Arson probe: "Revenge of the scientists"

Perhaps the single most compelling exemplar of problems with the U.S. death penalty is the case of Cameron Willingham of Texas. Willingham, whom I have blogged about before, was executed in 2004 for a house fire in which his three daughters perished. But, as it turned out, the fire may not have been arson after all.

An ongoing probe is fostering rebellion by scientists against pseudoscientific evidence in arson cases. Some are even calling for a re-examination of all arson convictions in Texas from the past 20 years, according to a report by Dave Mann of the Texas Observer, who has covered the case extensively.

PBS Frontline's has a new documentary on the case, "Death by Fire," which I recommend you keep an eye out for. (It's also available on DVD.) The PBS website has great background, online videos, and interactive links. PBS' Hari Sreenivasan has additional commentary and case-related links at his news blog.

Related blog posts:

• Will Texas arson case change death penalty debate? (Sept. 2, 2009)
• Arson: New frontier for exonerations? (July 2, 2008)
  

Is Good Lives only for sex offenders?

A reader asked:

How applicable is the Good Lives Model (book review HERE) to working with people who have transgressed in ways other than sex offending?

Answer:

The theory was not developed for sex offenders in particular. It is being adopted for use with sex offenders under the premise that their patterns of desistance from crime are similar to those of other criminal offenders. Many types of rehabilitation programs are turning to the Good Lives Model and other positive psychology approaches. By way of illustration, here is a testimonial from a Canadian psychologist who uses it with men who have engaged in family violence:

We have been using the Good Lives Model (GLM) in a family violence program for men who batter for the past year. The framework allows us to maintain all the traditional processes one might typically see in an offender program. It also supports the use of a variety of strategies pulled from narrative therapy, solution focused therapy, zen psychology, biofeedback, cognitive behavioural, learning theory, etc. while maintaining a cohesive theoretical perspective.

The GLM approach supports a stronger focus on offender engagement. We find that the men are more able to see what their role is in therapy. We have been conducting exit interview with clients as they complete the program. It is interesting to hear how the values embedded in the program are translated into their narratives. I rarely heard this kind of ownership of change from men when we were teaching a relapse prevention-style group.

I found that shifting to the GLM from a purely cognitive-behavioral, relapse prevention, risk-needs-responsivity approach allowed me to align my understanding of what constitutes good therapy from the effective counselling literature (i.e., the therapeutic engagement of the client). At times I have found the strict manualized approaches to treatment to be more "psycho-educational" than therapeutic.

Our population is largely non-convicted, self-referred men where drop out rates are typically very high. People are finishing this program. Our outcome measures suggest clients experience an increase in self-monitoring, emotional self-regulation, and cognitive flexibility, with reductions in perceived levels of anger and aggression.

I did relapse-prevention sex offender programming for many years and continue to integrate those materials and strategies into the current curriculum. We just get to add a lot more and have the theoretical underpinning to back up our efforts.

Thanks to Ann Marie Dewhurst, Ph.D. of Edmonton for giving me permission to post this example of the Good Lives Model in action.

Systems failure or black swan?

New frame needed to stop "Memorial Crime Control" frenzy

It's the same thing again and again:

• A rare but horrific tragedy befalls a high-status victim, usually a child

• Media pundits point fingers and place blame

• A supposed flaw in the legal system is pinpointed

• Opportunistic politicians enact knee-jerk legislation to "fix" the "hole"

This process explains wave after wave of "memorial crime" laws, such as Jessica's Law, the AMBER Alerts, Three Strikes, and Megan's Law. Borne on a tide of moral panic, the symbolic laws are costly, have no impact on crime or public safety, and sometimes even backfire.

These laws are implictly driven by "Routine Activities" logic. Under the Routine Activities theory of crime, crime results from a convergence of: (1) motivated offenders, (2) available targets, and (3) the absence of a capable guardian. So, goes the theory, you can stop heinous behavior by reducing opportunity.

But this is an upside-down approach to rare events that are anything but routine, argue criminologists Timothy Griffin and B. Grant Stitt of the University of Nevada in an intriguing article in Critical Criminology. Far more logical and productive would be to interpet these events as statistical inevitabilities or -- as Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls them -- "Black Swans."

Good public policies and sensible lifestyle choices can minimize the risk of serious criminal victimization, but not absolutely. Unfortunately, current American public policies such as child protection legislation are driven not by the realization of this apparently simple truth, but by its denial….

