Militarization: When the extraordinary becomes ordinary

In line with the human rights theme of this year's Blog Action Day (it's exciting to be coordinating with 2,000+ other bloggers from around the world!),* let me share four brief anecdotes. They may seem unrelated but, ultimately, they do connect. I promise.

#1: Cheye Calvo, mayor of the small town of Berwyn Heights, Maryland, was in his bedroom one night, changing clothes for a meeting. His mother-in-law was in the kitchen, cooking a tomato-artichoke sauce. Suddenly, Calvo heard an explosion and the sound of gunfire. Heavily armed men clad in black burst into the house. He saw his mother-in-law lying face-down on the kitchen floor at gunpoint. His two beloved black Labradors lay dead in pools of blood. Clad only his boxer shorts, the mayor was bound and forced to kneel on the floor. This was it, he thought. He was about to be executed, but he knew not why.

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#2: In the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City, an alert neighbor observed a man forcing a woman into her apartment. Police were called. They burst in and found the woman in handcuffs, a man hiding in her closet with rope and two pairs of women's panties in his backpack. Daryl Thomas was a resident of the neighborhood, a husband and a father, and a computer system manager for a Manhattan law firm. When questioned by Senior Detective Harold Hernandez, he was forthcoming. No, this was not his first sexual assault; he had committed seven or eight similar attacks in the neighborhood in recent months. Yes, he was willing to show police the precise locations. The detective had one major problem: He was unaware of any serial rape spree in the 33rd precinct. If the victims had reported the crimes, the Manhattan Special Victims Unit would have notified the precinct of the pattern, so police could be on the lookout for a suspect matching Thomas’s description.

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Police prepare to enter Carey apartment

#3: After dental hygienist Miriam Carey attempted to ram a barricade near the White House and was shot to death on Oct. 3, her one-year-old baby in the car, police descended upon her home town of Stamford, Connecticut, armed with helicopters, bomb trucks, Hazardous Materials trucks and machine guns. The 100-odd personnel from the U.S. Secret Service, the FBI and state and local police sealed off the area and evacuated nearby residents before donning Haz-Mat suits with self-contained breathing apparatuses and entering Carey’s apartment. Rather than bombs, guns or Al Qaeda literature, they reportedly found prescriptions for the antipsychotic risperidone and the antidepressant escitalopram, medications consistent with Carey's diagnosis of postpartum depression with psychosis.

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Ohio State University's MRAP

#4: Ohio State University has just obtained a military surplus Mine-Resistant, Ambush-Protected (MRAP) armored personnel carrier. Explaining the acquisition, the campus police chief points out that stadiums are at risk for terrorist attacks, according to the Department of Homeland Security. The MRAP may also be used for crowd control at football games. The vehicle cost about half a million dollars to produce and is designed to withstand "ballistic arms fire, mine fields, IED's, and Nuclear, Biological and Chemical environments." To make its appearance less ominous, its desert tan is being repainted black and its roof-mounted machine gun being removed. The university joins the ranks of cities across America -- from Preston, Idaho to Cullman, Alabama to Boulder, Colorado and Murrieta, California -- that are cashing in on Department of Homeland Security grant money to buy such intimidating vehicles. In Dallas County, Texas, for example, the sheriff’s department plans to use its new MRAP to serve drug warrants. 

So what's the connection?

All four anecdotes relate to an insiduous shift in U.S. policing over the past few decades, toward greater and greater militarization.

The emergence of SWAT

Young people born in the 1980s may find it hard to believe that back in 1970, there was only one SWAT team in the entire United States -- in Los Angeles, California. Today, SWAT teams are a cultural icon. Almost all cities and most small towns have these paramilitary forces. By and large, the role of SWAT teams is far removed from the Hollywood image of hostage rescue or mass shooting intervention. Rather, they are being deployed – tens of thousands of times per year – in drug raids and to serve routine warrants, according to a new book by award-winning in investigative journalist Radley Balko. 

Cheye Calvo, the mayor of Berwyn Heights, Maryland (Anecdote 1), was a victim of one such raid. Mistaken drug raids are far from rare. The judiciary's progressive weakening of checks and balances in regard to warrants and searches has fostered a police culture in which "extraordinary violence" is meted out with impunity. The shooting of dogs "at the slightest provocation," Balko writes, is part of a larger problem of an us-against-them "battlefield mentality" in which many police see the citizenry as the enemy.

Allure of the techno-warrior

"Why serve an arrest warrant to some crack dealer with a .38?" asked one U.S. military officer who trained police SWAT teams in the 1990s. "With full armor, the right shit, and training, you can kick ass and have fun."

As this quote implies, SWAT raids -- conducted hundreds of times per year in cities large and small -- foster a masculine culture of violence and a worship of a "techno-warrior" image of policing. SWAT raids are the ultimate in power, an adrenaline rush that is quickly habit-forming. Recruitment videos that emphasize this culture may, in turn, be changing the type of individual who seeks to become a police officer.

Texas SWAT team terrorizes organic farmers in August

Balko traces the militarization of police to the "drug war" ideology that began under President Nixon and escalated under Ronald Reagan. One specific clause in an omnibus crime bill of 1984, not considered particularly controversial at the time, ultimately produced a seismic shift in American policing. The asset forfeiture law allowed police to seize property, auction it off, and divide up the bounty, just so long as federal agents were even remotely involved in the investigation.

Asset forfeiture created a huge incentive for police to go after people in order to seize their property. Drug enforcement brought in boatloads of cash, much of which was reinvested into more battle gear. Police departments competed with each other for drug revenue, to the neglect of investigating violent crimes such as rape, robbery and murder. So, we end up with situations like the one a few years back in Oakland, California, in which a lack of investigative prioritization allowed a serial rapist on parole to remain free to prey on young African American girls until he finally made the mistake of gunning down four police officers.

Detective work is no fun

Many police officers are appalled by the insidious militarization of police. Betty Taylor, police chief of a small Missouri town, recalled how she became troubled by the economic disparity between the "drug guys," flush with property seizures and endless federal grants, and the struggling sex crimes unit that she had established.

"When you think about the collateral effects of a sex crime, of how it can affect an entire family, an entire community, it just didn’t make sense," she told Balko. "The drug users weren't really harming anyone but themselves. Even the dealers, I found much of the time they were just people with little money, just trying to get by." Her opinion solidified when she was recruited onto a SWAT team, and witnessed first-hand the lasting terror that the raids produced in vulnerable children.

"I thought, how can we be the good guys when we come into the house looking like this, screaming and pointing guns at the people they love? ... Good police work has nothing to do with dressing up in black and breaking into houses in the middle of the night…. When you get into that [us-versus-them] mentality, there are no innocent people. There's us and there's the enemy. Children and dogs are always the easiest casualties."

Downgrading crime

The case of Daryl Thomas (Anecdote 2) involved more than neglect of violent crimes. As Detective Hernandez discovered, police brass in his precinct -- and throughout New York City -- were systematically downgrading crimes from serious felonies to minor misdemeanors, in order to improve their CompStat crime statistics. A model that has been adopted throughout the United States as well as in England and Australia, CompStat had the unintended consequence of fostering competition among precincts for lower statistics. Only seven categories of major crime are counted in crime statistics and made publicly available, so police can reduce crime rates by, for example, reclassifying attempted rape as criminal trespass.

