Adam Liptak has this article in the New York Times today on the controversy over incarceration rates and how ours is so much higher than Europe's. The article begins with the usual stuff we hear all the time. Later, it quotes Paul Cassell and an article of ours for the proposition that locking up criminals really has saved a lot of people from victimization. The articles cites "specialists" for "dismiss[ing] race as an important distinguishing factor." That is significant, and unusual, as for some folks race seems to be the explanation of first resort on every conceivable subject.

One point I would have liked to see expanded on is this: "From 1981 to 1996, according to Justice Department statistics, the risk of punishment rose in the United States and fell in England. The crime rates predictably moved in the opposite directions, falling in the United States and rising in England."

As noted on this blog Monday, the comparative data are more dramatic than that. Liptak notes elsewhere in the article that the United States has (present tense) lower burglary and robbery rates than England, but omits the fact that this is a fairly recent development. Americans have gone from a much greater risk of these crimes, compared to England and France, to a significantly lower risk. The tougher sentencing has been a big part of that.

Posted by Kent Scheidegger at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This post is by Julia Wobbe, a student at California State University, Sacramento.
There has been much controversy about the incarceration rate in the United States, which is much higher than in European countries. It is informative to consider these differences in the context of how comparative crime rates have changed over time. The European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice, (2nd ed. 2003) and (3rd ed. 2006), reveal the rate of violent crimes and the prison population rate. United States data are given by the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports and the Bureau of Justice Statistics website.

Continue reading "Crime & Punishment in the U.S. and Europe" »

Posted by Irma Abella at 01:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The August, 2007 issue of JLE is now available online. Two articles relate to criminal law: Is Crime Contagious? by Jens Ludwig and Jeffrey R. Kling and Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime: Evidence from Underage Drunk-Driving Laws by Christopher Carpenter. Abstracts after the jump.

Continue reading "Journal of Law and Economics" »

Posted by Kent Scheidegger at 08:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Stop the presses. A politician has wildly exaggerated.

“If you take a one-eighth square mile which is generally the size of a city block in most cities, and you end up with one foreclosure on that city block, two things happen immediately,” [Sen. Christopher] Dodd told two separate radio interviewers. “The value of every other home on that city block declines by 1% immediately, and the crime rates go up 2% immediately in that square block.”

An immediate 2% increase from one foreclosure? Oh, come now. Mark Lieberman, senior economist at Fox Business, dissects this claim here.

Posted by Kent Scheidegger at 08:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The reasons for the United States' crime drop in the 1990s have been the subject of considerable debate. As noted here, tough sentencing policies are one major reason, with even the anti-punishment side's experts grudgingly conceding that tough sentencing caused more than a quarter of the drop. Other estimates are higher.

One of the most controversial* hypotheses is that of Donohue and Levitt that the legalization of abortion by the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973) was actually a major factor. See Donohue & Levitt (2001) The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2, 379-420.

A new study of English data challenges that hypothesis.

Continue reading "Crime Rates and Legal Abortion" »

Posted by Kent Scheidegger at 04:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Medical News Today cites to a recent CDC study reporting 905,000 children were victims of maltreatment in one year (2005-06).

As the figure from the study shows, neglect remains the most common form of child maltreatment reported in the United States:

View image

Posted by Steven K. Erickson at 07:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Regular readers of this blog know of my interests about science, law, and policy. The Last Psychiatrist has two great posts (here and here) discussing the recent flap about the cholesterol drug Vytorin and the Enhance study (basics here).

Also off topic, but noteworthy: Ed Silverman at Pharmalot notes that two years after Health Canada warned about prescribing antidepressants to children, a new study reports that the number of children and teens who died by suicide increased 25 per cent after years of steady decline.

As mentioned before, there's been a lot of discussion -and spin- about the dangers associated with antidepressants use in children.

Posted by Steven K. Erickson at 06:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From Mind Hacks comes this:

Hot on the heals of a recent study that found that neuroscience jargon made unlikely scientific claims more believable, comes a new study, covered by the BPS Research Digest, that found that simply showing a picture of a brain scan made bogus science more convincing.

More to read at the site, plus a link to How to Lie with fMRI Statistics.

Also referenced at Neuroethics & Law Blog.

Posted by Steven K. Erickson at 05:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Psychology and Crime News mentions several studies in the current issue of The Social Science Journal. The abstract for the study: Secondary analysis of dangerousness among death sentenced capital murderers reads thusly:

The theory of incapacitation involves reducing an offender's ability or capacity to commit further crimes. Capital punishment accomplishes this goal. An executed murderer never murders again. However, we do not execute all murderers, only capital murderers. This policy produces several research questions. Do capital murderers present a special risk to society? Are capital murderers more likely to murder or commit other violent crimes again than other murderers or the average citizen? To answer these questions, many states require a prediction of future dangerousness of a newly convicted murderer. To what extent has the judgment of future dangerousness matched actuarial data of subsequent murders and serious crimes? Using a secondary analysis, this investigation attempted to assemble available data of postconviction dangerousness of death sentenced capital murderers to create a more comprehensive actuarial account of subsequent dangerousness and to present the data in a common format used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Across 14 studies identified with relevant data, there were 13 instances of subsequent murder and 462 serious crime or prison rule violations.

