PSYCHOLOGY LAW Contents... - APA Divisions

American Psychology-Law Society, Division 41, American Psychological Association Winter 2009 Vol. 29, No. 1

PSYCHOLOGYLAW

A M E R I C A N

NEWS

Presidential Column .......................................... 2Law and Human Behavior Update .................... 3Legal Update ...........................................................8Book Review ................................................... 10Expert Opinion ................................................ 12Research Briefs ............................................... 16Division News and Information ...................... 26Nominations, Awards, & Announcements ...... 30Fellowships and Positions .............................. 33Funding Opportunities.........................................34Student Section ............................................... 36Conference/Workshop/Grant Planners ........... 37

Contents...

Continued on p. 7

The program schedule for the AP-LS conference is now set and available for electronic viewing at the main conference website (http://www.ap-ls.org/conferences/apls2009/index.html). Through the website, you can also register for the conference and pre-conferenceworkshops, reserve your hotel room and read about special sessions that are planned for the conference. e once again have a fullconference program with two and ½ days of concurrent symposia, paper sessions, two poster sessions and a number of excellent awardpresentations. While not an exhaustive list of all conference events, this article provides special highlights for the upcoming conference.

We would like to draw your attention to two changes in the conference program. While we are maintaining the traditional Friday andSaturday evening poster sessions, our conference space will allow posters to be displayed throughout the day for informal viewing priorto the evening poster session. All authors have been instructed to place their posters in the Fiesta Pavilion between 8:00am and 9:00amaccording to the poster session schedule. While not attending a concurrent session, we encourage attendees to browse through theposters throughout the day and also visit one of the numerous exhibitor booths which will also be located in the pavilion.

New this year, the conference chairs are hosting four special invited sessions on Friday March 6th and Saturday, March 7th. These specialsessions highlight a range of topics and draw on prominent members of the division. The first invited session on Friday, March 6th, is“Miranda Rights and Wrongs: Emerging Opportunities for Forensic Psychology (presented by Dr. Richard Rogers). That same day, Dr.Thomas Grisso, Christopher Slobogin and Richard Bonnie will host a special panel discussion entitled “Making Sense of Indiana v.Edwards”. On Saturday, March 7th, Dr. Brian Bornstein will chair the “Psychology and Law Editorial Roundtable”. Later that day, Dr. JoelDvoskin and Dr. Stanley will conduct an interactive seminar on “Expert Psychological Testimony in Court”. Full abstracts for thesespecial invited sessions are available for review within the conference program which can be found on the conference website.

Pre-conference Workshops (Wednesday March 4th)

Several pre-conference continuing education workshops are being offered onWednesday, March 4th. Members and non-members are encouraged to register foreither one of the full day workshops or the ½ day workshops. The full day work-shops include “Management-oriented Risk Assessment of Sexual Offenders usingthe Risk for Sexual Violence Protocol (RSVP) (presented by Dr. Stephen Hart),“Introduction to the MMPI-2-RF (Restructured Form) (presented by Dr. YossefBen-Porath), and “Use of the Structured Assessment of Violence in Youth (SAVRY)Risk Assessment Tool (presented by Dr. Patrick Bartel). Half day workshops in-clude “Structural Equation Modeling with MPlus” (presented by Dr. Candice Odgers)and “Hierarchical Multilevel Modeling” (presented by Dr. Daniel Wright). Moreinformation about the workshops and presenters can be found using the on-lineregistration form (http://www.ap-ls.org/conferences/apls2009/index.html).

Special Plenary Sessions

The conference will open with a special plenary session “Neuroscience, Genetics,and the Law” starting at 12:00pm on Thursday, March 5th. Moderated by Dr.

AP-LS Conference UpdateCrowne Plaza Riverwalk, San Antonio, Texas,

March 5th – March 8th, 2009

Page 2 AP-LS NEWS, Winter 2009

AP-LS NewsEditorial Staff

Editor-In-ChiefJennifer Groscup, J.D., Ph.D.

[email protected]

Production/Advertising EditorMichele Galietta, Ph.D.

[email protected]

Past Editor-In-ChiefBarry Rosenfeld, Ph.D.

[email protected]

Associate Editor, Research BriefsMarc Boccanccini, Ph.D.

[email protected]

Associate Editor, Legal UpdateJeremy Blumenthal, J.D., Ph.D.

[email protected]

Associate Editors, Expert OpinionMatthew Huss, Ph.D, M.L.S.

[email protected] Elbogen, Ph.D.

[email protected]

Website ManagerAdam Fried, M.A.

[email protected]

The American Psychology-Law SocietyNews is a publication devoted to dissemi-nation of information, news, and com-mentary about psychology, mentalhealth, and the law. The newsletter ispublished three times per year; February,June, and October. Original contributionsare welcome, and will be published sub-ject to editorial approval and space avail-ability. A limited amount of space is alsoavailable for advertising and unsolicitedmanuscripts.

For information regarding editorial poli-cies contact the Editor, Jennifer Groscup,Department of Psychology, Scripps Col-lege, 1030 Columbia Ave. #4099,Claremont, CA 91711 orjennifer.groscup@scrippscollege. edu.Advertising inquiries should be directedto Michele Galietta, Production Editor,via e-mail: galietta13@ aol.com.

Address changes for APA membersshould be directed to APA MembershipDept., 750 First St. NE, Washington, DC20002-4242; for non-APA members, stu-dent members, or members-at-large toKathy Gaskey, AP-LS AdministrativeAssistant at [email protected].

What a difference a few months can make.Shortly after the full weight of the eco-nomic downturn exposed itself, BarackObama was elected, preaching hope andchange. Like most people my age, I neverthought I would see an African Americanpresident in my lifetime. Then withoutwarning, and after decades of duplicity,former NASDAQ Chairman BernardMadoff was arrested for running an elabo-rate multibillion dollar Ponzi scheme thathas claimed thousands of individual andinstitutional victims. At about the sametime, news broke in Beatrice Nebraska thatsix convicted felons to an old murder wereDNA exonerated and pardoned—themost wrongful convictions ever producedin a single case. All these events drawand impact upon the work of AP-LS andits membership, so let’s stop and reflecton what has happened and the implica-tions.

To begin with, there is good reason tobelieve that the Justice Departmentheaded by Attorney General Eric Holderwill change course on a number of sub-stantive matters. In 2002, State SenatorObama supported a bill to require the vid-eotaping of interrogations in capital cases(the state of Illinois has presided over fartoo many DNA exonerations involvingcoerced false confessions). At first, theidea was opposed by police, prosecutors,most senators, and the governor. Afterextensive negotiations with all sides,however, Obama brokered a deal. Ulti-mately, police and prosecutors lifted theiropposition to the bill, which passed in theIllinois Senate by a vote of 58-0 and wassigned into law by no other than Gover-nor Rod Blagojevich (a whole other storyfor a whole other column).

After the November election, JeremyTravis, former Director of NIJ and nowPresident of the John Jay College of Crimi-nal Justice, wrote an open letter to theAmerican Society of Criminology (ASC)and other relevant associations in whichhe argued that the federal governmentshould rethink its role in promoting re-search on matters of law and justice.Noting that the Departments of Educa-

Presidential ColumnPresidential ColumnPresidential ColumnPresidential ColumnPresidential ColumnAn Editorial by Saul Kassin, Div. 41 President

tion and Agriculture and the EPA have allrecently created research offices that aremore professional and independent, Travisproposed that DOJ should follow theseexamples and form what he would call theOffice of Justice Research. Historically,economic hard times have presaged in-creases in poverty rates, the commissionof certain types of crimes, fears of crime,and urgent calls for law and order mea-sures. For these reasons as well, I wouldagree that the time is ripe for a bold initia-tive such as this one. The ASC Board hasvoted unanimously to support this pro-posed new Office. President Travis’ letteris reprinted in this Newsletter. Read it,think about it, and talk about it. AP-LSshould weigh in—in my opinion, to sup-port this proposed initiative.

Then there’s Bernie Madoff. His scheme,mind boggling in its $50 billion scope, hasclaimed more than 14,000 victims—includ-ing the now defunct JEHT Foundation(whose name stood for Justice, Equality,Human dignity, and Tolerance)—which inrecent years had funded several programsto promote the reform of the criminal andcivil justice systems. In some ways, theMadoff case is like a commercial advertise-ment for forensic psychology and the workwe do. First, it shows that psychopathycomes packaged in all colors, shapes, andsizes. To quote my John Jay colleagueMichelle Galietta, recently interviewed inTime Magazine, the narcissistic Madoff issomething of a “white collar psychopath”who harms others not with physical vio-lence but with his calloused and viciousindifference. Second, if I may bring a so-cial psychological perspective to the table,it appears that the 70 year-old Madoff hadfirst orchestrated his Ponzi scheme manyyears ago, setting himself into a graduallyescalating trap from which he could notescape without punishment—even if hewere, at some point, inclined to do so.Third, and perhaps most unnerving to WallStreeters, this case tragically illustrates justhow inept human beings are at deceptiondetection. Madoff operated in a numbers-driven economy and serviced an elitegroup of clients motivated by high stakes.It didn’t matter. Faithful to scientific re-Continued on p. 4

AP-LS NEWS, Winter 2009 Page 3

Division 41 - American Psychological Association

Law and Human Behavior Updates:Is it time to stop the presses?

Brian L. Cutler, Editor-in-Chief

About three years ago, in my former life as a department chair, mydepartment was given the keys to most of the rooms on the floorbelow, allowing for substantial growth in our teaching and labora-tory space. In order to make the most of this opportunity, I ar-ranged for the relocation of about 12 faculty laboratories. Most ofthe faculty members affected by this room exchange had devel-oped a habit of storing their journals in their labs. Rather thanhauling these formidable stacks from the old to the new labs, oneby one my colleagues emptied their shelves into recycling bins,casting off years of American Psychologists and numerous otherAPA journals. When I asked why they chose not to keep them,they said that they do not use their archives, rather, they found itfaster and more convenient to retrieve e-copies of journal articlesfrom the web than to find the hard copy on their shelves.

The convenience of electronic access and storage of LHB articlesand journals leads me question the future of the print version ofour journal. AP-LS members receive full-text access to their jour-nal through our publisher’s web page, including all back issues.They likewise receive articles published in the Online First sec-tion of Springer’s web page – about 35 articles (plus or minus) atany one time. By the time an article is published in the printjournal, it has been in circulation for a year. Our newly signedcontract with Springer allows for all AP-LS members, includingstudent members to receive the published journal at no cost toAP-LS. Despite the fact that we now receive the hard copies at nocost, I wonder how many of us actually want to continue to re-ceive hard copies. Is it even appropriate to use the phrase “nocost” given the massive amount of paper required to print thejournal and other resources required to ship the printed journal to3000 or so addresses on several continents.

I would like to invite the AP-LS membership to begin thinkingabout the journal’s future with respect to publication media.Should we continue to produce the journal in both electronic andprint format? Should we stop the press and become an online-only journal? Perhaps there are alternative forms that we shouldconsider, such as optional printed copies, fewer than six printedvolumes per year (for many years there were four volumes peryear), a single annually printed journal (containing all of the ar-ticles from the volume), or perhaps an annual DVD for each newvolume.

Let me be clear about this. There are no plans to cease the pro-duction and shipment of our printed journal, so there is no imme-diate cause for concern among those who cherish it. Really. I ammerely asking the membership to begin thinking about this issuein anticipation of our next contract negotiation, which should be-gin within the next year or two.

Let me also take this time to report on a few other matters. LHBcontinues to prosper. New manuscript submissions rose againthis year. We received 184 new manuscript submissions in 2008,an increase of nearly 9% over the 2007 (169). We continue toprovide editorial decision letters within 60 days in most cases,thanks to the timely work of our ad hoc reviewers, editorial boardmembers, and associate editors. Last, I thank the 2008 EditorialBoard members for their service and willingness to continue toserve in 2009 and welcome the following new members to the 2009Editorial Board: Gregory DeClue, Jennifer Hunt, Matthew Huss,Steven Penrod, Debra Poole, Allison Redlich, and Barry Rosenfeld.

Keep sending us your best work!Brian Cutler, Editor-in-Chief

Law and Human Behavior: Online First

LHB is now a member of Springer’s Online First program. In thisprogram, manuscripts accepted for publication in LHB are imme-diately placed in the production cue and soon thereafter pub-lished online. It is important to note that, once these manuscriptsare published online, they are published. They are not “in press,”but “published.” Each article published online is assigned a Digi-tal Object Identifier (DOI). Sometime later, the article is then pub-lished (again) in print. This is a very exciting development forLHB, for it means that we can greatly reduce the time betweenacceptance of manuscripts and (online) publication.

How do I access Online First articles? AP-LS members have thebenefit of full-text access to LHB articles (including back issues ofpublished journals) through Springerlink. To obtain this access,however, members must first log onto the AP-LS web page and thennavigate to Springerlink through the AP-LS page (you will find aconvenient link). Many university faculty members and studentsalso have the option of logging on through their library networks.

Law and Human Behavior, the official journal of the AmericanPsychology-Law Society/Division 41 of the American PsychologicalAssociation, is a multidisciplinary forum for the publication of ar-ticles and discussions of issues arising out of the relationships be-tween human behavior and the law, our legal system, and the legalprocess. This journal publishes original research, reviews of pastresearch, and theoretical studies from professionals in criminal jus-tice, law, psychology, sociology, psychiatry, political science, educa-tion, communication, and other areas germane to the field.

AP-LS/Division 41 members receive Law and Human Behavior as part oftheir membership. To join the American Psychology-Law Society andreceive Law and Human Behavior, please visit www.ap-ls.org.

Description of Law and Human Behavior


search on human lie detection—which shows that people are no-toriously poor at judging others, sometimes despite confidence(because they focus too much on eye contact, smiles, shiftingposture, and other miscues)—the elites were fooled like everyoneelse. Add to the mix that credible communicators, which Madoffwas by reputation, tend to disarm critical thinking, leading peopleto mindlessly accept what they peddle. On that note, I would addthat the public should be wary not only of con artists in finance,but elsewhere—such as pseudoscientists and practitioners whomake the unsubstantiated claim that for a price they can trainmortals to become precision-accurate lie detectors.

Finally, because I am a sucker for a good story I want to saysomething about the Beatrice Six. In 1989, in Beatrice, Nebraska,three men and three women were wrongfully convicted of themurder of a 68 year-old woman. Five pled guilty or no contest;four gave vividly detailed confessions during intense interroga-tions. In January of 2009, the six were pardoned after a full rein-vestigation followed DNA testing that excluded all six defendantsand matched Bruce Allen Smith, who was in the area drunk andangry that night, and who has since died. The Nebraska AttorneyGeneral’s Office now concedes that all six are innocent, “Not be-yond a reasonable doubt,” said the assistant attorney general tothe Pardons Board, “but beyond all doubt.” This case is sure tobecome infamous in the annals of forensic psychology. It set arecord for the most wrongful convictions resulting from a singleinvestigation (there were five in the Central Park jogger case); allof the confessors went on to internalize the erroneous belief intheir own guilt (one woman stood by her statement until just be-fore the pardon, and then suggested, “I guess I was brain-washed”); and perhaps most troubling is that the interrogatorswere assisted in getting these confessions by a psychologist whopreviously had served as a private therapist to two of the defen-dants. So when this highly trusted source suggested the possibil-ity that memories of the murder could have been repressed, hisformer clients believed him.

Saul Kassin

The following is a reprint of Jeremy Travis’s open letter to theAmerican Society of Criminology refereced above, withpermissiion of the author:

November 11, 2008

Open Letter to the American Society of Criminology:

The inauguration of a new President and the opening of the 111th Con-gress present an unprecedented opportunity for the nation to rethinkthe federal role in promoting research on crime, society’s responses tocrime, and the administration of justice.

For the past forty years, the nation’s research and statistics agencies –the National Institute of Justice and the Bureau of Justice Statistics —have been housed within the Office of Justice Programs of the Depart-ment of Justice. Having served as Director of the National Institute of

Justice from 1994-2000, I have a firsthand understanding of the valuablerole that NIJ has played in promoting research that has benefited ournation’s criminal justice system. Yet I have come to the conclusion thatthe current structure of the Department of Justice, which places re-sponsibility for criminal justice research and statistics in a program-oriented office, cannot provide the rigorous, objective, timely and rel-evant research on crime and justice to which our citizens, and the prac-titioners in the law enforcement and criminal justice professions, areentitled.

The purpose of this Open Letter is to urge members of the AmericanSociety of Criminology as well as members of other associations ofprofessionals in criminal justice, to support a new structure that wouldbetter carry out the research and statistical obligations of the federalgovernment. Specifically, I propose that the Congress create, with sup-port from the new Administration, a new office in the Department ofJustice, called the Office of Justice Research and Statistics (OJRS) to beheaded by an Assistant Attorney General for Justice Research and Sta-tistics. This office would be separate from the Office of Justice Pro-grams, which would continue to administer the funding programs thatsupport reform efforts by state and local law enforcement and criminaljustice agencies. Other cabinet agencies – the Department of Education,the Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency– have all recently created research and statistics offices that are moreprofessional and independent. Now is the time for the Department ofJustice to follow these examples.

The argument for creation of the new Office of Justice Research andStatistics, separate from the Office of Justice Programs, is very straight-forward: if the research, statistics, and scientific development functionsof the federal government are located within an office that is primarilyresponsible for the administration of assistance programs, three risks arecreated. First, the scientific integrity of the research functions is vulner-able to compromise. Second, the research and development functionwill never be given the priority treatment that is needed to meet theenormous crime challenges facing the country. Third, the research agendaon crime and justice will more likely reflect short-term, programmaticneeds rather than the long-term need to develop a better understandingof the phenomenon of crime in America and the best ways to preventand respond to crime.

The rationale for this proposal exists independent of the level of fundingfor the statistics, research and development functions of the federalgovernment. Clearly, the National Institute of Justice and the Bureau ofJustice Statistics are woefully underfunded. The new Administrationand new Congress should also focus squarely on ways to enhance thesebudgets substantially. Yet simply augmenting the budgets of NIJ andBJS does not address the risks to scientific integrity or the importance ofdeveloping a scientific understanding of crime and testing effective re-sponses to crime. This proposal for a new structure should not beunderstood as a critique of the individuals who have served in the Officeof Justice Programs. The nation has clearly benefited from the contribu-tions of OJP and its predecessors, and the research and statistics agen-cies have promoted a level of empirical understanding of crime and ourresponses to crime that was unimaginable forty years ago. Rather, thisproposal is grounded in the conclusion that the current structure hasinherent limitations and, unless those limitations are addressed, we can-

Presidential Column, Continued from p. 2


not make the significant advances in our scientific knowledge about crimethat would substantially improve our ability to reduce crime and en-hance the administration of justice.

The Challenges.

The crime challenges that face the nation are profound, complex andrapidly changing. Although the level of violence in America has fallensignificantly since its peak in 1992, the rates of lethal violence in thiscountry are between four and ten times higher than in other industrial-ized nations. Although the national rates of homicide and robbery haveremained relatively constant over the past eight years, some cities haveseen double-digit increases in these crimes, while others have experi-ences double-digit declines, and we have no solid research to help usunderstand why this is happening.

Our ability to track these crime trends, analyze patterns, develop theo-ries about the changing nature of crime, and test the effectiveness ofdifferent interventions is hampered by a data collection system that isoutdated, cumbersome and incomplete. The Uniform Crime Reportdata are released nine months after the crimes have been reported, eventhough some police departments release their crime data close to realtime. The National Crime Victimization Survey is conducted once ayear, and only on a national basis, making it nearly impossible to under-stand victimization at local levels. The Arrestee Drug Abuse MonitoringProgram (ADAM), a quarterly survey of individuals arrested and held inpolice lockups, which provides timely data on trends in drug use, illegalgun use, gang activity, etc., exists in only ten cities, far short of theoriginal plan for seventy-five. The ability to employ the differing capa-bilities of the UCR, the NCVS, and ADAM is limited by the fact thatthese three data collection systems on crime have been managed by threeor four different agencies, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (UCR),the Bureau of Justice Statistics (NCVS) and the National Institute ofJustice or the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ADAM), withlittle coordination. Tested methodologies for special analysis of crime,particularly “hot spots,” and analysis of gang dynamics, have not beenimplemented widely or systematically. The nation has very little ca-pacity to track cybercrime, identity theft, or white collar crime. The currentdata collection systems do not identify transnational crimes. Our statisticson drug crimes, particularly drug selling, mostly reflect arrest activity, notthe actual incidence of the underlying criminal activity.

Our process for setting a research agenda on crime in America has beensubstantially compromised by the placement of the National Instituteof Justice and the Bureau of Justice Statistics within the Office of Jus-tice Programs. Because OJP is responsible for managing substantialfederal assistance programs, the culture of the office is geared, as itshould be, to performing that function well. That culture is quite differ-ent from an organizational culture that supports scientific inquiry, thedesign and management of statistical programs, and the rigorous evalua-tion of interventions designed to respond to crime more effectively.The constituents of OJP are the criminal justice agencies of state andlocal government, and OJP is properly responsive to their needs for moregrant-in-aid. An effective statistics, research and development entity shouldalso be responsive to the needs of these agencies, but the relationship is adifferent one. The relationship is mediated by the scientific enterprise,of analyzing the crime phenomenon so that practitioners understand

crime better, testing new interventions so they respond to crime better,and developing new scientific and technological tools so they can betterprevent criminal activity, solve crimes and administer justice.

As a result of these differing priorities between the programmatic andscientific functions, NIJ has not been able to develop a multi-year re-search agenda that would build a deeper understanding of crime, and hasnot been able to test rigorously a range of interventions that reducecrime. Instead, the research portfolio of NIJ reflects a preponderance ofsmall research projects conducted by large numbers of principal investi-gators, rather than long-term scientific inquiries into critical crime issuescarried out by a consortium of researchers. The portfolio is weightedtoward a large number of program evaluations, rarely employing the mostrigorous methods, rather than a small number of rigorous research demon-stration projects designed to test hypotheses rooted in sound theories.

