accurate information
without an increase in inaccurate information compared to standard interviews
 Significant differences between the two cognitive interviews have not
been found
 Some officers in Canada, US, UK, etc. have been trained to conduct cognitive
interviews
 Some are reluctant to use it, stating that it requires too much time to
conduct and that the appropriate environment isn’t always available
 Quantity and Accuracy of Descriptions
 Gender is most accurately reported
 Age is most inaccurately reported
 One study found up to 42% of described attributes were incorrect
 Witnesses were unreliable when describing basic features such as age,
height, and detailed features such as clothing
 Hair colour and hairstyle are reported accurately
 Difficulty reporting eye colour, footwear, and weight
 The use of a standard (i.e. my hair is this long, how long was the perpetrator’s
hair?) didn’t help with recall of person information
 Using a standard did help with descriptors not typically remembered well
(i.e. appearance of eyes, nose, or mouth)
 Writing out descriptions rather than speaking them out loud produced shorter and
less accurate descriptions than when witnesses orally stated descriptions
 Recognition Memory
 Can be tested in several ways including live lineups or photo arrays, video
surveillance records, and voice identification
 Lineup Identification
 Why conduct a lineup?
 Suspect: a person the police “suspect” committed the crime, who may be
guilty or innocent of the crime in question
 Perpetrator: the guilty person who committed the crime
 A witness helps to reduce uncertainty of whether a suspect is the
perpetrator
 Also provides information on physical similarity between a suspect and
the perpetrator
 Lineup Distractors (foils): lineup members who are known to be innocent of the
crime in question
 Similarity-to-suspect strategy matches lineup members to the suspect’s
appearance
 This strategy can be difficulty because there are many physical features to
be matched (i.e. eyebrows, nose, lips, etc.)
 Match-to-distraction strategy: sets limits on the number of features that
need to be matched
 Fair lineup: a lineup where the suspect does not stand out from the other lineup
members
  i.e. If the perpetrator is described as having brown hair but the suspect has
blond hair, then the distractors should have blond hair too
 Estimating Identification Accuracy
 Target-present lineup: a lineup that contains the predator
 Target-absent lineup: a lineup that does not contain the perpetrator but rather an
innocent suspect


 Possible decision in a target-present lineup
 Correct identification: witness identifies a guilty suspect
 Foil identification: witness identifies a foil
 False rejection: witness stating the perpetrator isn’t present
 Possible decision in a target-absent lineup
 Correct rejection: witness stating the perpetrator isn’t present
 Foil identification: witness identifies a foil
 False identification: witness identifies an innocent suspect
 False identification and foil identification can be combined together and
seen as false positives
 Indication Decision Implications
 Target-present lineup  only correct decision is correct identification
 Target-absent lineup  only correct decision is a correct rejection
 A foil identification is a known error to the police
 The witness may be perceived as having faulty memory and other details
they provide may be viewed with skepticism
 False rejection is an unknown error and can lead to the guilty suspect going free
and possibly committing further crimes
 False identification is an unknown error in real life and may result in the innocent
suspect being prosecuted and convicted for a crime they didn’t commit
 Live Lineups or Photo Arrays?
 Photo array: photographic lineups rather than live lineups
 Less time-consuming
 Portable
 Suspect doesn’t have the right to counsel being present when a witness
looks at a photo array
 Photos are static, thus the police don’t need to worry about the suspect’s
behaviour that may draw attention to themself in a live lineup
 Witness may be less anxious examining a photo array compared to a live
lineup
 Video-recorded lineups can also be used as an alternative
 Allows people to enlarge faces or focus on particular features
 Lineup members can also be shown walking, turning, and talking
 Correct identification and rejection rates don’t vary across live and video-
recorded lineups
  For adolescents, video lineups may have a slight advantage for correct
rejections but otherwise no difference between live and video lineups
 Video lineups are the usual format in the UK
 Lineup Presentation Procedures
 Simultaneous lineup: common lineup procedure that presents all lineup members
at one time to the witness
 Relative judgement: witness compares lineup members to one another and the
person who looks most like the perpetrator is identified
 Sequential lineup: alternative lineup procedure where the lineup members are
serially presented to the witness
 The witness must make a decision as to whether the lineup member is the
perpetrator before seeing another member
 Also, a witness can’t ask to see previously seen photos and is unaware of
the number of photos to be shown
 This procedure is supposed to reduce the likelihood that the witness can
make a relative judgement
 Absolute judgement: witness compares each lineup number to his or her memory
of the perpetrator to decide whether the lineup member is the perpetrator
 Correct identification rates don’t differ across lineup procedures
 Correct rejection rates were significantly different across lineup
procedures
 Only 42% of participants made a correct rejection with a simultaneous
lineup, whereas 65% made a correct rejection with a sequential lineup
 If the perpetrator isn’t included in the lineup, witnesses more likely to
indicate they aren’t present if they are shown a sequential lineup
 Meta analyses say correct identification rates are somewhat lower for sequential
lineups, but this difference is low when real world conditions are considered
 Sequential lineups used in Ontario, and in the US
 Showup: identification procedure that shows one person to the witness – the suspect
 The witness is asked whether the person is the perpetrator
 Some argue that since no other lineup members are shown, the witness is aware of
whom the police suspect which may increase likelihood of a false identification
 Some studies don’t find false identifications to be higher with a showup vs lineup
 Witnesses may be more likely to reject a showup than all members of a
lineup
 Witnesses may be more cautious with a showup
 Other studies say lineups have lower false identification rates than
showups
 For now, there are only two acceptable uses of a showup
 Deathbed identifications: when there is fear the witness won’t be alive
by the time a lineup is assembled
 Walk-by: identification procedure that occurs in a naturalistic
environment; police take the witness to a public location where the suspect
is likely to be and once the suspect is in view the witness is asked whether
they see the perpetrator
 In lineups with more than one person, the photos are usually randomly placed
 Biased lineup: a lineup that “suggests” whom the police suspect and thereby whom the
witness should identify
 Biases that increase false positives
 Foil bias: suspect is the only lineup member who matches the description
of the perpetrator (i.e. only one has a beard while the rest are shaved)
 Clothing bias: suspect is the only lineup member wearing clothing similar
to that worn by the perpetrator
 Instruction bias: police fail to mention to the witness that the perpetrator
may not be present, implying that the perpetrator is present and the
witness should pick them out
 Voice Identification
 Identification accuracy higher with longer voice samples
 Whispering significantly decreased identification accuracy
 Distinctiveness interacted with whispering, influencing identification accuracy
 Experiment where participants are shown a 40s recording of an unfamiliar voice
and presented with a voice lineup 2 weeks later
 Very poor performance
 Participants more likely to recognize a voice when accompanied by laughter or
only when the laughter was heard
 Factors that decrease the likelihood of correct voice identification
 If the voice is changed by whispering, muffling, or through emotion
 Identification more accurate when the speaker has a familiar accent compared to a
different accent
 Witnesses viewing a perpetrator with an accent reported less developed physical
descriptions of the perpetrator and were less accurate in identifying the voice
 Increasing the threatening nature of the message led to more inaccurate
descriptions of the perpetrator’s appearance
 When the target’s face was visible while the voice was being played, correct
identification decreased greatly
 More foils  decreased correct identification
 Are several identifications better than one?
 i.e. Being shown a face lineup, then a voice lineup, and then a body lineup to
identify the perpetrator
 If a suspect is identified across multiple lineups then there should be a greater
likelihood that the suspect is the perpetrator
 Exposing witnesses to more than one lineup, each consisting of a different aspect
of the suspect increased the ability to determine the reliability of an eyewitness
 Likelihood of suspect’s guilt increased as the number of independent
identifications of the suspect increased by any one witness
 Are confident witnesses accurate?
 In a US Supreme Court Case in 1972 (Neil v. Biggers), court stated that the
confidence of a witness should be taken as an indicator of accuracy
 Overall, there is a small positive correlation between accuracy and confidence
 Several moderator variables that increase/decrease this relation
 When confidence is assessed at the time of initial identification
 When the decision is made quickly
  When a ‘not here’ decision is made
 Interval between viewing the video and answering questions
 Providing (confirming) feedback (i.e. 87 other people had the same
response as you!) or feedback in general
 How witnesses feel and how much attention they think they paid to the
perpetrator
 The more often a decision is expressed, the greater that confidence one has
 Estimator Variable Research in Recognition Memory
 Three estimator variables that have received much attention in eyewitness
research – age, race, and weapon focus
 Age
 Older adults (over age 60) seem less likely than younger adults to identify the
perpetrator from a target-present lineup
 Older adults also more likely to make an incorrect decision from a target-absent
lineup than younger adults
 Older adults do not show any own-age bias
 Race
 Cross-race effect (other-race effect or own-race bias): witnesses remembering
own-race faces with greater accuracy than faces from other races
 Own-race faces produce higher correct identifications and lower false positives
than other-face races
 Attitudes
 People with fewer prejudicial attitudes may be more inclined to
distinguish among members of other races
 Not much empirical support
 Physiognomic homogeneity
 Some races have less variability in their faces
 Not much empirical support (i.e. Japanese, black and white faces tend to
have similar levels of similarity)
 People from other races may not pay attention or encode relevant features
that distinguish between members of a particular race
 Interracial contact
 Hypothesis that the more contact you have with other races, the better you
will be able to identify them
 Children from integrated neighbourhoods are better at recognizing other-
race faces than those in segregated neighbourhoods
 Weapon Focus: term used to describe the phenomenon of a witness’ attention
being focused on the perpetrator’s weapon rather than on the perpetrator
 The witness will remember less about the crime and perpetrator when a
weapon is present
 Two possible explanations for the weapon focus effect – arousal and
unusualness
 Cue-utilization hypothesis: when emotional arousal increases, attentional
capacity decreases
 Unusualness – weapons are unusual and attract a witness’ attention
 Expert Testimony on Eyewitness Issues
  Eyewitness experts may be overconfident in their conclusions and can mislead
courts about the validity, consistency, and generalizability of the data
 Weaknesses in eyewitness research that should limit its usefulness to real-world
application and experts testifying
 Studies examining the same issue produce different results
 Most of the studies use university students while real-life witnesses vary
in age and other demographic variables
 Most studies allow a witness to view the perpetrator for approximately 60s
but in reality witnesses may view the perpetrator for 5+ minutes
 Eyewitness research uses various methodologies and types of participants
 Some are highly reliable
 Some suggest that the lay public may not be sufficiently knowledgeable about
eyewitness issues to evaluate this evidence in court
 Public Policy Issues and Guidelines
 Mid 1990s, US attorney general Janet Reno commissioned a set of guidelines for
the collection and preservation of eyewitness evidence
 In more than 75% of DNA exoneration cases, the primary evidence used to
convict was eyewitness identification
 Eyewitness Evidence: A guide for Law Enforcement
 The person conducting the lineup or photo array shouldn’t know who the
suspect is
 Eyewitnesses should be told explicitly that the criminal may not be present
in the lineup and therefore, witnesses shouldn’t feel they must take an
identification
 Suspect shouldn’t stand out in the lineup as being different from the foils
based on the eyewitness’ previous description of the criminal or other
factors that would draw extra attention
 A clear statement should be taken from the eyewitness at the time of the
identification and prior to any feedback
 The entire lineup procedure should also be recorded on video to ensure accuracy
in the process
 One Canadian case involving poor police techniques in collecting eyewitness
identification was Thomas Sophonow (R. v. Sophonow, 1986)
 43 recommendations were made including the following –
 Photo lineup procedure with the witness should be videotaped or
audiotaped form the point the officer greets the witness to completion
 Officers should inform witnesses that it is just as important to clear
innocent suspects as it is to identify guilty suspects
 The photo lineup should be presented sequentially
 Officers should not discuss a witness’ identification decision with him or
her
 How does a case go wrong? R. v. Sophonow (1986)
 Barbara Stoppel was a waitress at a donut shop, found close to dead in the
women’s washroom after being strangled
 Several eyewitnesses were available in this case
  Mrs. Janower worked in the same plaza and went to the shop at 8:20pm and saw a
man standing inside who had locked the door and went to the washroom
 Mr. Doerksen was selling Christmas trees near the donut shop and chased a man
who walked out of the shop when Stoppel’s body was found
 Mr. McDonald was sitting in his parked truck waiting for his wife in the plaza
when he saw a man talking to the waitress
 Sophonow was visiting his daughter and has been in the shop
 He was convicted and found guilty – went through several trials
 He was later found to be not responsible after enduring 3 trials, 2 appeals,
and 45 months in jail for a crime he didn’t commit
 Some of the issues that may have contributed to his wrongful conviction
 Detective notes when interviewing Sophonow were not verbatim
 Police didn’t inform Sophonow that he could call a lawyer and that
statements he made could be used against him
 Officers didn’t allow him to call a lawyer
 He was strip-searched even though there was no reason to believe he
would have drugs
 Mr. Doerksen was basically a bad witness and his insight was unreliable
 Sophonow had an alibi that wasn’t considered seriously
 Terry Arnold lived near the shop and had a crush on Stoppel, he fit the
description and didn’t have an alibi – he was not fully investigated
 Dr. Elizabeth Loftus testified in the inquiry and noted a number of problems with
the eyewitness evidence
 When there’s more than one witness, they can inadvertently influence one
another
 People under hypnosis are suggestible and assume what they retrieve is
accurate even when it might not be
 The photo arrays shown to Mrs. Janower had Sophonow’s picture stand
out

CHAPTER 8 ~ The Role of Mental Illness in Court

 Presumptions in Canada’s Legal System
 Two elements must be present for criminal guilt to be established
 Actus reus: a wrongful deed
 Mens rea: criminal intent
 Myths about mental illness and the court
 Those with mental illness commit the most crime
 Actually, those with mental illness are similar to offenders with no mental
illness
 All defendants that commit very violent crime use the insanity defence to excuse
their behaviour
 Typically only around 1% of felony cases will argue the insanity defence
 Those with mental illness and who commit violent crime should never be released
from prison
  Some mentally ill offenders would benefit more from psychiatric
treatment than incarceration with scarce treatment for mental illness
 The criminal justice isn’t equipped to address the needs that psychiatric
hospitals or mental health courts can offer
 Once someone mentally ill has committed a crime, they can never be cured
 In the right treatment program, recidivism rates greatly decline
 If you are mentally ill and kill someone, you should go to jail rather than a mental
health facility
 Depending on the severity of the mental illness, offenders may fare better
in a mental health facility such as a psychiatric institution
 Fitness to Stand Trial
 Unfit to stand trial: refers to an inability to conduct a defence at any stage of the
proceedings on account of a person’s mental disorder
 i.e. If the defendant is experiencing an episode of schizophrenia and lacks
the ability to understand the situation
 R. v. Balliram (2003) concluded that an unfit person can’t be sentenced
 Degree of impairment necessary for an unfit determination is difficulty to
pinpoint but being found NCR doesn’t constitute an acquittal
 Instead they would be diverted to a provincial or territorial Review Board
of 5 members (chaired by a judge and containing a psychiatrist)
 R. v. Pritchard (1836) considered the key case for the fitness standard
 Three criteria delineated in the Prichard case
 Whether the defendant is mute of malice (i.e. intentionality)
 Whether the defendant can plead to the indictment
 Whether the defendant has sufficient cognitive capacity to understand the
trial proceedings
 Enactment of Bill C-30 in 1992 – criminal code stated a fitness standard
 A defendant is unfit to stand trial if they are
 Unable on account of a mental disorder to conduct a defence at any stage
of the proceedings before a verdict is rendered or to instruct counsel to do
so
 Unable on account of a mental disorder to (a) understand the nature or
object of the proceedings, (b) understand the possible consequences of the
proceedings, or (c) communicate with counsel
 Communication with counsel is with regard to limited cognitive capacity
 Court ruled that a defendant need only be able to state the facts relating to
the offence that would allow appropriate defence
 Not necessarily just communicating the facts that are in their best interest
 Length of time that a defendant can be held in custody for a fitness evaluation
 Five day limit on court-ordered assessments was legislated
 Extensions if necessary can’t exceed 30 days and the entire length of
detention should not exceed 60 days
 Witnesses have differing opinions regarding
 The presentation of a victim impact statement at a court or Review Board hearing
 Assessments by persons other than medical practitioners (i.e. psychologists in
addition to psychiatrists)
  The dual Review Board/court procedure to grant a stay of proceedings in the case
of a permanently unfit accused
 The extension of the time for the next review hearing from 12 to 24 months in the
case of a serious personal injury offence
 The transfer of physical evidence from courts to Review Boards
 Bill C-10 – An act to amend the Criminal Code (mental disorder) and to make
consequential amendments to other acts
 Raising the Issue of Fitness
 The issue of a defendant’s fitness may be raised at various points from the time of
arrest to the defendant’s sentence determination
 i.e. When the defendant chooses not to be represented by counsel, and
during sentencing


 How many defendants are referred for fitness evaluations?
 Approximately 5000 fitness evaluations conducted annually in Canada
 In a remand facility in BC
 61% of a sample underwent fitness evaluations
 24% were held for assessments of both fitness and criminal responsibility
 In the US, it is estimated that somewhere between 2-8% of all felony defendants
are referred for fitness evaluations (25-30K defendants)


