Dutch forensic psychology blog interviews this blogger

Forensic psychology bloggers are few and far between, so I was delighted to make the acquaintance of Harald Merckelbach, a psychology professor at Maastricht University in the Netherlands who co-hosts -- you guessed it -- a "Forensische Psychologie Blog." Maastricht University, in case you are not familiar with it, is an internationally oriented school that -- together with Portsmouth in the UK and Gotheborg in Sweden hosts a three-year Ph.D. program in legal psychology funded by the European Union that is open to excellent candidates from the USA and Canada (check it out HERE).

Dr. Merckelbach interviewed me for his blog. In case you aren't fluent in Dutch, I thought I would post the English version of the interview, "Van Journalist Naar Forensisch Psycholoog: Interview met Karen Franklin":

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Dr. Merckelbach: Can you give some background statistics on your forensic psychology blog? 

Dr. Franklin: Thanks for the opportunity to give you some background on the blog. When I started the blog seven years ago, it was just out of curiosity, dipping my toe into online media. I never imagined it would grow to its current size and scope. Now, almost a thousand posts later, the blog and my mirror blog at Psychology Today (“Witness”) have gotten about 700,000 hits, and the subscriber base just keeps growing. But more than the quantity of subscribers and readers, I have been gratified by the quality. Subscribers cross professional disciplines and include forensic practitioners, attorneys, professors, researchers, criminologists, journalists, students and public policy advocates. The majority are from English-speaking countries including the United States, Canada, England and Australia. But subscribers also hail from dozens of other countries, from Saudi Arabia and Turkey to Scotland and Lithuania. Not to mention the Netherlands, of course.

Dr. Merckelbach:  You were trained as journalist and legal reporter before you entered the forensic psychology scene. In your post “What’s it take to become a forensic psychologist?” you say that forensic psychologists should have excellent writing skills. Did your career as a journalist help you in that regard? Do you think that forensic psychology programs should include courses on journalism? 

Dr. Franklin: My education and training in journalism has definitely been a big asset. (And it is undoubtedly what spurred me to start the blog, as once writing gets in your blood, it’s hard to stop.) Journalism school teaches writing as a craft, and working in the field -- as a daily newspaper reporter – forces a certain efficiency in writing. In my graduate school teaching, I have definitely noticed that many students do not realize how critical writing precision is to success as a forensic psychologist. Only a small portion of forensic cases result in expert witness testimony. But almost all involve a written report. So our reputations rest largely on our written product. I don’t think psychology programs need to include courses on journalism, but I would certainly favor a lot more focused attention to students’ report-writing skills. I try to teach my students to edit their work carefully, and to take the time to produce multiple drafts, rather than thinking that they are finished after they have typed out a first draft. Writing is hard work, and requires concentrated practice.

That post on forensic psychology as a career is my most popular blog post, by the way. Posted back in 2007, it still gets multiple hits every day, attesting to the popularity of this field.

Psychology Professor Harald Merckelbach

Dr. Merckelbach:  It is impressive to see on your site this listing of highly diverse topics that you wrote about: 35 on psychological testing, 81 on expert witnesses, 60 on wrongful convictions, 27 on malingering and so on. What is the topic that keeps you awake most? 

Dr. Franklin: That’s a great question. When I first started blogging, I didn’t have a specific focus. I didn’t know whether to cover the field broadly or focus in on a few topics more narrowly. I wasn’t sure whether to do straight reporting or critical commentary. One beauty of blogging, it turns out, is that you can do both, like being a news reporter who also writes a weekly opinion column. But it took me awhile to find my voice.

Looking around the blogosphere, I was especially influenced by Vaughan Bell, who hosts a superb neuroscience blog called Mind Hacks, and Scott Henson, a fellow ex-journalist who writes about Texas justice at Grits for Breakfast. Both of them are skillful at blending facts and analysis. They are also far more prolific than I will ever be.

Gradually, I did find my own voice. I realized that there are plenty of academic journals supplying research findings. And there are plenty of news stories on any given topic, easily accessible through a quick Internet search. And running a blog all by myself, in my spare time, I could never hope to cover everything. So the best way I could be of service to the professional community was to provide a critical perspective on major issues and developments in the field, things that captured my attention and that I felt passionate about.

I can’t say that any topic keeps me awake at night. But an overarching concern of my blog is the ways that bureaucracies of social control deploy forensic psychology to provide a scientific veneer for injustice. So, for example, here in the United States we see the prejudicial label of “psychopathy” being used as a scientific rationale for sending juveniles to adult prisons for life. And what is most alarming is when forensic psychologists within the institutions of containment rationalize such practices as serving the greater good. This theme of moral disengagement, which grew out of my blog writings, became the topic of my keynote speech to the national association of forensic psychologists in Australia a few years ago. It’s a dangerously slippery slope. We end up with the American Psychological Association deciding not to punish psychologist John Leso for participating in the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo, a blatant human rights violation.

Dr. Merckelbach: Apropos malingering: some years ago, you wrote an article on 22-year-old Mr. Chavez who was sentenced to 25 years of prison because he had walked around with a weapon that he occasionally fired, while exhibiting bizarre behavior. The state hospital experts testified that he was a malingerer, but you – as a defense retained expert – discovered that they had based their opinions on erroneous scoring and interpretation of a malingering test (the SIRS). A disturbing story. Do you think that this type of problem occurs on a wide scale? 

