OBJECTIVES We sought to understand how basic competencies in moral reasoning influence the application of private, institutional, and legal rules. HYPOTHESES We predicted that moral appraisals, implicating both outcome-based and mental state reasoning, would shape participants' interpretation of rules and statutes-and asked whether these effects arise differentially under intuitive and reflective reasoning

OBJECTIVE Because confessions are sometimes unreliable, it is important to understand how jurors evaluate confession evidence. We conducted a content analysis testing an attribution theory model for mock jurors' discussion of coerced confession evidence in determining verdicts. HYPOTHESES We tested exploratory hypotheses regarding mock jurors' discussion of attributions and elements of the confession

OBJECTIVE This hypothetical vignette-based experiment was designed to better understand judges' and probation officers' interpretations and use of juvenile risk assessment tools in their decision-making around restrictive sanctions and confinement of youths on the basis of the youths' risk level and race. HYPOTHESES We expected that estimates of the probability of juvenile recidivism would significantly

OBJECTIVE Although there are many lab-based studies demonstrating the utility of confidence and decision time as indicators of eyewitness accuracy, there is almost no research on how well these variables function for lineups in the real world. In two experiments, we examined confidence and decision time associated with real lineups that had been conducted using research-based recommendations. HYPOTHESES

OBJECTIVE The overrepresentation of numerous racial/ethnic groups in the criminal legal system warrants examination of the cross-cultural applicability of risk assessment tools. Static-99R is a tool used in diverse countries to assess sexual recidivism risk. We conducted a meta-analysis on the predictive accuracy of Static-99R across different racial/ethnic groups. HYPOTHESES No hypotheses were made

OBJECTIVE Our first goal in this study was to identify cultural mistrust critical items (CMCIs) on two versions of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)-the MMPI-Second Edition-Restructured Form (MMPI-2-RF) and MMPI-Third Edition (MMPI-3)-that might be endorsed by people of color because of cultural mistrust rather than clinical paranoia. Our second goal was to determine whether CMCIs

OBJECTIVE Intervening in the cycle of symptom exacerbation and recidivism among justice-involved veterans is critical given elevated rates of psychiatric diagnoses and mental health sequelae. To responsively and effectively address justice-involved veterans' needs, it is essential to examine distinct groups who are at heightened risk (e.g., marginalized communities). Although racial and ethnic disparities

OBJECTIVE Our goal was to develop a framework to test for implicit racial bias in discretionary decisions made by community supervision agents in conditions with increasing information ambiguity. HYPOTHESES We reasoned that as in-person contact decreases, community supervision officers' specific knowledge of clients would be replaced by heuristics that lead to racially disproportionate outcomes in

By law, before interrrogating a suspect who is in custody, the police should inform them of their Miranda rights-the rights against self-incrimination and to an attorney. When a suspect or defendant waives their Miranda rights, a judge ultimately determines whether the waiver was legal. In making this determination, the judge employs the totality of the circumstances (TOC) analysis, which includes

OBJECTIVE State of Washington v. Sisouvanh (2012) was the first case in which an appellate court asserted the need for cultural competence in competency-to-stand-trial evaluations. A court reiterated this need in State of Washington v. Ortiz-Abrego (2017). Research in forensic psychology seldom addressed cultural considerations in pretrial evaluations until this past decade, but the growing body of

OBJECTIVE Prior research consistently demonstrates that defendants convicted at trial are sentenced more harshly than those who plead guilty. Additionally, a vast literature has shown that Black and Hispanic defendants, and especially young minority males, are particularly disadvantaged in sentencing, though these effects may be conditional on various legal and case-processing factors. However, it

OBJECTIVE Using archival and experimental methods, we tested the role that racial associations of first names play in criminal sentencing. HYPOTHESES We hypothesized that Black defendants with more stereotypically Black names (e.g., Jamal) would receive more punitive sentences than Black defendants with more stereotypically White names (e.g., James). METHOD In an archival study, we obtained a random

OBJECTIVE Recently, experimental work on racial bias in legal settings has diverged from real-world field data demonstrating racial disparities, instead often producing null or potential overcorrection effects favoring Black individuals over White individuals. We explored the role of social desirability in these counterintuitive effects and tested whether allowing participants to establish nonracist

OBJECTIVES Hispanic individuals are a growing proportion of the general and carceral populations in the United States. This study examined the relationship between the type of sentences (prison, jail/probation) given to White, non-Hispanic individuals and to similarly situated individuals who were perceived to be Hispanic (any race) or perceived to be White but, based on validated estimates, self-identified

OBJECTIVES Prosecutors often use race as a basis for excluding Black jurors in cases with Black defendants. The current research tested whether this practice influences juror attitudes (Study 1). It also tested an intervention to prevent racially biased jury selection (Study 2). HYPOTHESES We predicted that participants exposed to the exclusion of Black prospective jurors would have more negative feelings