 Who can assess fitness?
 Traditionally, only medical practitioners have been allowed to conduct court-
ordered assessments of aspects such as fitness to stand trial and criminal
responsibility
 The Canadian Criminal Code excludes psychologists from conducting court-
ordered assessments
 Specifies that only medical practitioners and other professions designated
by the Attorney General as qualified
 But the medical practitioners don’t need any background in psychiatry or
experience with forensic populations
 In the US, all but 6 states allow psychologists to conduct fitness and criminal
responsibility evaluations
 In Canada, psychologists can be involved by assisting the evaluations and
submitting their results to psychiatrists/MDs who incorporate results together
 Fitness Instruments
 Screening instruments help evaluators quickly screen out defendants who are
competent to stand trial
 Comprehensive fitness assessments reserved for defendants who are
“screened in”
 Long stays in mental facilities are unnecessary for most fitness decisions
 Many fitness decisions can be made quickly by using a screening
instrument which is also more cost-effective
 Fitness Interview Test Revised (FIT-R)
 Developed to meet the fitness criteria outlined in the Canadian Criminal Code
 Semi-structured interview assessing three psychological abilities stated in the
Code’s fitness standard
 Understand the nature or object of the proceedings
 Factual knowledge of criminal procedure:
 Defendant’s understanding of the arrest process
 Nature and severity of current charges
 Role of key participants
 Understand the possible consequences of the proceedings
 Appreciation of personal involvement in and importance of the
proceedings:
 Appreciation of range and nature of possible penalties and defences
 Communicate with counsel
 Ability to participate in defence:
 Defendant’s ability to communicate facts
 Defendant’s ability to relate to his or her attorney
 Defendant’s ability to plan legal strategy
 Each response rated on 3-point scale
 Fitness Instruments
 Competency Screening Test (CST)
 22 uncompleted sentences that the respondent must finish
 i.e. “The lawyer told Bill that…”, “When I go to court the lawyer will…”
 Items measure three constructs
 Potential for a constructive relationship between the defendant and his
lawyer
 Defendant’s understanding of the court process
 The ability of the defendant to emotionally cope with the criminal process
 Scored on a 0-3 point system
 Competency to Stand Trial Assessment Instrument (CAI)
 Designed to accompany the CST
 The CAI is a semi-structured interview and constitutes a comprehensive
competency evaluation
 Assesses 13 functions corresponding to a defendant’s ability to participate in the
criminal process on behalf of his/her best interests
 Each function is represented in a statement with 2-3 sample questions that
the evaluator may pose to the defendant
  E.g.
 Scored on a 1 to 5 scale
 Interdisciplinary Fitness Interview (IFI)
 A semi-structured interview measuring three areas of competency
 Functional memory
 Appropriate relationship with lawyer
 Understanding of the justice system
 Four main sections of the IFI
 Legal items
 Psychopathological items
 Overall evaluation
 Consensual judgement
 Each section has a number of subsections and areas of assessment
 Revision of the IFI (IFI-R) only has two sections – current clinical condition and
psycho-legal abilities
 Current Clinical Condition
 Attention/consciousness
 Delusions
 Hallucinations
 Impaired reasoning and judgement
 Impaired memory
 Mood and affect
 Psycho-legal abilities
 Capacity to appreciate charges and to disclose pertinent facts, events, and
motives
 Courtroom demeanour and capacity to understand the adversarial nature of
proceedings
 Quality of relationship with attorney
 Appreciation of and reasoned choice with respect to legal option and
consequences
 Responses rated on a scale from 0 to 2
 Recommended to also interview the defendant’s lawyer, previous mental health
contacts, and jail personnel
 Mental health reports, police reports, and prior arrest history should also
be reviewed
 MacArthur Competence Assessment Tool – Criminal Adjudication (MacCAT-CA)
 Structured interview with 22 items that assess competencies in three areas
 Factual understanding of the legal system and the adjudication process
 Reasoning ability
 Understanding of own legal situation and circumstances
 Areas are assessed via hypothetical scenarios
 Presentation of scenario  asking a series of questions
 Scores of 0, 1, or 2 are given based on scoring criteria
 Distinguishing between Fit and Unfit Defendants
  According to a meta-analytic review
 A greater proportion of incompetent defendants diagnosed with a
psychotic disorder compared with those who were competent
 Both unemployed and unmarried defendants more likely to be found
incompetent compared to those that were employed and married
 Competent defendants more likely to have a current violent criminal
charge as opposed to a non-violent charge
 Comparing demographic, mental health, and criminal characteristics of unfit
defendants
 Only marital status found to be significant
 Fit defendants significantly more likely to have been married 9married,
divorced, separated, common law) than unfit defendants
 Meta-analysis of 40 studies in Canada and the US
 Fit and unfit defendants differ in age, gender, race, and marital status
 Unfit defendants more likely to be older females belonging to a minority
group and to be single
 Competency (the US term for fitness)
 Differences between competent and incompetent defendants found in
employment status, psychiatric diagnosis, ethnicity, and criminal charges
 Incompetent defendants less likely to maintain employment and had more
serious mental illness than competent defendants
 More African-American defendants found to be incompetent compared to
Caucasian defendants
 Recent meta-analysis of 68 studies from 1967 to 2008
 Defendants with a psychotic disorder 8x more likely to be found
incompetent
 Unemployed defendants 2x as likely to be found incompetent
 Defendants with an earlier psychiatric hospitalization 2x as likely to be
found incompetent
 Not all psychotic defendants are unfit and the presence of psychosis is not
sufficient or equivalent to unfitness
 How is fitness restored?
 When a defendant is found unfit to stand trial, the goal of the criminal justice
system is to get the defendant fit
 Most common treatment for fitness is medication
 Courts take into account the individual’s capacity to comprehend and
appreciate the consequences of their actions and public safety
 Treatments may be imposed by court
 What happens after a finding of unfitness?
 Proceedings against the defendant are halted until competency is restored
 In the US, almost all jurisdictions limit the time that a defendant may be “held” as
unfit
 In Canada, the judge may order that the defendant be detained in a hospital or be
conditionally discharged
 Reassessed for fitness within 45 days, if they are still unfit after 90 days
they would be sent to a review board for assessment and disposition
  Cases of defendants who continue to be unfit are reviewed on an annual
basis by the review board
 The crown must prove that there’s sufficient evidence to bring the case to
trial (making a prima facie case) every 2 years and whenever defendant
requests the proceeding
 For youth found unfit, court must review the case every year (Youth
Criminal Justice Act)
 Prima facie case: case in which the crown prosecutor must prove there is
sufficient evidence to bring the case to trial
 If a defendant becomes unfit again during trial proceedings  proceedings stop
until the defendant becomes fit again
 If defendant becomes unfit while in custody and there is reason to believe they’ll
be unfit if released  defendant remains in the facility until the trial is complete
 Until recently, an absolute discharge could not be issued to defendants unlikely to
become fit
 Supreme Court of Canada ruled that if defendants post no significant
threat to society then they can be given an absolute discharge even if
they’re unfit


 Mental State at Time of Offence
 Insanity: impairment of mental or emotional functioning that affects perceptions,
beliefs, and motivations at the time of the offence
 Case of James Hadfield in 1800 who attempted to assassinate King George III
 Hadfield had a brain injury and his lawyer successfully argued that he was
out of touch with reality
 Daniel McNaughton in 1843 (R. v. McNaughton, 1843)
 McNaughton purchased 2 pistols and shadowed Edward Drummond (one
of the PM’s secretaries) and shot him in the back
 McNaughton was found not guilty because of his mental status: insanity
 He served out his life in a mental institute
 Five critical elements from McNaughton verdict – with three specific to
the insanity defenses of today
 1. A defendant must be found to be suffering from a defect of reason/disease
of the mind
2. A defendant must not know the nature and quality of the act he or she is
performing
3. A defendant must not know what they are doing is wrong
 Mid-1970s review of policies for offenders with mental disorders
 Found that mental disorder legislation in the Criminal Code was in
conflict with Charter of Rights and Freedoms
 1992, Bill C-30 enacted and the following changes were made to the justice
system
 “Not guilty by reason of insanity”  “Not criminally responsible on
account of mental disorder (NCRMD)”
 Wording of the standard was altered and stated in section 16 of the
Criminal Code (i.e. “mental disorder”)
 Review boards were created – legal bodies mandated to oversee the care
and disposition of defendants found unfit/NCRMD
 1999, Winko v. British Columbia
 Supreme Court of Canada stated that a defendant who is NCRMD should
be detained only if they post a criminal threat to the public
 Otherwise they should receive absolute discharge
 Forensic Psychology in the Spotlight – Sportscaster shot dead by patient with mental
illness
 Brian Smith was a sportscaster for CJOH (Ottawa TV station)
 He was shot in the head in the parking lot and died
 Jeffrey Arenburg was the confessed killer
 Said that he was angry with the media and wanted to harm a media
personality so he shot the first personality he recognized in the parking lot
 Arenburg was assessed for fitness to stand trial
 Jury found Arenburg fit and was charged with first-degree murder
 The defence raised the issue of his sanity and argued for an NCRMD
verdict and he was indeed found to be NCRMD for first-degree murder
 Sent to a maximum-security psychiatric facility for an indefinite period of
time
 Less than 10 years after the shooting Arenburg wanted to be released
 Mandatory review board meeting  granted conditional discharge and
required to live with his brother
 Attended classes at Georgian college
 Eventually granted absolute discharge, the board heard that he no longer
poses a significant risk to the community and didn’t have any more sx
 Arenburg had a long psychiatric history being in and out of hospitals and relatedly
offered treatment for schizophrenia
 Brian’s law led to the implementation of community treatment orders
 Requirements for people with mental illnesses who are living in the
community to report to a mental health caregiver on a regular basis
 They may also be required to take medication, and risk re-
institutionalizetion if they refuse medication
 Raising the Issue of Insanity
 Few defendants use the insanity defence
 In the US, one study found that less than 1% of all felony cases will argue an
insanity defence
 Success rate of such a defence is variable
 About 25% of defendants who argue an insanity defence succeed
 Insanity defences typically occur when the opposing sides (prosecution and
defence) agree to such a verdict
 Opposing experts often testify on the issue in jury trials
 Defendants found NCRMD are likely to have major psychiatric disorders (i.e.
schizophrenia) and many past mental health problems
 Males and females have similar violent offences and both just as likely to be
aggressive toward other patients
 In Canada, there are only two situations in which the Crown may raise the
issue of insanity
 Following a guilty verdict, the Crown could argue that the defendant was
NCRMD if they believe they require psychiatric treatment and a mental
facility is best suited for the defendant’s needs
 If the defence states that the defendant has a mental illness, the Crown can
then argue it
 The party that raises the issue must prove it beyond a balance of the probabilities
 Assessing Insanity
 Requires psychiatric assessment
 Richard Rogers developed the first standardized assessment scales for criminal
responsibility
 Rogers Criminal Responsibility Assessment Scales (R-CRAS) – 5 scales
 Patient reliability
 Organicity
 Psychopathology
 Cognitive control
 Behavioural control
 Each scale has 30 items with scores ranging from 0-6
 Higher values = greater severity
 What happens to a defendant found NCRMD?
 Absolute discharge: the defendant is released into the community without
restrictions to his or her behaviour
 Conditional discharge: defendant is released under certain conditions (i.e. not to
possess firearms) that the defendant must meet
 Failure to meet the conditions imposed may result in incarceration of
being sent to a psychiatric facility
 A defendant sent to a psychiatric facility need not comply with treatment
 Treatment decisions can only be forced when the defendant’s mental
health has deteriorated to a point where they’re no longer competent
 In Canada, dispositions may be made by the court or referred to a
provincial/territorial review board
 Review boards take lots of information into account such as
  Charge information, trial transcript, criminal history, risk assessment,
clinical history such as previous admissions to hospital, psychological
testing, hospital’s recommendation
 Capping: notion introduced through Bill C-30 where there is a maximum period
of time a person with a mental illness could be affected by their disposition
 i.e. The disposition period for a defendant with a mental illness who
committed a violent offence is 10 years (same length as a prison term)
 Four main criteria are considered when deciding a disposition
 Public safety
 Mental state of the defendant
 Reintegration of the defendant into society
 Other needs of the defendant


 Bill C-54 would make changes to defendants found NCR
 Bill is directed at those who committed a serious offence and have a high
likelihood of reoffending and toward acts that are dangerous to the public
 The bill is in proposal, hasn’t been passed yet
 If passed, high-risk offenders would not be granted a conditional or
absolute discharge and only a court could lift the high-risk designation
 Forensic Psychology in the Spotlight – Police Officer Run Over by Snowplow
 Richard Kachkar ran away from a homeless shelter, stole a snowplow, and was
running into card and injuring drivers for two hours
 Ran over Sergeant Ryan Russell who was trying to stop him
 The issue was Kachkar’s mental state at the time of the offence
 In a trial by jury a verdict of NCRMD was reached
 He was sent to Ontario Shores
 Automatism: unconscious, involuntary behaviour such that the person committing the
act is not aware of what they are doing
 Case of Kenneth Parjs
 Got up in the middle of the night, got dressed, drove to his parents-in-laws
and stabbed them
 He then drove to the police station and turned himself in
 His defence was sleepwalking, a form of automatism
 Criminal Code of Canada doesn’t specifically address automatism as a defence
 Judges rely on their own judgement and case law when such defences are
raised
 Supreme Court of Canada stated that there are two forms of automatism
  Noninsane automatism: involuntary behaviour that occurs because of an
external factor (verdict would be “not guilty”)
 Insane automatism: refers to an involuntary action that occurs because of
a mental disorder (verdict would be “NCRMD”)
 R. v. Stone (1999) – Supreme Court outlined a two-stage process for addressing
defences of automatism
 Trial judge must decide whether there is sufficient evidence that the
behaviour was involuntary
 Considers the following factors – psychiatric assessments, severity of
triggering event, history of automatic behaviour
 Trial judge determines if the condition is a mental disorder (insane) or non-
mental-disorder (noninsane) automatism
 External factor  noninsane automatism
 Judge and jury decide if the defendant acted involuntarily or not
 Canadian courts have recognized defences of noninsane automatism in the following
circumstances
 A physical blow (i.e. a blow to the head)
 Physical ailments, such as stroke
 Hypoglycemia (i.e. low blood sugar)
 Carbon monoxide poisoning
 Sleepwalking
 Involuntary intoxication
 Psychological blow from an extraordinary external event that might reasonably be
expected to cause a dissociative state in an average, normal person
 Everyday stresses that may lead to a dissociative state would not be
sufficient for a defence of automatism
 Forensic Psychology in the Spotlight – A Gas Company, a Tire Company, and a Case of
Automatism
 Dorothy and Earl Joudrie were teen sweethearts
 They got married and amassed quite a fortune
 Home, vacation home, millions of dollars
 Dorothy took a handgun and shot Earl sic times
 Psychiatrists told the court that Dorothy was in a dissociative state at the time of
the shooting
 Insane automatism
 NCRMD decision  psychiatric facility
 Cases in Forensic Psychology – Can Insults Lead to Automatism? R v. Stone (1999)
 Bert Stone stabbed his wife 47 times using a hunting knife
 Stone argued that his behaviour wasn’t under his control, he was in an
automatistic state triggered by his wife’s insults
 After he stabbed his wife he got rid of the body, cleaned up, left a note for his
stepdaughter, and then checked into a hotel
 Later selling his car and flying to Mexico
 He woke up, remembered stabbing his wife and then after 6 weeks he turned
himself in
 Sentenced to 7 years in prison
 How do NCRMD and Automatism Differ?
 Main difference is verdict outcomes
 NCRMD  defendant sent to mental health facility
 Successful noninsane automatism  defendant is not guilty and released without
conditions
 Intoxication as a Defence
 Mr. Daviault got drunk and sexually assaulted Ms. X
 Pharmacologist testified that since he was so drunk he blacked out and was in a
temporary dissociative state
 Judge found the defendant not guilty
 Appeal – court stated that self-induced intoxication resulting in a state similar to
automatism is not available as a defence for a general intent offence
 Defendants with Mental Disorders
 If a defendant doesn’t receive an unfit finding or an NCRMD verdict, this doesn’t
necessarily mean they don’t have mental health difficulties
 92% of males found to have a lifetime prevalence of psychiatric disorders
 Prevalence of mental disorders in federally incarcerated offenders – 43%
have a lifetime prevalence of substance abuse disorder
 In Canada, about 10% of the general population reported mental health problems
 10% of incarcerated officers found to have a mental disorder at the time of
admission
 61% of offenders sent to a short-term correctional facility in Canada were given at
least one mental disorder diagnosis
 Males found to suffer from psychotic disorders, anxiety disorders, and
drug dependence
 Females found to suffer from anxiety, personality disorders, and substance
abuse-related disorders


 25% of offenders incarcerated in Colorado suffer from mental illness
 Mentally ill offenders are likely to have more than one mental health issue
 Approximately 75% of mentally ill offenders have dual diagnoses
 13% diagnosed with schizophrenia
 56% with substance-related issues
 10% ASPD
 58% of cases experienced contact with a psychiatric health care facility
prior to the offence, 9% had contact in the previous 12 weeks
 In the Media – What to do with mentally ill offenders?
 Currently, inmates who are mentally ill are segregated from other offenders
 Segregation is used if inmates are suicidal or at risk of seriously injuring
themselves
  Howard Sapers (Canada’s federal prison ombudsman) stated that confining
mentally ill offenders must end
 Offenders who experience acute mental illness  sent to one of 5 regional
psychiatric hospitals in Canada
 Virtually no options if the offender doesn’t meet hospital admission
criteria but has a mental illness
 Why are there such high rates of mental illness in offender populations?
 Individuals with a mental illness are likely to be arrested at a disproportionately
higher rate
 Individuals with a mental illness are less adept at committing crime and therefore
more likely to get caught
 Individuals with a mental illness are more likely to plead guilty, possibly because
of an inability to access good representation or understand consequences of plea
 In 2004, CMHA suggested individuals with mental health issues more likely to be
detected and arrested for nuisance such as trespassing and disorderly conduct
 Dealing with offenders who are mentally ill
 Provincial and territorial mental health legislation grants police two options for
dealing with offenders in the community who are mentally ill
 If they are posing a threat to themselves or others  hospital or mental
health facility for assessment and possible treatment
 Police may charge and arrest the individual  mental health services may
be given through the criminal justice system
 Bias against mentally ill offenders
 Offenders can receive a conditional release from a federal facility in Canada in
two ways
 Parole – determined by a parole board, dependant on eligibility criteria
 Mandatory supervision – occurs after serving 2/3 of a sentence
 67% of those with a mental disorder vs 75% without one receive conditional
releases
 Offenders with mental disorders more likely to be conditionally released
as a result of mandatory supervision
 Offenders without a mental disorder more likely to be conditionally
released because of parole
 Offenders with mental disorders more likely to have their release suspended (i.e.
for not abiding by their supervision order) compared to other offenders
 Also more likely to be re-admitted for committing a new offence
 2x as likely to be at risk for coming back into contact with the criminal
justice system
 Those with only a psychiatric disorder less likely to violate parole and commit a
new offence
 Compared to those with a combination of psychiatric + substance use
disorder
 Are people with mental illness violent?
 About 55% of those with a psychiatric diagnosis committed violent acts
 In contrast only about 16% of respondents who did not meet criteria for a
psychiatric diagnosis engaged in violent behaviour
  Respondents with two diagnoses – 80-93% of these respondents committed
violent acts
 Over 50% of US respondents who met criteria for a psychiatric disorder
committed violent acts
 Approximately 23% of offenders with no psychiatric disorder committed violent
acts whereas 28% of offenders with a psychiatric disorder were violent
 Patients with sever mental illness more likely to have a violence conviction when
compared with general populations
 i.e. People with schizophrenia more likely to commit a violent crime than
those diagnoses with other psychoses
 Peak in criminal behaviour reflected in the 15-24 year old age group and a
decline in criminal behaviour observed in offenders 40+
 Within 5 years after diagnosis of schizophrenia
 10.7% of men and 2.7% of women committed a violent offence
 Drug use disorders and previous criminality prior to the diagnosis were
among the three risk factors predictive of adverse outcomes
 Types of Offences Committed by People with Mental Illnesses
 NCRMD defendants more likely to have committed murder or attempted murder
than others
 Offenders with mental disorders committed a variety of crimes such as fraud,
shoplifting, and murder
 Forensic Psychology in the Spotlight – A Violent Crime Committed by a Mentally Ill
Man
 Vincent Li greyhound bus incident
 Recidivism Rates and People with Mental Illnesses
 After 3 years, recidivism rates (reoffending rates) was
 17% following index verdict, 20% following conditional discharge, and
22% following absolute discharge
 Recidivism rates for BC and Ontario roughly the same, Quebec’s rate roughly 2x
the other two provinces
 Recidivism rates higher in general population compared to inmate
population treated for mental disorder
 The average recidivism follow-up time was 4.9 years in a meta-analysis
 Having psychosis (or any other mental disorder) is not a useful predictor
of recidivism
 Best predicting factors are age on admission, number of days hospitalized,
and number of previous offences
 Those with an alcohol problem more likely to recidivate earlier and be re-
arrested for a violent crime than those without an alcohol problem
 Treatment of Offenders with Mental Disorders
 Goals of tx vary greatly – i.e. symptom reduction, decreased length of stay in a
facility, and no need to be re-admitted to hospital
 Reducing risk of recidivism has garnered much attention as a treatment goal
among those in the criminal justice system
 Little agreement on which treatment type is more appropriate for offenders with
mental disorders
  Psychotic symptoms – antipsychotic drugs and behaviour therapy (adding
positive material reward for appropriate behaviour
 Availability of facilities and willingness of offender to engage in a particular
program varies
 Community treatment order: sentence that allows the mentally ill offender to
live in the community
 With the stimulation that the person will agree to treatment or detention in
the event their condition deteriorates
 Diversion: decision not to prosecute, but rather have an offender undergo an
educational or community-service program
 Also an option for courts dealing with offenders with mental illnesses
facing minor charges
 Court can divert the offender directly into a treatment program rather than
have them go through the court process
 A new court for the mentally ill: The Mental Health Courts
 Mental health courts have four main objectives
 To divert accused who have been charged with minor to moderately
serious criminal offences and offer them an alternative
 To facilitate evaluation of a defendant’s fitness to stand trial
 To ensure treatment for a defendant’s mental disorders
 To decrease the cycle that mentally disordered offenders experience by
becoming repeat offenders
 Perceptions of Mental Health Courts
 80% of general public and 70% of professional group reported supporting
government funding for mental health court in their community
 58 and 57% agreed even if the court would mean a tax increase
 Positive attitudes toward mental health courts predicted by factors
 i.e. Being older, prior exposure to mental health coursework, displaying
psychological openness, having positive help-seeking attitudes, and
positive attitudes toward mental illness generally
 Are mental health courts effective?
 Courts may differ on how defendants are referred, eligibility, quality/quantity of
services available, etc.
 Offenders who have gone through the mental health system report more
satisfaction and perceptions of higher fairness, less coercion, and increased
confidence with the administration of justice
 Medium effect size for improving mental health outcomes (meta-analysis)
 Overall, data supports mental health courts
 About 80% of the sample had a lower recidivism 2 years after 2x
compared with the 2x prior to treatment
 Those who completed a treatment program had a reduction in both recidivism risk
and criminogenic needs
 Not statistically significant though

