Articles
Forensic Mental Health - Treatment
2021
Gabrielle Beaudry, Rongqin Yu, Amanda E Perry, Seena Fazel, Effectiveness of psychological interventions in prison to reduce recidivism: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials, Lancet Psychiatry
This paper evaluates the effectiveness of interventions in prison to reduce recidivism after release. It suggests that therapeutic communities and interventions that ensure continuity of care in community settings should be prioritised for future research.
Read More →2021
Sarah M. Pringer & Nathaniel J. Wagner., Use of Trauma‐Informed Care With Incarcerated Offenders. [Restricted Access]
This article explores the current treatments available to those who offend, exploring Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). It then moves on to highlighting the gaps in the current framework of treatment and proposes the integration of Trauma-Informed Care within existing tools to produce safer and more effective outcomes.
Read More →2021
Marguerite Ternes,Barry S. Cooper & Dorothee Griesel., The perpetration of violence and the experience of trauma: Exploring predictors of PTSD symptoms in male violent offenders. [Restricted Access]
This article explores a study which examined 150 violent male offenders to study if incarcerated offenders are more likely to experience Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and associated symptoms than the general population. Findings indicate that perpetrated acts of violence were associated with a greater number of trauma symptoms. Such results support the need for trauma-informed assessment and treatment for offenders to ensure the safety and wellbeing of everyone.
Read More →2020
Scott E. Kirkorsky, Mary Gable & Katherine Warburton., An overview of jail-based competency restoration, Cambridge University Press (2020)
Forensic populations in the United States are increasing, driven largely by a rise in individuals determined to be Incompetent to Stand Trial (IST). Traditionally, competency restoration has taken place in state hospitals, but incompetent inmates often experience a significant wait for state hospital beds because of the rising demand for beds in such facilities. Jail-based competency (JBCT) provides restoration services in county jails, rather than in psychiatric hospitals. This article reviews the nature of JBCT programs within California.
2020
Darci Delgado, Ashley Breth, Shelley Hill & Katherine Warburton., Economics of decriminalizing mental illness: when doing the right thing costs less, Cambridge University Press (2020)
Mental health diversion programs across the nation are the need of the hour. Not only are they uniquely positioned to provide humane treatment to individuals within the community and break the cycle of recidivism but could also result in potential fiscal savings of over 1 billion dollars.
2020
Andrew Carroll,Andrew Ellis,Andrew Aboud,Russ Scott & Krishna Pillai., No involuntary treatment of mental illness in Australian and New Zealand prisons, Journal of Forensic Psychiatry & Psychology, Taylor and Francis Online (2020)
This article looks at involuntary treatment of serious mental illness in custodial settings and its impact on clinical care. The article argues that involuntary treatment carries a significant risk of serious harms, encourages inappropriate management of prisoners and breaches human rights conventions.
Mental Health and Criminal Justice
2021
Soumya AK, Maitreyi Misra, Anup Surendranath., Shapeshifting And Erroneous: The Many Inconsistencies in the Insanity Defence in India, NUJS Law Review (2021)
This paper explores how the inconsistent interpretation and application of the test under section 84 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 as a result of reliance on long discarded notions, has injected arbitrariness and vagueness into the jurisprudence.
Read More →2021
Riittakerttu Kaltiala, Timo Holttinen, Nina Lindberg, Subsequent criminal participation among young people first admitted to psychiatric inpatient care during early and middle adolescence, The Journal of Forensic Psychiatry and Psychology
This study comprised all subjects that had between 1980 and 2010 been admitted to psychiatric inpatient care in Finland for the first time in their lives between ages 13–17. The study calculated the incidence of crimes in this population and also analysed which disorders were associated with greater risk of commission of crimes.
Read More →2021
Lauren N. Miley, Ellie Heiss-Moses, John K. Cochran, Kathleen M. Heide, Sondra J. Fogel, M. Dwayne Smith & Beth J. Bejerregaard., An examination of the effects of mental disorders as mitigating factors on capital sentencing outcomes. [Restricted Access]
This article explores whether juries in the US take into account extreme mental and emotional disturbance, capacity impairment, and specific mental illness diagnoses, often referred to as mental disorders, at the sentencing phase to mitigate against a sentence of death. Its findings indicate that the mental health condition of the accused does not mitigate against a sentence of death, with the exception of a learning disability.