Over the forty year history of the federal role supporting research andstatistics on crime and justice, there have been numerous instances whenthe integrity of those functions has been compromised. Certainly one ofthe most troubling developments in this arena was the provision of thePATRIOT Act, inserted into that legislation without discussion, givingthe Assistant Attorney General of the Office of Justice Programs finalauthority over the award of research grants and the publication of re-search findings and statistical reports. With this enactment, the au-tonomy granted NIJ and BJS Directors – a critical underpinning of theindependence of the scientific enterprise – was eliminated. But thejustification for the proposal advanced in this letter is not based on aconcern about this statutory infringement, nor is it based on those in-stances when the integrity of NIJ and BJS was compromised. Rather,the core rationale for this proposal is that the nation should have a strongstatistics, research and development capacity on the issues of crime andjustice and that capacity cannot be realized as long as NIJ and BJSremain within the Office of Justice Programs.

The Office of Justice Research and Statistics.

The new Office of Justice Research and Statistics would be headed by anAssistant Attorney General, nominated by the President and confirmedby the United States Senate. The law creating this new position wouldspecify that the holder of this office should be a scientist of nationalreputation, with significant experience conducting and overseeing re-search in this field. As with the directors of the National Science Foun-dation, the National Institutes of Health, or the Institute of EducationalSciences, it is expected that the Assistant Attorney General in this posi-tion would bring to the position a reputation for scientific integrity.The Office of Justice Research and Statistics would be comprised ofthree distinct offices – the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the NationalInstitute of Justice, and the National Institute of Justice Technology.Although more discussion is clearly required regarding the scope of theseoffices, the following abstracts provide a good starting point:

The Bureau of Justice Statistics would continue all of the functionscurrently carried out by BJS. But, as mentioned above, the currentconstellation of data collections systems on crime and justice are frag-mented and incomplete. To remedy this situation – and to provide thenation the capability to track crime trends in a timely manner – themandate of BJS should be expanded significantly. First, BJS should be


Written (or read) a new book you want reviewed ? A psy-chological test that you want readers to know about ? Rec-ommendations for books, tests, or other media that you wouldlike to see reviewed in the APLS News should be forwardedto Jennifer Groscup, ([email protected]).Offers to review the work of others, or recommendations asto who an appropriate review might be for your own workare always appreciated.

Book and Test Reviews

authorized to work closely with the Federal Bureau of Investigation toimprove the timeliness and completeness of the Uniform Crime Re-ports. Similarly, responsibility for the ADAM program should be trans-ferred from ONDCP (it was originally housed at NIJ), and responsibil-ity for the statistical series on juvenile justice should be transferred fromthe Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (a componentof OJP). But the new BJS would be more than a manager of existingstatistical series. It should also develop new initiatives to track crimetrends, drawing on the capabilities of police departments that now postcrime trends close to real time. It would develop new protocols fortracking critical crime issues, such as the level of Illegal drug sellingactivity, public confidence in the criminal justice system, the operationsof the federal law enforcement agencies, etc. This expanded portfoliowould clearly require additional funding, but there are compelling argu-ments for creating a robust national capacity to improve our understand-ing of crime trends.

The National Institute of Justice would serve as the social scienceresearch entity on issues of justice. NIJ would continue to conductresearch on the nature of crime (property and violent crime), the effec-tiveness of the law enforcement and criminal justice agencies, the pat-terns of criminal behavior and desistance from crime, and the relation-ship between communities, civil society, and crime. The key differenceis that NIJ would design research programs that would be multi-year andcumulative. This research agenda would be developed under the guid-ance of a research advisory council. Regarding program evaluations, NIJwould only conduct evaluations of a limited number of programs. Thesewould be selected following a competitive process. Practitioners andresearchers would be invited to nominate programs or other interventionsthat are ripe for evaluation. In consultation with the research advisorycouncil, NIJ would select the programs for evaluation. The criteria forselecting the evaluation would include the potential contributions of anevaluation to our understanding of crime, the potential impact of the inter-vention, the rigor of the evaluation design, and the capabilities of the researchteam. In short, NIJ would be expected to place a small number of big bets,rather than evaluating a large number of small programs.

The National Institute of Justice Technology would perform thefunctions now carried out by the Office of Science and Technology ofthe National Institute of Justice. The Office of Science and Technologyhas been very successful in developing technologies that have providednew tools for law enforcement and criminal justice agencies. Includedamong these successes are the development o f bullet-resistant vests forpolice officers, DNA and other advances in forensic science, and lesslethal equipment for police officers and other emergency responders.The OS&T has developed productive relationships with the nationalnetwork of defense laboratories, and the technology R&D functions ofthe federal law enforcement agencies. As a component of the new Officeof Justice Research, the science and technology functions of the Depart-ment of Justice would be substantially elevated. This new office wouldbe responsible for coordinating the technology programs of all compo-nents of the Department of Justice. In this way, the technology invest-ments of the Department of Justice would be designed to yield significantscientific results, and those results would be shared with all agencies thatcould benefit from them. The new National Institute of Justice Technol-ogy would also serve as the Justice Department’s point of contact withother technology development entities in the federal government, such

as the Department of Defense, NASA, and the Department of Energy.In this way, the law enforcement and criminal justice agencies wouldbenefit from scientific developments in these other federal agencies.

Conclusion.

If we were designing a federal research and development capacity oncrime and justice today, we would probably not propose the currentstructure that houses NIJ and BJS within the Office of Justice Programs,three levels below the Attorney General, with a focus on state and localcriminal justice. Rather, we would create a scientific branch of govern-ment that operates under scientific principles reporting directly to theAttorney General. We would recognize that crime is now a transnationalphenomenon and we need to understand human trafficking, drug smug-gling, immigration trends and terrorism. We would examine the manysystems of justice – civil justice, immigration courts, the federal justicesystem, in addition to state and local justice systems. We would de-velop a modern capacity to understand local crime conditions usinghigh-tech surveys. We would develop creative ways to measure non-traditional crimes, such as identity theft, corporate and white collarcrime, and transnational crime. We would design a research and develop-ment program that would harness the power of technology so the agen-cies that enforce the law can benefit from the scientific and technologicalrevolution. This ambitious agenda clearly requires additional resources.But it also requires a new structure within the Department of Justice, astructure that guarantees both scientific integrity and policy relevance.

Next Steps.

It is my hope that this letter generates a lively debate within the justicepolicy and the academic community about how best to structure thenation’s research and statistical programs in the criminal justice arena. Iwould expect that this debate will produce worthy modifications of thisproposal. Yet I also hope there is consensus that we need to movebeyond the status quo. Now is the time to engage these important issuesand to improve our capacity to promote research on crime and justice.

Sincerely,

Jeremy TravisPresident


Conference Update, Continued from p. 1Thomas Grisso, this session will feature three distinguished ex-perts (Dr. Paul S. Appelbaum, Dr. Marie Banich and Dr. StephenMorse) who will address research developments in neuroscienceand genetics including the use of such evidence in the courtroom.

On Friday, March 6th, a special session entitled “PsychologicalPerspectives on the Conviction of the Innocent” will include threepresentations designed to enhance our understanding of thechains of events by which innocent citizens become convictedfelons. The session is chaired by Dr. Brian Cutler with individualpresentations by Dr. Gary Wells, Dr. Saul Kassin and Dr. JeffreyNeuschatz.

We are pleased that Dr. Elizabeth Loftus will deliver the InvitedPresidential Address on Saturday, March 7th. Dr. Loftus’ presen-tation is entitled “Rich False Memories”.

Special Committee Events

For student members (especially those who are attending the con-ference for the first time) the Teaching, Training, and Careers Com-mittee is once again hosting a special one hour event designed toprovide an overview of the conference entitled “How to Get theMost out of the Conference: Information, Advice, and Snacks forStudents”. This session will be held on Thursday, March 5th priorto the opening session.

On Thursday, March 5th, from 8:00am to 10:00am, the ProfessionalDevelopment committee is hosting a two-hour workshop entitled“Professional Advancement of Women in Psychology and Law:Panel Discussion and Mentoring Circles”. Directly following thisworkshop (10:00am to 12:00pm) the Early Career PsychologistCommittee will host a workshop on “Private Practice of ForensicPsychology: Preparation, Building a Practice, Problems in Prac-tice. We encourage those interested in attending one or both ofthe workshops to plan on arriving Wednesday night in order totake advantage of these workshop opportunities. Full workshopdescriptions are available at the conference website.

In addition the two-hour workshops, The Teaching, Training, andCareers Committee, Student Section, and Mentoring Committeeare co-sponsoring a special three-part series geared toward theprofessional development of students and early career profes-sionals. One session will be held each day with the co-sponsorsencouraging attendance at all three sessions. Part I of the three-part series is sponsored by the Student Section and will focus onCV and Personal Statement preparation. Part II is sponsored bythe Teaching, Training, & Careers Committee and will addressadvice on the job search and hiring process. Part III is sponsoredby the Mentoring Committee and will provide practical advice andpractice for an academic job interview.

The Scientific Review Paper Committee will be holding an openhearing on Saturday, March 7th, to allow comment and discussionfrom AP-LS members and the public on the proposed White Papertitled: “Police-Induced Confessions: Risk Factors and Recom-mendations” which was prepared by Saul Kassin, Steven Drizin,Thomas Grisso, Gisli Gudjonsson, Richard Leo and Allison Redlich

(the paper is available for review at http://www.ap-ls.org/links/whitepaperconfessions.html). This session will be the secondand final public review of the paper before it is submitted to theAP-LS Executive Committee for approval as an official statementof AP-LS.

An AP-LS conference would not be complete without socialevents. We will continue the tradition of hosting a welcome re-ception on Thursday, March 5th from 6:30pm to 8:00pm for all at-tendees. The Minority Affairs Committee Student Award Recog-nition Luncheon will be held Friday, March 6th from 12:15pm to1:30pm. Pre-registration for this luncheon is required via the over-all conference registration form. If you have processed your overallconference registration form and did not pre-register for this event,please contact Kathy Gaskey ([email protected]) to add this lun-cheon to your registration. Finally, various AP-LS committeesand academic units/organizations are also hosting social eventseach night of the conference.

In the final weeks leading up to the conference we encourageeveryone to check the main conference website for additionalupdates.

We look forward to seeing you in San Antonio!

Keith Cruise, Jeff Neuschatz and Gina Vincent

Join the EUROPEAN ASSOCIATION OF PSYCHOLOGY ANDLAW and receive a subscription to Psychology, Crime and Lawfor about $50 (45 Euros). Information about EAP can be obtainedat the Association website: www.law.kuleuven.ac.be/eapl/. Infor-mation about Psychology, Crime and Law can be found atwww.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/1068316x.html. Membership isavailable to psychologists and attorneys, as well as criminolo-gists, sociologists, psychiatrists, and educational scientists. In-formation on how to join EAPL is also available through the As-sociation website. In addition to a scholarly journal (Psychology,Crime, and Law), EAPL holds an annual meeting, including a jointconference with APLS every fourth year (most recently inEdinburgh, Scotland in July, 2003). This year’s conference will bea joint conference held July 3-8, 2007, in Adelaide, Australia. Fur-ther details are available through the Association website.

Membership in EAPL


Legal UpdateEditor: Jeremy Blumenthal, J.D., Ph.D.

University of Connecticut School of Law

Reading and Contemporary Law StudentsIan Gallacher, J.D., M.F.A.

Associate Professor and Director, Legal Communication and Research ProgramSyracuse University

Ed. note: Efforts to familiarize psycholegal scholars with re-search opportunities in the law emphasize study of what lawstudents and legal scholars learn. Only recently has focus turnedto any examination of how the law is learned. Preliminary ef-forts to apply cognitive psychology to the way people researchlaw (e.g., Kuh, in press) have recently emphasized the shift tointernet-based and computerized means of research. In this col-umn, a law professor and expert in legal research and communi-cation broadens the discussion of this shift. Substantive pointsabout law students’ — and by extension, graduate students’ andlegal or psycholegal researchers’ — methods of conducting re-search are explicit in his discussion. But implicit in these pointsis the identification of a new opportunity for psycholegal schol-ars to apply theory from developmental, cognitive, or educa-tional psychology to how students, lawyers, researchers, judges,law clerks, and others do research.

It’s customary for each generation to bemoan the illiteracy of theyounger generations coming behind them. So it’s not surprisingthat we should be pessimistic about the state of literary readingamong people the age of most law students today. I’m pretty suremy teachers had the same discussion about my fellow studentsand me, that their teachers had the same discussion about them,and on and on. I suppose it’s a miracle to some of our eldestcolleagues that the English language didn’t peter out and dieyears ago.

But, of course, there is one big difference now. Despite the de-spair previous generations have shown about our literary inter-ests, the means of our acquiring information through reading hadnot changed significantly since the invention of moveable type.That is no longer true. For the first time, law school classes arebeing populated by students of the internet age, and there havebeen changes in the way they acquire and process information.They aren’t good changes.

A survey I conducted during the summer of 2006 looked at thereading, writing, and research habits of incoming law students atseven law schools (Gallacher, 2007). The results suggested thatlaw students read far more than the general population, but thatshould be neither a surprise nor a comfort to us; these are the bestand brightest students of their generation, and if their readingdoesn’t far outstrip that of the general population, then the skyreally is falling.

The data themselves are less reassuring. Of those students re-sponding to the question, approximately 25% read for pleasure

one or more book a week, 31% read one book a month, 26% readfewer than one book a month but more than one a year, and ap-proximately 5% read one or fewer books a year. And this is, re-member, before they came to law school. One suspects that thosenumbers have dropped dramatically, at least during the semester,since the students started their studies.

The most popular style of writing read by responding studentswas literary fiction, at 36.3%, followed by nonfiction (25.9%), genrefiction (17.5%), biography (4%) and self help (1.3%). Studentswere also asked to list their favorite and least favorite books, thebooks they had read last, were reading now, and planned to readnext. The results are printed in an appendix to the article, andsuggest that the lines between literary and genre fiction mightgenerously be described as blurrier than some of the respondingstudents might think.

The data about reading for information are no more heartening.Almost 48% of responding students indicated that they read anewspaper daily, and this includes students who only read thesports pages and the comics. So the majority of incoming lawstudents don’t read a newspaper, or any part of one, every day.And of those students who read newspapers, only 17.4% indi-cated that they read them only in print form, with 16.7% indicatingthat they read them only online and the majority – 55.5% — indi-cating that they read newspapers in both print form and online.

The tendency to read from an online source of information isparticularly troubling because recent data from the U.K. suggeststhat we are, to put it mildly, not very good at reading online (CIBER,2008). The study, conducted by CIBER, a research group locatedwithin University College, London, looked at research habits ofBritish “young people” – apparently those between 18 and 21.Although the study loJ.oked exclusively at British “young people,”the results might sound a resonant chord with those of us whowork with slightly older American law students.

Of the study’s many interesting results, one in particular standsout. The research indicated that young people spend little timeevaluating information found on the web for relevance, accuracy,or authority. In fact, the survey concluded, researchers engage inhorizontal information seeking – the practice of viewing one ortwo pages from an academic site and then bouncing out of thatdocument to another one. Around 60% of the e-journal viewerslook at no more than two pages before moving on and 65% neverreturned to the documents they left. The authors of the studycontinue (CIBER, 2008, p.10):


The average times that users spend on e-bookand e-journal sites are very short: typically fourand eight minutes respectively. It is clear thatusers are not reading online in the traditionalsense, indeed there are signs that new forms of‘reading’ are emerging as users ‘power browse’horizontally through titles, contents pages andabstracts going for quick wins. It almost seemsthat they go online to avoid reading in the tradi-tional sense.

At least one commentator has recognized similar issues with hisown print-based reading. Nicholas Carr (2008), writing in July’sAtlantic Monthly, noted that:

[o]ver the past few years I’ve had an uncom-fortable sense that someone, or something, hasbeen tinkering with my brain, remapping theneural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. Mymind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’schanging. I’m not thinking the way I used tothink. I can feel it most strongly when I’m read-ing. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthyarticle used to be easy. My mind would getcaught up in the narrative or the turns of theargument, and I’d spend hours strolling throughlong stretches of prose. That’s rarely the caseanymore. Now my concentration often startsto drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety,lose the thread, begin looking for somethingelse to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging mywayward brain back to the text. The deep read-ing that used to come naturally has become astruggle.

Carr attributes the changes in his reading patterns to the time he’sbeen spending on the internet over the past few years, and manyof us who have spent much time reading documents online likelyshare his concern that the process has changed us in subtle butimportant ways. If it’s doing this to us, who have come to theinternet after a childhood and early scholarly life spent almostentirely in the books, it seems likely that the effect on today’s lawstudents, who have spent most if not all of their lives as consum-ers of online information, has been that much more significant.And therein lies a big problem, because reading lies at the core oflegal education and any changes in reading patterns affect theway law students learn and perform.

Whether or not it has acknowledged or even recognized it, legaleducation in America has, for the last hundred years or so, reliedon active reading as its principal instructional medium. The Socraticteaching method is, at its heart, a public modeling of the detailedtextual interrogation generations of teachers have expected theirstudents to perform while studying. When the student is havingthe same Socratic experience with the books at home as the teacherhas with the student in class then the student is fully engaged

with the material, asking and answering the same questions as theteacher will ask during the next class. And when that happens,the student has the chance to get more fully involved with thesubject than would be possible were the student listening pas-sively to a lecture series. It is no profound insight to say thatlegal education teaches students how to be auto-didactic, andthat things have been that way since the days of Langdell.

Whether that is how things can continue to be, though, is lessclear. If our students don’t come to us with the necessary tools tohelp them become self-teachers, is there time in law school toequip them? And if not, can we continue to teach in the same waywe were taught? Certainly the advocates of a greater emphasis onexperiential learning in the law school curriculum would suggestthat we should not, and would argue that experiential learning – inwhich (in a simplistic definition) doctrinal lessons are derived morefrom doing than from reading – is a more appropriate educationalmodel for today’s students.

However the current debates on curricular reform are resolved,though, I hope we can all agree that we should do as much aspossible to help our students to read more, and to read moreeffectively, than they do now. We can do this in a number ofways: by not sacrificing law and literature classes as we look forways to introduce experiential opportunities into the curriculum,by introducing students much earlier to the lessons of thoseclasses – perhaps even in the summer before they come to lawschool, through an expanded and enhanced version of the tradi-tional “summer reading list,” by overtly emphasizing active read-ing techniques in all first year courses, and, perhaps most impor-tantly, by recognizing reading as a core lawyering skill – one wor-thy of as much time and attention as the other lawyering skills weteach.

But the best solution probably lies outside our walls. While lawschools can do a lot to help students improve their active readingskills, the better those skills are when students enter law school,the further they would be able to go while in school. So while itmight be uncomfortable and difficult for legal educators to iden-tify and engage our students in the years before they formallyenter into the study of law, all our lives – students, educators,researchers, judges, clerks, and practitioners – will be better forthe effort.

References

Carr, N. (July/August 2008). Is Google making us stupid? Atlan-tic Monthly.

CIBER (2008). Information behaviour of the researcher of thefuture.

Gallacher, I. (2007). “Who are those guys?”: The results of asurvey studying the information literacy of incoming law students.California Western Law Review, 44, 151-215.

Kuh, K.F. (in press). Electronically manufactured law. HarvardJournal of Law & Technology.


Book ReviewA Comprehensive Guide to Child Custody Evaluations:

Mental Health and Legal Perspectives

by Joanna Rohrbaugh, Ph.D.

Review written by: Honorable Arline S. Rotman (retired)Browsing through Joanna Bunker Rohrbaugh’s new book, A Com-prehensive Guide to Child Custody Evaluations, Mental Healthand Legal Perspectives, is like one-stop shopping at a big boxstore. Everything you need to know as a custody evaluator canbe found here. This 700 page aptly named comprehensive volumecomes complete with a CD-Rom containing organizational toolsfor case management, forms for relevant pleadings, checklists andresource material such as Guidelines for Child Custody evalua-tions which can be downloaded and adapted for personal use.

Recognizing the interdisciplinary nature of family law, Dr.Rohrbaugh set out as her task to integrate “legal information andforensic procedures with social science research.” Her audienceis family court judges, family practice attorneys and forensic men-tal health professionals. This interdisciplinary approach sets herwork apart from other books about child custody evaluations. Allof the material is presented in easy to access, user friendly lan-guage. As an example, I looked at her explanation differentiatingconfidentiality from privilege. Throughout my own legal career, Iwas always frustrated by the often misunderstood difference be-tween the two terms. It seemed a difficult concept for people tocomprehend. Dr, Rohrbaugh defines the difference in simple tounderstand language

-Confidentiality protects against the disclosure of communica-tions that are made within certain protected relationships to any-one outside of that relationship.

-Privilege protects against the disclosure of confidential commu-nications to the court.”

This simple distinction will be a helpful reminder to both legal andmental health practitioners.

Many themes, after detailed well-footnoted discussion in the book’snarrative, are summarized in visually attractive boxes. For ease ofreference, the 108 boxes are identified in the detailed table of con-tents. These summary boxes include helpful overviews of wide rang-ing topics such as Risk and Protective Factors for Effects of ParentalSubstance Abuse on Children; Types and Frequency of DomesticViolence Allegations; General Guidelines for Parenting Plans; Criteriafor Test Selection; and Three Stages of Alcoholism..In order to learn more about the depth of coverage, you can go tohttp://books.google.gom and search for A Comprehensive Guideto Child Custody Evaluations: Mental Health and Legal Perspec-tives. Clicking on “preview this book” will allow you to viewseveral pages including the complete table of contents, a list of allthe Boxes in Text, a detailed guide to the accompanying CD-

ROM, and the first sixty pages of Part I as well as a sample of theindex on page 702. This will give you a better idea of why you willwant to own this book than any book review could offer.

This treatise is not intended to be read from cover to cover. It isrecommended, however, that the theoretical, legal and ethical is-sues explored in Part I be carefully considered and understoodbefore delving into the practical and essential substantive infor-mation in the other three parts of the book.

After assuring myself that the book was indeed comprehensive, Iwanted to test the quality of the substantive text. In order to dothat I considered real life scenarios that professionals might faceduring the course of custody proceedings.

