Scott E. Culhane

Utilizing Behavioral Interventions to Improve Supervision Outcomes in Community-Based Corrections

The number of offenders supervised in the community has grown significantly over the past few decades, whereas successful completions of probation and parole terms have been declining during the same time period. The current study examines the impact of rewards and sanctions on offenders in an Intensive Supervision Program (ISP). Data were collected on a random sample of 283 offenders who participated in an ISP between 2000 and 2003. Agency records, including supervision notes, violation reports, and other offender-related correspondence, were used to track offenders’ sanction and reward histories during their participation in the program. Controlling for a number of variables, the study found that the use of both sanctions and rewards led to higher success rates. Administering rewards in proportionally higher numbers than sanctions produced the best results, especially when a ratio of four or more rewards for every sanction was achieved. Correctional administrators are encouraged to identify ideological obstacles that may impede the application of behavioral techniques and to carefully train and guide line staff in the use of sanctions and rewards.

The Effects of Ethnicity, SES, and Crime Status on Juror Decision Making A Cross-Cultural Examination of Euopean American and Mexican American Mock Jurors

In two studies, a defendants ethnicity, socioeconomic status (SES), and crime status were varied for effects on verdict decisions, sentencing recommendations, culpability assignments, and trait assessments. In Study 1, European Americans (N = 221) provided a low SES Mexican American defendant with more guilt verdicts, a lengthier sentence, and higher culpability ratings, compared to a high SES Mexican American or a European American defendant, regardless of crime status. Higher negative trait ratings occurred for a low SES Mexican American who committed a low status crime. In Study 2, Mexican Americans (N = 136) showed no differences for guilt verdicts, recommended sentence, or culpability assignment. These findings demonstrate that European American bias toward Mexican Americans may operate in all phases of the legal process, and future research should address specific contexts where bias applies.

Jury decision making research: Are researchers focusing on the mouse and not the elephant in the room?

The concerns of jury research have extensively focused on subject selection, yet larger issues loom. We argue that observed differences between students and non-students in mock juror studies are inconsistent at best, and that researchers are ignoring the more important issue of jury deliberation. We contend that the lack of information on deliberating jurors and/or juries is a much greater threat to ecological validity and that some of our basic findings and conclusions in the literature today might be different if we had used juries, not non-deliberating jurors, as the unit of measure. Finally, we come full circle in our review and explore whether the debate about college and community samples might be more relevant to deliberating versus non-deliberating jurors.

Reliability and Validity of the Novaco Anger Scale and Provocation Inventory (NAS-PI) and State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory-2 (STAXI-2) in Hispanic and Non-Hispanic White Student Samples.

This project tested the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory—2 (STAXI-2) and the Novaco Anger Scale—Provocation Inventory (NAS-PI) in a sample of U.S. Hispanic ( n = 257) and U.S. non-Hispanic White (n = 246) undergraduate students. Internal consistency, subscale correlations, convergent validity with the Multidimensional Anger Inventory (MAI), and predictive validity were all analyzed. Across ethnic groups, all major subscales demonstrated adequate internal consistency reliability. Correlations between the subscales were strong for both groups within each measure and with the subscales of the other measure. In predicting PI scores, there was no evidence of intercept invariance across the ethnic groups and no evidence of slope invariance when either measure was used as a predictor. Results suggest that both measures are valid for use in Hispanic samples.

Public Perceptions of the Justifiability of Police Shootings: The Role of Body Cameras in a Pre- and Post-Ferguson Experiment

We conducted two studies, wherein participants from across the United States watched, heard, or read the transcript of an actual police shooting event. The data for Study 1 were collected prior to media coverage of a widely publicized police shooting in Ferguson, Missouri. Results indicated that participants who could hear or see the event were significantly more likely to perceive the shooting was justified than they were when they read a transcript of the encounter. Shortly after the events in Ferguson, Missouri, we replicated the first study, finding quite different results. Although dissatisfaction with the shooting was seen in all forms of presentation, video evidence produced the highest citizen perceptions of an unjustified shooting and audio evidence produced the least. Citizens were nonetheless overwhelmingly favorable to requiring police to use body cameras. Body-mounted cameras with high-quality audio capabilities are recommended for police departments to consider.