OBJECTIVE Our study examined officers' attitudes and perceptions of adolescents in general (and challenges in policing adolescents) and the degree to which community variables affect those perceptions. HYPOTHESES Our examinations of officers' descriptions of adolescents and challenges in policing adolescents were exploratory. We hypothesized that community characteristics would significantly influence

OBJECTIVE White and non-White adolescents report different experiences in the legal system. This disparity impacts their evaluations of, and attitudes toward, legal authorities such that non-White and older adolescents tend to perceive the legal system more negatively. Yet, many researchers assume that the process of legal socialization, which involves internalizing norms and information about the

OBJECTIVE We explored whether racial disparities in evidence-based suspicion (i.e., evidence of guilt prior to placement in a lineup) provide a better explanation of racial disparities in exonerations based on eyewitness misidentification than the own-race bias in eyewitness identifications. HYPOTHESES We predicted that the own-race bias in identification accuracy would be insufficiently large to fully

OBJECTIVE We assessed the factors that legitimized the police in the United States at an important moment of history, just after the police killing of George Floyd in 2020. We also evaluated one way of incorporating perceptions of systemic racism into procedural justice theory. HYPOTHESES We tested two primary hypotheses. The first hypothesis was that perceptions of police procedural justice, distributive

OBJECTIVE Given the greater contact that Black youth have with the legal system compared with White youth, it is important to consider the differential ways that police use of force against these youth is perceived. Black youth may be at greater risk than White youth for animalistic (being seen as animal-like) and mechanistic (being seen as object-like) dehumanization, which, along with a tendency

OBJECTIVE Despite documented racial disparities in all facets of the criminal justice system, recent laboratory attempts to investigate racial bias in legal settings have produced null effects or racial-bias reversals. These counterintuitive findings may be an artifact of laboratory participants' attempts to appear unprejudiced in response to social norms that proscribe expressions of racial bias against

OBJECTIVE Many highly publicized police use-of-force encounters have recently occurred in the United States. This project primarily explored whether officer, juror, or victim race affects verdicts in trials involving police use of force. HYPOTHESES Because of recent conflicting research surrounding race and juror decision-making, we conducted an exploratory analysis on the interactive effects of juror

Police killings of Black civilians have brought unprecedented attention to racial and ethnic discrimination in the criminal justice and legal systems. However, these topics have been underexamined in the field of law-psychology, both in research and forensic-clinical practice. We discuss how a racial justice framework can provide guidance for advancing psycholegal research and forensic-clinical practice

OBJECTIVE Black people are disproportionately targeted and disadvantaged in the criminal legal system. We tested whether Black exonerees are similarly disadvantaged by the stigma of wrongful conviction. HYPOTHESES In Experiment 1, we predicted that the stigma of wrongful conviction would be greater for Black than White exonerees. After finding the opposite pattern, we conducted two experiments to investigate

OBJECTIVE False confessions are prevalent in wrongful convictions, and much research has examined investigation factors and interrogation methods that can contribute to false confessions. However, not all these factors are under the control of the legal system, and improving the effectiveness of interrogation methods has a limited effect on evaluating the veracity of confessions. We suggest incorporating

OBJECTIVES Taxometric analysis employs multiple, nonoverlapping statistical procedures to estimate parameters that characterize latent categories (e.g., base rates). Consistency among these estimates can inform substantive inferences about latent variables and facilitate idiographic classification. We provide a sketch of a taxometric research program to estimate guilty-suspect base rates in criminal

OBJECTIVES In October 2021, the American Psychological Association (APA) passed a resolution addressing ways psychologists could work to dismantle systemic racism in criminal legal systems. In the present report, developed to inform APA's policy resolution, we detail the scope of the problem and offer recommendations for policy makers and psychologists to address the issue by advancing related science

OBJECTIVE Colleges and universities are increasingly adopting affirmative consent standards of sexual assault, in which consent is defined as conscious and voluntary "yeses" given throughout a sexual interaction. We examined the impact of affirmative consent standards on perceptions of assault and consent. HYPOTHESES We hypothesized that in sexual assault scenarios involving physical force or verbal

In 2019, the inaugural editorial of Law and Human Behavior promised a measured approach to increasing transparency, openness, and replicability practices in the journal. Now, 3 years later, and on the brink of the present authors' last year as the editorial team, it seems only fitting that they take further action to bolster the validity of science published in the journal by requiring that authors

OBJECTIVES This research examined hate crime victimization and crime reporting among Miami's lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) Latine immigrant population. HYPOTHESES Informed by the intersectionality perspective and the Cuban dominance thesis, I predicted that respondents would experience higher levels of victimization than what law enforcement data capture, yet the vast majority