Posted by Steven K. Erickson at 01:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

In conjunction with James Q. Wilson's op-ed about the recent Pew report on incarceration and crime rates, Bill Stuntz states about a week ago:

One of the key lessons of the Iraq surge is that putting more boots on violent ground tends to reduce the violence. The same lesson applies in American cities, but for the most part, the lesson hasn’t been learned. For reasons that mystify me, the same state and federal governments that shower money on urban school systems give nearly nothing to urban police forces. That gets it backward: the correlation between more money and better schools is weak at best; the correlation between more cops and less crime is very strong.

Continue reading "More Cops, Less Crime? " »

Posted by Steven K. Erickson at 05:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

James Q. Wilson has this op-ed in the Sunday LA Times, responding to the Pew report about 1 in 100 in prison and the accompanying hullabaloo.

In the last 10 years, the effect of prison on crime rates has been studied by many scholars. The Pew report doesn't mention any of them. Among them is Steven Levitt, coauthor of "Freakonomics." He and others have shown that states that sent a higher fraction of convicts to prison had lower rates of crime, even after controlling for all of the other ways (poverty, urbanization and the proportion of young men in the population) that the states differed. A high risk of punishment reduces crime. Deterrence works.

But so does putting people in prison. The typical criminal commits from 12 to 16 crimes a year (not counting drug offenses). Locking him up spares society those crimes. Several scholars have separately estimated that the increase in the size of our prison population has driven down crime rates by 25%.

Posted by Kent Scheidegger at 07:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A study on Maryland death penalty costs released last week has serious flaws and paints a misleading picture. There are three major deficiencies apparent on the face of the Urban Institute’s report:

First, the study fails to consider the savings that result when a case is plea-bargained to life in prison, a bargain few murderers would agree to in the absence of the death penalty.

Second, the study intentionally ignores the savings that result from the deterrent effect of the death penalty, asserting without justification that one article criticizing the numerous deterrence studies is “conclusive.”

Third, the study assumes that the long delays and high reversal rates that have characterized Maryland’s death penalty in the past will continue indefinitely, ignoring the potential savings from reform of the review process.

Continue reading "Flawed, Misleading Study on Death Penalty Costs" »

Posted by Kent Scheidegger at 03:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Last week the Pew Center on the States produced a report highlighting the statistic that the prison and jail population has topped 1% of the total population. The press release is here and the full report is here. In reaction, Investors Business Daily had this editorial noting that prison increases coincided with a dramatic drop in crime. Paul Cassell had this post at the Volokh Conspiracy with a similar graph making largely the same point.

The graph above shows the rate of violent crime (FBI violent index crimes per 100,000 population, in red on the left scale) and the number of prisoners in each year divided by the number of violent crimes in the same year (in blue on the right scale).

Continue reading "Crime and Prison" »

Posted by Kent Scheidegger at 01:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

As mentioned previously, the recent National Institute of Mental Health's CATIE study suggested a link between schizophrenia and violence. That conclusion generated a lot of controversy from folks who assert that there is no link between mental illness and violence, touting the frequent mantra that those with mental illness are no more likely to become violent than the general population. Indeed, we should be careful not to needlessly contribute to the enduring stigma that burdens those with mental illness. Nonetheless, we shouldn't ignore the link between mental illness and crime simply because it makes some people uncomfortable or is at odds with the vested rhetoric of political correctness. Several recent studies in the journal Psychiatric Services shed some new light on the subject and are worth a few comments.

Continue reading "The Ubiquity of Substance Abuse in the Calculus of Crime and Mental Illness" »

Posted by Steven K. Erickson at 05:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Lili O. Graue, David T. R. Berry, Jessica A. Clark, Myriam J. Sollman, Michelle Cardi, Jaclyn Hopkins, & Dellynda Werline (2007), Identification of Feigned Mental Retardation Using the New Generation of Malingering Detection Instruments: Preliminary Findings, Clinical Neuropsychologist, 21(6), 929-942.

Abstract: A recent Supreme Court decision - Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002) - prohibiting the execution of mentally retarded (MR) defendants may have raised the attractiveness of feigning this condition in the criminal justice system. Unfortunately, very few published studies have addressed the detection of feigned MR. The present report compared results from tests of intelligence, psychiatric feigning, and neurocognitive faking in a group of 26 mild MR participants (MR) and 25 demographically matched community volunteers asked to feign MR (CVM). Results showed that the CVM suppressed their IQ scores to approximate closely the level of MR participants. WAIS-III and psychiatric malingering measures were relatively ineffective at discriminating feigned from genuine MR. Although neurocognitive malingering tests were more accurate, their reduced specificity in MR participants was of potential concern. Revised cutting scores, set to maintain a Specificity rate of about .95 in MR clients, were identified, although they require cross-validation. Overall, these results suggest that new cutting scores will likely need to be validated to detect feigned MR using current malingering instruments.

