Age tables improve sex offender risk estimates

First, how old is the bus driver?

If 30 people are riding on a bus, and 30 more people board the bus, how old is the bus driver?

The answer, many second-graders will assure you, is 60. (They know your question involves numbers, but they don't quite get the concept.)

Clinical psychologists are a bit like that. Most of us were not drawn to the field by a deep and abiding passion for numbers. This puts some in a quagmire when they jump into forensic work, and courts order them to predict future events with a high degree of mathematical precision.

Illusion of certainty, certitude in illusions

Since passage of the Psychologist Full Employment Act,* I have observed a growing group-think among government sex offender evaluators in particular. At the annual meetings of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers (ATSA), crowds flock to hear self-appointed gurus give the latest in a series of ever-changing instructions about how to use their pet formulas, freely available online, that promise to take the guesswork out of risk assessment.

Psychologists who lack statistical sophistication are especially likely to swoon over fancy-sounding terms such as receiver operating characteristics (ROC) and to overlook the gaping flaws in current actuarial methodology. Instead of deriving from sound scientific principles such as random sampling, the tools are strung together from a motley collection of random data, much of it never published or subjected to peer review. As I have reported in the past, the Static-99 family of instruments are not very accurate, and tend to err in the direction of overestimating risk.

So, what about that bus driver?

Getting back to the bus driver: Let's say the second-graders happened to be right, and he really is 60 years old. What are the odds that he will be arrested for a sex crime, given that he recently served time for sexual assault? (I know, I know. What bus company would have hired him? But, play along with me here.)

If you asked a randomly selected passenger aboard the bus, the answer would be close to 100%.

But as you know, the public drastically overestimates sex offender recidivism rates. Let’s say that in reality, the average sex offender who scores in the low range on actuarial risk instruments has a 5% chance of sexual recidivism, while the average high-scoring offender has a 29% risk. Obviously, without knowing more about the bus driver, all you can say is that his risk of reoffense is somewhere between 5% and 29%.

But that too would be wrong. Because of his age, the bus driver's recidivism risk over the next eight years is more in the range of 2.7%.

Which is probably lower than the risk of a passenger getting trampled if you hollered out, “Eek! Sex offender!”

Good news: Age-stratified tables improve accuracy

The single most robust finding of two centuries of criminological research is that desistance from crime is near universal. As they age, criminals stop offending. This holds true across all eras, cultures, and offender groups. Sex offenders are not exempt from this pattern. As their libidos decline, they too settle down or burn out. Unfortunately, this “age invariance effect,” as it has been called, has trouble filtering down into the muddy waters of the sex-offender industry. (See my online review of the book Desistance in the Open Access Journal of Forensic Psychology for more discussion of this.)

When age is not properly taken into accounting in estimating risk, the risk for older offenders -- such as our bus driver -- is overestimated, while the risk of younger offenders is underestimated.

Now, a collaboration by scholars from the United States, New Zealand, and Australia reveals that the accuracy of sex offender risk prediction can be significantly improved by using age-stratified tables to calculate risk.

The researchers tapped into an electronic database of all sex offenders in New Zealand who were released from prison over a 15-year period. They combined the data on those 5,880 offenders with recidivism data on 3,425 offenders published by Static-99 developer Karl Hanson in 2006, to develop what they call a "Multisample Age-Stratified Table of Sexual Recidivism Rates" (MATS-1).

Using Bayes's Theorem, the researchers were able to calculate likelihood ratios for different levels of risk. (Bayes's Theorem speaks to the probability of an event, taking into account both the phenomenon's base rate and the accuracy of a test. Cognitive scientists regard the Bayesian method as the gold standard, often using it synonymously with rational reasoning.)

Overall, the recidivism base rate of their combined international sample was 9% over a 10-year period, which is consistent with other reported research. Dividing offenders into three levels of risk based on their scores on actuarial risk instruments, the researchers found that those with low risk scores had an average 5% risk of reoffense within eight years, as compared with 12% for medium-risk offenders and 29% for offenders with high scores. By dividing sex offenders into various age groups, they were able to come up with more precise estimates of risk (see below table).



Evaluators should use this type of age-stratified procedure when giving estimates of recidivism risk, particularly for older offenders, the researchers advise. Estimating an offender's probability of recidivism based on the observed proportion of recidivists in a population is more accurate than relying on a set of untested assumptions. It is also much simpler and easier to explain to a trier of fact.

I highly recommend the article, published in the current issue of Sexual Abuse, which goes into a great deal of detail about the method and its superior stability and accuracy. The authors are Richard Wollert of Washington State University and the Mental Health Law and Policy Insitute at Simon Fraser University in Canada, Elliot Cramer, a statistician and professor emeritus from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Jacqueline Waggoner of the University of Portland, Alex Skelton of the New Zealand Department of Corrections, and James Vess of Deakin University in Australia. Request reprints from the first author (HERE).

Related blog posts:

• Delusional campaign for a world without risk (April 3, 2010)
• Static redux: Sandgropers jumping off rickety ship (Sept. 23, 2010)
• SVP industry sneak peek: Problems in Actuaryland (Oct. 4, 2009)
• New study: Do popular actuarials work? (April 20, 2010)
• Study: Actuarials fail to predict sexually violent recidivism (March 5, 2010)

For a good introduction to Bayesian reasoning, see Eliezer Yudkowsky's tutorial, "An Intuitive Explanation of Bayes' Theorem."

*The Psychologist Full Employment Act is the label conferred on the Sexually Violent Predator (SVP) laws by a leading psychology-law scholar in a recent plenary address.

"Abandon ethics, all ye who enter here"

Special ethics exemption sought for SVP work

Concern is mounting among many in the fields of forensic psychology, forensic psychiatry, and law about ethical violations by some practitioners in the Sexually Violent Predator (SVP) arena. But instead of calling for greater adherence to ethical practice, some are floating a radically different idea: Abandon professional ethics altogether.

