Psychology, Public Policy, and Law

Evaluating the effectiveness of a 5-day training on science-based methods of interrogation with U.S. federal, state, and local law enforcement investigators.
As accusatorial approaches to interrogation in the United States have increasingly come under scrutiny, interest in science-based methods of interviewing and interrogation has risen. The purpose of the current study was to assess the effectiveness of a 5-day science-based interrogation course delivered by the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group to U.S. federal, local, and state law enforcement investigators. Core aspects of the training included the use of productive questions, developing interrogator–suspect rapport, and conducting a cognitive interview. Ninety investigators who participated in the training submitted pre- and posttraining recordings of real-world suspect interviews. As hypothesized, investigators increased their use of science-based approaches after training and decreased their use of unproductive questions. Training did not influence how frequently they employed customary accusatorial techniques. Using a path model analysis, we also explored the relationships between use of science-based techniques and accusatorial approaches on the key outcome variables of cooperation, information disclosure by the suspect, and confession. We found positive indirect effects of training on cooperation and information disclosure via the use of science-based approaches. Moreover, science-based approaches were positively associated with increased cooperation and information disclosure and, indirectly, confession rates. In contrast, accusatorial approaches were associated with increased use of suspect counter-interrogation strategies and decreased cooperation and information gain. Implications for future training programs are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
The utility of direct questions about actions with the hands in child forensic interviews.
This study evaluated the utility of asking direct hands questions (“what did he do with his hands” and “what did you do with your hands”) during forensic interviews with 197 five- to 17-year-old children disclosing sexual abuse. Interviewers had been previously trained to engage children in narrative practice, maximize their use of invitations and directives, and minimize their use of option-posing questions. We examined the extent to which direct hands questions elicited novel information about force, duress, resistance, and the nature of touch and body mechanics. Fifty-nine percent of children’s responses to the direct hands questions elicited novel details. Age, child productivity, and time spent on narrative practice exhibited few relations with novelty. The number of prior invitations was consistently negatively related to novelty; when more invitations were asked, the hands questions were less likely to elicit novel information. Direct questions about hands may supplement invitations in eliciting legally significant details about child sexual abuse. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Getting traction on positive youth justice: Prosocial identity as a promising target for intervention.
The positive youth justice (PYJ) paradigm emphasizes building youths’ strengths and prosocial attributes to promote healthy development and desistance from antisocial behavior. Despite broad support for PYJ, direct application of the model to juvenile justice interventions has been limited by its multitude of components and global targets. In this article, we chart an innovative pathway from theory to intervention that centers on promoting prosocial identity, or the extent to which young people view themselves as prosocial. We synthesize theory and evidence from developmental science and criminology to demonstrate that—with individual effort and environmental support—a youth’s identity can be shifted in the prosocial direction to promote desistance from antisocial behavior. Our intervention framework specifies three targets for change: content of the future possible self (promoting hope for a future prosocial self, balanced by fear of a future antisocial self), prosocial identity prominence (importance to the self), and prosocial identity validation (confidence that the self can be achieved). To realize the promise of this framework, researchers and practitioners can build consensus on measures of prosocial identity, assess the extent to which identity changes in response to existing strength-based services, and further establish the protective utility of prosocial identity. Interventions that directly target identity content, prominence, or validation should also be tested for their impact on antisocial behavior. When combined with relevant policy levers, we expect this identity-based approach to add value to existing services. Understanding that shifts in identity are both possible and matter, can help chart new pathways for promoting positive youth development. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Factors contributing to the delayed submission of competence to stand trial reports and the jail-based competency crisis in Washington.