Dr. Franklin: Yes, I do believe this is more widespread than is generally recognized. Whenever you have concentrations of people with no social power and no voice, such as in prisons and psychiatric hospitals, you are going to have abuses. That is what Piper Kerman illustrated so well in her bestselling memoir, Orange is the New Black, about her year in a women’s prison. In the Chavez case, it was a novice intern working under lax supervision. Professionals in government hospitals and prisons tend to get institutionalized, and some of them stop seeing their subjects as worthy human beings. This gets back to the issue of our moral and ethical obligation not to collude in injustice. I’m reminded of the case I just read about in which a man spent most of the past 40 years locked up in a psychiatric hospital for the theft of a $20 necklace. The poor guy, Franklin Frye, was 70 years old before someone finally noticed. I mean, how does that happen? Why wasn’t anyone paying attention?

Dr. Merckelbach: I like your blogs about biases, for example the one about authorship bias, i.e. the phenomenon that test designers report more hallelujah statistics about their risk assessment tools than independent researchers. Makes one think of researchers who are involved in the Prozac business. It leaves one with a somewhat gloomy impression of our discipline. Do you, at moments, say to yourself: "What a field, let’s get back to journalism?"

Dr. Franklin: I got out of journalism when I saw the writing on the wall, just as corporate monopolization began to get a stranglehold on the industry. The newspaper that I worked for was bought by a chain that was only interested in profits. And that has now happened throughout the newspaper industry. Rupert Murdoch’s empire now stretches around the globe, and Amazon’s billionaire owner just bought the Washington Post. That latter purchase was especially iconic for me, because I entered journalism school during the heyday of muckraking journalism, when Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were being heralded as role models for exposing the Watergate scandal and bringing down a corrupt administration. So, no, I haven’t regretted leaving journalism. After all, I can always blog!

Dr. Merckelbach:  What about writing a book in which you bring together all these fine blogs?

Dr. Franklin:  I’ve thought about it. I just have to find the time.

Thanks again for asking me to do this interview, and also for your own fine blog. I’ve been amazed at the dearth of forensic psychology blogs, so I was excited to discover yours. I hope others will join in. Blogging can be time consuming, but it’s also rewarding.

Dr. Merckelbach:  Thank you very much for this interview, Dr Franklin!

Dispatch from Queensland

Bond University, Robina, Queensland

The blog posts are piling up like jets on a crowded runway, but I haven't been able to carve out the time to send them aloft. It’s been a busy week, lecturing to the criminology and psychology departments at Bond University on Australia's Gold Coast and then giving a training to the College of Forensic Psychologists of the Australian Psychological Society.

The wily kookaburra

Bond is a gorgeous place, designed by an eminent architect in Japan and opened 24 years ago as Australia’s first private university. It caters to a wide range of domestic and international students. The criminology master's program, for example, has students from as far away as Canada, the United States, Iceland and even Grenada.

A fellow tourist captures gorgeous Gold Coast shoreline

The faculty's interests are equally diverse. Raoul Mortley, the Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, who invited me over as a visiting research scholar, is a scholar of philosophy and the history of ideas. Criminologist Robyn Lincoln, my generous host, has done a slew of fascinating research, including on aboriginals in the criminal justice system, the naming and shaming of juvenile offenders, and wrongful convictions. Currently, she and her students are out riding public buses as part of a research project looking at risks faced by bus drivers. Rebekah Doley, the forensic psychologist who supervises the master’s level psychology students and who graciously organized my career talk to students, and her colleague Kate Fritzon, meanwhile, have launched a pioneering, international institute for the study of arson.

View from Elephant Rock, Carrumba (photo credit: R. Doley)

As during my first trip to Queensland, two years ago for a national forensic psychology conference, I find the country a breath of fresh air – both literally and figuratively. The staff and students at Bond are well informed on local and international issues, and are keen to discuss critical perspectives on the field. (After Americans, Australians form my next-largest subscriber base.)

The infrastructure is so much healthier than in my homeland, with its crippling debt, astronomical incarceration rates, tightening police state apparatus, and legions of homeless roaming the streets. Everything's not perfect; aboriginal incarceration rates are 15 times higher than those of other Australians. (One in every four prisoners here is aboriginal, although aboriginals are only about 2 percent of the population.) But in general, the social safety net is much more solid. Australians find it mind-boggling to hear of an advanced nation without universal health care. Service workers are paid a living wage, so they need not grovel for tips. And I've only seen two presumably homeless people so far, and I've been keeping my eyes peeled.

Lifeguards in training, Broadbeach

It hasn't been all work. As you can see from the photos, I’ve squeezed in a bit of sightseeing and nature viewing. I cycled from my hotel along the Gold Coast to Burleigh Heads one day; another day, Robyn took me into the Hinterlands, to explore a rainforest. (Hence, the kookaburra, who is a consummate thief; just minutes after I got close enough to take this photo, the bird snatched a sandwich from the hands of an unwary little girl.) Watching for migrating humpback whales from my apartment's balcony has also taken up a good deal of my down time.

Sunrise from my apartment

Next up: Honolulu. It’s a rough life.

A tale of two prison systems: Whither the future?

Group therapy, San Quentin Prison, California

California's beleaguered prison system got more bad headlines today for suppressing a report warning that prison suicide-watch practices were actually fostering suicide. The suppressed report, by a national expert on prison suicide, described suicidal prisoners being stripped of their clothes, placed in “safety smocks,” and then held for days "in dim, dirty, airless cells with unsanitized mattresses on the floor," according to today's Los Angeles Times. The horrific conditions encouraged prisoners "to declare they were no longer suicidal just to escape the holding cells. Many of them took their own lives soon after."