[A] good-faith, case-by-case, consequential ethics approach should be used that balances the greatest good for the greatest number without trampling unduly on individual rights and each citizen’s constitutionally protected liberty interests.

This "consequential" approach will eliminate bias and give the civil commitment process "ethical authenticity," contend Shoba Sreenivasan, Allen Frances, and Linda Weinberger in the current issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.

Sexually Violent Predator evaluations lend themselves to ethical slippage because of the laws' requirement that in order to be eligible for civil commitment, a convicted sex offender must suffer from a "mental abnormality" that makes him "likely" (interpreted in most states other than California to mean a risk of 51 percent or more) to commit another sexually violent offense.

These legal requirements create a slippery slope when an offender does not have a bona fide mental disorder and/or does not score high on risk assessment instruments, but the evaluator still believes the offender needs to be civilly committed to protect the public.

But this is no "puzzling ethics quandary." It's no different from such pulls in other forensic arenas. For example, a forensic practitioner might opine that:

• a young man who experienced a brief, drug-induced psychotic break meets the M'Naghten standard of insanity, because the prosecutor and the defense attorney have worked out a deal in which he won't have to go to prison

• a victim of an industrial accident meets the criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder because she needs counseling and the corporation has deep pockets

• a mother in a child custody dispute has "parental alienation syndrome" because she appears angry and vindictive toward her husband

Each of these evaluators is overstepping, and usurping the role of the trier of fact (the judge or jury). It is not the expert's job to decide whether Sexually Violent Predator laws are morally just. It is not our job to balance the goals of public protection with individual civil liberties. Those duties fall to courts, legislatures, and voters.

As I teach my students in Forensic Psychology 101, when we enter the courtroom our job is a simple one: To assist the trier of fact in understanding the psychological science of relevance to the case at hand. Nothing more, nothing less.

The authors complain that the courts have given us insufficient guidance in this task. But, welcome to the forensic world. Statutory and case law is often intentionally vague, to allow for unique situations or changing circumstances. The law's inherent vagueness about mental abnormality and risk does not create an ethics quandary, much less one that merits abandonment of our ethics codes.

It is ludicrous to think that the solution to problems in SVP practice is an anything-goes approach that essentially rests upon the good intentions of individual evaluators. Most of us probably do have good intentions. But self-serving blinders make it hard to be objective. That is precisely why professionals have established deontological, or rule-based, ethics standards (which the authors refer to as "normative ethics").

Indeed, these authors reveal their implicit bias through their choice of examples. Instead of focusing on the widespread exaggeration of risk or manufacturing of bogus psychiatric diagnoses, they condemn "long and confusing discussions of Bayes' theorem" and label as biased the evaluator who emphasizes limitations in our ability to accurately predict risk.

Actually, that is precisely our job. We are ethically obligated to present the limitations of our models, which are significant. To fail to do so is to succumb to what an Australian judge described as gross product enthusiasm:

Amongst the many factors which may lead an expert witness into error is a malady which, if encountered in a new car salesperson, might be described as gross product enthusiasm. Some witnesses seem to become so fervid about the potential of their chosen discipline that they lose sight of its limitations and are borne by their enthusiasm into making claims that could not be supported by more sober and objective assessment of the available evidence.*

As this judge implies, the testimony of expert witnesses should be given little weight when it amounts to confirmatory bias in disguise, resting on a paper-thin layer of exploratory or contradictory research that has not been peer reviewed, published, or replicated, and is of unknown reliability or validity.

I will say it once again: Our only role in court is to assist the trier of fact to accurately apply reliable and valid science to the case at hand. And that includes acknowledging the science's limitations.

Science in principle is distinguished from the law, religion, and politics by its allegiance to scientific inquiry, or the search for replicable cause-effect relationships. The ethics of our discipline therefore rely upon the principles of objectivity and transparency. In contrast, Sreenivasan et al’s ethics of "consequentialism" elevate expedience. This might be fine in the fields of law or religion. But, as a learned colleague said, "expedience is the bane of Science."

SVP trials pit David against Goliath. The dice are loaded against sex offenders facing civil commitment, due to the onerous nature of their past crimes, inequalities in legal resources, and even the very label of predator, which conjures a beastly monster. Condemning as "biased" efforts by the defense to point out the scientific weaknesses of the state's evidence would only increase this monumental power imbalance.

But that's no "puzzling ethics quandary." Any more than psychologists are faced with a puzzling ethics quandary when they decide to participate in government torture for the greater good.

Because we have professional rules, or ethics codes, the psychologists who allegedly tortured detainees at Guantanamo now await licensing board actions in their respective states of Ohio and New York.

That's the way it is, and the way it should remain.

Acknowledgment: In crafting this essay, I consulted with more than a dozen learned colleagues, who helped me to ponder these critical issues of ethics. Thanks to all of you, and a special thanks to Robert Halon, who gave the matter a great deal of thought. It’s a privilege to count such wise individuals among my professional colleagues.

Photo credit (Creative Commons license): Klearchos Kapoutsis, Baba Vida fortress, Bulgaria, the place of the hangings.

*R. v. Hiller, ACTSC 50, 25 (Australia, 2003), as cited in Psychological Science in the Courtroom, Consensus and Controversy, page 255.

BLOGGER RESPONSES:

Steve Erickson @ Crime & Consequences

Mark Bennett @ Defending People

Emma B. @ Psychology & Crime News (UK)

Forensic psychology at the crossroads

Leading forensic psychologist calls for reform

Alas, summer is over. For my fall forensic overview course, I just read Kirk Heilbrun's new article in Psychology, Public Policy, and Law on the future of forensic psychology. He frames it in the context of the National Science Foundation's scathing report on problems with scientific accuracy and bias in other forensic science disciplines.

Psychology's progress in the forensic arena is at least as good as those of the hard sciences such as chemistry and biology, say Heilbrun and co-author Stephanie Brooks, also of Drexel University. The field has come a long way in the last three decades: Texts and journals galore, about three dozen forensically oriented doctoral programs, many doctoral internship sites with a significant forensic component, various sets of practice guidelines, and even a "best practices" series by Oxford University Press.