First I assumed that as a custody evaluator I was weighing thepros and cons of administering psychological tests as part of myevaluation. It should be noted that in some jurisdictions, tests canonly be administered if there is specific judicial authority in thecourt order. Assuming that testing is authorized if needed, whattests would I use and would I be able to defend their use if I werecross-examined? What if I were the attorney faced with eitherpresenting or challenging the use of the tests? Would the infor-mation be helpful in crafting my direct or cross-examination?

Using the Table of Contents, Part III, Ordering, Conducting andReviewing Evaluations, I was directed to Chapter 11, -Uses andLimitations of Pyschological Texts. Dr. Rohrbaugh introducesthe topic by explaining the continuing controversy surroundingthe use of psychological testing in custody evaluations. This willbe known to some but not all custody evaluators, but is importantinformation for every custody evaluator to keep in mind. She spellsout the positions given by those evaluators who support the use ofpsychological testing as well as those who think tests are either notrelevant to custody disputes or have poor psychometric qualities.

The criteria for test selection are set out and then summarized in atext box. Mental health professionals will be well acquainted with thelanguage, but for attorneys and judges using this information, a glos-sary is provided to define terms such as the various forms of “reliabil-ity” and “validity.” Since this is not everyday language for the legalprofession it is very useful to have the explanations available withinthe text. As someone who finds it necessary to review these termsevery time I am faced with them, I appreciated not needing to go tomy reference files. When reading custody evaluations with re-ports of test results, as a judge, I was always grateful to the evalua-tors who wrote in plain English, and were careful to explain terms ofart. In order to keep a report to a manageable size, evaluators mightconsider adding a glossary to their own reports rather than includingthe information within the body of their report.


The comprehensive explanation of psychological tests most com-monly used in custody evaluations, including their potential limi-tations, should help the evaluator to determine what tests, if any,will be appropriate for his or her evaluation. Dr. Rohrbaugh distin-guishes standard psychological tests from custody specific assess-ment devices, cautioning that the custody-specific testing devicesprovide little added value to a child custody evaluation, and mightnot be admissible under the Daubert standard adopted by many states.The Daubert standard of admissibility is explained with a reference toother sources should more information be needed. This section willbe extremely helpful to lawyers who want to challenge the use of atest, while providing the evaluator with sufficient background infor-mation to respond to the challenge. For judges, this chapter willprovide a ready reference to evaluate the oral testimony or writtenreport. Dr. Rohrbaugh, uses helpful text boxes to summarize anExplanation of Methodolgy, Reliablity and Validity , a Sample Ex-planation of Test Relevance-MMPI-2 — (the most widely used testin custody proceedings), -Sample Explanation of Psychometric Prop-erties of Test –MMPI-2, and Sample Explanations for Not Using Psy-chological Tests. — -All of this information is important to a wellwritten report. Although challenges to the admissibility of evalua-tors’ reports are rare, evaluators should always be prepared to de-fend their procedures. If a judge is not convinced that an evaluatorhas used sound scientifically defensible techniques, the evaluationmay not be given as much weight.

In summary, to answer my question about the quality of the sub-stantive material, I found the information in this section thoroughwith ample accurate information and references to be helpful toeveryone dealing with the issue of testing.

Next I checked Chapter 14, Writing the Report, which is a mustread for everyone writing reports. As Dr. Rohrbaugh so aptly states“The report is the culmination of the evaluator’s work. It mustsummarize the evaluation in a way that makes it clear what thequestions are, what procedure was used, what data was collected,and what the inferences and conclusions are.” Following hercarefully constructed outline will assure any evaluator that all theessential elements are included in each report. She appropriatelycautions against using jargon or psychiatric diagnoses. The latterwould only be useful if the diagnosis has been made by an inde-pendent psychiatrist, has not been made as part of the evaluationunless relevant to the custody dispute and authorized by courtorder. Otherwise, as Dr. Rohrbaugh points out “Diagnoses areoften used by the litigants and their attorneys in an inappropriate,pejorative manner.” She stresses the importance of evaluatingthe data in the context of relevant social science research. In thisrespect, it is important for the evaluator to remain current as re-search evolves at a relatively rapid pace. When research is con-troversial or contradictory, such as the research on infant over-nights, the controversy should be set out with a clear explanationof which research the evaluator is relying on.

The CD-Rom included with the book contains a very helpful samplereport which can be adapted to any evaluation, provided the writeris careful to tailor each piece of the report to his or her own case.Similar to any boilerplate form, care must be given that everythingthat is included is there for a reason. Conversely, anything thatdoes not apply should be excised. Dr. Rohrbaugh cautions not to

make the report too lengthy, a recommendation with which I heart-ily concur. Although it is important to include all of the necessarycomponents of a report, I would suggest that ruthless editing is oftencalled for. As the writer reads his or her own report, each sentenceshould be read with the question “Is this information relevant to acustody determination?” Judges want the basic facts, as well as asense that the evaluation was thorough and objectively conducted.A report that is too lengthy runs the risk of losing some of its impact.

Dr. Rohrbaugh has written about the current controversy regard-ing the inclusion of recommendations as part of the evaluation.She references both opponents and proponents of “answering theultimate question”, with a clear summary of the major positions. Indeciding whether or not to include recommendations, the evaluatorshould consider the predilections of the judge hearing the case aswell as customary practice in the particular jurisdiction.

Dr. Rohrbaugh’s familiarity with a broad range of current researchis impressive. Any evaluator wishing to serve as an expert will beexpected to be familiar with the research and controversies. - Forevaluators who aren’t familiar with current research and trends,this book will provide them with the necessary background.

The thoroughness and attention to detail with which Dr.Rohrbaugh approaches the complexity of her topic is unparalleledin my experience. It would be difficult to seek information on anyaspect of a custody evaluation which is left uncovered. Whilerecognizing that this encyclopedic book will be a useful referenceto both the neophyte as well as more experienced practitioners, afew words of caution are advised.

Considerable amount of attention is paid to special issues in-volved in some evaluations such as substance abuse, estrange-ment and alienation, abduction, domestic violence, and sexualabuse. Notwithstanding the breadth of information, I would sug-gest that before undertaking an evaluation with these difficultand sometimes controversial special issues, the evaluator be certainof his or her competence. Attorneys handling such cases would bewell advised to carefully consider the training and experience of po-tential evaluators or evaluators they might hire as consultants. Evalu-ators should never accept an appointment with issues beyond theircompetence. And when a difficult case is accepted, consultation witha more experienced evaluator might be advised.

Family law falls with the purview of state law. Substantive as wellas procedural rules that govern custody disputes differ in somerespects among our fifty states. To make matters more difficult, prac-tices and procedures differ within each state, county by county andjudge by judge. Some states have specialized Family Courts whileothers hear family matters in courts of general jurisdiction. Dr.Rohrbaugh’s procedural frame of reference is largely based on herexperience in Massachusetts where family cases and probate mattersuniquely share jurisdiction in a Probate and Family Court.. This limi-tation does not take away from the value of her book, but profession-als should be certain they are familiar with the statutes, jurisdictionaland procedural rules, as well as case law of their own jurisdiction.

With these caveats, I have no hesitation in saying that this work willbe a valuable resource in every family law professional’s library.


Expert OpinionEditors: Matthew Huss & Eric Elbogen

Assessing Risk for Violence using Structured Professional Judgment

Kevin S. Douglas, LL.B., Ph.D.Simon Fraser University

Almost three decades ago, John Monahan (1981, 1984) identifieda handful of studies on the prediction of violence, which he col-lectively termed the “first generation” of research on the predic-tion of violence. Although he described these studies in somedetail, noted their limitations, discussed positive features of theliterature such as research focusing on the identification of riskfactors, and pointed to promising future research directions, themost commonly cited phrase from Monahan (1981) was that “psy-chiatrists and psychologists are accurate in no more than oneout of three predictions of violent behavior” (p. 77; emphasis inoriginal). A few years later he lamented:

[r]arely has research been so uncritically accepted and sofacilely generalized by both mental health professionals andlawyers as was this first-generation research on the predic-tion of violence. The careful qualifications the researchersplaced on their findings and the circumscribed nature of thesituations to which they might apply were forgotten in therush to frame a bumper-sticker conclusion – ‘Psychiatristsand psychologists can’t predict violence’ – and paste it onevery policy vehicle in sight (Monahan, 1984, p. 10).

How have things changed? Quite remarkably, it would seem. First,there have been important conceptual shifts that have moved usfrom focusing solely on violence prediction to emphasizing riskreduction and management (Douglas & Kropp, 2002; Douglas &Skeem, 2005; Hart, 1998; Heilbrun, 1997; Dvoskin & Heilbrun, 2001;Mulvey & Lidz, 1995; Steadman, 2000; Webster & Bailles, 2000).Second, whereas Monahan (1981, 1984) counted roughly half adozen studies on the prediction of violence, there are now literallyhundreds of studies on violence risk assessment instrumentsalone. Recent meta-analyses suggest that most contemporary riskassessment instruments are associated with violence with moder-ate to large effect sizes (Blair, Marcus, & Boccaccini, 2008;Campbell, French, & Gendreau, in press; Guy, 2008; Hanson &Morton-Bourgon, in press; Walters, 2006).

Structured risk assessment instruments fall into two general camps(although there is meaningful heterogeneity within camps) – ac-tuarial and structured professional judgment (SPJ). Most thoughnot all actuarial instruments select their risk factors based on em-pirical associations with violence in a development sample (em-pirical item selection); all of them use equations, algorithms, orcut-off scores to produce numeric estimates of the future prob-ability of violence. SPJ instruments select their risk factors basedon a consideration of the broad literature on violence (rational orlogical item selection); none of them use equations, algorithms, or

cut-off scores to produce estimates of the future probability ofviolence, numeric or otherwise. Despite these meaningful differ-ences, available empirical evidence suggests that both types ofapproaches are comparably associated with violence.

In this column, I would like to focus on the SPJ approach to riskassessment. Although a good deal has been written about SPJ,there are several key points that could receive more clarification.The SPJ approach to risk assessment also is newer than actuarialprediction and therefore perhaps less familiar to professionals.Despite its relatively recent emergence, there have now been over100 empirical investigations of SPJ instruments (Guy, 2008).

SPJ is the term given to a collection of risk assessment instru-ments that share common features. As mentioned above, this in-cludes rational item selection and a non-actuarial means by whichto make risk judgments (described below). Structure is imposed inseveral ways: direction for conducting a risk evaluation; inclu-sion of a set of 20-30 risk factors to consider in every risk assess-ment; operational definitions and scoring instructions for risk fac-tors; direction for making final risk judgments about future risk forviolence and risk management needs.

SPJ instruments cover a variety of settings and applications (fullinstrument names in references): adult violence (HCR-20; Webster,Douglas, Eaves, & Hart, 1997); adolescent violence (SAVRY; Borum,Bartel, & Forth, 2006); childhood (boys and girls) antisocial be-havior (EARL-20B; Augimeri, Koegl, Webster, & Levene, 2001;2001; EARL-21G; Levene et al., 2001); adult sexual violence (SVR-20; Boer, Hart, Kropp, & Webster, 1997; RSVP; Hart et al., 2003);adult spousal violence (SARA; Kropp, Hart, Webster, & Eaves,1999); short-term risk for multiple adverse outcomes (START;Webster, Martin, Brink, Nicholls, & Middleton, 2004). The amountof research devoted to any one of these instruments varies.

What is the Main Purpose of SPJ Instruments?

Most basically, the primary purpose of SPJ instruments is to iden-tify important risk factors that are present for a given person, andto facilitate the identification of risk management strategies thatare logically linked to those risk factors that, if implemented, likelywill reduce or mitigate risk. In so doing, SPJ instruments providenon-numeric estimates of the likelihood of future violence (dis-cussed below) that can be used to prioritize risk management re-sources.


Why are SPJ Instruments Non-Actuarial?

This issue has in fact been addressed in numerous publications,and so I will just briefly outline the rationale for the developmentof SPJ instruments, and refer readers to other sources for more in-depth discussions (Douglas, 2008; Douglas & Kropp, 2002; Dou-glas & Reeves, in press; Hart, 1998; Heilbrun et al., in press a).First, it should be noted that “actuarial” is used here as defined byMeehl (1954) – the algorithmic combination of risk factors relatedto some outcome. Non-actuarial instruments can and should bebased in science and can and should be validated empirically.

SPJ instruments are not a combination of actuarial and unstruc-tured clinical prediction techniques. Rather, they attempt to achievethe strengths and minimize the weaknesses of both. For instance,although the discretion that is associated with clinical decision-making allows an idiographic focus, and tends to be well-suitedfor tailoring intervention and risk management programs, its reli-ability and validity may be jeopardized by the lack of structure.The strength of actuarial decision-making (the algorithmic combi-nation of risk factors) is that algorithmic decision-rules are 100%replicable, or reliable, because they are pre-specified. Used in con-junction with empirical item selection in a given sample, this ap-proach usually means that researchers can optimize the predictivevalidity of a set of risk factors in that sample. However, actuarialprocedures also have potential drawbacks. For instance, the algo-rithms derived in one sample can be highly sample-dependentand hence under-perform upon cross-validation in new samples.This result may be particularly so if complex weighting proce-dures are used in deriving predictive algorithms (Grann &Långström, 2007). As such, numeric estimates of the future prob-ability of violence might not be stable across settings. It is alsothe case that potentially important risk factors might be excludedfrom consideration, for example if they were not studied, or weremeasured with poor reliability, in the development research. Fur-ther, most though not all actuarial risk assessment instruments arenot focused on the identification of useful risk reduction and man-agement strategies. For these and other reasons, SPJ instrumentshave been developed with the goals of being comprehensive,generalizable, relevant to risk management, as well as reliable andvalid.

How Does One Use an SPJ Instrument?

The steps involved in using an SPJ instrument vary somewhatacross instruments. However, there are several fundamental stepsthat are common to all SPJ instruments.

1. The evaluation process is comparable to clinical or pro-fessional evaluations that would be conducted for other pur-poses, such as diagnosis or personality assessment. It re-quires a relatively comprehensive evaluation using as manysources as necessary including but not limited to an inter-view with the evaluee, review of case records, psychologicaltesting, interviews with third parties, and observation.

2. Information gathered in the first step is collated as itpertains to each of the risk factors on a given risk assessmentinstrument. I recommend that evaluators consider and docu-

ment the evidence for and against each risk factor. This ap-proach may promote balanced scoring and caseconceptualization.

3. Two further (related) steps are necessary in the consid-eration of each risk factor beyond merely indicating whetherit is present. First, evaluators should describe the individualmanifestation of each risk factor. For instance, if a person hassubstance use problems, as defined in item H5 on the HCR-20, what does it “look like” for this individual? How long hasit been a problem? Is it getting worse? Second, evaluatorsshould make a determination about the individual relevanceof each risk factor in terms of a person’s risk for violence. Forsome, substance use problems might be of extreme relevanceto violence risk; for others, it might not. Most (though not all)actuarial procedures, whether they use unit- or optimized-weighting procedures, assume that all risk factors are of equalrelevance to all people. The “relevance” often is determinedby a sample statistic, such as a correlation coefficient, oddsratio, or beta weight. Yet, these statistics are essentially aver-ages of people. For some of those individuals, the given riskfactor’s association with violence will be stronger than aver-age; for others, it will be weaker than average.

These two steps are necessary to facilitate the case formula-tion and risk management planning that are part of the SPJmodel. They also distinguish the SPJ model from most actu-arial instruments, which do not explicitly require these steps.The reason these steps are part of the SPJ model is to try tobridge the nomothetic and idiographic levels of analysis.That is, risk factors on SPJ measures (i.e., substance useproblems) have broad empirical support, but they manifestdifferently across people, and likely are of differential rel-evance to risk of violence across people. One of the criticaltasks in the SPJ model, one that most actuarial instrumentsdo not include, is to determine for whom which risk factorsare most relevant in terms of understanding and conceptual-izing risk for violence.

4. Specification of the risk reduction strategies that couldbe used to mitigate the risk associated with the risk factorsthat were identified, taking into account those that are con-sidered most relevant to a person’s risk for violence. Thisfeature of the SPJ model also differs from most actuarial riskassessment procedures.

5. Based on the foregoing, communication of one’s risk judg-ment is made, typically as “Low,” “Moderate,” or “High” Risk.These simple descriptive categories are intended to capturemore than the estimated future likelihood of violence.

a. High risk should be applied to cases (a) with many relevantviolent risk factors present, or (b) that require frequent, inten-sive, or highly restrictive supervision, monitoring, manage-ment, or intervention in order to stem violence risk. In gen-eral, evaluators should make a decision of high risk if theybelieve, based on the number and relevance of risk factorsthat are present, and the associated degree of intervention,


supervision, monitoring, or management required to mitigaterisk, that a person will likely be violent in the future if noappropriate risk management plans are not enacted.

b. Low risk should be reserved for cases (a) in which there arefew relevant violent risk factors present, or (b) that requireminimal or no supervision, monitoring, management, or inter-vention in order to stem violence risk.

c. Moderate risk should be applied to cases which are neitherhigh nor low risk, as defined above.

SPJ risk judgments, then, communicate not only a non-numericestimate of the likelihood of future violence, but also statementsabout the degree of intervention required to mitigate risk, and thenature of those interventions. As described further in Douglasand Reeves (in press), evaluators should also specify how fre-quently and how soon re-evaluations should be conducted. Therationale for not including numeric risk estimates for clinical use isprovided above, and in other sources (Douglas, 2008; Douglas &Kropp, 2002; Hart, 1998; Heilbrun et al., in press a; chapters withinOtto & Douglas, in press).

The Role of Numbers in SPJ

If one reads a published article on an SPJ instrument, it looks a lotlike a published article on an actuarial instrument – beta weights,odds ratios, areas under the curve (AUC), percent correctly clas-sified, and so forth. Why is this so, if SPJ instruments are notintended to be used with numeric estimates? I don’t think there isan inconsistency, here. Randy Kropp and I outlined a basic planfor the evaluation of SPJ instruments which included testingwhether (a) the risk factors were reliable and valid, and (b) whetherjudgments based on those risk factors were reliable and valid(Douglas & Kropp, 2002). Most studies of SPJ instruments haveevaluated the former question, which is necessary in terms oftesting the choice and definition of risk factors on various SPJtools, and hence can serve as a basis for making clinical judg-ments about risk.

As reviewed below, fewer studies have evaluated the latter ques-tion about whether risk judgments based on SPJ tools are reliableand valid. These studies also provide estimates of predictive va-lidity, sometimes in the form of the number (percent) of peoplewho are violent as a function of final risk judgments of low, mod-erate or high risk. These studies are not intended to provide aformal estimated probability of violence associated with judgmentsof low, moderate or high risk that should be used in clinical prac-tice. Rather, they test the basic premise of the SPJ model thatpersons judged to be high risk are indeed at higher risk than thosejudged to be moderate or low risk.

Does it Work? State of the Research on SPJAs mentioned above, there have been over 100 evaluations of thevalidity of SPJ instruments, approximately half of which are of theHCR-20. There have now been approximately 16 studies on whetherthe risk judgments of low, moderate, or high risk actually identifypeople at differential risk for violence. I’ll briefly summarize re-sults of these studies, focusing on the 11 published studies (see

also Douglas, 2008; Douglas & Reeves, in press; Heilbrun et al., inpress a, b; chapters within Otto & Douglas, in press).

Most studies of SPJ final risk judgments show that they are re-lated to violence as or more strongly than the numeric use of theinstruments upon which they are based. In 9 of 11 published stud-ies, the final (non-actuarial) risk judgment of low, moderate or highrisk was significantly predictive of violence (for reviews, see Dou-glas, 2008; Douglas & Reeves, in press; Heilbrun et al., in press a,b). In the five published studies that tested the incremental valid-ity of these judgments against the numeric use of the instruments,each reported that they added incrementally to the use of thenumeric scores on the instruments. To give one example of suchresearch, I’ll describe a prospective study conducted by de Vogeland de Ruiter (2006) on 127 forensic psychiatric patients. In thisstudy, consensus ratings of low, moderate and high risk on theHCR-20 were strongly predictive of later violence (AUC = .86). Of36 patients estimated to be low risk, none were later violent; of 61estimated to be moderate risk, 5 (8%) were later violent, and of 30estimated to be high risk, 19 (64%) were later violent. In multivari-ate analyses, addition of the risk judgment of low, moderate orhigh risk (re-coded for research as 0, 1, or 2) significantly im-proved upon the predictive validity of the HCR-20 total numericscore. Other studies have reported that the final risk judgments oflow, moderate or high risk predict as well or better than actuarialinstruments (de Vogel, de Ruiter, van Beek, & Mead, 2004; Dou-glas, Yeomans, & Boer, 2005).

Conclusions

The SPJ approach to risk assessment is relatively new, thoughresearch would suggest that it is one viable means by which toconduct a violence risk assessment. Most basically, it is intendedto identify risk factors, anticipated level of risk, and necessaryrisk reduction and management strategies. The degree of researchin support of SPJ instruments varies by instruments, and clini-cians should consult this research base as part of the process ofdeciding whether to use any of these instruments. There are atleast two important and interesting areas for future research onthe SPJ model. First, although research is quite consistent in sup-porting the validity of estimates of low, moderate or high risk,there is no research on why they are as or more strongly related toviolence relative to the numeric use of SPJ instruments, or whencompared with actuarial instruments. Second, it will be vital to testwhether use of SPJ instruments actually reduces later violence throughthe identification and management of important risk factors.

References

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Research BriefsEditors: Marc Boccaccini, Ph.D.

and Maria Hartwig, Ph.D

The AP-LS newsletter research briefs are writtenby students in the Clinical Psychology Ph.D. Pro-gram at Sam Houston State University: ErikaCanales, Laadan Gharagozloo, Laura Heinonen,Vivian Lotts, Amanda McGorty, and Amy Wevodau;and by students in the Forensic Psychology Ph.D.Program at John Jay College: Sarah Jordan, JasonMandelbaum, Joseph Toomey, and Brian Wallace.