Read More →2021
Josh Salzer., Ending the Death Penalty for People With Severe Mental Illness (How Recent Supreme Court Cases Interpreting Atkins v. Virginia Support a New Death Penalty Prohibition)
This article argues that courts or legislatures should prohibit the execution of people with severe mental illness who were significantly impaired by their illness at the time of their crime in light of recent Supreme Court death penalty interpretation of Atkins. It explores themes such as, “The Reduced Culpability of People With Intellectual Disability” and argues that the best way to create this prohibition is to rely on medical professionals to define the category of people with “severe mental illness.”
Read More →1965
K. M. Sharma., Defence of Insanity in Indian Criminal Law, Journal of the Indian Law Institute (1965)
This paper explores various aspects of the defence of insanity defence in Indian criminal law. The paper commences by looking at the defence of insanity in Hindu and Muslim systems of jurisprudence and modern attempts at codification culminating in section 84 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860. The paper also examines the the judicial interpretation of section 84 and the selective case-law of over a century, involving a variety of fact situations, to find out the extent and scope of the defence of insanity as available under this section. The author asserts that a commission must be set up to amend the existing law to include volitional capacity.
2015
Suresh Bada Math., Insanity Defense: Past, Present and Future, Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine (2015)
This article focuses on the Indian case laws on the insanity defense and standards employed in Indian court. The article presents a model for evaluating a defendant’s mental status examination and briefly discusses the legal standards and procedures for the assessment of insanity defense evaluations.
2016
Asokan T V., The insanity defense: Related issues, Indian J Psychiatry (2016)
The insanity defense has a long history, and is evolved after many tests that have been tried and tested. Going by the current understanding of neurological evidences of compulsion and lack of impulse control, rationality tests without the inclusion of lack of control, seem to be outdated. With progress in neuroscience, the law may need to abandon or alter some of its current assumptions about the nature of voluntary conduct.
2019
## Parthasarthy Ramamurthy,Vijay Chahoth & Pradeep Thilakan., How does India Decide Insanity Pleas? A Review of High Court Judgments in the Past Decade, Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine (2019)
This study was undertaken with the objectives of estimating the success rate of insanity pleas in Indian High Courts and determining the factors associated with the outcome of such insanity pleas. The study looks at 102 judgements collected from the websites of 23 High Courts of India.
2008
Stanley Yeo., The Insanity Defence in the Criminal Laws of the Commonwealth of Nations, Singapore Journal of Legal Studies, (2008)
This article compares the M'Naghten Rules and some of the principal variations found in the Commonwealth of Nations for the purpose of formulating the best possible provision on the defence of insanity. The discussion is enhanced by evaluations of the concept of diminished responsibility operating in the Commonwealth, and of the provision on insanity in the Statute of the International Criminal Court.
2008
Rogers, T. P, Blackwood, N. J, Farnham, F, Pickup, G. J & Watts, M. J., Fitness to plead and competence to stand trial: a systematic review of the constructs and their application',Journal of Forensic Psychiatry & Psychology, (2008)
Numerous assessment instruments have been developed in North America to help guide professional determinations of competence to stand trial, but such assessments are not routinely employed in British settings. The evidence reviewed calls into question the utility of the fitness to plead construct as currently formulated and highlights the inadequacy of the procedures employed in its determination.
Access to Healthcare
2021
Shivam Singh, Farhad R. Udwadia, Shayan Sadeghieh & J. Wesley Boyd., The Role of Medical Personnel in Improving Prisoner Rights and Health in India
A survey conducted with students in Indian medical schools suggests that medical students are not offered much (if any) education about prisoner rights pertaining to healthcare and conditions in Indian prisons. The study discusses the health crisis within Indian prisons, and argues that medical schools ought to advocate for and promote the health and human rights of prisoners in India to make prison reform more likely.