The authors are all with the University of Kentucky, Lexington. Research Digest Blog has this summary.

Posted by CJLF Staff at 04:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Jane Brody has this piece in the New York Times which discusses recent findings regarding how teenagers perceive and deal with risk:

Is it that teenagers think that they are immortal or invulnerable, immune to the hazards adults see so clearly? Or do they not appreciate the risks involved and need repeated reminders of the dangers inherent in activities like driving too fast, driving drunk, having unprotected sex, experimenting with drugs, binge drinking, jumping into unknown waters, you name it?

None of the above, says Valerie F. Reyna, professor of human development and psychology at the New York State College of Human Ecology at Cornell. The facts are quite the opposite. Scientific studies have shown that adolescents are very well aware of their vulnerability and that they actually overestimate their risk of suffering negative effects from activities like drinking and unprotected sex.

That's funny, I thought the psychological community was in agreement that "the characteristics of adolescents" were "as a group, are not yet mature in ways that affect their decision-making." At least that was the position of the American Psychological Association when it came to the juvenille death penalty. Indeed, the APA stated in it's brief that during adolescence the "brain has not reached adult maturity, particularly in the frontal lobes, which control executive functions of the brain related to decision-making." What they failed to mention, however, is that the process of myelination (which is what the APA brief was alluding to) is not complete until around age 50.

A good reason why institutions like APA should not take such strong positions on issues like the juvenile death penalty is because the science is rarely as settled as they make it out to be. We have a lot yet to learn about the human brain and development. Yet, when science enters the legal and political arena it risks its credibility when later discoveries, like those mentioned in the Times article, undermine positions that were so strongly held in the past.

Posted by Steven K. Erickson at 03:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From the NCJRS Weekly Accessions List:

Attitudes of Members of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers Towards Treatment, Release, and Recidivism of Violent Sex Offenders: An Exploratory Study, Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, Volume:44 Issue:4  Dated:2007  Pages:17 to 24, Michael J. Engle ; Joseph A. McFalls Jr. ; Bernard J. Gallagher III:  "The findings suggest that the popular belief that sex offenders cannot be cured is shared by professionals who work with and/or study these offenders. A large majority (63 percent) of the professional respondents reported little hope for a cure, and 88 percent reported a fear of recidivism after treatment."

Continue reading "Research Notes" »

Posted by Kent Scheidegger at 11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The current issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry has an interesting article form researchers at Duke University, titled "Childhood Psychiatric Disorders and Young Adult Crime: A Prospective, Population-Based Study." Briefly, the researchers followed several cohorts of adolescents for several years and examined the link between childhood mental illness, juvenile delinquency, and arrests for crimes as adults. As other studies have shown, there is a link between mental illness and criminal behavior, and the current study supported these findings:

Nearly half of the young adults with criminal record in our sample had a history of mental illness, as compared to with one in three male or one in four female young adults with no criminal history (p.1672).

But there are some caveats here worth noting.

Continue reading "Childhood Mental Health and Adult Criminality " »

Posted by Steven K. Erickson at 06:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Psychology and Crime News has this post on the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scales. I had not previously heard of this instrument, but it may be coming soon to a courtroom near you.

People who are high in IS [interrogative suggestibility] are more susceptible to making false confessions under interrogative pressure, in a police or military interrogation scenario, for instance. However, as the authors point out, some offenders might be motivated to appear suggestible or vulnerable even if they are not. For instance, if an offender wanted to retract a statement or confession, or “in circumstances where the successful demonstration of vulnerability may lead to a reduction in a fine or sentence or even to escaping a custodial sentence”.

The problem is explored in a forthcoming article: Julian Boon, Lynsey Gozna and Stephen Hall (in press). Detecting ‘faking bad’ on the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scales. Personality and Individual Differences

Posted by Kent Scheidegger at 02:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Michael Connelly over at Corrections Sentencing has this post regarding the latest criminal justice statistics showing an increase in reported violent crimes. Connelly's post argues that most pundits are missing the chance to suggest that more crime leads to worse laws; that is, the fear of violence drives legislatures to enact unwise, and presumably harsh, laws. Indeed, our criminal justice policies are not wise when prompted by emotions. Moreover, given the innumerable variables that likely affect crime from year to year, the latest statistics might just represent normal variation instead of the beginning of a trend -- only time will tell. However, this part of Connelly's post deserves a brief comment:

"Why not point out that the resources devoted to putting tokers in prison could be put into cops on the street"

Many folks within the criminal justice reform movement often make these types of assertions: that the money spent on incarceration would be better spent putting more police on the street. But more police means more enforcement, which means more punishment. Such a policy would likely lead to more incarceration, the very phenomenon reformers dislike. Prevention efforts are noble yet the evidence is lacking that they actually work. Many supporters cite to various studies suggesting that programs like drug courts work; yet the methodology used in these studies leaves much to be desired.