But we could do better, says Heilbrun, a pillar of the forensic psychology community.

The limited research on field practices finds three levels of competence:

• Best practice: Forensic psychologists practicing at the aspirational level expected from highly trained and experienced specialists

• Appropriate practice: Forensic psychologists who practice in a manner consistent with relevant standards and guidelines set by the field

• Poor practice: Forensic psychologists whose work is so deficient that it is inaccurate, irrelevant, and/or not helpful to the courts.

Unfortunately, as many of us can attest, there is plenty of this poor-quality work, which can not only harm the individuals in the legal system but also damage our field's reputation. Common problems found with poor forensic reports include extreme brevity, an inadequate data base, use of outdated or irrelevant tests, substantial errors in test scoring or interpretation, and failure to grasp the relevant legal constructs.

Recommendations for improvement

In making recommendations to improve forensic psychology practice, Heilbrun and Brooks focus on the areas identified by the National Science Foundation study (which did not include the fields of psychiatry or psychology). These include both the quality of the underlying science and the elements of bias and human error. They recommend exploring the possibility of adding forensic psychology within the proposed National Institute of Forensic Science as one method of improving quality control. Other recommendations:

• Develop quantifiable measures of reliability and accuracy of forensic analyses.

• Competitively fund peer-reviewed research on the scientific bases of validity of forensic methods.

• Develop quality improvement procedures to ensure best practice and minimize error.

• Continue cutting-edge research on observer bias and human error in forensic examinations, like the work of Dan Murrie, Marcus Boccaccini, and colleagues on partisan allegiance.

Striking lack of diversity

Finally, Heilbrun and Brooks make a strong plea for greater attention to our field's lack of ethnic and cultural diversity, lest forensic psychology become irrelevant by the mid-21st century:

One of the striking gaps in forensic psychology is between those who provide services and those who are assessed and treated, and about whom legal decisions are made, in consideration of these services. It is crucial that this gap be narrowed. The racial and ethnic composition of the United States is changing; by 2040, it is estimated that Latina/Latino citizens will be in the majority. The delivery of services, and the research on their effectiveness, by individuals with a high degree of specific cultural competence is likely to be promoted by increasing the number of forensically trained psychologists of African American, Asian American, Latina/Latino, American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, and multiracial backgrounds providing such services.

Addressing this goal will require actively encouraging, even recruiting, minority individuals as early as high school. Minority issues within APA are promoted in part through a multigroup council. One potentially effective strategy for the field of forensic psychology would involve closer collaboration with councils like this and with secondary schools and colleges that educate substantial proportions of minority students. The effectiveness of this diversity effort will have a major impact on the extent to which forensic psychology is perceived as providing services that are culturally competent and effective—and the extent to which it actually provides such services.

The article is: Heilbrun, K., & Brooks, S. (2010). Forensic psychology and forensic science: A proposed agenda for the next decade. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law 16, 219-253. Correspondence should go to Dr. Heilbrun.

Handbook of Violence Risk Assessment

Best practices for violence risk assessment change from second to second. So, publishing a sourcebook on the topic is a bit like trying to capture and hold a hummingbird. Still, the authorship and range of content may make the Handbook of Violence Risk Assessment an authoritative resource for at least a minute or two -- and then they can publish a second edition.

The volume's first editor, Randy Otto, is a respected forensic psychology scholar. An award-winning professor in the Department of Mental Health Law and Policy at the University of South Florida, he is past president of both the American Psychology-Law Society and the American Board of Forensic Psychology. He also chairs the Committee to Revise the Specialty Guidelines for Forensic Psychology (which, by the way, has yet a new draft coming out next month), and he is a co-author of the third edition of the widely consulted text, Psychological Evaluations for the Courts. Co-editor Kevin Douglas is a former colleague of Otto's at the Department of Mental Health Law and Policy.

The book begins with an overview chapter by respected forensic scholar Kirk Heilbrun. Remaining chapters -- most written by leading practitioners and instrument developers -- review specific instruments for assessing both adult and juvenile risk for violence, including sexual violence. Tools reviewed include:

• EARL-20B and EARL-21G
• SAVRY
• Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory
• VRAG, SORAG
• Violence Risk Scale
• HCR-20
• Classification of Violence Risk
• Level of Service Inventory
• Spousal Assault Risk Assessment Guide
• Static-99
• SVR-20 / RSVP

I am impressed with what I have read so far. John Monahan wrote the chapter on the Classification of Violence Risk. David DeMatteo, John Edens, and Allison Hart have a nice chapter on the utility -- and limitations -- of using psychopathy measures to address violence risk. And Stephen Hart and Douglas Boer provide an up-to-the-minute summary of reliability and validity studies on the SVR-20 and a parallel instrument sex offender risk instrument, the Risk for Sexual Violence Protocol (RSVP), which I predict may overtake the Static-99 at some point, given the latter's instability and atheoretical basis.

My Amazon review is HERE.

Websites worth checking out

• Psychology and Crime News is B-A-C-K! Emma B. was hosting this excellent source of news and information in the United Kindom back when I began blogging in 2007. She went on hiatus for a while, so I am happy to see she is back on the Web, even if in a somewhat abbreviated form. (She recommends you follow her on Twitter.) She's got especially strong resources in the area of lie deception research. Check her out (HERE). Welcome back, Emma!

• Sex offender laws are becoming so out of proportion in terms of their financial cost and the number of people they are ensnaring, including teens and even children, that calls for reason are mounting. Among the more interesting sites of this counter-movement is Citizens for Change, which is jam-packed with news stories, links, and other resources. I recommend that anyone working in the sex offender field give it a look-see (HERE).

• Finally, as I've mentioned before, if you want to keep up with psychological science and be entertained at the same time, Mind Hacks is the place to go. Psychologist Vaughan Bell's weekly "spike activity" columns give comprehensive lists of new research, while his in-depth daily reports provide eclectic perspectives on select news (e.g., new research on the "booty call" and the "poker face").
  

