OBJECTIVES The present study examined how changes in a set of motivational/self-regulatory factors were associated with subsequent change in future-oriented cognition and behavior. HYPOTHESES We hypothesized that within-individual changes in aspirations, expectations, emotion regulation, resistance to peer influence, and impulse control would be positively associated with later change in future-oriented

OBJECTIVE Three studies examined the influence of a witness's identification speed on the identification decision of another witness. HYPOTHESES Based on research documenting cowitness effects we expected cowitness speed to affect identification decisions from target-absent photospreads. Without prior research testing the effects of cowitness speed, we did not have a specific prediction regarding how

OBJECTIVE Effective practices for eliciting and analyzing children's eyewitness reports rely on accurate conclusions about age differences in how children retain information and respond to memory probes. Binning, which is the practice of categorizing continuous variables into discrete groups, can lower studies' power to detect age differences and, in some situations, produce significant but spurious

OBJECTIVE When wrongfully convicted individuals are released from prison, at first glance, it is a triumph; however, anecdotal evidence from exonerees suggests that obtaining housing postrelease is often challenging. We empirically examined whether race (Study 1) or type of criminal offense (Study 2) influenced landlords' willingness to rent to exonerees compared to releasees (i.e., rightfully convicted

OBJECTIVE We examined the prevalence of criminal defendants facing only misdemeanor charges and referred for forensic mental health evaluations of legal sanity (criminal responsibility) in a state-wide sample of sanity reports. We sought to describe this population of defendants, particularly as compared to defendants facing felony charges and referred for evaluation of legal sanity. HYPOTHESES We

OBJECTIVES Many corporations in the United States have enacted nondiscrimination policies for their LGBT employees, despite that the LGBT community has not been a legally protected class concerning employment discrimination at the national level. We examined whether progressive corporate LGBT-related policies may be an extension of policies and practices designed to foster diversity and create equality

OBJECTIVE Child neglect is often initially identified via adults who come into contact with children and report their suspicions to the authorities. Little is known about what behaviors laypersons view as constituting neglect and hence worth reporting. We examined laypersons' perceptions of neglect and poverty, particularly how these factors independently and jointly shaped laypersons' decisions about

Objective: Minimization is a legal interrogation tactic in which an interrogator attempts to decrease a suspect's resistance to confessing by, for example, downplaying the seriousness of the crime. These studies examined the extent to which minimization pragmatically implies that a suspect will receive a more lenient sentence in exchange for a confession. Hypotheses: Generally, we predicted that participants

OBJECTIVE Research suggests distinct criminal risk factors, not mental illness, are more strongly associated with most criminal behaviors. This notion has been supported among inpatient persons with mental illness (PMI) when examining antisocial cognitions; however, other key criminogenic risk factors (the Big Four and Central Eight risk factors) have not been examined among psychiatric inpatient PMI

OBJECTIVE Interested adults, such as parents and attorneys, may pose as safeguards against juveniles' vulnerabilities during custodial interrogations; yet, the trial-level ramifications of their presence are unknown. The current research examined mock jurors' perceptions and case decisions after they read about disputed juvenile confession evidence elicited in the presence of an interested adult. HYPOTHESES

OBJECTIVE To examine whether litigants' initial attraction to legal procedures (e.g., mediation, hearings, jury trials) predicted their postexperience evaluations of the procedures and whether attendance moderated this relationship. HYPOTHESIS Litigants' initial attraction to the legal procedure that later resolved their case would better predict postexperience satisfaction and fairness for litigants

Objective: Feedback from lineup administrators about identification accuracy significantly impacts witness confidence. In the current studies, we investigated the effect of post-identification feedback given 1-week after an initial, pristine lineup. We tested 2 kinds of feedback: typical feedback (i.e., about identification accuracy) and misinformation feedback. Misinformation feedback came in the

OBJECTIVE We conducted 2 experiments using machine learning to better understand which lineup looking behaviors postdict suspect guilt., Hypotheses: We hypothesized that (a) lineups with guilty suspects would be subject to shorter viewing duration of all images and fewer image looks overall than lineups with innocent suspects, and (b) confidence and accuracy would be positively correlated. The question

OBJECTIVE This study presents a prospective evaluation of the contribution of criminogenic factors, psychiatric symptomatology, and neighborhood-level factors to risk for self-reported gun violence by adolescents with criminal justice involvement. HYPOTHESIS We hypothesized that elevated psychiatric symptom clusters would be associated with increased risk for gun violence after accounting for criminogenic

OBJECTIVE The present study examined how mothers' personal characteristics, experience with, and attitudes toward the juvenile justice system are associated with their knowledge of the juvenile justice system over time. HYPOTHESES We hypothesized that additional exposure to the system (via sons' rearrests) would be associated with greater legal knowledge. We predicted that White women, women with higher