Continue reading "Crime Stats and Policy" »

Posted by Steven K. Erickson at 06:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

This article in today's New York Times discusses an unpublished study by the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) suggesting a strong link between viewing child pornography and sexual abuse of children. Specifically, the study reports that 85% of men who admitted to looking at child pornography also admitted to sexually abusing children. There's a big problem though with the study: The sample consisted only of men serving federal prison sentences at the federal prison in Butner, NC.

Continue reading "Link Between Child Pornography and Child Sexual Abuse? " »

Posted by Steven K. Erickson at 05:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The Washington Post on Sunday had this article by Shankar Vedantam on a claimed link between lead exposure of children and crime rates years later when the children grow up. One red flag that immediately goes up is Vedantam's determined effort to spin the story into an anti-Giuliani piece. Another is that is seems unlikely that a factor such as this could explain a sharp drop in crime in a short period. If a cohort of children is exposed to sharply less lead than the cohort before, both cohorts are in the population for a long time, and if one is less crime-prone than the other, the drop would be gradual.

Steven Levitt has this skeptical post at Freakonomics Blog.

Posted by Kent Scheidegger at 05:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One of the favorite tricks of mathematical prestidigitators is to keep the audience's eyes on the numerator while slipping something fishy into the denominator, producing a startling ratio. This article by Terry Woster in the Argus Leader (Sioux Falls, SD) contains a good example.

Almost one of every nine persons sentenced to death since 1977 has asked, as Elijah Page did in South Dakota last summer, to have all legal appeals ended and the execution carried out, a University of Colorado death penalty scholar says.

Those of us working the field immediately suspect that so-called "volunteers" aren't that common, and indeed they are not. It turns out the numerator of 126 volunteers is placed over a denominator of 1083 executions to yield the 1/9 ratio. But there is a vast difference between the number of people sentenced to death and the number executed. It's about a factor of 7. See BJS, Capital Punishment 2005. So that 1/9 is really more like 1/63.

Posted by Kent Scheidegger at 09:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Controversial economist John Lott has released a new book titled "Freedomnomics," apparently a takeoff on Steven Levitt's "Freakonomics." The Amazon page is here. All the press on the book so far seems to be from conservative media sources.

Catherine Herridge of Fox News has an interview with Lott here (halfway down), focusing on his criticisms of a report by the Police Executive Research Foundation. Lott says PERF engaged in data "cherry picking" to produce misleadingly high crime numbers.

Then there is this column by Ann Coulter. Even taking Ms. Coulter with the requisite grain of salt, it appears there are some crime-related nuggets in the book. Perhaps the real reason that Democrats are so enthused about giving felons the right to vote is not a high-minded concern for the disparate impact of disenfranchisement laws, but rather because felons vote overwhelming for Democrats.

It looks like an interesting book, and I'll have to pick one up before my next long plane trip.

Posted by Kent Scheidegger at 01:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Nearly twice as many women as men said they perpetrated domestic violence in the past year.

That's the quote from a new study discussed at Dr. Helen's blog. The abstract also reports no association between domestic violence and alcohol or drugs of abuse. The study was published in the journal Violence and Victims.

I find the lack of association between domestic violence and alcohol use hard to believe. I suspect this finding may be related to the methodology used in the study. Any experienced police officer will tell you that alcohol and domestic violence go hand in hand.

Posted by Steven K. Erickson at 08:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

As mentioned here, there's a lot of discussion about the recent media stories concerning deterrence and the death penalty. Psychology and Crime News blog has this post on the topic that may be of interest to readers.

Posted by Steven K. Erickson at 12:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We have more reaction to the Associated Press article noted here, which brought to the attention of the general public the studies on death penalty deterrence that people involved in the debate have known about for years.

An article by Cassy Stubbs in the Huffington Post begins:

Among the many factors in the debate about the death penalty is whether capital punishment deters violent crime. Although solid research indicates that there is no valid evidence of such deterrence, recent attention has been given to a few flawed studies concluding that the death penalty does deter murder.

Continue reading "More Hysteria on Deterrence" »

Posted by Kent Scheidegger at 05:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

This post from Medical News Today discusses a new federal study linking early marijuana use and subsequent membership with gangs, violent behavior, and general juvenile delinquency. As mentioned previously, the discovery of the cannabinoid receptor has greatly enhanced our understanding of how marijuana affects the brain. While the present study results are intriguing, the obvious counter-argument is that it is likely that many people use marijuana without joining gangs or engaging in violence. Furthermore, although the gateway drug theory of marijuana has been supported by numerous studies, those studies often neglect to fully account for alcohol as the primary gateway drug of abuse. Nonetheless, the new study, sponsored by the National Institute of Drug Abuse (which curiously is a separate Institute at the National Institute of Health and separate from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism ) adds to the litany of studies strongly suggesting that marijuana isn't "harmless" as some folks may argue.

