Marc W. Patry

EXPLORING THE EFFECTS OF ATTITUDES TOWARD THE DEATH PENALTY ON CAPITAL SENTENCING VERDICTS

Attitudes toward the death penalty are multifaceted and strongly held, but little research outside of the death-qualification literature has focused on the role that such attitudes and beliefs play in jurors’ capital sentencing verdicts. A single item is insufficient to properly measure attitudes toward the death penalty; therefore, a new 15-item, 5-factor scale was constructed and validated. Use of this scale in 11 studies of capital jury decision making found a large effect of general support of the death penalty on sentencing verdicts as well as independent aggravating effects for the belief that the death penalty is a deterrent and the belief that a sentence of life without parole nonetheless allows parole. These effects generally were not completely mediated by, nor did attitudes moderate the effects of, aggravating and mitigating factors. Through death qualification and voir dire, the legal system attempts to strike a balance between jurors’ attitudes toward the death penalty and a defendant’s right to an impartial jury. Courts embrace the fact that capital jurors’ attitudes toward the death penalty influence their decisions whether to sentence a defendant to death: “A jury that must choose between life imprisonment and capital punishment can do little more—and must do nothing less—than express the conscience of the community on the ultimate question of life or death” (Witherspoon v. Illinois, 1968, p. 519). However, the defendant’s right to an impartial jury requires that jurors also be able to follow the law and not reach a verdict based solely on their attitudes. Courts currently balance these interests by allowing parties to exclude for cause only those jurors whose attitude toward the death penalty is so strong, either for or against, that it would “prevent or substantially impair the performance of [their] duties as a juror” (Wainwright v. Witt, 1985, p. 424). To ascertain whether jurors fail this test, defendants are entitled to an adequate voir dire that consists of more than general questions and that is sufficient to allow the defendant to uncover biases to which jurors do not readily admit (Morgan v. Illinois, 1992). Afterward, death-qualified capital jurors must (though the specifics vary by

The impact of community notification laws on sex offender treatment attitudes.

Laws for sexual offenders in the United States have changed dramatically in the past few years. In all 50 states, sex offenders are now required to register with local law enforcement in their communities (Schopp, Pearce, & Scalora, 1998). The United States Supreme Court has held its constitutional to civilly commit sexual offenders, even after completing a full prison sentence (Kansas v. Hendricks, 1997). Most recently, a number of states have passed, or are considering, community notification laws that would permit public disclosure of information about a sex offender (LaFond, 1998). The information disclosed varies by state, but usually includes name, age, social security number, race, height, weight, sex, hair and eye color, permanent address, and working address. In the state of Louisiana, for instance, sex offenders are required to place an advertisement in the local newspaper providing information about their criminal background and to affix a bumper sticker to their cars identifying them as sex offenders (see Winick, 1998). Community notification of sex offenders is commonly referred to as Megan’s Law, resulting from the 1994 case in the state of New Jersey involving a twice-convicted sexual offender who raped and murdered 7-year-old Megan Kanka after luring her into his home under the pretext of seeing his new puppy (Montana, 1995). Local law enforcement and community members had no knowledge of the offender’s legal history. In response to the resulting community uproar, New Jersey created a series of laws requiring convicted sex offenders to register with police prior to moving into a neighborhood (Sullivan, 1995). The statutes for New Jersey, and for about half of the other states that require sex offender registration, allow authorities to notify the community of the convicted sex offender’s

Attractive but guilty: deliberation and the physical attractiveness bias.

The current study examined the effect of jury deliberation on the tendency for mock jurors to find attractive defendants guilty less often. It was expected that there would be an interaction between group deliberation (yes or no) and defendants appearance (plain-looking or attractive). It was hypothesized that mock jurors who did not deliberate would be more likely to find a plain-looking defendant guilty and that deliberation would mitigate this effect. The study was a 2 × 2 between-subjects factorial design. Participants were assigned randomly to one of four conditions: attractive defendant/deliberation, attractive defendant/no deliberation, plain-looking defendant/deliberation, and plain-looking defendant/no deliberation. A total of 172 undergraduates from a small, rural college in Vermont contributed to this study: mock jurors were 70 men and 52 women, ages ranged from 18 to 52 years (M=20.5, SD = 4.9). The hypothesis was supported. Mock jurors who did not deliberate were more likely to find the plain-looking defendant guilty, whereas mock jurors who deliberated were more likely to find the attractive defendant guilty.

Prison Inmate Characteristics and Suicide Attempt Lethality: An Exploratory Study

Working with suicidal inmates is among the most demanding elements of clinical practice in corrections, yet few studies regarding the characteristics of prison inmate suicide attempters or their attempts exist. This represents a significant gap as the method of attempt, the prison context, and the resulting lethality of these incidents may be different from attempts made outside of prison. This exploratory study is the first to apply a continuous scale rating of suicide attempt lethality to incidents where an inmate survived a suicide attempt. It describes the attempt incident dynamics and resulting range of lethality scores found within the study sample. It also examines the inmate adjustment and mental health characteristics that were associated with the lethality rating. Preliminary findings suggest that increases in suicide attempt lethality are associated with the presence of Axis II disorders, favorable staff interactions, and the decreased use of drugs other than marijuana, alcohol, cocaine, or depressants. A call for research to extend this exploration through replication is made and recommendations for clinical practice are considered.