COMMUNITY, CORREC-TIONAL, & FORENSIC

TREATMENT

Baillargeon, J., Binswanger,I.A., Penn, J.V., Williams, B.A.,& Murray, O.J. (2009). Psychi-atric disorders and repeat in-carcerations: The revolvingprison door. American Jour-nal of Psychiatry, 166, 103-109. Data on psychiatric dis-orders and history of incar-ceration were obtained for asample of 79,211 prison in-mates. Over a 6-year period,inmates were significantlymore likely to have multipleprior incarcerations if they hada major psychiatric disorder. Adiagnosis of bipolar disorderhad the strongest associationwith incarceration, with in-mates with bipolar disorderbeing approximately threetimes more likely than otherinmates to have four or moreprevious incarcerations.

Davis, K., Fallon, J., Vogel, S.,& Teachout, A., (2008). Inte-grating into the mental healthsystem from the criminal jus-tice system: Jail aftercareservices for persons with asevere mental illness. Jour-nal of Offender Rehabilita-tion, 46, 217-231. In a sampleof 36 persons participating inAssertive community service(ACT), aftercare hospitaliza-tions and days incarceratedwere reduced (compared topre-ACT), while arrests werenot.

Dembo, R., et al., (2008). Evalu-ation of an innovative post-ar-rest diversion program: 12-month recidivism analysis.Journal of Offender Rehabili-tation, 47, 356-384. Florida ju-veniles (male n = 255, female n= 154) completed a Post-ArrestDiversion (PAD) program be-tween April and June of 2003.Completion of PAD was asso-ciated with significantly fewerarrests and charges, compared

to juveniles who did not com-plete the PAD program.

Denning, R., & Homel, R.(2008). Predicting recidivismin juvenile offenders on com-munity-based orders: The im-pact of risk factors and ser-vice delivery. Journal of Of-fender Rehabilitation, 46, 189-215. In a sample of 190 adoles-cent males, implementation ofthe Youth Justice System(YJS), a program implementedin Australia in order to workwith young offenders andmonitor their compliance, wasnot associated with a signifi-cant decrease in recidivism.

Heilbrun, K., DeMatteo, D.,Fretz, R., Erickson, J., Yasuhara,K., & Anumba, N. (2008). How“specific” are gender-specificrehabilitation needs? An em-pirical analysis. Criminal Jus-tice and Behavior, 35, 1382-1397. Archival records from2,321 offenders (1,435 male and886 female) revealed signifi-cant differences betweenmales and females on the com-panions, financial, criminalhistory, family/marital, accom-modation, and alcohol/drugdomains of the Level of Ser-vice Inventory-Revised (LSI-R). Female offenders fell intohigher score ranges than maleoffenders in the companions,financial, alcohol/drug, andfamily/marital domains, indi-

cating more substantial prob-lems for the female offenders.Male offenders fell into higherscore ranges than female of-fenders in the criminal historyand accommodation domains.

Maeder, E. M. & Wiener, R. L.(2008). Likelihood of usingdrug courts: Predictions us-ing procedural justice and thetheory of planned behavior.Behavioral Sciences and theLaw, 26, 543-553. In a sampleof 166 substance users, trust-worthiness and deliberativeattitudes predicted intentionto use drug courts in the fu-ture. However, only delibera-tive attitudes was predictive ofintent to use drug courts whenboth predictors were examinedin the same model.

Magaletta, P.R., Patry, M.W.,Wheat, B., & Bates, J. (2008).Prison inmate characteris-tics and suicide attempt lethal-ity: An exploratory study. Psy-chological Services, 5, 351-361. Researchers reviewedarchived suicide incident re-ports in order to complete theLethality of Suicide AttemptRating Scale (LSARS) for 205male prison inmates. Resultsindicate that past use of PCPor LSD and the presence of anAxis II disorder significantlyincreased the risk of high le-thality suicide attempts.

Mellow, J. & Christian, J.,(2008). Transitioning offend-ers to the community: A con-tent analysis of reentryguides. Journal of OffenderRehabilitation, 47, 339-355.Transition guides for pris-oners being released (N = 13)were analyzed to evaluate con-tent, readability, and interac-tive nature. Reading level wasfound to be difficult for manyguides. Of the 13 guides re-viewed, 8 described specificstrategies to use for locatingservices.

Sacks, J. Y., et al. (2008).Prison therapeutic commu-nity treatment for female of-fenders: Profiles and prelimi-nary findings for mentalhealth and other variables(crime, substance use and HIVrisk). Journal of OffenderRehabilitation, 46, 233-261.Female offenders in a prisonTherapeutic Community (n =163) and those in an IntensiveOutpatient Program (n = 151)showed improvements in suchdomains as, mental health,substance abuse, criminal be-havior, and HIV –risk, duringthe initial six months after re-lease, suggesting prison TCmay be more effective thanIOP.

Schoenwald, S. K., Chapman,J. E., Sheidow, A. J., & Carter,R. E. (2009). Long-term youthcriminal outcomes in MSTtransport: The impact of thera-pist adherence and organiza-tional climate and structure.Journal of Clinical Child andAdolescent Psychology, 38,91-105. Juveniles who engagedin delinquent behaviors andtheir caregivers (N=1,979) par-ticipated in Multisystemictherapy. High therapist adher-ence was the strongest predic-tor of low criminal charges. Jobsatisfaction, potential forgrowth and advancement, andparticipation in decision mak-ing were also indicators of


lower levels of criminal chargeswhen therapist adherence ef-fects were held constant.

Spano, R., Rivera, C., Vazsonyi,A.T., & Bolland, J.M. (2008).The impact of exposure to vio-lence on a trajectory of (de-clining) parental monitoring:A partial test of the ecologicaltransactional model of com-munity violence. CriminalJustice and Behavior, 35,1411-1428. African Americanyouths (N = 348) were sur-veyed to examine the impactof exposure to violence onparenting over time. Youthswho had a sharply increasingtrajectory of exposure to vio-lence over time also tended tohave a decrease in parentalmonitoring.

St. Lawrence, J.S., Snodgrass,C.E., Robertson, A., & Baird-Thomas, C. (2008). Minimizingthe risk of pregnancy, sexu-ally transmitted diseases, andHIV among incarcerated ado-lescent girls: Identifying po-tential points of intervention.Criminal Justice and Behav-ior. 35, 1500-1514. Incarcer-ated female juveniles (N = 234)completed demographic, indi-vidual, partner, peer, and fam-ily measures and were testedfor sexually transmitted dis-eases. Participants’ older age,earlier sexual debut (age atfirst-time intercourse), gangmembership, higher percep-tions of being at risk for STDs,and higher levels of substanceuse were each positively cor-related with risk for STDs.

Warner, T.D., & Kramer, J.H.(2009). Closing the revolvingdoor?: Substance abuse treat-ment as an alternative to tra-ditional sentencing for drug-dependent offenders. Crimi-nal Justice and Behavior. 36,89-109. The effectiveness ofPennsylvania’s drug and alco-hol treatment-based interme-

diate punishment, RestrictiveIntermediate Punishments(RIP/D&A), was examined us-ing rearrest rates at 12, 24, 36months postrelease (N =3,290). Offenders who suc-cessfully completed treatmenthad a lower risk of rearrestthan offenders receiving tra-ditional sentences (e.g., jail,probation). Offenders sen-tenced to RIP/D&A who didnot successfully completetreatment were more at risk forrearrest than traditionally sen-tenced offenders in general.

Way, B.B., Sawyer, D.A., Lilly,S.N., Moffitt, C., & Stapholz,B.J. (2008). Characteristics ofinmates who received a diag-nosis of serious mental ill-ness upon entry to New Yorkstate prison. Psychiatric Ser-vices, 59, 1335-1337. In astudy of prison inmates inNew York state (N = 2,918), 6%were admitted to mental healthservices and given a diagno-sis of serious mental illness.Of the 6%, almost all inmateshad a prior psychiatric hospi-talization (97%), and many hadpreviously attempted suicide(62%), received inpatient treat-ment for substance abuse(59%), and had previouslybeen incarcerated (46%).

DELIQUENCY/ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOR

Bäckström, M., & Björklund,F. (2008). The Measures ofCriminal Attitudes and Asso-ciates (MCAA): Further test-ing of structural and crite-rion-related validity. CriminalJustice and Behavior. 35,1398-1410. The validity of aSwedish translation of theMCAA was evaluated usingtwo samples (184 criminal of-fenders and 556 participantswho completed the question-naire through an Internet Website open to the public). Crite-rion-related validity was evi-

denced through the offendershaving more positive attitudestoward criminality than theinternet sample, changes in theoffenders’ MCAA ratings af-ter treatment, and test scoresbeing meaningfully related tocriminal history variables.Cronbach’s alpha for theMCAA scale was .95.

Beaver, K. (2008). The inter-action between genetic riskand childhood sexual abuse inthe prediction of adolescentviolent behavior. SexualAbuse: A Journal of Researchand Treatment. 20, 426-443.Data from the Add Health, aprospective, longitudinal, andnationally representativesample of American adoles-cents in 7th through 12th grade,was used to examine the inde-pendent and interactive ef-fects of childhood sexualabuse and genetic risk on vio-lent delinquency. Sexuallyabused males, in comparisonwith nonabused males, self-re-ported greater involvement inviolent delinquency duringadolescence. Sexually abusedfemales were not more likelyto engage in violence whencompared with females whowere not sexually abused. Formales, the combination ofsexual abuse and high scoreson the genetic risk index wasassociated with greater self-reported violence.

Beaver, K.M., Schutt, J.E.,Boutwell, B.B., Ratchford, M.,Roberts, K., & Barnes, J.C.(2009). Genetic and environ-mental influences on levels ofself-control and delinquentpeer affiliation: Results froma longitudinal sample of ado-lescent twins. Criminal Jus-tice and Behavior, 36, 41-60.Analysis of Add Health datafrom sibling pairs revealed thatgenetic factors accounted forbetween 40% and 56% of thevariance in low self-controland between 37% and 62% of

the variance in contact withand exposure to drug-usingpeers.

Brinkley, C.A., Diamond, P.M.,Magaletta, P.R., & Heigel, C.P.(2008). Cross-validation ofLevenson’s psychopathy scalein a sample of federal femaleinmates. Assessment, 15, 464-482. Confirmatory factoranalysis did not support theexpected 2-factor structure ofthe Levenson Self-Report Psy-chopathy Scale (LSRP) in asample of 430 federal femaleinmates. Instead a 3-factorsolution (Egocentric, Antiso-cial, Callous) provided thebest fit with the data, similarto solutions proposed by pre-vious research with female in-mates. The researchers arguethat the significant relation-ship between high LSRPSscores, self-reported hostility,antisocial behavior, aggres-sion, and egocentricity sug-gest that the LSRPS taps dif-ferent aspects of psychopathyas described by Cleckley(1976).

Decuyper, M., De Fruyt, F., &Buschman, J. (2008). A five-fac-tor model perspective on psy-chopathy and comorbid Axis-II disorders in a forensic-psy-chiatric sample. Interna-tional Journal of Law andPsychiatry, 31, 394-406. Maleforensic-psychiatric patients(N=48) were assessed with thePCL-R, NEO Personality In-ventory (NEO-PI-R), NEOFive-Factor-Inventory (NEO-FFI), and two Dutch self-re-port personality inventories,the VKP and ADP-IV Ques-tionnaire. Analysis revealedsignificant correlations be-tween the five-factor modeltraits and antisocial personal-ity disorder ratings on theADP-IV and the VKP. Therewere only two significant cor-relations between the five-fac-tor model traits and PCL-R


scores. Antisocial PersonalityDisorder was the most com-mon Axis-II disorder amongthose high in psychopathy.

Dolan, S. L., Bechara, A, &Nathan, P. E. (2008). Executivedysfunction as a risk markerfor substance abuse: The roleof impulsive personality traits.Behavioral Sciences and theLaw, 26, 799-822. This studyevaluated the relationship be-tween family history of sub-stance use, executive func-tions, impaired decision mak-ing, and current substancedependence among 38 inpa-tient substance dependentparticipants and 30 commu-nity controls. Substance de-pendent individuals reportedpoorer executive functioning.Family history was related toimpaired performance on testsevaluating the dorsolateralprefrontal cortex. Results alsoindicated that impulsive per-sonality traits, specifically ur-gency scores, accounted forgroup differences in executivefunctioning.

Douglas, K.S., Lilienfeld, S.O.,Skeem, J.L., Poythress, N.G.,Edens, J.F., & Patrick, C.J.(2008). Relation of antisocialand psychopathic traits tosuicide-related behavioramong offenders. Law andHuman Behavior, 32, 511-525.ASPD and the impulsivity/lifestyle features of psychop-athy were associated with sui-cide-related behavior (SRB) ina sample of 682 male offend-ers. However, the relationshipwas mediated by high nega-tive emotionality and low con-straints. ASPD was weakly butsignificantly related to concur-rent suicide ideation and pastSRB. Additionally the behav-ioral dimensions captured byPCL-R Factor 3 were related toSRB. PPI-I was inversely re-lated to suicidal indices whilePPI-II was positively related.Results suggest that PCL-R

Factor 3 may be more closelyrelated to suicidal behaviorthan the DSM-IVconceptualization of ASPD.

Edens, J.F., Marcus, D.K., &Ruiz, M.A. (2008). Taxometricanalyses of borderline person-ality features in a large-scalemale and female offendersample. Journal of AbnormalPsychology, 117, 705-711.Taxometric analyses of scoresfrom the PAI Borderline Fea-tures subscales provide sup-port for a dimensional struc-ture of borderline personalitypathology in a sample of male(n = 787) and female (n = 368)prison inmates.

Edens, J. F., Poythress, N. G.,Lilienfeld, S. O., & Patrick, C.J. (2008). A prospective com-parison of two measures ofpsychopathy in the predictionof institutional misconduct.Behavioral Sciences and theLaw, 26, 529-541. In a sampleof 46 inmates who were as-sessed with the PCL-R and thePsychopathic Personality In-ventory (PPI), PPI total andtwo factor scores tended to bestronger predictors of the to-tal number of institutional vio-lations (r ranged from .28 to.36 at two-year follow-up) thanPCL-R total and facet scores(r ranged from -.01 to .21).

Enns, R.A., Reddon, J.R., Das,J.P., & Boudreau, A., (2008).Measuring executive func-tions in female delinquentsusing the cognitive assess-ment system. Journal of Of-fender Rehabilitation, 47, 3-23. Adolescent delinquent fe-males (n = 100) and males (n =111) had lower than the normfull scale scores on the Cogni-tive Assessment System (fe-males M = 92.88 SD = 11.08;males M = 89.80 SD = 16.31).

Forsman, M., Lichtenstein, P.,Andershed, H., & Larsson, H.(2008). Genetic effects explain

the stability of psychopathicpersonality from mid- to lateadolescence. Journal of Ab-normal Psychology, 117, 606-617. A sample of male and fe-male twin pairs from Sweden(N = 1,480) were assessed forpsychopathic personality us-ing the Youth PsychopathicTraits Inventory (YPI). Re-sults indicate that genetic ef-fects primarily explain the highstability of psychopathic per-sonality from mid- to late ado-lescence.

Haden, S. C. & Shiva, A. (2008).Trait impulsivity in a foren-sic inpatient sample: An evalu-ation of the Barratt impulsive-ness scale. Behavioral Sci-ences and the Law, 26, 675-690. Male forensic psychiatricinpatients (N=425) completedthe Barratt Impulsivity Scale(BIS-11) and Personality As-sessment Inventory (PAI).Participants reported morenonplanning than motor andattentional impulsiveness.Analyses also revealed sev-eral significant association be-tween impulsiveness and mea-sures of psychopathology onthe PAI.

Kenny, D.T., Lennings, C.J., &Munn, O. A., (2008). Risk fac-tors for self-harm and suicidein incarcerated young offend-ers: Implications for policyand practice. Journal of Fo-rensic Psychology Practice, 8,358-393. Incarcerated adoles-cents (N = 242) were assessedto identify risk factors for sui-cide and self-harming (SSH)behavior. Those showing SSHbehaviors within the past 18months were more likely thannon-SSH adolescents to haveinjected drugs, committedcrimes for drugs, been underthe influence of alcohol or il-licit drugs during a crime, en-gaged in high-risk sexual ac-tivity and thrill seeking, beenunconscious more than twotimes due to head injury, expe-

rienced severe childhoodabuse or emotional neglect,and have had a history of ag-gressive behaviors.

Kucharski, I. T. , Petitt, A.N.,Toomey, J., & Duncan, S.,(2008). The utility of the Per-sonality Assessment Inven-tory in the assessment of psy-chopathy. Journal of Foren-sic Psychology Practice, 8,344-357. Criminal defendant’sscores (N = 92) on the PAI andthe PCL-R were compared todetermine validity of the PAIas a self-report multi-scale in-ventory used for identificationof psychopathic characteris-tics. Measures of behavioralfeatures, but not affective/in-terpersonal features, were use-ful for differentiating betweenthose high and low in psych-opathy.

Lowe, N.C., Dawson-Edwards,C., Minor, K. I., & Wells, J.B.,(2008). Understanding the de-cision to pursue revocation ofintensive supervision: A de-scriptive survey of juvenileprobation and aftercare offic-ers. Journal of Offender Re-habilitation, 46, 137-169. Ju-venile Intensive SupervisionTeam (JIST) employee (N = 66)were surveyed about percep-tions concerning programgoals and revocation. Resultsshow rehabilitation rated asthe least important functionand technical violations as themost frequent violation.

Miller, J.D., Gaughan, E.T., &Pryor, L.R. (2008). TheLevenson Self-Report Psych-opathy Scale: An examinationof the personality traits anddisorders associated with theLSRP factors. Assessment, 15,450-463. Undergraduate males(n = 119) reported higher lev-els of the interpersonal and af-fective aspects of psychop-athy on the LRSP than females(n = 152), but there were no


significant gender differencesfound with regard to levels ofsocial deviance. Total LSRPscores were positively corre-lated with Neuroticism andnegatively correlated with Ex-traversion, Agreeableness,and Conscientiousness.LSRP Factor 1 and Factor 2were significantly correlated (r= .46) and both factors werepositively correlated with allDSM-IV PDs except OCPD.

Minor, K.I., Wells, J.B., & An-gel, E., (2008). Recidivismamong juvenile offenders fol-lowing release from residen-tial placements: Multivariatepredictors and gender differ-ences. Journal of Offender Re-habilitation, 46, 171-188. In asample of 580 juvenile offend-ers (males = 567 & females =113), 5 of 33 variables were sig-nificant predictors of recidi-vism: being male, older, hav-ing a history of abandonment,sexual abuse, or special edu-cation needs predicting ahigher likelihood of recidivism.

Neumann, C.S., & Hare, R.D.(2008). Psychopathic traits ina large community sample:Links to violence, alcohol use,and intelligence. Journal ofConsulting and Clinical Psy-chology, 76, 893-899. PCL:SVscores from a communitysample of 514 adults from theMacArthur Violence Risk As-sessment Study indicate thatclinically significant levels ofpsychopathy in the generalpopulation are rare. Factor-analysis results supported thefour-factor model of psychop-athy in this community sample.

Neumann, C.S., Malterer, M.B.,& Newman, J.P. (2008). Factorstructure of the PsychopathicPersonality Inventory (PPI):Findings from a large incar-cerated sample. Psychologi-cal Assessment, 15, 169-174.Factor analysis of PPI scores

from 1,224 offenders failed tosupport the 2-factor modelidentified by Benning et al.(2003). Findings suggest thata 3-factor solution (Factor 1:Impulsive Nonconformity,Blame Externalization, Machia-vellian Egocentricity and Fear-lessness, Factor 2: Stress Im-munity and Social Potency,Factor 3: Coldheartedness andCarefree Nonplanfulness) maybe more appropriate.

Ruiz, M.A. & Edens, J. F.,(2008). Recovery and replica-tion of internalizing and ex-ternalizing dimensions withinthe Personality AssessmentInventory. Journal of Person-ality Assessment, 90, 585-592.Researchers split a sample of1099 offenders and used fac-tor analysis to examine the fitof a two-dimensional model ofPAI scores (Internalization andExternalization). The two-di-mensional model fit the databetter than a one-dimensionalmodel.

Ruiz, M.A., Poythress, N.G.,Lilienfeld, S.O., & Douglas,K.S. (2008). Factor structureand correlates of the dissocia-tive experiences scale in alarge offender sample. Assess-ment, 15, 511-521. Dissocia-tive Experiences Scale (DES)scores from 1,515 offenderssuggested poor fit for a 3-fac-tor model. DES total scorescorrelated significantly withtrauma-related variables aftercontrolling for negative affect.Total scores related to mea-sures of antisocial behaviorand aggression. Total scoresdid not, however, predict crimi-nal or violent recidivism at a 1-year follow up.

Stanford, M. S., Houston, R.J., & Baldridge, R. M. (2008).Comparison of impulsive andpremeditated perpetrators ofintimate partner violence. Be-havioral Sciences and theLaw, 26, 709-722. Using the

Impulsive/Premeditated Ag-gression Scale, authors clas-sified (N = 113) men convictedof domestic violence and courtordered into an interventionprogram into one of twogroups: impulsive (N = 76) orpremeditated (N = 37). Partici-pants also completed the Psy-chopathic Personality Inven-tory, Personality AssessmentInventory, and an aggressionhistory questionnaire. Menclassified as premeditatedscored higher on psycho-pathic traits and treatment re-jection, while men classified asimpulsive reported more seri-ous and varied psychopathol-ogy.

Sturek, J.C., Loper, A.B., &Warren, J.I. (2008). Psychop-athy in female inmates: TheSCID-II Personality Ques-tionnaire and the PCL-R. Psy-chological Services, 5, 309-319. Female prison inmates (N= 136) were assessed with theSCID-II-PQ and PCL-R. Re-sults indicate a positive rela-tionship between the Antiso-cial Personality Disorder(ASPD) scale from the SCID-II-PQ and Factor 2 of the PCL-R (based on two-factor modelof psychopathy). Further-more, summary analysis ofSCID-II-PQ items indicatedthat conduct disorder itemsfrom the ASPD scale were ef-fective in correctly identifying72% of inmates meeting crite-ria for psychopathy (PCL-Rtotal score e” 25).