Posted by Steven K. Erickson at 08:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Michael Connelly, over at Corrections Sentencing, always does a fine job of highlighting recent abstracts from the various criminal justice journals. Today he points us to this study on religion and drug treatment (emphasis added):

This paper attempts to offer a theoretical framework that includes religiosity as an explanation of desistance from drug use. Study findings revealed that religious behavior not only prevented the onset of delinquent behavior but also inhibited the continuation of drug use. Although religious salience was found to prevent the onset of drug use, religious importance did not have any significant effects on desistance from using drugs. Compared to religious importance, religious behavior had larger deterrent effects on the initiation of drug use. These findings suggest that religiosity may be important for prevention of illicit drug use as well as recovery from drug dependence. Although recent research acknowledges an inverse relationship between religion and crime, no desistance theories to date include religiosity in their model as part of the explanation of desistance from drug use. It was expected that adult religiosity would have a positive, direct effect on desistance from drug use.

As mentioned previously, prison ministries seem to me like a good idea given the high recidivism rates and intractable despair that accompanies prison life and community re-entry.

Posted by Steven K. Erickson at 01:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Gallup is out with its annual poll on moral values. Once again, the death penalty tops the list as having the highest level of agreement as morally acceptable of any of the issues. The report by Lydia Saad is available here, free for a limited time.

According to Gallup's 2007 Values and Beliefs survey, conducted May 10-13, the death penalty ranks as one of the most widely agreed upon issues on the roster of moral issues facing the country. Nearly two-thirds of Americans say it is morally acceptable (66%), while less than half that number (27%) consider it morally wrong. Support for the death penalty is fairly uniform across different age groups, political parties, and between men and women.

Posted by Kent Scheidegger at 08:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As discussed here, there's a lot of problems with the clarion call of a mental illness crisis in our jails and prisons. That said, a new article in this month's issue of Psychiatric Services has a notable finding: 92% of jail inmates in the study with diagnosed severe mental illness were non-adherent with treatment before their arrest. Furthermore, of those 92%, 72% had a prior arrest for violent crime. This study adds to a growing body of research suggesting that a subgroup of people with mental illness are more violent when compared to the general population.

Posted by Steven K. Erickson at 06:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here are cites and quotes from the abstracts of some recent articles of interest:

John Wooldredge, Neighborhood Effects on Felony Sentencing, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Vol. 44, No. 2, 238-263 (2007): "Findings revealed that convicted felons from more disadvantaged neighborhoods were more likely to receive nonsuspended prison sentences, whereas a defendant's race was unrelated to imprisonment. By contrast, neighborhood disadvantage was unrelated to sentence length for imprisoned defendants, whereas African Americans received significantly shorter terms relative to Whites."

John Clark, Marcus T. Boccaccini, Beth Caillouet, & William F. Chaplin, Five Factor Model Personality Traits, Jury Selection, and Case Outcomes in Criminal and Civil Cases, Criminal Justice and Behavior, Vol. 34, No. 5, 641-660 (2007): "In the 17 juries that deliberated to a verdict (n = 285), high levels of juror extraversion were associated with not guilty verdicts or verdicts for the defendant, especially in criminal cases."

Wayne N. Welsh, Patrick McGrain, Nicole Salamatin, & Gary Zajac, Effects of Prison Drug Treatment On Inmate Misconduct, Criminal Justice and Behavior, Vol. 34, No. 5, 600-615 (2007): "The hypothesis that TC treatment alone would significantly reduce misconduct over time was not supported. Instead, changes in misconduct over time interacted with individual characteristics and time served posttreatment."

Posted by Kent Scheidegger at 05:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The correlation between poverty and crime is well known, and it is often assumed that this correlation is completely explained with the assertion that poverty causes crime. Gary Becker has this post at the Becker-Posner Blog noting that causation can also run the other way: crime causes poverty, or at least it inhibits the ability of poor, crime-ridden countries to escape from it. Judge Posner's comment includes several points: decriminalizing acts that don't need to be crimes, eliminating economic restrictions that create the need for bribes, and increasing punishments for maximum deterrence.

Although Becker's post is addressed to international comparisons, there is a lesson for domestic policy as well. When people who claim to care about the poor undercut law enforcement, they are cutting the legs off the economic ladder that poor people need to climb out of poverty.

Posted by Kent Scheidegger at 03:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

That's the amusing title of this fascinating post from Psychology and Crime News about a new report from National Center for Victims of Crimes. The abstract:

Witness intimidation is a pervasive threat to the criminal justice system, particularly in crimes such as domestic violence, trafficking, and gang violence and drug trafficking. Yet few jurisdictions have developed a comprehensive response to the problem of witness intimidation. The study described in Snitches Get Stitches gathered information directly from youth on their views about gangs, reporting crime, relationships with law enforcement, and witness intimidation. The report contains ten key findings and six recommendations to help criminal justice authorities and communities better coordinate and focus their efforts to protect young witnesses to gang crimes.

