MLK to psychologists: We need creative maladjustment

In honor of today's holiday, I am excerpting portions of a speech by Martin Luther King Jr. to psychologists, which remains prophetically relevant to our field today. I have made the entire speech, "The Role of the Behavioral Scientist in the Civil Rights Movement," available for download (HERE).

... For social scientists, the opportunity to serve in a life-giving purpose is a humanist challenge of rare distinction.... Social scientists, in the main, are fortunate to be able to extirpate evil, not to invent it....

On crime and urban violence

After some years of Negro-white unity and partial success, white America shifted gears and went into reverse. Negroes, alive with hope and enthusiasm, ran into sharply stiffened white resistance at all levels and bitter tensions broke out in sporadic episodes of violence. New lines of hostility were drawn and the era of good feeling disappeared....

Science should have been employed more fully to warn us that the Negro, after 350 years of handicaps, mired in an intricate network of contemporary barriers, could not be ushered into equality by tentative and superficial changes.... Negroes could contain their rage when they found the means to force relatively radical changes in their environment. [But] without a more effective tactic for upsetting the status quo, the power structure could maintain its intransigence and hostility. Into the vacuum of inaction, violence and riots flowed and a new period opened....

Urban riots ... are a distorted form of social protest. The looting which is their principal feature serves many functions. It enables the most enraged and deprived Negro to take hold of consumer goods with the ease the white man does by using his purse. Often the Negro does not even want what he takes; he wants the experience of taking. But most of all, alienated from society and knowing that this society cherishes property above people, he is shocking it by abusing property rights. There are thus elements of emotional catharsis in the violent act....

The policymakers of the white society have caused the darkness; they create discrimination; they structured slums; and they perpetuate unemployment, ignorance and poverty. It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society. When we ask Negroes to abide by the law, let us also demand that the white man abide by law in the ghettos. Day-in and day-out he violates welfare laws to deprive the poor of their meager allotments; he flagrantly violates building codes and regulations; his police make a mockery of law; and he violates laws on equal employment and education and the provisions for civic services. The slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of the white society; Negroes live in them but do not make them any more than a prisoner makes a prison. Let us say boldly that if the violations of law by the white man in the slums over the years were calculated and compared with the law-breaking of a few days of riots, the hardened criminal would be the white man....

The unemployment of Negro youth ranges up to 40 percent in some slums. The riots are almost entirely youth events--the age range of participants is from 13 to 25. What hypocrisy it is to talk of saving the new generation--to make it the generation of hope--while consigning it to unemployment and provoking it to violent alternatives.

When our nation was bankrupt in the '30s we created an agency to provide jobs to all at their existing level of skill. In our overwhelming affluence today what excuse is there for not setting up a national agency for full employment immediately?

... These are often difficult things to say but I have come to see more and more that it is necessary to utter the truth in order to deal with the great problems that we face in our society....

On taking a stand

There are those who tell me that I should stick with civil rights, and stay in my place. I can only respond that I have fought too hard and long to end segregated public accommodations to segregate my own moral concerns. It is my deep conviction that justice is indivisible, that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere....

On some positions cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?!' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But conscience must ask the question, 'Is it right?!' And there comes a time when one must take a stand that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular. But one must take it because it is right....

On the role of the social scientist

Negroes have been oppressed for centuries not merely by bonds of economic and political servitude. The worst aspect of their oppression was their inability to question and defy the fundamental precepts of the larger society. Negroes have been loathe in the past to hurl any fundamental challenges because they were coerced and conditioned into thinking within the context of the dominant white ideology.... For the first time in their history, Negroes have become aware of the deeper causes for the crudity and cruelty that governed white society's responses to their needs. They discovered that their plight was not a consequence of superficial prejudice but was systemic.

The slashing blows of backlash and frontlash have hurt the Negro, but they have also awakened him and revealed the nature of the oppressor. To lose illusions is to gain truth. Negroes have grown wiser and more mature and they are hearing more clearly those who are raising fundamental questions about our society whether the critics be Negro or white. When this process of awareness and independence crystallizes, every rebuke, every evasion, become hammer blows on the wedge that splits the Negro from the larger society.

Social science is needed to explain where this development is going to take us. Are we moving away, not from integration, but from the society which made it a problem in the first place? How deep and at what rate of speed is this process occurring? These are some vital questions to be answered if we are to have a clear sense of our direction....

The problem is deep. It is gigantic in extent, and chaotic in detail. And I do not believe that it will be solved until there is a kind of cosmic discontent enlarging in the bosoms of people of good will all over this nation....

On creative maladjustment

There are certain technical words in every academic discipline which soon become stereotypes and even clichés. Every academic discipline has its technical nomenclature. You who are in the field of psychology have given us a great word. It is the word maladjusted. This word is probably used more than any other word in psychology. It is a good word; certainly it is good that in dealing with what the word implies you are declaring that destructive maladjustment should be destroyed. You are saying that all must seek the well-adjusted life in order to avoid neurotic and schizophrenic personalities.

But on the other hand, I am sure that we will recognize that there are some things in our society, some things in our world, to which we should never be adjusted. There are some things concerning which we must always be maladjusted if we are to be people of good will. We must never adjust ourselves to racial discrimination and racial segregation. We must never adjust ourselves to religious bigotry. We must never adjust ourselves to economic conditions that take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. We must never adjust ourselves to the madness of militarism, and the self-defeating effects of physical violence.