Read More →2018
S Rabiya & V Raghavan., Prison Mental Health in India: Review, Indian J. Soc. Psychiatry (2018)
A review of 12 research studies showed the prevalence of psychiatric disorders such as substance use, schizophrenia, depression, adjustment issues, and suicidal risk is considerably high.
2015
United Nations General Assembly Resolution, The Nelson Mandela Rules: Protecting the Rights of Persons Deprived of Liberty (2015)
The Mandela Rules provide States with detailed guidelines for protecting the rights of persons deprived of their liberty, from pre-trial detainees to sentenced prisoners.
2016
M Keulen-de Vos et al., Schema Modes in the Criminal and Violent Behavior Of Forensic Cluster B PD Patients: A Retrospective and Prospective Study, Legal and Criminological Psychology
Schema modes are states that represent an individual’s emotional, cognitive, and behavioral tendencies. This article states that by focusing on schema modes an individual’s criminal and violence behavior can be explained, predicted, and treated.
2012
G M Willis et al., How to Integrate the Good Lives Model Into Treatment Programs for Sexual Offending: An Introduction and Overview, Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment (2012)
This paper explains the good lives model (GLM) and its implementation with respect to people convicted of sexual offences. The GLM is a treatment module with a cognitive behavioral therapy framework that works within the risk, need, and responsivity parameters of behavioral treatment focused on reducing recidivism.
2011
F Gilbert and M Dafern, Illuminating the Relationship Between Personality Disorder and Violence: Contributions of the General Aggression Model, Psychology of Violence (2011)
This article discusses the inaccuracy of an association between personality disorders and violence. It introduces the General Aggression Model to explain individual variances in aggression propensities. Such an assessment allows focus to be on the relevant constructs for violence potential in people with personality disorders. Implications for using personality disorders in risk assessments and treatment needs are discussed.
Forensic Mental Health - Expert Witness Testimony
2021
The science-based pathways to understanding false confessions and wrongful convictions.
This article is a review that explores how real-life cases have driven the science by stimulating research into “coercive” police questioning techniques, psychological vulnerabilities to false confession, and the development and validation of psychometric tests of interrogative suggestibility and compliance. It identifies the three established error pathways to false confessions and wrongful convictions: misclassification, coercion, and contamination.
Read More →2021
Forensic mental health expert testimony and judicial decision-making: A systematic literature review.
This article looked at Forensic Mental Health Expert Testimony (FMHE) across 27 studies and measured its effects on judicial decisions on guilt and sentencing. This expertise can be used in various decisions in a criminal trial, such as criminal responsibility and sentencing decisions. The effect of FMHE on sentencing was found to be influenced by type of disorder, behavioral control, treatability, or recidivism risk.
Read More →2018
I E Dror and D C Murrie, A Hierarchy of Expert Performance Applied to Forensic Psychological Assessments, Psychology, Public Policy, and Law
This paper explores psychological assessment in forensic psychology by looking at the Hierarchy of Expert Performance (HEP) -a framework that assesses the reliability and biasability, both within and between experts, at the levels of observations and conclusions. This framework is intended to strengthen forensic assessment research and expert witness testimony.
Research and Application
2021
Janani Umamaheswar., ‘Suppression on top of oppression’: A symbolic interactionist perspective on the affective experience of incarceration, British Journal of Criminology, Oxford Academic (2021) [Restricted Access]
This article draws on 24 in-depth interviews with incarcerated men to reveal how the prison setting generates negative emotions (such as sadness, shame, humiliation, and anger) that in turn perpetuate the isolation that these men face. The article also draws on theoretical literature derived from symbolic interactionism (and identity theory in particular) to explore how participants cope with, and make efforts to overcome, their negative emotions.