The state directed its consultant, Lindsay Hayes, to write a sanitized version of his report to give to a court monitor and lawyers for prisoners, according to court records reviewed by Times reporter Paige St. John. And when prisoner lawyers were nonetheless able to get a copy of the full report, which called the treatment of suicidal prisoners "punitive" and "anti-therapeutic," the state made an unsuccessful effort to have a judge order the report destroyed.

There were 32 prison suicides in California in 2012, above the national average in the United States.

Convict sunbathing on porch of his bungalow,   
Bastoy Prison (photo credit: Marco Di Lauro)

Meanwhile, more than 5,000 miles and an ocean away, sits a peaceful island prison which has not seen a single suicide in its two decades of operation. Bastoy, an island prison in Norway, with no bars or concertina fences, bills itself as "the first ecological prison in the world."

It might not seem fair to compare California prisons with those in Norway, a small and homogeneous nation with only 4,000 prisoners all told. But Norway's forward-looking penal philosophy is worth a gander. The idea is to build people up into productive citizens, rather than to tear them down. To "generate hope instead of despair" in the words of Erwin James, himself a former prison lifer in the UK who recently toured Bastoy and wrote about it for the Guardian. 

Debarking from the ferry, James found an atmosphere more akin to a religious commune than the British prisons he was accustomed to. "There is a sense of peace about the place," he wrote, describing the brightly painted wooden bungalows where the island's 115 prisoners live in groups of up to six, cooking their own meals with money earned from prison jobs and food purchased at the "well-stocked mini-supermarket."

A quick dip after work, Bastoy Prison

Norway has no death penalty or life sentences; the maximum sentence is 21 years. Prisoners can apply to Bastoy when they are down to the last five years of their sentences. They must commit to non-violence and a drug- and alcohol-free lifestyle.

Who wouldn't take a deal like that, to live in an idyllic beach resort while learning the life skills necessary to reintegrate into society? Even when the sea ice was frozen solid last winter, not a single convict walked away.

"In closed prisons we keep them locked up for some years and then let them back out, not having had any real responsibility for working or cooking," explains director Arne Nilsen, a clinical psychologist. "In the law, being sent to prison is nothing to do with putting you in a terrible prison to make you suffer. The punishment is that you lose your freedom. If we treat people like animals when they are in prison they are likely to behave like animals. Here we pay attention to you as human beings."

The proof of Norway's philosophy is in the pudding: Balstoy's re-offense rate of just 10 percent is by far the lowest in Europe. Compare that to California, where seven out of ten released prisoners bounce back into custody within three years, the highest rate in the United States.

Click on image to see 5-minute YouTube feature on Bastoy

One of the guards showing James around the island looks at him with disbelief when he tells her that prison officer training in the UK lasts only six weeks. In Norway, the training takes three years. Here in California, meanwhile, basic training lasts 16 weeks, with a focus on "effective use of force," "restraint devices" and "cell searches."

Ad for prison suicide smock

And what, pray tell, are the guards in Norway spending all of that time studying?

"There is so much to learn about the people who come to prison," the guard explains to James. "We need to try to understand how they became criminals, and then help them to change."

With a rehabilitative philosophy like that, let's just hope that Bastoy -- and not California or the UK -- represents the way of the future. After all, by treating prisoners with respect and humanity, Norway is also creating a safer world.

Hat tip: Jane

Fremantle to host Australian forensic conference

I hope all of you Aussies out there are aware of the exciting forensic psychology conference coming up in April. The theme is timely: "The Times are a Changin': Controversies, Competencies, and DSM-5." Robert Krueger, a personality researcher at the University of Minnesota and a member of the Personality Disorders Workgroup for the DSM-5, will give a keynote focusing on issues specific to using the DSM-5 personality disorders in court. The other keynote speaker is Jane Goodman-Delahunty of Charles Sturt University, a prominent psychologist and attorney who will speak about psychological injuries from workplace harassment. The setting, for those of you who might want to travel to Australia to attend, is the western city of Fremantle, which bills itself as the best preserved 19th Century seaport in the world. (The conference alternates between eastern and western Australia; when I gave a keynote there two years ago, it was held in the idyllic resort setting of Noosa, in southern Queensland.) The website for the April 18-20 event is HERE; the full program  can be downloaded HERE. Don't procrastinate too long, as early-bird registration ends March 18.

Panorama of the Swan River Settlement (Fremantle), 1831 (Source: Wikipedia Commons)

Long-awaited HCR-20 update to premiere in Scotland

The long-awaited international launch of the third version of the popular HCR-20 violence risk assessment instrument has been announced for next April in Edinburgh, Scotland.

The HCR-20 is an evidence-based tool using the structured professional judgment method, an alternative to the actuarial method that predicts violence at least as well while giving a more nuanced and individualized understanding. It has been evaluated in 32 different countries and translated into 18 languages.

A lot has changed in the world of risk prediction since the second edition premiered 15 years ago. Perhaps the major change in the third edition is the elimination of the need to incorporate a Psychopathy Checklist (PCL-R) score; research determined that this did not add to the instrument's predictive validity. Additionally, like the sister instrument for sex offender risk assessment, the RSVP, the HCR:V3 will focus more heavily on formulating plans to manage and reduce a person's risk, rather than merely predicting violence.

The revision process took four years, with beta testing in England, Holland, Sweden and Germany. Initial reports show very high correlations with the second edition of the HCR-20, excellent interrater reliability, and promising validity as a violence prediction tool.

The HCR:V3 will be launched at a one-day conference jointly organized by The Royal Society of Edinburgh and Violence Risk Assessment Training. Developers Christopher Webster, Stephen Hart and Kevin Douglas will be on hand to describe the research on the new instrument and its utility in violence risk assessment.

More information on the April 15, 2013 training conference is available HERE. A Webinar PowerPoint on the revision process is HERE.