In a day when Sputniks, Explorers and Geminies are dashing through outer space, when guided ballistic missiles are carving highways of death through the stratosphere, no nation can finally win a war. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence, it is either nonviolence or nonexistence. As President Kennedy declared, 'Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind.' And so the alternative to disarmament, the alternative to a suspension in the development and use of nuclear weapons, the alternative to strengthening the United Nations and eventually disarming the whole world, may well be a civilization plunged into the abyss of annihilation. Our earthly habitat will be transformed into an inferno that even Dante could not envision.

Thus, it may well be that our world is in dire need of a new organization, The International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment. Men and women should be as maladjusted as the prophet Amos, who in the midst of the injustices of his day, could cry out in words that echo across the centuries, 'Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream'; or as maladjusted as Abraham Lincoln, who in the midst of his vacillations finally came to see that this nation could not survive half slave and half free; or as maladjusted as Thomas Jefferson, who in the midst of an age amazingly adjusted to slavery, could scratch across the pages of history, words lifted to cosmic proportions, 'We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. And that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' And through such creative maladjustment, we may be able to emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man’s inhumanity to man, into the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice.

I have not lost hope. I must confess that these have been very difficult days for me personally. And these have been difficult days for every civil rights leader, for every lover of justice and peace.

King was assassinated seven months after giving this speech at the American Psychological Association's 1967 convention.

Another severe attack at Napa Hospital

Less than two months after a psychiatric technician was strangled to death, another staff member has been beaten unconscious at Napa State Hospital, California's largest psychiatric hospital. Already abysmal staff morale is sinking lower as tensions rise among the captive patients, whose privileges have been curtailed since October's slaying.

Four years ago, the U.S. Attorney General's Office negotiated a consent decree mandating sweeping changes aimed at improving patient care and reducing suicides and assaults at the troubled hospital. A federal probe had revealed widespread civil rights violations, including generic "treatment" and overuse of seclusion and restraints. Napa, the only state psychiatric hospital in Northern California, houses defendants undergoing competency restoration treatment and those found not guilty by reason of insanity.

Earlier this year, another scandal hit the hospital, when its executive director was arrested on 35 felony charges stemming from the alleged molestation of a foster son. He was suspected of molesting at least four other boys going back to the 1970s.

Lee Romney of the Los Angeles Times, who has provided the best coverage of California's troubled state hospital system over the past few years, reported that patients at Napa are increasingly agitated in the wake of greater restrictions on their movement, exacerbating an already bleak picture:

Since 2006, the state's mental hospitals have been under a federal court order to improve conditions for patients. Yet safety for both patients and staff has deteriorated markedly at Napa State Hospital over the last year, data show. The other state hospitals subject to the federal consent judgment have also experienced a rise in violence since the state began implementing changes in care.

In case you need a job, by the way, the hospital is hiring.

Hat tip: Kathleen

Abuse rampant in California prisons

Mentally disabled prisoners in California are routinely beaten, robbed, sexually assaulted and deprived of food and sanitation. And in a "climate of indifference," prison officials have virtually ignored a 2001 court order mandating that they identify and protect these most vulnerable prisoners.

That was the opinion a federal judge issued last week in refusing to lift the 9-year-old court order. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer's ruling followed a 6-day trial. The judge cited one instance in which a mentally disabled prisoner lost 35 pounds in five months because his cellmate was stealing his food and guards only laughed at him when he requested their help.

Sacramento Bee series: Prisoner abuse widespread

The judicial ruling echoes a stellar investigative series by reporter Charles Piller of the Sacramento Bee, who obtained and analyzed thousands of pages of documents and interviewed dozens of insiders, including confidential sources. The resulting picture of the inside of California prisons is not pretty:

• Guards fabricating rule violations that extended the time of prisoners they didn't like, including prisoner activists

• Prisoners losing "good time" credits for breaking minor rules, such as stepping across a line on the concrete

• A rigged system in which nearly all prisoners charged with rule violations are found guilty, and appeals or complaints against guards are fruitless

• Light discipline even when officers severely injure or kill prisoners

In one case, an officer needlessly punched a prisoner in the head, broke his elbows, and then lied about it in reports. The penalty? A 12-day suspension.

"The degree of civilization in a society
can be judged by entering its prisons."

-- Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1860)

Undermining the appeals process, according to prisoners and former officers, is prisoners' fear of retaliation. Edgar Martinez, a former prisoner at High Desert, claimed that guards trampled his belongings and strip-searched him in a snow-covered yard. He said he watched guards provoke fights among inmates and tell others, "this [complaint] needs to go away or we're going to make your life a living hell." Afterward, Martinez said, he was too terrified to protest the mistreatment.

In a 2007 case, guards viciously beat several prisoners and denied them adequate medical treatment, yet not a single one filed a complaint, according to a former lieutenant named Gerald Edwards. Prisoners know that filing a complaint may lead to retaliation, including being shipped off to a different prison dominated by racial or ethnic enemies.

Behavior modification units a living hell

If routine conditions are bad, they are nothing compared to the cruelty, corruption and racism that Piller found when he investigated the so-called behavior modification units.

