Victim selection patterns of community-residing child molesters identified by a nationwide youth-serving organization.

The current study examines data extracted from revocation files of a national youth-serving organization (YSO) involving 7819 revoked individuals and 12,254 alleged child victims to better understand victim selection patterns of community-residing child molesters. These data demonstrate consistent patterns of victim selection based upon the age, gender, and YSO affiliation of each victim. We created two variables to explore whether the revoked individual was "likely pedophilic (LP)" or a "mixed offender (MO)" based upon their behaviors and patterns of victim selection. Compared with the non-LPs and non-MOs, LPs and MOs had more known victims, were more often involved in other YSOs, and were more likely to have had contact with law enforcement. We utilized a public health perspective to interpret these findings, suggesting that child sexual abuse in YSOs reflects a societal problem that is not a unique phenomenon specific to programs offering services to youth.

The lethality of non-familial child abductions: Characteristics and outcomes of 565 incidents involving youth under the age of 18 years.

Offender motivation for child abduction determines both the nature and final outcome of the abduction. Research has identified victim characteristics, offender characteristics, and sexual motivations as factors influencing child abduction and child abduction homicide. We examine 565 child abductions identified through the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to determine the characteristics of victim, perpetrator, and crime and their influence on whether the child is murdered. Central to this research was the finding that 88.6% of the abductions involved a sexual motivation for the crime, and sexual motivation was significantly more likely when the victim was female and when the victim was post-pubescent. Of 581 child victims for whom the outcome of the abduction was known, 281 (48.3%) were found alive and 300 (51.7%) were found dead or presumed dead. There was a significant interaction between motive for the crime and the final abduction outcome, with victims abducted for sexual purposes being at higher risk of being murdered.

Combined evaluations of competency to stand trial and mental state at the time of the offense: An overlooked methodological consideration?

Combined evaluations of competency to stand trial (CST; competency) and mental state at the time of the offense (MSO; sanity) frequently co-occur. However, most research examines the 2 as discrete constructs without considering 4 potential combined evaluation outcomes: competent-sane, incompetent-sane, competent-insane, and incompetent-insane. External validity can be improved if research more closely mirrored practice. It may be incorrect to assume incompetent defendants are similar across CST-only and combined evaluations, and insane defendants are similar across MSO-only and combined evaluations. Using a sample of 2,751 combined evaluations, we examined demographic, clinical, offense, evaluation, and psycholegal characteristics associated with evaluators' combined evaluation opinions. Multinomial regression analyses revealed older defendants were more likely to be opined incompetent-insane. Defendants with psychotic disorders were more often opined insane, regardless of competency status. Affective diagnoses predicted competent-insane opinions. Developmental disorders were closely related to incompetence, regardless of sanity status. Defendants with organic disorders tended to have global psycholegal impairment, in that they were more often opined incompetent-insane, incompetent-sane, or competent-insane, relative to competent-sane. Prior hospitalization predicted competent-insane relative to competent-sane opinions. Defendants not under the influence of a substance during the offense or with no prior convictions were more likely to be opined insane, regardless of competency status. We interpret these findings in light of psycholegal theory and provide recommendations for research and practice. Collectively, results suggest incorporation of combined evaluations into CST and MSO research is an important methodological consideration not to be overlooked. (PsycINFO Database Record

Symptom patterns related to traumatic exposure among female inmates with and without a diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder.

Our study examines the trauma-related experiences of 203 female prison inmates, most of whom had experienced chronic trauma throughout their lives but among whom only 51 percent met diagnostic criteria for PTSD. We used the two groups to study differences in trauma exposure and pre-existent psychopathology as they related to the emergence of full diagnostic criteria for PTSD. We also used the entire sample to explore the factor structure and endorsement frequencies of each symptom category as it related to trauma exposure. Our analyses indicated that the PTSD group differed from the non-PTSD group in the number of life traumas each group had experienced and the pre-existence of borderline personality disorder. Five symptoms accurately differentiated the two groups, with an 86 percent correct classification: recurrent thoughts, amnesia, loss of interest, difficulty concentrating, and a heightened startle response. An exploratory factor analysis further suggested two primary factors: intrusion and arousal. We apply our findings to the naturalistic versus interactional debate surrounding the disorder and reflect on the endorsement frequencies as they might inform our understanding of malingering as it occurs in legal and forensic settings.

Gender and violence risk assessment in prisons.

Our study examines the association between Historical, Clinical, Risk Management-20: Version 2; Psychopathy Checklist-Revised; and Violence Risk Assessment Guide scores and violence perpetrated during incarceration by male and female inmates. Using a sample of 288 men and 183 women selected from prisons in 2 states, we used receiver operating characteristics analyses to assess the potential of these 3 measures to predict threatened, physical, or sexual prison violence measured in 2 ways: inmate self-report and formal institutional infractions. We found all 3 instruments to demonstrate moderate to good levels of predictive accuracy for both the male and female inmates, a finding that suggests that actuarial, structured professional judgment and personality measures perform in a broadly comparable manner in assessing institutional violence for both men and women. Our findings did vary on the basis of the way violence was measured: Women self-reported significantly higher levels of prison violence than was suggested by their institutional infractions, and the associative power of the instruments diminished substantially, particularly among the men, when institutional infractions alone were used in the analyses. These findings suggest that the 3 risk measures are likely to be gender neutral in their association with prison violence, albeit with gender-related differences in the frequency of violent behavior and the relevance of particular subscales. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Understanding the risk factors for violence and criminality in women: the concurrent validity of the PCL-R and HCR-20.