Two forensic posts at University of Surrey

The Department of Psychology at the University of Surrey, one of the top research and teaching sites in the UK, has two openings for psychologists with active research in forensic psychology, crime and law:

Senior Lecturer in Forensic Psychology:

The successful applicant will teach at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels and will also develop the forensic psychology research program.

Lecturer in Social Psychology, Crime, and Law:

The department is looking for a social psychologist with active research projects and expertise in crime and law.

Click on the above links or contact Peter Hegarty, Senior Lecturer and Deputy Head of the Psychology Department, for more information.

APA 2010: Exciting forensic programming

I was vacillating about whether to attend the upcoming American Psychological Association convention in San Diego, but browsing through the schedule sold me. The American Psychology-Law Society (Division 41) is sponsoring almost two dozen top-notch sessions featuring timely topics and appearances by many forensic psychology luminaries. Especially timely is the focus on juvenile justice issues. Here's a sampling of the great offerings:

Juvenile justice track

• "Life Without Parole for Juvenile Offenders: Current Legal, Developmental, and Psychological Issues" features Thomas Grisso, Bryan Stevenson, Barry Feld, and Chrisopher Slobogin, dissecting the recent Sullivan and Graham cases and discussing the role of forensic examiners.

• Judicial Panel on Reducing Racial and Ethnic Disproportionality, hosted by forensic psychology scholar Richard Wiener, features three juvenile court judges and an attorney from the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges

• "Juvenile Offenders Are Ineligible for Civil Commitment As Sexual Predators," looks to be a great presentation on a topic I have blogged about recently, that of predicting sex offender recidivism among kids; moderated by Richard Wollert, the panel includes Michael Caldwell telling us "Why Evaluators Can't Identify Sexual Recidivists When They Assess Juveniles."

• "The Construct of Empathy in the Treatment of Adolescents in the Juvenile Justice System," moderated by Lois Condie of Harvard Medical School, will include a presentation by forensic psychologist and professor Frank DiCataldo, whose outstanding book The Perversion of Youth I reviewed here.

Other Div. 41 hot picks

• "Forensic Assessment": Scholars Daniel Murrie, Richard Rogers, and others will discuss the reliability of forensic evaluations in sanity evaluations, misassumptions regarding Miranda waivers, evaluating the competence of violence risk assessors, and other timely forensic assessment issues.

• "Mental Health Courts -- The MacArthur Research" features stalwarts John Monahan, Hank Steadman, and others.

• "Long-Term Solitary Confinement's Impact on Psychological Well-Being -- The Colorado Study" looks to be an especially powerful panel including presentations by Stuart Grassian, an early scholar of segregation psychosis, AP-LS fellow Joel Dvoskin, and Jamie Fellner, an attorney with Human Rights Watch, talking about "Supermax Confinement and the Mind."

• "Juror Decision Making": Margaret Bull Kovera and other scholars will present recent empirical findings in jury research.

• "Social Cognition in Court -- Understanding Laypersons' Interrogation Schemas and Prototypes" features false confession scholars Saul Kassin, Solomon M. Fulero, and others.

Early registration ends Wednesday (after which the price goes up), so register now if you plan to attend. Now that you know which panels I am attending, I hope to see many of y'all down in sunny San Diego in just a couple of months.

New York Times covers psychopathy debacle

I had no idea when I broke the news of this censorship controversy that it would generate so much mainstream attention. First Science ran with it, and today it's made the New York Times; I am told other major U.S. and international news outlets have made inquiries. I hope this affair will serve as a dramatic lesson to others who might think about making legal threats when someone criticizes their work. The move certainly backfired against psychopathy guru Robert Hare.

Certain theories have weightier real-world implications than others. When a capital case defendant is labeled a "psychopath" in court, it can literally mean the difference between life and death. Similarly, the pejorative label has serious consequences for someone facing lifelong civil detention as a sexual predator. Thus, critical analysis of the reliability and validity of the underlying theory is essential. Researchers whose work lends itself to partisan forensic application should expect scrutiny.

Here's what Benedict Carey, health beat reporter at the New York Times, had to say:

Academic disputes usually flare out in the safety of obscure journals, raising no more than a few tempers, if not voices. But a paper published this week by the American Psychological Association has managed to raise questions of censorship, academic fraud, fair play and criminal sentencing -- and all them well before the report ever became public.

The paper is a critique of a rating scale that is widely used in criminal courts to determine whether a person is a psychopath and likely to commit acts of violence. It was accepted for publication in a psychological journal in 2007, but the inventor of the rating scale saw a draft and threatened a lawsuit if it was published, setting in motion a stultifying series of reviews, revisions and legal correspondence.

"This has been a really, really troubling process from the beginning," said Scott O. Lilienfeld, a psychologist at Emory University and a collaborator with one of the paper's authors. "It has people wondering, 'Do I have to worry every time I publish a paper that criticizes someone that I’ll get slapped with a lawsuit?' " The delay in publication, he said, "sets a very dangerous precedent" and censors scientific discourse….

Dr. Hare's clinical scale, called the Psychopathy Checklist, Revised, is one of the few, if not the only, psychological measures in forensic science with any scientific backing…. Dr. Skeem and Dr. Cooke warned in their paper that the checklist was increasingly being mistaken for a complete definition of psychopathy -- a broader personality construct that includes deceitfulness, impulsivity and recklessness, though not always aggression or illegal acts. The authors contended that Dr. Hare's checklist warps that concept by making criminal behavior a more central component than it really is…. {NOTE: The New York Times later issued a correction of the above portion that is in red; clearly, it's wrong to call the PCL "one of the few, if not the only," forensic psychology measures with any scientific backing!}

"When we first wrote the paper," [Jennifer Skeem] said, "we saw it simply as a call to the field to recognize we were going down a path where we were equating an abstract concept with a checklist, and it was preventing us from looking at the concept more closely."

