Law and Psychology Commons^™

No-One Receives Psychiatric Treatment In A Squad Car, Judy Ann Clausen, Joanmarie I. Davoli

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article explores tragedies caused by our current system for responding to mental health emergencies: homelessness, institutionalization, criminalization, harm to self, harm to others, and harm by police. In the wake of the George Floyd murder, there has been increased attention on our response to mental health emergencies and an outcry to reduce the role of police. This Article analyzes reforms from California, Colorado, Eugene, Oregon, the federal government, Dallas, and Nebraska. This Article posits that any reform that focuses only on first responders will not fix our system. Harm by police is only one of the tragedies suffered by …

Top Ten Practice Tips For Discharge Upgrades, Judy Ann Clausen, Colleen E. Miller, Danica Gonzalves

UF Law Faculty Publications

One of the most impactful ways attorneys can serve those who have served is to assist veterans with discharge upgrades. The military branches, especially the Marines, are issuing an increasing percentage of Other Than Honorable Discharges, leaving many veterans in need of this assistance. For years, the U.S. Department of Defense (“DoD”) issued Less Than Honorable Discharges based on the veteran’s diagnosis of a personality disorder, a condition that cannot be service-connected for VA purposes. Instead, many of these service members suffered from service-connected PTSD which caused misconduct such as self-medication with drugs, or missing or showing up late for …

The Conundrums Of Hate Crime Prevention, Shirin Sinnar

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

The recent surge in hate crimes alongside persistent concerns over policing and prisons has catalyzed new interest in hate crime prevention outside the criminal legal system. While policymakers, civil rights groups, and people in targeted communities internally disagree on the value of hate crime laws and law enforcement responses to hate crimes, they often converge in advocating measures that could prevent hate crimes from occurring in the first place. Those measures potentially include educational initiatives, conflict resolution programs, political reforms, social services, or other proactive efforts aimed at the root causes of hate crimes.

Focusing on the public conversation around …

In-Person Or Via Technology?: Drawing On Psychology To Choose And Design Dispute Resolution Processes, Jean R. Sternlight, Jennifer K. Robbennolt

Scholarly Works

Covid-19 fostered a remote technology boom in the world of dispute resolution. Pre-pandemic, adoption of technical innovation in dispute resolution was slow moving. Some attorneys, courts, arbitrators, mediators and others did use technology, including telephone, e-mail, text, or videoconferences, or more ambitious online dispute resolution (ODR). But, to the chagrin of technology advocates, many conducted most dispute resolution largely in-person. The pandemic effectively put the emerging technological efforts on steroids. Even the most technologically challenged quickly began to replace in-person dispute resolution with videoconferencing, texting, and other technology. Courts throughout the world canceled all or most in-person trials, hearings, conferences, …

The Future Of Criminal Culpability: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder's ("Ptsd") Effect On A Defendant's Actions And State Of Mind, Amin R. Yacoub, Becky Briggs

University of San Francisco Law Review

No abstract provided.

Emotions And Precedent, Emily Kidd White

All Papers

The philosophy of emotion raises complications for theories of precedent. This chapter argues that it is productive to think of the effect of some precedents as facets of legal reasoning that are related to the use and understanding of legal concepts as thick concepts. In legal reasoning, precedents are routinely invoked to explicate, and/or clarify the content of legal concepts that are at issue in a case. This chapter develops an argument by Bernard Williams, i.e., that one must avoid the risk of over-generalizing the relationship of emotions to thick concepts, by placing it in the context of legal reasoning. …

Lawyering 'Twisties': Naming And Untangling Performance Anxiety, Heidi K. Brown

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Individuals Who Have Been Convicted Of A Sex Offense: Attitudes On Legislation And Policy, Brenna L. Scott

Student Theses

Sex offender legislation, both at the state and federal level, was designed to keep communities safer. However research suggests that many of these laws do not decrease recidivism and in some cases may increase risk for reoffending. Despite this there has been little movement to repeal these laws. As such, it is important to understand how the current legislation impacts individuals who have committed a sex offense and their ability to successfully reintegrate into communities post-incarceration and what if anything can be done to improve existing laws. The current study surveyed 46 individuals convicted of sex offenses about their opinions …

Breaking Free: Detectives Let The Guilty Walk, Cassandra Holcombe

All Master's Theses

In a genre like detective fiction, known for affirming social order, the refusal to enforce rule of law seems like an anomaly. The number of famous detectives who have let a perpetrator go suggests that release of suspects is not a break in genre conventions, but is a wider pattern that needs to be acknowledged. This study investigates that pattern by measuring the complexity of thirteen detectives: eleven of whom release perpetrators and two of whom do not, to serve as a control group. The higher the complexity of the character, the more human the character seems to be. The …

Trauma-Informed Forensic Mental Health Assessment: Practical Implications, Ethical Tensions, And Alignment With Therapeutic Jurisprudence Principles, Julie Goldenson, Stanley Brodsky, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

The need for trauma-informed practice is well recognized across mental health and legal settings; however, relatively little has been written about its application in forensic mental health assessment. This paper focuses on trauma-informed assessment of criminal justice involved individuals, given the high rates of trauma exposure and related sequelae in this population. A trauma-informed lens allows forensic mental health examiners to assess examinees in the context of their developmental histories and lived experience. Such a lens also has implications for the entire assessment process in terms of interviewing, psychological testing, diagnostic conclusions, feedback, and the provision of testimony and educating …