The Thomas case was handled quietly, with no media attention. Thomas was convicted and sentenced to 50 years in prison. But Hernandez, frustrated by the constant battles with his own superiors, took an early retirement. "Unfortunately, this is the culture for the young cop coming into the department. He doesn't see the bigger picture," he said. "If it's going to allow him to have a day off, and they won't ride him or harass him, he'll go along with it. And New Yorkers are being victimized, and no one responds to their complaints."

While major crimes were being downgraded to misdemeanors, Manhattan police were also being encouraged to trump up minor cases -- drinking in public or driving without a seatbelt -- in order to bolster their statistics. Police officer Adrian Schoolcraft surreptitiously recorded his superiors giving these directives; with the collusion of a department psychologist, he eventually found himself drummed out of the force on trumped-up psychiatric grounds. (You can hear excerpts from his secret tapes on This American Life.)

Culture of fear

Putting the case of dental hygienist Miriam Carey (Anecdote 3) in historical context illustrates just how much has changed in the past few decades. 

Back in 1976, Chester M. Plummer became the first person shot to death by White House guards. Plummer and Carey were similar in some respects. Both were African American. Both were described as apolitical. And both manifested signs of psychiatric decompensation. With her postpartum psychosis, Carey had apparently incorporated President Obama into a delusional belief system. Plummer, a decorated Army veteran, former high school football star and part-time cabbie, had been examined by a psychiatrist after being arrested for indecent exposure; the doctor thought Plummer's recent divorce had triggered a psychiatric crisis. On July 25, 1976, Plummer scaled a fence while holding a three-foot pipe. He was shot to death after ignoring the guards’ orders to stop.

What happened -- or didn't happen -- next is where the difference in culture emerges. Blogging at The Nation, Rick Perlstein compares the two cases to highlight the extreme overreaction of police today to any threat, however contained.

"There’s terrorism now, they say. But there was terrorism then, nearly every month -- 89 bombings attributed by the FBI to terrorism in 1975, culminating in that awful LaGuardia bomb; and a veritable wave in the winter and spring 1976, much of it around the trial of Patty Hearst: of an FBI office in Berkeley, Standard Oil of California headquarters in San Francisco. Americans didn’t freak out, or shut down, or exhibit symptoms of PTSD. They had a massive outdoor national 200th birthday party."

Writing in The Baffler, Chris Bray makes a similar point in regard to the shutdown of Boston after the explosion at the marathon that killed three people.

Police outside Carey residence in Stamford, CT

In the aftermath of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the 1996 bombing at the Atlanta Olympics, and the paired 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, here’s what didn’t happen: whole cities weren’t locked down, armored personnel carriers with police logos didn’t rumble in, and SWAT teams in combat uniforms and body armor didn’t storm through the suburbs for a loosely ordered set of (ultimately hapless) house-to-house searches. Somehow, though, 2013 was the year it became appropriate to close cities, turning off taxis, buses, and trains and telling residents that the governor was suggesting -- okay, strongly suggesting -- that they not leave their homes until the police said so. One of those familiar moments in which officials ask the public to be on the lookout turned into a remarkable new moment in which officials ask the public to cease to exist in its public form so that the police can have the streets.

That leaves Anecdote 4, about armored personnel carriers, which pretty much speaks for itself.

"We are in the midst of a historic transformation," wrote Eastern Kentucky University professor Peter B. Kraska in 2007 in regard to police militarization. "Attempting to control the crime problem by routinely conducting police special-operations raids on people’s private residences is strong evidence that the U.S. police, and crime-control efforts in general, have moved significantly down the militarization continuum." 

The irony is that this militarization is occurring simultaneously with a great diminution in violent crime in the United States. In particular, despite the public's perception of police work as dangerous, the job of law enforcement is getting safer all the time.

The American Civil Liberties Union is looking into the broader implications of the spread of military culture into domestic policing in the United States. The agency believes that militarization has come at the cost of trampled human rights and a greater risk of violence, according to a report in the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch. The study is due out next year.

That strikes me as a bit too late. Pandora's box has long been opened, and there's no going back.

So, don’t be too surprised if you happen to spy a mine-resistant, ambush-protected, armored personnel carrier rolling down your street in the near future. It's only a matter of time.

Sources and recommended resources:

Radley Balko (2013), Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces 

Peter Kraska (2007), Militarizing the American Criminal Justice System: The Changing Roles of the Armed Forces and the Police

Graham Rayman (June 8, 2010), Village Voice, NYPD Tapes 3: A Detective Comes Forward about Downgraded Sexual Assaults: When even attempted rapes are being downgraded to misdemeanors, is the public safe?

Rick Perlstein (Oct. 3, 2013), Nation, Culture of Fear: Miriam Carey’s Tragedy, and Our Own

Ira Glass, This American Life, “Right to Remain Silent” (well worth a look or, better yet, a listen)

Sarah Stillman (August 12, 2013), New Yorker, Taken: Under civil forfeiture, Americans who haven’t been charged with wrongdoing can be stripped of their cash, cars, and even homes. Is that all we’re losing? 

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*Blog Action Day is an international event in which thousands of bloggers around the world pledge to participate. This year's theme, in coordination with Amnesty International, is human rights. If you want to see a true smorgasbord of human rights topics streaming in live, check out the web page.

Study: Risk tools don't work with psychopaths

If you want to know whether that psychopathic fellow sitting across the table from you will commit a violent crime within the next three years, you might as well flip a coin as use a violence risk assessment tool.

Popular risk assessment instruments such as the HCR-20 and the VRAG perform no better than chance in predicting risk among prisoners high in psychopathy, according to a new study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry. The study followed a large, high-risk sample of released male prisoners in England and Wales.

Risk assessment tools performed fairly well for men with no mental disorder. Utility was decreased for men diagnosed with schizophrenia or depression, became worse yet for those with substance abuse, and ranged from poor to no better than chance for individuals with personality disorders. But the instruments bombed completely when it came to men with high scores on the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) (which, as regular readers of this blog know, has real-world validity problems all its own). 

"Our findings have major implications for risk assessment in criminal populations," noted study authors Jeremy Coid, Simone Ullrich and Constantinos Kallis. "Routine use of these risk assessment instruments will have major limitations in settings with high prevalence of severe personality disorder, such as secure psychiatric hospitals and prisons."

The study, "Predicting future violence among individuals with psychopathy," may be requested from the first author, Jeremy Coid (click HERE).  

California prisons careening closer to cliff

For a minute there, it looked like California's prisons were on the verge of positive reforms. But the current situation in the state's massive prison system -- one of the largest in the world -- is far from encouraging. It's been a kaleidoscope of bad news lately.

Chemical weapons

Private prison company annual report (credit Huff Post)

Guards have been videotaped tossing chemical grenades and pumping pepper spray into the cells of psychotic prisoners, some of them screaming and delirious. In one case, the prisoner's offense was not taking his psych meds; an asthmatic prisoner was sprayed for refusing to leave a holding cage, according to AP news coverage. A federal judge will rule next week on whether the public has a right to see the disturbing videos as part of a legal case challenging abusive discipline of mentally ill prisoners and inadequate mental health care for prisoners on death row. An expert observer described the chemical arsenals possessed by California guards as "shocking."