Carey's full article is HERE. I will be sure to keep readers posted on any further developments.

POSTSCRIPT

This evening, readers alerted me that Robert Hare has posted a lengthy response giving his side of the controversy. His essay, "On Fairness in Academic Debate: A Commentary on Poythress and Petrila (2010) and Related Matters," claims that Poythress and Petrila's critical opinion piece in the International Journal of Forensic Mental Health (see my May 30 blog post) was biased and one-sided. He presents a timeline of the events surrounding the lengthy delay in publishing the underlying psychopathy article by Skeem and Cooke in Psychological Assessment, and gives specific examples of their allegedly egregious misrepresentations of his work. He comments:

… Poythress and Petrila and Hart failed to give an impartial and complete account of the situation. Their actions resulted in publication and circulation of a seriously biased account of events, and a commentary in the June 11 issue of Science, which noted that there are several sides to every issue…. I have no arguments with their thoughtful and commendable views about the nature of scientific debate and peer review, and about the potential fallout from threats of litigation…. I would welcome a formal investigation of the entire matter by an appropriately impartial body. I also would be willing to engage in open debate with the parties involved…. Contrary to the characterizations of others, I made extensive efforts to use the academic system in this case, but [the Skeem and Cooke] article went beyond the boundary of fair academic debate and criticism. The nature of the issue and the authors' refusal to correct their egregious statements gave me no reasonable alternative….

Would I do it again, given similar circumstances? Perhaps not, for like a whistle-blower the focus soon turns to the person who made the complaint and not on the issues and events that led to the complaint. Further, many in the scientific community believe that there are no grounds for litigation concerning academic works, no matter what the circumstances. I’ve learned from this experience that not all academics and scientists play by the accepted rules of science, and that legal redress for those claiming injustice is frowned upon by many as rocking the academic/scientific boat, however leaky it may be; a professional Catch-22 that serves to deny academics the legal rights enjoyed by the rest of the population.

His full statement is HERE. Again, I encourage readers interested in this subject to read Skeem and Cooke's Psychological Assessment article, rebuttal, and surrebuttal and form your own opinions.

Delusional campaign for a world without risk

Convicted sex offender Anthony Sowell seemed run-of-the-mill. He scored a low "1" on the Static-99, the popular actuarial tool designed to quantify risk for sexual recidivism. Now, he is suspected in the murders of 11 women whose remains were found at his Cleveland, Ohio home. (His publicly leaked risk evaluation is HERE.)

John Albert Gardner III, who like Oscar-winning film director Roman Polanski was convicted of molesting a 13-year-old girl, looked almost as routine. Paroling after a 5-year prison stint, he scored a "2" on the Static. Now, he stands charged with the highly publicized San Diego rape-murder of teenager Chelsea King.

While the United States crashes and burns -- jobs disappearing, home values plummeting, public school teachers begging for basic supplies like paper and pencils -- politicians are hosting emergency hearings to determine "what went wrong."

Who you gonna blame? The Static-99

The same California politicians who enthusiastically enacted a law -- the ambitiously titled Sex Offender Control and Containment Act of 2006 -- mandating the use of this scientifically flawed actuarial tool are now jumping all over prison bureaucrats for mandating its use to determine which paroling sex offenders should be most carefully monitored. Maybe they should have listened to those who have been saying all along that actuarial tools are not a panacea.

When I got a call from a news reporter exploring that angle, I found myself in the amusing position of (half-heartedly) defending the Static-99. As I tried to explain to the reporter (who then misquoted me), finding a needle in a haystack ain’t easy. At the risk of sounding perseverative: it's the statistical problem of low base rates. If only about one of every ten paroling sex offenders will reoffend sexually, picking out that one is difficult. And picking the one who will commit an exceedingly rare crime like the Chelsea King murder is virtually impossible. The hysterical masses can't seem to grasp that:

• The broad majority of men who are apprehended and prosecuted for a sex offense are never rearrested for another, and
  

• The broad majority of sex crimes are committed by men who fly below the radar because they have never been apprehended before. To catch these guys, you'd have to engage in massive over-prediction, producing an epidemic of what we call "false positives."

And that's just what the mobs are calling for. As one man in the crowd lobbying for the new "Chelsea's Law" put it, anyone who "touches a child" should automatically lose all Constitutional rights.

Be careful what you wish for. Even in a fascist police state, bad stuff will still happen. In fact, a misplaced emphasis on eliminating risk will paradoxically decrease public safety, by eliminating primary prevention programs that actually work to reduce crime. In California, prison officials told an emergency meeting of the Assembly Select Committee on Prisons and Rehabilitation Reform they would need $1 billion more each a year to return every paroled sex offender to prison on the basis of minor violations like Gardner's. That would mean taking even more pencils away from teachers in a state near bankrupted by its massive prison infrastructure.

All aboard the opportunist train

It's understandable why parents of crime victims like Chelsea King lobby for tougher laws. It's a way to deny their impotence and channel their feelings of sadness, guilt and rage.

And it's similarly easy to understand why politicians jump on the bandwagon. Powerless to fix our shattered economy and lacking the political will to tackle more complex social problems, they seize on random horrors to make themselves look good. Illusory efficacy wins votes.

And then the other opportunists jump on board. Crime Victims United used this week's hearing to lobby against early release of nonviolent prisoners. (Can you say non sequitur?)

Not to be outdone, a group of embittered forensic psychologists have jumped on the Chelsea bandwagon. Forming a secret "consortium," they have complained to the state Attorney General's Office that if they were still evaluating paroling prisoners for potential civil commitment as Sexually Violent Predators (SVP's), they would have done a better job of protecting the public. The evaluators, who are shielding their identities through an attorney, claim that the state's new contract bidding policy for SVP evaluations "results in the loss of life of untold victims" "for the sake of economic expediency." Their propaganda, aired on the incendiary Larry King Live show, conveniently omits mention of their pecuniary interest: Many of these state contractors were billing more than $1 million per year, again while school teachers begged for budget crumbs.