The report is available for free here.

Posted by Steven K. Erickson at 04:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Bernard Harcourt of U. Chi. is guest-blogging at the Volokh Conspiracy and has this fascinating post on the relationship between total incarceration rate -- both prisons and mental hospitals -- and homicide rates

Posted by Kent Scheidegger at 09:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The latest issue of Behavioral Sciences and the Law has an entire issue devoted to the concept of free will, behavior and the implications of recent psychological research on the law. Of particular note is an article by University of Pennsylvania law professor Stephen Morse, The Non-Problem of Free Will in Forensic Psychiatry and Psychology and National Institute of Health psychopathy researcher R. J. R. Blair, Aggression, Psychopathy and Free Will From a Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective. The articles require a subscription, but are worth reading.

Posted by Steven K. Erickson at 09:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Thanks to crimepsychblog for a link to this interesting review article, titled Cognitive Science and the Law. Authors Thomas A. Busey and Geoffrey R. Loftus discuss the many fascinating areas of cognitive psychology which have great enhanced our understanding of how people process and remember information. Much of this research has shown how some aspects of police investigation are subject to imperceptible, but flawed cognitive processes, especially bias.

Continue reading "Cognitive Mistakes and Their Relevancy to the Law " »

Posted by Steven K. Erickson at 03:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Is PTSD a real diagnosis? Can damage to the brain impair moral decision making? Two new studies examining these topics are worth reading.

The first study by researchers at Harvard Medical School titled Is PTSD Caused by Traumatic Sress? suggests that for many folks there is no link between traumatic events and PTSD. The question that naturally flows from this is whether PTSD is being over-diagnosed.

The next study, titled Damage to the Prefrontal Cortex Increases Utilitarian Moral Judgements appears in the journal Nature and examines damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (sorry, no easy link for description) and moral decision making.

Update: Mind Hacks has some good comments on the PTSD study.

Posted by Steven K. Erickson at 07:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The Center for Sex Offender Management has released this report (pdf) titled Understanding Treatment for Adults and Juveniles Who Have Committed Sex Offenses. The Center is a project of the Department of Justice and was formed in the late 1980s and has published many reports on the state of sex offender issues. It's good that we have federal funding focusing on the problem of sex offenses. Indeed, with all of the rhetoric and substantial resources spent on prosecuting and incarcerating sex offenders, one can easily conclude that sex offenses are a major criminal justice issue and the more we know the better. We should try to understand criminal behavior better in an effort to stem the tide of crimes against our citizens and help our offender citizens leave their criminal offending in the past.

That said, there are a few aspects of this report worth noting.

Continue reading "More On Sex Offenders" »

Posted by Steven K. Erickson at 08:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mental health evidence is a hotly contested area these days. Much of debate centers around two areas: what are behavioral health experts qualified to opine on and how good are their opinions. My colleagues and I have published two papers in this month's issue of Family Court Review on the limits of common psychological tests in family court matters. Although these tests are used most frequently in civil matters such as custody and visitation, they are also used in potential criminal matters such as allegations of abuse or neglect. Our first study concludes that many of the tests used by psychologists for family court evaluations lack scientific rigor to be used ethically in deciding issues such as custody and childhood attachment. Our second paper responds to our critics. Of particular concern are the numerous projective measures (e.g., inkblots) that are often used with children. Most of these tests have no demonstrative validity or reliability in ascertaining important psychological constructs at issue in these cases. Similar to a previous study (.pdf) I published in the New York Bar Journal years ago, inkblot tests are of a particular concern because of the extensive problems surrounding their psychometric properties. One wonders when the American Psychological Association will finally call for their prohibition (I'm not holding my breath)...

Posted by Steven K. Erickson at 05:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Despite the concerns of some legal scholars, more empirical evidence suggests that there is indeed such a thing as juvenile psychopaths. Moreover, such youth psychopathy is predicative of adult criminality and violence. A new meta-analysis by Dr. John Edens and colleagues from Southern Methodist University published in February's issue of Law and Human Behavior reveals a modest to strong relationship between Hare's psychopathic traits and future criminal behavior. Added to prior studies suggesting psychopathy is largely heritable, the youth psychopathy construct provides interesting questions for criminal law scholars and incapacitation proponents.

