Confession to prison psychiatrist not confidential

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has issued a ruling with implications for forensic psychology, treatment in correctional settings, group therapy, psychotherapist-patient confidentiality, and correctional ethics more broadly.

The case goes way back to 1984, when 13-year-old Christy Ann Fornoff was sexually assaulted and smothered to death in Arizona. Physical evidence and suspicious circumstances linked Donald Beaty to the crime, and he was quickly arrested.

While awaiting trial, Beaty became depressed and went on a hunger strike. He was transferred to a psychiatric unit, where he agreed to participate in an experimental, coed therapy group. At one group session, a teenage girl confronted Beaty about his offense, and he became upset. Immediately after the group session, Beaty approached the prison psychiatrist who ran the group, George O'Connor. As O'Connor later recalled the conversation, Beaty said he was not a terrible person and that he had not meant to kill Ms. Fornoff.

Time went by. Beaty went to trial. The prosecution presented physical evidence linking him to the crime, but the jury hung 10-2 (for guilty). Meanwhile, O'Connor happened to be in court on another case. During some idle chitchat, he told a guard that Beaty had confessed to him. Through the grapevine, the prosecutor quickly heard this good news, and O'Connor was compelled to testify at Beaty's second trial. Not surprisingly, the verdict this time was guilty. Beaty was sentenced to death.

At issue in the capital habeas appeal was whether Beaty's statement to the psychiatrist was properly admitted, or whether it was protected as confidential. Beaty argued that he had signed a confidentiality agreement to participate in the group therapy and that he thought his conversation with the psychiatrist was confidential.

An appellate court disagreed. The confidentiality contract only applied to statements made while the group was in session, not to a private conversation immediately thereafter. The court also disagreed with Beaty that he was coerced into treatment. (This is relevant because a coerced confession to police may be excluded from evidence if it is shown that the suspect's independent will was overborne.)

The court distinguished Beaty's case from two earlier cases in which statements made to psychiatric clinicians in custodial settings were deemed protected from disclosure.

Case of Daniel Pens

In the first of these two cases, Daniel Pens was convicted of rape in 1981 and committed to a locked treatment program at Western State Hospital in Washington. The treating therapists assured Pens that information he revealed during his mandatory treatment would remain confidential and would not be disclosed to the courts. As part of his treatment, Pens confessed to additional rapes. After three years, the clinicians wrote a report to the court detailing Pens’ self-incriminating statements and concluding that he was too dangerous to be released.

In 1989, the Ninth Circuit ruled that Pens' admissions fell squarely within the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, and could not be used against him in court. (The case is Pens v. Bail, 902 F.2d 1465.)

Case of "D.F."

The appellate court also distinguished the Beaty case from a far more fascinating case out of Wisconsin that is worthy reading for all mental health practitioners. In 1993, 12-year-old "D.F." of Wisconsin was charged with killing her two infant cousins. She was placed in a locked institution for troubled youths. Like many such programs, the program utilized a level system in which privileges and punishments were accorded based on participation in treatment. Patients who talked to clinicians and wrote in their journals could wear their own clothes, talk to other children, and move around freely.

Four months into her treatment, during a group therapy session, D.F. admitted killing her cousins. A staff member immediately reported the confession to Child Protective Services, which in turn notified the FBI. During a subsequent investigation, treatment staff secretly funneled information to the FBI while continuing to encourage DF to discuss her crimes in therapy.

At DF's trial, the judge suppressed the statements not on the basis of the privilege against self-incrimination (as in Beaty's case), but on the grounds of psychotherapist-patient privilege. The prosecution appealed to the district court.

The district court conducted an inquiry into the treatment center's operations. The court noted that treatment staff had close working relations with police agencies and, indeed, many acted as "law enforcement surrogates" in eliciting confessions from troubled teens. Warnings about the consequences of self-incrimination were minimal to non-existent. The district court upheld the suppression of DF's confession; the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling in 1995. DF's treating clinicians, in the appellate court's view, were acting in the dual roles of prosecutor and healer. (The case is U.S. v. DF, 63F.3d 671.)

Harking back to Estelle v. Smith

In its decision in DF's case, the 7th Circuit went back to the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case of Estelle v. Smith (451 U.S. 454). To refresh your memory, that Texas case involved Ernest Benjamin Smith, who was sentenced to death for the armed robbery of a grocery store in which his accomplice fatally shot the clerk. Smith had the misfortune to have his competency evaluated by state psychiatrist Dr. James P. Grigson, who later earned the infamous nickname of "Dr. Death." At Smith's sentencing hearing, Grigson testified that Smith was "going to go ahead and commit other similar or same criminal acts if given the opportunity to do so." After hearing that ominous prediction, the jury voted for death.

In Estelle, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a court-appointed psychiatrist must give Miranda warnings before questioning a prisoner. In other words, it doesn't matter that the information-gatherer is a psychiatrist rather than a police interrogator. What matters is the purpose for which the information is being collected. Dr. Grigson, although not a government officer, was acting on the state's behalf.