Realignment woes

Another snippet from the Correctional Corp of America

Meanwhile, things are getting worse in many of the state's 58 county jails. The state's "realignment plan," in which nonviolent offenders stay in county jails rather than going to prison, is causing lots of headaches for jails and prisoners alike. The idea was to reduce prison overcrowding while keeping prisoners closer to home and within range of reintegration services. But the plan shifts the burden onto cash-strapped counties that are ill-equipped to handle a large influx of convicts. In state prisons, convicts get yard time and some educational or vocational programming. In many jails, in contrast, they can sit in a room the size of your bathroom for five years or more. Sheriffs are complaining of a rise in violence, and forecasting a rash of lawsuits like those dogging the state prisons. According to an ACLU report, rather than reforming incarceration policies, counties are scrambling to add new jail beds. One exception is in progressive San Francisco, where jailers, prosecutors and defense attorneys alike have embraced realignment as an opportunity to create community-based alternatives to incarceration.


Hunger strike

Private prisons benefit from immigration crackdowns

After two months, prisoners ended their hunger strike over long-term isolation without any tangible victories. In a remarkable show of solidarity, the strike initially included more than 30,000 prisoners from around the state. By the end, the numbers had dwindled to about 100. The strike was called off after two legislators – Loni Hancock and Tom Ammiano -- announced they would hold public hearings into the prisoners’ complaints over the security housing units, or SHUs. Hancock said that concerns over the use and conditions of solitary confinement in California's prisons "can no longer be ignored."

Private prisons

Finally, and perhaps most disturbingly, on Monday a massive private prison corporation announced that state Governor Jerry Brown had signed a deal to ship 1,400 prisoners to its private facilities. The GEO Group, formerly the infamous Wackenhut Corrections Corporation, is a Florida-based corporation that manages 96 facilities with about 73,000 beds worldwide, including in the USA, Australia, South Africa and the United Kingdom.  

Click on image to visit Huffington Post infographic and related resources

The states of fiscal emergency in the public sector encourage governments to contract with private prisons that promise cost savings. But private prison corporations like Geo Group and the Corrections Corporation of America are short-sighted quick fixes. They encourage prison growth by mandating that governments guarantee them a certain minimum occupancy. It's kind of like when the American Psychological Association contracts with hotels in a convention city; if not enough psychologists rent rooms, the APA must pay the difference. In a report released this month, In the Public Interest found that nearly two-thirds of contracts between private prison companies and state and local governments included such quotas. Arizona recently paid $3 million to a prison company for failing to meet a 97 percent occupancy quota, the Huffington Post reported.  

The Post, one of the few media outlets to regularly cover this disturbing trend, has published an infographic illustrating the widespread nature of these contracts, which discourage criminal justice reform by "leaving taxpayers footing the bill for lower crime rates." As part of its coverage, the Post took a peak at annual shareholder reports of the Corrections Corp. of America that reveal its "aggressive business strategy based on building prison beds, or buying them off the government, and contracting them to government authorities." (The drop quotes in the post are just a few of the nuggets they unearthed.)

"Profits, after lining the pockets of shareholders, are used to create more beds and to lobby state and federal agencies to deliver inmates to fill them," the Post reports. "The resulting facilities can be violent and disgusting."

As one example, the Post reported on the horrendous conditions that quickly developed after the Corrections Corp. of America bought a formerly public prison in Ohio. Educational programming for prisoners and salaries of staff were slashed, violence and drug use skyrocketed, and correctional officers jumped ship en masse, leaving newcomers to run the facility. Prisoners in isolation were left to wallow in their own filth, with no access to running water or toilets.

Efficacy of sex offender treatment still up in the air

Sex offender group treatment, Larned State Hospital, Kansas

"Did he complete treatment?"

That is a front-burner question for judges and jurors in sexually violent predator trials. Understandably, before they decide to release someone who has been convicted of sexually molesting a child, they want reassurance that he is sincerely remorseful and has acquired the tools to turn his life around. In short, they want a certificate of rehabilitation attesting to his low risk.

But does formal sex offender treatment really lower risk?

A systematic review found no scientifically rigorous studies that establish a link between treatment completion and a reduced risk of reoffending among men who have sexually abused children.

This isn't altogether fresh news. We knew from earlier research reviews that:

• Any effect of treatment was modest, at best
• Treatment works best for the tiny minority of very high-risk offenders, while possibly aggravating risk for the broad majority of men at lower risk of recidivism 
• Older offenders, due mainly to their very low risk, derive no tangible benefits from treatment

But considering both the prevalence and the harm of child sexual abuse, there is surprisingly little high-quality research on effective interventions. Partly, this is because of the lock-'em-up-and-throw-away-the-key mentality of policy makers. And partly it is because of the ethical difficulties in implementing random-design procedures, a hallmark of the scientific method, because men assigned to a control group would be denied treatment that could reduce their risk and in some cases shorten their prison terms.

Patient at "treatment program" in Minnesota

Scouring research databases, a six-member, international research team was able to locate only three well-designed experimental studies. These included one with adults, one with adolescents and one with children. In only the study with adolescents was treatment shown to reduce recidivism. That project used multisystemic therapy, a very promising approach that integrates the family and larger community in the treatment. 

Even broadening the search to include observational studies that lacked experimental designs, the research team found only five studies with a low enough risk of research bias to be deemed reliable. None of the five observational studies demonstrated that formal treatment -- primarily cognitive behavioral therapy with relapse prevention -- impacts sexual reoffending.

High-bias studies, in which the study design introduced a high probability of unreliable findings, were excluded. An example of such research bias would be a study in which treated and untreated offenders differed on a variable known to affect risk. When subjects are  not randomly assigned to treatment or control groups, any observed differences between groups may be due to factors outside of the treatment itself.

Treatment in most formal sex offender programs is cognitive behavioral, and relies primarily on manual-based group therapy. For example, group exercises challenge distorted thinking, denial and minimization.

The research team found no  minimally adequate studies whatsoever on the efficacy of pharmacological treatment with antiandrogen drugs, more popularly known as "chemical castration." They found this omission "particularly striking," in light of the prominence of this method in public debates. 

Can treatment cause harm?

Given "the overall unimpressive treatment effects" that were found, the researchers cautioned clinicians working with sex offenders to consider the potential negative effects of treatment:

"Journeymen" by Ricky Romain (reproduced with permission)

"Under certain circumstances, with some people and some interventions, treatment could increase the risk of sexual reoffending. For instance, prolonged or intense interventions for offenders at low risk of relapse, or grouping low risk offenders with those at high risk for reoffending, could result in adverse outcomes."

They especially cautioned against unnecessary treatment of children. With recidivism risk very low among untreated children, treatment may lead to "unjustified stigmatization and could negatively affect the child’s development…. If these children are subjected to excessively intense or inappropriate therapy, this could increase the risk for future antisocial behavior."