High Desert State Prison. Photo credit: Ben Kutchins, "Prison Town USA"

These are the units where recalcitrant prisoners, disproportionately African American, are subjected to "extreme isolation and deprivation -- long periods in a cell without education, social contact, TV or radio." A prisoner at the Salinas Valley unit went five months without exercise, sunlight or fresh air, according to his successful lawsuit. At the High Desert facility, prisoners described "hours-long strip-searches in a snow-covered exercise yard. They said correctional officers tried to provoke attacks between inmates, spread human excrement on cell doors and roughed up those who peacefully resisted mistreatment. One said guards contaminated prisoners' food with dirt and insects and starved those who complained.

Many of the prisoners' claims were backed by legal and administrative filings, and signed affidavits, which together depicted an environment of brutality, corruption and fear." As Edward Thomas, a former prisoner in the High Desert unit, described it, it was "like something that happens in a concentration camp."

"Black monkey unit": Abuse based on skin color

While about a third of California prisoners are black, blacks comprised a majority of prisoners subjected to the High Desert behavior unit. Guards referred to the unit as the "black monkey unit" and joked about how the "monkeys" are "always hanging around in there" -- a macabre reference to suicide attempts by prisoners of color.

"Guards seemed to view behavior modification as a license to make inmates as miserable as possible to compel obedience," Piller reported.

"Several inmates described an incident when staff left one inmate on the floor with rectal bleeding and refused to take him to get medical attention," according to the report of a group of state researchers. When guards arrived, "they said 'It's the f---ing n----- again, let him die.' And they left him there."

Their July 2007 visit to High Desert shook up the state researchers, said one, a sociologist who lectures at UC Davis and has more than 25 years of corrections research experience. Norm Skonovd said he had never seen a similar case. The researchers were allegedly chastised when they reported what they had seen, and were told to tone down and bury the prisoner allegations of abuse. Skonovd claims he suffered professional retaliation.

Correctional abuse: A cause of violence and recidivism?

Prisoners said the behavior modification units were so dreaded that they would act out so they would be placed in "the hole" instead. This, the researchers noted, could lead to more violence behind bars. Indeed, although the units were "sold to lawmakers as a way to reduce recidivism," their brutality would likely lead to more anger and, hence, more convicts returning to prison, the researchers theorized.

For you blog readers who aren’t from California, why should you care?

Because, like Milan is to the fashion industry, so California is a trendsetter for the global prison industry. You all know by now that the USA is the world's premiere Prison Nation, locking up 1 out of 100 residents. But if California were a country, we would rank seventh in the world -- behind the USA, China, Russia, and a handful of others. (That's by raw numbers. If you go by proportion of the population incarcerated, we fall further back; only one out of every 36 adult Californians is under correctional control, compared with a whopping one out of 13 adult Georgians. Hint: Maps showing rates of incarceration for U.S. states look eerily similar when juxtaposed with maps showing states' proportions of African Americans. Click on the links to see for yourself.)

I highly encourage all of you to read the Bee series (available HERE). Muckraking journalism is practically dead these days, with the daily news biz more and more resembling interchangeable strip malls along the highways -- corporate-owned, homogenized, and full of quick-and-dirty crime bytes. And the prison news beat is especially hard to cover, because access is so highly controlled and critical information subjected to censorship (as "Red Hog" reported in Committing Journalism).

I wonder how Dostoyevsky would have rated the civilization level of modern California.

Forensic psych professor slams video game law

A forensic psychology professor and leading researcher of violence and video games has published an editorial in the Salt Lake City Tribune condemning attempts to restrict violent video games as a "waste of taxpayer money."

Christopher Ferguson, an associate professor at Texas A&M University, wants Utah's Attorney General to sign an amicus brief opposing California's Assembly Bill 1179. An appellate court struck down that law, but California has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which is slated to hear the case this fall. The law would criminalize selling or renting video games deemed "violent" to consumers under age 18.

Ferguson claims it is "simply dishonest" to imply that research consistently links video games with violence:

First, there is no consistent research indicating that video games cause increased violence. Studies of video game effects return weak and mixed results. Many studies are limited by poor methodology, and some scholars do seem eager to promote negative links, oftentimes ignoring inconsistent data from their own results. The most recent Surgeon General’s report downplayed the influence of media violence, as did a recent Secret Service report on school shooters.

My own research, published in peer-reviewed journals in pediatrics, psychology and criminal justice, has found no links between violent video game playing and violent behavior. Other researchers, such as Cheryl Olson, Lawrence Kutner, Dmitri Williams, John Colwell, among others, have come to similar conclusions. Others, such as Patrick Markey, suggest that perhaps video game violence is like peanut butter, a harmless indulgence for the vast majority of children, but perhaps something to be avoided for a tiny minority of children, particularly those already disposed to pathological violent behavior.

Second, as video games have become more popular and more violent in the past two decades, violent crimes among both youth and adults have gone down to their lowest levels since the 1960s. Indeed, if there is a correlation between video game violence and violent crimes, it is in the opposite direction as that suggested by proponents of the California bill. I’m not saying video games have made the United States less violent; we don’t know that. However, the waves of youth violence some anti-game activists have feared simply never materialized….

My understanding is that California is experiencing difficult financial times and has cut valuable services to needy individuals, including many families and children. It is ironic that the state would claim to champion the welfare of children by throwing money at a video game bill that will help no one, yet cut basic health, education and support services to countless children.