CHAPTER 10 ~ Risk Assessment

 What is Risk Assessment?
  Prior to the 1990s, risk was seen as a dichotomy – an individual is either
dangerous or not dangerous
 Now risk is regarded as a range – the individual can vary in the degree to which
they are considered dangerous
 Dimension of probability
 Probabilities may change over time
 Risk level reflects an interaction among a person’s characteristics,
background, and possible future situations that will affect their behaviour
 The process of risk assessment includes both a “prediction” and “management”
component
 Prediction: the probability that an individual will commit future criminal
or violent acts (focus on identifying risk factors of future violence)
 Management: development of interventions to manage or reduce
likelihood of future violence (focus on treatment to reduce risk)
 Risk Assessments: When are they conducted?
 Civil Settings and criminal settings
 Civil Setting
 Civil commitment: requires an individual to be hospitalized involuntarily if they
have a mental illness and pose a danger to themselves or others
 Mental health professional (usually psychiatrist or psychologist) needs to
know the probability of violence associated with various mental illness sx
 Identify whether the circumstances associated with individual patients
would affect the likelihood they will harm themselves or others
 In Canada, only a psychiatrist can civilly commit someone to a hospital
 Child protection: involves laws that are in place to protect children from abuse
 Risk of physical abuse, sexual abuse, or neglect is considered when a
government protection agency such as Children’s Aid Society decides to
temporarily remove a child from their home or terminate parental rights
 Immigration laws prohibit the admission of individuals into Canada if there are
reasonable grounds for believing they will engage in acts of violence
 Or if they pose a risk to the social, cultural, or economic functioning of
Canadian society
 School and labour regulations also include provisions to prevent any kind of act
that would endanger others
 Mental health professionals expected to consider the likelihood that their
patients will act in a violent manner and to intervene to prevent such behaviour
 Duty to warm
 Criminal Settings
 Risk assessment occurs at nearly every major decision point in the criminal justice
and forensic psychiatric systems
 Including pretrial, sentencing, and release
 Bail can be denied if there is substantial likelihood they will commit another
criminal offence
 Adolescent offenders
 Judge can decide to apply adult criminal sanctions depending on age, type
of offence, and risk level
  Risk also plays a role in decisions about sending a youth to secure custody
(i.e. if they are high risk), open custody, or community probation
 Risk assessment is a routine component of many sentencing decisions, but is also
critical to certain kinds of sentencing decisions
 Risk assessment is also required for decisions concerning release from
correctional and forensic psychiatric institutions such as parole
 Parole board members use information such as risk assessments provided
by institutional psychologists to determine likelihood of crime
 Types of Prediction Outcomes
 True positive: a correct prediction occurring when a person who is predicted to
be violent engages in violence
 True negative: a correct prediction occurring when a person who is predicted not
to be violent does not act violently
 False positive: an incorrect prediction occurring when a person who is predicted
to violent is not
 False negative: an incorrect prediction occurring when a person is predicted to be
nonviolent but acts violently


 Minimizing the number of false positive errors results in an increase in the
number of false negative errors
 False positive errors have implications for the individual being assessed (i.e.
denial of freedom)
 False negative errors have implications for society and the potential victim (i.e.
another child victimized by a sexual offender)
 In some cases, it is tolerable to have a high rate of false positives if the
consequences of such an error are not severe
 The Base Rate Problem
 Base rate: represents the percentage of people within a given population who
commit a criminal or violent act
 It is difficult to make accurate predictions when the base rates are too high or too
low
 Low base rates  many false positives
 i.e. Many high-profile school shootings have occurred with media
coverage, but they occur infrequently
 Any attempt to predict which individual youths might engage in a school
shooting would result in many youths being wrongly classified
 Base rates can vary dramatically depending on the group being studied, what is
being predicted, and the length of the follow-up period
 It is easiest to predict frequent events than infrequent events
 A History of Risk Assessment
 Before 1966, relatively little attention was paid to how well professionals could
assess risk of violence
  1960s – civil rights concerns provided the rare opportunity to study the accuracy
of mental health professionals in predicting violence
 Baxstrom v. Herald (1966) – Baxstrom was detained beyond his sentence
expiry and released into the community
 This case led to more than 300 mentally ill offenders from Dannemora
State Hospital for the Criminally Insane to be released or transferred
 98 of the patients considered to be too dangerous were released into the
community, only 20 were arrested in 4 years and only 7 were violent
 Thornberry and Jacoby followed 400 forensic patients released into the
community
 Dixon v. Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 1971
 60 patients arrested or rehospitalized for a violent incident
 These studies are referred to as the Baxstrom and Dixon studies
 Base rates for violence is relatively low
 False positive rates are very high
 Overall, in the past many mentally disordered forensic patients were
needlessly kept in restrictive institutions based on erroneous judgements
 Ennis and Litwick characterized clinical expertise in risk assessment as similar to
“flipping coins in the courtroom”
 Some even conclude that no expertise to predict dangerous behaviour
exists
 Methodological Issues
 Risk assessment assumes risk can be measured
 Measurement assumes that an instrument exists for the measurement of risk
 Ideally we would assess a large number of offenders and then regardless of risk
level, release them into the community
 Track them to see if they commit another criminal act
 This way a risk instrument could be evaluated to determine if it could
accurately predict future criminal acts
 This is not ethically feasible since we can’t just release high-risk
individuals into the community
 In reality we have small and limited sample sizes with a low risk of
offending
 Monahan and Steadman (1994) identified three main weaknesses of research on
the prediction of violence
 (1) Limited number of risk factors being studied
 Violent behaviour is due to a complex interaction between individual
dispositions and situational factors
 Risk assessment may be improved by measuring more of the reasons why
people engage in violence
 (2) How the criterion variable (the variable you are trying to measure) is
measured
 Researchers often use official criminal records as their criterion but many
crimes are never reported to police
 Thus many false positives may be undiscovered true positives
 (3) How the criterion variable is defined is a concern
  In some studies, researchers classify their participants as having either
engaged in violence or not
 Recommended that researchers expand this coding to include severity of
violence, types of violence, targets of violence, location, and motivation
 It is likely that some risk factors will be associated certain forms of
violence
 i.e. Hx of sexual offences may predict future sexual offences but not future
bank robberies
 Judgement Error and Biases
 Heuristics: shortcuts people use to help make decisions
 Some lead to inaccurate decisions
 Illusory correlation: belief that a correlation exists between 2 events that are in
reality wither not correlated or correlated to a much lesser degree
 i.e. Only some forms of mental disorder are related to an increased risk of
violent behaviour, not all diagnoses
 Mixed findings regarding the likelihood that those with a mental disorder will
recidivate compared to those without a mental disorder
 Clinicians tend to ignore base rates of violence
 People tend to be overconfident in their judgements
 Clinicians who are very confident more likely to recommend and
implement intervention strategies
 Confidence =/= accuracy
 Association between clinician confidence and accuracy is minimal
 Approaches to the Assessment of Risk
 Unstructured clinical judgement: decisions characterized by a substantial
amount of professional discretion and lack of guidelines
 Actuarial prediction: decisions are based on risk factors that are selected and
combined based on their empirical or statistical association with a specific
outcome
 Debate in the literature concerning the comparative accuracy of unstructured
clinical vs actuarial prediction
 Review of 20 studies concluded that actuarial prediction was equal to or
better than unstructured clinical judgement in all cases (1964)
 In 2000, menta-analysis reached a similar conclusion
 Weight of evidence clearly favours actuarial assessments of risk, even
with samples of offenders with mental disorders and sex offenders
 Criticism of actuarial assessments has been their sole reliance on static risk factors
which don’t permit measuring changes in risk over time
 Structured professional judgement: decisions are guided by a predetermined
list of risk factors that have been selected from the research and professional
literature
 Judgement of risk level is based on the evaluator’s professional judgement
 Violence risk assessments have 4 components (not all risk approaches include
these components though)
 Identifying empirically valid risk factors
 Determining a method for measuring (scoring) these risk factors
  Establishing a procedure for combing scores on the risk factors
 Producing an estimate of violence risk


 Dr. Death – A Legendary (Notorious) Forensic Psychiatrist
 Dr. James Grigson – Dallas psychiatrist who was called Dr Death and the
Hanging Shrink because of his effectiveness at testifying in death-penalty cases
 Death-penalty trials divided in two phases
 Guilt is decided  if serious crime, then same judge and jury decide
whether to impose life in prison or to sentence the defendant to die
 Dr. Grigson’s testimony was very effective
 Often diagnosed defendants as being sociopaths and stated with 100%
certainty that they would kill again
 Dr. Grigson has been proven wrong
 He based some assessments on 15 minute interviews where he would ask
about family background, administer neuropsychological tests, and ask
about the meaning of two proverbs
 He was eventually expelled from the APA for ethical violations
 Disqualified for claiming he has 100% certainty
 Unclear how many of his predictions were incorrect
 Types of Risk Factors
 Risk factor: a measurable feature of an individual that predicts the behaviour of
interest (i.e. violence)
 Typically divided into two main types – static and dynamic
 Static risk factor: risk factors that do not fluctuate over time and are not
amenable to change (i.e. criminal history)
 Dynamic risk factor: risk factors that fluctuate over time and are amenable to
change (i.e. antisocial attitude)
 More recently, correctional researchers have begin to conceptualize risk factors as
a continuous construct (static and acute dynamic risk factors on either end)
 Acute dynamic risk factors can change rapidly within days, hours, or
minutes and often occur just prior to an offence (one end of the spectrum)
 i.e. Negative mood and level of intoxication
 Dynamic risk factors in the middle of the continuum, which change but
only over long periods of time (i.e. months or years)
 i.e. Coping ability, criminal attitudes, and impulse control
 Dynamic risk factors related to imminence of engaging in violent behaviour
 Important Risk Factors
 Historical risk factors (static risk factors): risk factors that refer to events that
have been experienced in the past
 i.e. General social history and specific criminal history variables such as
employment and history of violence
  Dispositional risk factors: risk factors that reflect the individual’s traits,
tendencies, or styles
 i.e. Gender, age, criminal attitudes, and psychopathy
 Clinical risk factors: symptoms of mental disorders that can contribute to
violence, such as substance abuse or major psychoses
 i.e. Substance abuse
 Contextual risk factors (situational risk factors): risk factors that refer to aspects
of the current environment
 i.e. Access to victims or services
 Some of these factors are likely relevant to risk assessment only, while others are
relevant to both risk assessment and risk management
 Factors vary in terms of how much they are subject to change
 i.e. Gender is fixed, age of onset of criminal behaviour can’t be undone,
psychopathy is resistant to change, while social support may vary
 Factors that predict general recidivism also predict violent or sexual recidivism
 Predictors of recidivism in offenders with mental disorders overlap considerably
with predictors found among offenders without a mental disorder
 Dispositional Factors
 Demographics
 Young age was identified as a risk factor for violence
 The younger the person is at the time of their first offence, the greater the
likelihood that they will engage in criminal behaviour and violence
 Applies to both offenders with and without mental disorders
 Males at higher risk than females for general offending
 Males engage in more serious violent acts such as sexual assaults,
homicides, and assaults causing bodily harm
 Personality Characteristics
 Not being able to regulate behaviour in response to impulses/thoughts 
increased likelihood of engaging in crime and violence
 Lifestyle impulsivity (impulsive in most areas of life) distinguishes
recidivistic rapists from non-recidivistic rapists
 Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by grandiosity,
manipulation, lack of remorse, impulsivity, and irresponsibility
 Psychopathic individuals engage in diverse and chronic criminal
behaviours (moderately related to general and violent recidivism)
 Combination of psychopathy and deviant sexual arousal predicting sexual
recidivism
 Predicting Terrorism: Are there unique risk factors?
 Age (average age 20-29)
 Gender (most are male)
 Marital status (most are single)
 Social class (not primarily from lower social classes, but are representative of the
local population they come from)
 Prior crime (many terrorists don’t have a record of past violent criminal
behaviour)
 Suicidality (only a small number of terrorists commit suicide terrorism)
  Major mental illness (very low rates of major mental illness such as bipolar or
schizophrenia in terrorists)
 Substance abuse (substance abuse in terrorists is very rare)
 Psychopathy (relatively low in terrorists)
 Many individuals who commit general violence are young, male, and single
 No risk factors that may uniquely contribute to risk amongst violent
extremists
 13 critical risk factors for terrorism – five categories
 Social wellbeing (i.e. inequality, non-availability of basic facilities, and a
gathered population)
 Economic indicators (i.e. unemployment and a higher consumer price
index)
 Governance (i.e. dishonest leadership, unjust or unfair accountability
system, corruption, etc.)
 Law enforcement (i.e. poor judicial system and poor state of national
forces)
 Armed conflict (i.e. unobserved presence of non-combat foreigners)
 Historical Factors
 Past behaviour
 Most accurate predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour
 Past violent and non-violent behaviour can predict violence
 Age of Onset
 Earlier age of antisocial behaviour  more chronic and serious offenders
 50% of boys in one study who committed a violent offence prior to age 16
were convicted of a violent offence in early adulthood
 50% of male youth who committed their first violent acts prior to age 11
continued violent behaviour into adulthood
 Childhood History of Maltreatment
 History of childhood physical abuse or neglect is associate with increased
risk for violence and delinquency
 Continued abuse predicts chronic offending
 Clinical Factors
 Substance use
 Drug and alcohol use associated with criminal behaviour and violence
 Direct effects (i.e. pharmacological effects of the drugs)
 Indirect effects (i.e. the use of violence to obtain drugs)
 Use, possession, and sale of illegal drugs are crimes, but also sometimes
people commit offences to support a drug habit (i.e. robberies)
 Heroin and crack use – greatest use of committing property crimes
 Alcohol and drug use problems moderately related to general recidivism
 Drug abusers come in contact with antisocial people which leads to violent
confrontations
 Mental Disorder
 Most people with mental disorders are not violent
 Dx of affective disorders and schizophrenia linked to higher rates of
violence
  Forensic psychiatric patients with a hx of suicide attempts and self-harm
more likely to engage in verbal and physical aggression
 Psychosis associated with 49-69% increase in odds of violence but the link
depends on study design, measurement, and timing of symptoms
 Contextual Factors
 Lack of Social Support
 Instrumental support – “to provide the necessities of life”
 Emotional support – “to give strength to”
 Appraisal support – “to give aid or courage to”
 Information support – “by providing facts”
 Assessing the kinds and levels of support a person has can help evaluate
their level of risk
 Relationship between an offender with a mental disorder has with their
parents/siblings is related to violence
 Access to Weapons or Victims
 Being in an environment that permits easy access to weapons or victims
 potential for another violent act increases
 i.e. Living in an area with other antisocial individuals provides easy access
to drugs
 Myths about Risk Assessment
 Commonly used risk assessment tools are applicable across all offender
populations
 They don’t apply to all offender populations equally
 Risk statements provide objective information on an offender’s risk to reoffend
 Offenders usually ranked as low, moderate, or high
 These rankings can mean different things depending on context and the
true outcome can be lost with such simple descriptions
 There is clear consensus amongst researchers as to which type of risk assessment
should be utilized
 There is actually strong debate amongst researchers and clinicians about
which type of risk assessment to use
 Advocates for actuarial risk assessment value its objective, structured, and
mechanical nature
 Advocates for professional judgement argue that actuarial tools don’t
leave room for clinically relevant factors
 Research indicates no large differences between predictive accuracies of
either tool
 Unstructured professional judgement is no longer used by clinicians to assess risk

 Despite robust findings that unstructured professional judgement should

not be relied upon, some clinicians still conduct risk assessments using
this method
 Risk-Assessment Instruments
 Some instruments predict specific kinds of risk while others utilize particular
strategies such as actuarial or structured clinical assessments
 Static-99: a 10-item actuarial scale designed to predict sexual recidivism
  All items on the scale are static in nature
 Four risk categories: low, moderate-low, moderate-high, and high


 HCR-20: designed to predict violent behaviour in correctional and forensic
psychiatric samples
 Uses structured professional judgement to assess risk
 Evaluator conducts a systematic risk assessment and refers to a list of risk
factors – each having specific coding criteria and relationship with violent
recidivism based on the literature
 20 items organized into three main scales that align risk factors on past
(historical), present (clinical), and future (risk management)


 Meta-analysis comparing several risk assessment measures found that all risk
measures are equally predictive of violent offending
 Current Issues: Where is the theory?
 Focus of risk-assessment research has been on perfecting the prediction of
violence
 Less attention given to why these risk factors are linked to violence
 Understanding the causes of violence will aid in the development of
prevention and intervention programs
 Silver (2006) recommends using criminological theories to guide the next
generation of empirical research in the area of mental disorder and violence
 i.e. Coping-Relapse Model of Criminal Recidivism – environmental
trigger  emotional and cognitive appraisal  inadequate coping
mechanisms  criminal behaviour