Brazilian prisoners riding toward freedom

Photos: Felipe Dana, AP

Brazilian prisons, criticized by human rights groups for their miserable conditions, are getting some good press this week over an innovative rehabilitation program that allows prisoners to pedal their way to freedom.

Prisoners in the small mountain town of Santa Rita do Sapucai, in southeastern Brazil, can shave one day off their sentences for every three days spent generating energy for the local township by pedaling stationary bikes.

Not only do the prisoners benefit, but so do local dog walkers, joggers, bicyclists, children and strolling couples: The generated power lights lamps along a riverside promenade that was heretofore abandoned after dark.

Lots of local citizens chipped in to create the program: A judge got the idea from reports of U.S. gyms using stationary bikes to generate energy, police contributed old bicycles, and engineers transformed them into stationary bikes and hooked them up to batteries donated by local businesses.

It's one of a series of new projects being implemented across Brazil to enable prisoners to improve their lives and health while working their way toward freedom, according to a story by Associated Press reporter Jenny Barchfield. With an estimated half a million people behind bars, the nation is also hoping to ease rampant prison overcrowding.

With one in 10 Brazilians over the age of 15 unable to read, literacy is a major focus of these rehabilitation efforts. A federal "Redemption through Reading" program allows prisoners in four federal penitentiaries to shave up to 48 days a year off of their sentences. In the labor-intensive program, a judge reads each prisoner's book report and decides on a sentence reduction of up to four days per book, for a maximum of 12 books per year. The prisons are offering similar time-reduction incentives for taking classes ranging from the elementary school to college level.

These types of educational programs are commonplace in Europe. Indeed, the European Prison Education Association sees prisoner education as a "moral right." They used to be widespread in U.S. prisons, too. But in 1994, with the elimination of federal funding for prisoner education, the number of higher-education programs in prison plummeted overnight from more than 350 -- serving about 40,000 prisoners -- to fewer than a dozen, despite their proven efficacy in reducing recidivism.

Let's hope that other countries struggling with overcrowded and dismal prisons will follow Brazil's lead and implement similar rehabilitation efforts that provide a sense of hope and some chance for prisoners to turn their lives around.

Australians: Proposed paraphilia diagnoses 'dangerously circular'

Proposed expansions of the sexual disorders in the DSM are getting negative attention Down Under, with critics worried about the blurring of lines between bad behavior and mental illness, according to an article in today's Sydney Morning Herald.

The article in Australia's fourth-largest newspaper focuses on the expansion of pedophilia to include a hebephelic subtype and the placement of a "so-called paraphilic coercive disorder" (rape-proneness) in the upcoming manual's appendix as a proposed condition meriting further study.

Most mental health professionals in Australia use the American Psychiatric Association's diagnostic nomenclature, enshrined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), rather than the International Classification of Diseases (IMD), the international standard promulgated by the World Health Organization.

Australian psychiatrists and psychologists worry that the sexual disorder expansions will pave the way for more civil detention, in violation of the United Nations' International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights or, conversely, may be used by sex offenders to minimize or avoid legal punishment.

Indeed, in a case currently in the news in Melbourne, a well-known chef who sexually exploited vulnerable 13- and 14-year-old girls has introduced expert testimony on hebephilia as a mitigating factor. At a presentencing hearing, a defense-retained psychiatrist testified that Simon Humble suffered from hebephilia and would find prison difficult.

In addition to quoting clinicians and scholars in Australia, reporter Amy Corderoy reached across the Pacific to discuss the issue with your faithful blogger, a recent guest in Queensland; her article links back to this blog.

Study: Lads’ mags sound identical to rapists

As I was driving through America’s Farm Belt on the way to a prison (miles and miles of cows and plowed corn fields as far as the eye could see), it was a bit incongruous to suddenly see --

Photo by Karen Franklin

-- an ADULT SUPERSTORE, perched on the side of the freeway like a giant mousetrap. While sex offenders are chastised for even thinking about pornography, a free-world traveler like me can't escape its dehumanizing specter, whether on the highway or in my hotel room. Novelist Russell Banks was surely on to something when he called sex offenders the canaries in the coal mine, victims of a $10-billion-plus industry that preys on their loneliness and alienation.

With that vision in mind, I was pleased to see that two of my favorite academic scholars are getting a flurry of media attention over their new study finding that most people cannot distinguish between statements about women in British lads' mags and those made by convicted rapists.

In the study, due to be published in the British Journal of Psychology, men identified more with the comments made by rapists than the quotes made in lads' mags. And that's not necessarily a bad thing: On the whole, the statements pulled from Britain's four leading lads' mags (what North Americans would call men's magazines) were actually more denigrating of women than the rape-justifying statements made by rapists.

For example, here are two quotes:

• "There's a certain way you can tell that a girl wants to have sex . . . The way they dress, they flaunt themselves."

• "You do not want to be caught red-handed . . . go and smash her on a park bench. That used to be my trick."

The first quote is pulled from the book, The Rapist Files: Interviews With Convicted Rapists. The second is from a lads' mag. (If you want to test your ability to differentiate rapists from lads' mags, Jezebel has obliged with an online quiz containing 16 of the statements used in the study.)

The study authors worry that lads' magazines (which are not categorized as pornographic because they do not show full nudity) are mainstreaming hedonistic, predatory attitudes toward women.

"The apparent normalising effect of lads' mags runs counter to the work that is done with sex offenders both in prison and the community,” lead researcher Miranda Horvath told the Guardian. “Sex offender programmes challenge the men about their sexist, misogynistic and derogatory beliefs about women and seek to reeducate them. Yet it appears that some similar beliefs have been presented in recent lads' mags, which are normalised and accepted in mainstream society."