OBJECTIVE This paper examines contamination in interrogations: the process by which an interrogator divulges privileged information to a suspect. HYPOTHESES In Experiment 1, we predicted that mock investigators would communicate critical crime details when they interview mock suspects about a crime-and that innocent and guilty suspects alike would later produce confessions that contained these details

OBJECTIVE The police face great scrutiny after highly publicized instances of lethal force. Dash-camera footage ostensibly provides "objective" evidence of whether the force was excessive. We tested whether participants interpreted the same "objective" video of an officer exerting force differently based on the officer's gender and race. HYPOTHESIS We predicted that when (a) a male (vs. female) officer

OBJECTIVE We surveyed a national sample of child forensic interviewers to learn the types of information they wanted to have before interviewing children, their attitudes and beliefs about forensic interviews, the characteristics of their interviews, and their professional experiences. HYPOTHESES We predicted (1) interviewers would want many different types of information before interviewing children

OBJECTIVE The Structured Inventory of Malingered Symptomatology (SIMS; Widows & Smith, 2005) is a 75-item self-report measure intended to screen for potentially feigned symptoms of mental illness and/or cognitive impairment. We investigated the classification accuracy of 2 new detection scales (Rare Symptoms [RS] and Symptom Combinations [SC]) developed by Rogers, Robinson, and Gillard (2014) that

OBJECTIVE Childhood parental incarceration has been linked to increased rates of delinquency and arrest during adolescence and young adulthood; however, previous research has focused on White and/or Black samples rather than Latinx youth. We examined relationships between childhood parental incarceration and later delinquency and arrest among Puerto Rican youth living in Puerto Rico (majority context)

OBJECTIVE The Executive Committee of the American Psychology-Law Society (Division 41 of the American Psychological Association) appointed a subcommittee to update the influential 1998 scientific review paper on guidelines for eyewitness identification procedures. METHOD This was a collaborative effort by six senior eyewitness researchers, who all participated in the writing process. Feedback from

The lead article in this issue of Law and Human Behavior is "Policy and Procedure Recommendations for the Collection and Preservation of Eyewitness Identification Evidence" by Gary Wells and colleagues (2020). This special article is an official Scientific Review Paper (SRP) of the American Psychology-Law Society (AP-LS), Division 41 of the American Psychological Association (APA). This SRP is the

OBJECTIVE Use of risk assessment instruments in the criminal justice system is controversial. Advocates emphasize that risk assessments are more transparent, consistent, and accurate in predicting re-offending than judicial intuition. Skeptics worry that risk assessments will increase socioeconomic disparities in incarceration. Ultimately, judges make decisions-not risk assessments. This study tests

OBJECTIVE The Miranda v. Arizona (1966) decision was intended to protect individuals' rights in custodial situations. The purpose of this paper was to evaluate Miranda abilities of individuals with intellectual disability and evaluate the utility of intelligence in predicting these abilities. Additionally, we aimed to provide an updated resource for forensic examiners regarding the performance of individuals

OBJECTIVE This study examined whether race/ethnicity and gender predicted sentencing to anger management therapy as a probation condition. HYPOTHESES We predicted judges would be more likely to assign African Americans and Hispanics, and males to anger management than Caucasians and women, respectively. We hypothesized demographic variables would predict assignment to anger management beyond legal

OBJECTIVE This study empirically evaluated risk judgments made using the Risk for Sexual Violence Protocol (RSVP; Hart et al., 2003), a widely used set of structured professional guidelines for assessing and managing sexual violence risk. HYPOTHESIS Based on evaluations of other structured professional judgment guidelines, we hypothesized that judgments made using the RSVP would demonstrate good interrater

OBJECTIVE We investigated the effects of administrator knowledge of suspect identity in a lineup (blind vs. nonblind), witness identification (suspect vs. filler), and witness confidence (high vs. low) on whether administrators recorded the identification as an affirmative response; whether administrators recorded qualitative notes regarding the lineup task; and the content of those qualitative notes

OBJECTIVE We tested whether the reliability and validity of psychological testing underlying an expert's opinion influenced judgments made by judges, attorneys, and mock jurors. HYPOTHESES We predicted that the participants would judge the expert's evidence more positively when it had high validity and high reliability. METHOD In Experiment 1, judges (N = 111) and attorneys (N = 95) read a summary

OBJECTIVE Specific responsivity features are not directly targeted in offender rehabilitation programs but may impact a client's receptivity. We investigated if two features may explain why high-quality correctional programs do not uniformly impact all high-risk, high-needs clients. HYPOTHESES The current study was exploratory. We hypothesized a relationship between higher static risk and poorer program

OBJECTIVES Child witnesses often describe their experiences across multiple interviews. It is unknown whether talking with a familiar interviewer increases disclosures, however, or whether any benefits of a familiar interviewer could be achieved by ensuring that interviewers (regardless of familiarity) behave in socially supportive ways. This study tested the effects of interviewer familiarity and