Vending Times has additional coverage and background information HERE.

Sept. 21 postscript:

States Join Media Groups in Briefs Opposing California's Violent Video Game Ban, National Law Journal

Metaanalysis debunks psychopathy-violence link

No clear winner among violence risk tools

If you are looking for the best tool to assess someone's risk for violence, the array may seem confusing. Lots of acronyms, lots of statistical data about AUC's (Areas Under the Curve) and the like. What do do?

No worries. As it turns out, they're pretty much interchangeable. That is the bottom-line finding of a groundbreaking metaanalytic study in the APA journal Psychological Bulletin by three academic researchers from the United Kingdom.

The University of Nottingham researchers used sophisticated statistical tools to meta-analyze multiple studies on the accuracy of nine leading violence risk assessment tools. All nine turned out to have similarly moderate predictive accuracy, with none clearly leading the pack. And none -- the scholars warned -- were sufficiently accurate for courts to rely upon them as a primary basis for decision-making in forensic cases requiring "a high level of predictive accuracy, such as preventive detention."

Widely touted PCL-R's "Factor 1" a bust

In a result with potentially momentous implications for forensic practitioners, the researchers found that Factor 1 of the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) does not predict violence. As you know, Factor 1 purports to measure the core constellation of a psychopathic personality (superficial charm, manipulativeness, lack of empathy, etc.). When introduced in court, evidence of psychopathy has an enormously prejudicial impact on criminal offenders.

But, the PCL-R's much-ballyhooed ability to predict certain types of violence owes only to the instrument's second factor, according to the metaanalysis by researchers Min Yang, Steve Wong, and Jeremy Coid. And that's no surprise. After all, Factor 2 measures the criminogenic factors (criminality, irresponsibility, impulsivity, history of delinquency, etc.) that even a fifth-grader knows are bad signs for a future of law-abiding citizenship.

In my experience, the Factor 1 items -- the ones purporting to measure an underlying personality profile -- are the ones more likely to be inflated by some evaluators. That's because many of these items are pretty subjective. Glib? Superficially charming? If you don't like a guy -- and/or he doesn't like you -- you are more likely to rate these negative items as present. That's one of my hypotheses for the large evaluator differences and partisan allegiance effects found with the PCL-R in forensic practice.

Cumulatively, the emerging PCL-R findings beg the question:

Why introduce the Psychopathy Checklist in court if other violence risk tools work just as well, without the implicitly prejudicial effect of labeling someone as a "psychopath"?

Psychopathy evidence skyrocketing in juvenile cases

Despite (or perhaps because of, in some cases) its prejudicial impact, the construct of psychopathy is increasingly being introduced in court cases involving juveniles. It is often used to infer that a youth should get a longer sentence because he or she is dangerous and not amenable to treatment.

Skyrocketing use of psychopathy evidence in juvenile cases
Source: Viljoen et al, Psychology, Public Policy, and Law (2010)

The first systematic review, published in the current issue of Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, found the use of psychopathy evidence against juveniles skyrocketing in both Canada and the United States. Psychopathy evidence is typically introduced when juveniles are being sentenced as adults and in sex offender commitment cases. It is also introduced in a variety of other cases, including ones involving disputed confessions, competency to stand trial, and criminal responsibility, report authors Jodi Viljoen, Emily MacDougall, Nathalie Gagnon, and Kevin Douglas.

In one egregious case showing how judges may improperly use evidence of psychopathy, a Canadian judge reasoned that a youth's "psychopathic device [sic] score" showed that under his "shy and unassuming" exterior lurked "a monster" that "at any time ... may well come alive." As a result, the judge sentenced this minor to an adult penitentiary.

Such inferences of unremitting danger and untreatability are improper. A large proportion of youths measured high in psychopathy score lower on psychopathy instruments once they mature. And so-called psychopathic youths are far from untreatable; in one recent study by Michael Caldwell and colleagues, after intensive treatment youths who scored high in psychopathy were actually less likely to recidivate than a comparison group in a juvenile jail.

"[T]he introduction of psychopathy evidence into juvenile forensic contexts has been somewhat rushed and premature at times," the authors conclude.

Have risk prediction tools hit the ceiling?

Researchers have been toiling for almost five decades to perfect risk prediction tools. Unfortunately, they keep running into an insurmountable obstacle: A large proportion of violence is situational. It's affected by environmental context, not just qualities internal to the individual. And not only that, but it is always extremely hard to predict a rare event.

Based on their metaanalytic findings, the UK researchers say maybe it's time to stop searching for the holy grail. Maybe we've reached the ceiling of predictive efficacy.

Violent behavior is the result of the individual interacting with the immediate environment. Although it may be possible to improve on our understanding and predicting what an individual may do in hypothetical situations, it will be much more difficult to predict the situation that an individual actually encounters in the open community. Even predicting violence within an institutional environment is difficult, where the assessor has much more information about that environment.

Instead, they say, it is time to turn our attentions to interventions that can reduce risk:

Building a better model of violence prediction should not be the sole aim of risk prediction research, which is just one link in the risk assessment-prediction-management triad that aims to achieve violence reduction and improved mental health…The risk, need and responsivity principles derived from the theory of the psychology of criminal conduct provide a useful theoretical framework for risk reduction intervention. Appropriate risk assessment can identify high-risk individuals in need of more intensive management and intervention…. Using tools with dynamic risk predictors to assess risk can identify appropriate changeable treatment targets linked to violence.