OBJECTIVE Despite increasing depression and suicide rates in justice-system-involved youth, little is known about depressogenic risk factors in this population. Therefore, we explored how levels of and changes in hopelessness and perceptions of procedural justice predicted depressive and suicidal outcomes in justice-system-involved youth. HYPOTHESES We hypothesized that higher levels and increasing

OBJECTIVE This study investigated individual-level and neighborhood-level predictors of criminal legal involvement of veterans during the critical transition period from military to civilian life. HYPOTHESES We hypothesized that substance use, mental health, and personality disorders will increase the incidence of criminal legal involvement, which will be highest among veterans living in socioeconomically

OBJECTIVE Valid guilty pleas must be made voluntarily, yet most defendants report that they did not feel part of the decision-making process or responsible for the decision. Defendants and judges both play a role in determining whether guilty pleas are voluntary. The actor-observer bias suggests that defendants and judges perceive the decision-making process differently given the nature of their roles

OBJECTIVE In guilty plea hearings, judges must determine whether defendants' plea decisions were made knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily. Little is known, however, about how plea hearings unfold, especially in juvenile court, where hearings are generally closed to the public. In this study, we had the unique opportunity to systematically observe plea hearings in juvenile and criminal court.

OBJECTIVE Should forensic evaluators convey empathy during forensic assessments? Opponents contend that empathy causes harm by leading evaluees to disclose potentially incriminating information, but proponents hold that empathy is crucial for establishing rapport and conveying respect. This study provides a comprehensive examination of experienced forensic evaluators' use of empathy in forensic assessment

OBJECTIVES We tested the effect of true and fabricated baseline statements from the same sender on veracity judgments. HYPOTHESES We predicted that presenting a combination of true and fabricated baseline statements would improve truth and lie detection accuracy, while presenting a true baseline would improve only truth detection, and presenting a fabricated baseline would only improve lie detection

OBJECTIVE In 2007, Congress changed the military's sexual assault laws as part of an effort to improve sexual assault case processing. This study looked at the U.S. Army law enforcement investigative finding for every sexual assault reported to the Army from 2004 through June 2012, along with every nonsexual assault. Our objective was to measure whether the legal intervention affected the investigative

OBJECTIVES To determine whether prosocial rule-breaking exists as a separate construct from antisocial rule-breaking and to develop a valid rule-breaking scale with prosocial and antisocial subscales. HYPOTHESES We hypothesized that (a) rule-breaking would have prosocial and antisocial subfactors; (b) the prosocial rule-breaking subscale would positively associate with prosocial intentions, empathy

OBJECTIVE Law enforcement officers often encounter alcohol-intoxicated suspects, suggesting that many suspects are presented with the challenge of grasping the meaning and significance of their Miranda rights while intoxicated. Such comprehension is crucial, given that Miranda is intended to minimize the likelihood of coercive interrogations resulting in self-incrimination and protect suspects' constitutional

OBJECTIVES In cases of child neglect, intervention depends on accurate identification and reporting. Prior work has shown that individuals, especially those of high socioeconomic status (SES), conflate poverty and neglect when making identification and reporting decisions. The COVID-19 pandemic led to changes in people's experiences with poverty, likely influencing their ability to distinguish poverty

OBJECTIVES There has been much discussion around the use of both money bail and pretrial risk assessment instruments. We examine how bail and risk scores compare in terms of their associations with failure to appear in court and rearrest during the pretrial period. HYPOTHESES Our research questions included whether bail and risk scores differed between people who did and did not experience pretrial

OBJECTIVE Cross-cultural research into risk assessment instruments has often identified comparable levels of discrimination. However, cross-cultural fairness is rarely addressed. Therefore, this study explored the discrimination and fairness of the Level of Service/Risk, Need, Responsivity (LS/RNR) within a sample of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander

OBJECTIVES The present research examined homelessness, race/ethnicity, and pretrial detention in the plea bargaining process. HYPOTHESES We predicted that homelessness, Hispanic ethnicity, and pretrial detention would be positively associated with unfavorable plea bargaining outcomes. METHOD We coded defendant characteristics and plea bargaining variables for a random sample (N = 500) of criminal cases

OBJECTIVE This field-simulation experiment was designed to compare eyewitness performance when conducting show ups and lineups under field versus laboratory conditions. HYPOTHESES We expected to replicate the findings from previous field-simulation experiments showing overconfidence in show up identifications made under field but not lab conditions, and further predicted that under field conditions

OBJECTIVE Despite advances in developing structured risk assessment instruments, there is currently no instrument to assess and manage the risk of intimate partner violence perpetration among adolescents. Given the empirical link between many forms of antisocial behavior, we tested whether structured tools commonly used by professionals to evaluate adolescents' risk of engaging in general violence