If public officials could embrace the grim reality that a certain number of certain types of crimes are inevitable, it could move the public discourse away from a futile search for a misguided solution and toward a mindset of rational problem management. The policy implication of random activities theory is that public safety officials and the general public need to be prepared to accept the fact that, for some categories of crime, there are few if any "‘solutions’" beyond what we are currently doing, and that our visceral reaction to 'Black Swan crimes' in the form of memorial crime control legislation is futile and possibly self-defeating….

[T]he proper application of random activities theory, rather than resulting in a depressing resignation toward tragic crime, could actually ... be liberating. Random activities theory could be a powerful heuristic in the public discussion of crime control because it enables experts to identify and categorize a class of crime that have stubbornly resisted repeated public attempts at suppression. It is a rhetorical tool that can defuse at least some of the excessive attention lavished on unavoidable crimes and allow the public discourse to move toward the preponderance of crime which is more amenable to public policy remedy….

In times of inexplicable tragedy, people cannot be faulted for taking what solace they can in whatever beliefs and comforts they can muster, but these are the arenas of religion, philosophy, and personal reflection -- not the justice system. The history of memorial crime control in the United States shows that whatever catharsis it provides is always short-lived. There will always be one more "Black Swan crime" to fuel reactionary demands for legislative response, and the failed policy cycle continues….

The message might lack visceral appeal, but most people do have, at some level, an intuitive appreciation of "‘acts of God," "adversity," or just plain bad luck.

Unfortunately, while I am by nature an optimist, the brazen assault on rationality that is taking place in the United States at this moment in history may belie the authors' optimism in appeals to common sense. Citizens who cling en masse to superstition, stubbornly reject established science, and believe that our president is a Muslim are proving themselves fairly unamenable to sane discourse.

I still recommend the article.

The abstract of the article, "Random Activities Theory: The Case for 'Black Swan' Criminology," is HERE. Request a copy of the article from the authors by clicking HERE (for Timothy Griffin) or HERE (for B. Grant Stitt).

Hat tip: David Stubbins

Exciting new sex offender treatment model

Today, dear readers, is an exciting day. It marks the official release of a groundbreaking new book on sex offender treatment, one that may signal a pivotal turning point away from punitive practices toward a recognition of offenders' essential human dignity and the universality of crime desistance.

Scholars D. Richard Laws and Tony Ward have taken on a huge task in Desistance from Sex Offending: Alternatives to Throwing Away the Keys. They hope to bring mainstream criminological theories about crime desistance to an insular, risk-obsessed fringe of forensic psychology that has remained remarkably uninterested in the fact that offenders desist from crime, or the process through which that occurs.

Desistance provides a superb, highly readable overview of the criminological literature on desistance, the age-crime curve, and offender reintegration research, focusing heavily on the seminal works of Sampson and Laub and Shadd Maruna. The authors propose the Good Lives Model as a theory that can bridge the looming chasm between desistance theory and forensic psychology practice with sex offenders.

The voices of dissent against the dominant, pathologizing discourse of deviance are growing louder. The publication of this trailblazing book is yet another in a series of signals that the reign of penal harm may be losing steam, creating opportunities for implementing progressive reforms.

Desistance is essential reading for clinicians, researchers, academicians, attorneys, and anyone interested in the application of contemporary social science theory on desistance to sex offender rehabilitation.

The timing is propitious, coinciding as it does with next week's annual conference of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers (ATSA) in Phoenix, Arizona. At least one conference seminar, by Pamela Yates, Ph.D., will focus on applying the Good Lives Model to sex offender treatment. If you are attending the conference, buy this book early before it sells out.

We can only hope that the spirit of reform embodied in Desistance truly catches on, rather than being coopted by the entrenched forces of risk management.

NOTE: I am writing more detailed and formal reviews of Desistance for publication, and will link to those as soon as they are available. Also see my online review at Amazon (and please, as always, remember to click on “yes” if you like the review).

Prominent forensic psychologist hired in Ford Hood massacre case

The defense team for Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan has retained prominent forensic psychologist Xavier Amador. The New York-based expert has been involved in several high-profile cases involving the military, including those of PFC Lynndie England (of Abu Ghraib infamy) and U.S. Army sergeant Hasan Akbar, who killed two fellow officers and wounded 14 soldiers in Kuwait in 2003. He was also a defense expert in the trial of would-be 9/11 hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui.

