Identification and support of autistic individuals within the UK Criminal Justice System: a practical approach based upon professional consensus with input from lived experience.

BACKGROUND: Autism spectrum disorder (hereafter referred to as autism) is characterised by difficulties with (i) social communication, social interaction, and (ii) restricted and repetitive interests and behaviours. Estimates of autism prevalence within the criminal justice system (CJS) vary considerably, but there is evidence to suggest that the condition can be missed or misidentified within this population. Autism has implications for an individual's journey through the CJS, from police questioning and engagement in court proceedings through to risk assessment, formulation, therapeutic approaches, engagement with support services, and long-term social and legal outcomes. METHODS: This consensus based on professional opinion with input from lived experience aims to provide general principles for consideration by United Kingdom (UK) CJS personnel when working with autistic individuals, focusing on autistic offenders and those suspected of offences. Principles may be transferable to countries beyond the UK. Multidisciplinary professionals and two service users were approached for their input to address the effective identification and support strategies for autistic individuals within the CJS. RESULTS: The authors provide a consensus statement including recommendations on the general principles of effective identification, and support strategies for autistic individuals across different levels of the CJS. CONCLUSION: Greater attention needs to be given to this population as they navigate the CJS.

The effects of a defendant's childhood physical abuse on lay support for sentencing: The moderating role of essentialism.

Research suggests that a defendant's history of experiencing childhood abuse, and its effects on their life and later decision-making, may impact public support for a defendant's sentencing, particularly mitigation. However, no existing research has examined how and why sentencing support may vary based on the time period when the abuse occurs during a defendant's childhood. This experiment, using a sample of the U.S. public (N = 400), examines how the age at which a defendant's childhood physical abuse occurs affects lay support for the goals of their sentencing. We hypothesized that participants with higher levels of social and biological trait essentialism would moderate their increased support for more punitive sentencing goals-particularly when a defendant was abused earlier, rather than later, in childhood. Results suggest that social essentialism is associated with increased support for restoration and rehabilitation toward defendants with histories of childhood physical abuse, potentially indicating that the public views the effects of child abuse as more of a social, versus biological, process which may affect support for utilitarian punishment goals.

Portrayals of gun violence victimization and public support for firearm policies: an experimental analysis.

Objectives: This study examines how characteristics of victims and types of incidents described in a media account of gun violence affect public support for three categories of policies that regulate firearms. Methods: A randomized experiment with a sample of US public (N = 3410). Results: Victim race, particularly if the victim was Black, was a strong predictor of less public support for all tested categories of firearm regulation. Respondents were less supportive of policies to address gun suicide or accidents and more supportive of policy solutions to mass shootings, compared to street-level gun homicides. Depictions of victim gender, mental illness, prior incarceration, and age were less salient to support across categories of firearm regulation, compared to race and type of incident. Conclusions: Media coverage of gun violence has heterogenous effects on public support for firearm regulation and may influence support for policies aimed at reducing specific types of gun violence.

Losing the lottery of life: Examining intuitions of desert toward the socially and genetically "unlucky" in criminal punishment contexts.

This research presents three experiments that examine how natural "luck" (social and genetic luck) may affect lay intuitions toward desert-based criminal punishment. Study 1 examined if intuitions surrounding desert-based rewards in relation to good qualities/advantages ascribed to natural luck would extend to desert-based punishments in relation to bad qualities/disadvantages ascribed to natural luck. Study 2 examined how both social and genetic luck affect support for desert-based punishment across different criminal offenses and tests the relevance of immanent justice reasoning to such support. Study 3 examined whether findings in the prior studies are specific to desert-based punishment and immanent justice reasoning, or if natural luck elicits broader punishment judgments and types of justice reasoning. Results showed that known intuitions surrounding desert-based rewards do extend to desert-based punishments in instances of natural luck. Immanent justice reasoning was strongly associated with support for desert-based punishment in instances of both social and genetic luck. However, genetic luck, as compared to social luck, significantly increased support for desert-based punishment, with imminent justice reasoning mediating this increased support. Implications are discussed in relation to capital sentencing and better understanding lay intuitions toward the punishment of criminal offenders who may have qualities ascribed to the "natural lottery."