 Unique Sub-Populations of Offenders
 Most risk-assessment measures have been developed and validated with
Caucasian male offenders
 Important differences in criminality across women and other ethnic groups
 What about Female Offenders?
 Gender differences in criminality
 Women engage in less criminal behaviour than men
 21% of people accused of a criminal offence in 2005 were female
 Women represent 6.8% of admissions to federal custody
 Women are arrested for different crimes than men
 The only crime women commit more often than men is prostitution
 When women engage in violence they are more likely than men to target family
members
 Women reoffend at a lower rate than men as well
 Women have a higher percentage of successful full paroles and statutory
releases (83 vs 73% for full parole and 73 vs 61% for statutory release)
 Childhood victimization is more prevalent in female offenders than men
 50% of incarcerated female offenders reported childhood sexual abuse and
70% experienced childhood physical abuse
 Female offenders more likely than male offenders to have a serious mental
disorder such as schizophrenia, bipolar, depression, etc.
 Many of the static risk factors associated with recidivism in men are also
predictors with women (i.e. criminal history and age)
 Similar dynamic risk factors for men and women include substance abuse,
antisocial attitudes, and antisocial associates
 Women have further risk factors such as a history of self-injury or attempted
suicide, and self-esteem problems
 Additional research on static and dynamic risk factors in women and predictive
factors that can improve success in the community after release are needed
 LSI-R predicts general recidivism as well for women as men
 LS/CMI 8 risk domains and the total/risk needs score are equally predictive of
general recidivism in an aggregate sample of female and male offenders
 Substance abuse risk domain more strongly associated with recidivism in female
offenders compared to male offenders
 What about Aboriginal Offenders?
 Overrepresentation of Aboriginal people in the Canadian criminal justice system
highlights the need to better understand this sub-population of offenders
 Aboriginal people make up approximately 4% of the general population in
Canada, but about 22% of the total offender population
 Overrepresentation especially prominent in the prairies and northern
territories
 In Saskatchewan, 11% of the population is Aboriginal, but 81% of all
sentenced offenders are aboriginal
 Federally, Aboriginal offenders account for 25% of incarcerated offender
population and 17% of the community supervision population
 Meta-analytic results suggest that the majority of risk factors discussed previously
predict general and violent recidivism amongst Aboriginal offenders
 Most predictive factors for Aboriginal offenders aren’t necessarily the best
predictors among non-Aboriginal offenders
  Proposed culturally-relevant risk factors pertaining to Aboriginal
offenders may be a more accurate estimation of risk
 LSI scores moderately predict general recidivism for Aboriginal offenders
 But less predictive for Aboriginal offenders compared to non-Aboriginal
offenders
 Similar trends for Static-2002R
 Static-99R – comparable effect sizes among Aboriginal and non-
Aboriginal offenders
 In the Media – Ashley Smith: A Preventable Death?
 Challenging for individuals with serious mental health problems to receive
intensive treatment in prison
 Ashley Smith was a 19-year-old offender in Grand Valley Institution for Women
 Deemed high risk to commit suicide
 Extensive history of self-harm
 She strangled herself, and the officers did not intervene
 Smith family launched an $11M wrongful death lawsuit against CSC that was
settled out of court in 2011
 Dec 2013 – coroner’s inquest ruled Smith’s death a homicide and made 104
recommendations on how to better support female offenders
 Cases in Forensic Psychology – Are the Tools Valid? Ewert v. Canada (2015)
 Case of Ewert v. Canada allowed for action against the Correctional Service of
Canada’s use of risk assessments
 Ewert is a 53-year-old Metis offender serving 2 life sentences for second degree
murder and attempted murder
 Ewert sued Correctional Service of Canada saying they were using culturally
biased risk assessments with Aboriginal offenders
 Argues that this damaged his rehabilitation process
 Court eventually ruled that the Correctional Service of Canada was indeed
violating the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
 Ruling indicated that CSC must stop using risk assessments with Aboriginal
offenders until proper validation and empirical findings on cultural bias were
conducted
 Aug 2016, Federal Court of Appeal overturned this decision saying the evidence
presented during the original trial was insufficient
 What about protective factors?
 Protective factors: factors that mitigate/reduce the likelihood of a negative
outcome (i.e. delinquency, aggression)
 i.e. Strongly attached to school can be a protective factor for youth against
violence
 Most research on protective factors has been conducted with children and youth
 Protective factors in children
 Prosocial involvement, strong social supports, positive social orientation
(i.e. school/work), strong attachments, intelligence
 Protective factors for high-risk offenders
 Employment stability
 Strong family connections (for lower-risk male offenders)
  Protective factors for adult male sex offenders
 Professional support
 Support network
 Structured group activities
 Goal-directed living
 Hopeful or persistent attitude to desistance 9ceasing antisocial behaviour)
 Risk Assessment: Risky Business?
 Most actuarial risk-assessment measures provide probability statements about
reoffending based on group data
 No method of determining what the specific risk level is for an individual
 Structured professional judgement measures typically ask evaluators to state the
level of risk in terms of low, moderate, or high
 But forensic evaluators don’t agree on what is meant by low, moderate, or
high risk
 Measures developed in one country or population may not generalize to another
country or population
 Are Psychologists and Decision Makers Using the Scientific Research?
 Many practitioners are not using new instruments that have been made to refine
methods of violence prediction
 87% of correctional psychologists use the MMPI, and only 11% of respondents
used the Hare PCL-R
 <1% use VRAG or LSI-R
 A different survey says 75% of forensic clinicians always or almost always used a
risk-assessment tool when assessing an older offender’s risk for reoffending
 Assessment tools used most often are psychopathy checklists, HCR-20,
MMPI-II, WASI-III, Static-ii and VRAG
 Wy do some individuals stop committing crimes?
 Desistance: the process of ceasing to engage in criminal behaviour
 Majority of offenders show large declines in their criminal activity into early
adulthood
 As many as 70% of offenders show declines in crime
 Reasons why offenders give up crime are poorly understood
 Some studies say onset of a criminal career do not necessarily explain
desistance from crime
 Factors such as marriage can be protective against crime
 Age-related decline in crime related to maturation process (developing
self and social control)
 Moderators such as crime expectancies, beliefs about ability to change, and
attributions for engaging in crime
 Why do high-risk violent offenders stop offending?
 Insight triggered by negative events connected to their criminal lifestyle
 Social avoidance
 Orientation to the family

CHAPTER 11 ~ Psychopaths
 Psychopathy: a personality disorder defined by a collection of interpersonal, affective,
and behavioural characteristics including manipulation, lack of remorse or empathy,
impulsivity, and antisocial behaviours
 Psychopaths are dominant, selfish, manipulative individuals who engage in
impulsive and antisocial acts and who feel no remorse or shame
 Descriptions of psychopathy exist in most cultures
 Assessment of Psychopathy
 Hervey Cleckley (1976) provided a comprehensive clinical description of
psychopaths in his book The Mask of Sanity
 16 features described, ranging from positive features (i.e. intelligence,
social charm), emotional-interpersonal features (i.e. lack of remorse) and
behavioural problems (i.e. antisocial behaviour, unreliability, etc.)
 Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R)
 Most popular method of assessing psychopathy in adults
 Developed by Robert Hare at UBC, strongly influenced by Cleckley’s
work
 20-item rating scale using a semi-structured interview and a review of file
information to assess interpersonal, affective, and behavioural features
 Factor analyses of the PCL-R revealed two factors
(interpersonal/affective traits and unstable/socially deviant traits)
 Factor 1 more strongly related to instrumental violence, emotional-
processing deficits, dropping out of tx, and poor tx response
 Factor 2 strongly related to reoffending, substance abuse, lack of
education, and poor family background
 Some researchers argue for a three-factor model of psychopathy
 Arrogant and deceitful interpersonal style
 Deficient affective experience
 Impulsive and irresponsible behavioural style
 Psychopathic traits can be assessed through self-report questionnaires
 Advantages
 Able to measure attitudes and emotions that are not easily observed by
others (i.e. feelings and low self-esteem)
 Easy to administer (can be administered online), quick to score, relatively
inexpensive
 No need to worry about inter-rater reliability since only the individual is
completing the score
 Concerns about lying on self-report measures can be addressed with
measures of response styles to detect faking good/bad
 Challenges with self-report measures of psychopathy
 Psychopaths often lie
 Psychopaths may not have sufficient insight to accurately assess their
traits
 Difficult for psychopaths to report on specific emotions if they have not
experienced these emotions before
 Psychopathic Personality Inventory-Revised
 Measures psychopathic traits in offender and community samples
  8 content scales and 2 validity scales
 Measures two factors (fearless dominance and self-centred impulsivity)
 Self-report Psychopathy Scale
 64-item self-report measure designed to assess psychopathic traits in
community samples
 Four factors – erratic lifestyle, callous affect (i.e. I’m more tough-minded
than others), interpersonal manipulation, and criminal tendencies
 Short form of the SRP has 28 items, often used in online surveys
 Forensic Psychology in the Spotlight – Subclinical Psychopaths: University Samples
 Psychopathic traits are dimensional, meaning people vary on the number and
severity of psychopathic features exhibited
 Detecting Vulnerable Victims
 Students with higher SRP scores more accurate at detecting victim
vulnerability
 Faking Remorse
 Higher score on factor 1 traits in the PPI-R, the more genuine their fake
stories were rated by others
 Defrauding a Lottery
 Students scoring higher on the SRP were more likely to try and defraud
the experimenter and claim they won a prize when they didn’t
 Cheating on Exams
 4% of students were identified as cheating pairs, in which one student
copied answers from an adjacent student
 Psychopathic traits as measured by the SRP were the strongest predictors
of cheating
 Psychopathy and Antisocial Personality Disorder
 Antisocial personality disorder: a personality disorder characterized by a history
of behaviour in which the rights of others are violated
 A pervasive pattern
 Sociopathy: a label used to describe a person whose psychopathic traits are
assumed to be due to environmental factors
 Rarely used in empirical literature, and no assessment instruments have
been developed to identify this construct
 Prevalence of APD is very high in prisons, up to 80% of adult offenders are
diagnosed with this disorder
 Nearly all psychopathic offenders meet the diagnostic criteria for APD, but most
offenders diagnosed with APD are not psychopaths
 Forensic Use of Psychopathy
 Psychopathy has played a role in a diverse range of criminal cases
 With majority of testimony regarding psychopathy being associated with
an increased severity of disposition
 In Canada, psychopathy and associated constructs were used in making
sentencing decisions
 To support a case’s transfer from youth to adult court
 To contribute to dangerous offender hearings
 To help determine parole eligibility
  To assess mental state at time of offence hearings
 Adversarial allegiance: the tendency for forensic experts to be biased toward the
side (defence or prosecution) that hired them
 Defense experts have on average 7 points lower than prosecution experts
 Prosecution professionals giving higher PCL-R scores compared to
defence professionals
 Some evidence that a workshop on administering and scoring the PCL-R makes
people more reliable
 Aboriginal offenders tend to score 3 points higher on the PCL-R compared to
non-Aboriginal offenders
 Concern about bias?
 Psychopathy and Violence
 Characteristics that define psychopathy are compatible with a criminal lifestyle
and lack of concern for societal norms
 Characteristics that ordinarily help to inhibit aggression and violence such as
empathy, close emotional bonds, and internal inhibitions are lacking
 Psychopaths commit many crimes ranging from minor theft to murder
 They tend to start their criminal career at a young age and persist longer,
engaging in more violent offences
 They also commit a greater variety of violent offences, engage in more
violence with institutions, and are more likely to be violent after release
 The one type of offence that psychopaths do not commit more often if homicide
 Psychopathic violence is more likely to be predatory in nature, motivated by
readily identifiable goals, and carried out in a calculated manner without emotion
 Offenders who engage in instrumental violence (premeditated violence to
obtain a goal) score higher on measures of psychopathy
 When non-psychopaths commit violence, they are more likely to target people
they know and their violent behaviour is likely to be emotionally driven
 Psychopaths more likely to target strangers and to be motivated by
revenge/material gain
 Interpersonal features (factor 1) more strongly related to use of instrumental
violence
 Factor 2 (social deviance) most strongly related to the use of reactive violence
 Offenders scoring higher on factor 1 PCL-R scores were more accurate at
detecting victim vulnerability and reported using gait cues to inform ratings
 Psychopathic offenders less successful than non-psychopathic offenders after
release from prison
 Myths about Psychopathy
 Psychopaths are born, not made
 Strong genetic contribution but the environment/experiences can also
influence how psychopathic traits are manifested
 Once a psychopath, always a psychopath
 Moderate to strong stability in psychopathic traits across developmental
periods, but the most change is seen during adolescence
 All psychopaths are violent
  Many engage in violence or threats of violence, but some are never violent
and use charm, deceit, and manipulation instead
 You either are or are not a psychopath
 Psychopathy is not an all-or-nothing construct
 People vary in the degree to which they possess psychopathic traits
 There are no female psychopaths
 Psychopathy is slightly more common in men, but women also display
psychopathic traits
 Psychopathy and APD are different labels for the same construct
 The constructs overlap but are distinct
 Psychopathy focuses more on the interpersonal and affective traits
 APD focuses more on the behavioural and antisocial traits
 Psychopaths are all intelligent
 No strong association has been found between psychopathic traits and
intelligence
 Smart and not-smart psychopaths exist
 Psychopaths are untreatable
 They are challenging to treat, but there is evidence that especially in
youth, they are amenable to treatment
 Psychopathic traits cannot be measured via self-report instruments
 You need to be cautious when using self-report scales, but they can
measure a range of psychopathic traits
 Psychopaths don’t know the difference between right and wrong
 They know the difference between what is morally right and wrong but
they don’t care lol
 Psychopaths in the Community
 Much of the research in community samples has used self-report scales or the
Hare psychopathy checklist: screening version (PCL:SV)
 12 item version takes less time to administer and places less emphasis on
criminal behaviour for scoring
 In the general population psychopathy is rare
 In one study only 0.6% of the sample had scores 13+ on the PCL:SV and
71% had no psychopathic traits
 Not all psychopaths are violent nor do they all end up in prison
 Professionals with psychopathic traits less likely to be team players, have
poorer management skills, and poorer performance appraisals
 More psychopathic professionals tend to be more creative, engaged in
strategic thinking, and have stronger communication skills
 Respondents who have had a psychopathic manager reported more conflict,
counterproductive work behaviour, and negative emotions
 Supervisors who score higher on psychopathic traits more likely to use a Lassez-
Faire leadership style (little guidance)
 And less likely to use a positive leadership style
 Men score higher than women in psychopathic traits
 Lifestyle traits (i.e. impulsivity and risk taking) being most prevalent and
antisocial traits (i.e. arrest history and violence) being least prevalent
  8 characteristics of male psychopaths in heterosexual relationships
 Talking victim into victimization, lying, economic abuse, emotional
abuse/psychological torture, multiple infidelities, isolation and coercion,
assault, and mistreatment of children
 Psychopathy and Sexual Violence
 Psychopathy is associated with violent offences, but not sexual offences
 Offenders with many psychopathic traits who also show deviant sexual arousal
are much more likely to engage in sexual reoffending than other offenders
 Psychopaths engage in significantly more violent offences than non-psychopaths
but fewer sexual offences
 High rate of sexual offending found in child molesters who do not have
many psychopathic traits
 Sexual homicide: homicides that have a sexual component
 Offenders who commit sexual homicides are the most psychopathic,
followed by mixed sexual offenders (assault kids and adults), followed by
rapists
 Lowest psychopathy scores found among child molesters
 Motivations of psychopaths when committing sexual crimes
 81% of psychopathic rapists were opportunistic or vindictive, compared to
56% of non-psychopathic rapists
 Non-psychopaths more likely to report feelings of anxiety or alienation in
the 24-h period leading up to the rape
 Psychopaths reported positive emotions
 Levels of sadistic violence (evidence for overkill and enjoying hurting
victims) was related to the PCL-R total scores
 Sexual sadism: people who are sexually aroused by fantasies, urges, or acts of
inflicting pain, suffering, or humiliation on another person
 PCL-R total scores, affective deficits facets, and antisocial facets all
related to sexual sadism
 Psychopathy and Treatment
 Most clinicians and researchers are pessimistic about psychopathic adults being
responsive to treatments
 Psychopaths suffer little personal distress, see little wrong with their
attitudes/behaviours, and seek treatment only when it’s in their best interest
 Retrospective study of treatment outcome in psychopaths
 Intensive therapeutic treatment program on violent psychopathic and non-
psychopathic forensic psychiatric patients
 Violent recidivism rate was 39% for untreated non-psychopaths, 22% for
treated non-psychopaths (treatment works for non-psychopaths)
 Violent recidivism rates were 55% for untreated psychopaths and 77% for
treated psychopaths (treatment made psychopaths more violent)
 Retrospective study implies that psychopaths are untreatable
 Alternative could be that treatments that have been tried so far don’t work,
but other treatment programs might
 Another study found that psychopathic sex offenders who dropped out of tx more
likely to reoffend, but those that stayed in tx were less likely to reoffend
 Cases in Forensic Psychology: Predatory Psychopath Prompts Change in Legislation:
Section 754 – The “Faint Hope Clause”
 According to section 754 of the Criminal Code of Canada, first-degree and
second-degree murderers can apply for a judicial hearing after serving 15 years
 “The Faint Hope Clause” introduced when the death penalty was
abolished and replaced by mandatory life sentences for murder
 The underlying motivation for this clause was to provide murderers with an
incentive to behave in prison, making prisons safer for correctional officers
 And to motivate murderers to participate in rehabilitation
 Psychopathy in Youth
 Research assumes that psychopathy doesn’t suddenly appear in adulthood, but
instead gradually develops from environmental and biological antecedents
 Antisocial Process Screening Device: observer rating scale to assess
psychopathic traits in children
 Designed for assessing the precursors of psychopathic traits in children
 Child is assigned a rating on various questions by parents or teachers
 Self-report version of this scale also developed for use with adolescents
 Hare Psychopathy Checklist (Youth Version): scale designed to measure
psychopathic traits in adolescents
 Concerns about using the construct of psychopathy in children and adults
 The label “psychopath” has many negative connotations for the public and mental
health/criminal justice professionals
 Which can influence treatment decisions, social service plans, and juvenile
justice determinations
 Psychopathy in adults associated with violence is assumed to be stable and
resistant to intervention
 Moderate degree of stability in psychopathic traits from age 13 to 24
 Also moderate stability from childhood to age 48
 Adolescence shows the largest change
 Scores on measures of psychopathy may be inflated by general characteristics of
adolescence
 Support for extending the construct of psychopathy to youth
 Boys who score high on callous/unemotional dimension of the APSD  more
police contacts, conduct problems, and likely to have a parent with APD
 Adolescents with many psychopathic traits become involved in criminal
behaviour at an earlier age, engage in more violence, higher risk of recidivism
 Youth with psychopathic traits may be more responsive to treatment interventions
 Youth released from juvenile correction centre violently reoffend at 2x the
rate compared to youth receiving treatment at a treatment centre
 Basically juvenile treatment centre > juvenile correction centre
 With the appropriate treatment, youth with many psychopathic traits are
amenable to treatment
 Forensic Psychology in the Spotlight – Psychopathy Label: The Potential for Stigma
 