OBJECTIVE Cognitive biases can impact experts' judgments and decisions. We offer a broad descriptive model of how bias affects human judgment. Although studies have explored the role of cognitive biases and debiasing techniques in forensic mental health, we conducted the first systematic review to identify, evaluate, and summarize the findings. HYPOTHESES Given the exploratory nature of this review

OBJECTIVE We developed the Self-Injury Risk Assessment Protocol for Corrections (SIRAP-C) to meet legal mandates for self-directed violence (SDV) risk assessment standards in correctional settings. We focused on two empirical aims: (1) factor structure and internal consistency and (2) subscale associations with SDV and intervention recommendation outcomes. HYPOTHESES We expected a multifactorial SIRAP-C

OBJECTIVE Although there is evidence of a strong age-crime relationship, there is little consensus as to why crime peaks in midadolescence and drops off in late adolescence or early adulthood, and there is virtually no information on how age interacts with other crime-related variables such as criminal thinking. The purpose of this study was to document changes in the age-criminal thinking relationship

OBJECTIVE We updated and extended a meta-analysis on pretrial publicity (PTP) conducted by Steblay et al. (1999) by reexamining the effect of negative (antidefendant) PTP on individual (juror) and deliberating group (jury) verdicts and the effect of positive (pro-defendant) PTP on individual verdicts. HYPOTHESES We hypothesized that exposure to negative PTP would increase guilty verdicts from both

OBJECTIVE Recent work has established that high-confidence identifications (IDs) from a police lineup can provide compelling evidence of guilt. By contrast, when a witness rejects the lineup, it may offer only limited evidence of innocence. Moreover, confidence in a lineup rejection often provides little additional information beyond the rejection itself. Thus, although lineups are useful for incriminating

OBJECTIVE This systematic review and preliminary meta-analysis examined the effectiveness of translated versions of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) and the MMPI-2 Restructured Form (MMPI-2-RF) in detecting response distortion (i.e., symptom exaggeration and minimization), a central concern in forensic assessment. HYPOTHESES We hypothesized that translated versions of the

OBJECTIVES Little empirical research has examined postconviction processes associated with the unique legal events of release from incarceration and official exoneration. Across various models, we tested the influence of risk factors associated with wrongful convictions (false confessions, faulty or misleading forensic evidence, inadequate legal defense, mistaken eyewitness identifications, official

OBJECTIVE We investigated the impact of eyewitness confidence on the following dependent variables: (a) guilty or not-guilty verdict; (b) judgments of guilt as measured on a scale; and (c) mock jurors' perception of the accuracy of an eyewitness's identification. In addition, we examined two potential moderators of the effects of eyewitness confidence: (a) whether the eyewitness expressed confidence

OBJECTIVE Previous research has noted contradictory findings regarding race and police notification, such that Black people indicate higher levels of distrust in the police yet report victimization to the police at rates similar to or higher than others. We investigated the role of offense severity in accounting for these discrepancies. HYPOTHESES We hypothesized that severity would moderate racial

OBJECTIVES Peer deviancy and substance-related consequences are dynamic criminogenic needs associated with increased risk of recidivism for justice-involved youth. Most prior research in this area, however, is based on samples of primarily male youth charged with delinquent offenses. Because identification of dynamic criminogenic needs is essential to delinquency risk reduction efforts, the purpose

OBJECTIVE We examined whether variations in the strength of the evidentiary connection between a suspect and the crime under investigation affected officers' decisions to place suspects into an identification procedure and whether education about the problems associated with base-rate neglect sensitized officers to variations in evidentiary connection. METHOD Police officers (N = 279; age range = 24-70;

OBJECTIVE We conducted an exploratory study testing procedural justice theory with a novel population. We assessed the extent to which police procedural justice, effectiveness, legitimacy, and perceived risk of sanction predict compliance with the law among people experiencing homelessness. HYPOTHESES We did not develop formal a priori hypotheses but examined five general research questions. First

OBJECTIVE Research shows that youth who engage in early delinquency have higher callous-unemotional (CU) traits than youth with a later start. This study extends prior research to determine the optimal delinquency onset age cutoff for identifying youth high versus low on CU traits and the average age of delinquency onset for youth with clinically significant CU traits. HYPOTHESES We hypothesized that

OBJECTIVE In community-based corrections, reassessment of dynamic risk factors improves the prediction of recidivism relative to initial risk assessment at the time of release. However, there is less evidence for predictions of violent recidivism. We examined whether reassessment proximity or aggregation of reassessments improved the prediction of imminent violence in a sample of paroled individuals

OBJECTIVES Developed to keep youth in school and out of court, the Philadelphia Police School Diversion Program allows youth to avoid arrest for specified school-based summary and misdemeanor offenses. This study examined whether diverted youth were also less likely to experience exclusionary discipline, both in response to the referring incident and in the following calendar year. HYPOTHESES We predicted