The team was headed up by prominent researcher and professor Niklas Långström and included Canadian researcher R. Karl Hanson, psychologist Pia Enebrink, forensic psychiatrist Eva-Marie Laurén and researchers Jonas Lindblom and Sophie Werkö. The research was commissioned and partially funded by the Swedish government.

The Convention on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse, ratified by 27 countries so far, mandates effective treatment to sexual abusers of children, individuals at higher risk of committing such offences, and children with sexual behavior problems.

This mandate is a bit of a problem, given the inconclusive evidence that the dominant treatment approach works.

Manualized, one-size-fits-all approach

My own belief is that the one-size-fits-all approach of manualized group therapy, driven in part by a shortage of highly qualified and talented clinicians in bureaucratic institutions, can never meet the needs of a heterogeneous population of offenders. Indeed, in the hands of poorly trained technicians, much of what passes for "treatment" is actually punishment in disguise. As anthropology professor Dany Lacombe noted in her insightful ethnographic study,  sex offender treatment can paradoxically cement deviance through its obsessional fixation on sex. As an 18-year-old patient told Lacombe:

"They want to hear that I always have fantasies and that I have more bad ones than good ones. But I don't have bad ones that often. I make up the bad ones. I make them really bad because they won’t leave me alone." 

"Contained" by Ricky Romain (with artist permission)

Genuine treatment, as we all should remember from our graduate school training, is all about the empathic relationship -- not the technique. Indeed, although more and more psychologists have internalized the insurance industry's mantra that cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is the "evidence-based" treatment of choice for a variety of conditions, this is not actually true. For example, in a new randomized clinical trial published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, psychodynamic therapy performed just as well in the treatment of depression.

The research team cautioned that their failure to find significant effects of treatment should not be interpreted to mean that treatment as currently implemented is ineffective. The low base rates of recidivism among sex offenders make it difficult to find treatment effects without very large sample sizes and long follow-up periods, they point out.

Additionally, an early study out of California provided some evidence that it was not the formal completion of treatment per se that reduced risk but, rather, the internalization of treatment messages and a desire to change -- something that is harder to measure. 

The research team issued a call for large-scale, multinational randomized controlled trials. In the meantime, in the absence of solid proof that manualized cognitive-behavioral group therapy works as intended, they recommend a shift to more individualized assessment and treatment.

That's a solid, and very welcome, recommendation.

The study is: "Preventing sexual abusers of children from reoffending: Systematic review of medical and psychological interventions" by Niklas Långström, Pia Enebrink, Eva-Marie Laurén, Jonas Lindblom, Sophie Werkö and R Karl Hanson. It is freely available online from the British Medical Journal (HERE). 

Subscribers: View the conversation and add your comment by scrolling to the bottom of the original blog post (HERE). 

Free, one-stop shopping: Bulletin showcases new violence articles

The first monthly bulletin from the Alliance for International Risk Research just hit my email box, collating August's journal offerings on violence risk assessment and management. A quick sampling from the 17 articles listed:

• Large MM, Ryan CJ, Callaghan S, Paton MB, and Singh SP (2013) Can violence risk assessment really assist in clinical decisionmaking? Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry (online first Aug 2013)

• Rettenberger M, Haubner-Maclean T, and Eher R (2013) The contribution of age to the Static-99 Risk Assessment in a population-based Prison sample of sexual offenders. Criminal Justice & Behavior (online first June 2013)

• Lund C, Hofvander B, Forsman A, Anckarsater H, and Nilsson T (2013) Violent criminal recidivism in mentally disordered offenders: a follow-up study of 13-20 years through different sanctions. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 36, 250-257

• Caldwell MF (2013) Accuracy of Sexually Violent Person Assessments of Juveniles Adjudicated for Sexual Offenses Sexual Abuse (online first March 2013).

AIRR's goal is to make information about the latest research on violence risk assessment available to researchers, practitioners, and policymakers for free. I you don't have access to an academic database you still have to find a way to access the articles themselves, but that can generally be done through a request of the author.) If you haven't already signed up to receive your monthly email, you can do so by clicking HERE. 

'Authorship bias' plays role in research on risk assessment tools, study finds

Reported predictive validity higher in studies by an instrument's designers than by independent researchers

The use of actuarial risk assessment instruments to predict violence is becoming more and more central to forensic psychology practice. And clinicians and courts rely on published data to establish that the tools live up to their claims of accurately separating high-risk from low-risk offenders.

But as it turns out, the predictive validity of risk assessment instruments such as the Static-99 and the VRAG depends in part on the researcher's connection to the instrument in question.

Publication bias in pharmaceutical research
has been well documented

Published studies authored by tool designers reported predictive validity findings around two times higher than investigations by independent researchers, according to a systematic meta-analysis that included 30,165 participants in 104 samples from 83 independent studies.

Conflicts of interest shrouded

Compounding the problem, in not a single case did instrument designers openly report this potential conflict of interest, even when a journal's policies mandated such disclosure.

As the study authors point out, an instrument’s designers have a vested interest in their procedure working well. Financial profits from manuals, coding sheets and training sessions depend in part on the perceived accuracy of a risk assessment tool. Indirectly, developers of successful instruments can be hired as expert witnesses, attract research funding, and achieve professional recognition and career advancement.

These potential rewards may make tool designers more reluctant to publish studies in which their instrument performs poorly. This "file drawer problem," well established in other scientific fields, has led to a call for researchers to publicly register intended studies in advance, before their outcomes are known.

The researchers found no evidence that the authorship effect was due to higher methodological rigor in studies carried out by instrument designers, such as better inter-rater reliability or more standardized training of instrument raters.

"The credibility of future research findings may be questioned in the absence of measures to tackle these issues," the authors warn. "To promote transparency in future research, tool authors and translators should routinely report their potential conflict of interest when publishing research investigating the predictive validity of their tool."

The meta-analysis examined all published and unpublished research on the nine most commonly used risk assessment tools over a 45-year period:

• Historical, Clinical, Risk Management-20 (HCR-20)
• Level of Service Inventory-Revised (LSI-R)
• Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R)
• Spousal Assault Risk Assessment (SARA)
• Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth (SAVRY)
• Sex Offender Risk Appraisal Guide (SORAG)
• Static-99
• Sexual Violence Risk-20 (SVR-20)
• Violence Risk Appraisal Guide (VRAG)

Although the researchers were not able to break down so-called "authorship bias" by instrument, the effect appeared more pronounced with actuarial instruments than with instruments that used structured professional judgment, such as the HCR-20. The majority of the samples in the study involved actuarial instruments. The three most common instruments studied were the Static-99 and VRAG, both actuarials, and the PCL-R, a structured professional judgment measure of psychopathy that has been criticized criticized for its vulnerability to partisan allegiance and other subjective examiner effects.

This is the latest important contribution by the hard-working team of Jay Singh of Molde University College in Norway and the Department of Justice in Switzerland, (the late) Martin Grann of the Centre for Violence Prevention at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden and Seena Fazel of Oxford University.

