Bruce A. Arrigo

The Confusion Over Psychopathy (I): Historical Considerations

This article is the first in a two-part series on psychopathy. Psychopathy is an elusive and perplexing psychological construct. Problems posed by this mental disorder are linked to changing historical interpretations impacting the current clinical community’s general understanding of it, especially in relation to Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD). Accordingly, the researchers provide a thorough analytical review of the major transitions associated with psychopathy’s historical development. This assessment demonstrates where and how the nomenclature, meaning, degree of social condemnation, and prognosis for this mental disorder have changed. Ultimately, this article clarifies much of the uncertainty surrounding this misunderstood psychological construct.

The Psychological Effects of Solitary Confinement on Prisoners in Supermax Units: Reviewing What We Know and Recommending What Should Change

This article examines the psychological consequences of short- and long-term solitary confinement for prisoners in the United States subjected to administrative or disciplinary segregation. Particular attention is paid to the use of secure housing units, alternatively known as control units or supermax units. These correctional entities allow for the isolation of convicts under conditions that offer little sensory stimulation and minimal opportunities for interaction with other people. The circumstances typically found in these units and the heightened potential for the abuse of prisoners are described. The connections between internment and mental illness—as well as isolation and race, gender, and class—are explored. A set of recommendations for the reform of secure housing is presented.

Explaining Paraphilias and Lust Murder: Toward an Integrated Model

The literature on sexual homicide and serial murder has offered mostly descriptive or anecdotal accounts. What seems to underscore these crimes is a series of paraphilias (i.e., sexually deviant behaviors) that give rise to violent conduct. The motivational model of Burgess et al. and the trauma-control model of Hickey indicate as much in their respective sexual homicide and serial murder typologies. However, neither model offers a detailed conceptual account of the etiology and process of paraphilias, especially in relationship to lust murder, or erotophonophilia. This article attempts to fill this gap in the research. The authors demonstrate how the motivational and trauma-control typologies are assimilable, making possible an integrated theoretical paraphilic schema. The authors explain how paraphilias as a system of behavior function as motive in the sexually sadistic act of lust murder. They conclude by exploring the implications of their conceptual synthesis for clinical forensic treatment and law enforcement practice.

Lifting the Cover on Drug Courts: Evaluation Findings and Policy Concerns

Drug treatment courts emerged in 1989 as a court-based solution to an enormous increase of drug-related arrests. Since their inception, drug treatment courts have been subject to empirical and process evaluations to provide quantitative and qualitative data regarding their effectiveness. This article reviews the extant literature on the effectiveness of drug treatment courts and discusses findings regarding various components of the criminal justice system. It is argued that based on empirical evaluation findings, drug treatment courts have achieved success in lowering rates of recidivism among drug offenders, despite problematic methodological and analytical concerns. This article also presents key components and agents of drug treatment courts and discusses their impact and relevance to policy creation and adaptation. It is suggested that when combined with empirical evaluations, process evaluations provide great insight into the drug-treatment-court dynamic. This article concludes with a discussion of the implications of drug treatment courts for justice policy.

Restoring justice for juveniles: A critical analysis of victimoffender mediation

Increases in youth crime have placed considerable strain on both the criminal justice and the juvenile justice system. In response to mounting caseloads and diminishing resources, some experts suggest that a restorative justice model, using victim-offender mediation (VOM) principles, is necessary for combating crime and its impact on victims, juveniles, and the community. In this article we evaluate the merits of VOM programs and the philosophy of restorative justice as applied to adolescent offenders. Relying on the interpretive tools of the postmodern sciences, we carefully examine the language of restoration as structuring victim-offender mediation sessions. Integrated, selected contributions from psychoanalytic semiotics and chaos theory underpin this investigation. We demonstrate how VOM discourse advertently or inadvertently marginalizes juveniles. Therefore, as a policy matter, we argue that the goals of restorative justice are not presently realized. We conclude by provisionally describing how a m...

Victim Vices, Victim Voices, and Impact Statements: On the Place of Emotion and the Role of Restorative Justice in Capital Sentencing

This article examines the efficacy and legitimacy of using victim impact statements (VIS) during the penalty phase of capital cases. It is argued that the emotionally laden content of VIS (particularly victim allocution) fuels vengeance, anger, and hatred, thereby undermining prospects for a fair and impartial sentence and undoing prospects for a more meaningful and restorative experience of victim justice. To examine these dynamics, several principles of “critical” restorative justice are delineated, the empirical and legal limits of VIS are identified, societys urge to punish is conceptually and speculatively explored, and this tendency is juxtaposed against the extent to which compassion and forgiveness are important dimensions of the sentencing process. The article concludes with an outline of several policy reforms, consistent with critical restorative justice practice, explaining how personal/family harm following criminal wrongdoing can significantly be attended to for victims, offenders, and the community of which both are a part.