Cultural Myopia and moral relativism

Underlying these empty moral campaigns are a set of intertwined myths and lopsided values:

• Rare sex crimes are a significant threat to public safety. As the mob vents its impotent rage against the government and its spawn -- the mythical sexual predator -- the fact remains that the biggest killer of 15- to 24-year-olds worldwide remains motor vehicle accidents. The is followed closely by suicides, the fourth-leading killer of children over age 10 in seven developed nations.

• Only sex crimes count. Is sexual assault really all that much worse than murder, torture, or other serious crimes? Why is it treated so differently? Are legislatures assigning as much resources to combating the "pseudocommander mass murderer" or the burgeoning militia movement stoked up by its racist hatred of Obama?

• Only a certain type of sex crime counts. Many of the same angry folks who want to suspend the Constitutional rights of some accused sex criminals are busy defending others. When the Chelsea King case broke, the reaction to another breaking sex crime story was its polar opposite. Responding to news that star football quarterback Ben Roethlisberger was accused of a second rape, media pundits went wild on lying, gold-digging women who falsely accuse men of rape. In fact, some of the men who most vitriolically despise sexual predators are rapists themselves. Rape is endemic on many college campuses, with fraternity boys virtually immune from prosecution. As an excellent National Public Radio series describes, young men face few consequences for using alcohol as weapon with which to sexually assault naive young women who are then often forced to quit school. If we really want to make the world a safer place, we need to look a little closer to home. Instead of focusing on an easy bogeyman, let's put our efforts into primary prevention of rape and child molestation. And if we truly want to stop criminals from reoffending, let's not eliminate rehabilitation programs in prison!

• Science is capable of eliminating (or at least drastically reducing) risk. The search for blame has become reflexive. Whenever anything bad happens, the what-went-wrong tenor of media coverage encourages finger-pointing, public wrath, and -- ultimately -- pointless (or worse) legal tweaks by opportunist politicians. When hoodlums sneak into a zoo and taunt a tiger into attacking them, it's the zoo's fault for not building high enough fences. (Remember that 2007 case?) When a speeding truck careens over the side of a bridge, traffic engineers get blamed. "They" -- shorthand for the amorphous "government" -- can never do enough to protect their citizens from all conceivable danger.
  

It's hard to accept that random danger is a part of life. Sometimes, bad stuff just happens.

Excellent overview of insanity evaluations

I just finished Ira Packer's new book, Evaluation of Criminal Responsibility, from the Best Practices in Forensic Mental Health Assessment series. I found it to be an excellent summary manual, and affordably priced to boot. Here is the start of my review; click HERE for the full review:

This crisply written manual provides a balanced summary of the case law, empirical research, and developing practice standards for conducting insanity evaluations. Ira Packer, an award-winning scholar and long-time leader in the field of forensic psychology, brings a wealth of wisdom and experience to this topic. His discussions of controversial topics, such as whether to provide an “ultimate issue” opinion and how to approach the possibility of malingering, are especially balanced and nuanced.

Criminal responsibility evaluations are difficult endeavors both because of their retrospective nature, and also because we can never know for sure what was going on in someone else’s head, especially when that person may have understandable reasons to distort....

My full review is HERE. (Please be sure to click on "yes" if you find the review helpful; that boosts my Amazon ranking.)

Blogosphere recommendations

Mind Hacks

I have been checking out Mind Hacks since it featured a really nice review of my blog. The blog evolved out of the 2004 book by the same name, in which authors Tom Stafford (a cognitive neuroscientist) and Matt Webb (an engineer and designer) provide 100 exercises that teach readers neuroscience theories through games and tricks.

Among the scientists who contributed "hacks" is Vaughan Bell, who seems largely responsible for keeping the blog alive through his quirky and eclectic posts. Dr. Bell is a psychologist currently working in Medellín, Colombia and also a visiting research fellow in the Department of Psychological Medicine and Psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London.

Just to give you an idea of some of his near-daily offerings, he recently posted on everything from decorative skull shaping to dream smoking (that's when you dream about cigarettes after you quit smoking) to new research on cave paintings. I particularly enjoyed his link to an amazing Russian website that features historical art by and about the mad. It reminded me of when I was living in Paris at age 10 and was influenced by an exhibit of art by schizophrenics that my mother took me to at the Louvres museum. More somberly, the prolific Bell reported on a new study in the Journal of Adolescent Health finding that it's a myth that teens think they are invincibile; actually, they greatly overestimate their chances of dying soon. I found it interesting, because the behaviors that result from either thinking error could look very similar.

The psychology of the angry American

Elsewhere in the blogosphere, my forensic psychology colleague Paul G. Mattiuzzi in Sacramento has an interesting analysis at his Everyday Psychology blog of the psychology of the pilot who intentionally crashed his plane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas on February 18.

Dr. Mattiuzzi based his analysis on the diatribes that Joe Stack wrote before taking his last flight. Although Mattiuzzi doesn't specifically reference the so-called Tea Party Movement, his comments on the "lunatic fringe" seem to apply to these disaffected white Americans:

There is in this country today, it seems to me, a gathering storm of mindlessly angry people who are "fed up" for reasons they can barely explain. There are people in the media who are telling them they should be angry, and perhaps more importantly, that they should be afraid….

[These] people have come to identify the government as an enemy of the people. They are grandiose in their belief that they understand it all better than anyone else. They are self-righteous in their indignation and in their resentment. They express a sense of entitlement, arguing that they have a right not just to their own opinions, but also to their own facts. They shout until no one can hear them and then complain that no one is listening. They expect their individual voice to prevail and then complain that they have been denied representation. They do not wish to contribute to the common good, but demand all the benefits they have been promised. Like Stack, they bemoan corporate greed while demanding that greed be unfettered.

Dr. Mattiuzzi hopes that acts like Joe Stack's do not inspire copycats. As he concludes (in my favorite lines from his essay):

Joe Stack wanted us to believe that in his abject failure, he had achieved success. It's as if he listened to only part of what Bob Dylan once sang ("there's no success like failure"), without bothering to stick around and hear the end of the lyric: "and failure's no success at all."