OBJECTIVES Crime control theater refers to intuitively appealing laws that appear to address crime while lacking any evidence that they actually do so (e.g., sex offender registration and residence restriction laws, which do not reduce recidivism). Despite their ineffectiveness, public support for such laws tends to be high. HYPOTHESES We predicted that making people aware of these laws' failure to

Increased distance between an eyewitness and a culprit decreases the accuracy of eyewitness identifications, but the maximum distance at which reliable observations can still be made is unknown. Our aim was to identify this threshold. We hypothesized that increased distance would decrease identification, rejection accuracy, confidence and would increase response time. We expected an interaction effect

This study was designed to investigate the effect of victimization experiences and peer influence on delinquency via one's attitude toward the police. It was hypothesized that negative attitudes toward the police would mediate the prospective relationships between victimization and offending and between peer delinquency and offending. Participants were 2,623 early adolescents from the Gang Resistance

Reports an error in "Validity of content-based techniques to distinguish true and fabricated statements: A meta-analysis" by Verena A. Oberlader, Christoph Naefgen, Judith Koppehele-Gossel, Laura Quinten, Rainer Banse and Alexander F. Schmidt (Law and Human Behavior, 2016[Aug], Vol 40[4], 440-457). During an update of this meta-analysis it became apparent that one study was erroneously entered twice

Reports an error in "Racial Bias in Mock Juror Decision-Making: A Meta-Analytic Review of Defendant Treatment" by Tara L. Mitchell, Ryann M. Haw, Jeffrey E. Pfeifer and Christian A. Meissner (Law and Human Behavior, 2005[Dec], Vol 29[6], 621-637). In the article, all of the numbers in Appendix A were correct, but the signs were reversed for z' in a number of studies, which are listed. Also, in Appendix

OBJECTIVE In custodial interrogations, suspects tend to give disproportionate weight to immediate outcomes relative to future outcomes when deciding whether to confess or deny guilt. The current research examined whether the perceived (un)certainty of an immediate outcome influences suspects' short-sighted confession decisions. HYPOTHESES We hypothesized that suspects are more likely to make short-sighted

OBJECTIVE Research indicates moderate-to-limited integration of the risk-need-responsivity (RNR) principles in probation case planning. Efforts to improve implementation are important targets for research, policy, and practice. This study examined the ability of two juvenile probation departments to implement RNR principles with fidelity following a comprehensive implementation protocol that included

OBJECTIVES Proponents of criminogenic risk assessment have called for its widespread expansion throughout the criminal justice system. Its success in predicting recidivism is taken as evidence that criminogenic risks tap into the causes of criminal behavior, and that targeting these factors can reduce correctional supervision rates and even prevent crime. This study challenges these assertions, by

OBJECTIVES Many agencies use risk assessment instruments to guide decisions about pretrial detention, postconviction incarceration, and release from custody. Although some policymakers believe that these tools might reduce overincarceration and recidivism rates, others are concerned that they may exacerbate racial and ethnic disparities in placements. The objective of this systematic review was to

OBJECTIVES Eyewitness research has adapted signal detection theory (SDT) to investigate eyewitness performance. SDT-based measures in yes/no tasks fit well for the measurement of eyewitness performance in show-ups, but not in lineups, because the application of the measures to eyewitness identifications neglects the role of fillers. In the present study, we introduce a SDT-based framework for eyewitness

Researchers have linked police officers' concerns with appearing racist-a kind of stereotype threat-to racial disparities in the use of force. This study presents the first empirical test of the hypothesized psychological mechanism linking stereotype threat to police support for violence. We hypothesized that stereotype threat undermines officers' self-legitimacy, or the confidence they have in their

The Cognitive Interview (CI) has been shown repeatedly to enhance witness recall of events. The current study examined two conspicuous holes in the CI literature: (a) whether the CI improves witness descriptions specifically of a perpetrator's appearance; and (b) whether CI-elicited perpetrator descriptions help investigators to find the perpetrator. We examined these issues across three studies: In

OBJECTIVE This study presents a prospective evaluation of the contribution of criminogenic factors, psychiatric symptomatology, and neighborhood-level factors to risk for gun violence by adolescents with criminal justice involvement. HYPOTHESES We hypothesized (a) elevated psychiatric symptom clusters would be associated with increased risk for gun violence after accounting for criminogenic factors;

This study examined the extent to which being arrested during adolescence was associated with subsequent self-reported offending and court-recorded arrests. We also examined whether the way in which the justice system processed adolescents was related to the nature of these associations. The sample included 532 boys who had been arrested ("justice-system-involved") and 99 boys who had never been arrested