The studies included in the metaanalysis were from six countries: the United Kingdom (11), Canada (9), Sweden (3), the United States (3), Holland (2), and Germany (1). The instruments included the PCL-R, the PCL:SV, the HCR-20, the VRAG, the OGRS, the RM2000V, the LSI/LSI-R, the GSIR, and the VRS, as well as seven instrument ubscales: PCL-R Factor 1 and Factor 2, the 10-item Historical subscale, the five-item Clinical subscale, and the five-item Risk Management subscale of the HCR-20; and the Static and Dynamic scales of the VRS.

Dr. Wong, former Research Director at the Regional Psychiatric Centre in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, studied psychopathy and high-risk offenders for 25 years and developed the Violent Risk Scale and the Violence Risk Scale-sexual offender version before becoming a special professor at the Institute of Mental Health at the University of Nottingham. Dr. Yang is a professor of medical statistics with the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at the University of Nottingham. And Dr. Coid, Director of the Forensic Psychiatry Research Unit, is principal investigator of the UK Home Office’s Prisoner Cohort Study and also studies the epidemiology of violent and criminal behavior at the population level.

The articles reported on here are:

• Yang, M., Wong, S.C.P., & Coid, J. (2010). The efficacy of violence prediction: A metaanalytic comparison of nine risk assessment tools. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 740-767. Correspondence to: Min Yang.
  

• Viljoen, J.L., MacDougall, E.A.M., Gagnon, N.C., & Douglas, K.S. (2010). Psychopathy evidence in legal proceedings involving adolescent offenders. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 16, 254-283. Correspondence to: Jodi Viljoen.
  

Of related interest:

• Boccaccini, M.T., Turner, D.B., & Murrie, D.C. (2008). Do some evaluators report consistently higher or lower PCL-R scores than others? Findings from a statewide sample of Sexually Violent Predator evaluations. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 14, 262-283. Correspondence to: Marcus Boccaccini.
  

• Murrie, D.C., Boccaccini, M.T., Johnson, J.T., & Janke, C. (2008). Does interrater (dis)agreement on Psychopathy Checklist scores in Sexually Violent Predator trials suggest partisan allegiance in forensic evaluations? Law & Human Behavior, 32, 352-362. Correspondence to: Marcus Boccaccini.

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.

Psychopathy controversy goes primetime

More than a million people worldwide will get a chance to learn about psychology's internal controversy over psychopathy tomorrow, when Science publishes an article on the censorship allegations that I blogged about May 30.

Perhaps not coincidentally, just as the June 11 issue of the world's leading scientific news outlet hits the presses, the American Psychological Association is suddenly publishing the disputed article that was siderailed for more than three years.

Forensic psychologists Jennifer Skeem and David Cooke submitted the contested article to Psychological Assessment in 2006. It was peer reviewed, accepted, and scheduled for publication in 2007, but was derailed after Robert Hare, inventor of the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL), threatened to sue for defamation.

As you will remember from my previous blog post, the controversy surfaced in an opinion piece last month in the International Journal of Forensic Mental Health by two psychology-law leaders.

"[T]he threat of litigation constitutes a serious threat to academic freedom and potentially to scientific progress," wrote attorney John Petrila and psychologist Norman Poythress. "Academic freedom rests on the premise that advances in science can only occur if scholars are permitted to pursue free competition among ideas. This assumes that scholars have the liberty to do their work free from limitations imposed by political or religious pressure or by economic reprisals."

Hare now says he is "upset colleagues are suggesting he squelched academic debate," Science writer John Tavris reports, as his "lawsuit threat was meant only to get the 'attention' of APA, Skeem, and Cooke and force changes to the article."

The Science report is a sidebar to a larger piece on reform efforts over plaintiff-friendly libel laws in the United Kingdom. That country's laws, in which the defendant bears the burden of proof, are under fire from around the world over their allegedly chilling effect on scientific research on controversial topics. Critics say they encourage "libel tourism," in which corporations sue there over alleged offenses that occurred elsewhere.

PCL-R reification hampering science

The contested article by Skeem and Cooke, "Is Criminal Behavior a Central Component of Psychopathy? Conceptual Directions for Resolving the Debate," posits that the field of forensic psychology has prematurely embraced Hare's Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) as the gold standard for psychopathy, due in large part to legal demands for a tool to predict violence. Yet the PCL-R's ability to predict violent recidivism owes in large part to its conflation of the supposed personality construct of psychopathy with past criminal behavior, they argue:

[T]he modern justice context has created a strong demand for identifying bad, dangerous people…. [The] link between the PCL and violence has supported a myth that emotionally detached psychopaths callously use violence to achieve control over and exploit others. As far as the PCL is concerned, this notion rests on virtually no empirical support…. [T]he process of understanding psychopathy must be separated from the enterprise of predicting violence.

Criminal behavior weighs heavily in the PCL's 20 items because the instrument emerged from research with prisoners. But using the PCL-R's consequent ability to predict violence to assert the theoretical validity of its underlying personality construct is a tautological, or circular, argument, claim Skeem and Cooke. Or, as John Ellard put it more directly back in 1998:

"Why has this man done these terrible things? Because he is a psychopath. And how do you know that he is a psychopath? Because he has done these terrible things."