Amador's hiring came amid hints that Hasan might be resistant to defense efforts to develop evidence of possible mental issues, according to a report in yesterday's Dallas Morning News. The defense dismissed a previous forensic psychologist due to "irreconcilable differences."

The defense team has successfully delayed the military's efforts to have its own panel of psychiatric experts evaluate Hasan. The military's sanity board will evaluate Hasan to determine whether he had a severe mental illness at the time of the shooting, whether he knew right from wrong at the time of his alleged actions, and whether he is competent to stand trial.

Some experts say Hasan may resist any insanity defense due to his medical training and his desire to be seen as motivated by his faith, according to the in-depth report by Lee Hancock of the Dallas Morning News.

Hasan faces the death penalty in the shooting deaths of 13 people at Fort Hood. His Article 32 evidentiary hearing is set to begin Tuesday.

Military suicides skyrocketing

Meanwhile, in the wake of last November's massacre, stressful conditions continue unabated at sprawling Ford Hood in Texas. So far this year there have been 20 suspected suicides, out of at least 125 in the Army overall, according to a report in today's New York Times. The record level of mental breakdown among U.S. soldiers is being attributed to the longevity of combat deployment. Also, after nine years of war, the military is accepting less stable individuals and is increasingly short on qualified mental health personnel.

Critics say that even when service members are identified as severely depressed, they are often just prescribed medication rather than given meaningful help.

Today's New York Times article on military suicides is HERE.

Hat tip: Ken Pope

Rare juror speaks out after sexual predator trial

Civil commitment unfair, says law-and-order Floridian

Juror Number 6 is a conservative, law-and-order Republican. But she was appalled when she realized that in the United States, someone can be indefinitely detained not for what he has done, but for what he might do in the future.

Kathy Martin spoke to a news reporter after she and her five colleagues refused to civilly commit a convicted sex offender. Robert Richard Sanzone, age 34, had finished the prison term imposed in 2004 for having sex with one 15-year-old girl and trying to coax a second girl into sexual intimacies.

Martin said that she was struck by the similarities between the 2002 film Minority Report and Florida's Jimmy Ryce Act, under which sex offenders who are determined to still be a danger to society may be held indefinitely for so-called treatment.

"I didn't realize in America you could be given an indefinite sentence," the registered nurse told reporter Richard Prior of Florida's St. Augustine Record. “I'm not a bleeding-heart liberal, but I would like to think someone can't incarcerate me because they think I might do something."

Martin said she and the other members of the 5-woman, 1-man jury were skeptical of the reliability of the Static-99 actuarial risk assessment tool.

She also expressed concern about civilly committing someone for having consensual sex with a teenager.

"This is supposed to be about violent sexual predators, and I kept waiting for the violence to come up. I kept waiting for one of the witnesses to say he threw (them) against the wall or pushed (them) to the ground or pulled a knife. When I realized that wasn't going to happen ... well, I listened politely to the closing argument, but by that time I'd made up my mind."

Florida's Jimmy Ryce Act was passed in 1998 after Juan Carlos Chavez raped, beat, dismembered, and murdered 9-year-old Jimmy Rye in 1995. Chavez is currently awaiting execution on Florida's death row. The Ryce Act parallels sexually violent predator civil commitment laws in 20 U.S. states.

The articulate juror said she understands why horrific crimes lead to new laws, but she doesn't like that knee-jerk practice.

"When a brutal case occurs, the public wants to do something. It makes us feel better that we passed a law. This law has unintended consequences that can come back and bite someone's behind. I think these laws are just feel-good measures."

Two psychologists, Amy Swan and Mary Anne Etheridge, testified in favor of civil ccommitment for Sanzone. Dr. Etheridge diagnosed Sanzone with "fetishism" -- in this case toward underwear -- as well as the ubiquitous antisocial personality disorder.

Psychologist Deborah Leporowski, the lone defense witness, disputed the prosecution psychologists' estimation of Sanzone's risk, and said many of his early problems could be attributed to teenage impulsivity and immaturity.

Sanzone will remain on special sex offender probation for many years, and will be banned from schools, playgrounds, or other places where children congregate.

Richard Prior's fascinating interview with juror Kathy Martin is HERE.