Police Corruption and Psychological Testing: A Strategy for Preemployment Screening

The prediction, control, and prevention of police corruption represent pervasive and enduring problems. Researchers have suggested that intervention at the preemployment screening stage may be the best solution. However, investigators have acknowledged that existing assessment practices are flawed. This article proposes a strategy for the preemployment screening of law enforcement personnel. In particular, it examines the utility of the Inwald Personality Inventory and the Revised-NEO Personality Inventory in relation to assessing antisocial behavioral tendencies and conscientious personality traits, respectively, and argues that their combined use, appropriately administered in a testing situation, represents a reliable and valid predictor of good job performance. The article speculatively comments on this strategy for purposes of psychological testing, future research in the field, and law enforcement administration practices.

The Confusion over Psychopathy (II): Implications for Forensic (Correctional) Practice

This article is the second in a two-part series on psychopathy. The first article systematically, although provisionally, reviewed the major transitions associated with psychopathy’s historical development, focusing on how changes in nomenclature, meaning, degree of social condemnation, and prognosis significantly affect the current understanding of this mental disorder. This article assesses the most pressing forensic practice issues stemming from the convoluted history of psychopathy. In particular, this article comments on assessment concerns related to the convergence and divergence of the antisocial personality disorder–psychopathy continuum, on diagnostic and treatment concerns related to countertransference and misdiagnosis, and on courtroom testimony concerns related to competent forensic evaluations particularly when clinical assessments of sexually violent predators are administered. On this latter point, this article explores the limits of the Hare Psychopathy Checklist–Revised, especially in regard to predicting accurately violent sexual recidivism. Ultimately, this article clarifies much of the confusion surrounding psychopathy and forensic (correctional) practice.

The Ethics of Therapeutic Jurisprudence: A Critical and Theoretical Enquiry of Law, Psychology and Crime

For more than a decade, therapeutic jurisprudence has informed legal procedures, rules, institutions and actors. Most recently, academic and applied criminologists have seized upon this doctrine to interpret the behavior of criminal justice programs, agencies, and personnel. The expressed purpose of therapeutic jurisprudence is to assess, through social and behavioral science inquiry, the impact of the law on the mental and physical wellbeing of individuals affected by legal decisions and processes. As such, therapeutic jurisprudence aims to conceive of and rely upon the law as a therapeutic agent, thereby promoting the interests of a more just and civil society. At issue in this article is whether the central normative dimension of therapeutic jurisprudence limits (and erodes) prospects for humanism and justice, promoting instead a logic of identity that displaces (and denies) individual and group differences. This is a pervasive ethical dilemma at the core of therapeutic jurisprudence, especially in its relationship to mental health law and criminological enquiry. To substantiate this claim, this article examines how therapeutic jurisprudence wrongly assumes laws legitimacy, neglects (or dismisses) the ideology embedded within legal texts, promotes a unitary moral subject in law, and fosters a state of false consciousness among citizens. Contributions from anarchist theory, feminist jurisprudence, postmodern psychoanalysis, and critical legal studies inform this critique.

Managing Risk and Marginalizing Identities: On the Society-of-Captives Thesis and the Harm of Social Dis-Ease

This article develops the constitutive features of the society-of-captives thesis as suggested by Arrigo and Milovanovic, and Arrigo, Bersot, and Sellers. The relevance of this thesis is briefly explored in relation to the institutional and community-based treatment philosophies that currently inform the mental health and criminal justice systems. This exploration specifies how risk (being human and doing humanness differently) is managed symbolically, linguistically, materially, and culturally. The management of this risk extends to the kept as well as to their keepers, regulators, and watchers (i.e., the society of captives). This article calls for a new clinical praxis (being/doing a critical mindfulness) designed to overcome the totalizing madness (the harm of social dis-ease) that follows from managing risk fearfully and marginalizing identities desperately as reified recursively through society’s captivity. The ethical underpinnings of this clinical praxis represent an emergent direction for undertaking correctional policy reform.