Swogger, M.T., Walsh, Z., &Kosson, D.S. (2008). Psychop-athy subtypes among AfricanAmerican county jail inmates.Criminal Justice and Behav-ior. 35, 1484-1499. The PCL-R,IM-P, STAI-T, and SCID-I wereused to identify psychopathysubtypes in a sample of 262African American male countyjail inmates. The 6-cluster so-lution included: Cluster 1 (Pri-mary psychopaths, n = 33),

Cluster 2 (Secondary psycho-paths, n = 42), Cluster 3 (Lowpsychopathology criminals, n= 48), Cluster 4 (anxious, anti-social criminals, n = 35), Clus-ter 5 (alcohol-dependent crimi-nals, n = 55), and Cluster 6(drug-dependent criminals, n= 49). The finding of six clus-ters is inconsistent with find-ings from European Americaninmates and suggests a morecomplex taxonomic pictureamong African Americans.

Teten, A. L., Miller, L. A.,Bailey, S. D., Dunn, N. J. &Kent, T. A. (2008). Empathicdeficits and alexithymia intrauma-related impulsive ag-gression. Behavioral Sci-ences and the Law, 26, 823-832. Authors used regressionanalysis to investigatewhether alexithymia and empa-thy were related with impul-sive aggression among 38 im-pulsive aggressive veterans.Aleyithymia was uniquely re-lated with impulsive aggres-sion while deficits in empathywere associated with generalverbal aggression.

Vaughn, M. G., Howard, M. O.,& DeLisi, M. (2008). Psycho-pathic personality traits anddelinquent careers: An em-pirical examination. Interna-tional Journal of Law andPsychiatry, 31, 407-416. Juve-nile offenders (N=723) were as-sessed by trained graduatestudents using the AntisocialProcess Screening Device(APSD). Participants alsocompleted the PsychopathicPersonality Inventory-ShortVersion (PPI-SV), the Self-Re-port of Delinquency (SRD),and items from the Brief Symp-tom Inventory (BSI). Higherscores on the PPI-SV andAPSD Narcissism factors andthe APSD Impulsivity andUnemotional factors were as-sociated with delinquent be-haviors. Juveniles scoringhigh on the APSD Impulsivity


and Narcissism factors, andthose scoring high on the PPI-SV Rebellious Narcissism fac-tor were more likely to engagein hostile aggression.

Verona, E., Sadeh, N., Case,S.M., Reed, A., &Bhattacharjee, A. (2008). Self-reported use of differentforms of aggression in lateadolescence and emergingadulthood. Assessment, 15,493-510. Two studies investi-gated the psychometric prop-erties of a self-report measureof commonly recognized formsof aggression (FOA). Study 1(-N = 1,567 students) identifieda 5-factor model of aggression(Physical, Property, Verbal, Re-lational and Passive-Rela-tional) and several significantdifferences between forms ofaggression. Study 2 examinedthe fit of the 5-factor structurein a new sample of ethnicallymixed college students (N =192), and found that a 4-factoror 2-factor higher-order modelprovided the best fit with thedata.

Walsh, Z., & Kosson, D.S.(2008). Psychopathy and vio-lence: The importance of fac-tor level interactions. Psycho-logical Assessment, 15, 114-120. Two studies examined theindependent and interactiveeffects of the Interpersonal/Unemotional (Factor 1) andImpulsive/Antisocial (Factor2) factors assessed by thePCL-R in a sample of countyjail inmates (n = 199) and civilpsychiatric patients (n = 863).The Factor 1 x Factor 2 inter-action was a significant pre-dictor of violence in bothsamples. Factor 2 was a stron-ger predictor of violence, butthe relationship between Fac-tor 2 and violence was stron-ger at higher levels of Factor1.

Walters, G.D. (2008). Self-re-port measures of psychopathy,

antisocial personality, andcriminal lifestyle: Testing andvalidating a two-dimensionalmodel. Criminal Justice andBehavior. 35, 1459-1483. Re-sults from an SEM analysis of5 studies showed modest toadequate fit for a two-dimen-sional model of criminality(proactive, reactive). Analysisalso revealed that the two-di-mensional model was superiorto one-factor and social learn-ing models in direct compari-sons using the AIC relative fitmeasure.

FORENSIC ASSESSMENT

Barendregt, M., Muller, E.,Nijiman, H., & de Beurs, E.2008. Factors associated withexperts’ opinions regardingcriminal responsibility in TheNetherlands. Behavioral Sci-ences and the Law, 26, 619-631. Experts opinions aboutcriminal responsibility wereassociated with several of-fender and crime characteris-tics. Axis I psychiatric symp-toms were associated with anincreased lack of responsibil-ity. Axis II personality disor-ders were associated with di-minished responsibility, al-though severely diminishedresponsibility to a lesser ex-tent. The type of crime com-mitted by the defendant wasfound to be less importantthan how the crime was com-mitted. Minority status led toa higher chance ofbeing held responsible.

Bianchini, K.J., Etherton, J.L.,Greve, K.W., Heinly, M.T., &Meyers, J.E. (2008). Classifi-cation accuracy of MMPI-2validity scales in the detectionof pain-related malingering.Assessment, 15, 435-449. Sev-eral MMPI-2 validity scales (F,Fb, FBS and MI) showed highlevels of accuracy for detect-ing malingering in clinical pa-tients with chronic pain (N =

115). Several scales (F, Fb,FBS, MI, L, ES, Hs and Hy)were useful for differentiatingbetween responses producedby deliberate exaggeration, le-gitimate psychological distur-bance, and the pressure ofpursing a legal claim.

Boccaccini, M.T., Turner, D.B.,& Murrie, D.C. (2008). Do someevaluators report consistentlyhigher or lower PCL-Rscores than others? Findingsfrom a statewide sample ofsexually violent predatorevaluations. Psychology,Public Policy, and Law, 14,262-283. In a sample of 321 sexoffenders who were scored onthe PCL-R by one of 20 differ-ent evaluators, approximately30% of the variance in PCL-Rtotal scores was attributableto idiosyncratic scoring ten-dencies of the evaluators. Themean PCL-R scores assignedby two of the most prolificevaluators differed by nearly10 points. Rater agreement forPCL-R total scores was low(ICC = .47) in a subsample ofoffenders with two PCL-Rscores from state-contractedevaluators.

Cooper, V.G., & Zapf, P.A.(2008). Psychiatric patients’comprehension of Mirandarights. Law and Human Be-havior, 32, 390-405. Psychiat-ric inpatients (N = 75) demon-strated similar levels of under-standing on Grisso’s andGoldstein’s measures for as-sessing Miranda-related abili-ties, even though the languageused by Goldstein’s measurerequired a lower grade readinglevel and had a higher readingease score than Grisso’s mea-sure (but was not more easilyunderstood than Grisso’s mea-sure). Psychiatric symptomswere negatively correlatedwith Miranda comprehensioneven after controlling for IQ.

Fernandez, K., Boccaccini,M.T., & Noland, R.M. (2008).Detecting over- andunderreporting of psychopa-thology with the Spanish-lan-guage Personality Assess-ment Inventory: Findings froma simulation study with bilin-gual speakers. PsychologicalAssessment, 15, 189-194. En-glish- and Spanish-languagevalidity scales of the PAI per-formed similarly for detectingmalingering in a sample of 72bilingual participants. Nega-tive Impression Managementand Positive Impression Man-agement scales demonstratedthe highest levels of accuracyfor the identification of simu-lators in both language ver-sions. However, optimal cutscores for identifying simu-lated protocols varied some-what across language ver-sions.

Large, M. M., & Nielssen, O.(2008). Factors associatedwith agreement between ex-perts in evidence about psychi-atric injury. Journal of theAmerican Academy of Psy-chiatry and the Law, 36, 515-521. Reports from experts(N=148) who were either en-gaged by the same side (n=51)or opposing sides (n=97) wereexamined for expert agreementabout the presence of a men-tal disorder and specific diag-nosis. Experts on the same sidehad good agreement about thepresence of a mental disorder(8�=.74), but lower agreementfor the exact diagnosis(8�=.31). Experts onadversarial sides had pooragreement for both presenceof a mental disorder (8�=.09)and diagnosis (8�= .14).

Murrie, D.C., Boccaccini, M.T.,Zapf, P.A., Warren, J.I., &Henderson, C.E. (2008). Clini-cal variation in findings ofcompetence to stand trial.Psychology, Public Policy,


and Law, 14, 177-193. Re-searchers examined the fre-quency with which compe-tence to stand trial evaluatorsin Virginia (n = 55) and Alabama(n = 5) reported that offenderswere incompetent to stand trial(IST). The rate of IST opinionsfor evaluators ranged from 0%to 62%, with psychiatrists be-ing less likely than psycholo-gists to report that offenderswere IST. However, there wasstill a significant amount ofvariability in IST rates for psy-chologists (range = 0% to55%).

Shealy, C., Cramer, R.J., Pirelli,G. (2008). Third party presenceduring criminal forensicevaluations: Psychologists’opinions, attitudes, and prac-tices. Professional Psychol-ogy: Research and Practice,39, 561-569. Data from a sur-vey of forensic practitioners(N = 160) indicate that the ma-jority of clinicians believe thepresence of a third party cannegatively impact a forensicevaluation (e.g., interfere withrapport building). However,presence of interpreters andstudents/trainees was viewedmore positively than presenceof attorneys or family mem-bers.

Walters, G.D., et al. (2008).Malingering as a categoricalor dimensional construct:The latent structure offeigned psychopathology asmeasured by the SIRS andMMPI-2. Psychological As-sessment, 15, 238-247. Re-searchers used SIRS (n =1,211) and MMPI-2 (n = 711)scores from civil and criminalexaminees to examine the la-tent structure of feigned psy-chopathology. Results sug-gest that feigned psychopa-thology is dimensional ratherthan taxonic. Results suggestthat malingering exists as a

continuous, rather than a di-chotomous, construct.

LAW ENFORCEMENT,CONFESSIONS,& DECEPTION

Alison, L., Kebbell, M. &Leung, J. (2008). A facet analy-sis of police officers’ self-re-ported use of suspect-inter-viewing strategies and theirdiscomfort with ambiguity.Applied Cognitive Psychol-ogy, 22, 1072-1087. HongKong police officers (n = 99)reported preferred interview-ing tactics and need for clo-sure. Officers with more Dis-comfort with Ambiguity useda wider array of interviewingtactics (including being morecoercive). Findings supportthe identification of a duplexstructure of interviewing tac-tics, with two intersecting fac-ets (cognitive-affective & fa-cilitative-coercive).

Ask, K., Rebelius, A. &Granhag, P.A. (2008). The‘elasticity’ of criminal evi-dence: A moderator of investi-gator bias. Applied CognitivePsychology, 22, 1245-1259.Police trainees (n = 117) readthe background of homicidecase and received confirmingor disconfirming evidence.Disconfirming evidence wasrated as less reliable and gen-erated more questions regard-ing reliability. Differentialskepticism was higher for wit-ness evidence than DNA orphoto evidence demonstrat-ing varied ‘elasticity.’

Cao, L., Hou, C., & Huang, B.,(2008). Correlates of the vic-tim-offender relationship inhomicide. InternationalJournal of Offender Therapyand Comparative Criminol-ogy, 52, 658-672. Researchersexamined sociodemographicand situational factors of 308homicide cases to identify their

potential role in three types ofhomicide: homicide betweenstrangers, between acquain-tances, and between intimates.Older age was predictive ofacquaintance and intimate ho-micide, married suspects mur-dered intimate partners morethan strangers, those with pre-vious convictions were morelikely to kill strangers, and pre-meditation was most commonin acquaintance homicide.

Campos, L., & Alonso-Quecuty, M. L. (2008). Lan-guage crimes and the cogni-tive interview: Testing its ef-ficacy in retrieving a conver-sational event. Applied Cog-nitive Psychology, 22, 1211-1227. Researchers studyingmemory for criminal conversa-tions examined the effective-ness of the Cognitive Inter-view (CI). CI participants (n =25) made fewer errors and pro-vided more correct informationcompared to participants us-ing a free recall technique (n =25).

Henkel, L. A., Coffman, K. A.J, & Dailey, E. M. (2008). A sur-vey of people’s attitudes andbeliefs about false confes-sions. Behavioral Sciencesand the Law, 26, 555-584. Juryeligible individuals completedtwo surveys (N = 116 for sur-vey one and N = 169 for sur-vey two) concerning their at-titudes regarding false confes-sions. Respondents wereaware that false confessionsoccur but did not believe theywould ever falsely confess.Participants reported that con-fessions were not a definitiveindicator of guilt, but were un-aware of factors that contrib-uted to false confessions.

Higgins, G.E., Gabbidon, S.L.,& Jordan, K.L. (2008). Exam-ining the generality of citi-zens’ views on racial profilingin diverse situational con-texts. Criminal Justice and

Behavior. 35, 1527-1541. Re-searchers conducted a Galluppoll of 2,250 randomly selectedAmericans, including anoversample of Hispanics (n =500) and Blacks (n = 800) totest the “generality” of citi-zens’ views regarding airport,traffic stop, and consumer ra-cial profiling. Blacks were morelikely than whites and Hispan-ics to believe that racial profil-ing is widespread and whiteswere less likely than Blacksand Hispanics to believe thatracial profiling is widespread.Whites were more likely thanBlacks and Hispanics to viewracial profiling as being justi-fied. Blacks were less likelythan Hispanics to believe thatracial profiling was justified.

Mann, S.A., Vrij, A., Fisher,R.P., & Robinson, M. (2008).See no lies, hear no lies: Dif-ferences in discrimination ac-curacy and response biaswhen watching or listening topolice suspect interviews.Applied Cognitive Psychol-ogy, 22, 1062-171. Police of-ficers’ use of cues when de-tecting deception (N= 103) wasinvestigated using differentmodalities: audio only, visualonly, or both. Only visual cuesyielded lower accuracy and ledto lie bias.

Peace, K.A. & Bouvier, K. A.,(2008). Alexithymia, dissocia-tion, and social desirability:Investigating individual differ-ences in the narrative contentof false allegations of trauma.Journal of Offender Rehabili-tation, 47, 138-167. Under-graduates (males = 58 & fe-males = 233) completed mea-sures of alexithymia, dissocia-tion, and social desirability ina study examining differencesbetween truthful and fabri-cated written narratives oftrauma. The presence ofalexithymia was associatedwith lower plausibility and dis-


sociation with less coherencyand plausibility.

Unkelbach, C., Forgas, J.P., &Denson, T.F. (2008).The tur-ban effect: The influence ofMuslim headgear and inducedaffect on aggressive re-sponses in the shooter biasparadigm. Journal of Experi-mental Social Psychology, 44,1409-1413. In a computer game,participants (N = 66) madequick decisions to shoot/ notshoot, showing a bias for tar-gets wearing Muslim head-gear. Positive mood selectivelyincreased likelihood of shoot-ing Muslims; angry mood in-creased the propensity for par-ticipants to shoot all targets.

Van Bergen, S., Jelicic, M.,Merckelbach, H. (2008). Inter-rogation techniques andmemory distrust. Psychology,Crime & Law, 14, 425-434. Par-ticipants (N = 50) imaginedbeing innocently accused of acrime and interviewed usingone of five techniques (falseevidence, false eyewitness,minimization, maximization, orsuggested memory problems).Participants most frequentlyconfessed when presentedwith false evidence; the tech-niques had a differential effecton a measure of memory dis-trust, with the suggestion ofmemory problems creating themost distrust.

LEGAL DECISION-MAKING/JURY RESEARCH

Krahe, B., Temkin, J., Bieneck,S., & Berger, A. (2008). Pro-spective lawyers’ rape stereo-types and schematic decisionmaking about rape cases. Psy-chology, Crime & Law, 14,461-479.Undergraduate law students(N = 451) and postgraduate lawtrainees (N = 129) read rapecase scenarios in which a

woman was raped by astranger, acquaintance, or ex-partner and the perpetratorused force or took advantageof alcohol induced defense-lessness. When perpetrationinvolved alcohol and astranger or acquaintance, par-ticipants agreeing with therape myth rated the complain-ant as more responsible. Prim-ing participants with the legaldefinition of rape did not elimi-nate the trend.

Dhami, M.K. (2008). On mea-suring quantitative interpre-tations of reasonable doubt.Journal of Experimental Psy-chology: Applied, 14, 353-363.Two studies investigated threetechniques for measuringquantitative interpretations ofreasonable doubt. Study 1showed differences in reason-able doubt thresholds betweenall three methods: the novelmembership function (95%),direct rating (85%), and deci-sion-theory (53%). In study 2,judicial instructions affectedonly the direct rating method.All methods were equally pre-dictive of verdict.

Furgeson, J.R., Babcock, L., &Shane, P.M. (2008). Behind themask of method: Political ori-entation and constitutionalinterpretive preferences. Lawand Human Behavior, 32,502-510. Political orientationwas associated with legal rea-soning and preferred interpre-tation of the Constitution intwo independent samples oflaw clerks and college stu-dents. A strong associationbetween clerks’ political orien-tation and interpretive prefer-ences was found such thatmore conservative participantswere less likely to prefer ex-pansive interpretations. Anexperimental study with thestudent sample indicated thataltering the perceived policyimplications of judicial re-straint could change initial

preferences regarding inter-pretation.

Henkel, L.A. (2008). Jurors’reactions to recanted confes-sions: Do the defendant’s per-sonal and dispositional char-acteristics play a role? Psy-chology, Crime & Law, 14,565-578.Participants (N = 281) read atrial transcript which variedconfession characteristics: nomention of a confession wasmade, a confession was re-canted due to a medical or psy-chological condition, or tostress of the interrogation, ora confession was inadmissiblebut no reasons were given.Guilty verdicts occurred morefrequently when the reason forconfession was mental disor-der or interrogation stress, asopposed to a medical condi-tion.

Landström, S. & Granhag, P.A.(2008). Children’s truthfuland deceptive testimonies:How camera perspective af-fects adult observers’ percep-tion and assessment. Psychol-ogy, Crime & Law, 14, 381-396.Children were videotaped mak-ing either truthful or deceptivestatements. Adult participants(N = 256) viewed the videoswhere the camera focus wasclose-up, medium (child only),medium (child and inter-viewer), and long shot. Thecloser the focus the more criti-cally the children were as-sessed, but this did not affectveracity judgments.

Ruva, C. L., & McEvoy, C.(2008). Negative and positivepretrial publicity affect jurormemory and decision making.Journal of Experimental Psy-chology: Applied, 14, 226-235.Undergraduate mock jurors (N= 159) viewing a murder casedisplayed similar sourcememory errors in negative andpositive pre-trial publicity(PTP) conditions. Guilt rating

effect sizes (compared to anonexposed condition) weregreater for negative PTP thanfor positive PTP.

Sauerland, M. & Sporer, S.L.(2008). The application of mul-tiple lineups in a field study.Psychology, Crime & Law, 14,549-564. Confederates askedpassers-by for directions to acertain area. Participants (N=648) were asked to identify theconfederate; some lineupswere target present and sometarget absent, and participantsidentified portrait, body, pro-file, and accessory bag line-ups. The combinations of line-ups increased guiltdiagnosticity, with portraitlineups being most diagnos-tic.

Shaked-Schroer, N., Costanzo,M., & Marcus-Newhall, A.(2008). Reducing racial bias inthe penalty phase of capitaltrials. Behavioral Sciencesand the Law, 26, 603-617. Au-thors altered the content ofjury instructions to examinejuror bias toward Blacks. Whiteand non-White participantsreceived instructions that ma-nipulated the defendant’s race(White/Black) and instructiontype (standard/simplified).Simplified instructions in-cluded definitions of legalterms and used a simplifiedsentence structure. Simplifiedinstructions led to reducedbias against Black defendantsand better understanding ofsentencing instructions.

Skagerberg, E.M., & Wright,D.B. (2008). The prevalence ofco-witnesses and co-witnessdiscussions in real eyewit-nesses. Psychology, Crime &Law, 14, 513-521. In a study ofreal witnesses (N = 60), 58%discussed events of the crimeand 39% discussed suspectdetails when a co-witness waspresent.


Wiener, R.L., & Richter, E.(2008). Symbolic hate: Inten-tion to intimidate, political ide-ology and group association.Law and Human Behavior,35, 463-476. Mock jurors (N =180) were presented with liti-gation scenarios that con-tained variations in symbolicspeech symbols, reasons fordisplaying these symbols, andstatute type. The presence ofalternative justifications fordisplaying some speech sym-bols (i.e., cross burning) low-ered participants’ perceptionsof the intent to intimidate whileother symbolic acts (e.g., dis-playing swastikas) weredeemed true threats.

RISK ASSESSMENT

Bonta, J., Rugge, T., Scott, T.L., Bourgon, G., & Yessine, A.K., (2008). Exploring theblack box of community su-pervision. Journal of OffenderRehabilitation, 47, 240-270.Ina sample of 154 probationers,recidivism decreased as theamount of time probation of-ficers spent discussing crimi-nogenic needs with the pro-bationers increased.

Brennan, T., Dietrich, W., &Ehret, B. (2009). Evaluating thepredictive validity of theCOMPAS risk and needs as-sessment system. CriminalJustice and Behavior. 36, 21-40. Offenders’ (N = 2,328) wereassessed with CorrectionalOffender Management Profil-ing for Alternative Sanctions(COMPAS) as part of theirprocessing at entry into pro-bation agencies. AUC valuesfor predicting arrests rangedfrom .66 to .80, with most ex-ceeding .70.

Douglas, K.S., Epstein, M.E.,& Poythress, N.G. (2008).Criminal recidivism amongjuvenile offenders: Testingthe incremental and predic-

tive validity of three measuresof psychopathic features. Lawand Human Behavior, 32, 423-438. In a sample of 85 delin-quent youth, the ChildhoodPsychopathy Scale (CPS) wasmore consistently related tomost types of recidivism thanthe PCL:YV and AntisocialProcess Screening Device(APSD, self report), with thePCL:YV having a non-signifi-cant association with recidi-vism. The predictive effectsof the measures were nolonger significant when rel-evant covariates, such as age,substance use, conduct disor-der, and previous propertycrime, were included in multi-variate predictive models.