Effects of an Alibi Witness’s Relationship to the Defendant on Mock Jurors’ Judgments

Two studies tested the impact of an alibi witness’s relationship to a defendant on the perceived credibility of that witness. In the first study, 291 mock jurors estimated the frequency with which individuals would invent alibis, the frequency they themselves would do so, and the frequency of interpersonal contact among individuals of varying relationships. The degree of relationship between an alibi witness and a defendant remained a predictor of witness credibility when contact frequency was controlled. In the second study, 512 mock jurors were randomly assigned to case scenarios. Skepticism toward witnesses who are biologically or affinally related to a defendant was greater than skepticism toward a socially linked witness. Both studies supported predications from kinship theory and reciprocal altruism.

Changed alibis: current law enforcement, future law enforcement, and layperson reactions

Despite numerous calls for more research on alibis, there remain many unanswered questions. Three experiments tested the beliefs about and behaviors toward criminal suspects who changed or maintained their alibi statements. In Experiments 1 (N = 350) and 2 (N = 211), participants included current law enforcement officers, criminal justice and psychology undergraduate students who intended to enter law enforcement (future law enforcement officers), and those students who did not intend to do so (laypersons). Only students were used in Experiment 3 (N = 423). Alibi statements were changed (strengthened or weakened) or were maintained in all studies. Results showed that groups had more favorable beliefs about and behaviors toward those alibi statements that were maintained than those that were changed. This research suggests that any lapse in memory for one’s timeline of events could prove detrimental to the suspect.

Narcissism and Self-Esteem in the Presence of Imagined others: Supportive versus Destructive Object Representations and the Continuum Hypothesis

The present investigation tested an assumption of the Continuum Hypothesis that representations of the self are coordinated with representations of others, or “objects.” A sample of 373 university students responded to measures of Self-Esteem, Adaptive Narcissism, Maladaptive Narcissism, Positive Affect, and Negative Affect under normal instructions and then again under procedures in which they imagined themselves in the presence of a Supportive Object that promoted the experience of a “good and happy self” or a Destructive Object associated with a “bad and unhappy self.” Supportive Objects produced decreases in Negative Affect and increases in all other measures, whereas Destructive Objects caused a generally opposite pattern of changes. Data for Maladaptive Narcissism suggested that each type of object was associated with maturational challenges. For both groups, Self-Esteem instability predicted greater overall self-representation instability, but evidence of instability was more obvious in the Destructive than in the Supportive Object condition. These results confirmed, but also revealed a need for refining, the Continuum Hypothesis.

Generation and Detection of True and False Alibi Statements

This article reports two experiments focusing on two stages of the alibi process. In Experiment 1, participants generated a true or false alibi for one of two dates (short or long delay). Results showed that participants were most likely to report that they could get alibi corroboration from a motivated alibi witnesses regardless of whether they were being truthful or deceptive. Changes in details to the generated alibi were frequent for both true and false statements. In Experiment 2, individuals were asked to discriminate between true and false statements. The results indicated that participants were no better than chance at detecting lies. As has been seen with in other domains (e.g. eyewitness identification), confidence had no predictive power in distinguishing lies from true statements.

Assessing Measurement and Predictive Invariance of the Toronto Alexithymia Scale–20 in U.S. Anglo and U.S. Hispanic Student Samples

We collected data from a predominately Anglo American student sample in the Southeastern United States and a predominately Hispanic student sample in the Southwestern United States. Along with an assessment of internal consistency reliability, we examined measurement invariance of the Toronto Alexithymia Scale–20 (TAS–20) using confirmatory factor analysis. We also assessed the predictive invariance of the TAS–20. Results indicate that 2 of the 3 TAS–20 subscales demonstrated satisfactory internal consistency reliability across samples. Items from the TAS–20 subscales demonstrated measurement invariance of the latent means. The relationship between 2 measures of emotional dysfunction and the TAS–20 also demonstrated slope and intercept invariance, indicating equivalent validity.