Said co-researcher Peter Hegarty in a press release, “We are not killjoys or prudes who think that there should be no sexual information and media for young people. But are teenage boys and young men best prepared for fulfilling love and sex when they normalise views about women that are disturbingly close to those mirrored in the language of sexual offenders?”

He added that young men should be given credible sex education and not have to rely on lads' mags as a source of information as they grow up.

Dr. Horvath of Middlesex University is a pioneering researcher into multiple-perpetrator rape and co-organizer of the London conference on sexual violence at which I gave a keynote this summer. Dr. Hegarty at the University of Surrey has just completed a fascinating research project on Lewis Terman of Stanford University; his book, Poison in the Gift: Alfred Kinsey, Lewis Terman and the Sexual Politics of Smart Men is in press by the University of Chicago Press.

The article is: "Lights on at the end of the party: Are lads' mags mainstreaming dangerous sexism?" by Miranda Horvath, Peter Hegarty, Suzannah Tyler and Sophie Mansfield, in the British Journal of Psychology. Author correspondence may be addressed to Dr. Horvath (HERE).

New critique of APA’s detainee interrogation policies

Interrogation of Canadian citizen Omar Khadr, age 15, at Guantanamo

Prominent psychology ethicist Ken Pope, a former chair of the American Psychological Association's Ethics Committee who resigned from the APA in 2008, has authored a new article critiquing the APA's controversial policies on detainee interrogations.

Pope said his purpose is to "highlight key APA policies, procedures, and public statements that seem in urgent need of rethinking and to suggest some questions that may be useful in a serious assessment."

He questions the ethical legitimacy of standing behind policies and practices that can cause harm to individuals -- such as detainees -- based on the stated desire to do "the most good for the most people."

Pope provides a history of the APA’s controversial 2002 decision to reject the so-called "Nuremberg Ethic" by permitting psychologists to forego ethical responsibilities when they conflict with government authority (Ethics Code Section 1.02).

Psychologists came under intense criticism from human rights proponents in the wake of 9/11 for their critical role in detainee interrogations. Unlike organized psychiatry and other medical professions, the American Psychological Association promoted its role in detainee interrogations as contributing to national security in a time of crisis.

"APA promoted support for its interrogation policies in its press releases, its journals, its web site, its Internet lists, its conventions, the APA Monitor on Psychology, and other venues," Pope noted. For example, it "submitted a statement on psychology and interrogations to the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence explaining that 'psychologists have important contributions to make in eliciting information that can be used to prevent violence and protect our nation's security'; that 'conducting an interrogation is inherently a psychological endeavor'; and that 'psychology is central to this process.' "

Accordingly, psychologists under contract with the CIA were given a green light to design aggressive interrogation techniques to break down detainees, while other psychologists on the outside assured the public that techniques such as waterboarding were safe and would not cause lasting mental harm.

The article, "Are the American Psychological Association's Detainee Interrogation Policies Ethical and Effective? Key Claims, Documents, and Results," is slated for publication in the journal Zeitschrift fur Psychologie / Journal of Psychology, the oldest psychology journal in Europe and the second oldest in the world.

Pope's critique is timely. For one thing, the policies authored by the APA's controversial Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS Task Force) remain in place. Additionally, the issues he raises have broader implications for current ethical practice of psychologists in other custodial settings, such as prisons, jails, and mental hospitals.

Pope has made the article available at his website (HERE), which also has many other useful resources on ethics and interrogations.

Breivik insanity finding showcases Norway’s progressive system

Sensible and efficient are words that come to mind in reviewing the Norwegian government's handling of mass killer Anders Behring Breivik's legal case.

The court appointed two psychiatrists who worked collaboratively to evaluate Breivik,who admits killing 77 people and injuring 151 others in a mass shooting spree in July.

The psychiatrists spent 36 hours interviewing Breivik on 13 separate occasions before finding him insane at the time of the crimes. Breivik was psychotic and inhabited a ''delusional universe,'' they wrote in their 243-page report.

Although many have expressed surprise, there's not the kind of political grandstanding one might expect with such a politically charged case in the United States or some other Western countries. Even prosecutors are not voicing any objection to the insanity finding.

''Anders Behring Breivik during a long period of time has developed the mental disorder of paranoid schizophrenia, which has changed him and made him into the person he is today,'' prosecutor Svein Holden announced at a press conference.

Inga Bejer Engh, speaking for government prosecutors, also said she was ''comfortable'' with the finding.

An expert panel from the Norwegian Board of Forensic Medicine is expected to approve the finding. If so, Breivik will likely be detained indefinitely in a psychiatric hospital and will not stand trial.

Rehabilitation a central goal

Norway’s criminal justice system stands in stark contrast to the more punitive systems in many other countries. Rehabilitation, rather than just punishment for punishment's sake, is its central goal.

Even if Breivik had been found sane and convicted at trial, his maximum prison sentence would have been 21 years, or at most 30 years if he had been found guilty of crimes against humanity.

For example, a male nurse found guilty of murdering 22 of his elderly patients was released in 2004 after serving just 12 years in prison.

"A lot of resources are put into this. The idea is for people to be able to leave prison and lead a life free from crime,” criminology professor Hedda Giertsen of the University of Oslo told the BBC. "There is help to find accommodation, help with personal finances, education -- nearly half of Norway's prison population is offered some sort of course or education."

Statistics indicate this policy works: Reconviction rates in Norway are about 20 percent, far lower than in other European countries or the United States.