Posted by Steven K. Erickson at 05:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This month's issue of the prestigious journal Archives of General Psychiatry begins with the lead article,
Torture vs Other Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment Is the Distinction Real or Apparent?. The abstract beings thusly: "After the reports of human rights abuses by the US military in Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, and Afghanistan, questions have been raised as to whether certain detention and interrogation procedures amount to torture." It concludes "Ill treatment during captivity, such as psychological manipulations, humiliating treatment, and forced stress positions, does not seem to be substantially different from physical torture in terms of the severity of mental suffering they cause, the underlying mechanism of traumatic stress, and their long-term psychological outcome. Thus, these procedures do amount to torture, thereby lending support to their prohibition by international law." While this article is likely to invoke strong reactions across the political spectrum, it's worth noting some methodological aspects of this study since charges of torture can be prosecuted in the International Criminal Court.

Continue reading "Torture, Crime, and Politics" »

Posted by Steven K. Erickson at 01:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A study to be released today appears to corroborate what I have long suspected. The mandate of the self-esteem fanatics to lavish kids with praise regardless of whether they have done anything to earn it is a recipe for narcissistic personality disorder, and it has long-term damaging effects for society.

According to this story by Larry Gordon and Louis Sahagun in the LA Times, Jean Twenge of San Diego State U. is the lead author of the study titled "Egos Inflating Over Time." Scores on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory given to college students over 25 years show that two-thirds now score above the 1982 average.

Continue reading "Self-Esteem, Narcissism, and Root Causes" »

Posted by Kent Scheidegger at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The LA Times and the Sacramento Bee both have editorials on an inspector general's report that a gigabuck of spending on prison drug abuse programs has produced zero results.

We often hear arguments to the effect that "prevention" is preferable to incarceration, or in this case reincarceration when released inmates reoffend. These arguments often blithely assume that prevention is a simple matter, we know what to do, and we simply need to do it. Well, it's not that simple. Before we dump vast resources into a program touted as prevention or rehabilitation, we need solid evidence that it is an effective program and that it will be done right.

One of the things California prisons need before anything else is adequate space, yet the same people who squawk loudest about the need for programs adamantly oppose the needed expansion. Some downward revisions to sentencing may be in the cards, but there is no way that laxer sentencing will get California's prison population down to design capacity without major damage to public safety. New construction must be part of the deal.

Posted by Kent Scheidegger at 05:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Steve Levitt has a great post over at Freakonomics on a new study appearing in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. The study purports to show a link between smoking and PTSD. Studies like this are what give science a bad name.

Posted by Steven K. Erickson at 05:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A recent commentary in the journal Scientific American makes a number of assertions regarding pedophilia that are noteworthy -- not because they are insightful, but because they make such egregious assumptions about pedophilia.

Continue reading "Pedophilia: Even Science Gets It Wrong" »

Posted by Steven K. Erickson at 05:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A forthcoming study claims to demonstrate a link between religious beliefs and aggression. The article is forthcoming in the highly prestigious journal, Psychological Science. The article, in coming in the March issue, is titled: "When God Sanctions Killing: Effect of Scriptural Violence on Aggression." In brief, the researchers examined aggression in students from two different colleges: Brigham Young University and Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. Both groups were given a passage where a woman and her husband were unjustly killed and then an additional passage was inserted where God commands Israel to avenge the killings.

Continue reading "Religion and Aggression: Is There a Link?" »

Posted by Steven K. Erickson at 05:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As I discussed in a previous post, there’s much talk about sex offenders but a lack of good science. One of the most discussed areas in terms of sex offenders is risk of recidivism. While some say recidivism risk is relatively low among sex offenders, others disagree and praise the severe civil restrictions mandated for many sex offenders. Where does the truth lie? Like so many things in life, it’s a mixed bag.

Continue reading "Promise and Pitfalls of Sex Offender Research" »

Posted by Steven K. Erickson at 04:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

From the Herald Sun of Australia comes an article that begins with this passage:

SEX offenders who commit further crimes are a small minority who can cause immense harm, according to a new study.

But the study concludes that the task of reliably identifying potential repeat offenders is "extremely difficult, if not impossible".

The research paper on recidivism of sex offenders found only 13.4 per cent were known to have committed a new sex offence within five years.

But Dr Karen Gelb, senior criminologist for the Sentencing Advisory Council, said the recidivism rate -- like the sexual assault reporting rate -- was likely to be a conservative estimate.

The opening sentence is a claim we often hear, but does it really fit with the actual data in this study? Considering the consequences, is "only" 13.4% accurately characterized as a "small minority," even on its face? That seems to me to be a quite sizable minority. More importantly, though, if 13.4% represents the fraction who reoffend and whose new offenses are reported and who are caught and who are convicted, then what is the fraction who simply reoffend? If X * Y * Z * W = 0.134 and if Y, Z, and W are all less than 1 (and Y, we know, is substantially less), then X may not be a minority at all.

Dr Gelb said Australian Bureau of Statistics figures showed that the proportion of sex offenders who moved all the way through the criminal justice system represented "only the tip of the iceberg".

Posted by Kent Scheidegger at 10:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In Australia, a study by the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research found "no significant trends in drug dealing or possession since the opening of the injection room five years ago," according to this story in the Sydney Morning Herald. However, the reasons why sound a cautionary note for those advocating such facilities in the United States.