This study explores the performance of 132 female maximum-security inmates on the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) and the HCR-20 (Historical, Clinical, and Risk Management Scheme) to examine the concordance between these two risk assessment instruments, and to assess their potential usefulness in determining level of risk for violent behavior and other forms of criminality. The two instruments demonstrated consistent and highly significant correlations across total scores, factor scores, and subscale scores. When the two instruments were entered into a multiple regression analysis to predict violent and non-violent crime, the HCR-20 did not add to the variance explained by the PCL-R. These results confirm earlier research that suggests that there is little or no difference between these two risk assessment instruments in their relationship to community or institutional violence. Further, Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) analyses show that both instruments demonstrated an inverse ability to predict convictions for murder, a close to chance ability to predict violent crime, but a shared ability to predict property and minor crime. Broadly, these results suggest that psychopathic women are involved in chronic patterns of non-violent criminality, while women charged and convicted of murder generally do not have elevated scores on the PCL-R or HCR-20. The relevance of these findings to rehabilitation and treatment is discussed.

Correlates of adjudicative competence among psychiatrically impaired juveniles.

This study examines the competence-related abilities of 120 psychiatrically hospitalized male juveniles age 10 to 17 years, using the MacArthur Competence Assessment Tool-Criminal Adjudication (MacCAT-CA), the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale-Anchored (BPRS-A), the Massachusetts Youth Screening Instrument (MAYSI), the Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test (K-BIT), and discharge diagnoses derived from file review. The findings indicate significant age-related differences across adolescence with a relatively strong performance for most of the youths on the competence measure. While intellectual and psychiatric factors were found to contribute substantially to deficits in legal decisional ability, they were modulated by age and the developmental factors associated with it. These findings, replete with caveats concerning both the dimensional structure of competence as measured by the MacCAT-CA and the interplay with the mental status and developmental factors affecting it, underscore the multifarious nature of legal decisional capacity in youths of varying ages. The relevance of these findings to the structuring of restoration services and the application of legal theory to the competence standard in juvenile court are discussed.

Personality disorders and violence among female prison inmates.

The current study seeks to expand our understanding of the increasingly well-documented relationship between mental disorder and violence, specifically by examining the relationship between Axis II disorders and community and institutional violence among a cohort of 261 incarcerated women. Drawing from an initial screening of 802 female inmates in maximum security, we sampled to identify 200 nonpsychotic women who met criteria for one of the four Cluster B personality disorders, and 50 nonpsychotic women who did not meet criteria for these disorders. Each inmate was interviewed with the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis II Personality Disorders (SCID-II). Information regarding instant offense and institutional behavior was obtained from prison files and a self-report inventory. The analyses indicated a high degree of comorbidity between the various Cluster B diagnoses and a significant association with various types of violent crime and nonviolent criminality. Significant relationships were found between Antisocial Personality Disorder and institutional violence, and Narcissistic Personality Disorder and incarceration for a violent crime. Cluster A diagnosis was unexpectedly found to be associated with both incarceration for a violent crime and incarceration for prostitution.

A symptom level examination of the relationship between Cluster B personality disorders and patterns of criminality and violence in women.

The psychometric properties and structure of the Cluster B Personality Disorder criteria (Antisocial, Borderline, Histrionic, and Narcissistic) are examined in a sample of 261 female inmates using a self-report screen followed by a full diagnostic interview. The results of the structural analyses in this sample demonstrated good internal consistency and convergence, but poor discriminant validity between disorders. An exploratory factor analysis found that the structure of these disorders was best accounted for by a four-factor solution that paralleled the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV-TR; APA, 2000) classification scheme with some significant and notable exceptions. Using the factor scores generated from the factor analysis, the personality profiles of the women were compared with several behavioral indices, including instant offense, institutional infractions, and self-report violence and victimization within the prison. Of particular importance was the consistent relationship observed between narcissistic personality traits and threatening and violent behavior within the prison combined with the impulsive but less malignant presentation of antisocial personality traits among this sample of women. Results are discussed as they inform our understanding of the structural integrity of the four Cluster B diagnostic categories and the relationship of these personality disorders to different types of criminality and violence.

Patterns of prior offending by child abductors: a comparison of fatal and non-fatal outcomes.