Mind Hacks is HERE. Everyday Psychology is HERE.

Atkins claims: Did Texas psychologist skew data for death?

Denkowski faces loss of license for role in capital appeals

The U.S. Supreme Court's Atkins decision triggered a wave of ferocious legal battles in the 35 death penalty states. Since 2002, an estimated 7 percent of condemned prisoners have filed Atkins claims on the basis of mental retardation, with about 40 percent succeeding. As of mid-2008, by one tally, at least 82 death sentences had been overturned on Atkins grounds.

At the center of these ongoing skirmishes are forensic psychologists, whose expert opinions about a condemned prisoner's IQ and real-world functioning can literally make the difference between life and death.

With so much at stake, the pull toward partisanship is especially strong. In Texas, one psychologist who has testified in a whopping 29 cases -- nearly two-thirds of all Atkins appeals in that state -- now faces the loss of his license for alleged errors that systematically favored prosecutors.

George Denkowski skewed the administration and interpretation of test data to rule out mental retardation, according to an expose by investigative reporter Renée Feltz in the current issue of the Texas Observer. The state Board of Examiners of Psychologists has upheld a complaint against him, finding that he made "administration, scoring and mathematical errors" in three death penalty evaluations. The State Office of Administrative Hearings will hear his case Feb. 16.

The complaint was initiated by Jerome Brown, a forensic psychologist who had worked on opposite sides from Denkowski in five capital cases and was appalled by his technique of inflating obtained IQ and adaptive functioning scores through "estimation."

As Denkowski explained his method in the American Journal of Forensic Psychology, he uses a "composite methodology" to inflate the scores of "persons from the criminal socioculture," on the grounds that formal testing assesses "mainstream skills" that criminal offenders never learn.

In the case of Daniel Plata, a Mexican immigrant featured in the Observer expose, Denkowski used this clinical judgment technique to raise Plata's adaptive-behavior score from 61 to 71, and his IQ score from 70 to 77. (Antonin Llorente, a neuropsychologist who evaluated Plata in his native Spanish, reported Plata's IQ score as 65.)

Click on above image to see excerpt of
Denkowski's videotaped evaluation of Daniel Plata.

This subtly racist argument of cultural deficit seems to be becoming increasingly popular as a way to explain away the deficits of low-functioning Mexican immigrants in particular. I have encountered it in recent cases I have been involved in. Kevin McGrew, director of the Institute for Applied Psychometrics, offers a psychometric critique over at his Intellectual Competence and the Death Penalty blog, focusing on another Texas death case involving a Mexican immigrant.

After hearing all of the evidence in the Plata case, Federal District Court Judge Brock Kent Ellis issued a scathing critique of Denkowski's method, writing that all of his testimony "must be disregarded due to fatal errors." Plata’s sentence was commuted to life in prison.

Plata's lawyer, Kathryn Kase, told the Observer that all 17 appeals in which Denkowski opined against mental retardation should be re-heard:

"When you have junk science in a case, it’s like pouring poison into a punch bowl. You aren’t going to get the poison out. So you have to pour out the punch, clean the bowl, and start all over again."

In the case of one convict, Michael Richard, that suggestion comes too late. Richard has already been executed.

According to the Observer article, Denkowski originally opined that Richard was mentally retarded, with an IQ of 64 and an adaptive-behavior score of 57, well below the 70 cutoff. But he adjusted his scores after prosecutors showed him a list of books found in Richard's cell, concluding that Richard’s reading level suggested he was not retarded.

The defense psychologist, Jerome Brown, said when he asked Richard about these books -- one of which was written in German -- the prisoner said he used the books to sit on, since his death row cell lacked a chair.

Denkowski's unorthodox method has sparked outrage in the psychological community, including two rebuttals in the American Journal of Forensic Psychology (see resources below) and a pointed caution in the 2010 edition of the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities’ diagnostic manual against use of his method.

Further resources:

Denkowski, George C. & Denkowski, Kathryn M. (2008). Adaptive behavior assessment of criminal defendants with a mental retardation claim, American Journal of Forensic Psychology, Volume 26, Issue 3, pp. 43-61.

Widaman, Keith F. & Siperstein, Gary N. (2009). Assessing adaptive behavior of criminal defendants in capital cases: A reconsideration, American Journal of Forensic Psychology, Volume 27, Issue 2, pp. 5-32 (response to Denkowski and Denkowski 2008)

Denkowski, George C. & Denkowski, Kathryn M. (2009). Adaptive behavior misconceptions about criminal defendants with a mental retardation claim: A response to Widaman and Siperstein, American Journal of Forensic Psychology, Volume 27, Issue 2, pp. 33-61

Olley, J. Gregory (2009) Challenges in implementing the Atkins decision, American Journal of Forensic Psychology, Volume 27, Issue 2, pp. 63-73 (response to Denkowski and Denkowski 2009)

Blume, John H., Johnson, Sheri Lynn, and Seeds, Christopher (2009), An Empirical Look at Atkins v. Virginia and Its Application in Capital Cases, Tennessee Law Review, Volume 76, p. 625

Should forensic psychologists have minimal training?

Would you trust a "master's level dentist" to pull your tooth? Or a "bachelor's degree attorney" to defend you in court?

Not hardly.

Terminal master's degree programs in forensic psychology represent just this type of degradation in quality, says Carl Clements, a psychology professor at the University of Alabama, who argues that forensic psychology training should remain at the traditional doctoral or postdoctoral level.

But critics like Clements are spitting in the wind. Paralleling forensic psychology's breakneck growth and immense popularity, degree programs -- including many online, distance-learning options -- are sprouting up like mushrooms after a heavy rain. And just like mushrooms, they will be impossible to eliminate.

