OBJECTIVE This study aimed to develop and validate a dynamic risk assessment tool for individuals serving community sentences that accounts for the effects of acute adverse events and desistance from crime. HYPOTHESES Dynamic risk prediction models that incorporate updated data on mental health relapses, incidents of victimization, and desistance from crime will produce more accurate risk stratification

OBJECTIVE We explored the potential of large language models (LLMs) in legal decision making by replicating Fraser et al. (2023) mock jury experiment using LLMs (GPT-4o, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and GPT-o1) as decision makers. We investigated LLMs' reactions to factors that influenced human jurors, including defendant race, social status, number of allegations, and reporting delay in sexual assault cases

OBJECTIVE We examined whether interrogation tactics that imply leniency (i.e., minimization) or exaggerate seriousness and incriminating evidence (i.e., maximization) have downstream consequences on innocent and guilty defendants' plea decisions. HYPOTHESES We predicted that (a) participants interrogated using minimization and maximization tactics would plead guilty more often than would those

OBJECTIVE We explored how the reasonable officer standard aligns with the use-of-force judgments. HYPOTHESES Reasonable officer standard-related factors of civilian resistance and civilian injury would impact participant judgments in ways inconsistent with reasonable officer standard-based policy. Given a scenario of legally reasonable force, participants would find an officer's actions less reasonable

Objective: Behavioral threat assessment and management (BTAM) is a form of violence risk assessment that has been widely adopted in U.S. public schools. However, there are concerns that the involvement of law enforcement officers in schools on BTAM teams could lead to criminalization of student misbehavior and exacerbate disparities in arrests for students of color and students with disabilities. This

Objective: Although in-court identifications provide less evidence of a defendant's guilt than even the most poorly conducted out-of-court identification procedures, they are more likely to be admitted into evidence. The current work examined the effect of an in-court identification on juror decisions and whether exposure to a suggestive out-of-court identification would be less prejudicial than exposure

OBJECTIVE Building on recent suggestions that there are, thus far, unnoticed levels of increased polarization and decreased perceived legitimacy of the judiciary within the Netherlands, we studied the experiences of self-represented litigants in early stages of Dutch small claims procedures. Our objective was to assess by means of qualitative interviews (a) whether litigants would mention experiences

OBJECTIVE We developed and tested a chatbot for reporting information to police. We examined how chatbot communication styles impacted three outcomes: (a) report accuracy, (b) willingness to provide contact information, and (c) user trust in the chatbot system. HYPOTHESES In police-citizen interactions, people respond more positively when police officers use a combination of power and solidarity

OBJECTIVE The complexity of tax laws makes manual preparation difficult, leading more taxpayers to use software or accountants. This study presents an experimental analysis comparing taxpayer perceptions of trust and procedural justice when filing with tax experts versus using tax software. The study addressed four questions: (1) How do perceptions of human tax experts compare to tax software? (2)

OBJECTIVE Beyond traditional in-person meetings, contemporary juvenile probation officers (JPOs) leverage modern technology to interact with youth via videoconferencing, phone calls, and text messaging. It is plausible that youth feel more-or less-supported by JPOs depending on the format of their interactions. Simultaneously, the procedural justice literature suggests that the quality of JPOs' interactions

OBJECTIVE We examined the evolution of statistical reporting practices within forensic psychology across two decades (2000-2020) to assess their adherence to recommended best practices. METHOD We conducted a comprehensive analysis of articles published in six prominent forensic psychology journals, including every empirical article published in each journal in 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, and 2020

OBJECTIVE This research examined how the cost of incarceration to the state and type of offense affect public support for different levels of sentence reductions (10%, 25%, 50%) via policies called "second chance" mechanisms that reduce incarcerated populations as well as whether political ideology or affiliation predicts such support. HYPOTHESES (a) Across different levels of sentence reductions

OBJECTIVE To inform policies and practices that reflect the values and expectations of the communities that judges serve, we fielded a national survey of public perceptions regarding judicial roles and factors that could be considered in decision making. HYPOTHESES We had four questions: (1) What is public opinion on the importance of various judicial roles and considerations? (2) Can distinct

OBJECTIVE The Alford plea allows defendants to maintain innocence while pleading guilty, but this option is largely unknown to the public, and its effects are unknown to researchers and practitioners. Some legal scholars have argued that the Alford plea may attract innocent defendants who may not otherwise accept a plea, whereas others have asserted that it offers a beneficial alternative for those

OBJECTIVE We replicated research by ten Brinke and Porter (2012), who reported that a combination of four behavioral cues (word count, tentative words, upper face surprise, lower face happiness) could accurately discriminate deceptive murderers from genuinely distressed individuals, pleading for the return of a missing relative. HYPOTHESES We hypothesized that each of the four behavioral cues

OBJECTIVE We examined whether U.S. college students across multiple disability types were at an increased risk for sexual victimization (compared with students without disability) and whether disability type or registration with the accessibility office was associated with odds of reporting sexual victimization experiences to any campus-designated program/resource. HYPOTHESES We predicted (a)

We are grateful to prior Editorial Teams for being such outstanding stewards of Law and Human Behavior, and we are committed to maintaining the journal's high standards. We also appreciate the many contributions of the Editorial Board, ad hoc reviewers, Student Editorial Board reviewers, and participants in the Reviewer Mentoring Program for contributing their time and expertise to this journal. It

Law and Human Behavior's inaugural issue of 2025 begins with the publication of an official Scientific Review Paper (SRP) of the American Psychology-Law Society (AP-LS; Division 41 of the American Psychological Association). The article, "Police-Induced Confessions, 2.0: Risk Factors and Recommendations" (Kassin et al., 2025), was approved by a unanimous vote of the eligible AP-LS Executive Committee

OBJECTIVE Question-type classification is widely used as a measure of interview quality. However, question-type coding is a time-consuming process when performed by manual coders. Reliable automated question-type coding approaches would facilitate the assessment of the quality of forensic interviews and court testimony involving victims of child abuse. HYPOTHESES We expected that the reliability