Casey Laduke

Community-based alternatives for justice-involved individuals with severe mental illness: review of the relevant research

Community-based alternatives to conviction and imprisonment for adult offenders with severe mental illness are receiving increasing attention from researchers and policy makers. After discussing the justifications that have been offered in support of community-based alternatives, this article reviews the current empirical evidence relevant to such alternatives. The authors use the sequential intercept model as a guide and summarize the existing research at several points along the criminal justice continuum. They conclude by highlighting the gaps in existing research and discussing the need for further research in several key areas.

Methodological, Ethical, and Legal Considerations in Drug Court Research

Since their inception in the late 1980s, drug courts have become the most prevalent specialty court in the United States. A large body of outcome research conducted over the past two decades has demonstrated that drug courts effectively reduce drug use and criminal recidivism, which has led to the rapid proliferation of these courts. Importantly, drug court research has flourished despite the many challenges faced by researchers when working with a vulnerable population of justice-involved substance users. In this article, we highlight the most common methodological, ethical, and legal challenges encountered in drug court research, and discuss ways in which researchers can overcome these challenges to conduct high-quality research. Drug court research exemplifies how rigorous empirical investigation can be accomplished in the criminal justice system, and it can serve as a useful model for researchers working in other parts of the judicial system.

Neuroscientific, Neuropsychological, and Psychological Evidence Comparably Impact Legal Decision Making: Implications for Experts and Legal Practitioners

ABSTRACT Neuroscientific evidence is assuming an increasingly prominent role in criminal law, where it has considerable potential for affecting legal decision making. Our understanding of this effect is currently limited. Research initially suggested a significant impact of neuroscience on lay and legal decision making, but subsequent investigations have failed to replicate or extend these findings. The current study investigated the impact of several types of evidence in a novel criminal-sentencing paradigm that surveyed community participants (N = 896) using Amazon Mechanical Turk. No significant differences among neuroscientific, neuropsychological, and psychological evidence conditions—with or without images—were observed on mock jurors’ impressions of the evidence, sentencing decisions, or opinions of violence risk, recidivism, or culpability. These results suggest that our current understanding of the differential impact of neuroscientific and neuroimaging evidence on legal decision making may be oversimplified. An accurate understanding of this effect is imperative for researchers, practitioners, and legal professionals working with neuroscientific evidence as its prevalence continues to grow in legal decision making.

The Neuropsychological Assessment of Justice-Involved Men: Descriptive Analysis, Preliminary Data, and a Case for Group-Specific Norms

Objective Neuropsychological expertise has played an increasing role in legal decision-making in criminal contexts. Valid neuropsychological evidence in criminal forensic contexts requires normative data that are representative of justice-involved individuals. Unfortunately, existing normative data appear unlikely to represent justice-involved individuals due to significant demographic and clinical factors specific to this population. As a result, the interpretation of neuropsychological performance with justice-involved individuals using existing normative data may increase the risk of inaccurate description, invalid clinical conceptualization, misdiagnosis of impairment, and misattribution of deficits in functional-legal capacities. The current study aimed to examine the use of neuropsychological assessment with justice-involved men. Method A sample of incarcerated men (N = 95) was assessed using a battery of demographic, clinical, and neuropsychological measures. Results Descriptive analyses showed the demographic and clinical diversity of justice-involved men. Inferential statistical analyses, effect size calculations, and clinical analyses demonstrated that a sample of justice-involved men performed significantly differently and was more impaired than commonly referenced normative samples across multiple measures of intellectual functioning, attention, verbal fluency, and executive functioning. Preliminary data are provided to aid the use of the selected neuropsychological measures with justice-involved men. Conclusions Justice-involved men appear to represent a distinct neuropsychological population. Group-specific normative data will be useful to help ensure that opinions about these individuals are relevant, valid, and admissible within legal decision-making in criminal contexts. The current data can guide future efforts to develop substantive normative data on neuropsychological measures likely to be used in the assessment of justice-involved men.