And just think about all of the money Norway will save by avoiding the public spectacle of a lengthy and high-profile trial featuring dueling psychiatric experts. 

Rationality: Don't you love it?

Thanksgiving roundup

Brandon McInerney

Gay panic defendant gets 21 years

The gay panic case of Brandon McInerney that we’ve been tracking here since 2008 is finally over. The defendant, who was 14 when he shot and killed classmate Larry King, agreed to a 21-year prison term after a jury deadlocked in his murder trial two months ago.

"The missing militant" pleads no contest

Ronald Bridgeforth

Ronald Bridgeforth, the man I blogged about a couple of weeks ago who spent 43 years underground before deciding to turn himself in, pleaded no contest yesterday to a 1968 charge of assault on a police officer. His sentencing is set for February. For those of you who are interested in his fascinating life, I recommend a profile (HERE) by Laura Rena Murray in Tuesday's San Francisco Chronicle. As Bridgeforth put it, "Not being in jail is not the same as being free."

From Australia: Prolonged detention and mental health

An investigative journalism program in Australia has aired a remarkable documentary on the psychiatric effects of lengthy detention of asylum seekers. ABC’s Four Corners obtained rare footage of conditions in facilities that are typically kept out of sight and out of mind. The show portrays rampant self-mutilation, suicide and psychotic decompensation among Australia's 4,000 incarcerated asylum seekers. "I have only seen darkness in life and a dark future ahead," explains a young Iranian man who has just tried to hang himself after the third rejection of his immigration petition. In a secretly filmed interview, a psychiatric nurse states that suicide attempts and grotesque self-mutilations are daily occurrences, with as many as 30 detainees at a time on one-to-one suicide watch at her facility alone. Psychiatric staff are shown responding to the overwhelming despair by overprescribing sedating medications. Dr. Suresh Sundram of the Mental Health Research Institute describes the detention sites as factories for producing mental illness, especially for detainees who are held for lengthy periods and those who have undergone torture and other traumas before fleeing their homelands. Click below to watch the 45-minute video, which is relevant not only in Australia but other countries around the world with similar immigration issues.

Juveniles: Lifelong benefits of multisystemic therapy 

In a study that's getting a bit of buzz around the Web, a researcher has found that Multisystemic Therapy's positive effects on juvenile delinquents extend for decades. An average of 22 years later, youths who were randomly selected for MST treatment had significantly fewer arrests and family problems than those who got traditional individual therapy. MST, developed by study co-author Charles Borduin of the University of Missouri, has become one of the most widely used evidence-based treatments in the world. It owes its success to the fact that it involves the offender's entire family and community, whereas traditional therapy targets only the offender without modifying his problematic environment. The new study is published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. The Abstract is HERE; a press release summarizing the findings is HERE.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Photo (c) Karen Franklin 2011

And finally, if you're reading this in the comfort of your warm and cozy home or office, you can be thankful you're not at the bottom of the 99 percent, living in a plywood shack being torn down just in time for the rainy season. That's the plight of the folks in one of the many homeless encampments near where I walk.

I wish all of you readers and subscribers a nice holiday. 

Fiji travelogue: A different approach to murder

Guest post by Jules Burstein*

Three weeks ago while on a vacation in Fiji, I was on the third-largest island, Taveuni, walking in a light rain up a not-so-steep hill, when I encountered the following sign in front of what looked like a series of dormitories:

Fiji Correction Services

Taveuni Prison

Giving a Second Chance

 

I walked inside and explained to a secretary at the front desk that I was a forensic psychologist and was interested in learning something about the criminal justice and prison system in Fiji. She invited me to speak to the Director (Warden) who was just outside the main building and was quite receptive to having an exchange with me.

I was more than a little astonished to learn from him that on an island with 18,000 people there were only a dozen men serving time for murder. But more compelling than that was the Director informing me that all men convicted of murder are sentenced to 10 years.

At that point they are evaluated to see whether they have sufficient remorse for their offense, and have made constructive changes in their character so as to warrant release. If that is the case they are discharged from custody. If not, there are periodic reviews every two years to determine whether inmates are then suitable for release. Thus, all inmates are strongly motivated to effect positive changes while in custody in order to earn the right to be reintegrated into society.

I found it impressive (and sad) to consider that this progressive approach exists in a country that just obtained its independence from Great Britain 40 years ago, while we in America have prisons filled with thousands of men convicted of murder either sentenced to death or to life sentences with little chance of parole.

*Jules Burstein is a clinical and forensic psychologist in Berkeley, California.

Brick wall blocking progress on sexual violence

Forty years after the women’s rights movement brought attention to the widespread nature of sexual violence, the overwhelming majority of offenses still go unreported. Even when a brave victim does come forward, prosecution is rare and conviction even rarer.

That unpleasant reality was the starting point for this week's international conference on sexual violence at Middlesex University in London. Delegates from around the world -- including from Europe, Turkey, Israel, Australia, Canada and the United States -- met to brainstorm next steps in the battle against this catastrophic pandemic.

The consensus among delegates seemed to be that the legal system -- despite the best of intentions of many within it -- is ill equipped to rectify the "justice gap" between sexual violence perpetrators and their victims.

The "brick wall" (in the words of criminologist Betsy Stanko of "the Met," London's Metropolitan Police) blocking progress is built of so-called "rape myths" that make women unwilling to come forward, and impede successful prosecution when they do.

Myth Number One is that only bad and/or crazy men rape. As I explored in my opening keynote address, the promotion of this fiction by a powerful sex offender treatment industry has had the paradoxical effect of making the everyday rapist and child molester even less recognizable than ever by jurors and judges.