 Mock jurors less likely to support the death penalty for juveniles than for adults
 Undergraduates more likely to support capital punishment if the defendant was
described as being psychopathic
 Lack of remorse strongly associated with capital punishment
 Defendants described as being diagnosed with conduct disorder, APD and
psychopathy were more likely to be found guilty
 And rated as a higher risk for future violence and recidivism
 Neither age nor sex of the defendant influenced mock jurors’ ratings
 Psychopathy: Nature versus Nurture?
 Growing evidence suggests a strong genetic contribution to psychopathy
 In studies teasing apart the role of genes and environment, investigators try to
hold constant the effect of either genes or environment
 i.e. Comparing those with similar genes raised in different environments
 i.e. Identical twins can be compared when raised apart from each other to
reveal the impact of environment rather than genetics
 i.e. Fraternal twins raised together can be compared with identical twins
raised together
 i.e. Biological siblings raised together can be compared with adoptive
siblings (no shared genes but same environment)
 Identical twins more similar in PPI scores (Psychopathic Personality Inventory)
compared to fraternal twins
 Genetic influences account for 29-59% of the variance for each of the
different PPI subscales
 Strong genetic influence on Youth Psychopathic Inventory in Sweden
 Does Family Matter?
 Longitudinal studies follow a group of young children through adulthood,
adolescence, and into adulthood
 Allows researchers to avoid retrospective bias and establish causal order
 Cambridge Study is a 40-year prospective study of antisocial behaviour
 Men scoring 10 or more on the PCL:SV – 97% had bene convicted of an
offence and 48.5% were chronic offenders
 Measuring family background variables between ages 8-10, the best predictors of
adult psychopathy are
 Being a son with no father
 Having a low family income
 Coming from a disrupted family
 Experiencing physical neglect
 Psychopathy and Law Enforcement
 Psychopaths engage in high rates of crime, thus law enforcement personnel often
come into contact with psychopaths which can be lethal
 Almost half of those that kill police officers have personality and behaviour
features consistent with psychopathy
 Impulsivity can be manifested at a crime scene by injury pattern to the victim,
choice of weapon, and time and location of crime
 Another challenge is developing effective methods for interrogating psychopathic
suspects
 Appealing to their sense of grandiosity and need for status may be better
than trying to use guilt
 Behaviours of psychopaths during interrogations
 Trying to outwit the interrogator (seeing interrogation as a game to win)
 Enjoy being the focus of attention
 Attempt to control the interrogation (“turning the tables” and becoming
the interrogator – Paul Bernardo)
 Will not be fooled by bluffs
 Attempt to shock (may speak in a matter-of-fact manner about how they
have treated people)
 Suggestions for interviewing psychopathic suspects
 Ensure case familiarity (interrogators should be extremely familiar with
the evidence to counteract the psychopath’s evasiveness)
 Convery experience and confidence
 Showing liking or admiration
 Avoid criticism
 Avoid conveying emotions
 What Makes Them Tick? Cognitive Affective Models of Psychopathy
 Many theories proposed to help forensic psychologists understand the
development of psychopathy
 Response modulation deficit theory: suggests that psychopaths fail to use the
contextual cues that are peripheral to a dominant response set to modulate their
behaviour
 Basically if psychopaths are engaging in specific rewarded behaviour, they
won’t pay attention to other information that may inhibit their behaviour
 Theory explains why psychopaths fail to learn to avoid punishment
 Other theories propose that psychopaths have a deficit in the experience of certain
critical emotions that guide prosocial behaviour and inhibit deviance
 Non-psychopaths have a faster reaction time when shown emotional
words, psychopaths don’t have a faster reaction time
 Psychopaths’ brain-wave activity doesn’t differentiate between emotional
and neutral words
 Boys with many psychopathic traits were impaired at recognizing fearful
vocal affect
 Psychopathic offenders don’t have a startle-elicited blink
 Amygdala dysfunction theory has been proposed
CHAPTER 13 ~ Intimate Partner Violence
 Domestic violence: any violence occurring between family members
 Typically occurs in private settings
 Historically it wasn’t condoned, but it was tolerated and not subject to effective
legal sanctions due to religious and cultural attitudes
 In Canada, little attention paid to domestic violence prior to the 1980s
 Intimate partner violence (spousal violence): any violence occurring between intimate
partners who are living together or separated
 Types of Violence and Measurement
  Violence against partners is varied in terms of types and severity and includes
physical, sexual, financial, and emotional abuse
 Emotional abuse is often less visible to others, and is often viewed by
victims as being as damaging as physical violence
 Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS) most commonly used to measure intimate partner
assault
 CTS2 has 39 items divided into 5 scales, respondents are asked how
frequently they have engaged in the behaviour and experienced the acts


 Meta-analysis of 48 studies using CTS scales
 Females more likely to engage in minor physical aggression (i.e. slapping,
kicking)
 Men more likely to beat up or choke their partners
 For couples in treatment for intimate partner violence, men engage in
much higher rates of minor and severe physical violence compared with
men from student and community samples
 Within community and university student samples, males and females
commit equal amounts of violence
 Respondents self-report fewer violent acts than their partners and men are
more likely to under-report than women
 A common form of emotional abuse is verbal aggression
 Women use verbal aggression significantly more than men
 Criticisms of the CTS/CTS2
 Does not include all potential violent acts (but this isn’t practical anyways)
 Doesn’t take into account the different contexts or consequences of the same act
for men and women
 i.e. A punch by a man can cause more sever injury than from a woman
 Women more likely than men to suffer both physical and psychological
consequences from intimate violence
 40% of women vs 24% of men reported being injured in the most recent
violent episode
 Does not assess motive for violence, and therefore initiating and responding with
violence are treated equally
 i.e. If a bf threatens to punch his gf and she pushes him away from her,
both acts would be included on the CTS/CTS2
 These criticisms are mostly concerned with theoretical disagreements and seem to
neglect evidence that women also exhibit violence in relationships
 Myths and Realities – Intimate Partner Violence
 Intimate partner violence is not a common problem
 Private nature of intimate partner violence and the shame/embarrassment
issue prevents us from knowing how many people are subject to violence
  In Canada, 1 in 8 women are abused by their partners
 Highest rates of intimate partner violence are experienced by women
between the ages of 15 and 25
 Only heterosexual women get battered. Men are not victims, and women never
batter
 Men can be and are victims of intimate partner violence
 Women can be and are batterers
 Men and women in same-sex relationships also can and do experience and
perpetrate intimate partner violence
 When a woman leaves a violent relationship, she is safe
 The most dangerous time for a battered spouse is after separation
 Of all spousal homicide, 75% occur after separation
 At this time, the abusive partner may feel they are losing control, which
may cause an escalation of abuse in an attempt to regain control
 Alcohol and/or drugs cause people to act aggressively
 Alcohol and drug abuse is often present in incidents of spousal abuse, but
it’s not the alcohol/drug that causes the violence
 Blaming alcohol or drugs takes the responsibility away from the abusive
person and can prevent that person from thinking they need to change
 When a woman gets hit by her partner, she must have provoked him in some way
 No one deserves to be het, whether or not there was provocation
 Violence never solves problems and often silences the victim
 Maybe things will get better
 Once violence begins in a relationship, it usually gets worse without
intervention
 Waiting and hoping for change is not a good strategy
 Husband Battering and Same-Sex Battering Does Exist
 Is intimate partner violence invariably male-initiated?
 No, it appears women engage in the same amount of violence as men
 Some studies found women engage in more minor violence than men
 Most common type of violence was mutual mild violence, followed by
mutual severe violence
 No gender gap exists, female partner violence is common and occurs at
the same rate as male partner violence
 Is there a gender bias in police responses to intimate partner violence?
 Limited research suggests yes
 When female partner is injured, male is charged in 91% of cases
 When male is injured, female is charged 60% of the time
 When no injury occurs, male is charged in 13% of cases compared with
52% of the time for males
 Is there intimate partner violence in same-sex relationships?
 Yes, gay/lesbian/bisexual Canadians 2x as likely than heterosexual
Canadians to experience intimate partner violence
 Lesbian and bisexual women nearly 4x more likely to be intimate partner
victims compared to heterosexual women
 Are the patterns of intimate partner violence the same in gay and lesbian couples?
  No, some risk factors for same-sex intimate partner abuse are substance
and alcohol abuse, mental health issues, and HIV-positive status
 Gay men and lesbian women have unique patterns of partner violence
 Gay men incur many types of intimate partner violence (i.e. emotional,
physical) and are often both perpetrators and victims
 Lesbian intimate partner violence – tendency to become socially isolated
as a couple which seems to predict more physical abuse
 Intimate Partners: A Risky Relationship
 1993 Statistics Canada Violence Against Women Survey
 51% of women reported at least one physical incident of physical or
sexual violence since the age of 16
 Most recent Canadian survey, the General Social Survey (GSS) on intimate
partner assault was conducted by stats can in 2014
 Survey used a modified CTS to measure psychological, physical, and
sexual violence in intimate relationships
 1% of men and women experienced physical and/or sexual assault, which
was down from 2% in the GSS report from 2009
 About 4% of male and female respondents each reported experiencing
physical and/or sexual assault between 2009 to 2014
 Rates of intimate partner violence seem to be declining (currently 4% in
the past 5 years compared to 7% in 2004 and 6% in 2009)
 Violence more common in previous partners than in current relationships
 Rates of violence similar across ages except for lower rates in older
couples (55+)
 Lesbian, gay, bisexual Canadians 2x as likely to report violence
 Lesbian and bisexual women 4x as likely to report violence compared to
heterosexual women


 Both men and women experience violence
 Women report experiencing more severe forms of violence (34% of
women vs 16% of men report being beat, choked, sexually assaulted, etc.)
 For every 10 cases of intimate partner violence, 3 people report being
injured
 Women more likely to get injured (40%) compared to men (24%)
 Less than 1 in 5 cases of abuse reported to the police (19%) and violence
against women more likely to be reported than violence against men
 Common reason for reporting to the police was to stop violence from
happening again
 Most common reason for not reporting was the victim felt it was a
personal matter to try to resolve
 Most recent GSS added a question about childhood experiences of physical and/or
sexual abuse
  Almost half (48%) of intimate violence victims also reported having
experienced childhood physical and/or sexual abuse
 First self-report survey of residents in Canada’s territories done in 2009
 In the 12 months prior to the survey in 2009, 4% reported experiencing
violence
 10% of men and women reported intimate partner violence in the past 5
years
 Younger residents and Aboriginal people had higher rates of intimate
partner violence than older residents or non-aboriginals
 Injury rates relatively high with 42% of victims reporting being injured
 Police-reporting rates also higher than in the provinces with 51% of
victims having police contact
 Higher concentration of police per population in territories compared to
the provinces could lead to more police-reporting
 Prevalence of Intimate Partner Violence in Aboriginal Populations
 GSS shows that Aboriginal respondents (9%) reported more than 2x the amount
of intimate partner violence compared to non-Aboriginals (4%) over past 5 years
 Aboriginal women more likely to be victimized
 Aboriginal respondents report more experiences with abuse as children and
witnessing abuse perpetrated by an authority figure during childhood
 Aboriginal women more likely to contact the police in cases involving intimate
partner violence compared to non-Aboriginal, non-minority women
 Aboriginal women have a higher incidence of intimate partner violence
 Prevalence of Dating Violence in University Students
 International Dating Violence Study examined prevalence of dating violence in
15K university students across 22 countries
 CTS2 scale administered – asks about engaging in physical and sexual violence
with their dating partner and experiencing this violence too
 Minor violence ranges from things being thrown, slapped, arm twister
 Serious violence ranges from choking, beaten up, threatened with knife/gun
 Rates of perpetration and victimization of sexual coercion
 Minor acts – having sex without a condom, having sex when they don’t
want to
 Severe acts – forced to have oral or anal sex, having sex due to partner
threats


 Female students less likely to be perpetrators of serious assaults and
sexual coercion as compared with male students
 Median rates of physical assaulting a partner was 29.8% for any assault,
5.8% for serious assault, and 21.5% for any sexual coercive acts
  Canadian dating physical violence rates were in the lower half of countries
surveyed
 1 in 5 Canadian university students reported having experienced physical
assault by their dating partner in the last 12 months
 Canada has higher rates of sexual coercion compared to many other
countries
 University students engaging in dating violence  likely to continue in future
intimate relationships
 Substance use strongly linked to dating violence in university students
 Alcohol use and drug use both increase risk of perpetrating dating
violence
 Theories of Intimate Violence
 Patriarchy: broad set of cultural beliefs and values that support the male
dominance of women
 First described in the 1970s – associated with sociology and feminism
 States with male-dominant norms have higher rates of spousal assault than those
with more egalitarian norms
 Patriarchal perspectives likely contribute to this issue,
 But a more encompassing theory is required to explain why it exists on so
many levels (i.e. male/female-initiated, same-sex) and is maintained
across generations
 Social Learning Theory
 Developed to explain aggression in general, but has been used to explain intimate
partner violence specifically
 Observational learning: learning behaviours by watching others perform these
behaviours
 Three major sources for observational learning – family origin, subculture,
and televised violence
 Male batterers much more likely to have witnessed parental violence than
nonviolent men
 But not all behaviours that are observed will be practiced, theory posits
that the behaviour must have a functional value to be acquired
 Behaviour that is rewarded increases in likelihood of occurrence,
behaviour that is punished decreases in likelihood of occurrence
 Instigators: in social learning theory, these are events in the environment that act
as a stimulus for acquired behaviours
 Aversive instigators produce emotional arousal, and how a person labels
that emotional arousal will influence how they respond
 Male batterers tend to label many different emotional states as anger
(called male-emotional funnel system)
 Incentive instigators are perceived rewards for engaging in aggression
 When people believe they can satisfy their needs by using aggression they
tend to be violent
 Regulators: in social learning theory, these are consequences of behaviours
 Including external punishment (i.e. arrest) and self-punishment (i.e.
remorse)
  If consequences outweigh rewards and alternatives are provided to cope
with instigators, likelihood of violence should diminish
 Nested ecological model focuses on relationship among multiple levels that
influence intimate violence
 Including cultural beliefs and attitudes, social institutions and laws,
relationship qualities, and psychological and biological factors unique to
the individual
 Evolutionary Psychology Theory
 Evolutionary psychology: the scientific study of psychology that takes the
evolutionary history of a species into account when understanding a psychological
trait and what led to its origination, development, and maintenance
 Selective pressure: an environmental circumstance that presents an opportunity
for new genes to develop that give a survival and/or reproductive advantage to the
individual that has those genes
 i.e. Preference for energy-rich foods such as sweet and fatty foods evolved
to overcome the selective pressure of famine
 Some selective pressures facing humans in intimate partner relationships are
 Losing access to resources from the relationship (i.e. sexual access)
 Events that threaten access to those resources (i.e. another person flirting
with your partner)
 These pressures could have created the opportunity for strategies that maintain
access to relationships and from preventing threats to develop
 i.e. Emotional abuse may be an evolved tactic that makes the partner think
they can’t be loved by anyone else, which discourages them from leaving
 i.e. Physical abuse may be a more direct way of preventing a partner from
leaving, and threats can be a tactic to prevent them from flirting w others
 Ultimate goal of using intimate partner violence from this perspective is to
maintain exclusive access to the partner for sexual and social resources
 Many other selective pressures exist in relationships as well (i.e. cooperation,
trust, mutual care for kids)
 So it would not be expected that all relationships have intimate partner
violence
 This evolutionary perspective allows for precise predictions about what contexts
might bring about intimate partner violence
 i.e. Sexual infidelity, flirting outside the relationship, love triangles,
perceived attractiveness of the two partners are not similar, etc.
 Why do battered women stay?
 The percentage of males and females believing in myths:


  The decision to stay with or return to an abusive partner is complex, especially
when the violence is not constant
 Three phase cycle of abuse has been proposed
 (1) Tension building phase occurring prior to the assault with increasing
conflict and stress between partners
 (2) Acting out phase when the batterer engages in intimate partner
violence
 (3) Honeymoon phase – when the batterer apologizes and often promises
not to engage in further violence
 The cycle repeats itself with the honeymoon phase sometimes
disappearing
 Critiques of the cycle of abuse claim that not all abuse occurs in a predictable
cycle and many abusers don’t cycle through all the different stages
 Some women stay due to learned helplessness
 This theory has been critiqued because many women may be passive on
purpose in order to placate their abusers
 Also many women do make active attempts to leave their abusive partners
 Violence Against Women Survey
 42% of women left their abusive partners for a short while or permanently
 Primary reasons for leaving were related to experiencing an increase in the
severity of violence, having children, and reporting the violence to police
 70% of women who left their abusive partners returned home at least one
 Most common reasons for returning
 For the sake of the children (31%)
 To give the relationship another chance (24%)
 The partner promised to change (17%)
 Lack of money or a place to go (9%)
 Environmental, social, and psychological barriers that exist for victims
 i.e. Money, shelter, support from the criminal justice system
 i.e. Not wanting their kids to suffer, feeling safer being in the relationship
than leaving because they knew what the abuser was doing
 Financial independence, level of fear, self-esteem, and locus of control are
variables associated with a woman’s decision to stay or leave
 For those who left and stayed away, 1 year later there are significantly better
scores on measures of vitality, mental health, and social domains
 Compared to when they first left
 41% of men arrested for intimate partner violence have committed at least one act
of animal abuse compared to only 1.5% of men from the general population
 Women delay leaving partially due to fear of the welfare of their animals
 Battered Woman Syndrome: Should It Be Admissible in Court? R. v. Lavallee (1990)
 Lavallee was the common-law wife of Kevin Rust
 She was physically abused by Rust between 1983 and 1986 and made
several trips to the hospital for injuries
 At a party Kevin gave her a gun and said wait until everyone leaves, you’ll get it
then and “either you kill me or I’ll get you”
 She shot him once in the back of the head and he died
  She was charged with second-degree murder
 Psychiatrist Dr. Shane testified that Kevin had terrorized Lyn and made her feel
vulnerable, worthless, and trapped – unable to escape
 The jury acquitted Lyn believing this was self-defence
 They recognized battered woman syndrome as a defence to murder
 Decision to acquit Lyn Lavallee does not give battered women a licence to kill
their batterers though
 Woman’s Best Friend: Pet Abuse and Intimate Violence
 Link between animal maltreatment and violence against women
 In a study of women in intimate violence shelters, 72% said their partners had
either threatened to harm or actually harmed their pets
 54% reported that their pets had been injured or killed by their abusive partners
 Women in intimate violence shelters 11x or more likely to indicate that their
partners had hurt or killed their pets
 Out of 50 abused women who owned pets
 49% reported their partners had threatened their pets
 46% indicated that their partners had actually harmed their pets
 Only 45% of intimate violence shelters in the US ask victims about animal abuse
 When animal abuse is present and severe, women are often hesitant to bring their
pets to a vet for fear of having to explain the injuries
 90% of women in the pet-abuse group considered their pet a source of emotional
support compared to 47% of women of the no-pet-abuse group
 About half of the pets in both groups were left with the abusive partner
 65% of women in pet-abuse group worried about the safety of their pets
 Only 15% of the women in the no-pet-abuse group were concerned
 Some women delay leaving their abusive partners out of concern for their
pets’ safety
 A Heterogeneous Population: Typologies of Male Batterers
 Not all batterers are alike, categories of batterers have been developed to help
understand the causes of intimate violence
 Family-only batterer: a male spousal batterer who is typically not violent outside
the home, does not show much psychopathology, and does not possess negative
attitudes supportive of violence
 Engages in the least amount of violence of all types of batterers
 Doesn’t engage in other criminal behaviours
 If a PD is present, would most likely be passive-dependent personality
 Typically displays no disturbance in attachment to his partner
 Most common type, 50% of batterers are this type
 Dysphoric/borderline batterer: a male spousal batterer who exhibits some
violence outside the family, is depressed, has borderline personality traits, and
problems with jealousy
 Engages in moderate to severe violence
 Exhibits some extra-familial violence and criminal behaviour
 Moderate problems with impulsivity and alcohol/drug use
 Has an attachment style best described as preoccupied
 Makes up 25% of batterers
  Generally violent/antisocial batterer: a male spousal batterer who is violent
outside the home, engages in other criminal acts, has drug and alcohol problems,
has impulse-control problems, and possesses violence-supportive beliefs
 Engages in moderate to severe violence
 Engages in the most violence outside of the home and in criminal
behaviour
 Antisocial and narcissistic personality features
 Likely has drug/alcohol problems
 High levels of impulse-control problems and many violence-supportive
beliefs
 Shows a dismissive attachment style
 Makes up 25% of batterers
 Some studies have provided support for this typology both in offender and
community samples of male batterers
 Some research has looked at typologies for female batterers as well
 Partner-only (PO): believed to use reactive violence primarily out of fear
and self-defence
 Generally violent (GV): more instrumental violence, traumatic
symptoms, and more physical abuse from their mothers
 Criminal Justice Response
 For centuries, wife battering was seen as a family matter and police were reluctant
to become involved
 Since the 1980s, mandatory charging policies have been in effect in Canada and
most jurisdictions in the US
 Mandatory charging policies: policies that give police the authority to
lay charges against a suspect where there are reasonable and probable
grounds to believe a domestic assault has occurred
 Prior to mandatory charging, women were required to bring charges against their
partners
 Women were often hesitant to do this for fear of further violence, thus
charges were usually not laid
 Experimental study on the specific deterrence effect of arrest on spousal violence
 One of three police responses:
 Separation (order for suspect to leave the premises for at least 8 hours)
 Mediation (provide advice to victim)
 Arrest
 Recidivism rates for arrested men much lower (13% and 19% from police reports
and victim reports respectively)
 Compared to men in separation and (26% and 28%) or mediation (18%
and 37%) groups
 Mixed results when trying to replicate these findings
 Another study found a deterrent effect for arrest while another did not
 Lots of mixed findings
 Do mandatory arrest policies increase the probability of partner abusers being
arrested?
 In 1970s and 80s, arrest rates in Canada and the US ranged from 7-15%
  Recent rates of 30-75% have been reported
 But there have also been an increase in dual arrests (i.e. if the police can’t
determine the primary aggressor then both parties will be arrested)
 Also an increase in the number of men who are court-mandated to attend
treatment
 Does treatment of male batterers work?
 Many procedures developed to treat male batterers
 Two most common forms are feminist psychoeducational group therapy
(Duluth model) and cognitive-behavioural group therapy
 Duluth model states that the primary cause of intimate partner violence is
patriarchal ideology
 Thus therapy aims to challenge the man’s perceived right to control his
partner
 The atmosphere in treatment often has a blaming, punitive orientation
which can result in a high drop-out rate up to 75%
 Criticized for focusing on violence done by men to women only (ignores
same-sex relationships and women’s use of violence which is common)
 Violence is viewed as one-sided and not as an interaction between people,
much of violence in relationships is mutual
 Focus of this model is on shaming the man and therapists fail to establish a
therapeutic bond
 Limited focus on changing the man’s attitudes about power and control in
relationships, the causes of intimate partner violence is more complex
 This model has negligible success in reducing or eliminating violence
among perpetrators
 Cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) believes that violence is a learned
behaviour and using violence is reinforcing because it creates compliance
 CBT focuses on the costs of engaging in violence
 Alternatives to violence such as anger-management and communication-
skills training are taught
 Some CBT programs also address perpetrators’ attitudes about control and
dominance
 Rational for group therapy is to break through barriers of denial and
minimization
 The Correctional Service of Canada’s Family Violence Prevention Programs
 Primarily focused on male offenders who have been abusive in their intimate
relationships with female partners or ex-partners
 Includes many programs
 Moderate-intensity program for offenders with less extensive histories of
abuse
 High-intensity programs for higher-risk offenders
 High-intensity program for higher-risk Aboriginal offenders
 Maintenance program for offenders who have completed the programs
 Treatment primer designed to enhance motivation of potential participants
 Philosophy
  Programs based on social learning model conceptualizing violence against
women as a learned pattern of behaviour that can be modified
 Programs teach offenders to understand the dynamics of their abusive
relationships by using CBT techniques
 Techniques allow them to identify their abusive behaviours and replace
them with alternative skills and behaviours that help form nonabusive
relationships
 High Intensity Family Violence Prevention Program (HIFVPP) provides intervention to
federal offenders deemed high risk to be violent in relationships
 Only offered in institutions
 75 group sessions 2.5 hours each over 15 weeks
 8-10 individual counselling sessions with a primary counsellor
 Delivered by psychologist and qualified program officer
 Moderate Intensity Family Violence Prevention Program (MIFVPP) intended to help
offenders who are at a moderate risk to engage in future violence
 Offered in the community and institutions
 24 group sessions 2.5 hours each over 5-13 weeks
 3 individual counselling sessions
 Program delivered by 2 training program facilitators
 Aboriginal High Intensity Family Violence Prevention Program is similar to HIFVPP
 But the process and method of delivery reflect teachings, traditions, and cultural
values of Aboriginal people
 Program approved by Aboriginal Elders and Elders are involved in the delivery of
the program
 They provide counselling and conduct ceremonies
 Programs focus on many treatment targets including
 Motivation to change, education on intimate partner violence, attitudes, managing
emotions, building relationship skills, and relapse prevention and copying
strategies
 Effectiveness of family violence prevention programs
 Moderate to strong treatment effects found
 Offenders who complete tx show lower levels of jealousy, negative attitudes
about relationships
 Better recognition of relapse prevention skills, and more respect and
empathy for their partners
 Parole officers report positive attitudes and behaviours while under supervision
 Participants report the program is useful and they were able to use the skills they
learned
 6 month follow-up study
 Treated offenders less likely to engage in spousal assault or violent
reoffending as compared with the untreated group
 No group difference in rates of any infractions
 Unclear if treatment gains continue after longer periods but preliminary
results are promising
 Meta-analysis of 22 studies to evaluate the efficacy of tx for male batterers
  No differences in efficacy among Duluth model, CBT, and other (i.e. couples
therapy) in terms of recidivism rates
 Regardless of reporting method, study design, and type of treatment, the effect on
recidivism remate remains in the small range
 5% increase in success rate because of treatment which is still meaningful but
small
 Recent research is more optimistic about treatment of intimate partner violence
 Even when controlling for differences in hx of violence, personality, demographic
variables, and motivation
 Men who completed tx less than half as likely to be re-arrested for
intimate partner violence compared to those that didn’t complete tx
 Participant characteristics that predict program attrition
 Youthful age, having served a previous prison sentence, and self-reporting
a low level of partner violence
 These static factors can be used to tailor intimate partner violence tx and
prevention program attrition
 Strongest predictors of tx completion were employment, age (older age more
likely to complete), and referral source (court-mandated)
 Specific subsamples of intimate partner abusers may respond to tx differently
 Including types of batterers, batterers with substance-abuse problems, and
batterers at different levels of motivation
 Family-only batterers attend more tx sessions than the other types
 Violent/antisocial batterers most likely to drop out of tx, reoffend sooner, and
reoffend more often compared to the other types
 May need to match the type of offender to the type of tx
 Future research on treatment of violent women and mutually violent relationships needed
too
 1-year follow-up conviction rates lowest for couples when both partners attend tx
compared to one or neither partner going
 Subjective ratings about tx program mostly positive suggesting participants may
find joint treatment enjoyable and useful
 Stalking: Definition, Prevalence, and Typologies
 Stalking can occur when a abusive relationship ends
 Stalking is a form of violence that is known in Canadian criminal law and
criminal harassment
 According to section 264 of the Criminal Code of Canada
 Criminal harassment: crime that involves repeatedly following,
communicating with, watching, or threatening a person directly or
indirectly
 The person being stalked must fear for their safety or the safety of
someone they know for the police to charge someone
 In 2008 there were 18K charges of criminal harassment in Canada
 As part of the GSS participants were asked about criminal harassment
 Women more likely to be victims of stalking than men
 Women received twice the amount (7%) of stalking than men (4%) over
the past 5 years that caused them to fear their own safety
  Women age 15 to 24 have the highest rates of being stalked
 Prevalence of stalking more common in university students
 9-30% rates of stalking in university females and 11-17% for university
males
 Prevalence rates vary based on the definition of stalking used and time
period (i.e. last 12 months vs ever)
 Most stalking victims know their stalkers
 Meta analysis reported that 79% of stalking victims know their stalkers
 Most common type of relationship was romantic (49%) – i.e. the stalking
occurred after a romantic relationship between stalker and victim ended
 Most victims of criminal harassment reported to the police are female (76%)
 Women more likely to be criminally harassed by former partners and men more
likely to be harassed by acquaintances
 Some research suggests more males are actually stalked by ex-intimates
than some surveys indicate
 But these men don’t report that they have been stalked since the behaviour
doesn’t cause them to fear for their safety
 Variables significantly related to violence
 Clinical variables: substance-abuse disorder, personality disorder, and the
absence of a psychotic disorder predicted violence
 Case-related variables: a former intimate relationship between offender and
victim and threats toward the victim predicted violence
 Stalking victims suffer intense stress, anxiety, sleep problems, depression, and
disruptions in social functioning and work
 Overall they have a decreased QoL
 Some ex-partners attempt to kill their former partners
 More likely in female victims that were spied on or followed
 Threats of harm to children if the woman doesn’t return to having a relationship
 likelihood of attempted or actual homicide increased by 9x
 Stalking behaviours associated with increased risk of lethal violence
 Stalking victims often change their behaviours to try to protect themselves
 Victims most often avoided certain places or people, get an unlisted phone
number or call display, and about 1/3 won’t leave their homes alone
 Only 37% of stalking victims contacted the police and charges were laid against
the stalker in 23% of cases
 In 11% of cases victims received restraining orders in an attempt to stop their
stalked from contacting them
 Of those who secured a restraining order, just under half (49%) of these
orders were violated – the stalker contacted the victim
 Categories of stalkers
 Ex-intimate stalker: a stalker who engages in stalking after an intimate
relationship breaks up
 Most common
 Individual is disgruntled or estranged, and unable to let go
 Has a history of domestic violence in intimate relationships
  Love-obsessional stalker: a stalker who has intense emotional feelings for the
victim but who has never had an intimate relationship with the victim
 Rare type
 Does not have symptoms of depression or psychosis
 Delusional stalker: a stalker who suffers from delusions and wrongly believes
they have a relationship with the victim
 Rare type
 Sometimes targets a celebrity, media figure, or politician
 Often dx with delusional disorders, schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder
 Grudge stalker: a stalker who knows and is angry at the victim for some
perceived injustice
 Rare type
 Knows the victim but has not had an intimate relationship with them
 Angry individual seeking revenge for a perceived injustice
 Politicians more vulnerable to being stalked than the general population
 40% of participants in a study of federal and provincial politicians had
experienced harassment
 Most common communication was phone calls or emails
 Most common theme was threats and a small portion (about 8%) were
declarations of love
 Of the politicians harassed, 60% were personally approached with 24% having
some form of physical contact and 6% being physically assaulted
 Doctors also have higher rates of being stalked
 14.9% of physicians report being stalked by their patients
 Psychiatrists had the highest prevalence of being stalked (26%)
 Both male and female patients engaged in stalking but their motives differed
 Male pts stalked as a result of delusional ideas and being upset over tx
outcomes
 Female patients stalked because of delusional ideas and being in love with
their physician
 University faculty members also have more stalking experiences
 25.4% of faculty in the US had experienced stalking
 English, psychology, and nursing faculty members being the most frequent
victims
 Most common stalking behaviour was unwanted calls or emails, waiting outside
their office, and inappropriate class behaviour
 Student stalkers classified in 3 groups based on perceived motivations
 Psychological disorder (46%)
 Attraction/romantic interests (36%)
 Dissatisfied by a mark or grade or something the faculty member said in
class (14%)
 Faculty suggested to be provided with guidance on preventing stalking and how to
respond to it
 Dangerous Fixations: Celebrity Stalkers
 Stalking of celebrities prompted several countries to introduce criminal code
offences
  1990, California was the first state to introduce anti-stalking laws in the aftermath
of the Rebecca Schaeffer murder
 1993, Canada introduced the new offence of criminal harassment
 Rebecca Schaeffer
 Actress who responded to a fan letter with “with love Rebecca”
 John Bardo travelled to her studio with a teddy bear and roses
 He sent hundreds of letters to her and his bedroom had dozens of photos of
her
 When he saw her in a movie where she had a sex scene with another man
he got upset and got a gun, hired a PI to find her address
 He went to her door, she asked him to leave, he returned an hour later and
shot her 2x and killed her
 Sentenced to life without eligibility of parole
 David Letterman
 Margaret Ray developed an obsession with him in the mid 80s after a
breakup of her marriage
 She was dx with schizophrenia
 First arrested in ’88 when she stole his car and was caught driving it with
her 3 yar old son
 Over the next few years she went to his house repeatedly with letters,
books, and cookies
 Charged with trespassing 8x
 1990s – served a 10 month prison sentence and then shifted her obsession
to astronaut Story Musgrave
 Ray died by suicide in 1998
 Jodie Foster
 John Hinckley watched a movie where Foster played a child prostitute and
became obsessed with her
 He followed her around Yale, called her, left messages/poems in her
mailbox, but couldn’t get her attention
 Planned to get her attention by assassinating the president, but was
stopped at the airport, fined, and released for having handguns
 Fired 6 shots at President Reagan injuring him and 3 others, but was found
not guilty by reason of insanity, sent to a secure forensic psych hospital