What is Correctional About Clinical Practice in Corrections

It is clear that adequate academic and continuing education/training for correctional mental health professionals is imperative if their practice is to be effective. To help shape such training, the clinical and correctional knowledge ranked most meaningful and relevant by psychologists practicing in federal prisons is determined. Overall, results suggest nine core bodies of knowledge representing a mix of clinical (e.g., psychopathology, suicide prevention, psychopharmacology) and prison-based domains (e.g., interdepartmental communications, safety, confrontation avoidance) form the heart of their work. In terms of where such knowledge was obtained, graduate school is frequently endorsed for the more clinical domains, but the correctional domains are transmitted namely through on-the-job training. Recommendations for training psychologists to practice in corrections include the development of a two-tiered training strategy that offers a curriculum in basic psychological knowledge unique to corrections and an advanced curriculum that builds on foundational clinical knowledge obtained in graduate school.

Establishing the validity of the personality assessment inventory drug and alcohol scales in a corrections sample.

Although not originally designed for implementation in correctional settings, researchers and clinicians have begun to use the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) to assess offenders. A relatively small number of studies have made attempts to validate the alcohol and drug abuse scales of the PAI, and only a very few studies have validated those scales in nonclinical correctional samples. The current study examined evidence of convergent and discriminant validity for the substance abuse scales on the PAI in a large, nonclinical sample of offenders. The net sample for the current study consisted of 1,120 federal inmates. Both the drug abuse and alcohol scales showed good convergent validity through high correlations with relevant proximal and distal indicators of substance use across multiple measures from several data sources. Discriminant validity was established as neither scale showed any “erroneous” correlations after controlling for the other scale. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.

High-Risk Interrogation: Using the “Mr. Big Technique” to Elicit Confessions

Kassin et al. (Police-Induced Confessions: Risk Factors and Recommendation, 2009) provide a detailed and thoughtful analysis of how police interrogation practices might elicit false confessions from innocent suspects. The purpose of this commentary is to provide a brief review of a relatively recent development in Canadian police investigation practice and discuss how this procedure may increase the likelihood of police-induced false confessions. The so-called “Mr. Big Technique” is a non-custodial interrogation tactic wherein suspects are drawn into a supposed criminal organization (actually an elaborate police sting) and subsequently told that to move up in the organization, they must confess to a crime. In this article, we describe this remarkable interrogation technique and discuss issues relevant to the potential induction of false confessions.

Who Is Training Behind the Wall? Twenty-Five Years of Psychology Interns in Corrections

Despite the critical inmate need for correctional mental health services, little attention is paid to those in training to provide such services. The present study fills this gap by examining, across 25 years, 896 predoctoral psychology interns who matched for and completed a 1-year federal corrections internship. Student characteristics, their graduate training programs, and postinternship hiring outcomes are presented. More women and students with prior clinical experience in criminal justice settings have, through the years, entered into internships in correctional settings. Outcome data suggest that more than half the graduate students find employment in correctional settings after completion of internship and that having criminal justice experiences prior to internship and receiving training in more urban locations was related to such hires. Implications for training and recruiting a strong psychology services workforce in corrections are discussed.

Measuring suicidality using the personality assessment inventory: a convergent validity study with federal inmates.

Although numerous studies have examined the psychometric properties and clinical utility of the Personality Assessment Inventory in correctional contexts, only two studies to date have specifically focused on suicide ideation. This article examines the convergent validity of the Suicide Ideation Scale and the Suicide Potential Index on the Personality Assessment Inventory in a large, nontreatment sample of male and female federal inmates (N = 1,120). The data indicated robust validity support for both the Suicide Ideation Scale and Suicide Potential Index, which were each correlated with a broad group of validity indices representing multiple assessment modalities. Recommendations for future research to build upon these findings through replication and extension are made.

Death Penalty Decisions: Instruction Comprehension, Attitudes, and Decision Mediators.

This research tested jury comprehension of death penalty instructions and the use of evidence in capital punishment decision making. Two studies are presented. The first study (N = 245 undergraduates) was based on paper-and-pencil methods, and the second study (N = 735 jury-eligible participants) involved videotaped stimuli and deliberating mock jurors. Manipulations included instructions and several different variations in the evidence. Findings support previous research showing low comprehension of capital penalty instructions. Higher instruction comprehension was associated with higher likelihood of issuing life sentence decisions. The importance of instruction comprehension is emphasized in a social cognitive model of jury decision making at the sentencing phase of capital cases.