Ferguson, A.M., Ogloff, J.R.P.,& Thomson, L. (2009). Predict-ing recidivism by mentallydisordered offenders usingthe LSI-R: SV. Criminal Jus-tice and Behavior. 36, 5-20. Ina sample of 208 mentally ill of-fenders, Level of Service In-ventory-Revised: ScreeningVersion (LSI-R:SV) scoreswere predictive of recidivismamong mentally disorderedoffenders (AUC = .65). How-ever, the LSI-R:SV did not reli-ably predict recidivism for in-dividuals who had dual diag-noses of mental illness andsubstance abuse.

Frowd, C.D., Bruce, V., Smith,A.J., & Hancock, P.J.B. (2008).Improving the quality of facialcomposites using a holisticcognitive interview. Journal ofExperimental Psychology:Applied, 14, 276-287. A novelHolistic-Cognitive Interview(H-CI) facial composite con-struction technique was com-pared to the traditional Cogni-tive Interview (CI). H-CI com-posites yielded superior namerecollection, better facialmatching, and higher similar-ity ratings than CI composites.

Manchak, S.M., Skeem, J.L., &Douglas, K.S. (2008). Utility ofthe revised Level of ServiceInventory (LSI-R) in predict-ing recidivism after long-term incarceration. Law andHuman Behavior, 32, 477-488.The LSI-R was a moderate pre-dictor of general, but not vio-lent, recidivism in a sample of555 Long-Term Inmates (LTIs).The LSI-R appears to workequally well for LTIs andshorter-term inmates as a pre-dictor of general recidivism.

McDermott, B. E., Quanbeck,C. D., Busse, D., Yastro, K., &Scott, C. L. (2008). The accu-racy of risk assessment in-struments in prediction ofimpulsive versus predatoryaggression. Behavioral Sci-ences and the Law, 26, 759-777. Authors investigated therelationship between risk mea-sures (PCL-R and HCR-20) andthree types of aggression (im-pulsive, predatory, and psy-chotic) among 238 patients inan inpatient forensic hospital.Impulsive aggression was as-sociated with anger (AUC =.73) and HCR-20 scores AUC= .71). Anger (AUC = .95) andPCL-R scores (AUC = .84) weremost strongly associated withpredatory aggression. Psy-chotic symptoms were moststrongly associated with psy-chotic aggression (AUC = .90).

Ménard, K.S., Anderson, A.L.,& Godboldt, S.M. (2009). Gen-der differences in intimatepartner recidivism: A 5-yearfollow-up. Criminal Justiceand Behavior. 36, 61-76. Ex-amination of 596 cases of inti-mate partner violence (15%perpetrated by women) re-vealed men were more likelythan women to have commit-ted the offense in the presenceof children (31% versus 19%)and to have used severe vio-lence in the incident (37% ver-sus 23%). Men were morelikely to recidivate than

women (48% versus 19%) andto have evidence of drug oralcohol problems, or a historyof probation or parole. Druguse was the only criminal jus-tice variable that significantlypredicted recidivism in menand women.

Schwalbe, C.S. (2008). A meta-analysis of juvenile justicerisk assessment instru-ments: Predictive validity bygender. Criminal Justice andBehavior. 35, 1367-1381.Across 19 studies examiningrisk of recidivism for juveniles(Total N = 57,938), effect sizesfor male offenders ranged fromr = .13 to .44, and effect sizesfor female offenders rangedfrom r = .03 to .57. The overallaverage effect size was r = .27.The largest effect size formales was exhibited by theArizona Risk/Needs Assess-ment (r = .44, .48 for male andfemale offenders respec-tively). The largest effect sizefor females was exhibited bythe Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory(r = .32, .57 for male and femaleoffenders respectively).

Walters, G.D., & Schlauch, C.(2008). The Psychological In-ventory of Criminal ThinkingStyles and Level of ServiceInventory-Revised: ScreeningVersion as predictors of offi-cial and self-reported disci-plinary infractions. Law andHuman Behavior, 32, 454-462.The LSI-R:SV was somewhatbetter at predicting self-re-ported disciplinary infractionsthan the PICTS in a sample ofmale inmates at a 24 month fol-low up (-n = 83). The PICTSGeneral Criminal Thinking(GCT) score was able to betterpredict officially recorded dis-ciplinary infractions than theLSI-R:SV, although the differ-ences were not statisticallysignificant. Only age and GCTscores achieved incrementalvalidity when age, GCT, and


LSI-R:SV scores were includedas predictors in the samemodel.

SEX OFFENDERS

Kingston, D.A., Yates, P.M.,Firestone, P., Babchishin, K.,& Bradford, J.M. (2008). Long-term predictive validity of therisk matrix 2008: A compari-son with the static-99 and thesex offender risk appraisalguide. Sexual Abuse: A Jour-nal of Research and Treat-ment. 20, 466-484. Adult malesexual offenders (n = 351) wereassessed at the with modifiedversions of the Static-99,SORAG, and RM2000. Recidi-vism was monitored for an av-erage follow-up period of 12years. The RM2000 demon-strated moderate predictiveaccuracy for sexual recidivism(ROC = .64), violent (includingsexual) recidivism (ROC = .65),and criminal recidivism (ROC= .69). For sexual recidivism,the Static-99 was significantlymore accurate than theRM2000. In predicting violent(including sexual) recidivism,the SORAG was statisticallysuperior to the RM2000. Forcriminal recidivism, theSORAG was superior to theRM2000.

Letourneau, E.J., & Armstrong,K.S. (2008). Recidivism ratesfor registered and nonregis-tered juvenile sexual offend-ers. Sexual Abuse: A Journalof Research and Treatment,20, 393-408. Recidivism ratesacross a mean 4.3 year follow-up were examined for regis-tered and nonregistered juve-nile sex offenders (n = 111matched pairs). In comparisonwith nonregistered offenders,registered offenders had 85%higher odds of nonperson re-cidivism. There was no signifi-cant between-group differencewith respect to nonsexual per-son offenses.

Lindsay, W.R., Steptoe, L., &Beech, A.T. (2008). The Wardand Hudson pathways model ofthe sexual offense processapplied to offenders with in-tellectual disability. SexualAbuse: A Journal of Researchand Treatment. 20, 379-392.Sex offenders with intellectualdisability (n = 62) were classi-fied according to four self-regulation pathways. Explicit/active offenders had a signifi-cantly higher rate of contactwith their victim whereas au-tomatic/passive offenders hada higher rate of noncontactoffending. Explicit/active of-fenders also had a signifi-cantly lower rate ofreoffending than the auto-matic/passive offenders.

Rice, M.E., Harris, G.T., Lang,C., & Chaplin, T.C. (2008).Sexual preferences and re-cidivism of sex offenders withmental retardation. SexualAbuse: A Journal of Researchand Treatment, 20, 409-425.Sex offenders with MR (n = 69)exhibited more deviant prefer-ences for prepubertal children,male children, and young chil-dren than the non-MR offend-ers (n = 69). Sex offenders withMR were also more likely tohave had a prepubertal victim,a prepubertal male victim, anda very young victim. Theywere no more likely than thecomparison offenders to ex-hibit preferences for extremelycoercive sex with children orto exhibit deviant adult activ-ity preferences, nor were theymore likely to recidivate vio-lently.

Sandler, J.C., Freeman, N.J., &Socia, K.M. (2008). Does awatched pot boil? A time-se-ries analysis of New Yorkstate’s sex offender registra-tion and notification law. Psy-chology, Public Policy, andLaw, 14, 284-302. Monthly ar-rest counts were obtained fromcriminal history files for every

offender arrested for a sexualoffense in New York state be-tween 1986 and 2006. Timeseries analyses indicated thatsex offender registration andnotification laws were not ef-fective in reducing the rates ofrape, child molestation, sexualrecidivism, or general sexualoffending.

WITNESS ISSUES

Allwood, C.M., Innes-Ker,A.H., Homgren, J., & Fredin,G. (2008). Children’s andadults’ realism in their event-recall confidence in re-sponses to free recall and fo-cused questions. Psychology,Crime & Law, 14, 529-547. Ex-amined confidence and accu-racy (realism) in 8-9 and 12-13year old children and adults intwo experiments (N = 227). The8-9 year olds had comparablelevels of realism to adults andwere neither over orunderconfident for free-recall;all participants were overcon-fident responding to focusedquestions.

Boyce, M., Lindsay, D., &Brimacombe, C. (2008). Inves-tigating investigators: Exam-ining the impact of eyewitnessidentification evidence on stu-dent-investigators. Law andHuman Behavior, 32, 439-453.Information-gain analysisshowed that student investi-gators were unduly influencedby the witness’ identificationor non-identification. Investi-gators were highly influencedby the witness, regardless ofwhether they had a good or abad view of the crime.

Brewer, N., Weber, N., Clark,A., & Wells, G.L. (2008). Dis-tinguishing accurate frominaccurate eyewitness identi-fications with an optional dead-line procedure. Psychology,Crime & Law, 14, 397-414.Participants (n = 500) viewed

a crime and made simulta-neous identifications in one ofthree conditions: Forcedchoice required an answer af-ter 8s of exposure; optionaldeadline allowed a choice ofselecting after 8s exposure, ifnot then a further 8s, and if notthen unlimited exposure; finalcondition used unlimited expo-sure. Optional deadline moreaccurately discriminated be-tween correct and incorrectidentifications.

Clark, S., & Wells, G. (2008). Onthe diagnosticity of multiple-witness identifications. Lawand Human Behavior, 32, 406-422. Researchers used a Baye-sian analysis of eyewitnessidentification data to study theeffect of multiple eyewitnessoutcomes on diagnosticities.Adding a nonidentifying wit-ness to an identifying witnessdecreased diagnosticity morethan adding a second identi-fying witness raised it.

Hutchings, P. B., & HaddockG. (2008). Look Black in an-ger: The role of implicit preju-dice in the categorization andperceived emotional intensityof racially ambiguous faces.Journal of Experimental So-cial Psychology, 44, 1418-1420. White participants (N =82) viewed racially ambiguousfaces displaying varied emo-tions (angry/neutral/happy).Participants higher in implicitprejudice were more likely toclassify racially ambiguousfaces with angry expressionsas Black and reported the in-tensity of the emotion asgreater than participants withlower levels of implicit preju-dice.

Laimon, R. L., & Poole, D. A.(2008). Adults usually believeyoung children: The influ-ence of eliciting questions andsuggestibility presentations


on perceptions of children’sdisclosures. Law and HumanBehavior, 35, 489-501.Children’s (N = 114, age 3-8)freely recalled responses weremore accurate than disclosuresfollowing ‘’yes’’ responses toyes–no questions, which weremore accurate than disclosuresfollowing ‘’no’’ responses.Students (N = 108) usuallybelieved descriptions givenduring free-recall and follow-ing “yes” responses, and didnot believe descriptions givenafter “no” responses.

Lindholm, T. (2008). Who canjudge the accuracy of eyewit-ness statements? A compari-son of police and lay-persons.Applied Cognitive Psychol-ogy, 22, 1301-1314. Swedishjudges (n = 59), police detec-tive (n = 36) and lay-persons(n = 60) evaluated the accu-racy of eyewitness statements(video or transcript) from eth-nic in- or out-groups. Detec-tives were most accurate; ac-curacy was better for tran-scribed than videotaped state-ments. Judges used the mostliberal response criterion over-all. Detectives and lay-per-sons were more liberal whenjudging out-group members.Lindsay, R.C.L., Semmler, C.,Weber, N., Brewer, N. & Lind-say, M.R. (2008). How varia-tions in distance affect eyewit-ness reports and identifica-tion accuracy. Law and Hu-man Behavior, 35, 536-535.The effect of distance on de-scription accuracy, choosingbehavior, and identificationtest accuracy was explored (N= 1300). Results indicated sub-stantial errors in distance judg-ments, mediocre descriptionaccuracy, and decision accu-racy that declined with dis-tance.

Lippert, T., Cross, T. P., Jones,L., & Walsh, W. (2008). Tell-ing interviewers about sexual

abuse: Predictors of child dis-closure at forensic interviews.Child Maltreatment, 14, 100-113. Files from cases of childsexual abuse (N=987) were ex-amined to identify case char-acteristics associated with fulldisclosure of abuse. Full dis-closure was more commonwhen the child was older atboth time of the offense andat the time of the forensic in-terview, the victim was female,the investigation was initiatedby the child’s disclosure, andthe child’s family was support-ive.

Megreya, A.M., & Burton,A.M. (2008). Matching facesto photographs: Poor perfor-mance in eyewitness memory(without the memory). Journalof Experimental Psychology:Applied, 14, 364-372. Threestudies investigated baselinerecognition rates for unfamil-iar faces in ideal conditions(no delay or side-by-side com-parison). All studies showedpoor performance (67-83%);studies 1 and 2 showed no dif-ferences between live andphotographic stimulus presen-tation.

Neal, T.M.S, & Brodsky, S.L.(2008). Expert witness cred-ibility as a function of eye con-tact behavior and gender.Criminal Justice and Behav-ior. 35, 1515-1526. Under-graduates (N=232) saw avideo with varying conditions:male expert or female expertpaired with either low, medium,or high eye contact. Male ex-perts with high eye contactwere seen as more crediblethan experts who made me-dium or low eye contact. Thefemale expert’s credibility wassimilar for each eye contactcondition.

Powell, M. R., Fisher, R. P., &Hughes-Scholes, C. H. (2008).The effect of using trained

versus untrained adult re-spondents in simulated prac-tice interviews about childabuse. Child Abuse & Ne-glect, 32, 1007-1016. Child pro-tection workers (N=50) weretrained in the use of open-ended questions and com-pleted two practice interviewswith either a trained or an un-trained participant. Results in-dicated significant increasesin the use of open-ended ques-tions by those who practicedwith trained actors in both im-mediate and 12-week follow-up post-training interviews.

Pozzulo, J. D., Crescini, & C.,Lemieux, J. M. T. (2008). Areaccurate witnesses morelikely to make absolute judg-ments? International Journalof Law and Psychiatry, 31, 495-501. Undergraduate students(N=74) viewed a one minutevideo of a male confederatediscussing street safety aware-ness and then viewed a sixperson target absent lineup foreither two seconds or an un-limited amount of time. Partici-pants who viewed the unlim-ited lineup had increased re-sponse latency, although therewas no difference betweengroups for response accuracy.Participants who correctly re-jected the lineup were foundto be more confident in theiridentifications, while thosewith longer response latencywere less confident in theirdecisions.

Pozzulo, J. D., Crescini, C., andPanton, T. (2008). Does meth-odology matter in eyewitnessidentification research?: Theeffect of live versus video ex-posure on eyewitness identi-fication accuracy. Interna-tional Journal of Law andPsychiatry, 31, 430-437. Under-graduates (N=104) were as-signed to either a live expo-sure or videotaped exposurecondition and then to either a

target absent or target presentlineup condition. Participantscompleted the Stress-ArousalChecklist and a lineup re-sponse form which included aconfidence rating. Mode oftarget exposure did not have asignificant effect on accuracyof identification. Participantsin the live exposure conditionsexperienced higher levels ofstress and arousal. Confidencelevels were significantlyhigher for those who made acorrect identification in the tar-get present lineup.

Pozzulo, J.D., Dempsey, J.,Corey, S., Girardi, A., Lawandi,A. & Aston, C. (2008). Can alineup procedure designed forchild witnesses work foradults? Comparing simulta-neous, sequential, and elimi-nation lineup procedures.Journal of Applied SocialPsychology, 38, 2195-2209.Participants (N= 165) vieweda staged theft and made iden-tification from target-present ortarget-absent lineups. Similarrates of identification werefound for target present line-ups. Differences in rates ofcorrect rejections of target-absent lineups were found; se-quential and elimination lineupsyielded more correct rejectionsthan simultaneous lineups.


Division News and Information

Early Career PsychologistsLora Levett, Chair, Committee on ECPs

The main goal of the AP-LS Committee on Early Career Psycholo-gists (ECPs) is to provide support and opportunities within AP-LS for ECPs. Last summer, we conducted a survey of our member-ship to ascertain the best ways that AP-LS could accomplish thisgoal. First, we would like to extend our gratitude to the 270 mem-bers of AP-LS who completed the survey and the 60 ECPs whoparticipated in our focus group – thank you! The results showedgeneral support within our membership for initiating programmingwithin AP-LS geared toward ECPs, and we brought the resultsand our suggestions to the Executive Committee last August atAPA. The Executive Committee approved the formation of an ad-hoc committee on ECPs, funds for an annual conference work-shop and social geared toward ECPs, and reduced dues and con-ference fees for ECPs within three years of receiving their latestdegree. ECPs are now able to register for conferences at a re-duced rate and join AP-LS at the student rate for the first threeyears post-graduation.

We have been busy planning our conference workshop for thisMarch. On Thursday, March 5th, 2009 from 10:00 a.m. – 11:45 a.m.,Dr. Louis Schlesinger (Professor of Forensic Psychology, JohnJay College of Criminal Justice and Diplomate in Forensic Psy-chology, American Board of Professional Psychology) will be pre-senting a workshop titled “Private Practice of Forensic Psychol-ogy: Preparation, Building a Practice, and Problems in Practice.”In the workshop, Dr. Schlesinger will discuss graduate and post-graduate preparation, developing a subspecialty in forensic psy-chology, licensure issues and inter state cases, board certification(ABPP), building a practice, getting and keeping referrals, prob-lems in practice, staying out of trouble, and other emerging prac-tice issues. The workshop is open to all membership and is free ofcharge. We also will be hosting a social the opening night of theconference. After the welcome reception, the committee on ECPswill host a reception for ECPs and soon-to-be ECPs in the Execu-tive Salon 3 room at the conference hotel from 8:00 p.m. – 10:00p.m. Please feel free to stop by and say hello to the ECPs!

The committee on ECPs also has exciting plans for the future. Weare currently working on proposing an AP-LS grant-in-aid pro-gram for ECPs to our Executive Committee. In addition, we haveplanned a newsletter column series to address issues commonlyfaced by ECPs. We will also continue to offer workshops andhost socials for ECPs at our annual conference. If you have inputfor the committee on how to best support ECPs, if you would liketo make a suggestion for a newsletter column or workshop topic,or if you would like to join the ad-hoc AP-LS Committee on ECPs,please contact the committee chair, Lora Levett, at [email protected].

Pre-conference Symposium for Students and First-Time (or even Second-Time) Convention-Goers

Title: “How to Get the Most out of the Conference: Information,Advice, and Snacks for Students”Sponsored by the APLS Teaching and Training Committee andthe APLS Student Section March 2009Time: 11-12, Thursday March 5, 2009

A panel of graduate students and faculty members will lead adiscussion about how to get the most out of the conference. Top-ics will include (a) why to attend the conference, (b) what to ex-pect at the conference, and (c) helpful tips for successfully navigat-ing the conference. In addition, the AP-LS Student Section Chair andChair-Elect will provide information about conference events specifi-cally for students. Last, there will be a brief discussion of “things todo” in San Antonio, Texas. Hope to see you there!

Student and Early CareerProfessional Development Series

The Teaching Training and Careers Committee, Student Section,and Mentoring Committees are co-sponsoring a special three-partseries at this year’s conference that is geared toward the professionaldevelopment of students and early career professionals. The co-sponsors encourage attendance at all three sessions. SCHEDULE:

SESSION I: Thursday 03/05/09 - 2:15pm to 3:30pm - CV and Per-sonal Statement Seminar(Sponsored by Student Section)

SESSION II: Friday 03/06/09 - 5:30pm to 6:30pm - Advice on theJob Search and Hiring Process Panel(Sponsored by Teaching, Training, & Careers Committee)

SESSION III: Saturday 03/07/09 - 12:15pm to 1:30pm – Prepara-tion for the Academic Job Interview Interactive Session(Sponsored by Mentoring Committee)

**Please check the conference program for further details on lo-cation, content, and format.

Scientific Review Paper CommitteeScientificReview Paper Committee Session at AP-LS

Scientific Review Paper Committee, Chaired by William Thomp-son, is having a session during the meeting to hear comment anddiscussion on the “white paper” titled “Police-Induced Confes-sions: Risk Factors and Recommendations,” which was preparedby Saul Kassin, Steven Drizin, Thomas Grisso, Gisli Gudjonsson,Richard Leo and Allison Redlich. Check your AP-LS Conferenceprogram for details. The white paper is available for review on theAP-LS website at http://www.ap-ls.org/links/whitepaperconfessions.html. After the review process, the AP-LS Executive Committee will be asked to consider endorsing thewhite paper as an official statement of the organization.



The U.S leads the world in its rate of incarceration (Walmsley,2005). The number of Americans under some form of correctionalsupervision recently reached an all-time high of over 7 million(Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2008). Over recent years, there hasbeen increasing recognition that longstanding punitive correc-tional policies have done little to reduce crime (e.g., Levitt, 2004;Spelman, 2000; see also Haney, 2006). Economic and sociopoliticalfactors have begun shifting policymakers’ attention to evidenceon “what works” to reduce offenders’ risk of recidivism. Acrossthe nation, stakeholders have become interested in results-drivenpolicies and evidence-based criminal justice programs (Aos, Miller,& Drake, 2006). The notion that robust research evidence can beapplied to increase public safety – and to improve outcomes forsome people involved in the criminal justice system - is gainingreal traction. In short, it is an exciting time to study corrections.There is great demand for identifying data-based solutions to theproblem of recidivism. Who better to help meet this demand thanmembers of the American-Psychology Law Society (AP-LS)?

Historically, problem-solving correctional research has beengrossly underrepresented in AP-LS conference programming andLHB journal articles, particularly compared to topics like psych-opathy or violence risk assessment. Although some of our mem-bers have made remarkable strides with policy-relevant correc-tional research, they could use company. So could the larger fieldof correctional research and practice.

The AP-LS Corrections Committee was (re)formed two years ago.The committee is chaired by Jennifer Skeem and includes JoelDvoskin, Patricia Griffin, Sarah Manchak, Robert Morgan, DarylKroner, Jeremy Mills, and Ira Packer. Three committee members -Kroner, Mills, and Morgan – bring a wealth of corrections exper-tise and connections with them, in joining our effort at AP-LS.The committee’s goal is to increase APLS’ representation of re-searchers who study supervision, services, and rehabilitative pro-grams for correctional populations.

