Psychopathy and Canadian criminal proceedings: The potential for human rights abuses

Zinger, Ivan; Forth, Adelle E.

doi:10.3138/cjcrim.40.3.237

Cited by 70 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The construct of psychopathy is subject to legal and clinical interpretations, and an expert witness's reporting of a high PCL‐R score can have grave implications for young offenders. This is because expert evidence from a mental heath professional on the untreatable nature of psychopathy can ‘offer judges a hard‐to‐resist justification’ for harsher and longer prison sentences, irrespective of guidelines within manuals (Forth, Kosson, & Hare, 2003; Zinger & Forth, 1998, p. 255). Revised risk assessment instruments applicable to adolescents (including the application of the construct of psychopathy in childhood) require coherent syndromes to be recognized using developmentally informed models (Johnstone & Cooke, 2004).…”

Section: Items Changed For the Pcl:yvmentioning

confidence: 99%

The relative validity of psychopathy versus risk/needs‐based assessments in the prediction of adolescent offending behaviour

Marshall

Egan

English

et al. 2006

Legal Criminol Psychol

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Purpose. The predictive validity of the psychopathy checklist‐youth version (PCL:YV) and Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory (YLS/CMI) for juvenile offenders were compared to examine whether a broad needs–risk tool predicted violence better than a focused individual assessment of psychopathy. Methods. 94 adolescents from residential and secure units were interviewed and assessed using the PCL:YV and YLS/CMI. Total scores were retrospectively applied to staff‐recorded incidents of violence, total number of charges and convictions and formally recorded assaults. The predictive accuracy of each tool was assessed using correlational and receiver operator characteristic analyses. Results. The PCL:YV was a better predictor of staff‐recorded violence than the YLS/CMI; both instruments were similar in their ability to predict total number of charges and convictions and assaults. When subdivided by gender, the correlations for predicting staff recorded violence in male participants were significantly higher than for female participants for both test instruments. Both instruments were broadly equivalent in their association with assaults and charges and convictions by gender. Conclusion. The PCL:YV is a better predictor of recorded violence than the YLS/CMI, but for charges and convictions and assaults, the YLS/CMI and PCL:YV were comparable for UK adolescent offenders. When recalculated to exclude the likelihood of predictor–criterion overlap, the results were the same. These findings are discussed in relation to the value of using risk–needs assessment instruments as compared with scales with a more psychopathological and personality focus.

show abstract

Section: Items Changed For the Pcl:yvmentioning

confidence: 99%

The relative validity of psychopathy versus risk/needs‐based assessments in the prediction of adolescent offending behaviour

Marshall

Egan

English

et al. 2006

Legal Criminol Psychol

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…However, concerns have been raised that expert testimony provided in court trials, especially testimony in regards to psychopathy, may promote unfounded prejudice or inflate weakly supported research findings to bias criminal justice decision makers (DeMatteo & Edens, 2006; Edens, 2001; Zinger, 1995; Zinger & Forth, 1998). Minimally, professional integrity requires a measure of caution when considering the use of emotionally charged diagnoses in the courts or applying standardized instruments to situations for which these instruments were not originally intended (e.g., within offender populations and situational contexts that differ from the instrument's construction sample); that psychopathy is relevant to court decisions does not give license to disregard the unresolved debates in the psychopathy literature.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Psychopathy, expert testimony, and indeterminate sentences: Exploring the relationship between Psychopathy Checklist‐Revised testimony and trial outcome in Canada

Lloyd

Clark

Forth

2010

Legal Criminol Psychol

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Purpose. Psychopathy, as measured by the Hare Psychopathy Checklist‐Revised (PCL‐R), has the potential to inform judges attempting to preventatively detain Canada's highest risk offenders. However, studies examining the stigma of the psychopathy label give reason to exercise caution when expert witnesses introduce PCL‐R scores into their testimony. Methods. Judges' written or oral judgments were gathered from a publically available database in Canada. Dangerous offender hearings (N = 136) were examined to determine how factors within expert witness testimony were related to sentences of indeterminate or determinate length. Results. Results show a trend for PCL‐R scores to be related to trial outcome. Specifically, psychopathy diagnoses were correlated to experts' ratings of treatment amenability which were in turn related to trial outcome. In addition, experts tended to show partisan allegiance in the way they scored offenders on the PCL‐R. Conclusion. Discussion advocates a measure of caution when using PCL‐R testimony in an adversarial court context. Further research clarifying the role psychopathy plays in court decisions is also encouraged.

show abstract

“…FASD has generally been recognized as a condition that is associated with neurocognitive impairment (Nash, Sheard, Rovet, and Koren 2008;Mattson, Crocker, and Nguyen 2011) and thereby merits some consideration as a mitigating factor precisely because it affects the capacity to make decisions that will prevent an individual from coming into conflict with the criminal law (Roach and Bailey 2009). However, neither the public nor the courts have been inclined to view psychopathy as a condition that may be treated as a mitigating factor (Zinger and Forth 1998). Nevertheless, there has been an increasing degree of recognition that psychopathy involves several specific neurocognitive impairments that may affect the degree of perceived blameworthiness of psychopathic offenders (Fine and Kennett 2004;Freedman and Verdun-Jones 2010).…”

Section: Fasd and Psychopathymentioning

confidence: 99%

Sentencing Neurocognitively Impaired Offenders in Canada

Verdun-Jones

Butler

2013

Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

While there is general agreement that the great majority of offenders who are sentenced to prison live with a mental disorder and/or a neurocognitive impairment, there is a paucity of research that examines the impact of these conditions on sentencing decisions. This article analyses three studies that reviewed Canadian sentencing decisions obtained from legal databases. Specifically, the article examines the extent to which neurocognitive impairment was treated as a mitigating factor. The analysis indicates that psychopathy was considered to be an aggravating factor insofar as it was associated with a lengthy or indeterminate prison sentence. FASD was consistently considered a mitigating factor with respect to young offenders but, for adult offenders, the judicial approach was variable with less concern for a specific diagnosis and treatment. In a small number of adult cases, PTSD was explicitly identified as a mitigating factor in the judgments, but only if it was causally connected to the offence(s). However, in cases involving young offenders, judges were more likely to focus on the need for treatment of this condition and speedy intervention to achieve rehabilitation. ADHD was not given much weight in sentencing decisions involving either young or adult offenders.

show abstract

Psychopathy and Canadian criminal proceedings: The potential for human rights abuses

Cited by 70 publications

References 0 publications

The relative validity of psychopathy versus risk/needs‐based assessments in the prediction of adolescent offending behaviour

The relative validity of psychopathy versus risk/needs‐based assessments in the prediction of adolescent offending behaviour

Psychopathy, expert testimony, and indeterminate sentences: Exploring the relationship between Psychopathy Checklist‐Revised testimony and trial outcome in Canada

Sentencing Neurocognitively Impaired Offenders in Canada

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About