Recently in Studies Category

While today's news focuses on the current Archives of General Psychiatry article reporting 1 in 5 college aged students has a personality disorder, another article just released in the American Journal of Psychiatry deserves as much attention - probably more.

The article by Jacques Baillargeon and colleagues titled Psychiatric Disorders and Repeat Incarcerations: The Revolving Prison Door examines the link between mental illness and risk of multiple incarcerations.  Of note, the authors narrowly construe their definition of mental illness to include only four categories:  major depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and non-schizophrenic psychotic disorder.  Thus, they wisely excluded substance abuse disorders in their calculations which have greatly inflated the results of similar previous studies. The study included 79,211 inmates who began serving a sentence between September 1, 2006, and August 31, 2007.

The tables and graphs tell the story. Contrary to the prevailing wisdom of many advocacy groups, the study adds the emerging yet growing body of literature which suggests severe mental illnesses do indeed seem to be  associated with crime and violence.

 

 

A Netherlands study to be published in Science provides further empirical support for the "Broken Windows" hypothesis that policing seemingly petty offenses makes a big difference. The authors are Kees Keizer, Siegwart Lindenberg, & Linda Steg of the U. of Groningen. Abstract here. Ronald Bailey, science editor of Reason magazine, comments here.

Neurolaw is all the rage these days. The lure to explain behavior and social norms such as free will under the lens of reductionist biology abounds. And there is no question that the wealth of information about brains and behavior has vastly increased during the past twenty years. Yet the disparity between what is truly known about the link between biology and human behavior and the normative claims populating legal and science scholarship is breathtaking. Often ignored is the extreme complexity of the human mind and the infancy of the methods used in examining brains and behavior. Several recent articles highlight this simple and important fact.

The September 2008 issue of Applied Cognitive Psychology is a special issue on eyewitness research. The Psychology and Crime News blog has this summary.

The FBI has released it annual Crime in the United States report. The overall violent crime rate is down 1.4% from 2006. (The AP story reports that violent crimes are down 0.7%, but that is total crimes, not per capita rate.)

For trend data, see Table 1, which shows the indexes and per capita rates from 1988 to 2007. The overall violent crime index is down 38% from the peak, since we got tough on sentencing. The extent to which getting tough contributed to the drop remains hotly debated, but there is not much doubt it was one of the major factors. See prior post here.

Sequential lineups have been touted as inherently superior to simultaneous lineups. A new study indicates that the situation is not quite that simple. (Hat tip: Psychology and Crime News) The article is:
Lineup composition, suspect position, and the sequential lineup advantage.
Carlson, Curt A.; Gronlund, Scott D.; Clark, Steven E.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied. 2008 Jun Vol 14(2) 118-128

Abstract after the jump:

The latest issue of Law & Human Behavior has an article by psychologist Steven J. Rubenzer titled The Standardized Field Sobriety Tests: A Review of Scientific and Legal Issues (subscription required):

This article details the history and development of the National Highway and Safety Administration’s Standardized Field Sobriety Tests. They are reviewed in terms of relevant scientific, psychometric, and legal issues. It is concluded that the research that supports their use is limited, important confounding variables have not been thoroughly studied, reliability is mediocre, and that their developers and prosecution-oriented publications have oversold the tests. Further, case law since their development has severed the tests from their validation data, so that they are not admissible on the criterion for which they were validated (blood alcohol concentration), and admissible for a criterion for which they were not (mental, physical, or driving impairment). Directions for further research are presented.

Time constraints prevent me from a thorough reading, but a cursory read provides this assertion, that if true, sounds troublesome:

This review of the SFST [Standardized Field Sobriety Tests] empirical research finds many deficiencies and unanswered questions. The SFSTs are not validated as tests of impaired driving or as indicators of loss of normal physical functioning: I could not identify a single study, published or not, that that has ever addressed these issues. There is only one peer-reviewed study that reported moderate correlations of SFST performance with decrements in cognitive performance. The SFSTs do show substantial correlations with BAC in most studies, subject to the limitations cited throughout this paper.

It would be interesting to read an opposing view.