A goal was to settle once and for all a dispute over whether the authorship bias effect is real. The effect was first reported in 2008 by the team of Blair, Marcus and Boccaccini, in regard to the Static-99, VRAG and SORAG instruments. Two years later, the co-authors of two of those instruments, the VRAG and SORAG, fired back a rebuttal, disputing the allegiance effect finding. However, Singh and colleagues say the statistic they used, the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC), may not have been up to the task, and they "provided no statistical tests to support their conclusions."

Prominent researcher Martin Grann dead at 44

Sadly, this will be the last contribution to the violence risk field by team member Martin Grann, who has just passed away at the young age of 44. His death is a tragedy for the field. Writing in the legal publication Das Juridik, editor Stefan Wahlberg noted Grann's "brilliant intellect" and "genuine humanism and curiosity":

Martin Grann came in the last decade to be one of the most influential voices in both academic circles and in the public debate on matters of forensic psychiatry, risk and hazard assessments of criminals and ... treatment within the prison system. His very broad knowledge in these areas ranged from the law on one hand to clinical therapies at the individual level on the other -- and everything in between. This week, he would also debut as a novelist with the book "The Nightingale."

The article, Authorship Bias in Violence Risk Assessment? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis, is freely available online via PloS ONE (HERE).

Related blog reports:

• Violence risk instruments overpredicting danger (Aug. 2, 2012) 
• Violence risk in schizophrenics: Are forensic tools reliable predictors? (Sept. 14, 2011) 
• Violence risk meta-meta: Instrument choice does matter (June 19, 2011)
• Psychology rife with inaccurate research findings (Nov. 20, 2011)
• International violence risk researchers launch free news service (June 13, 2013) 

Violence prevention: DC to host major collaborative venture

From U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to legal scholar Barbara Bennett Woodhouse, the speakers at next month's APA-ABA collaborative conference read like a who's who in the field of violence prevention.

To give a flavor:

• Carl Hart, the neuroscientist whose memoir I recently featured, will speak on the contribution of U.S. drug policy to violence
• James Garbarino, author of the terrific book Lost Boys: Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them, will address the developmental effects of violence -- a topic that forensic psychologists confront daily in our practices
• Mary Ann Dutton, a leading researcher on domestic violence, will discuss preventing intimate partner violence
• Patrick Tolan and Dewey Cornell will address youth violence in the schools 
• Judge Jay Blitzman and colleagues will talk about disrupting the 'cradle to prison pipeline' by implementing alternatives to school suspension and exclusion 
• Charlotte Patterson, a pioneer in LGBT research, will focus on reducing violence against sexual minorities 
• Mark Soler, an attorney who taught my media law class way back in journalism school, will speak on alternatives to incarceration in juvenile justice 
• Edward Mulvey will address mental illness and substance abuse in violence 

And that's just for starters. With more than 40 plenary and invited sessions, the lineup goes on and on, with a wide array of programming that should appeal to psychologists, attorneys, judges, legal and social science scholars, and anyone else interested in the roles of law and psychology in addressing the effects of violence:

• Intergenerational transmission of violence
• Violence in Native American communities
• Offender reentry
• Risk assessment and threat assessment
• Hate crimes
• Poverty and race in violence
• Sexually violent offenders
• Violence among military veterans
• Elder abuse
• and much more

A major goal of the conference, entitled "Addressing the Unspeakable: Confronting Family and Community Violence, The Intersection of Law and Psychology," is to build on the momentum of Eric Holder's Defending Childhood initiative, which aims to address the effects of violence on children, youth and families.

The conference is co-sponsored by the American Psychological Association and the American Bar Association, and continuation education credits will be provided for both legal and mental health professionals. Early registration ends this week, so register now if you're planning to attend.

The preliminary program is HERE; an overview of the event and its logistics is HERE; the online registration form is HERE. 

8-year prison term in long-running Ayres saga

The up-and-down case of a child psychiatrist who sexually molested boys sent to him by the courts for counseling has finally concluded -- at least for now. William Ayres, 81, pleaded no contest to molesting five boys and was sentenced this week to eight years in prison.

The case has been slogging through the courts for as long as this blog has been around, in large part due to disputes over Ayres's competency. Ayres is suspected of molesting dozens of boys over a period of several decades, but many cases were beyond the statute of limitations.

The case had all of the elements of high drama: A once-respected child psychiatrist accused of molesting vulnerable boys sent to him by the courts. Allegations that prosecutors turned a blind eye. Pressure from victim's rights lobbyists. And, of special interest to this blog's readers, a bevy of mental health experts presenting contradictory evidence.

After a jury trial on the issue of competency ended in a deadlock in 2011, both sides stipulated that Ayres was incompetent due to dementia. He spent about nine months at Napa State Hospital -- where defendants in Northern California are sent for competency restoration treatment -- before the hospital decided that he was faking dementia in an elaborate ruse to avoid trial. He was finally found competent to stand trial after a four-day court hearing late last year.

At his sentencing hearing, victims -- now adults, some with children of their own -- spoke of the traumatic effects of being victimized by someone in a position of trust. As evidence that the former head of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry knew the damage he was inflicting, one former victim even read an excerpt from a journal article Ayres co-authored entitled "Practice Parameters for the Forensic Evaluation of Children and Adolescents Who May Have Been Physically or Sexually Abused."

Victims and their family members burst into applause when Ayres was sentenced, hugging and rejoicing over their victory in a lengthy and uphill struggle for justice, according to a news report in the San Mateo County Times.

But the fight may not be quite over yet: Ayres' attorney warned in court that the wheelchair-bound octogenarian may seek to withdraw his no contest pleas.

My prior blog posts on this case include: 

• Ayres case: Final act in long-running competency drama? Notorious psychiatrist found fit for trial on molestation charges (Nov. 24, 2012)
• Psychiatrist accused of faking dementia to thwart retrial (Aug. 5, 2012)
• Professionals behaving badly: Mistrial in psychiatrist molestation case (July 27, 2009)
• Lesson to abusers: Target socially disempowered (April 23, 2007)

Forensnips aplenty, forensnips galore

Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes, Everybody knows

I can't seem to get Leonard Cohen’s haunting Everybody Knows out of my mind.

Perhaps it's because I was just down in Alabama, the belly of the beast, working on a tragic case. With the highest per capita rate of executions in the United States, the Heart of Dixie State kills people for crimes that other nations punish with probation. No exaggeration. It was jarring to drive around  Montomery and see the close proximity of historic mansions to abandoned homes and decaying housing projects. The juxtaposition is fitting, as Montgomery claims the dual distinctions of being the "cradle of the Confederacy" and the "birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement."  

Montgomery, Alabama (c) Karen Franklin 2013

Or maybe it's a flashback to Elysium, in which the one percenters have left Earth’s teeming masses to rot away while they luxuriate on an idyllic orbiting satellite. The scene in the parole office, with a robot parole agent delivering a quick risk assessment and then pushing meds, is worth the price of admission, although the film is marred by interminable hand-to-hand combat scenes and a ridiculous Hollywood ending.

David Miranda, held hostage
by British security forces

Or, it could be because I’m still riled up over the British government's abuse of David Miranda. He is the Brazilian partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald (think Edward Snowden). In what can only be called an outrageous effort to intimidate journalists, the Brits detained Miranda at Heathrow Airport for nine solid hours -- the maximum allowed under the British Terrorism Act -- before finally releasing him sans his laptop, cell phone and camera. Under the Terrorism Act, he was not entitled to counsel, nor to decline to cooperate. I sure hope it backfires and incenses journalists; it certainly fired up USA Today columnist Rem Rieder (whose column I highly recommend).