CHAPTER 14 ~ Sexual Offenders

 Nature and Extent of Sexual Violence
 Sexual violence is on par with homicide in terms of how perpetrators are vilified
by society
 In 2014, over 20.7k sexual assaults against adults were reported to the police in
Canada
 Rate per 100,000 population was 58, a 3% decrease from 2013
 Sexual assault in which the victim was unable to provide consent to sexual
activity due to drugs, intoxication, or manipulation/forced in ways other than
physically accounted for 9% of sexual assaults reported in Canada in 2014
  Sexual touching accounted for 71% of reported assaults and forced sexual
activity accounted for 20%
 In 2014 there were 4.4k sexual assaults against children
 13 per 100,000 population which is a 6% increase from the rate in 2013
 Rate of sexual assaults among the Aboriginal population was more than 2x that of
non-Aboriginals
 Rate per 1000 population was 115 among Aboriginals and 35 among non-
Aboriginals
 In 56% of incidences involving sexual assault, the victim previously knew their
attacker
 Official stats don’t provide an accurate measure of true incidence of this crime since
majority of victims don’t report it to the police
 95% of adult sexual assault victims didn’t report it to the police
 Reasons why adult victims don’t report:
 Don’t feel the matter is important enough
 Fear revenge by the offender
 Believe the police wouldn’t be able to find the offender
 Don’t want to get the offender in trouble
 Fear they would bring shame or dishonour to their family
 Feel the matter is too personal and they don’t want others to know
 Don’t want the police to be involved and don’t want to deal with the
hassle of the court process
 Child victims often don’t report being sexually abused for the following reasons:
 Fearful about what will happen to them or their parents
 Don’t think they’ll be believed
 Believe they are in some way to blame for the abuse
 Not aware that what was happening was unacceptable
 Sexual assault affects a large percentage of the population
 High victimization rates in children and youth (1 in 20 in the US) and adult
women (1 in 5 will experience rape/attempted rape at some point in their life)
 Prevalence of childhood sexual abuse 17% for females and 8% for males
 One type of victimization experience that has been ignored by many researchers is
male rape by female perpetrators
 In a study of university students, 20.7% of men and 27.5% of women reported
being the recipient of unwanted sexual contact
 i.e. Pressured, given drugs/alcohol, or physically forced
 Sexual offenders admit to having many victims
 Rapists have 7 victims on average
 Female-victim child molesters have 20 victims
 Male-victim child molesters average 150 victims
 Sexual offenders appear to under-report their number of victims
 At the time of arrest they report an average of 2 victims, but after
incarceration and treatment they report an average of 184 victims
 Child molesters tend to report an average of 88 victims
 Rapists found to report 6x as many victims as had been recorded in official
records when guaranteed their responses would be kept anonymous
  In community samples, 10-20% of men admit to sexually assaulting women or
children
 Definition of Sexual Assault
 Prior to 1983, a number of different offences were lumped together under the
label of “rape”
 According to the Criminal Code of Canada at that time, a male commits
rape when he has sex with a female who isn’t his wife without her consent
 Later changed in response to criticism and to make the definition more inclusive
of diverse sexual relationships and more representative of the nature of assault
 Sexual assault: any nonconsensual sexual act made by either a male or female
person to either a male or female person, regardless of their relationship
 Divided into three levels based on severity – each level comes with
different maximum penalties
 Simple sexual assault – maximum sentence 10 years
 Sexual assault with a weapon or causing bodily harm – maximum
sentence 14 years
 Aggravated sexual assault – maximum sentence is life imprisonment
 Consequences for Victims
 Sexual aggression has serious psychological and physical consequences for
victims
 Child victims of sexual abuse develop a wide range of short-and long-term
problems
 Adult victims of rape also report high levels of stress and fear that disrupts social,
sexual, and occupational functioning
 Also generates high levels of anxiety and depression
 Up to 30% of rape victims contract sexually transmitted diseases, and pregnancy
results in about 5% of cases
 Rape trauma syndrome: a group of symptoms or behaviours that are frequent
after-effects of having been raped
 Acute crisis phase – several days to weeks with severe symptoms (i.e.
high fear, anxiety and depression), asking questions about why this
happened to them and engaging in self-blame
 Long-term reactions phase – lasts from months to years, 25% of women
who have been raped don’t significantly recover even after several years
(i.e. phobias, sexual problems, depression, chronic physical health
symptoms)
 The psychological consequences of rape victimization also include PTSD
 PTSD: trauma and stress-related disorder that may develop as a result of
exposure to death, serious injury, or sexual violence whether actual or
threatened
 Four symptom clusters of PTSD – avoidance of stimuli, recurring
distressing memories, negatively altered cognition and mood, altered state
of arousal and reactivity
 One month after being raped, 65% of female victims diagnosed with OTSD
 At 9 months, 47% were classified as having PTSD
 Some victims continue to have PTSD sx years after the rape
  16.5% of rape victims have PTSD 15 years after the rape
 Effective treatment programs can help rape victims overcome the
emotional suffering caused by this trauma
 Myths about Sexual Assault
 Sexual assault is not a common problem
 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 men have experienced some type of sexual
assault
 Sexual assault is most often committed by strangers
 Women face the greatest risk of sexual assault from men they know, not
from strangers
 About half of all sexual assaults occur in dating relationships
 In about 60% of cases, victims know the attacker
 Women who are sexually assaulted “ask for it” by the way they dress or act
 Victims of sexual assault rage across the age span (from infants to elderly)
and sexual assault can occur in almost any situation
 No women “deserves” to be assaulted regardless of what they wear, where
they go, or how they act
 No victim blaming
 Avoid being alone in dark, deserted places, such as parks or parking lots, and this
will protect you from being sexually assaulted
 Most sexual assaults occur in a private home and many in the victim’s
home
 Women lie about sexual assault
 False accusations happen but are very rare
 Sexual assault is a vastly under-reported crime, and most sexual assaults
are not reported to the police
 Classification of Sexual Offenders
 Voyeur: someone who obtains sexual gratification by observing unsuspecting
people, usually strangers who are naked, in the process of undressing, or engaging
in sexual activity
 Exhibitionist: someone who obtains sexual gratification by exposing his or her
genitals to strangers
 Rapist: person who sexually assaults victims over 16 years of age
 Pedophile: person whose primary sexual orientation is toward children
 Child molester: someone who has actually sexually molested a child
 Two types – intra-familial and extra-familial
 Intra-familial child molester: someone who sexually abuses his or her own
biological children or children for whom they assume a parental role
 i.e. Stepfather or live-in boyfriend
 Also known as incest offenders
 Extra-familial child molester: someone who sexually abuses children not related
to him or her
 Is resisting a sexual attack a good idea?
 The answer is complicated, it depends on the type of rapist under consideration
 Research with incarcerated rapists indicate that they search for vulnerable victims
in certain areas and attack women they believe can’t or won’t resist
  Many women do resist their attackers
 Compared with nonresistance strategies (i.e. pleading, crying, or
reasoning), victims who use force are more likely to avoid being raped
 Association between victim injury and resistance is inconclusive at present
 Depends on the type of rapist and whether the offender has a weapon
 Self-defence training can empower women to be confident in their ability to resist
sexual assault and subsequently reduces their likelihood of victimization
 Prevention programs are more effective when oriented towards a single gender
 Rapist Typologies
 Not all rapists engage in sexual assault for the same reasons
 The Revised Rapist Typology, Version 3 consists of 5 primary subtypes based on
motivational differences (developed by the Massachusetts Treatment Center)
 Opportunistic type: commits sexual assault that is impulsive, void of sexual
fantasies, controlled primarily by situational or contextual factors, and void of
gratuitous violence
 These offenders often engage in other criminal behaviours
 i.e. Breaking into a home with the intention to steal, but raping a female
occupant would be opportunistic
 Passively angry type: high level of anger directed toward both men and women
 Offenders tend to be impulsive, use unnecessary force, cause serious
victim injury, and be void of sexual fantasies
 Sexual type: distinguished by other types in that these offenders’ crimes are
primarily motivated by sexual preoccupation or sexual fantasies
 Sadistic type: differentiated from the sexual type in that there must be a sadistic
element to the offence
 Vindictive: anger is focused solely on women, these offenders aren’t impulsive or
preoccupied by sexual fantasies
 The goal is to demean and degrade the victim
 Opportunistic, sexual, and vindictive subtypes further subdivided based on their
level of social competence
 Sadistic type further subdivided into overt or muted sadists based on the
presence or absence of gratuitous violence
 These types differ on prevalence of psychopathy, rates of recidivism, and
treatment needs
 Another typology that uses motivations to classify rapists was proposed by Groth (1979)
with three main types
 Anger rapist: uses more force than necessary to obtain compliance from the
victim and who engages in a variety of sexual acts to degrade the victim
 High levels of anger directed solely toward victim
 Not being motivated primarily by sexual gratification
 Most of these rapists are precipitated by conflict or perceived humiliation
by some significant woman (i.e. offender’s wife, mother, or boss)
 ~50% of rapists fit this type
 Power rapist: seeks to establish dominance and control over the victim
 Variation in amount of force used depending on the degree of submission
shown by the victim
  Not being motivated primarily by sexual gratification
 Frequent rape fantasies
 ~40% of rapists fit into this category
 Sadistic rapist: obtains sexual gratification by hurting the victim
 High levels of victim injury, including torture and sometimes death
 Frequent violent sexual fantasies
 ~5% of rapists fit this type
 Child Molester Typologies
 Fixated child molester: has a long-standing, exclusive sexual preference for
children
 Little to no sexual contact with adults
 Sexual interest in children begins in adolescence and is persistent
 Male children are their primary targets
 Precipitating stress is not evident
 Offences are planned
 Emotionally immature, poor social skills, and are usually single
 No hx of alcohol or drug abuse
 Often feel no remorse or distress over their behaviour
 Regressed child molester: primary sexual orientation is toward adults, but whose
sexual interests revert to children after a stressful event or because of feelings of
inadequacy
 Interest in children begins in adulthood and is episodic
 Female children are their primary targets
 Precipitating stress and feelings of inadequacy usually present
 Offences are more impulsive
 Often married and are having marital problems
 Many offences related to alcohol use
 More likely to report feeling remorse for their behaviour
 National Sex Offender Registry: Is it helping the police to locate sex offenders?
 National Sex Offender Registry created in 2004 to provide rapid access to
information about convicted sex offenders
 Goal is to help police investigate sexual crimes by identifying sexual
offenders living near the crime scene
 Registry contains addresses, phone numbers, offence history, aliases, identifying
marks, vehicle information, employment, and a photo of offenders
 Registry was developed in response to the 1988 murder of 11-year-old
Christopher Stevenson by paroled child molester Joseph Fredericks
 The public doesn’t have access to this registry but in the US the public can obtain
access with some websites
 Public sex offender registries don’t make communities safer, instead they instill a
false sense of security
 No noticeable decline in the frequency of sexual offending in areas where
registries are publicly available
 Also reinforces stereotypes that offenders prey on strangers when they are
more likely to victimize people they know
 Can also make it difficult for them to reintegrate into society
  Offenders are less likely to reoffend after being released
 Adolescent Sexual Offenders
 Before the 1980s, sexually aggressive behaviour by adolescents wasn’t deemed
serious and was discounted by some as normal experimentation
 Crime reports and victimization surveys indicate 20% of rapes and 30-50% of
CSA is committed by adolescents
 645 adolescents tried in youth court for sexual assault in Canada in 2013
 98% male, majority between age 12-15
 Adolescent sexual offenders consistently report being victims of sexual abuse
themselves
 Prevalence of sexual abuse committed against adolescent sexual offenders
ranges from 40-80%
 Majority of sexually abused children don’t go on to become adolescent or adult
sexual offenders
 History of childhood sexual victimization is not related to sexual
recidivism in adolescent sexual offenders
 Being a victim of sexual abuse is only one factor that affects later sexual
offending
 Social inadequacy, lack of intimacy, and impulsiveness also play a role in sexual
abuse
 Adolescent sex offenders more likely to have a history of sexual abuse, exposure
to sex or pornography, and atypical sexual interests
 Link between playing violent video games and negative attitudes toward women
 Sexual Objectification in Video Games and Assault Myths: Is there a link?
 Some computer games are explicitly about raping women
 When female characters are present, in 21% of the games violence was depicted
against them
 And in 28% of the games women were portrayed as sex objects
 Difficult to determine causality
 People who have negative attitudes toward women could be more likely to
play violent video games rather than the games causing these attitudes
 Ethical concerns – should we ask students who don’t play violent video
games to participate in research where we ask them to play them?
 One study found watching a video game that depicted sexual objectification of
women and violence against women was related to increased rape-myth attitudes
 Female Sexual Offenders
 Research on female sex offenders is limited because only 2-5% of incarcerated
sex offenders are female
 Sexual abuse of children by women is more prevalent than previously believed
 Rate of sexual reoffending is substantially lower in female sex offenders (1.5%
over 6 year follow-up) compared to male sex offenders (13.5% over 5.5 years)
 Female sex offenders appear to receive shorter sentences on average than men
 Rates of sexual abuse by females vary drastically depending on the definition
used
 Retrospective surveys of university students found a large percentage of
perpetrators are females
  5% of college men molested as children – 60% were molested by females
most being older female adolescents
 Another study found 7.3% of university students were abused
 43% of the perpetrators were females, and almost half of them were
female adolescent babysitters
 Half of the male respondents reported that they participated in the sexual
acts voluntarily and didn’t feel victimized
 Other studies found only 6% of university women and 16% of university men
reported CSA by a woman
 Reasons why sexual abuse by females is underestimated
 Women able to mask their sexually abusive behaviours through caregiving
activities and are thus more difficult to recognize
 Women sexual offenders more likely to target their own children who are less
likely to disclose the abuse
 Boys are more frequent targets than girls, and boys are less likely to disclose
abuse
 Four types of female sexual offenders
 Teacher/lover: typically involving a male adolescent and female teacher
 Offender is in a position of authority or power
 Unknown how common this type is because victims rarely report abuse to
authorities
 This type has not likely experienced CSA, although substance-use
problems are common
 These offenders are often not aware that their behaviour is inappropriate,
describing that they are “in love” with the victim
 Victims often report participating voluntarily and don’t feel victimized
 Male-coerced: offenders are coerced or forced into sexual abuse by an abusive
male
 Often the victim is the female offender’s own daughter
 These offenders are unassertive, dependent on men, and relatively passive
partners in the abuse
 Male-accompanied: these offenders also engage in sexual abuse with a male
partner
 However they are more willing participants than the male-coerced type
 Victims are both inside and outside the family
 Predisposed: offender initiates the sexual abuse alone
 She has often experienced severe and persistent childhood sexual abuse
and has been a victim of intimate violence
 This type reports having deviant sexual fantasies, the offences are more
violent and bizarre, and typically involve younger children
 Victims are often their own children, and they also frequently physically
abuse and neglect the victim
 Aboriginal Sex Offenders
 Lack of research on Aboriginal sex offenders despite the fact that 40% of
Aboriginal offender population in Canada has committed a sexual offence
  Aboriginal sex offenders score higher on many risk factors compared to non-
Aboriginal sex offenders
 i.e. Lengthier criminal and substance abuse hx, lower education, higher
rates of unemployment
 Aboriginal sex offenders mostly fall between ages 19-40
 When committing the sexual offence, approximately 89% of Aboriginal sex
offenders were under the influence of alcohol
 Aboriginal sex offenders less likely to have male victims and less likely to
victimize young children
 Majority appear to be part of the Aboriginal community and known to the
offender
 Less than 16% of victims are non-Aboriginal and less than 15% of victims
were strangers
 Theories of Sexual Aggression
 Finkelhor’s theory of child molesting proposes 4 preconditions must be met for
the sexual abuse to occur
1. Offender must be motivated to sexually abuse
a. Three factors for motivation: (1) emotional congruence, the offender’s
desire for the child to satisfy an emotional need, (2) sexual attraction to the
child, (3) blockage of emotional outlets for the offender to meet his sexual
and emotional needs
2. Lack of internal inhibitions (i.e. alcohol, impulse control issues, etc.)
3. Must overcome external inhibitors for the abuse to occur (i.e. the offender might
need to create opportunities to be alone with the child)
4. Offender must overcome the child’s resistance
a. Offenders will reward the child with attention or bribes to encourage
cooperation
b. Some offenders use the threat of harm to intimidate the child
 Marshall and Barbaree (1990) proposed an integrated model of sexual aggression
 Includes biological factors, childhood experiences, sociocultural influences, and
situational events
 Argues that males learn to inhibit sexually aggressive behaviour via a
socialization process that promotes the development of strong, positive
attachments
 Authors suggest sex offenders fail to acquire effective inhibitory control because
they experienced childhood abuse or were raised in dysfunctional families
 Also acknowledge importance of structure of society that reinforces the use of
aggression and acceptance of negative attitudes towards women
 Evolutionary theory has also been proposed to explain sexual offending
 Theories focus on how behaviour is the product of our ancestral history and how
features related to reproductive success become more frequent
 Assessment and Treatment of Sexual Offenders
 Denial, Minimizations, and Cognitive Distortions
 Sex offenders often deny or fail to take full responsibility for their sexual
offending
  About 70% of sex offenders deny or minimize having ever committed a sexual
crime
 The blame is often shifted to someone else including the victim or an
external factor
 Assessments of denial and acceptance of responsibility are often done through
self-report questionnaires (i.e. Clarke Sex History Questionnaire)
 Or by comparison of police and victim reports with what offenders admit
in interviews
 Research hasn’t found a link between denial and sexual recidivism, but some
researchers provide evidence that denial is linked in low-risk and incest offenders
 Denial may have more of an impact on recidivism outcomes among sexual
offenders with fewer risk factors (i.e. designated as low-risk)
 Cognitive distortions: deviant cognitions, values, or beliefs that are used to
justify or minimize deviant behaviours
 i.e. A child molester thinking that having sex with a child in a loving
relationship is a good way to teach a child about sex
 Cognitive distortions that are self-serving and inhibit them from taking full
responsibility for their offences
 Cognitive distortions or attitudes supportive of sex offending are more
predictive of recidivism among child molesters than rapists
 Some tx programs refuse to accept deniers because they can’t fully participate in
the treatment since the focus is on sexual reoffending
 In tx, offenders are asked to disclose in detail what happened before,
during, and after the sexual abuse
 Empathy
 Some sex offenders have a great deficit in empathy (i.e. psychopathic sex
offenders) but most have a specific deficit in empathy toward their victims
 Empathy: the ability to perceive others’ perspectives and recognize and respond
in a compassionate way to the feelings of others
 Cognitive distortions cause empathy problems by lowering the amount of harm
they think they’ve done
 Don’t think the victim has suffered  don’t empathize with the victim
 Measures of empathy focus on self-report such as the Rape Empathy Scale
 Empathy training typically focuses on getting the offender to understand the
impact of the abuse on the victim and the pain caused
 And to develop feelings such as remorse
 Offenders read survivor accounts of rape and child abuse and compare
these accounts with how their victim likely felt
 Videos of victims describing the emotional damage they suffered and
long-term problems they experience are often used
 Some therapy programs use role-playing
 Some programs may have sexual offenders meet with adult survivors of rape or
CSA but only if they are demonstrating empathy before the meeting
 Social Skills
 Sexual offenders lack a variety of skills including self-confidence in interpersonal
relations, capacity for intimacy, assertiveness, and dealing with anger
  Self-report scenarios have all been developed to assess social-skill deficits
 Tx programs vary in terms of which social-skill deficits are targeted
 Some focus on communication, others target relationship skills, anger control, and
self-esteem
 Substance Abuse
 Substance abuse problems common in nonsexual offender sand sexual offenders
 Likely that some sex offenders use alcohol to facilitate offending by reducing
their inhibitions
 Self-report measures often used to assess problems with drugs and alcohol
 Sex offenders with substance-abuse problems often referred to substance-abuse
programs
 Usually based on relapse-prevention model
 Deviant Sexual Interests
 Deviant sexual interests motivate some sex offenders, but many other salient
motives also play a role
 i.e. Power and control over others, anger toward others, and desire for
emotional intimacy
 Penile phallometry: a measurement device placed around the penis to measure
changes in sexual arousal
 One of the most popular methods to assess deviant sexual interests
 To measure deviant sexual interests in child molesters, photos of naked male and
female children and adults are presented
 As well as rapists’ recorded descriptions of nondeviant and deviant sexual
behaviour
 Intra-familial child molesters don’t differ in phallometric responses from
nonoffenders
 Phallometric assessments have been used to differentiate extra-familial child
molesters from nonoffenders
 Research with rapists is mixed, depending on methodology used
 Largest differences between rapists and non-rapists identified when
participants are shown vignettes involving the presence/absence of consent
 Rapists appear to respond more favorably to situations involving non-
consensual sex than non-rapists
 Many techniques developed to train offenders to eliminate deviant thoughts and interests
and increase the frequency of appropriate sexual thoughts and interests
 Aversion therapy: the pairing of an aversive stimuli with a deviant fantasy for
the purpose of reducing the attractiveness of those deviant fantasies
 i.e. Using aversive smells such as ammonia whenever one has a deviant
sexual fantasy
 Masturbatory satiation: offender is told to masturbate to ejaculation to a
nondeviant fantasy
 After ejaculation they are told to switch to a deviant fantasy, thus pairing
the inability to become aroused to this deviant fantasy
 Effectiveness of these techniques to change deviant sexual interests has been
questioned by several researchers
  When combined with psychotherapy, pharmacological interventions appear to be
effective at suppressing deviant sexual desires
 Drugs used in the past acted to suppress all sexual interests which was an
issue
 Using SSRIs has been shown to be the most effective for sex offenders with
paraphilia and those with exhibitionism, compulsive masturbation, and pedophilia
 Relapse Prevention: a method of treatment designed to prevent the occurrence of an
undesired behaviour (i.e. sexual assault)
 Two main parts
 Offenders asked to list emotional and situational risk factors that lead
them to fantasizing or committing sexual abuse (i.e. feeling lonely)
 Offenders need to develop plans to deal more appropriately with their
problems and ways to avoid/cope with high-risk situations (i.e. meeting
emotional needs in a prosocial way)
 Relapse Prevention with Sexual Offenders
 Relapse prevention is a self-control program designed to teach sex offenders to
recognize risky situations and learn coping/avoidance strategies to deal with them
 Initially developed to treat addictive behaviours such as smoking, drinking, and
overeating
 This isn’t considered a cure, but helps the offender to manage the urge to offend
 Teaches offenders to look ahead to prevent committing another offence
 Lapse: any occurrence of fantasizing about sexual offending or engaging in
behaviours in the offence cycle
 Relapse: occurrence of a sexual offence
 High-risk situation: any situation that increases the likelihood of a lapse or
relapse
 Apparently irrelevant decisions: conscious or unconscious decisions made by
offenders that put them in high-risk situations
 Coping response: development of avoidance strategies to sidestep high-risk
situations and escape plans if the high-risk situation can’t be avoided
 Abstinence violation effect: how the offender reacts to a lapse – cognitive
reactions (i.e. lack of willpower0 and emotional states (i.e. guilt) are considered
 If offender views the lapse as an irreversible failure, then this can promote
a relapse
 If the lapse is seen as a reasonable mistake in a learning process the
offender can become more confident in their ability to handle/avoid future
lapses
 
