Law and Psychology Commons^™

Modern Law Enforcement Training Based On Four Classic Psychological Experiments, Mkay Bonner, Mark S. Johnson

Contemporary Southern Psychology

Psychology as a discipline is alive and well. Psychology is so much more than just therapy or research with rats. Psychological science is applied to real life in a myriad of ways every day. One excellent example is the use of four classic psychological experiments as a foundation for the Active Bystandership for Law Enforcement (ABLE) training curriculum. This contemporary police training program seeks to reduce harm and improve the national law enforcement culture. The four classic psychological science experiments that are used in this evidence-informed curriculum include Diffusion of Responsibility from Darley and Latane’, the Seminary Experiment from Darley …

Encounters Between The Elderly And Law Enforcement

Contemporary Southern Psychology

The elderly population is growing dramatically throughout the world. Out of this growth comes an increase in the number of encounters between the aged and law enforcement. These encounters occur because of a variety of factors including mental illnesses and addictions. Furthermore, older adults may be victims as evidenced in different forms of abuse such as physical, emotional, or financial abuse. Sadly, some documentation exists that older adults are committing more crimes. Multiple reasons have been postulated for these crimes including poverty, jealousy, and boredom. All of these different situations with the aged have created an increase in the number …

Crisis Deescalation: A Brief Review And Variations On A Model, Mkay Bonner, Mark S. Johnson

Contemporary Southern Psychology

The demand for changes in police responses to crises are loud and compelling. One such recommended change is from a Warrior mindset to a Guardian mindset. The emphasis in the Guardian philosophy is on law enforcement officers (LEOs) as protectors instead of fighters. This mindset emphasizes deescalation instead of the use of force whenever possible. Several deescalation courses existed but more have been created recently. This recent increase has been due, in part, to profiteers wanting to benefit from the change in philosophy and training. A brief history starting with the legend in deescalation, Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) Training, is …

A Call To Dismantle Systemic Racism In Criminal Legal Systems, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Margaret C. Stevenson

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

Objectives: In October 2021, APA passed a resolution addressing ways psychologists could work to dismantle systemic racism in criminal legal systems. The present report, developed to inform APA’s policy resolution, details the scope of the problem and offers recommendations for policy and psychologists to address the issue by advancing related science and practice. Specifically, it acknowledges the roots of modern-day racial and ethnic disparities in rates of criminalization and punishment for people of color as compared to White people. Next, the report reviews existing theory and research that helps explain the underlying psychological mechanisms driving racial and ethnic disparities …

Moving Toward A Competency Based Model For Fostering Law Students’ Relational Skills, Susan L. Brooks, Marjorie A. Silver, Sarah Fishel, Kellie Wiltsie

Scholarly Works

Legal education has long been criticized for failing to provide adequate professional training to prepare graduates for legal practice realities. Many sources have lamented the lack of sufficient attention to the range of competencies necessary for law graduates to be effective practitioners and develop a positive professional identity, including those that are intra-personal, such as self-awareness, critical self-reflection, and self-directedness; those that are interpersonal, such as deep and reflective listening, empathy, compassion, cross-cultural communication, and dialogue; and those that engage with the social/systemic dimension of lawyering, such as appreciating the role of multiple identities, implicit bias, privilege and power, and …

Criminal Acts And Basic Moral Equality, John A. Humbach

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Modern criminal justice presupposes that persons are not morally equal. On the contrary, those who do wrong are viewed by the law as less worthy of respect, concern and decent treatment: Offenders, it is said, “deserve” to suffer for their misdeeds. Yet, there is scant logical or empirical basis for the law's supposition that offenders are morally inferior. The usual reasoning is that persons who intentionally or knowingly do wrong are the authors and initiators of their acts and, as such, are morally responsible for them. But this reasoning rests on the assumption that a person's mental states, such as …

Towards A Psychological Science Of Abolition Democracy: Insights For Improving Theory And Research On Race And Public Safety, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Phillip Atiba Goff

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

We call for psychologists to expand their thinking on fair and just public safety by engaging with the “Abolition Democracy” framework that Du Bois (1935) articulated as the need to dissolve slavery while simultaneously taking affirmative steps to rid its toxic consequences from the body politic. Because the legacies of slavery continue to produce disparities in public safety in the U.S, both harming Black people and the institutions that could keep them safe, psychologists must take seriously questions of history and structure in addition to immediate situations. In the present article, we consider the state of knowledge regarding psychological processes …

Indicators Of Deception: Science Or Non-Science, Kristina Vasquez

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Deception detection is used by many law enforcement professionals who work in interviews and interrogations. The ability to detect deception or having knowledge on the signs of deception is very important in not only law enforcement, but in other careers and everyday life. The question remains: is deception detection a science or not a science? There are three areas where someone can learn how to detect deception and those are verbal communication, non-verbal communication, and paralanguage. The use of verbal communication looks at what the person is saying with their words. The use of non-verbal communication looks at what someone …

The Negative Impact Of Service Member And Veteran Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (Ptsd) Rating Or Specter Of Ptsd On Child Custody Arrangements, Erhan Bedestani

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

No abstract provided.

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 …

Tanggung Jawab Hukum Sumber Daya Manusia Potensi Basarnas Dalam Melakukan Tindakan Medis Terhadap Korban Bencana, Wahyu Andrianto, Nindya Noviani

Jurnal Hukum & Pembangunan

First aid is a basic medical action that can’t be avoided by The Human Resource Potential (HR Potential) of BASARNAS during SAR Operation. Even though it is only categorized as a basic medical act, first aid can determine victims’ life because first aid is done to prevent them from getting more severe injuries or experiencing death. Despite there is no a specific regulation about basic medical action conducted by HR Potential of BASARNAS during SAR operations. This legal research focuses on answering three problems. First, how the legal rules in Indonesia regarding volunteer participation during disasters. Second, how is the …