* * * * *

I feel bad about the dearth of posts recently. It's been a hectic period. I'll try to make up for my lapse by packing this post with lots of links to forensic psychology and criminology news and views from the past few weeks:

Evidence-based justice: Corrupted memory

Nature magazine's profile of Elizabeth Loftus and her decades-long crusade to expose flaws in eyewitness testimony is worth a gander.

Psychopathic criminals have empathy switch

New research published in the journal Brain indicates that psychopaths do not lack empathy, as is often claimed. Rather, they can switch it on and off at will. The study, out of the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, is freely available online. BBC also has coverage.  

The demographics of sexting

Sexting is becoming increasingly commonplace. But practices and meanings differ by gender, relationship and sexual identity, according to a new article, also available online, in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking.

Brainwashed video discussion

New York Times columnist David Brooks just interviewed psychiatrist Sally Satel and psychologist Scott Lilenfield about their new book, Brainwashed, which is getting quite a bit of media buzz. The book is a workmanlike, if a bit superficial, exploration of the allure of "mindless neuroscience." If you’ve got 65 minutes, I recommend watching the video discussion.

Prison news: Hunger strike, juveniles, the elderly, women

On the prison front, a lot has been going on. California prisoners are into Day 50 or so of their hunger strike over solitary housing (a condition that the Department of Corrections denies, despite many men being kept in segregation units for years and even decades) and other cruel conditions. With prisoners' health deteriorating, a court order has been issued allowing force feeding if necessary to forestall deaths. Mainstream media reporting has been minimal, but at least Al Jazeera's got you covered.  

Even more local to me, a lawsuit has been filed over solitary confinement of juveniles in Contra Costa County. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court, accuses county officials of flouting state laws mandating that juvenile detention facilities be supportive environments designed for rehabilitation.

Meanwhile, NBC news is sounding an alarm over the increasing number of elderly people in U.S. prisons. NBC sounds mostly worried about the cost to taxpayers of prisons teeming with upwards of 400,000 elderly prisoners by the year 2030. Read ithttp://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/29/.UeV62HppQL8.twitter, and weep. 

Piper Kerman, author of the memoir Orange Is the New Black that's become a trendy Netflix series, is also sounding an alarm. In a New York Times op-ed, she writes about a federal plan to ease overcrowding in men's prisons by shipping about 1,000 women from Connecticut down to Alabama and points beyond, where they will be even more estranged from their families. As Kerman notes: "For many families these new locations might as well be the moon." I recommend her thoughtful essay on alternatives for low-risk women prisoners. 

In a more promising development, the U.S. Justice Department has announced efforts to curtail the stiff drug sentences that have caused much of this overcrowding in the first place. The U.S. prison system is so bloated, so costly, and so irrational, that even conservatives are calling for reform. Better late than never, I suppose.

By the way, Florida has executed John Errol Ferguson, the prisoner whose controversial case I blogged about earlier this year, whose competency was contested in part because of his insistence that he was the "Prince of God." The American Bar Association had filed an amicus brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to clarify the standard for competency for execution being applied in the case. 

Sex offender news

In yet another in a series of registry-facilitated vigilante attacks, a South Carolina man has been arrested for killing a sex offender and his wife in the mistaken belief that the man was a child molester. At the same time, there are signs that overzealous laws that contribute to such stigmatization are being scrutinized more closely. For example, a federal judge has struck down a Colorado city's ordinance restricting where registered sex offenders can live, ruling that it conflicts with a state law requiring parolees to be reintegrated into society. An appellate panel in North Carolina has also struck down a law that banned registered sex offenders from using social media sites. The state Court of Appeals agreed with the challenger that the law violated his Constitutional rights to free speech and freedom of association. 

Dispute over expert witness credentials

Finally, there's a big brouhaha in South Dakota over the credentials of a psychologist who frequently testifies as an expert witness in child custody cases. The credentials of the widely respected psychologist, Thomas Price, became an issue during a child custody dispute. It was ascertained that he had earned his PhD in behavioral medicine from an online degree mill called Greenwich University on Norfolk Island, Australia, that was subsequently shuttered by the Australian government. According to an expert on diploma mills quoted by the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, degree mills often adopt the names of respected English universities. Price's resumé says he earned a Ph.D. in behavioral medicine from Greenwich University, without noting the Norfolk Island location. "Typically," notes the article, "people don’t get caught using an unaccredited degree until they assume a high-profile position ... or they do something that causes another person to research their backgrounds…. If you stay under the radar, you can get by."

Science blogger

Finally (this time I really mean it), for those of you who are into offbeat science, I've just added a new blog, Mike the Mad Biologist, to my blog roll (which can be found a little ways down the right column of my blog site). Mike is prolific and wide-ranging in his news links, with a creative spin. 

Hat tips to Jane, Terry, Kirk and others

Deaths at Minnesota detention site bringing public scrutiny

State legislator calls SVP practices Unconstitutional 

Two back-to-back deaths at Minnesota's draconian Moose Lake facility have prompted new calls for reform of the United States' largest per capita preventive detention apparatus. More than 600 men are being indefinitely warehoused behind razor wire at Moose Lake, after having served prison terms for sexual offending. Only one has ever been released.

Yesterday, a state legislator publicly decried the state's current civil detention practices as Unconstitutional, in an interview on Minnesota Public Radio.

LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW (7 MINUTES)

"Minnesota just can't continue to … lock people up with no hope of release. It isn't Constitutional, and I think there's wide recognition of that fact," said Rep. Tina Liebling, who is leading reform efforts.

Moose Lake

In the wake of a federal class-action lawsuit by detainees, a federal task force recommended a number of changes to the program. But the state legislature is balking at implementing changes, which could include setting up alternative placement facilities and wrestling some power away from the Moose Lake treatment bureaucracy by giving the courts more discretion and mandating bi-annual case reviews by independent forensic experts.

Liebling said that out of the 20 U.S. states with laws allowing civil incapacitation of dangerous sex offenders after they have completed their prison terms, no other state has a "one-size-fits-all" procedure that doesn't allow for any hope of release.

"We can't hold people for their entire lives because we are worried about what they might do in the future," she told reporter Cathy Wurzer. "Unless we're prepared to lock up everybody who might pose any kind of risk … we need to get better at dealing with people as individuals … [and not solely based on] what they did 10 or 15 or 20 years ago."

Liebling expressed optimism about increasing public interest and knowledge stemming from the class-action lawsuit and recent deaths, which included one suicide and one of unexplained causes. "This is definitely something the public needs to be aware of…. People need to know that there are sex offenders living among us, and most of them are doing so successfully."

* * * * *

Related blog posts: 

"Most civilly detained sex offenders would not reoffend, study finds: Other new research finds further flaws with actuarial methods in forensic practice" (July 18, 2013) 

Blogger urges new paradigm for sex offenders (Feb. 23, 2012)

Challenge to Minnesota commitment gains ground (Sept. 23, 2012)

Cluelessness, complacency and the great unknown

The case of the self-blind psychologist

An experienced forensic psychologist -- let's call him Dr. Short -- applies for a job as a forensic evaluator. He is rejected based on his written work sample. He files a formal protest, insisting that the report was fine.

