Are autistic people disadvantaged by the criminal justice system? A case comparison.

LAY ABSTRACT: Most autistic people will never experience being arrested or charged with a crime, however for those who do tend to be less satisfied with the way they were treated. The purpose of this study was to find out if autistic people are being disadvantaged by the criminal justice system if they are arrested. Previous research has shown that autistic people may have difficulties communicating with the police. This study builds on this knowledge by uncovering why autistic people may not feel able to communicate with the police and whether the police made any adjustments to help them. This study also measures the impact of being involved with the criminal justice system on autistic people's mental health, such as stress, meltdowns and shutdowns. The results show that autistic people were not always given the support they felt they needed. For example, not all autistic people had an appropriate adult with them at the police station who could help to make sure they understood what was happening around them. Autistic people were also more likely to feel less able to cope with the stress and more likely to suffer meltdowns and shutdowns because of their involvement with the criminal justice system. We hope this study will help police officers and lawyers to better support autistic people if they become involved with the criminal justice system.

Cumulative Disadvantage: A Psychological Framework for Understanding How Innocence Can Lead to Confession, Wrongful Conviction, and Beyond.

False confessions are a contributing factor in almost 30% of DNA exonerations in the United States. Similar problems have been documented all over the world. We present a novel framework to highlight the processes through which innocent people, once misidentified as suspects, experience cumulative disadvantages that culminate in pernicious consequences. The cumulative-disadvantage framework details how the innocent suspect's naivete and the interrogator's presumption of guilt trigger a process that can lead to false confession, the aftereffects of which spread to corrupt evidence gathering, bias forensic analysis, and virtually ensure wrongful convictions at trial or through pressured false guilty pleas. The framework integrates nascent research underscoring the enduring effects of the accumulated disadvantages postconviction and even after exoneration. We synthesize findings from psychological science, corroborating naturalistic evidence, and relevant legal precedents to explain how an innocent suspect's disadvantages can accumulate through the actions of law enforcement, forensic examiners, prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, juries, and appeals courts. We conclude with prescribed research directions that can lead to empirically driven reforms to address the gestalt of the multistage process.

Infection control for third-party benefit: lessons from criminal justice.

This article considers what can be learned regarding the ethical acceptability of intrusive interventions intended to halt the spread of infectious disease ('Infection Control' measures) from existing ethical discussion of intrusive interventions used to prevent criminal conduct ('Crime Control' measures). The main body of the article identifies and briefly describes six objections that have been advanced against Crime Control, and considers how these might apply to Infection Control. The final section then draws out some more general lessons from the foregoing analysis for the ethical acceptability of different kinds of Infection Control.

Inferring models of opinion dynamics from aggregated jury data.

Jury deliberations provide a quintessential example of collective decision-making, but few studies have probed the available data to explore how juries reach verdicts. We examine how features of jury dynamics can be better understood from the joint distribution of final votes and deliberation time. To do this, we fit several different decision-making models to jury datasets from different places and times. In our best-fit model, jurors influence each other and have an increasing tendency to stick to their opinion of the defendant's guilt or innocence. We also show that this model can explain spikes in mean deliberation times when juries are hung, sub-linear scaling between mean deliberation times and trial duration, and unexpected final vote and deliberation time distributions. Our findings suggest that both stubbornness and herding play an important role in collective decision-making, providing a nuanced insight into how juries reach verdicts, and more generally, how group decisions emerge.

Ethical Issues Arising from Marijuana Use by Nursing Mothers in a Changing Legal and Cultural Context.

In the early 2000s, several states legalized marijuana for medicinal uses. Since then, more and more states have either decriminalized or legalized marijuana use for medical or recreational purposes. Federal law has remained unchanged. The state-level decriminalization of marijuana and the concomitant de-stigmatizing and mainstreaming is likely to lead to greater use among the general population, including among nursing mothers. Marijuana is already one of the most widely used illicit substances among lactating women. There exist few studies demonstrating the effects of marijuana in breast milk on nursing babies. In the present context of a changing legal landscape, shifting cultural beliefs, and the absence of clear professional guidelines, healthcare professionals are faced with ethical questions around how best to support nursing mothers and their babies when marijuana use is a factor. This paper first presents an overview of the law, science, and professional guidelines as they relate to marijuana and breastfeeding. Then, I offer an assessment of the relevant ethical issues providers and their patients may need to navigate.

The Impossibility of Criminal Justice Ethics: Toward a Phenomenology of the Possible.