Our study examines the prior offending of 750 individuals who are known to be responsible for the abduction of a child under the age of 18 years. The first group comprised of 311 offenders (42%) who had abducted a child that was later located alive (found alive, referred to as FA). The second group was comprised of 439 offenders (58%) who had abducted a child that was either found murdered or was still missing and presumed dead (found murdered, referred to as FM). While males perpetrated the majority of the abductions, women perpetrated 31 (10%) of the offenses in the FA group and 10 (2%) of the offenses in the FM group. The average number of prior offenses as reflected in the NCIC criminal history of each offender was seven with these occurring over an average of 12 years. Seventy-five percent of the offenders had prior arrests for an assortment of different crimes while 25% had no known criminal history, a finding that was consistent across both the FA and FM groups. Of those with a criminal history, 41% had been arrested for assault, 40% for larceny, 35% for burglary/breaking and entering, 33% for forcible sex offenses, 25% for drug/narcotic offenses, 21% for weapons law violations, 17% for motor vehicle thefts, 15% for robbery, and 14% for kidnapping. Our findings are congruent with the theme of criminal diversity among child abductors and argue against the specificity in offending that is often assumed with this type of sexual offender. This information is relevant to our understanding of the progression in criminal offending that is manifested by offenders who abduct children and will hopefully be used by law enforcement in helping to direct and focus their investigations.

Childhood maltreatment and cluster B personality pathology in female serious offenders.

The authors examined early maltreatment among serious female offenders at a maximum-security correctional facility, contrasting the maltreatment histories of inmates with and without Cluster B personality pathology. Women were interviewed regarding the frequency of 13 indicators of psychological or physical abuse perpetrated by maternal or paternal caregivers and the frequency of 10 types of sexual abuse perpetrated by persons at least 5 years older. Reports were based on inmates' recollected worst years of maltreatment before age 16. Women in both diagnostic groups reported substantial early maltreatment. Cluster B inmates reported higher levels and a greater variety of maternal and paternal physical and psychological abuse but were not distinguished from non-Cluster B inmates on levels of childhood sexual abuse. Inmates reported more physical and psychological abuse from maternal than paternal caregivers. The results document the high levels of childhood maltreatment of female prisoners and the relevance of this history to personality pathology.

Comparing the constructs of antisocial personality disorder and psychopathy in a sample of incarcerated women.

Our study examines the relationship between Antisocial Personality Disorder (APD) and psychopathy among a sample of 137 female offenders. Drawing from a historical review of the evolution of these two concepts, we explore their differential relationship to patterns of criminal behavior, psychological adjustment, co-morbidity with other personality disorders, victimization, and institutional adjustment. Findings suggest that the two disorders share a common foundation of social norm violations and deception; however, APD is associated with impulsive, aggressive, and irresponsible behavior, higher rates of childhood abuse, and greater co-morbidity with Cluster A PDs, while psychopathy is better characterized by higher rates of property crimes, previous incarceration, and the manifestation of remorselessness. Results contribute to a further understanding of the etiology and phenomenology of these two disorders and suggest different types of treatment and intervention.

Opinion formation in evaluating the adjudicative competence and restorability of criminal defendants: a review of 8,000 evaluations.

Evaluations of competence to stand trial (CST) are the most common type of criminal forensic evaluation conducted, and courts tend to defer to clinician opinions regarding a defendant's competence. Thus, it is important to study the ways in which clinicians arrive at opinions regarding adjudicative competence and the data they consider in forming their opinions. We reviewed 8,416 evaluations conducted by forensic evaluators in Virginia over a 12 year period, and examined (a) the clinical, demographic, and criminal characteristics of a defendant as related to opinions regarding competence, predicted restorability, and impairment on "prongs" of the Dusky standard, (b) process and outcome differences in evaluations conducted by psychiatrists versus psychologists and inpatient versus outpatient evaluators, and (c) the consistency of incompetence base rates over a 10 year period. Overall, clinicians opined that 19% of defendants were incompetent and considered 23% of these unlikely to be restored to competence. Not surprisingly, psychotic and organic/intellectual disorders were most strongly associated with findings of incompetence. However, there were some notable differences between evaluations by psychologists versus psychiatrists and between evaluations conducted in inpatient versus outpatient settings.

Opinion formation in evaluating sanity at the time of the offense: an examination of 5175 pre-trial evaluations.

Sanity evaluations are high-stake undertakings that explicitly examine the defendant's culpability for a crime and implicitly explore clinical information that might inform a plea agreement. Despite the gravity of such evaluations, relatively little research has investigated the process by which evaluators form their psycholegal opinions. In the current study, we explore this process by examining 5175 sanity evaluations conducted by a cohort of forensic evaluators in Virginia over a ten-year period. Our analyses focus on (i) the clinical, criminal, and demographic attributes of the defendant correlated with opinions indicative of insanity; (ii) the clinical content of the evaluations and the legal criteria referenced as the basis for the psycholegal opinion; (iii) the process and outcome differences in the sanity evaluations conducted by psychologists versus psychiatrists; and (iv) the consistency in these opinions over a ten year period. Analyses predicting an opinion of insanity indicate a positive relationship with psychotic, organic, and affective diagnoses and previous psychiatric treatment. Analyses also indicate a negative relationship with prior criminal history, drug charges, personality disorder diagnosis, and intoxication at the time of the offense. Modest racial disparities were observed with evaluators offering opinions that the defendant was insane more often for white than for minority defendants despite comparable psychiatric and criminal characteristics.