The committee’s efforts were most visible at the 2008 AP-LS con-ference in Jacksonville. There, Donald A. Andrews, an interna-tionally recognized expert in correctional programming and treat-ment, delivered an invited address and led a round table discus-sion with AP-LS members. Behind the scenes, the committee es-tablished an expert panel to review AP-LS conference submis-sions on corrections topics. They also worked with a co-chair ofthe AP-LS program at APA to highlight corrections topics. Com-pared to the three previous years, there was an increase in sympo-sia and paper sessions on corrections at both the APLS and APAconferences in 2008. Although this is terrific news, there is stillmuch room for improvement: the number of submissions is notcommensurate with their potential impact on correctional policyand practice in today’s environment.

What next, then? The committee received support for two majoractivities this year:

First, Henry J. Steadman, Ph.D., will present an invited address on“Problem-solving research for justice-involved persons with men-tal illness” at our San Antonio conference on Saturday, March 7th

2009 at 4:15 pm. Dr. Steadman is internationally known for hisresearch on the interface between mental health and criminal justicesystems. People with serious mental illness are grossly over-repre-sented in the correctional population, and tend to have particularlypoor criminal justice outcomes. Dr. Steadman’s work is designed toidentify - and help implement - solutions to improve the delivery ofappropriate services to justice- involved people with mental illnessand to improve criminal justice outcomes. After highlighting thisresearch, Dr. Steadman will lead a discussion with the audience onopportunities for studying this important and exciting topic.

Second, the AP-LS Corrections Committee is accepting proposalsfor a Seed Grant to support research relevant to improving thesupervision of – or services for – correctional populations.Postdoctoral fellows and faculty are eligible to apply. The com-mittee will give funding priority to proposals that (a) go beyondassessment to address services, intervention, and recidivism reduc-tion, (b) will generate seed data for a larger grant proposal, and (c) aredriven by theory and have direct implications for practice. The com-mittee will fund one seed grant of about $5,000. Proposals should beabout five pages in length, and should highlight the study aims/rationale, proposed method and analyses, and potential impact. Pleaseinclude a simple budget. Proposals should be submitted by e-mail, in.pdf format, no later than April 30, 2009 to [email protected] .Propos-als will be reviewed by corrections committee members.

Your suggestions and comments are welcome ([email protected] ). We will continue collaborating with membersof other organization (e.g., the Criminal Justice Section of APA’s Divi-sion 18) to disseminate announcements about these conference andfunding endeavors. Our goal is to draw promising corrections re-searchers to our organization and to spark greater interest in correc-tions research among APLS members. We believe that the consider-able talent of our members has much to offer in helping to solvecontemporary problems in corrections. The time is ripe!

ReferencesAos, S. Miller, M., & Drake, E. (2006). Evidence-based policy options to

reduce future prison construction, criminal justice costs, and crimerates. Olympia, WA: Washington State Institute for Public Policy.

Bureau of Justice Statistics. (2008). Corrections facts at a glance. Wash-ington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs.

Haney, C. (2006). The wages of prison overcrowding: Harmful psycho-logical consequences and dysfunctional correctional reactions. Wash-ington University Journal of Law & Policy, 22, 265-293.

Levitt, S. (2004). Understanding why crime fell in the 1990s: Four fac-tors that explain the decline and six that do not. Journal of EconomicPerspectives, 18, 163-190.

Spelman, W. (2000). What recent studies do (and don’t) tell us aboutimprisonment and crime. Crime and Justice: A Review of Research,27, 419-494.

Walmsley, R. (2005). World prison population list (6th Edition). London,England: King’s College of London, International Centre for PrisonStudies.

Problem-Solving Correctional Research: Filling a Gap in APLSSarah Manchak & Jennifer Skeem



Now Updated: Resource Directory ofForensic Psychology Pre-Doctoral

Internship Training Programs

The APLS Teaching, Training, and Careers Committee is pleasedto announce that the newly updated “Resource Directory ofForensic Psychology Pre-Doctoral Internship Training Programs”is now available on-line at the APLS website www.ap-ls.org. Thisdirectory includes a listing of U.S and Canadian pre-doctoralinternships with forensic rotations including: setting, population,type of forensic assessment and treatment experiences, as well astime spent at each training experience. Email and website addresseshave been included to facilitate contact with internship programs.This directory is a must-have for students interested in forensicpsychology.

The TCC is indebted to Professor Alvin Malesky and AllisonCroysdale for all their efforts spent in updating this directory.

APLS Book Series

The APLS book series is published by Oxford University Press.The series publishes scholarly work that advances the field ofpsychology and law by contributing to its theoretical and empiri-cal knowledge base. The latest book in the series, by LarryWrightsman, is entitled Oral arguments before the Supreme Court:An empirical approach. Larry traces the history of oral argumentsfrom John Jay and the beginning of the Supreme Court to thepresent day Roberts Court. Challenging the notion that oral argu-ments play an insignificant role in decisions, Wrightsman pro-vides a careful and detailed analysis of the transcripts of oralarguments and shows that oral arguments are central to the deci-sion making process. The editor is interested in proposals for newbooks. Inquiries and proposals from potential authors should besent to Dr. Ronald Roesch, Series Editor (E-mail: [email protected] phone: 778-782-3370).

The following books are available for purchase online from Ox-ford University Press (note that APLS members receive a 25%discount, as shown on the website): http://www.us.oup.com/us/collections/apls/?view=usa

Wrightsman, L. S. (2008). Oral arguments before the SupremeCourt: An empirical approach.

Levesque, R. J. R. (2007). Adolescents, media and the law: Whatdevelopmental science reveals and free speech requires.

Wrightsman, L. S. (2006). The psychology of the Supreme Court.

Slobogin, C. (2006). Proving the unprovable: The role of law,science, and speculation in adjudicating culpability anddangerousness.

Stefan, S. (2006). Emergency department treatment of the psychi-atric patient: Policy issues and legal requirements.

Haney, C. (2005). Death by design: Capital punishment as a so-cial psychological system. (This book received the HerbertJacob Book Prize from the Law and Society Association forthe “most outstanding book written on law and society in2005”).

Koch, W. J., Douglas, K. S., Nicholls, T. L., & O’Neill, M. (2005).Psychological injuries: Forensic assessment, treatment andlaw.

Posey, A. J., & Wrightsman, L. S. (2005). Trial consulting.

Handbook of Teaching Materials

The recently-revised “Handbook of Teaching Materials for Un-dergraduate Legal Psychology Courses” (by Edie Greene andErica Drew) is available on the AP-LS website (www.ap-ls.org)under the Academics link. The handbook provides models forintegrating psychology and law into the undergraduate curricu-lum, course descriptions, relevant textbooks, sources for lecturematerial, suggested writing assignments and active learning exer-cises, and video and on-line resources.

Call for Psychology and Law Syllabi

The AP-LS Teaching, Training, and Careers Committee (TTC) iscontinuing its efforts to collect syllabi for courses in Psychologyand Law or closely related topics. There are already a number ofsyllabi that have been collected over the years on the AP-LS website(http://ap-ls.org/academics/downloadIndex.html). However, wewould like to routinely post new syllabi. We would appreciateyour assistance in providing us with a copy of your syllabi. If youhave not already provided one, please do so in the following way:

Send a copy of your syllabi to Matthew Huss([email protected]). Soft copies may be submitted as e-mailattachments (Word Perfect, Word, or ASCII files are preferred).

The American Academy of Forensic Psychology, the membershipof ABPP board certified forensic psychologists, presents an on-going series of workshops and training seminars led by leaders inthe field of forensic psychology. Workshops focus on contempo-rary psycho-legal issues relevant to forensic, child, clinical andneuropsychologists and are designed for those interested in pur-suing psycho-legal topics in depth.

The schedule for 2009-2010 can be found at www.abfp.com, alongwith a listing of the specific topics covered in each workshops.More information also appears in Conference and Workshop plan-ner on page 36 and detailed information about upcoming work-shops appears to the left.

The American Academy of Forensic Psychology is approved bythe American Psychological Association to offer continuing edu-cation for psychologists. AAFP maintains responsibility for itsprograms.

American Academy of Forensic PsychologyWorkshop Schedule: 2009


• President Saul Kassin [email protected]• Past-President Margaret Bull Kovera [email protected]• President-Elect Ed Mulvey [email protected]• Secretary Eve Brank [email protected]• Treasurer Brad McAuliff [email protected]• Member-at-Large Natacha Blain [email protected]• Member-at-Large Allison Redlich [email protected]• Member-at-Large Wendy Heath [email protected]• Council Representative Randy Otto [email protected]• Council Representative William Foote [email protected]• Student Section President Gianni Pirelli [email protected]• Newsletter Editor Jennifer Groscup [email protected]• Publications Editor Ron Roesch [email protected]• Law & Human Behavior Editor Brian Cutler [email protected]• Psychology, Public Policy, & Law Editor Ron Roesch [email protected]• Web Site Editor Kevin O’Neil [email protected]• Webpage Administrator Adam Fried [email protected]• Liaison to APA Science Directorate Kathy Pezdek [email protected]• Liaison to APA Public Interest Directorate Natacha Blain [email protected]• Liaison to APA Practice Directorate Michele Galietta [email protected]• Teaching, Training, and Careers Committee Mark Costanzo [email protected]• Dissertation Awards David DeMatteo [email protected]• Fellows Committee Edie Greene [email protected]• Grants-in-Aid Robert Cochrane [email protected]• Book Award Committee Richard Redding [email protected]• Undergraduate Research Award Committee Veronica Stinson [email protected]• Interdisciplinary Grant Committee Gail Goodman [email protected]• Continuing Education Committee Randy Otto [email protected]• Corrections Committee Jennifer Skeem [email protected]• Scientific Review Paper Committee William Thompson [email protected]• Minority Affairs Committee Roslyn Caldwell [email protected]• Mentorship Committee Tara Mitchell [email protected]• Early Career Psychologists Committee Lora Levett [email protected]• Division Administrative Secretary Kathy Gaskey [email protected]• Conference Advisory Committee Patricia Zapf [email protected]• 2008 APA Program Chairs Veronica Stinson [email protected]

Roslyn Caldwell [email protected]• 2009 APA Program Chairs Veronica Stinson [email protected]

Nancy Ryba [email protected]• 2009 APLS Conference Chairs Keith Cruise [email protected]

Jeffery Neuschatz [email protected] Vincent [email protected]

• 2010 APLS Conference Chairs Jodi Viljoen [email protected] Sommers [email protected] Scullin [email protected]

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE AND COMMITTEE CHAIRS

New AP-LS Web Site Editor

The new AP-LS Web Site Editor would like to improve the look,functionality, and content of the AP-LS web site (http://www.ap-ls.org). If you have ideas for revisions that you would like to seemake to the web site, please email them directly to the Web SiteEditor, Dr. Kevin O’Neil at [email protected]. Content that shouldbe added to, or corrected on, the Web site is especially desired.


Nominations, Awards, and Announcements

The Minority Affairs Committee sent out the call for proposals inNovember. The following are award recipients of $1000 each:

Award Recipient: Julia Busso Kennard, M.A., John JayCollege of Criminal Justice, City University of New York

Project: The Effects of Suspect Race on False Confessions

AbstractResearch has shown that police interrogation techniques can leadto false confessions, however, the way in which the race of thesuspect interacts with these techniques during police interviewsand interrogations has yet to be examined. Basic social psycho-logical research indicates that race can play a prominent role insocial perceptions and influence, and preliminary research on raceand Miranda waiver shows that Black suspects have less trust inpolice and are less likely to waive their Miranda rights than Whitesuspects. We believe that Black suspects, lacking trust in police,may be more likely to confess to crimes they did not commit thanWhite suspects because they have greater fear of the negativerepercussions of failing to cooperate with police. The current studywill examine the rate of false confessions by Black and Whitesuspects using a mock crime paradigm asking participants to“steal” money from the university to help a fellow study partici-pant. True and false confession rates for Black and White sus-pects will be examined as well as the suspects’ reasons for con-fessing to the crime.

Award Recipient: David Flores, University of Nevada, RenoProject Title: Examining the Impact of Implicit Racial Bias on

the Exercise of Peremptory Challenges

AbstractConsiderable attention has recently been devoted to the system-atic exclusion of racial minorities from jury service. Recent Su-preme Court decisions (Miller-el v. Dretke, 2005; Snyder v. Loui-siana, 2008) reaffirmed the unconstitutionality of race-based ex-clusions during jury selection, originally established in Batson v.Kentucky (1986), and have further underscored this as a promi-nent issue in the American trial system. Previous archival researchin the area has substantiated concerns about racial inequities,demonstrating a relationship between prospective juror race andthe exercise of peremptory challenges (e.g., Rose, 1999). Recentexperimental research has provided convergent evidence, expos-ing the influence of race on jury selection, while also revealing thegeneral ineffectiveness of self-report justifications for identifyingthis influence (Sommers & Norton, 2007).

The social contextual dynamic of voir dire mirrors conditions un-der which theory suggests judgment and decision-making pro-cesses are highly susceptible to the effects of unconscious formsof racial bias. Unconscious, automatic racial bias represents per-haps the most invidious form of bias in this domain, as its effectgoes undetected even to the individual, yet is nonetheless ca-pable of contributing to racial inequality in jury selection. Emerg-ing research has suggested a relationship between implicit racial

bias and the exercise of peremptory challenges. Much more workis needed, however, to more thoroughly elucidate the precise char-acter of the role of implicit bias in jury selection, and the socialdynamic and specific contexts that facilitate its operation. Suchknowledge will be vital to those engaging in the debate regardingperemptory challenges, as well as to those who are consideringthe development of preventative or remedial procedural measuresto address influence of racial bias in jury selection.

The proposed research is comprised of two studies tailored topursue work on these two important fronts. One study will bedevoted to a theoretical extension, focusing on further examiningthe structure of implicit racial stereotypes and their influence onjury selection practices, while also simultaneously exploring therole of various potential moderating factors. The second studywill provide for an investigation of one social contextual dimen-sion of jury selection in which the impact of implicit bias may bemore pronounced.

Award Recipient: Isaiah Pickens, M.A., Fordham UniversityProject Title: An investigation of pathways to academicamotivation and reactive aggression among high school

students: domain specificity or multifinality?

AbstractThe present study seeks to examine how lower academic motiva-tion (academic amotivation) and reactive aggression developamong high school students. Using patterns of thinking as abasic framework, beliefs and situation-specific decision makingprocesses will be explored as antecedents to academic amotivationand reactive aggression among a sample of 300 male and femalestudents recruited from three public high schools. While supportexist for the role of beliefs and situation-specific decision makingprocesses on the development of academic amotivation and reac-tive aggression respectively, researchers have yet to determinethe extent to which patterns of thinking in one domain (i.e. aca-demic) account for the development of behaviors in the otherdomain (i.e. social) and vice versa. To address this limitation, theprimary goal of the present study is to explore four independentand nested developmental models of academic amotivation andreactive aggression utilizing structural equation analytic tech-niques. This methodology permits exploration of both the do-main-specific and cross-domain influences of cognitive anteced-ents on development and maintenance of academic amotivationand reactive aggression. Furthermore, the secondary goal of thisstudy is to examine differential gender effects within and betweenmodels. It is expected that the models representing beliefs andsituational decision making processes that reflect inflexible, orbiased, patterns of thinking will be associated with greater aca-demic amotivation and reactive aggression within each model.Furthermore, it is expected that the model accounting for cross-domain influences of decision making processes on behaviorswill represent the optimal relationship between variables. Thesefindings will provide the understanding necessary to create spe-cific educational interventions aimed at improving youths aca-demic and social outcomes within school.

Diversity in Psychology Research Awards


APLS BOOK AWARD

The APLS Book Award Committee is pleased to announce thewinner of the award for the outstanding book in Law and Psychol-ogy for 2007-2008:

Roger J.R. Levesque, J.D., Ph.D., Department Chair and Professorof Criminal Justice at Indiana University

For his 2007 book, ADOLESCENTS, MEDIA, AND THE LAW:WHAT DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE REVEALS AND FREESPEECH REQUIRES, published by Oxford University Press, in thePerspectives in Psychology and Law Series sponsored by APLS.

The award will be presented at the March, 2009 APLS Conference,where Professor Levesque will present an invited address.

We congratulate Professor Levesque for his achievement!

Nominations, Awards, and AnnouncementsCongratulations to AP-LS Fellow and Honorary

Distinguished Members!

The Fellows Committee approved the Fellowship application ofone new fellow, Lois Oberlander Condie, and two current APAFellows, Lisa Grossman and Jeffrey Siegel. David Faigman andSusan Stefan were named Honorary Distinguished Members ofAP-LS. Honorary Distinguished Members are those individualswho have made significant contributions to our field but who arenot members of AP-LS or APA. Congratulations to all on thesewell-deserved honors.

Fellow Status in the APA

Becoming a Fellow recognizes outstanding contributions to psy-chology and is an honor valued by many members. Fellow nomi-nations are made by a Division to which the Member belongs.The minimum standards for Fellow Status are:

• Doctoral degree based in part upon a psychological disserta-tion, or from a program primarily psychological in nature and con-ferred by a regionally accredited graduate or professional school.• Prior status as an APA Member for at least one year.• Active engagement at the time of nomination in the advance-ment of psychology in any of its aspects.• Five years of acceptable professional experience subsequent tothe granting of the doctoral degree.• Evidence of unusual and outstanding contribution or perfor-mance in the field of psychology.

Members nominated for Fellow Status through AP-LS must pro-vide evidence of unusual and outstanding contributions in thearea of psychology and law. All candidates must be endorsed byat least one current AP-LS Fellow. For further information andapplication materials, please contact Kathy Gaskey, AP-LS Ad-ministrative Officer ([email protected])

AP-LS Award for Outstanding Teaching AndMentoring In The Field Of Psychology & Law

The Teaching, Training, and Careers Committee of the AmericanPsychology-Law Society is proud to announce that ProfessorEdie Greene of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springshas been selected as the recipient of the 2008 Award for Outstand-ing Teaching and Mentoring in the Field of Psychology and Law.

This competitive award is given to a scholar in the field of psy-chology and law who has made substantial contributions in termsof student teaching and mentoring, teaching-related service andscholarship, development of new curricula, administration of train-ing programs, etc. Professor Greene’s record is outstanding in allof these ways and more. We congratulate her on this grand achieve-ment.

Congratulations to the 2009 AP-LS ConferenceStudent Travel Award Winners!

Sara Appleby John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Carmelina Barone Simon Fraser University

Stephanie Evans University of Alabama

Naomi Freeman NYS Office of Mental Health

Heidi Gordon Simon Fraser University

Sarah Greathouse John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Allyson Horgan University of Texas at El Paso

Tarika Daftary Kapur John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Kaitlyn McLachlan Simon Fraser University

Cynthia Najdowski University if Illinois at Chicago

Elizabeth Nicholson Simon Fraser University

Jennifer Schell Maastricht University

Sanjay Shah Drexel University/Villanova Law School

Diane Strub Simon Fraser University

Joseph Toomey John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Chantal van Reeuwyk Sam Houston State University

Lindsey Rhead John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Samantha Schwartz University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Rebecca Weiss Fordham University

Shanna Williams McGill University


AP-LS Dissertation Award ProgramThe American Psychology-Law Society confers Disserta-tion Awards for scientific research and scholarship that isrelevant to the promotion of the interdisciplinary study ofpsychology and law. Students who complete dissertationsinvolving basic or applied research in psychology and law,including its application to public policy, are encouraged toapply for these awards. Only students who complete theirdissertations in 2008 are eligible for Dissertation Awards.First-, second-, and third-place awards will be conferred.Winners will be invited to present their research at the 2009AP-LS Conference in San Antonio, TX.

To apply for the Dissertation Awards, please attach the fol-lowing items in an e-mail to [email protected] January 1, 2009: (1) the dissertation as it was submittedto the student’s university, (2) the dissertation with all authorand advisor identifying information removed, and (3) a letterof support from the dissertation advisor. You must be amember of AP-LS to be eligible for a Dissertation Award.For more information, please contact David DeMatteo([email protected]), Chair of the Dissertation Awards Com-mittee.

Nominations, Awards, and Announcements

1st Place:Margaret Stevenson is our 1st-place winner. Her disserta-tion, entitled “Understanding jurors’ discussions of adefendant’s history of child abuse and alcohol abuse in capi-tal sentencing trials,” documented the nature of jurors’ de-liberation discussions about child abuse and alcohol abuseby coding the extent to which jurors used them as mitigatingfactors, used them as aggravating factors, or argued thatthey should be ignored. The committee reviewers describedMargaret’s study as “high-quality and meaningful,” and theynoted that her project “makes a very high contribution onboth a theoretical and practical level.” Margaret completedher dissertation at the University of Illinois at Chicago underthe supervision of Bette Bottoms. Margaret will receive$1000 for winning first place.

2nd Place:Laura Kirsch is our 2nd-place winner. Her dissertation, en-titled “An investigation of self-report and psychophysiologicempathic responses in non-psychopathic and psychopathicindividuals,” examined the relationship between psychopathyand empathy. She sought to develop and validate an objec-tive measure of empathy using psychophysiological indicesof emotional experience as indicators of an empathic re-sponse. The committee reviewers describer Laura’s re-search as “highly original” and “completely novel.” Thecommittee reviewers stated that Laura’s project “has thepotential to advance the field” and “makes an immediatecontribution to the study of empathy and psychopathy.”Laura completed her dissertation at the University of Ari-zona under the supervision of Judith Becker. Laura willreceive $500 for winning second place.

3rd Place:We had a tie for third place between Melanie Farkas andLindsay Malloy. Melanie’s dissertation, entitled “Ability ofmalingering measures to differentiate simulated versus genu-ine mental retardation,” examined whether three commonlyused measures of malingering can differentiate betweenthose of normal intellect who were instructed to feign men-tal retardation and those with documented mental retarda-tion. The committee reviewers described Melanie’s meth-odology as “carefully designed,” and they stated that herdissertation will make a “timely contribution to the field.”Melanie completed her dissertation at Fordham Universityunder the supervision of Barry Rosenfeld. Melanie will re-ceive $250 for sharing third place.