 Effectiveness of Treatment for Sexual Offenders
 Incarceration doesn’t appear to be a deterrent for sexual or other offenders
 No association between incarceration and sexual recidivism rates in 627
adult male sex offenders
 Incarceration can handle high-risk sex offenders, but community
alternatives may be more effective and less expensive for most offenders
 Issues with evaluating the effectiveness of sexual offender tx programs
 Unethical to carry out the ideal controlled study
 i.e. Randomly assign motivated sex offenders to either tx or no treatment
and then releasing them and following them – this is unethical/not feasible
 Low base rates of sexual recidivism, even in untreated offenders
 On average, only 15% of sex offenders are detected committing a new
sexual offence after 5 years and 20% after 10 years
 Detecting differences between groups can take years of follow-up
 Unofficial data (i.e. child protection agency files or self-reports) can be used to
detect reoffending
 Meta-analyses of sexual offender tx programs
 Sexual recidivism rate was 12.3% for treated sex offenders and 16.8% for
untreated sex offenders
 Results
 Sex offenders who refuse tx or drop out of tx had higher sexual recidivism
rates compared to those who complete the treatment
 Tx effects were equally effective for adolescent and adult sex offenders
 Both institutional tx and community tx associated with reductions in
sexual recidivism
 Treatments that appear most effective were recent programs with some form of
CBT and for adolescent sex offenders, systemic tx that targets a range of life
problems such as family, school, and peers
 A different study says surgical castration is the most effective but it is unethical
 27.6% of sex offenders drop out of tx for many reasons
 Variables related to tx attrition – number of prior offences, psychopathy,
denial, negative tx attitudes, and level of motivation
 Offenders with these features may need additional support to encourage
them to remain in tx
CHAPTER 15 ~ Homicidal Offenders
 Nature and Extent of Homicidal Violence
 Canadian criminal law recognizes 4 different types of homicide
 First-degree murder, second-degree murder, manslaughter, and infanticide
(the killing of a baby by its mother)
 Different penalties for each type (i.e. max 5 years for infanticide)
 Some forms of killing are exempt from penalties such as killing during
war or killing in self defence
 First-degree murder: all murder that is planned and deliberate
 Also includes murder of law enforcement officers or correctional staff
members, or during the commission of another violent offence regardless
of whether the murder was unplanned or deliberate
 Second-degree: all murder that isn’t considered first-degree murder
 Manslaughter: unintentional murder occurring during the “heat of passion) or
because of criminal negligence
 i.e. Drunk driving and accidentally hitting someone (criminal negligence)
 i.e. Shooting a mistress (“heat of passion”)
 Homicide is relatively rare in Canada, representing less than 1% of all violent crimes
 Rate has been declining since the 1960s
 Attempted homicide has also gradually decreased over the same time period
 Currently at its lowest since the mid-1970s


 Interesting details related to homicide in Canada
 In 2014, Newfound Land and Labrador reported the lowest homicide rate of all
provinces
 Manitoba reported highest homicide rate
 Thunder bay reported highest homicide rate followed by Winnipeg
(metropolitan areas)
 Territories report significantly higher homicide rates than the provinces
 Most solved homicides in 2014 were committed by someone known to the victim
(83%)
 Including an acquaintance (37%), a family member (34%), or some other
individual (i.e. an ex-spouse)
 Youth commit relatively few homicides
 25 in 2014 (out of 516) which is the lowest since it has been since 1969
 In 2014, 23% of all homicide victims were Aboriginal
 Aboriginal homicide rate nearly 6x higher than non-Aboriginal homicide
rate
 Of people accused of homicide in 2014, 32% were Aboriginal people
 Bimodal Classification of Homicide
  Reactive (affective) aggression: aggression that is impulsive, unplanned,
immediate, driven by negative emotions, and occurring in response to some
perceived provocation
 Occurs more often among relatives
 80% of homicides
 Instrumental (predatory) aggression: aggression that is premeditated,
calculated, and motivated by some goal (i.e. to obtain money)
 Occurs more often among strangers
 20% of homicides
 Most homicides involve acquaintances (55%), with most of which being
classified as reactive (80%)
 Family members and intimate partners account for 28% of the cases, with
nearly all of these homicides being classified as reactive (93%)
 In 17% of cases the victim was a stranger, with 52% being classified as
reactive
 Continuum of violence ranging from purely reactive to purely instrumental
 12.8% of homicides purely reactive
 23.2% reactive-instrumental
 20% instrumental-reactive
 36% purely instrumental
 8% couldn’t be coded
 Relationship between instrumentality of the homicide and the degree to which the
offender exhibited features of psychopathy
 High PCL-R score  more likely to commit instrumental homicides
 Significant relationships between psychopathy and both types of violence have
been found though
 Interpersonal features of psychopathy associated with instrumental
violence
 Social deviance features of psychopathy associated with reactive violence
 Lifestyle features of psychopathy associated with both types of violence
 Types of Homicide
 Filicide: the killing of children by their biological or step-parents
 Includes neonaticide (killing a baby within 24 hours of birth) and infanticide
(killing a baby within the first year of life)
 Some cultures have sanctioned gender-based killing of children
 i.e. China and India – female children more likely to be killed
 In the past, Inuit societies killed infants with birth defects or one infant
when twins were born
 From 2003-2013, 319 children were victims of familial homicide
 Children (0 to 11) more at risk of familial homicide than youth (12 to 17
years) but children <1 were most at risk
 Since 2003, 22% of infant victims were killed the day they were born
 Most common cause of death is strangulation, suffocation, or drowning
(27%)
 These methods are rarer when children/youth are murdered by non-family
members (7%)
  In non-familial homicides of children and youth, stabbing is the most common
method of death (34%)
 But this is rarer in cases of familial homicides of children/youth (16%)
 Why would family members kill children and youth?
 Frustration, concealment of the child, argument, revenge
 Some studies argue that fathers are more likely than mothers to be the perpetrator
of filicides, whereas other research has indicated the opposite
 Some studies found stepfathers and stepmothers are more likely to kill a
child than biological fathers and mothers
 Other studies have failed to replicate this finding
 Mothers Who Kill
 Fathers are capable and perhaps even more likely than mothers to kill their
children in Canada but most research and media focuses on mothers
 Three broad types of maternal filicides
 Neonaticides (killing within 24 hours of birth)
 Those committed by battering mothers
 Those committed by mothers with mental illnesses
 Neonaticide group – typically young, unmarried women with no prior history of
mental illness, who are not suicidal and have concealed their pregnancies
 Fearing rejection or disapproval from their families
 Battering mothers have killed their children impulsively in response to the
behaviour of the child
 Highest rates of social and family stress, including marital stress and
financial problems
 Mental disorders group – tends to be older and married
 Likely to have killed older children, have multiple victims, and to be
diagnosed with a psychosis or depression
 Most likely to attempt suicide after murder
 Altruistic filicide: mothers who kill out of love, in response to the
mother’s delusional beliefs that the child’s death will protect the child
 Infanticide and Mental Illness
 Three types of mental illness have been identified during the postpartum period
 Postpartum blues, postpartum depression, and postpartum psychosis
 Postpartum blues: experienced by 85% of women, most common type of mental
illness
 Includes crying, irritability, and anxiety beginning within a few days of
childbirth and lasting a few hours to days
 Rarely lasts past day 12
 Postpartum depression: experienced by 7-19% of women, occurs within the first
few weeks or months after birth and usually lasts for several months
 Symptoms identical to clinical depression and include depressed mood,
loss of appetite, concentration and sleep problems, and suicidal thoughts
 Postpartum psychosis: the most severe and rare type of mental illness associated
with childbirth
 Occurs in 1 or 2 of every 1000 births
  Usually involves delusions, hallucinations, suicidal or homicidal thoughts
within the first 3 months after childbirth
 Potential role in maternal infanticides (i.e. Andrea Yates)
 In the Media – Mothers who Kill
 Suzanne Killinger-Johnson
 Physician with a psychotherapy practice in Toronto
 History of depression while in medical school
 Had a successful marriage and flourishing career, supportive family and
friends
 After giving birth to her son she became more obsessive and caring about
him
 Saw a therapist and went on antidepressants  stopped taking them
because she worried about the medicine entering her breast milk
 Eventually jumped in front of a train while holding her son
 Depression assumed to be a contributing factor in the death of her and her
son
 Sonia Blanchette
 Mental illness didn’t appear to play a significant role in this case
 Accused of strangling and drowning her 3 children in her apartment
 Lost custody of her kids to her ex-husband
 While in jail waiting for trial she starved herself to death
 Fathers Who Kill
 Familicide: the killing of a spouse and children – almost always committed by a
man
 Often accompanied by a history of spousal and child abuse prior to the
offence
 The killer commits suicide in half of the cases
 Those who kill their biological children have a higher likelihood of
committing suicide than those who kill their spouse and stepchildren
 Two types of familicide murderers
 Despondent non-hostile killer: depressed and worried about an
impending disaster for himself or his family, kills the family and them
himself
 Hostile accusatory killer: expresses hostility toward the wife, often
related to alleged infidelities or her intentions to terminate the relationship,
a hx of violent acts is also common
 Youths Who Kill
 In 2014, 25 youths between the ages of 12 and 17 were accused of homicide in
Canada
 Represents a decline compared to 2013 (16 fewer than 2013) and is below
the 10-year youth homicide average of 59
 Youth homicide rate of 1.07 per 100,000 youth is the lowest rate recorded
since 1984
 Number of attempted homicides is increasing though
 38 in 2013  51 in 2014 (2.18 per 100 000 youth), but this is still below
the 10-year average (2.25 per 100,000 youth)
  When youth commit homicides they often have at least one accomplice, in
contrast to homicides committed by adults
 Of the 46 youths who committed murder in Canada in 2011, 57% had an
accomplice compared to only 31% of adult homicide offenders
 Homicides committed by youth represent only a small portion of the total number
of homicides committed in Canada
 Youths charged with parricide (killing parents)
 More likely to have been physically abused, have witnessed spousal abuse,
and to report amnesia for the murders
 Abused youth are younger, more often Caucasian, and more likely to have
attempted suicide prior to the homicide than non-Abused youth
 Types of juvenile homicide offenders based on circumstance of offence
 Psychotic: youth who have symptoms of severe mental illness at the time
of the murder (7%)
 Conflict: youth who were engaged in an argument or conflict with the
victim when the killing occurred (42%)
 Crime: youth who killed during the commission of another crime, such as
robbery or sexual assault (51%)
 Differences across these homicide subgroups in family background,
criminal hx, and psychopathology have been reported
 Motivations underlying youth homicides in Canada
 46.2% of all homicides were committed while the youth was committing
another crime
 38.6% of homicides in their sample involved theft of money, property, or
substances and 8.9% involved sexual assault
 36.7% of crimes could be classified as instrumental, 33.7% as
instrumental-reactive, 6.1% as reactive-instrumental, and 23.5% as purely
reactive
 More than ¾ of youth homicides in the sample involved some level of
instrumentality, slightly less than instrumentality in adult homicides (85%)
 Family members less likely to be victims in instrumental homicides and
more likely to be victims in reactive homicides
 Acquaintances and strangers more likely to be targeted by youth for
instrumental reasons
 The Youngest Convicted Multiple Murderer in Canada: The Case of Jasmine Richardson
 Richardson’s parents and brother found dead in their home and she was convicted
of triple murder
 Her boyfriend was convicted too
 Motivation seemed to be that her parents were preventing her from seeing her 23
year old boyfriend
 Steinke (boyfriend) carried out the killings but Richardson persuaded him to do it
and told him how to gain access to her house and willingly fled with him
 Boyfriend sentenced to 3 life sentences and Richardson was a minor so she got
the maximum 10 years in a psychiatric facility
 And then conditional supervision in the community
 Spousal Killers
  Femicide: the killing of women
 Uxoricide: the killing of a wife by her husband
 Androcide: the killing of men
 Matricide: the killing of a husband by his wife
 Uxoricide appears much more common than matricide
 Intimate-partner crime rate has declined over time, but a disproportionate
rate of uxoricides has remained stable over time
 Motives for uxoricide
 Anger over estrangement from their partners or sexual jealousy about
perceived infidelity
 Escalations of arguments/quarrels
 Jealousy – more often a motive when the female intimate partner was
killed compared to when the male partner was the victim (24 vs 10%)
 Risk factors for uxoricide
 Recent or imminent departure by the eventual victim associated with a
husband killing his wife (but not his wife killing her husband)
 The offender having access to a gun
 Previous threats having been made with a weapon
 Estrangement
 The victim having left for another partner
 Offence characteristics have also been examined
 i.e. Husbands often use close contact methods when killing their partners
(i.e. beating or strangling)
 Uxoricides are often characterized by use of excessive force or overkill
 High incidence of perpetrator suicide following the murder
 Male acquaintances rarely commit suicide after killing acquaintances or
strangers
 Lower rate of matricide than uxoricide, but when it does happen the perpetrator is
often the man’s wife
 Motives for matricide
 Men most often kill their wives due to anger or jealousy, while wives kill
their husbands out of fear for themselves or their children
 Research suggests that when a wife kills her husband, the husband is often
the one who used or threatened violence first
 Sexual Homicide: killing that involves a sexual component
 In order for a homicide to be considered a sexual homicide, one of the following
sexual indicators must be present
 Victim attire or lack of attire (i.e. found undressed)
 Exposure of sexual parts of the victim’s body
 Sexual positioning of the victim’s body
 Insertion of foreign objects into the victim’s body cavities
 Evidence of sexual intercourse (oral, vaginal, anal)
 Evidence of substitute sexual activity, interest, or sadistic fantasy
 These crimes rarely occur and can be difficult to solve
 Characteristics of sexual homicides in Canada
 Most offenders are young, white, single, and have a diverse criminal history
  Victims are ~27, female, white, and engaged in a high-risk lifestyle (i.e. abusing
drugs/alcohol, homeless, prostitution, etc.)
 In majority of cases, the offender made eye contact with the victim, killed the
victim, and disposed of the body outdoors
 The victim’s residence was also a common contact point, killing site, and
body recovery site
 The offender usually used a con approach (i.e. feigning an emergency), would
beat or strangle them, and frequently used a weapon
 Often exhibiting behaviours of overkill and theft
 Wide range of sexual acts were also committed in the crimes
 Most common were vaginal and anal penetration


 Multiple Murderers
 Most murderers kill a single individual, but some kill multiple people
 Serial murder: the killing of a minimum of 2 people over time
 The time interval between the murders varies and has been called a
cooling-off period
 Subsequent murders occur at different times, have no apparent connection
to the initial murder, and are usually committed in different locations
 Mass murder: the killing of multiple victims at a single location during one event
with no cooling off period
 Spree murder: the killing of 2+ victims in one continuous event at two or more
locations, with no cooling-off period between the murder
 Serial Murder
 Issues with the definition – number of victims should be required before an
offender is classified as a serial murderer
 Motives can also be different among serial murderers
 i.e. Should contract killers motivated by money be considered serial
killers?
 Characteristics of Serial Murderers (US)
 Mostly male (92.5% male, 7.5% female)
 A slight majority or serial murderers in the US are white
 51.7% are white, 40.6% are African-American
 Most common motive for serial homicides appears to be enjoyment (i.e. thrill,
lust, power)
 40.1% of serial killers appeared to be driven by enjoyment
 Other common motives included financial gain (28.28%) and anger
(15.10%)
 Victims of serial murderers are usually females (53.49%), white (67.33%), and
relatively young (modal victim age of 19 years)
 Shooting is the most common method of death in serial murders
 41.73% of cases were death by gunshot
 Strangulation (23.21%)
 Stabbing (15.22%)
 Myths about Serial Killers
 There is a typical “type” of serial killer
 There are some common characteristics (i.e. male) but many differences
 They can differ in gender, age, ethnicity, nationality, intelligence,
childhood experiences, victim preferences, motivation to kill, etc.
 Serial killers are psychopathic
 Some research suggests that they are
 But when assessed using the PCL-R, they don’t always meet the
diagnostic criteria for psychopathy
 Killing numerous people doesn’t automatically make you a psychopath
 Most serial killers are super-intelligent and because of this they rarely get caught
 Many are caught for their crimes due to advances in investigative and
forensic techniques
 Serial killers travel far distances to commit their crimes, often picking up victims
along their travels
 Like most serial offenders, serial killers tend to travel relatively short
distances to commit their crimes
 Female Serial Murderers
 Female serial killing is extremely rare
 Many female serial killers appear to be either “black widows”, “those who kill for
financial gain”, or “angels of death”


 Typologies of Serial Murderers
  Visionary serial killer: a murderer who kills in response to voices or visions
telling them to kill
 Mission-oriented serial murderer: a murderer who targets individuals from a
group that they consider to be “undesirable”
 Hedonistic serial murderer: a murderer who is motivated by self-gratification
 Divided into three subtypes – lust, thrill, and comfort
 Lust serial murderer: a murderer who is motivated by sexual
gratification
 Thrill serial murderer: a murderer who is motivated by the excitement
associated with the act of killing
 Comfort serial murderer: a murderer who is motivated by material or
financial gain
 Power/control serial murderer: a murderer who is motivated not by sexual
gratification, but by wanting to have absolute dominance over the victim
 Criticisms of this typology
 Overlap among categories
 i.e. Lust, thrill, and power/control murders are all characterized by a
controlled crime scene, a focus on process, and selection of specific
victims
 Typology developers failed to test this empirically
 Research has failed to find support for the proposed typology
 Murderers’ motives may change over the course of their killings
 Keppel and Walter (1999) classification for serial murderers
 Motivational rapist typology
 Two types of sexual murderers reflect the theme of power
 Power-assertive
 Power-reassurance: commits planned rape that escalates to unplanned
murder
 Two types reflecting the theme of anger (planned murders)
 Anger-retaliation
 Anger-excitation
 Very little evidence to support this typology either
 Mass murder: killing of 4+ victims at a single location during one event with no
cooling-off period
 i.e. School shootings
 In a classic mass murder, the individual goes to a public place and kills strangers
at that location
 In a family mass murder, 4+ family members are killed, usually by another family
member
 Can also occur when the offender intends to kill one person but ends up killing
others in the process
 Not all mass murders are motivated by the same reasons but the outcome is
always the same (innocent people die)
 Mass murderers are often depressed, angry, frustrated individuals who believe
they have not succeeded in life
 Often socially isolated, lacking interpersonal skills
  Murder can be triggered by a perceived serios loss or social injustice
 Offenders often select targets who represent who they hate/blame for their
problems
 Often feel rejected by others and regard homicide as a justified act of
revenge
 Most mass murderers plan their crimes and obtain semi-automatic guns to
maximize the number of deaths
 They display warning signs basically
 Canada’s Deadliest Mass Murder
 Marc Lepine shot at women at Ecole Polytechnique
 According to the media, this was because his father had little respect for women
 Theories of Homicidal Aggression
 Motivational model of sexual homicide (Burgess et al., 1986)
 Trauma-control model of serial homicide (Hickey, 2006)
 Social Learning Theory
 Aggressive behaviour is learned through a process of reinforcement
 Rewards for aggressive behaviour (i.e. beating up a schoolmate 
increase in status among classmates)
 Observing others such as family, peers, and mass media
 Evolutionary theories
 In ancestral environments, certain physiological, psychological, and
behavioural characteristics became associated with reproductive success
 Homicide is one approach to win against competitors competing for
limited resources
 General Association Model (GAM)
 Integrates a number of domain-specific theories to explain the emergence
of all types of aggression


 Inputs – biological, environmental, psychological, and social factors
that influence aggression
 Person factors (i.e. traits, attitudes, genetics)
 Situation factors (i.e. inventives, provocation, frustration)
 Inputs influence cognitions, emotions, and arousal
 Outcomes can be automatic/impulsive or heavily controlled and thoughtful
in nature
 Treatment of Homicidal Offenders
 There is no typical treatment for violent offenders
 Many tx programs are designed to target some or all of the following
 Anger management, self-regulation, problem solving, interpersonal skills,
and social attitudes
 Interventions used for sex offenders sometimes also used for nonsexual violent
offenders
 Research has found positive effect sizes (lower rates of reoffending) in treated
offenders
 Negative effect sizes and higher rates of reoffending in treated group (the
textbook has a typo here um)
 Treatment programs are effective to some extent but the effects aren’t very
large
 Not all violent offender tx programs are equally effective
 Depends on what the program targets (i.e.anger control is better than
empathy training)
