Screening for intellectual disability in Dutch police suspects

Abstract

The screener for mild intellectual disability (SCIL) was developed to screen for mild intellectual disability (IQ below 85). The aims of this study were (a) to examine the predictive validity of the SCIL in screening for intellectual disability among police suspects and (b) to explore the prevalence of cognitive intellectual disability among suspects in police custody in the Netherlands. An unselected sample of police suspects (N = 178) charged with a variety of offences was assessed with the SCIL, aWechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)-III-NL short form, and a malingering measure. The SCIL screened 50.0% of the sample as having mild intellectual disabilities, whereas the short WAIS classified 84.3% of the sample with an IQ below 85. A principal component analysis of the SCIL showed ambiguous results. Furthermore, the short WAIS classified 55.6% of our sample with a borderline IQ (IQ = 70-84), 84.3% with an IQ below 85 and 28.7% with an IQ below 70. The prevalence of intellectual disability in this sample of Dutch (police) suspects appears to be higher than prevalence rates found in previous international studies. More exhaustive research is needed to examine the prevalence of intellectual disabilities in police suspects, and the utility of the SCIL to screen for these disabilities. KEYWORDS intellectual disabilities, police suspects, police custody, SCIL -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. suspected of having seduced a 16-year-old girl to perform sexual acts in front of a webcam, but in the invitation letter, the police did not mention he was a suspect in a sexual offence case. The man came to the police station and agreed to participate in the interrogation voluntarily without being arrested. Early on, the young man stated that he received special education in the past and that he resided in an assisted living residence; yet despite this information, the police interrogators did not notify the man he could have access to a lawyer, and they proceeded to interrogate him about the alleged sexual offence. In the subsequent verdict, the court recognised that it had been obvious that the suspect was suffering from intellectual disability and that he was not able to oversee his situation and to determine his position during the police investigation; hence, the court blamed the police officers for not having informed the suspect he had access to a lawyer and ruled that his statement was deemed inadmissible because of violation of the principle of a fair trial (Arnhem Court, 2011).The above is an example of recent Dutch jurisprudence, which illustrates that it is important that police officers take certain vulnerabilities of suspects (e.g., intellectual disability)...

Screening for intellectual disabilities and borderline intelligence in Dutch outpatients with severe mental illness

“…In earlier validation studies, Cronbach’s alphas were found to have been 0.83 (adult sample) and 0.74 (youth sample; Nijman et al, ). Recently, the SCIL was also administered to a sample of 178 suspects who were placed into police custody awaiting interrogation (Geijsen, Kop, & De Ruiter, ). In this sample, Cronbach’s alpha was 0.64, whereas the AUC value for predicting the outcomes of a brief version of the WAIS was 0.78.…”

The use of an impact framework to evaluate the impact of research on policy and practice: Screening questionnaires for intellectual disability

“…Many studies, published by independent researchers, have cited the research underpinning and/or used the LDSQ and CAIDS-Q as part of their own research. This has included their potential use by nurses (Delahunty, 2017); in homeless services (Stone et al, 2019); in relation to the impact of immigration on mental health (von Werthern et al, 2018); in criminal justice services (Ali and Galloway, 2016;Board, Ali and Bartlett, 2015;Boer et al, 2016;Chaplin et al, 2017;Courtney and Lascelles, 2010;Ellem and Richards, 2018;Forrester et al, 2017;Geijsen, Kop and de Ruiter 2018;Gudjonsson, Gonzalez and Young 2019;Gulati et al, , 2018aKaal, 2010;Kaal, Nijman and Moonen 2015: McCarthy et al, 2015McKinnon, Thorp and Grube, 2015;Murphy, Gardner and Freeman 2015;O'Mahony, Smith and Milne, 2011;Poynter, 2011;Sarrett, 2017;Sen et al, 2018;Short et al, 2018;Silva, Gough and Weeks 2015;Wakeling and Ramsay, 2019;Young et al, 2013Young et al, , 2018; as part of treatment and intervention studies (Idro et al, 2019;Hall et al, 2019); as part of the neuropsychological assessment or screening processes (Aubry and Bourdin, 2018;Bjørgen, Gimse and Søndenaa. 2016;Doyle and Mattson, 2015;McInnis, Hills and Chapman 2012;Murphy, 2019;…”

Screening prisoners for cognitive impairment – literature review

“…Its 14 items include educational background, preferred journals or magazines, availability of social support and arithmetic (calculation), reading and writing (spelling exercise), language comprehension and behaviour tasks. Psychometric data for the SCIL are from four studies, one each in correctional, forensic, community (Nijman et al , 2018; Nieuwenhuis et al , 2017; Kaal et al , 2015) and police custody settings (Geijsen et al , 2018). Discriminant validity appears strong and justifies further investigation.…”