As you all know, forensic reports should be (in the words of an excellent trainer I once had) both "fact-based" and "fact-limited." In other words, we must (a) carefully explain the data that support our opinion, and (b) exclude irrelevant information, especially that which is intrusive or prejudicial.[1]

Dr. Short's report was neither fact-based nor fact-limited. The adduced evidence did not support his forensic opinions, and the report was littered with extraneous material insinuating bad moral character. We learned of the subject's unorthodox sexual tastes and former gang associations, neither of which were relevant to the very limited forensic issue at hand. Using ethnic terms to describe the subject's hair, Dr. Short inadvertently revealed more about his biases than about the subject.

Obviously, based on his vehement insistence that his report was fine, Dr. Short was blind to these deficiencies. Which got me to thinking: Since biases are largely unconscious, can people be made aware of them? Can blind spots be overcome? How can we come to understand what we do not know?

"The anosognosia of everyday life"

Pondering these questions in connection with one of my seminars at Bond University, I stumbled across some intriguing philosophical discourse on the various types of unknowns, and how to remedy them:

The simplest type of unknown has been labeled a "known unknown." This is something we don't know, and know we don't know. Let’s say you learn that someone you are evaluating in a sanity proceeding had ingested an obscure substance just before the crime. If you don’t know the substance’s potential effects, the solution is straightforward (assuming you are motivated): Do the research.

In some cases, we know the question, but no answer exists. For example, we know that six out of ten individuals who score as high risk on actuarial instruments will not reoffend violently, due to the base rates of violence. What we don’t know is how to distinguish the true from false positives. So that’s a known unknown with an unknown answer. But if we are at least aware of the issue, we can explain the field’s empirical knowledge gap in our reports.

However, unknown unknowns [2] are an entirely different kettle of fish. These are things we don't know and don't realize that we don't know. We don't know that there even IS a question that needs to be asked. Without being able to frame the question, we obviously cannot figure out an answer. Put simply: We are clueless.

Unknown unknowns are a major problem in forensic psychology, with its dearth of racial, ethnic and cultural diversity among researchers and practitioners.[3] Vast experiential divides lead evaluators to impose their own moral standards without even realizing they are doing so. In condemning his subject's sexual promiscuity and drug use, for example, Dr. Short made false and universalizing assumptions that revealed ignorance of lifestyles other than his own. (This reminded me of an African American prisoner’s dilemma interacting with white guards in remote, rural prisons; because the farming communities from which these guards were recruited are devoid of mainstream African Americans, the guards tended to assume that all Black people had the characteristics of Black convicts.)

"The anosognosia of everyday life" is the rather gloomy term coined by David Dunning of Cornell University, who specializes in decision-making processes, to describe such routine ignorance.[4] Dunning is a great believer in ignorance as a driving force that shapes our lives in ways in which we will never know. 

"Put simply, people tend to do what they know and fail to do that which they have no conception of. In that way, ignorance profoundly channels the course we take in life."

Apropos of Dr. Short's report, Dunning notes that cluelessness on the part of a so-called expert does not imply dishonesty or a lack of caring:

"People can be clueless in a million different ways, even though they are largely trying to get things right in an honest way. Deficits in knowledge, or in information the world is giving them, leads people toward false beliefs and holes in their expertise."

Laziness a major culprit

Unknown unknowns are not unfathomable mysteries that can never be solved. They are caused by laziness and complacency, which block the process of discovery as surely as a dam holds back water. It’s what German cognitive scientist Dietrich Dorner was talking about when he wrote, in The Logic of Failure, that “to the ignorant, the world looks simple.”[5] We’ve all known people who are incompetent, but whose very incompetence masks their ability to recognize their incompetence. There’s even an unwieldy term for this condition (named after the researchers who studied it, naturally): Just call it the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Quoting Dunning yet again: 

"Unknown unknown solutions haunt the mediocre without their knowledge. The average detective does not realize the clues he or she neglects. The mediocre doctor is not aware of the diagnostic possibilities or treatments never considered. The run-of-the-mill lawyer fails to recognize the winning legal argument that is out there. People fail to reach their potential as professionals, lovers, parents and people simply because they are not aware of the possible."

Before leaving the topic of the great unknowns, I must mention one final type of unknown, an especially pernicious one in forensic work. Unknown knowns, which undoubtedly beset Dr. Short, are unconscious beliefs and prejudices that guide one’s perceptions and interactions. Perhaps the 19th century humorist Josh Billings captured the quality of these unknowns the best when he wryly observed:

"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you think you know that just ain't so." [6]

Tackling the great unknown

So, is there any hope for our wayward Dr. Short, oblivious to his biases and blind spots? The answer, as in many facets of life, is: It depends. One of the most elementary lessons one learns as a novice psychologist is that people don’t change unless they are motivated to change. (Hence, a whole area of psychology devoted to enhancing motivation to change, through so-called “motivational interviewing.”) Effective change is rarely compelled. If Dr. Short is open to feedback and correction, this experience could be a wake-up call. On the other hand, his very protest speaks to an impaired capacity for self-reflection, a brittle ego defense that may be difficult to penetrate.

Either way, Dr. Short's dilemma can serve as a lesson for others, including both students and practitioners. The key to opening the locks on the dam of knowledge is readily available: It is simply a genuine desire to learn, and a willingness to confront life’s complexities. To those with a thirst for knowledge, the world is complex, and that complexity is what makes it so fascinating.

Here, in a nutshell, is the advice I gave to the graduate students at Bond during last week’s lecture that touched on the paradoxes of the unknowns:

If you haven't faced it, it's not easy to imagine this life

• To reduce the unknown unknowns, seek broad knowledge. Seek out people from other walks of life, who may not share your views or experiences. Travel outside your comfort zone, not just geographically but in other local cultures as well. These experiences can open one’s eyes to difference. Travel vicariously by reading widely, especially OUTSIDE of the insular, micro-focused and ahistorical field of psychology.

• Study up on cognitive biases and how they work. Especially, understand confirmatory bias, and build in hypothesis testing (including the testing of alternate hypotheses) as a routine practice. (Excellent resources on cognitive biases include Nate Silver's The Signal and the Noise and Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson's Mistakes Were Made (but not by me), which brilliantly and unforgettably explains how two people can start out much the same but diverge dramatically so that they ultimately stare at each other as strangers across a great chasm.)

• Create formal feedback loops so that you learn how cases you were involved in were resolved, how your work was received, and whether your opinions proved accurate. 

• Don't assume you know the answer. Ask questions. And then ask more questions. 

• Stay humble. Arrogance, or overconfidence in one’s wisdom, can short-circuit understanding as surely as TSA security checkpoints destroy the fun of flying. (That rather strained metaphor is a clue that this post was penned from 40,000 feet in the air.)

• Finally, and most critically: When you look across the table, try to see a fellow human being, someone who perhaps lost their way in life's dark wood, rather than an alien or a monster. Before you judge someone, try to walk a mile in his shoes.