Regardless the specific theoretical perspective, all ethical formulations for criminal justice practice in some way construct the ontological character of the offender, which, in turn, situates both epistemology and method. How this ethical process ultimately constructs the offender will likely help to establish the degree of ethical worth such an individual is deemed worthy to receive. Whether based upon the seriousness of the crime or based upon the specific configuration of the architecture of incarceration, the very possibility of legitimate ethical practice is greatly compromised. Such results can be better avoided when the ethical import of the individual is ontologically situated within the very definition of what it means to be human.1 By situating this discussion within the context of the analytic psychology of Carl Jung and his concept of the shadow and the originary ethics of Martin Heidegger found in Being and Time, a more ontologically configured possibility for a criminal justice ethics can be recognized.

Why "Moral Enhancement" Isn't Always Moral Enhancement: The Case of Traumatic Brain Injury in American Vets.

In this article, I argue that as we learn more about how we might intervene in the brain in ways that impact human behavior, the scope of what counts as "moral behavior" becomes smaller and smaller because things we successfully manipulate using evidence-based science are often things that fall outside the sphere of morality. Consequently, the argument that we are morally obligated to morally enhance our neighbors starts to fall apart, not because humans should be free to make terrible choices, but because morality is not something subject to such manipulation. To illustrate my argument, I shall use the rise of veteran diversion courts in the United States as a putative instance of an intervention designed to change human behavior for the better. Part of my purpose in working my way through this case study is to demonstrate that many philosophers have the psychology of immoral action wrong.

Truth as Humility Nourishing Compassion Through Wisdom.

Among the strengths of forensic psychiatry as a profession is its ability to support lively discussion of critical questions, such as how to characterize its own essence and whether it belongs to the practice of medicine. The American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law is fortunate that Michael Norko has taken the occasion of his presidential address to describe in depth the results of the advanced stage of his probing on a truly spiritual level the fundamental place of compassion in the practice of forensic psychiatry. In so doing, he casts inevitable light on the seamless connections binding forensic psychiatry and medicine, particularly the importance for both of practicing compassion in our search for truth.

When Should Screening and Surveillance Be Used during Pregnancy?

Using the ethical and legal concept of shared responsibility for healthy births, this article considers social, cultural, and historical contexts in which medicalization and criminalization have worked in tandem to widen surveillance in ways that intensify scrutiny of women's lives under the guise of child protection, bringing women who are pregnant, postpartum, or parenting under criminal justice control. Although pregnant and postpartum women are prime candidates for medication-assisted treatment (MAT), the expanding carceral system has not prioritized drug treatment or reproductive justice. This article investigates ethical and historical dimensions of the question, According to which principles and practices should screening and surveillance be carried out to reduce harm, safeguard civil and human rights-including reproductive autonomy-and ensure that treatment, when necessary, occurs in the least coercive settings possible?

The Sequential Intercept Model and Juvenile Justice: Review and Prospectus.

Behavioral health needs in justice-involved adolescents are an increasing concern, as it has been estimated that two-thirds of youths in the juvenile justice system now meet the criteria for one or more psychological disorders. This article describes the application of the Sequential Intercept Model (SIM), developed to describe five "points of interception" from standard prosecution into rehabilitation-oriented alternatives for adults (Munetz & Griffin, 2006), to juvenile justice. The five SIM intercepts are: (1) first contact with law enforcement or emergency services; (2) initial hearings and detention following arrest; (3) jails and courts (including problem-solving courts); (4) re-entry from jails, prisons and forensic hospitals; and (5) community corrections and community support, including probation and parole. Modifying the SIM for application with justice-involved adolescents, this article describes three examples of interventions at different intercepts: Intercept 1 (the Philadelphia Police School Diversion Program), Intercept 3 (problem-solving courts for juveniles), and Intercept 5 (juvenile probation). Relevant research evidence for each example is reviewed, and the further application of this model to juveniles is described. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Memory Interventions in the Criminal Justice System: Some Practical Ethical Considerations.

In recent years, discussion around memory modification interventions has gained attention. However, discussion around the use of memory interventions in the criminal justice system has been mostly absent. In this paper we start by highlighting the importance memory has for human well-being and personal identity, as well as its role within the criminal forensic setting; in particular, for claiming and accepting legal responsibility, for moral learning, and for retribution. We provide examples of memory interventions that are currently available for medical purposes, but that in the future could be used in the forensic setting to modify criminal offenders' memories. In this section we contrast the cases of (1) dampening and (2) enhancing memories of criminal offenders. We then present from a pragmatic approach some pressing ethical issues associated with these types of memory interventions. The paper ends up highlighting how these pragmatic considerations can help establish ethically justified criteria regarding the possibility of interventions aimed at modifying criminal offenders' memories.