Myth Number Two is that men cannot control their sexual impulses. The corollary of this is to blame women for rape: Why did she get drunk? Why did she go with him? Why did she act (or dress) that way? Women have internalized these messages and so - unlike, say, burglary victims -- feel deeply humiliated and ashamed when they are raped.

Conference organizers Jackie Gray, Miranda Horvath,
and Susan Hansen (Photo credit: The Times)

These myths are so universal in Western cultures that even feminist women working at a women's health clinic communicate them in private, informal conversation, according to new research by one of the conference's organizers, Susan Hansen of Middlesex University. (The other two organizers were Miranda Horvath and Jackie Gray.)

Compounding the problem is the fact that rapists tend to target vulnerable women who do not fit the profile of a virtuous victim, so do not make good witnesses. In the "vast majority" of London cases tracked by the Met, around 85 percent, victims were (1) seriously intoxicated at the time of their assault, (2) involved in an intimate relationship with the perpetrator, (3) mentally ill, and/or (4) minors, Stanko reported. These are not ideal victims, from the standpoint of successful prosecution.

What to do?

As noted by long-time activist Liz Kelly, chair of the Child & Woman Abuse Studies Unit of London Metropolitan University, sexual violence exists on a continuum, from predatory leers, touches and verbal harassment -- to which virtually all women are subjected -- on up to illegal sexual assault. Direct confrontation of the male entitlement undergirding this entire spectrum of behaviors will be critical to meaningful progress against sexual violence, speaker after speaker emphasized.

In other words, delegates argued for reintroducing gender into the professional discourse. As Moira Carmody of the University of Western Sydney in Australia pointed out, gender-based analysis of sexual victimization is often perceived as too threatening. So it is replaced with gender-neutral discourse about interpersonal conflict, in which the gender of perpetrator and victim become interchangeable.

I had witnessed this dynamic in action the previous day, at the international consortium on multiple-perpetrator rape. As so frequently occurs in these types of professional gatherings, someone brought up the topic of female perpetrators, sidetracking discussion onto this tangential topic. I say tangential, because the reality is that group rape is an overwhelmingly male activity. Even on the exceedingly rare occasions in which women or girls are present, they are almost always auxiliaries, for example the wife of a sexual deviant, or a female gang member pressured to help her boyfriend procure a victim.

In addition to addressing the gender hierarchies and other power imbalances that facilitate victimization, we need to empower young people so that they perceive of themselves as active agents who have choices and practical tools for negotiating complex social situations.

Stieg Larsson, the author of the popular Millennium trilogy, did not feel this power when he was 15 years old. Thus, he did not intervene during a group camping trip, as three of his friends raped a 15-year-old girl. "Her screams were heartrending, but … his loyalty to his friends was too strong," writes longtime friend and biographer Kurdo Baksi. "He was too young, too insecure." Larsson struggled with guilt for the rest of his life, even naming the heroine of his novels after the rape victim, Lisbeth.

To empower young people in these types of situations, Carmody has developed an educational program that trains participants both in how to behave ethically in their own sexual encounters, and how to be "ethical bystanders." The curriculum, funded by the Australian government, has been successfully introduced with boys, girls, men and women from a variety of backgrounds, from rugby players to Maoris in New Zealand to gay men and lesbians.

New Zealand is using this ethical bystander approach in an innovative public health campaign to combat an expected rise in sexual assaults during the Rugby World Cup. An eight-minute video, "whoareyou," pushes the idea that everyone is responsibility for the safety of those around them.

A first step in primary prevention, then, is teaching and training young people to behave ethically toward each other.

On a larger level, we will need to directly challenge the rape myths undergirding an entire spectrum of intimate intrusions by men and boys against those with less social currency. Only then will victims feel empowered to step forward, and will judges and jurors be able to recognize and condemn the everyday offender who stands before them.

Knocking down that brick wall will be no small task.

Group rape getting long-overdue spotlight

Groups of men and boys have been raping lone, vulnerable girls and women since time immemorial. (Read Judges 19 in the Old Testament for one chilling account.) In fact, group rape is woven so tightly into the fabric of Western civilization that hardly anyone ever stops to think about it. Until now, that is.

When I did my first literature review of the topic back in 2003, for an article conceptualizing it as a theatrical production of hegemonic masculinity, I was astonished by the paucity of research. That is starting to change, thanks in large part to the tireless efforts of two prolific young scholars in the UK, Miranda Horvath of Middlesex University and Jessica Woodhams of the University of Birmingham.

Horvath and Woodhams secured funding from the British Psychological Society to put together an international consortium of researchers, academics and practitioners to further study the topic. We’re collaborating on an edited volume, which I’m pretty sure will be the first book in the history of the world on the topic of multiple-perpetrator rape. (It’s due out from Routledge in February 2013.)

I’m here in London giving a talk on the role of masculinity and culture in multiple-perpetrator rape, at the second of three research seminars. As I found in an analysis of international media coverage (which I will present in the upcoming book), Western societies display a cultural schizophrenia toward this phenomenon: Even as the public at large condemns group rape, contradictory messages permit and even reinforce it, fueling a cycle of masculine misconduct. 

London after the riots

Piccadilly Circus, 2011 (by K. Franklin)

London is a fitting backdrop for a seminar on group violence. Even as the city frenetically prepares to host the 2012 Olympics, it struggles to regain equilibrium in the wake of last month’s severe and economically costly rioting. 

Yesterday, I watched live BBC coverage of a government hearing into the police response to the rioting. Although the hearing covered a broad range of issues, Britain’s popular media latched onto a quote by Justice Secretary Ken Clarke, blaming the rioting on a "feral underclass." With coded racial language like that, it's no surprise that the rioting has led to increased racial prejudice and xenophobia among the British public, according to a just-released study. A greater number of respondents who felt that British society and culture were under threat are now expressing hostility toward Muslims, blacks and eastern Europeans.