Ultimately, Dr. Short's dilemma flows not only from complacency but from an essential deficit in empathy, an inability to truly see -- and understand -- the fellow human being sitting across from him in that forensic interview room.

* * * * *

Notes

1. This is discussed in both the American Psychological Association's Ethics Code (Standard 4.04, Minimizing Intrusions on Privacy, states that psychologists should include in written reports "only information germane to the purpose for which the communication is made") as well as the Specialty Guidelines for Forensic Psychology (see, for example, 10.01, Focus on Legally Relevant Factors).


2. The term "unknown unknown" is sometimes credited to US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who used it to explain why the United States went to war with Iraq over mythical Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD’s). Although the phrase gained currency at this time, others had already used it. 


3. Heilbrun, K., & Brooks, S. (2010). Forensic psychology and forensic science: A proposed agenda for the next decade. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 16, 219-253. 


4. For further conversation on this topic, see: Morris, E. (2010, June 20), The anosognosic's dilemma: Something's wrong but you'll never know what it is, New York Times blog.  Also see: Dunning, D. (2005). Self-Insight: Roadblocks and Detours on the Path to Knowing Thyself (Essays in Social Psychology), Psychology Press, p. 14-15; Dunning, D. & Kruger, J. (1999), Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77 (6), 1121-1134. 


5. I cribbed the Dorner quote from Dr. Wayne Petherick, Associate Professor of Criminology and coordinator of the criminology program at Bond University. 


6. Some attribute this quote not to Josh Billings but to Mark Twain, who was kicking around at the same time. Others claim it was neither. For now, the true origin of the quote is just one more of life's unknowns. 

New analyses undermine perception of DNA infallibility

Rags-against-riches case highlights technology's pitfalls

If you trust in the technology of DNA matching, it was an impeccable case:

Lukis Anderson's DNA matched that found on the fingernails of a San Francisco Bay Area millionaire killed in a home-invasion robbery. Based on the match to Anderson’s sample in the DNA database, the homeless man was arrested on a potential capital murder charge and spent five months in jail.

Fortunately for him, Anderson had an airtight alibi: He was lying in a hospital bed miles away, drunk to the point of unconsciousness. He also had no known connection to Raveesh "Ravi" Kumra, a cell phone entrepreneur and former winery owner who was killed during a home-invasion robbery near San Jose, California.

Although Anderson's attorneys initially thought there might have been a mix-up at the crime lab – the most common cause of erroneous DNA matches – an investigation ruled out improprieties. This despite the fact that, in an ironic twist, the technician who handled the DNA evidence in the case was previously implicated in a crime lab scandal in nearby San Francisco.

Prosecutors think they have solved the mystery: The paramedics who responded to Kumra’s home were the same two who had brought Anderson to the hospital via ambulance about two hours before the home-invasion attack on Kumra began. They likely inadvertently transferred Anderson’s DNA to Kumra via their equipment or clothing.

The local prosecutor called the case unique. But this is far from the first time that cross-contamination has led to a wrongful DNA match.

One of the strangest, most infamous and most embarrassing cases was the "Phantom of Heilbronn." A mystery woman was linked to six murders and dozens of other crimes across Germany and Austria through DNA found on everything from a heroin syringe to a cookie to a stolen car. Desperate police turned to profilers, a monetary reward and even fortune-tellers and psychics to no avail. Finally, after 15 years, the case was cracked: Evidence collection kits had accidentally been contaminated by a worker at a cotton swab factory. Forensic swabs are sterilized, but sterilization does not kill DNA.

In Australia, meanwhile, a 20-year-old man named Farah Jama was convicted and spent time in prison for a rape that likely never even took place. The same forensic officer had collected his DNA in an unrelated matter a day before collecting DNA from a woman who was found unconscious at a Melbourne nightclub. The woman had no recall of events and never claimed she was assaulted; nonetheless, Jama -- who didn’t know the woman and denied ever setting foot inside the nightclub -- spent 15 months in prison before his conviction was overturned.

Potential contamination of DNA evidence also factored into the reversal of Amanda Knox’s conviction in the odd Italian case that received international scrutiny. (Stay tuned on that convoluted case, by the way; the acquittal has now been overturned and a retrial in abstentia is scheduled to begin next month.)

The fact that an airtight alibi did not prevent Alexander from languishing in jail for five months, with a potential death sentence hanging over his head, highlights the problem of blind faith in the reliability of DNA evidence. As Osagie K. Obasogie, a law professor at Hastings School of Law in San Francisco and a senior fellow at the Center for Genetics and Society, argues in a compelling New York Times op-ed:

[T]he certainty with which prosecutors charged Mr. Anderson with murder highlights the very real injustices that can occur when we place too much faith in DNA forensic technologies. In the end, Mr. Anderson was lucky. His alibi was rock solid; prosecutors were forced to concede that there must have been some other explanation. It’s hard to believe that, out of the growing number of convictions based largely or exclusively on DNA evidence, there haven’t been any similar mistakes.

Chance matches more common than thought

But there may be bigger and more ominous problem than the rare transfer errors. The claim that random DNA matches are just about impossible, promoted by crime shows like CSI and powerfully influential in court, turns out to be flat-out wrong. As DNA databases become more and more massive, so too do the odds of chance hits.

An audit of Arizona’s 65,000-profile DNA database turned up almost 150 matching pairs, collected from different people. The California case of John Puckett is frequently cited as an example of misleading over-claiming about the reliability of DNA matches. Puckett is serving life due to a cold hit in a 1972 killing. Jurors heard testimony that there was only a one-in-a-million chance of a coincidental match. But, as Obasogie points out, that figure is misleading, according to an analysis by the National Research Council:

It reflects the chance of a coincidental match in relation to the size of the general population (assuming that the suspect is the only one examined and is not related to the real culprit). Instead of the general population, we should be looking at only the number of profiles in the DNA database. Taking the size of the database into account in Mr. Puckett’s case (and, again, assuming the real culprit’s profile is not in the database) would have led to a dramatic change in the estimate, to one in three.

This overdue recognition of the fallibility of DNA technology is causing some to call for greater oversight and to rethink the idea of allowing convictions based solely upon cold hits from DNA evidence.

Obasogie's final warning is profound:

For far too long, we have allowed the myth of DNA infallibility to chip away at our skepticism of government’s prosecutorial power, undoubtedly leading to untold injustices. In the Anderson case, thankfully, prosecutors acknowledged the obvious: their suspect could not have been in two places at once. But he was dangerously close to being on his way to death row because of that speck of DNA. That one piece of evidence -- obtained from a technology with known limitations, and susceptible to human error and prosecutorial misuse -- might mistakenly lead to execution at the hands of the state should send chills down every one of our spines. The next Lukis Anderson could be you. Better hope your alibi is as well documented as his.

Related blog post: DNA science on trial (April 17, 2009)

Blogger note: As always, it was great meeting blog subscribers during my seminar and training tour at Bond University in Queensland and the American Psychological Association convention in Honolulu. Thanks to all of you who attended and participated. The trainings were great fun; now it's back to the old grindstone as I head home and get back to work.