The bureau's director, Don Weatherburn, said police tactics had helped to keep crime down in Kings Cross.

"Police deserve credit for stopping any increase in crime as a result of the way they have used their 'move on' powers, which allow them to order anyone suspected of loitering for the purpose of a drug offence to move on," Dr Weatherburn said.

In other words, this couldn't be replicated in the U.S., because an American police officer doing what the NSW police do will immediately be sued by the ACLU.

Posted by Kent Scheidegger at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

With our brief in Smith v. Texas finally out to print, I will be posting on a few things that have piled up in the inbox. The October issue of The Journal of Law & Economics (49:2) is out in hard copy. The electronic edition is here. Several articles more or less crime-related are sure to stir up controversy.

p. 451: Holzer, Raphael, and Stoll "find that employers who check criminal backgrounds are more likely to hire African American workers, especially men."

p. 481: Charles and Stephens continue looking at the controversial association between legalized abortion and crime and find that persons born in states where abortion was legal prior to Roe v. Wade are less likely to use drugs.

p. 507: Mocan and Tekin find an association between juveniles' access to guns and their likelihood of committing a crime. "No support is found for the hypothesis that gun availability decreases the propensity for being victimized." They are probably off the NRA's Christmas card list.

p. 533: Jennifer Hunt examines the correlation between teen birth rates and crime

In the current American Law and Economics Review (8:3, Fall) , there is an article by Ross & Yinger titled, "Uncovering Discrimination: A Comparison of the Methods Used by Scholars and Civil Rights Enforcement Officials." This might have some application to discrimination claims in criminal cases.

Posted by Kent Scheidegger at 04:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Bureau of Justice Statistics has released its annual report on prison populations. As usual, the report emphasizes the number of people in prison and what they call the "incarceration rate," i.e., the number in prison relative to the total population. The latter invariably prompts much hand-wringing every time it is announced, even though by itself it is a nearly useless number that tells us almost nothing about policy.

This "incarceration rate" is actually made up of at least two factors which must be determined and considered separately to see anything meaningful. The number of prisoners per capita is the product of prisoners per criminal times criminals per capita. For the algebraically inclined, Pr/Pop = Pr/Cr * Cr/Pop. The first factor is the percentage of criminals society chooses to lock up; the second is the percentage of people who choose to commit crimes. Because the two factors represent different choices by different people, it makes little sense to lump them together, and the undifferentiated product of the two tells us very little. A high "incarceration rate" could mean a society has strict sentencing policies, or it could mean the society is plagued with a high crime rate, or it could be a combination of the two.

The first factor could actually be broken down further as prisoners per criminal we catch times the proportion of criminals we catch. That separation would further separate our ability and determination to catch criminals from our determination to punish the ones we catch.

The situation is further complicated by interrelation of the factors. The probabilities of being caught and of being punished if caught are factors that go into a rational actor's decision to commit a crime. Were the low sentencing rates of the 60s and 70s a cause of the high crime rates of the 80s and 90s and the subsequent high sentencing rates? Quite possibly. The increase in prison population in California from the Three Strikes Law was much less than projected. That may be in part because the law contributed to California's rapidly declining crime rate. A dated but possibly still interesting article on these topics by yours truly and Michael Rushford is available here.

Stand by for a raft of simplistic denunciations that ignore these issues and cite the "incarceration rate" as proof that America is a cruel and heartless society. Bonus points to any reader who finds a single mention of how many people have not been robbed, raped, or murdered because we toughened up sentencing in the 80s and 90s.

Posted by Kent Scheidegger at 03:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Broken Glass. Researchers at Auckland U. in New Zealand are studying forensic applications of fragments of broken glass on perpetrators, according to this report in the Dominion Post.

UK Clearance Rate. "Only one crime in 39 leads to a conviction, according to a startling Home Office study," says this report. This is far lower than the official clearance rate because so many crimes are unreported.

Steroids Cause Fraud? Most studies in criminology are correlational. That is, they study two variables out in the general population to see if they tend to go together. When a correlation is found between factor X and crime rate Y, we typically see a rush of dilettantes who don't know any better all proclaiming that the study proves that X causes Y. This fallacy is so basic yet so common that I call it the Fundamental Fallacy of Social Science.

Once in a while, though, the causal connection is so implausible (in researchspeak, "lacks facial validity") that everyone has to recognize something else is at work, right? Swedish researchers have found a correlation between steroid use and fraud, but not violence. While it is a plausible hypothesis that hormones could have an effect on impulsive crime, no one could jump to the conclusion, on a correlation alone without other very compelling evidence, that they cause an inherently cognitive, premeditated crime like fraud, could they? The Forbes story on the research is headlined "Anabolic Steroids May Boost Crime Rate."

The actual journal article reporting the study, of course, disclaims any proof of causal connection. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2006;63:1274-1279

Posted by Kent Scheidegger at 04:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)