A jury of scientists: Formal education in biobehavioral sciences reduces the odds of punitive criminal sentencing.

This study examines how formal education in biological and behavioral sciences may impact punishment intuitions (views on criminal sentencing, free will, responsibility, and dangerousness) in cases involving neurobiological evidence. In a survey experiment, we compared intuitions between biobehavioral science and non-science university graduates by presenting them with a baseline case without a neurobiological explanation for offending followed by one of two cases with a neurobiological explanation (described as either innate or acquired biological influences to offending). An ordinal logistic regression indicated that both science and non-science graduates selected significantly more severe punishments for the baseline case as compared to when an innate neurobiological explanation for offending was provided. However, across all cases, science graduates selected significantly less severe sentences than non-science graduates, and only science graduates' decisions were mediated by free will and responsibility attributions. Findings are discussed in relation to scientific understandings of behavior, the impact of science education on attitudes towards punishment, and potential criminal-legal implications.

A tale of "second chances": an experimental examination of popular support for early release mechanisms that reconsider long-term prison sentences.

Objectives: This study examines US popular support for mechanisms that provide early release and "second chances" for individuals serving long-term prison sentences. Methods: An experiment using a national sample of US adults (N=836). Results: Data showed moderate, consistent levels of general support for using a range of commonly available "second chance" mechanisms that also extended to offenders convicted of both violent and non-violent offenses. Levels of support significantly varied by race, gender, and age. There was significantly more support for using certain mechanisms in response to the trafficking of serious drugs, which was fully mediated by participants' views on the importance of the cost of incarceration. Conclusions: Members of the public appear open and supportive to utilizing "second chance" mechanisms in a variety of contexts. Yet the cost of incarceration to taxpayers appears to particularly motivate increased public interest in using such mechanisms for offenders convicted of the trafficking of serious drugs.

The effects of essentialist thinking toward biosocial risk factors for criminality and types of offending on lay punishment support.

This research uses experimental methods to gauge how different facets of essentialist thinking toward (1) types of offending and (2) biosocial risk factors for criminality predict lay punishment support. A randomized between-subjects experiment using contrastive vignettes was conducted with members of the general public (N = 897). Overall, as hypothesized, aspects of essentialist thinking, particularly informativeness, continuity, immutability, and discreteness, toward both biosocial risk factors and types of offending behavior generally predicted more severe punishments surrounding retribution, incapacitation, and deterrence. Yet, surprisingly, several of the same beliefs, specifically toward discreteness and informativeness, also predicted non-punitive sentiments toward restoration and decreased prison time in some contexts. This work demonstrates that essentialist thinking not only may affect how the public cognitively categorizes biosocial risk factors for criminality and types of offending, but also may have consequences for public support for the punishment of offenders with particular offense records or characteristics.

The psychopathic "label" and effects on punishment outcomes: A meta-analysis.

The current study, using a meta-analytic approach and moderation analysis, examines 22 studies reporting how psychopathic "labeling" influences perceptions on 3 punishment outcomes (dangerousness, treatment amenability, and legal sentence/sanction) for 2 types of experimental studies utilizing vignettes: (a) studies in which a defendant with a psychopathic "label" is compared to a defendant with no mental health diagnosis (psychopathic label vs. no label) and (b) studies in which a defendant with a psychopathic "label" is compared to a defendant with a different psychiatric diagnosis (psychopathic label vs. other psychiatric label). Results show statistically significant or marginally significant (p < .10) summary effect sizes, albeit of different strengths, for the three punishment outcomes studied (legal sentence/sanction: d = 0.17; dangerousness: d = 0.58; and treatment amenability: d = -0.30) for studies comparing a psychopathic label versus no label. Conversely, all summary effects sizes for the three punishment outcomes in studies comparing a psychopathic label versus other psychiatric label were both weak and nonsignificant (legal sentence/sanction: d = 0.09; dangerousness: d = 0.14; and treatment amenability: d = 0.02). This suggests a significant general labeling effect, but not a specific labeling effect, for psychopathy in these studies. Further, these results suggest that the lay public, but not those in the criminal justice system, may subscribe to both general and specific labeling effects for psychopathy when it comes to punishment. This has potential implications for jury sentencing in both capital and, in select states, noncapital cases. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Educator of the Court: The Role of the Expert Witness in Cases Involving Autism Spectrum Disorder.