Rebuttal and response

Alongside the critique, Psychological Assessment has published a rebuttal by Robert Hare and Craig Neumann, along with a surrebuttal by Cooke and Skeem. Hare and Neumann accuse the critics of erecting a straw-man argument and misrepresenting their work:

The very title of their article is a straw man based on the unfounded claim that Hare and his colleagues consider criminality to be central or fundamental to the psychopathy construct. Their claim is bolstered by arguments misconstruing our published work and that of others and by quotes of our work that have been taken out of context or reconstructed in such a way that it appears that we have said something that we did not say. Skeem and Cooke also made highly selective use of the literature, often omitting published studies that directly contradict or do not support the points they attempted to make, particularly with respect to the role of antisocial tendencies in clinical and empirical conceptions of psychopathy. These tactics are inconsistent with their tutorial on the philosophy of science, compromise their arguments, and divert attention from any legitimate issues raised in their article. We contend that Skeem and Cooke did the field a disservice by presenting an inaccurate account of the role of the PCL–R in theory and research on psychopathy, both applied and basic.

I encourage readers to analyze all three papers, along with the two reports in Science, and draw your own conclusions.

• My original post on the controversy is HERE; a brief followup is HERE.
• Science writer John Travis' blog post on the story, in Science Insider (with more links), is HERE.
• Coverage at Mind Hacks is HERE.
• For more background and links on the UK libel law reform campaign, see my March 27 post, "Lie detection critic silenced by lawsuit."
  

The current issue of Psychological Assessment contains another article pertaining to the controversial psychopathy construct. In their abstract of "Validity of Rorschach Inkblot scores for discriminating psychopaths from nonpsychopaths in forensic populations: A meta-analysis," authors James Wood, Scott Lilienfeld and colleagues assert:

Gacono and Meloy (2009) have concluded that the Rorschach Inkblot Test is a sensitive instrument with which to discriminate psychopaths from nonpsychopaths. We examined the association of psychopathy with 37 Rorschach variables in a meta-analytic review of 173 validity coefficients derived from 22 studies comprising 780 forensic participants…. The present findings contradict the view that the Rorschach is a clinically sensitive instrument for discriminating psychopaths from nonpsychopaths.

Criminal Justice and Behavior: Free articles

During the month of May only, Sage Publications is offering free access to select articles from the 2009 volume of Criminal Justice and Behavior. Selections of potential interest to my readers include the following:

The Prediction of Violence in Adult Offenders: A Meta-Analytic Comparison of Instruments and Methods of Assessment
by Mary Ann Campbell, Sheila French and Paul Gendreau

Closing The Revolving Door? Substance Abuse Treatment as an Alternative to Traditional Sentencing for Drug-Dependent Offenders
by Tara D. Warner and John H. Kramer

Inferring Sexually Deviant Behavior from Corresponding Fantasies: The Role of Personality and Pornography Consumption
by Kevin M. Williams, Barry S. Cooper, Teresa M. Howell, John C. Yuille and Delroy L. Paulhus

Credit goes to Jarrod Steffan, a forensic and clinical psychologist in Wichita, Kansas who specializes in criminal forensic psychology, for alerting me to this special offer.

"Dismantling Hate" show features this author

On August 24th 2008, a young singer-songwriter named Geo Vaughn was walking down the street in New York City when he was set upon and viciously attacked by six young men.

Random? Probably.

Senseless? Not in the minds of the attackers, who believed they had a legitimate basis to punish Geo. After all, he is gay.

Premiering today is "Dismantling Hate," an episode of the award-winning educational television program In The Life on antigay violence. The show features an interview with your very own blogger on the motivations of antigay offenders (the topic of my doctoral research and several subsequent publications).

In the Life, "the longest-running television show documenting the gay experience," is a three-time Emmy Award nominee out of New York that airs nationally on public televison.

Click on the above image to view the short segment.

UK may end controversial "dangerous and severe personality disorder" program

In what could signal a seismic shift against civil commitment based on pretextual mental disorder, England is rumored to be considering an end to its controversial "Dangerous and Severe Personality Disorder" (DSPD) program.

The program was launched in 1999 and has so far cost an estimated 200 million pounds (more than $300 million USD), with little evidence of efficacy in identifying dangerous criminals or curbing violent crime. The four DSPD units -- two at Broadmoor and Rampton high security hospitals and two at Whitemoor and Frankland prisons -- house about 300 offenders. Critics say the label Dangerous and Severe Personality Disorder is a political invention, not a true psychiatric disorder.

According to an exclusive report by London's independent Channel 4 News, the Ministry of Justice is considering a halt to the program based in part on a report that concludes that the program "has been largely ineffective and should now be abandoned." The report, co-authored by former government advisor Peter Tyrer, is under review for the journal Medicine, Science and The Law, published by the British Academy of Forensic Sciences.

The report follows on the heels of another critical analysis that I recently blogged about, due to be published in the International Journal of Law & Psychiatry. That study, "Dangerous and severe personality disorder: An investigation of the construct," by authors Ullrich, Yang, and Coid, found a very high rate of false positives -- that is, people categorized as DSPD and at high risk of serious reoffending when they actually did not reoffend when tracked in the community.