2021
Emily Corner, Helen Taylor, Isabelle Van Der Vegt, Nadine Salman, Bettina Rottweiler, Florian Hetzel, Caitlin Clemmow, Norah Schulten & Paul Gill., Reviewing the links between violent extremism and personality, personality disorders, and psychopathy, The Journal of Forensic Psychiatry and Psychology, (2021) [Restricted Access]
This paper assesses the impact of personality upon attitudes, intentions, and behaviours in the context of radicalisation and terrorism. The paper interrogates existing empirical literature on personality and terrorism in terms of its coverage, common themes, methodological strengths and weaknesses and implications.
2016
S C Appleby and S M Kassin, When Self-report Trumps Science: Effects of Confessions, DNA, and Prosecutorial Theories on Perceptions of Guilt, Psychology, Public Policy, and Law (2016)
This article outlines three studies that were conducted to understand the effect of confessions on perception of guilt. The analysis discusses why people are so trusting of confessions and how juries and judges can be swayed by a confession and therefore how they can sway the analyses of other evidence presented. This study portrays how confession is very powerful in criminal law and can corrupt analysis of other evidence presented -even DNA, and result in several confirmation biases from the judge and jury.
2010
A Memon et al., The Cognitive Interview: A Meta-Analytic Review and Study Space Analysis of the Past 25 Years, Psychology, Public Policy, and Law
This is a meta-analysis of 46 publications assessing the effectiveness of the cognitive interview. Findings indicate that cognitive interview continues to be more effective in garnering accurate recall in field and experimental studies.
2009
S O'Mara, Torturing the Brain, Trends in Cognitive Sciences
This article critiques the use of ‘enhanced interrogation’ by identifying the faulty science that attempts to justify the use of such tactics. The study explains how different regions of the brain that are negatively affected harm the victim and inadvertently reduce the quality and truthfulness of the information gathered from them.
Forensic neuroscience and neuropsychology
2021
Advancement of Neuroscience and the Assessment of Mental State at the time of Offense.
This paper argues that assessing mental state at the time of offense should be a legal prerequisite for determining criminal responsibility in trials involving the insanity defense. It argues that neuroscience can improve the delivery of justice by increasing our understanding of the neural correlates of criminal behaviors and concludes that neuroscientific assessment can be a useful data source in the assessment of mental state at the time of offense.
Read More →2020
N E Anderson and K A Kiehl, Re-Wiring Guilt: How Advancing Neuroscience Encourages Strategic Interventions Over Retributive Justice, Frontiers in Psychology (2020)
This paper affirms the place of neuroscience in jurisprudence and explains how the fields of science and law can be balanced to better improve legal-decision making. The authors call for the shifting of normative attitudes about culpability. They propose that advancing neuroscience is not likely to promote major changes in the way we assign legal responsibility, but is rather likely to promote pragmatic strategies to combat patterns that promote mass incarceration and recidivism by helping to challenge “our harshest retributivist instincts”.
2010
J M Fabian, Neuropsychological and Neurological Correlates in Violent and Homicidal Offenders: A Legal And Neuroscience Perspective, Aggression and Violent Behavior [Paywall]
This paper presents a literature review exploring brain abnormalities and violent or aggressive behavior to see how they may correlate. This article goes on to explain how expert witnesses can “integrate neurological and especially neuropsychological data to address psycholegal issues, such as mitigation, freewill, and moral culpability, especially within death penalty and murder cases.” and discusses the responsibility of expert witnesses that bring neuropsychological evidence into the courtroom.
Forensic Mental Health Ethics
2013
Tony Ward, Addressing the Dual Relationship Problem in Forensic and Correctional Practice, Aggression and Violent Behavior
This article explains the dual relationship of forensic mental health practise oscillating between correctional/punishment and treatment needs. The ethical limitations of this ‘dual relationship’ are discussed by highlighting vertical clash (of professional ethics) and horizontal clash (codes vs human rights) and potential ways to accommodate the conflict are presented.
2011
L J Gooren, Ethical and Medical Considerations of Androgen Deprivation Treatment Of Sex Offenders, Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism
This paper explains how treatment of persons convicted of sexual offences with commonly used drug therapy and “chemical castration” is considered to be a minefield of ethical issues.