The role of the expert witness in legal contexts is to educate fact finders of the court who may have no background in the expert's area. This role can be especially difficult for those who assist in cases involving individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). As expert assistance on ASD is crucial to ensuring just outcomes for individuals diagnosed with ASD, knowledge on how expert witnesses perceive and approach their roles, and what factors may influence these perceptions, is essential. This qualitative research utilizes semi-structured interviews with a sample of expert witnesses in cases involving ASD, analyzed using a grounded-theory constant comparative analytic approach. Data reveal that experts appear to view their roles in court as reconstructionists, educators, myth-dispellers, and most of all, communicators, actively using their testimony to fill these roles in cases. These results also allow for the development of a model that illustrates two areas that coalesce to affect how experts view their roles in court: (1) personal experiences of experts in cases in which they have been involved; and (2) influences outside experts' personal experiences, such as their general opinions or observations regarding ASD and its relationship to the criminal justice system.

Ethical, legal, social, and policy implications of behavioral genetics.

The field of behavioral genetics has engendered a host of moral and social concerns virtually since its inception. The policy implications of a genetic basis for behaviors are widespread and extend beyond the clinic to the socially important realms of education, criminal justice, childbearing, and child rearing. The development of new techniques and analytic approaches, including whole-genome sequencing, noninvasive prenatal genetic testing, and optogenetics, has clearly changed the study of behavioral genetics. However, the social context of biomedical research has also changed profoundly over the past few decades, and in ways that are especially relevant to behavioral genetics. The ever-widening scope of behavioral genetics raises ethical, legal, social, and policy issues in the potential new applications to criminal justice, education, the military, and reproduction. These issues are especially critical to address because of their potentially disproportionate effects on vulnerable populations such as children, the unborn, and the incarcerated.

Bio-behavioral scientific evidence alters judges' sentencing decision-making: A quantitative analysis.

The present study surveyed judges to examine how they consider and apply scientific information during sentencing determinations. Judges in criminal courts are increasingly asked to assess and make decisions based on evidence surrounding psychiatric disorders, with unclear results on sentencing outcomes. We qualitatively interviewed 34 judges who have presided over criminal cases in 16 different states and also administered vignette surveys during the interviews. We asked them to make sentencing decisions for hypothetical defendants in cases presenting evidence of either no psychiatric disorder, an organic brain disorder, or past trauma, as well as to rate the importance of different goals of sentencing for each case. Results indicated that the case presenting no evidence of a mental health condition received significantly more severe sentences as compared to either psychiatric condition. Judges' ratings of sentencing goals showed that the importance of retribution was a significant mediator of this relationship. Trauma was not deemed to be as mitigating as an organic brain disorder. These results provide unique insights into how judges assess cases and consider sentencing outcomes when presented with scientific information to explicate defendants' behavior. We propose ways forward that may help better integrate scientific understandings of behavior into criminal justice decision-making.

Ethical, Legal and Social Issues Surrounding Research on Genetic Contributions to Anti-Social Behavior.

Scientific study of genetic contributions to chronic antisocial behavior has stemmed from many lines of research in recent years. Genetic research involving twin, family, and adoption studies have traditionally been used to compare the health and behavior outcomes of individuals who share the same environment or hereditary lineage; several of these studies have concluded that heredity plays some role in the formation of chronic antisocial behavior, including various forms of aggression and chronic norm-defiance. However, the ethical, social, and legal environment surrounding research on the biological contributions to antisocial behavior in the United States is contentious. Although there has been some discussion in the last few decades regarding the ethical, social, and legal concerns around this type of research within academic and policy circles, analysis and discussion of these concerns rarely appear together. This paper explores the main themes that interact to form the basis of much of the resistance to positing biological contributions to antisocial behavior.