Ullrich and colleagues found that 26 DSPD offenders would need to be civilly committed to prevent one major violent act. In regard to sex crimes, the researchers found that most were committed by offenders who were NOT categorized as DSPD, undermining the UK Home Office and Department of Health assumption that offenders at the highest risk for future sex offending would be categorized as DSPD.

If Britain does indeed eliminate the DSPD program, it will be a major blow for those who advocate for civil commitment as a viable means of increasing public safety. Not only is it exorbitantly expensive, but also the civil liberties implications of wrongfully detaining people who are not truly dangerous based on unreliable prediction tools are ominous.

It will also be a blow against the creation of dubious new diagnoses to justify civil commitment on the grounds of purported mental disorder, as is being done here in the United States.

Finally, this scientific setback may also help to discourage those who seek to extend civil commitment to other populations, such as juveniles.

Upcoming forensic training workshops

Forensic Training Institute - Diagnostic Controversies
April 16 (CA)

Your host (Karen Franklin) and colleague Craig Lareau will present this all-day training at the California Psychological Association convention in Oakland, California. Geared toward advanced-level forensic practitioners, we will focus on current diagnostic controversies in the field including those surrounding Antisocial Personality Disorder, Psychopathy, the sexual disorders as used in Sexually Violent Predator (SVP) proceedings, and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.

Click HERE for more information and online registration.

Assessing Malingering and Miranda Rights Waiver
April 24 (VA)

If you want to get away from the cold and visit a pretty place, you might want to check out this excellent training down in Charlottesville, Virginia. Richard Rogers, whom most of you all know as a leading forensic psychology practitioner and scholar, is presenting this full-day training sponsored by the always-excellent Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy (ILPP) at the University of Virginia. Dr. Rogers will be presenting one-half day on malingering (the topic of his classic reference text) and one-half day on evaluation of Miranda Rights, another of his specialty areas.

Click HERE for more information and to register.

Assessing Violence Risk in Community Settings
May 22 (VA)

This is a chance to hear from John Monahan, probably the foremost expert on this topic. Monahan has authored or edited 15 books and written hundreds of articles; his work on violence risk is frequently cited by courts, including the California Supreme Court in the landmark Tarasoff v. Regents and the United States Supreme Court in Barefoot v. Estelle, in which he was referred to as "the leading thinker on the issue" of violence risk assessment. This training is also sponsored by the Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy (ILPP) at the University of Virginia.

Click HERE for information and registration.

News headlines from around the U.S.

The major news outlets are running all kinds of stories relevant to forensic psychology. Here is a sampling.

CSI counterpoint

The fallability of forensic sciences is gaining attention lately. Roger Koppl, director of the Institute for Forensic Science Administration, and Dan Krane, a biological sciences prof at Wright State, co-authored this informative op-ed piece in the Newark (NJ) Star-Ledger:

Defendants should have right to forensic expertise

When patients kill

It is always bad news when someone is certified ready for release from a psychiatric hospital and then commits a violent offense. Take William Bruce: Two months after the 24-year-old schizophrenic was released from a hospital in Maine, he hatcheted his mother to death. Here, the Wall Street Journal finds fault with patients rights' advocates who lobbied for Bruce's release:

A Death in the Family: Aided by advocates for the mentally ill, William Bruce left the hospital -- only to kill his mother

Christian Science Monitor slams sex offender laws

As public awareness mounts regarding restrictive residency laws targeting sex offenders, the Christian Science Monitor joins the fray with this hard-hitting editorial by C. Alexander Evans:

Protecting our kids – or jeopardizing everyone's freedom? Residency laws for child sex offenders flout the Constitution

MoJo's "Slammed: The coming prison meltdown"

And if you've got time for still more reading, a highly recommend the Mother Jones special on incarceration, "SLAMMED." It features at least nine interesting articles, among them:

Hard Time Out: The prison boom comes to the schools

Probation Profiteers: In Georgia's outsourced justice system, a traffic ticket can land you deep in the hole

Why Texas Still Holds 'Em: Forget oil and gold. In the Lone Star state, the boomtown business is locking up immigrants

When Prison Guards Go Soft: Even California's powerful prison guards' union thinks more prisons are a bad idea

Not to mention, a "MoJo Prison Guide" with a glossary of prison slang and answers to such obscure prison trivia as:

• What Do Prisoners Make for Victoria's Secret?
• Which Works Better Behind Bars, Scuba or Buddha?
  

Hat tip: Jane

Scarface idolatry: Evidence of violence?

I was driving past an abandoned gas station where vendors usually sell fresh strawberries and oranges from the back of a pickup truck. This day, the vendors were selling Scarface posters instead. Framed ones, all different poses of the cultural icon.

The sight harkened me back to a young drug trafficker I evaluated. Although he had no known history of violence, federal agents found a Scarface poster along with a loaded handgun in his home. The poster, argued federal prosecutors, showed a propensity for violence.

I don't know how many young drug traffickers hang Scarface posters on their walls, but after last month's appellate decision in U.S. v. Marin I can say that it is not a good idea. Antonio Marin of Massachusetts was caught under very similar circumstances to the young man I evaluated. Charged with possessing a firearm in furtherance of drug trafficking, he said no, he simply had a "casual," innocent interest in guns. At trial, the government rebutted that defense by presenting a Scarface shadow box found in Marin's apartment. The display case contained (among other items) a picture of Al Pacino aiming a machine gun, a replica gun, and a cigar.