The AP-LS Dissertation Awards Committee would like to congratulate the winners ofthe 2008 Dissertation Awards

Lindsay’s dissertation, entitled “Maltreated andnonmaltreated children’s evaluations of disclosing an adult’swrongdoing,” examined the reasons maltreated andnonmaltreated children elect to disclose or not to disclosenegative experiences. The committee reviewers describedher project as “thorough in design and analysis,” with thepotential to “make a good contribution both theoretically andpractically.” Lindsay completed her dissertation at the Uni-versity of California, Irvine, under the supervision of JodiQuas. Lindsay will receive $250 for sharing third place.

Each award winner will have the opportunity to present herdissertation in a poster session at the 2009 AP-LS AnnualConference in San Antonio.


Fellowships and PositionsFaculty Position

Chicago School of Professional Psychology

Founded in 1979, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology is anindependent professional graduate school with a dynamic student body anda professionally accomplished faculty. Our curriculum and trainingopportunities prepare graduates to deliver outstanding professional servicesemphasizing the ability to understand and work with diverse populations.The Department of Forensic Psychology at The Chicago School is seekingan outstanding practitioner-scholar for full-time faculty appointment (half-time appointment will be considered) to begin in July 2009.

Successful candidates must be able to demonstrate ongoing professionalactivity and scholarship and the ability to involve students in theirprogram of scholarship. Preference will be given to candidates with theability to teach in the areas of: Intellectual Assessment, Cognitive andAffective Bases of Behavior, Biological Bases of Behavior, ForensicReport Writing/Advanced Assessment, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy,and/or Psychopharmacology. Furthermore, the newly developed ForensicCenter offers faculty the opportunity to engage in a wide array ofcommunity initiatives, including recidivism reduction, familyreunification, policy advocacy, and program evaluation. All candidatesare required to have a doctorate degree in psychology. Three years ofteaching experience is preferred. Candidates must also supply evidenceof graduate-level teaching effectiveness, a proven track record of clinicalforensic experience and scholarship.

The Chicago School offers a generous compensation and benefits package,as well as the opportunity to work for a leader in the field of professionalpsychology. Some of our key benefits include: medical and dental coverage,company-paid life and disability insurance, 403b with employer contribution,multiple flexible spending accounts (FSA), tuition reimbursement, professionaldevelopment, and regular employee appreciation events.

To apply for this position, please send a letter of intent, a copy of your CV,official transcripts, and three letters of recommendation to: Email:Megan Jamieson, Department [email protected]: Dept. Faculty Search – Forensic Psychology. Mail:The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, Department of ForensicPsychology, Attn: Megan Jamieson, Department Manager, 325 North WellsStreet,Chicago, Illinois, 60654, Re: Dept. Faculty Search – Forensic Psychology.For more information about The Chicago School visit www.thechicagoschool.edu.The Chicago School is an Equal Opportunity Employer

Part-time Faculty PositionArgosy University

Argosy University, Washington D.C. is seeking applicants for a part-time faculty position in our M.A. Forensic Psychology program. Appli-cants must have a commitment to graduate instruction, faculty gover-nance, student mentoring and interaction, student advisement, and in-volvement in professional and scholarly activity. Candidates must holda doctoral degree in psychology or related field, have the ability to holdfaculty rank, and be licensed or license-eligible in VA, MD, or DC. Com-mitment to the field of forensic psychology as evidenced by education,experience and professional affiliation. A minimum of three years gradu-ate teaching experience strongly preferred. We offer a competitive salaryand benefits. To apply, submit letter of intent, curriculum vitae, and alist of three references to: [email protected] indicating APLSFORin the subject line. For more information, visit www.argosy.edu.

Forensic Psychology CoordinatorArgosy University

This is a part-time position in a Department of Forensic Psychologywith opportunities for additional paid teaching responsibilities. Require-ments: Doctoral degree in Psychology or an equivalent field, licensed orlicense eligible as a psychologist, experience as a forensic psychologistand university/college teaching experience. Responsibilities include:Review student admission applications, interview student applicants,attend and conduct new student orientations, participate in on-site in-formation sessions, orient new adjunct faculty to the culture at ArgosyUniversity including the internet and the use of technology, partneringon recruiting new faculty, participate in the selection of internship sites,coordinate comprehensive examinations, visit all classes at the beginningof each term, and participate in selecting local program advisory boardmembers. Qualified applicants should submit their letter of applicationand curriculum vita to Dr. R. Preston Gelhart, Chair and Professor ofForensic Psychology Argosy University, Southern California. Email Sub-missions Preferred: [email protected]. Education Management embracesdiversity as a critical step in ensuring employee, student and graduate suc-cess. We are committed to building and developing a diverse environmentwhere a variety of ideas, cultures and perspectives can thrive.

Assistant ProfessorsUniversity of New Orleans

DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOPATHOLOGY & BIOLOGICALBASES OF PSYCHOPATHOLOGY. The Department of Psychology atthe University of New Orleans, a member of the LSU system, is search-ing for two creative and energetic scholars to join our faculty at theAssistant Professor level (tenure track) for Fall 2009. In recent years,the Department has developed two strong and unique Ph.D. programs,one in Applied Developmental Psychology and one Applied Biopsy-chology, both with an emphasis on psychopathology. The primary con-siderations in hiring for both positions will be the applicant’s scholarlypotential and fit within the particular concentration. For the develop-mental psychopathology concentration, a successful candidate will dem-onstrate a strong commitment to a developmentally-oriented approachto research and practice. Applicants must have a Ph.D. in psychologybut individuals trained in many psychological disciplines (e.g., develop-mental, clinical, school, community, gerontology) will be considered.For information on the developmental psychopathology position, con-tact Carl Weems at [email protected] or 504-280-6772. For the biologi-cal bases of psychopathology concentration, applicants must have aPh.D. in psychology but individuals trained in any area of biologicalpsychology will be considered, as long as their research contributes totheories and/or applications related to psychopathology. We are par-ticularly interested in applicants with expertise in psychophysiology orbehavioral medicine, especially those with translational research pro-grams or interests. For information on the biological bases of psychopa-thology position, contact Kevin Greve at [email protected] or 504-280-6185. Applicants should send their vita, a statement of research inter-ests and career goals, sample reprints/preprints, and three letters ofreference to: Faculty Search Committee, Department of Psychology,University of New Orleans, New Orleans, LA 70148. Review of appli-cations will be ongoing and continue until the available positions arefilled. The University of New Orleans is an Affirmative Action/EqualEmployment Opportunity employer. Women, ethnic minorities, veter-ans and persons with disabilities are encouraged to apply.


Funding Opportunities

AP-LS/Division 41Stipends for Graduate Research

The Division 41 Grants-in-Aid Committee is accepting pro-posals for small stipends (maximum of $750) to supportempirical graduate research that addresses psycholegal is-sues (the award is limited to graduate students who arestudent affiliate members of AP-LS). Note: AP-LS doesnot pay indirect costs to the institution or the University.

Interested individuals should submit a short proposal (amaximum of 1500 words excluding references) in electronicformat (preferably Word or PDF) that includes: (a) a coversheet indicating the title of the project, name, address, phonenumber, and e-mail address of the investigator; (b) an ab-stract of 100 words or less summarizing the project; (c)purpose, theoretical rationale, and significance of the project;(d) procedures to be employed; and, (e) specific amountrequested, including a detailed budget and (f) references.Applicants should include a discussion of the feasibility ofthe research (e.g., if budget is for more than $750, indicatesource of remaining funds). Note that a prior recipient ofan AP-LS Grant-in-Aid is only eligible for future funding ifthe previously funded research has been completed.

Applicants should submit proof that IRB approval has beenobtained for the project and the appropriate tax form W-9for US citizens and W-8BEN for international students. Dr.Robert Cochrane (committee chair): [email protected] forms and IRB approval can be FAXed to Dr. RobertCochrane (committee chair): 919-575-4866. Please in-clude a cover sheet with your FAX.

There are two deadlines each year: September 30 andJanuary 31.

Announcement of Funding Opportunity forScholarship Relating to Litigation

The ABA Section of Litigation (the Section) established The Litiga-tion Research Fund to support original and practical scholarly workthat significantly advances the understanding of civil litigation in theUnited States. The Section anticipates making individual awards ofbetween $5,000 and $20,000. Legal academics as well as social scien-tists and scholars from other disciplines are invited to apply.

The Section has funded various academic conferences and schol-arship relevant to civil litigation such as research on the “vanish-ing trial” that was published in the Journal of Empirical LegalStudies, vol. 1, no. 3 (2004). The new Litigation Research Fundbuilds upon this commitment. The Fund will be administered by aSection task force chaired by Professor Bruce A. Green of FordhamUniversity School of Law, and informed by advice from research-ers convened by the American Bar Foundation, a leading researchinstitute for empirical research on law.

The Litigation Research Fund will support research and writingprojects in two broad areas: First, scholarship relevant to litiga-tion policy (e.g., on issues important to rule makers, legislators, orcourts, or helpful to the organized bar in developing guidelines andformulating positions); and second, scholarship bearing on litigationpractice (such as writings addressing trial skills or other aspects ofhow litigators conduct their work). Funded scholarship may relate tojudicial administration; judicial independence; rules and standardsrelating to litigation (e.g., ethics rules, rules of evidence, and rules ofcivil procedure); the assistance of counsel; trial and discovery prac-tice; or the jury process, among others.

Preference will be given to works with an empirical foundation,although they need not involve original data collection. Positionpapers, comparative and historical scholarship, and other originalacademic work of practical significance to litigation and litigatorswill also qualify for funding. Works already in progress are eligible.Authors will maintain the copyrights in their works; however, theSection of Litigation will receive the non-exclusive right to distribute,publicize and quote from the completed works in order to make themavailable, as appropriate, to members of the Section of Litigation,courts, lawmakers and policymakers, and others.

Applicants should submit a short statement (approximately 5 pages)describing the project with a project title and how it will be con-ducted; the form the final product will take (e.g., article or book);when it will be completed; the importance of the project in light ofthe above criteria; and a project budget. Please include granteeinstitution’s name and contact person with e-mail and mailing ad-dress. The award is not intended to cover institutions’ indirectcosts. Awardees will be asked to sign the ABA grant conditionsbefore the award is made. A curriculum vita including a list of theapplicant’s prior publications should also be submitted. Priorityconsideration for the next awards will be given to submissionsreceived by February 28, 2009. For additional information, con-tact: Professor Bruce Green ([email protected]).

Applications should be submitted by e-mail with the subject line“Litigation Research Fund” to Monica Cortez([email protected]), ABA Section of Litigation, with cop-ies to Robert Nelson ([email protected]), Director, American BarFoundation, and Professor Bruce Green([email protected]).


Funding OpportunitiesAPF Visionary and Weiss Grants

Call for proposals

The American Psychological Foundation (APF) Visionary andWeiss grants seek to seed innovation through supporting re-search, education, and intervention projects and programs thatuse psychology to solve social problems in the following priorityareas:

Understanding and fostering the connection between mental andphysical health to ensure well-being; Reducing stigma and preju-dice to promote unity and harmony; Understanding and prevent-ing violence to create a safer, more humane world; and Supportingprograms that address the long-term psychological needs of indi-viduals and communities in the aftermath of disaster.

Amount (New in 2009):One-year grants are available in amounts ranging from $5,000 to$20,000. Multi-year grants are no longer available. Additionally, a$10,000 Raymond A. and Rosalee G. Weiss Innovative Researchand Programs Grant is also available for any program that fallswithin APF’s priority areas.

Deadline:March 15, 2009

Eligibility:Applicants must be affiliated with 501(c)(3) nonprofit organiza-tions. APF will NOT consider the following requests for grants tosupport: political or lobbying purposes entertainment orfundraising expenses anyone the Internal Revenue Service wouldregard as a disqualified group or individual localized direct ser-vice conference/workshop expenses. APF encourages proposalsfrom individuals who represent diversity in race, ethnicity, gen-der, age, disability, and sexual orientation. For more informationand to access the grant application form, please visit http://www.apa.org/apf/grantguide.html. Please contact Emily Leary([email protected]; 202.336.5622) with questions.

Minority Affairs CommitteeConference Travel Awards

Purpose of award:The Minority Affairs Committee (MAC) was established by theAmerican Psychology-Law Society to facilitate activities and de-velop opportunities within the Division that embrace, respect andvalue diversity. More specifically, the purpose of the conferencetravel awards is to provide financial assistance to students whowould like to attend the 2008 American Psychology-Law Society’sAnnual Conference in an effort to increase diversity attendance.

Award amounts:Five travel awards will be provided: one award in the amount of$500.00, and four awards in the amount of $250.00 each.

Eligibility for awards:Current full and part-time undergraduate and graduate studentsfrom underrepresented groups may apply. Applicants must bestudent members of AP-LS with priority given to students pre-senting at the conference. Although the primary target for theseawards are for historically disadvantaged groups that include ra-cial/ethnic minorities and first-generation college students, theMAC will also consider proposals from other underrepresentedgroups.

Award applications should contain the following:1. A cover letter which provides all contact information of theapplicant and confirms the applicant’s eligibility for the award asa member of an underrepresented group.2. A three-page (maximum), double-spaced, typewritten applica-tion containing the following information: Discussion of theapplicant’s benefits of attending and presenting at the confer-ence: Discussion of the applicant’s financial need for the award;Discussion on how the award will be utilized along with a detaileditemized budget (award recipients will need to submit financialreceipts to the MAC Chair & AP-LS Treasurer for reimbursement);Listing of three names of experts in the field who are attending the2009 APLS conference that the applicant would like to meet dur-ing the MAC luncheon (please see conference program on theAP-LS website). Award recipients must be available to attend thereception hosted by the MAC.

Application submission deadline:Applications must be submitted no later than midnight, EST,Wednesday, February 11, 2009. Please direct all inquiries andapplications to Roslyn M. Caldwell, Ph.D., Minority Affairs Com-mittee Chair via email: [email protected]. Applications will beawarded on a competitive basis and selected based on theapplicant’s financial need.

Award announcements:Award recipients will be notified by February 27, 2009. The awardswill be presented during the 2009 American Psychology-LawSociety’s Annual Conference in San Antonio, Texas.

Fellowship and Position listings are included in the APLSNews at no charge as a service to members and affiliates.All listings should be forwarded, in MS Word or WordPerfect,with minimal formatting included to Jennifer Groscup([email protected]). Deadlines are Janu-ary 1, May 1, and September 1, with each issue placed onlineapproximately six weeks later. Any requests for Fellowshipand Position listings should include details regarding whichissues of the newsletter the listing should be included (i.e., aone-time listing, for a specified number of issues or period oftime, or a listing that should appear on a regular schedule).


Notes From The Student Chair

AP-LSStudent Officers

E-mail Addresses

Chair, Gianni [email protected]

Past Chair, Andrew [email protected]

Chair Elect, Sarah Manchak [email protected]

Secretary/Treasurer, David [email protected]

Web Editor, Shannon [email protected]

Member-at-Large/Liasons (Clinical)Tess Neal

[email protected] McLawsen

[email protected]

Member-at-Large/Liasons (Experimental)Andre Kehn

[email protected] Skovran

[email protected]

Member-at-Large/Liason (Law)Ryan Montes

[email protected]

AP-LS Student Homepagewww.aplsstudentsection.com/

AP-LS Student [email protected]

Dear AP-LS Student Member:

On behalf of the Student Section cabinet I would like to wish you all a Happy New Year. Sincethis summer, your 2008-2009 student cabinet has been working hard on a number of excitinginitiatives. After receiving an important and necessary budget increase, we have been able tobuild upon and expand the quantity and quality of web-based resources and student-focusedconference-related programming. I am sure I speak not only for my fellow committee membersbut also the wider student constituency when I express my appreciation and gratitude to theExecutive Committee for their continued support of the Student Section and our initiatives.

As I reflect on our accomplishments thus far and look toward the full schedule of events wehave planned for this year’s conference, the main themes emerging from the cabinet continue tobe growth and communication. Beginning last year, we developed and continue to add to ourstudent list-serve. Additionally, we also have seen a substantial growth in our Campus Repre-sentative Program; there are currently 35 programs with AP-LS student representatives acrossthe United States and Canada. Our user-friendly and resource-rich website has helped to drumup much enthusiasm among students and has fostered increased involvement, communica-tion, and collaboration among our student members. This site is an incredibly useful tool and isconstantly being updated. As such, we encourage you to visit it often (www.aplsstudentsection.com).

Many of our initiatives will be actualized at the annual conference in San Antonio. This yearthere are many student-centered programming options to enhance your conference experience.Beginning on Thursday morning, the Mentoring Committee will be hosting a brief symposiumdesigned to help students navigate and get the most of their conference experience. Thursdayafternoon kicks off the first session in a three-part student and early career professional devel-opment series co-sponsored by the Student Section, Teaching Training and Careers Commit-tee, and Mentoring Committee. The first session will focus on developing and improving CVsand personal statements, and the remaining two workshops, on Friday and Saturday, willaddress the academic hiring process and the academic interviewing process. Friday night willbe our 2nd Annual Student Section Social, whereby students will have the opportunity tonetwork with other students over light refreshments and desserts. Like last year, we will have astudent section “booth” where students can stop by and obtain the conference “survivalguide”, sign up for the list-serve and Campus Representative Program, purchase a stylish AP-LS Student Section t-shirt (this year’s primary fundraiser), and meet the 2008-2009 officers.Finally and perhaps most exciting, the Student Section will be sponsoring three awards of $100each to the most original undergraduate and graduate student posters and best overall studentposter displayed at this year’s conference.

We look forward to an informative and exciting conference and will continue to provide youwith resources and opportunities to aid in your personal growth and professional develop-ment. See you in Texas!

Be Well,

Gianni PirelliStudent Chair & Doctoral Candidate, The Graduate Center at John Jay College of CriminalJustice (CUNY)


Conference and Workshop Planner

Law and Society AssociationAnnual Meeting

May 28 - 31, 2009Grand Hyatt Hotel

Denver, COSubmission deadline: closed but late

submissions may be acceptedFor further information see

www.lawandsociety.org

The next American Psychology-Law Society

Annual MeetingMarch 5 - 9, 2009San Antonio, TX

Mark it on your calanders!!

For further information seewww.ap-ls.org or page 46

Information regardingupcoming conferencesand workshops can be

sent to Jennifer Groscup([email protected])

International Association ofForensic Mental Health

Annual MeetingJune 24 - 26, 2009

Edinburgh Int. Conf. CenterEdinburgh, Scotland

Submission deadline: closed

For further information seewww.iafmhs.org/iafmhs.asp

Note: The American Academyof Forensic Psychology will

continue to present workshopsthroughout 2009-2010

Dates and Locations will beavailable at www.aafp.ws

Association forPsychological ScienceAnnual ConventionMay 22 - 25, 2009San Fransisco, CA


For further information seewww.psychologicalscience.org

American Society of CriminologyNovember 4 - 9, 2009

Philadelphia, PASubmission deadline: 3/13/09

For further information seewww.asc41.com

American Society of TrialConsultants

June 4-7, 2009Atlanta, GA

For further information seewww.astcweb.org

American Academy of ForensicPsychology

Contemporary Issues inForensic PsychologyApril 22-26, 2009

Wichita Hyatt RegencyWichita, KS

For further information seewww.aafpworkshops.com

Congress of the Internat’l Acad-emy of Law and Mental Health

June 28-July 4, 2009New York, NY

For further information seewww.ialmh.org


Contemporary Issues inForensic PsychologyMay 20-24, 2009

Albuquerque Hyatt RegencyAlbuquerque, NM


2010 American Psychology-Law Society

Annual MeetingMarch 18 - 20, 2010

Vancouver, British Columbia, CAMark it on your calanders!!

American PsychologicalAssociation Annual Meeting

August 6 - 9, 2009Toronto, Ontario, CA


For further information seewww.apa.org/conf.html

Society for Applied Research inMemory & Cognition

July 26-30, 2009Hotel Heian Kaikan

Kyoto, JapanSubmission deadline: closed

For further information seewww.sarmacjapan.org

European Association forPsychology & LawAnnual MeetingSept. 2-5, 2009Sorrento, Italy

Submission deadline: 03/10/09

For further information seewww.law.kuleuven.be/eapl/c&p.html


Contemporary Issues inForensic Psychology

March 25-29, 2009Montreal HyattMontreal, QC



Grant Writing Planner National Science Foundation

Law and Social Sciences Division

Submission deadlines:January 15th and August 15th, yearly

For further information seewww.nsf.gov

American Psychology-LawSociety Grants-in-Aid

Maximum award: $750

Submission deadlines:January 31st and September 30th,

yearly

For further information seepages 33

National Science FoundationLaw and Social Sciences Division

Dissertation ImprovementGrants

Submission deadlines:January 15th and August 15th, yearly

For further information seewww.nsf.gov

American PsychologicalAssociation

Various awards compiled by theAPA are availablefor psychologists

Submission deadlines:Various

For further information seewww.apa.org/psychologists/

scholarships.html


Student Awards

Various awards compiled by theAPAGS are available for students

For further information seewww.apa.org/apags/members/

schawrds.html:

Information regardingavailable grants and awards can

be sent to Jennifer Groscup([email protected])

Society for the PsychologicalStudy of Social Issues (SPSSI)

Grants-in-AidMaximum awards:

Graduate Student: $1000PhD Members: $2000

Submission deadlines:May 15, 2009 & October 16, 2009

For further information seewww.spssi.org


Dissertation Awards

Submission deadline:September 15, 2009

For information seewww.apa.org/science/dissinfo.html

National Institute ofMental Health

Various

Submission deadline: Various

For information on NIMH funding forresearch on mental health see

www.nimh.gov


Disginguished Scienitfic Award forEarly Career Contribution 2009Maximum Award: $1,000

Submission deadline:June 1, 2009

For further information seewww.apa.org/science/sciaward.html

National Institute of JusticeResearch on Sexual Violence and Teen

Dating ViolenceSubmission deadline:

March 30, 2009

For information on NIJ funding forresearch on the criminal justice system

see www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/funding


Student Travel AwardsTravel awards for the

2009 Annual ConventionAwards of up to $300

Submission deadline: April 1, 2009

For further information seewww.apa.org/science/travinfo.html

National Institute of JusticeSocial Science Research on

Wrongful ConvictionSubmission deadline:

March 16, 2009



National Institute of JusticeSocial Science Research on

Forensic ScienceSubmission deadline:

April 13, 2009



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