In recent years, demand has outpaced capacity to provide timely competence to stand trial (CST) evaluations and subsequent restoration services. This outpacing of resources has been coined the “competency crisis” and led to class action lawsuits across the country aimed at improving the timeliness of jail-based competence evaluations and inpatient restoration services. This study examined rates of CST evaluation delays in Washington State and evaluator-cited barriers to timely report submission for jail-based CST evaluations. The study used data from N = 17,874 court-ordered jail-based CST evaluations and N = 1,739 Good Cause Exception (e.g., extension) requests submitted by forensic evaluators to local courts from June 2018 to November 2022. Results indicated the number of jail-based CST evaluations increased annually, as did the percentage of evaluations with an accompanying extension request. Although Washington evaluators could have asked for a Good Cause Exception in any case that appeared to be at risk for noncompliance, they did not always do so, with only one request submitted for every 2.36 noncompliant evaluations. When evaluators did submit an extension request, the most common reason cited for requesting extensions was “attorney” (42.5%) followed by “other” (34.2%) and “more information needed” (17.1%). Although the most frequently cited reason for delays may be unique to Washington (i.e., attorney presence for evaluations), it highlights the importance of jurisdiction-specific field studies to identify and reduce barriers to the timely completion of competence valuations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Crossing the line: A comprehensive analysis of jurisdictional variations in sorna statutes.
The 2006 Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA) was established as a means of enhancing public safety by increasing supervision and limiting opportunities to reoffend among individuals convicted of a sex offense. Though SORNA established a federal mandate, jurisdictions are independently tasked with the creation, implementation, and enforcement of specific restrictions and procedural policies. The lack of uniformity and clarity in SORNA statutes places additional burdens on registrants and can jeopardize compliance efforts. Most of the existing literature has focused narrowly on specific restrictions, offering relevant glimpses of the issue but failing to procure a holistic account of the inconsistent and complex legal standards enforces across states and territories. The current study is a comprehensive statutory analysis of all 50 states and five major territories confirm the existence of substantial variability in restrictions on notification, residential, employment, and other SORNA criteria across the United States. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
The limited value of machine learning approach to improving predictive performance: The Ministry of Justice Case Assessment Tool.
This study aims to improve the predictive performance of existing risk assessment tools and the predictive validity of the original Ministry of Justice Case Assessment Tool (MJCA) concerning recidivism rates using machine learning (ML) and examine whether the tool’s predictive performance can be improved. With follow-up data on 5,942 individuals in Japanese Juvenile Assessment Centers, the study uses ML methods, such as the K-nearest neighbor algorithm, support vector machine, random forest, gradient boosting tree, and multilayer perceptron, to improve the MJCA’s prediction power. The results show that the predictive validity of the original MJCA significantly improves for three of the six ML methods; gradient boosting tree, random forest, and multilayer perceptron have the highest predictive validity. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) for the gradient boosting tree is 0.75, significantly higher than the AUC of the original MJCA (0.67). We concluded that ML can improve the predictive validity of recidivism rates. Among the ML techniques, decision tree algorithms were better at predicting recidivism. The improvement, as with other findings, is less pronounced than the enormous impact that recent artificial intelligence methods have had on information processing. However, it is significant because recidivism risk assessment is important in determining the treatment for individuals who offend. ML is beneficial for risk assessment and must be used with a focus on these issues. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Working toward desistance: Canadian public attitudes and policy endorsement for the treatment, management, and prevention of sexual offending.
Understanding public sentiments toward persons who commit acts of sexual violence and the means to prevent it is essential to the development of successful and workable policies to reduce sexual victimization. We examined Canadian attitudes toward persons who commit sex offenses, support for sexual violence prevention policy (i.e., incapacitation/control [IC] vs. rehabilitative/reintegrative [RR]), and the interrelations among attitudes, demographic variables, and policy endorsement in a representative sample of English-speaking adult Canadians (N = 1,008) who completed an online survey battery. Results demonstrated that the Canadian public had largely negative feelings toward individuals with a history of sex crimes, especially those who target children; beliefs about the population, in general, tended to be more neutral, and respondents anticipated meaningful reductions in sexual violence with treatment. Canadians endorsed both RR-related (e.g., therapy, stable housing, job assistance, bolstering community supports) and IC-related (e.g., residence restrictions, being placed on a registry, prison time) policies. Punitive attitudes were related to endorsement of more IC policies, and fewer RR policies, while rehabilitative attitudes demonstrated the reverse. Further, conservative political orientation and having children were associated with increasingly negative attitudes and IC policy endorsement, while education level was associated with more rehabilitative attitudes and RR policy endorsement. Multipredictor models upheld these findings, demonstrating that public beliefs, emotional feelings, and key demographics uniquely predicted RR versus IC policy endorsement. The findings have implications for future policies and reintegration strategies and may encourage collaboration between researchers, policymakers, and the public. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Do reasons for migration impact the elements of asylum applications? An investigation of participants in the 2018 “migrant caravan”.
As migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers continue to arrive at the Mexico–U.S. border and solutions to this situation remain elusive, growing opportunities exist for research to inform policy decisions. One policy implemented (and subsequently rescinded) by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was to limit asylum claims to only those individuals who experienced abuse or maltreatment at the hands of government officials, limiting protections for those fleeing gang violence or abuse inflicted by family members. We surveyed 515 migrants seeking entry to the United States who had traveled in the late 2018 “migrant caravan” from the Northern Triangle of Central America (Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala) to examine the nature and extent of pre- and peri-migration victimization experiences. Participants cited varied reasons for migration, including violence, economic opportunity, and family reunification. Not surprisingly, individuals who cited violence as their primary reason for fleeing reported greater exposure to premigration victimization and were significantly more likely to express a fear of returning to their country of origin. However, experiences of violence were ubiquitous in the sample, and mental health symptoms were not associated with reason for migration. We also found no significant differences in exposure to violence, fear of return, or perceptions of government protection between those who reported having experienced violence inflicted by government officials versus those who reported only gang-related violence. Hence, the perpetrator of violence appears to have little bearing on the nature or impact of violence experienced by these migrants. The implications of these findings for immigration policy are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Toward a multidimensional model of legitimacy: Validation of the Traffic Rules Perceived Legitimacy scale.
Perceived legitimacy is important, often more so than deterrence, to explain and improve compliance with legal rules. However, several issues in the definition and measurement of perceived legitimacy have recently been highlighted in different fields. A previous review of the literature (Varet et al., 2021), carried out on this issue, in the field of road safety, proposed a multidimensional model of the perceived legitimacy of traffic rules. The present study developed and tested theses insights through the validation of a self-report scale: the Traffic Rules Perceived Legitimacy scale. A hierarchical model underlying the scale was hypothesized with two second-order factors (i.e., instrumental factor, normative factor) and four first-order factors (i.e., effectiveness, efficiency, moral alignment, fairness). A pilot study (N = 74) was designed to pretest a pool of items. The main study (N = 833) was designed to assess the internal and external validity of the proposed scale, and a quicker single-item measure. The results corroborate the internal validity of the scale and the hypothesized hierarchical model. As expected, hierarchical regression analyses confirmed that the perceived legitimacy of traffic rules was a better predictor of compliance than perceived deterrence, risk of accident, and social norms. The value and limitations of the corroborated model for defining and measuring the perceived legitimacy of other objects, within and beyond the field of road safety, are discussed. Practical implications in the field of road safety field are also discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Crowd reactions to the police use of force at the 2017 Phoenix Trump rally.
This study examines crowd reactions to police use of force at a protest outside of a 2017 campaign-style rally held by U.S. President Donald Trump in Phoenix, Arizona. We rely on a mixed-method analysis that draws on three primary data sources: direct observations, video footage of the protest, and interviews with protesters. We use thematic analysis of the interview responses to identify a set of themes characterizing protesters’ psychological and behavioral responses to the police use of force against the crowd. Our analysis integrates the findings from this thematic analysis with evidence from direct observations and video footage. Our findings reveal that the police use of force generated a mix of psychological and behavioral reactions. Respondents described having experienced a range of emotional reactions, including anger, frustration, fear, and concern for the well-being of vulnerable people in the crowd. The two principal behavioral responses were oppositional (expressing anger toward police) and altruistic (providing aid to vulnerable people). While oppositional reactions are well-known in the literature on the police response to protests, much less is known about altruistic reactions in this setting. Future research should seek to clarify the factors that influence both oppositional and altruistic reactions in crowds. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)

Psychology, Public Policy, and Law - Vol 30, Iss 2