The court's narrow ruling in Beaty is troubling, in that it may encourage prosecutors to seek incriminating information from clinicians working in custodial settings. The ethics of such disclosures remains a cloudy issue, with correctional clinicians holding a variety of views on when they are required or permitted to divulge information to authorities. At minimum, this line of case law should remind forensic practitioners of the need to provide a careful, Miranda-like warning to people we are evaluating, describing the lack of confidentiality and how the information they provide may be used. And certainly, Dr. O'Connor's casual disclosure of Beaty's confession to a guard – which set this case in motion – seems a breach of proper conduct.

Perhaps the best treatise on this topic is John Monahan's Who is the Client? The Ethics of Psychological Intervention in the Criminal Justice System. But that was written more than a quarter of a century ago, in 1980, and drastically needs updating in light of new case law and practice and the radical expansion of both the criminal justice system and the correctional treatment industry.

The case of Beaty v. Schriro, No. 05-99013, is available at the 9th Circuit's website.

"The Scary Doodles Case"

The tale of a teenage doodler,
a disputed confession,
and a forensic psychologist

One of the most interesting disputed conviction cases in the news these days is the case of Tim Masters in Colorado, which I first blogged about back in July. If you haven't read up on it yet, it's worth checking out.

The Rocky Mountain News is pulling no punches in calling for a new trial for Masters, who was only 15 when the murder in question occurred. The News' most recent editorial, entitled "In need of a new trial: Prosecution handicapped Tim Masters' original defense," begins like this:

The worst thing you can say about a legal system is that it railroads defendants - convicts and sentences them without allowing juries to hear the full story and without investigators pursuing equally viable suspects. That's why the case involving a Colorado prisoner named Timothy Lee Masters is so important - and why it is critical that he be granted a new trial.

For purposes of this blog, the case is intriguing because of the disputed confession (see my earlier post) and also because of the central role of J. Reid Meloy, a prominent forensic psychologist. Meloy "worked hand-in-glove with prosecutors," even reviewing the arrest warrant before it was served. The News editorial comments:

Forensic psychologist Meloy's analysis, so crucial to the prosecution's theory, at times has the tone of a pulp crime thriller. Portentous but debatable conclusions are scattered throughout, such as: 'Sexual homicides are often unconscious displaced matricides'; '[the victim] also resembled his deceased mother, which is of enormous psychological significance . . .' ; and, Masters 'knows the distinction between slicing and stabbing, terms that generally would not be distinguished by the lay person.'

Indeed, it was largely on the basis of Masters' violent doodles – and Meloy's interpretation of them – that the boy was convicted, legal observers say. Prosecutors "bombarded" jurors with blown-up images of the doodles, projected onto the wall of the courtroom.

The News article continues here.

My more recent posts on this case are here and here.

The Denver Post has additional coverage of the case and an online video, "Sketchy Evidence: The Story of Tim Masters." The Pro Libertate blog has case analysis, graphics, and links. And there's even a blog devoted solely to the case, Free Tim Masters Because, which has a lengthy page devoted to the role of Dr. Meloy. See further commentary on this topic at the Witness LA blog.

Another forensic psychology sex scandal

A psychologist in North Dakota who conducted sex offender evaluations for the state has resigned over a self-admitted child pornography compulsion. Joseph Belanger had run the state's Sexually Dangerous Individual (SDI) civil commitment program. In that capacity, he evaluated sex offenders and testified in court that they were sexually dangerous and should remain hospitalized.

It was unknown what triggered the investigation against Dr. Belanger, but Homeland Security officials recently seized his home computer, according to the Forum newspaper in Fargo, ND.

Dr. Belanger, who worked for the state hospital for more than 20 years, was reportedly a protege of Dennis Doren, a prominent psychologist for the state in sex offender civil commitment proceedings (I've mentioned Doren previously here and here).

Belanger is at least the second forensic psychologist this year to be tarnished by accusations of sexual deviancy.

In July, prominent forensic psychologist Stuart Greenberg killed himself after being arrested on suspicion of voyeurism; he had allegedly secretly videotaped a woman in his office bathroom. Greenberg was known for his expertise in child custody evaluations, but he was also a consultant for the Archdiocese of Seattle in sex abuse cases.

A commonality in these cases in that both men allegedly used modern technology to further their deviant interests - Greenberg using a concealed video camera and Belanger using the Internet.

While reporting on this news, I hasten to point out that two men out of the countless forensic psychologists in the United States certainly doesn't represent a pattern. Rather, the similar scandals cropping up in other professions suggest that such cases may be more a sign of the times than a reflection on any particular line of work.

What is relevant to the field, however, is that the revelations will likely cause scrutiny of cases in which the two men were involved as expert psychologists. This scrutiny is already occurring in Greenberg's case, with parents protesting unfavorable child custody court decisions that were based in part upon his opinions. In King County (Seattle), the presiding judge anticipated a flurry of legal challenges to cases in which Greenberg was a court-appointed evaluator. Although Greenberg's arrest would not be sufficient to reopen a case, a parent could argue bias if Greenberg's custody recommendations hinged on a parent's sexuality. I would anticipate similar challenges by civilly committed sex offenders evaluated or treated by Belanger in North Dakota.