Acquired Pedophilia: international Delphi-method-based consensus guidelines.

Idiopathic and acquired pedophilia are two different disorders with two different etiologies. However, the differential diagnosis is still very difficult, as the behavioral indicators used to discriminate the two forms of pedophilia are underexplored, and clinicians are still devoid of clear guidelines describing the clinical and neuroscientific investigations suggested to help them with this difficult task. Furthermore, the consequences of misdiagnosis are not known, and a consensus regarding the legal consequences for the two kinds of offenders is still lacking. The present study used the Delphi method to reach a global consensus on the following six topics: behavioral indicators/red flags helpful for differential diagnosis; neurological conditions potentially leading to acquired pedophilia; neuroscientific investigations important for a correct understanding of the case; consequences of misdiagnosis; legal consequences; and issues and future perspectives. An international and multidisciplinary board of scientists and clinicians took part in the consensus statements as Delphi members. The Delphi panel comprised 52 raters with interdisciplinary competencies, including neurologists, psychiatrists, neuropsychologists, forensic psychologists, expert in ethics, etc. The final recommendations consisted of 63 statements covering the six different topics. The current study is the first expert consensus on a delicate topic such as pedophilia. Important exploitable consensual recommendations that can ultimately be of immediate use by clinicians to help with differential diagnosis and plan and guide therapeutic interventions are described, as well as future perspectives for researchers.

A Dual-Process Approach to Moral Panic and Public Support for Sex Offender Management Policies.

The current study explores if and how dual-process thinking styles (System I/experiential and System II/rational processing) predict and explain the degree to which members of the public express moral panic toward and support for existing sex offender management policies (registration, notification, residence restrictions), regardless of their efficacy or effects on recidivism rates, for different types of individuals who commit sex offenses (sex offender, juvenile sex offender, cybersex offender, female sex offender, rapist, child molester). Online experimental methods were used with a lay sample (N = 324). Results show that the extent to which participants exhibited a reliance on System I processing significantly predicted their feelings of moral panic (concern, hostility, and volatility) toward individuals classified as child molesters. Further, feelings of concern, hostility, and volatility, as significant predictors of support for existing sex offender management policies for individuals classified as child molesters, were found to increase as a function of participants' reliance on the System I, experiential thinking style. Implications of this work, specifically related to addressing public support for existing sex offender management policies for individuals classified as child molesters, are discussed.

The potential influence of criminological rationales in considering childhood abuse as mitigating to sentencing.

BACKGROUND: U.S. courts currently show no coherent approach with regard to how evidence of childhood abuse is considered in sentencing. Existing state and federal caselaw suggests that courts rarely place significant consideration on evidence of childhood abuse during sentencing, but the reasons why offenders who have been subjected to childhood abuse rarely receive mitigated or alternative sentences remain unknown. Yet literature has suggested it might be because no convincing rationales have been yet developed for the court in contending that penalties of offenders who were subjected to childhood abuse should be mitigated. OBJECTIVE: This research examines if and how criminological theoretical perspectives linking childhood abuse and later offending (Social Control Theory, Social Learning Theory, General Strain Theory) are persuasive in arguing childhood abuse (neglect, witnessing trauma, sexual abuse, physical abuse) as mitigating to criminal sentencing. PARTICIPANTS: A national sample of U.S. adults (N = 521). METHODS: A multi-factorial, vignette-based experiment was conducted, utilizing OLS and mediation analyses. RESULTS: Evidence on childhood abuse, and particularly sexual abuse, reduced support for incapacitation (B = -0.13, p ≤ 0.05) and increased support for rehabilitation (B = 0.16, p ≤ 0.01). Social Control Theory was particularly persuasive in arguing childhood abuse as mitigating to prison time and in relation to support for rehabilitative sentencing (mediated by beliefs regarding what the theory conveys about future dangerousness and reduced responsibility). CONCLUSIONS: Criminological theories appear to be persuasive rationales for arguing childhood abuse as mitigating to sentencing contexts involving incapacitation and rehabilitation. Implications for sentencing guidelines and systems are discussed.