An appellate court upheld the use of the Scarface memorabilia against Marin, saying its probative value outweighed its potentially prejudicial impact.

That's where expert testimony might have proven helpful. As I wrote in my report in the similar case, research has established certain factors as correlated with violence. Scarface idolatry, no matter its intuitive appeal, is not one of them. If it was, the crime rate would be much higher: Scarface is one of the most popular DVD's on Amazon, and the Internet has dozens of Scarface-related sites and hundreds of spin-off products, including music tapes, posters, and T-shirts.

Researchers have studied the effects of violent media on aggression for decades, generating hundreds of studies on this topic. Although the debate continues to rage, there is general consensus that no direct link exists between violent cinematic imagery and real-life violence. Watching large amounts of violent movies or TV shows might encourage violence in those already so inclined, but fantasy violence is neither necessary nor sufficient to trigger real-life violence.

Interestingly, the potentially unfair prejudice of Scarface memorabilia was acknowledged in a second case last month, this time when the defense tried to introduce it at a trial.

High school students Jean Pierre Orlewicz and Alexander Letkemann of Michigan were on trial for a gruesome beheading-murder of a 26-year-old man named Daniel Sorensen. To bolster their claim of self defense, the teenagers sought to introduce images from Sorensen's MySpace page of - you guessed it - Scarface.

No can do, the judge ruled. The photos "would tend to move the jury to decide the matter on an improper basis such as inflamed passions and emotions."

Sorensen is not the only murder victim whose MySpace site was scoured for the low-down on his personality and proclivities. Indeed, that is one of the first places police (as well as people like me) will look for uncensored (if sometimes exaggerated) self portrayals when someone gets caught up in a crime. That potential reality is far from the minds of young people as they immerse themselves in the semi-public world of social networking.


Take the case of University of California Berkeley fraternity member Christopher Wootton. He was killed this month in a drunken, late-night brawl. His loyal friends and family insist he was a peaceable guy who must have been trying to defuse the combatants. On his MySpace site just a week earlier, however, he had bragged about grinding another man's face into the pavement during an unrelated drunken fight.

Will this admission be allowed in court, to bolster the 20-year-old murder defendant's contention that he acted in self defense? Only time will tell.

One thing is certain: If either of these young men had a Scarface poster on their wall, we will hear about it on the local news. And then those street-corner vendors might have to go back to selling fruit. So far, no one has tried to link strawberries to violence.

Hat tip: Colin Miller at EvidenceProf

Violence among psychiatric patients

Psychiatric Services has just published an exciting special issue on violence among psychiatric patients, featuring some of the biggest names in the field.

First, and probably most controversial, is a heated debate looking back at the MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study, which some cite as proof that discharged psychiatric patients are no more dangerous than anyone else. Facing off are the big names - John Monahan, Hank Steadman, E. Fuller Torrey, and Jonathan Stanley.

Next, there's a review of all empirical studies of violence and victimization among people with severe mental illnesses in the United States since 1990, along with a discussion of the public health implications, by the esteemed Linda Teplin and colleagues.

Then, there's a very practical article on assessing risk for violence by psychiatric patients, aptly entitled "Beyond the 'Actuarial Versus Clinical' Assessment Debate."

And, there's more - online here. The lead editorial and the abstracts for each article are free, but the full articles require a subscription, unfortunately.

Teen male violence linked to aggressive sports

The sports culture surrounding football and wrestling may be fueling violence among teen male players and also among their male friends, according to a Penn State study released this week.

"Sports such as football, basketball, and baseball provide players with a certain status in society," said Derek Kreager, assistant professor of sociology in the Crime, Law, and Justice program. "But football and wrestling are associated with violent behavior because both sports involve some physical domination of the opponent, which is rewarded by the fans, coaches and other players."

Analyzing data from about 7,000 male students at 120 schools, the researchers found that football players and wrestlers were especially likely to get into serious fights. Perhaps more startingly, just having football-playing friends predicted violence among boys who were not athletes.

The Penn State press release is here.

Hat tip: Kirk Witherspoon

Intriguing new book: Psychology of women's violence

The second edition of Anna Motz's Psychology of Female Violence: Crimes Against the Body is now available for download as an ebook. The print version is forthcoming from Taylor & Francis. From the book's description:

What are the causes of violence in women? What can be done to help these women and their victims? Why does society deny the fact of female violence? This book explores the nature and causes of female violence from the perspectives of psychodynamic theory and forensic psychology. This fully updated and expanded second edition explores developments in research and services for violent women. The Psychology of Female Violence will be valuable to trainees and practitioners working in the fields of clinical and forensic psychology, women's studies, sociology, psychiatric nursing, social work, probation, counselling, psychoanalysis, the criminal justice system and criminology. Recent high profile cases of female violence are discussed alongside clinical material and theory.

Topics in the new edition include:

• The Victoria Climbié Inquiry
• The controversy surrounding Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy
• Dangerous and Severe Personality Disorder in women
• The impact of pro-anorexia and pro-bulimia websites
• Clinical issues of working with women who kill
• Designing therapeutic services for women in secure mental health settings
• Women who sexually and physically abuse children
• Infanticide
• Fabricated and induced illness
• Self Harm