This research tested whether the perception of threat during a police interrogation mobilizes suspects to cope with interrogation demands and bolsters their resistance to self-incrimination pressures. Experimental procedures led university undergraduates (N = 296) to engage in misconduct or not, thereby making them guilty or innocent. An experimenter then accused all participants of misconduct in either

The objective was to evaluate the relative efficacy of dialectical behavior therapy modified for stalking offenders (DBT-S) versus a cognitive-behavioral anger management intervention for the treatment of stalking offenders. We expected DBT to result in significantly lower rates of renewed stalking behavior and significantly greater improvements in impulsivity, aggression, anger, and empathy. We randomly

Tort law currently debates the value of facilitating apology to enhance the restoration of victims' nonmaterial needs, and to promote dispute resolution. However, the extent to which apology can augment these outcomes beyond conventional, monetary reparations is not yet clear. The present research aimed to provide some first insights into this question, by means of 2 experimental studies conducted

We examined how giving eyewitnesses a weak recognition experience impacts their identification decisions. In 2 experiments we forced a weak recognition experience for lineups by impairing either encoding or retrieval conditions. In Experiment 1 (n = 245), undergraduate participants were randomly assigned to watch either a clear or a degraded culprit video and then viewed either a culprit-present or

Although they remain a relatively small proportion of all identified sex offenders, there is increasing concern about individuals with offenses relating to indecent images of children (IIOC) online. This study examined the reoffending rates of a sample of IIOC-only (n = 584, 84.6%) and mixed IIOC-contact (n = 106, 15.4%) offenders who participated in a U.K. community intervention and the predictive

Legal socialization researchers have been paying more attention to legal cynicism, but the manner in which the concept was operationalized varied greatly and measurement properties of existing scales did not always meet traditional thresholds. The objective of this study was to construct and test a multidimensional legal cynicism scale with strong psychometric properties. We conducted 2 independent

In modern societies, citizens cede the legitimate use of violence to law enforcement agents who act on their behalf. However, little is known about the extent to which lay evaluations of forceful actions align with or diverge from official use-of-force policies and heuristics that officers use to choose appropriate levels of responsive force. Moreover, it is impossible to accurately compare official

Racial diversity in juries, meant to ensure representation of minority voices, can also reduce racial bias in verdicts and improve group performance during deliberation (Sommers, 2006). Although jury diversity might increase cognitive depletion because it involves interracial interactions (Richeson & Shelton, 2003), it might also reduce racial disparity in verdicts and deliberation quality by improving

This article presents an expected cost model for evaluating and comparing the performance of eyewitness identification procedures. The model estimates the expected cost of an identification procedure in order to quantify how well the procedure helps the police achieve the investigation goal of identifying and incriminating the culprit. We first apply the expected cost model to analyze five major procedural

The verbal content of interactions (what was said and who said what) can be important as evidence and intelligence information. Across 3 empirical studies, we examined memory for details of an overheard (Experiment 1) or witnessed (Experiments 2 and 3) conversation using a timeline technique adapted for the reporting of conversations between multiple speakers. Although participants in all conditions

The growing public health and legal concerns regarding gun violence has led to a call for research that investigates risk factors for gun violence across a variety of domains. Individual and sociocontextual risk factors have been associated with violence more broadly, and in some instances gun-carrying, however no prior research has investigated the role of these factors in explaining gun violence

Beginning with the original drug court model, specialized court programs (SCPs) have expanded to address a variety of offense-related problems, such as domestic violence courts, mental health courts, veteran courts, and homeless courts. To date, there has been no empirical assessment as to whether these types of court programs share similar program characteristics with the drug court model. To address

Both personal experience and parental attitudes shape youths' attitudes toward the justice system. The present study tested the influence of (a) youth rearrests and (b) parents' attitudes toward police on trajectories of youthful offenders' attitudes toward police over 3 years. Among a sample of 317 first-time male juvenile offenders and their mothers, group-based trajectory modeling identified 4 trajectories

Longitudinal studies have found that male adolescents who deal drugs, associate with delinquent peers, and engage in aggressive behavior are at increased risk for carrying a gun (between-individual risks). However, it is unclear whether changes in these risk factors help to explain fluctuations in youth gun carrying across adolescence (within-individual risks). The current study examined this issue

Recent findings suggest that priming may be useful for facilitating disclosure in investigative interviews; however, the effects of priming on behavioral outcomes have been mixed. The current studies attempted to replicate the increase in information disclosure when the concept of “openness” is primed. We assessed the separate and combined influence of context reinstatement instructions and activation

This study examined whether varying the presentation of information about a youth’s compliance with probation requirements in community provider reports influenced juvenile probation officers’ (JPOs) perceptions and court recommendations. This study used an experimental design to explore the impact of report framing (positive, neutral, negative) and youth risk level (low, high) on JPOs’ decision making