The importance of forensic evidence for decisions on criminal guilt.

Recent studies have found that the general public perceives forensic evidence to be relatively inaccurate and to involve high levels of human judgement. This study examines how important the general public finds forensic evidence by comparing decisions on guilt and punishment in criminal cases that involve forensic versus eyewitness testimony evidence and examining whether a CSI effect exists. Specifically, this experimental survey study utilized a 2 (crime type: murder or rape) × 4 (evidence type: DNA, fingerprint, victim eyewitness testimony, or bystander eyewitness testimony) - 1 (no victim testimony for murder scenario) design, yielding seven vignettes scenarios to which participants were randomly assigned. Results indicate that forensic evidence was associated with more guilty verdicts and higher confidence in a guilty verdict. Forensic evidence did not change the expected sentence length and did not generally affect the ideal sentence length. However, for rape, respondents believed that the defendant should receive a longer sentence when forensic evidence was presented but forensic evidence did not alter likely sentence that respondents expected the defendant to receive. The results of this study did not support a CSI effect. Overall, this study suggests that forensic evidence - particularly DNA - has a stronger influence during the verdict stage than the sentencing stage.

Cognitive and Affective Processing of Risk Information: A Survey Experiment on Risk-Based Decision-Making Related to Crime and Public Safety.

The current study, using a multi-factorial survey experiment with a sample of the general public (N = 800), investigates if and how types of risk information on crime and public safety, such as maps, graphs, or tables, commonly used and communicated by law enforcement elicit dual-process (affective and cognitive) risk information processing in risk-based decision-making, and if such processing or decision-making differs depending on the risk level, context, or the type or format of risk information communicated. Participants responded to a vignette in which they were asked to choose a ride-share pick-up point within a certain geographic area with varying risk levels of being involved in a pedestrian-automobile crash. Results showed that risk information related to crime and public safety elicits dual-process risk information processing, and that both affective and cognitive processing significantly predicted risk-based decision-making, regardless of the risk level or type of risk information examined. Interestingly, risk information was used to create an almost "black and white" distinction for participants, in which their lowest-risk choice was treated as their comparison point, relative to all other higher levels of risk, in risk processing and decision-making. Further, the risk level or type of risk information examined did affect the nature and level of affective and cognitive processing elicited, suggesting that different types or characteristics of risk information can change modes of processing and their effects on risk-based decisions. Our findings provide first-of-its-kind data that show members of the general public, as consumers of risk information in relation to crime and public safety, process and make decisions surrounding such information using the dual-process approach. Implications for communicating risk information in relation to crime and public safety to both the general public and police, as well as how to extend the current inquiry to future areas of research on police, are discussed.

The Brain of Dexter Morgan: the Science of Psychopathy in Showtime's Season 8 of Dexter.

This article identifies and discusses on the ways in which biological influences to psychopathy are thematically portrayed in the eighth season of Dexter to describe Dexter's psychopathy, particularly focusing on fatalism and the inevitability of succumbing to one's "biological self." This paper, utilizing traditional content analysis, focuses on seven qualitative themes surrounding "biological fatalism" and psychopathy in this final season of Dexter. As lay theories of psychopathy are thought to originate from the media's conceptualization of the disorder, such thematic portrayals serve to potential affect lay understandings of psychopathy and correspondingly, how the disorder is treated and perceived in the criminal justice process as a modern psychopathy-related "CSI Effect." The conclusion focuses on the messages that this final season of Dexter sends to the lay public about the biological influences to psychopathy and how this may create implications for the criminal justice system.