London 2011 (K. Franklin)

Bolstering the racialized image in the public's mind is the much-ballyhooed statistic that three-quarters of those convicted of riot-related crimes had prior criminal records.  Of course, as the police were the first to admit during yesterday’s hearing, those with prior criminal histories were easiest to find, and so were rounded up after the riots. In other words, if you weren’t a known criminal you were less likely to get arrested, thereby producing a misleading statistic.

More broadly, why would anyone be surprised that members of an unemployed and disenfranchised underclass would be the first to rise up in protest over a police killing? Or that the have-nots would seize any opportunity to steal from the haves? Britain's confronting the problem today, but the rioting should serve as a wake-up call to every nation with severe economic and social disparities.

Ironically, by seizing upon the isolated quote and statistic, the popular media distorted what the justice secretary and other government leaders were saying. They were actually promoting the concept of rehabilitation. Calling the penal system "broken," the Secretary commented:

It's no good just punishing them. We're failing to make sure that those that are capable of being reformed are reformed and are actually sorting out their drugs, their drink, given a slightly more sensible approach to the values of society so that at least fewer of them will start causing trouble again the next time they have a chance.

Next up: Sexual violence conference

Stay tuned: Tomorrow I will be giving the opening keynote at a conference on sexual violence prevention, also here at Middlesex University in North London. Time allowing, I'll have more to report from my visit.

Dangerous People: An international discourse

Dangerous People marks an important moment in risk discourse. Leading scholars from around the Western world join together to discuss the problematic science, ethics and morality underlying contemporary approaches to populations deemed high risk. These include not only sex offenders (the focus of this week's New York Times op-ed) but also suspected terrorists, illegal immigrants, violent youth, and the mentally ill.

Not surprisingly, contradictions over risk prediction play out even within the pages of this international and interdisciplinary work. Consider these offerings:

• Forensic psychologist David Cooke and statistician Christine Michie of Scotland issue their strongest warning yet about the fraud being perpetrated by proponents of “actuarial” risk prediction, whose illusion of scientific certainty camouflages predictions that are highly inaccurate and misleading:

At the heart of the matter is the fact that simple linear models cannot explain complex behavior…. Individuals are violent for different reasons: any one individual may be violent for different reasons on different occasions. This inherent complexity dooms simple-minded statistical prediction.... The only way to deal with this complexity is to think psychologically, not statistically.

• Lorraine Johnstone, another Scot, warns that the actuarials' inaccuracies are dangerously magnified with juvenile offenders, who present a "moving target" because they are still in the process of developing.

• Yet, on the other side of the fence, law professor Christopher Slobogin of the USA continues in his vociferous campaign for preventive detention of a litany of groups -- including the mentally ill, enemy combatants, violent juveniles and persons who spread communicable diseases -- based on these very same faulty statistical methods.

Meanwhile, legal scholars Eric Janus and John La Fond continue to shine a spotlight on the United States' costly experiment with civil detention of sex offenders.

Janus's intriguing theory is that the Sexually Violent Predator (SVP) laws are a tool of conservative ideologues to roll back feminist gains in the struggle against sexual violence and gender inequality. He advocates for a return to an empirically guided, public-health approach as the sanest way to combat sexual violence while also safeguarding tax dollars from waste.

"Predictably," agrees La Fond, "the American SVP experiment has been an abysmal and costly failure. Other countries should learn from our terrible mistakes."

Overviews of practices in other Western nations -- including Australia, England and Canada -- suggest that despite this warning, various U.S.-style detention schemes based on remote future risks are gaining traction internationally.

Several chapters in the volume, however, focus on a somewhat different model out of Scotland, the Order for Lifelong Restriction (OLR). This order, rendered at the time of initial sentencing, involves the imposition of an indeterminate sentence to be followed by lifelong supervision. To maximize consistency, risk assessors are accredited by a special Risk Management Authority. Although Scotland abides by the European Convention on Human Rights, which contains a guarantee against arbitrary detention, concerns have been raised about lengthy detention and lifelong sentences for juveniles. Additionally, as the volume editors point out, "it is too early to say whether the Scottish system has been successful in reducing violent and sexual recidivism."

On a somewhat different note, Jennifer Skeem, Jillian Peterson and Eric Silver challenge the widespread assumption that mental illness is a direct cause of criminality in mentally ill offenders. Rather, they say, many mentally ill people may engage in criminal behavior because they are poor, and therefore exposed to contextual risk factors for crime. We should stop regarding mental illness as a master status, they argue, in favor of a more nuanced approach to mentally ill offenders.

Many of the chapters in this timely collection -- edited by Australian legal scholars Bernadette McSherry and Patrick Keyzer -- will no doubt prove prophetic. The current state of fear-based hysteria, like all social movements, will wane in time. Politicians and the public will realize how costly and ineffective are many of the currently cherished practices and will reverse course. As the editors conclude:

What is clear from many of the chapters in this book is that schemes for imprisoning or detaining people for what they might do are costly, likely to contravene international human rights obligations, and have not proven to be effective in reducing crime, particularly sex offences. Detaining more and more people gives rise to the risk that detention regimes will collapse under the weight of numbers.

Yet in the short term, those who most need to hear this collective discourse -- including politicians, judges, prison officials, and even our very own misguided forensic practitioners -- are not listening. Isolated within a like-minded community, they are too busy searching for the magic potion that will make the world safe and appease a frightened public.

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