The field's perceived glamour, including the allure of the mythical profiler, has produced a bumper crop of impressionable young people willing to shell out cash for a forensic degree. Massive prison growth, along with prisoner's rights cases mandating mental health evaluation and treatment, have produced abundant jobs for psychologists.

Educational institutions have responded with alacrity. New training programs take a variety of forms, according to a survey in the current issue of Training and Education in Professional Psychology:

• PhD in clinical psychology with specialty track in forensic psychology (about 10 programs)
• PsyD in clinical psychology with forensic specialty track (about 10 programs)
• PhD in nonclinical (e.g., social or experimental) psychology with forensic or legal emphasis (about 10)
• Joint psychology-law degree programs (6)
• Master's degree in forensic psychology (12)
• Bachelor's degree in forensic psychology (John Jay College of Criminal Justice)
• Undergraduate psychology-law courses (increasingly common and popular)

In addition to all of these different degree options, more and more predoctoral internships offer forensic rotations. About 17% of APA-accredited internships now offer a major forensic rotation, with another 47% offering a minor rotation, according to the Association of Psychology Postdoctoral and Internship Centers (APPIC).

Yet with all of this rapid growth, there is no consensus as to what training models and curricula are adequate in order to prepare students for real-world forensic practice. With that in mind, David DeMatteo of Drexel University and colleagues are proposing a set of core competencies for doctoral-level forensic psychology training curricula. At minimum, they say, students should get training and experience in the traditional areas of substantive psychology and research methodology, along with specialized advanced training in:

• Legal knowledge
• Integrative law-psychology knowledge
• Ethics and professional issues in forensic psychology
• Clinical forensic psychology

Aren't all of these areas already integrated into current forensic psychology degree programs?

Again, not hardly.

Reviewing the curricula for the roughly 35 [as of his review] doctoral or joint-degree programs with training in forensic psychology, DeMatteo and colleagues found* only three programs that included all four components. For example, only about 40% offered courses falling under "legal knowledge." More alarmingly, only three programs reported offering courses specifically addressing ethical and professional issues in forensic psychology.

So, will all of the self-described forensic psychologists emerging from these newly minted degree programs be able to find work in the field? I predict that those who travel the traditional path of postdoctoral specialization will fare the best. Those with terminal master's (or even bachelor's) degrees will be restricted to lower-level occupations such as correctional counselor or social services case manager. While they may meet the demands of the prison industry for warm bodies with letters after their names, these practitioners certainly won't be called as experts in court.

But there is a greater danger in these bare-bones forensic training programs. Not only do they offer false promises to students, but they sacrifice the intensive clinical training, including experience working with severely mentally ill populations, that is a key foundation for forensic work. The lack of adequate training in the law and in ethics will likely cause even more disastrous outcomes when these professionals take on forensic cases.

I know, I know. I am just spitting in the wind, too. Financial exigencies always win out.

Related resources:

What's it take to become a forensic psychologist?

*SOURCE: David DeMatteo, Geoffrey Marczyk, Daniel Krauss & Jeffrey Burl (2009), Educational and training models in forensic psychology. Training and Education in Professional psychology 3 (3), pp 184-191. Request from the author HERE.

Rare chance to view dueling experts live

Accused coach killer's Iowa competency hearing

Courtesy of the Des Moines Register, we have a rare opportunity to watch two experienced mental health experts testify in court about competency to stand trial. The experts were the featured event in this week's highly publicized hearing for Marc Becker, the mentally disturbed man accused of gunning down esteemed Iowa football coach Ed Thomas in front of about 20 students this past June.
















Click on either image above to watch that expert's testimony. Dr. Michael Taylor's video (left) is about 79 minutes, the first 15 minutes of which are the testimony of a psychiatric nurse at the jail (manually move the time bar to 15 to start with Taylor). Dr. Dan Roger's video (right) lasts about 57 minutes.

The experts agreed that Becker is most likely schizophrenic. They differed vastly, however, on whether he evidenced symptoms of psychosis.

Testifying for the prosecution on Thursday, psychiatrist Michael Taylor said he found no evidence whatsoever of current psychotic symptoms. Dr. Taylor described the defendant as "a calm, relaxed, pleasant young man, well spoken, articulate, able to communicate clearly, able to joke."

"There's absolutely no hint in Mr. Becker's appearance or behavior that would raise any suspicion of any psychiatric disorder," Taylor testified.

On the other side of the aisle, defense-retained psychologist Dan Rogers described the defendant as "floridly psychotic," paranoid, and delusional. "He starts with a perfectly good thought and it just becomes filled with illogical concepts as he tries to proceed," he testified.

While the public may see this as an example of hired guns who will say whatever they are hired to say, an alternate possibility is that Becker presented differently to the two experts. Dr. Rogers evaluated Becker on two occasions, 32 days and 45 days after the offense. Dr. Taylor did not evaluate Becker until more than two months after the crime. By that time, Becker was being medicated with a high dosage of the antipsychotic Invega.

Becker appeared highly sedated in court, raising another competency issue: If his medication dosage is lowered so that he can stay awake in court, his psychosis will worsen, Dr. Rogers predicted.

Of note in this case is the informative, factually accurate coverage being provided by Jennifer Jacobs of the Des Moines Register. In Thursday's article, she quoted the illustrious Daniel Murrie of the Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, talking about how uncommon incompetency findings are (only an estimated 20% of cases in which the issue is raised).

In her previous story, Ms. Jacobs quoted competency guru Thomas Grisso (of Evaluating Competencies fame) and cited recent empirical research on incompetency findings:

"Each year, about 7,000 defendants nationwide are involuntarily committed to public psychiatric hospitals for treatment intended to make them well enough to stand trial, according to a 2008 report in the American Journal of Forensic Psychiatry. About 78 percent are released in less than three months, according to a 2003 report by the Missouri Institute of Mental Health. Another 20 percent are released between three months and 12 months after committal, and 2 percent are released after 12 months."

After hearing from the two experts, Judge Stephen P. Carroll put the case against Becker on hold while he contemplates his competency ruling.

Hat tip: Luis Rosell