As evidenced by the numerous venomous posts at the websites of Washington newspapers that covered the Greenberg case as well as websites devoted to parental rights in custody cases, these scandals also provide ready ammunition to critics of forensic psychology and expert witnesses more generally.

New Report: Mentally ill in Florida's legal system

Florida's Supreme Court is tackling the massive problem of mental illness in the correctional and family court systems. In a new report, a mental health committee acknowledges that correctional facilities have become the largest providers of mental health services for the poor, and recommends ways to address this growing problem.

The report follows media exposes detailing the plight of the mentally ill trapped in Florida's legal system. Mentally ill people often end up homeless and with substance abuse problems, leading to a revolving door of incarceration for minor nuisance offenses. The report recommends reforms to link the mentally ill to services that will reduce recidivism, and to improve the handling of mentally ill individuals in the juvenile, foster care, and child protective systems.

The Council of State Governments Justice Center in New York chose Florida as one of seven states to address the national crisis of the mentally ill in the legal system. The 170-page report is supposed to be the first step in a major overhaul that will include additional training for members of the judiciary. The report's massive title gives a hint of the massiveness of the project: "Mental Health: Transforming Florida's Mental Health System: Constructing a Comprehensive and Competent Criminal Justice/Mental Health/Substance Abuse Treatment System: Strategies for Planning, Leadership, Financing, and Service Development."

The report is available online. The National Institute of Corrections has a number of related documents online on the crisis of mental illness and substance abuse in the U.S. criminal and family court systems.

Sex panic going hi-tech

When someone emailed me yesterday about Offendar, I thought it was a joke. Or maybe a typo. But, no. Some greedy techno-entrepreneurs have found another way (they hope) to capitalize on the current sex panic in the United States.

What is Offendar? It's a portable "personal threat detection system" that sounds an alarm whenever someone nearby is wearing an electronic ankle bracelet.

It's not in use yet. But a rabidly tough-on-crime lawmaker in Ohio invited the maker to demonstrate it yesterday before state lawmakers. Offendar LLC is hoping that the Ohio state senator Tim Grendell will help pass legislation requiring that the technology for the device be inserted into existing ankle bracelets.

I'm guessing that would be necessary because so many people other than sex offenders are required to wear ankle bracelets these days. It's a common method for courts to keep track of people out on bail for misdemeanor offenses such as drunk driving. Here in Contra Costa County, California, just about every teenager released from juvenile hall pending further court action has a bracelet secured to his or her ankle.

David Singleton, executive director of the Ohio Justice & Policy Center, said the idea plays on public fears while penalizing people who have already served time in prison for their crimes. "What are we trying to do, make it impossible for people to get on their feet again and be productive citizens?" Singleton said.

A spokeswoman for the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center concurred, pointing out that 9 in 10 sex crimes involve family members or other intimates of the victim. "This just plays on the great … stranger danger myth that’s not true," said Lindsay Fello-Sharpe.

If the hand-held alarm takes off, Offendar LLC hopes to expand the concept to "permanent and mobile perimeter alerts" around schools, zoos, shopping malls, carnivals, fairs, and sports events.

Offendar principal Jerry Pignolet said the device is meant to enable people to leave the presence of a sex offender. "It gives you an opportunity to gather your family, get in the car and lock the doors."

The current wave of vigilante attacks against convicted sex offenders makes me doubt that everyone would just duck and run.

Picture this: Some guy who's just had a fight with his girlfriend fuels up on alcohol and decides to take out his rage and hostility on the nearest bogeyman sex offender. When police find him standing over the dead body with a bloody bat, they tell him the bad news. The dead kid had a conviction for statutory rape because when he was 18 he had dated a girl who was 16. Oops!

Ohio newspapers, including the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Columbus Dispatch, are covering the story. In the blogosphere, Sentencing Law & Policy has more.

Detection of feigned mental retardation

The Clinical Neuropsychologist has a new article on the problems in detecting feigned mental retardation. That issue is getting more attention these days in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Atkins v. Virginia, outlawing the execution of mentally retarded defendants. The British Psychological Society's Research Digest blog has more on the study, which is entitled "Identification of feigned mental retardation using the new generation of malingering detection instruments: Preliminary findings."

Top criminal justice stories today

Felony murder, juvenile recidivism,
racist sentencing, and prison evangelism

Wow! There is just so much to blog about today, and so little time!

Liptak on the felony murder rule

My favorite today is Adam Liptak's editorial on felony murder. As Liptak points out, only the United States still invokes this archaic construct in which someone can be punished equally for loaning their car or for committing the actual murder in which the car was used. Realizing the injustice of punishing someone for something that someone else did, a few brave states, including Hawaii, Kentucky and Michigan, have abolished the rule. Others continue to routinely use it, despite its unjust effects and its slim-to-nonexistent deterrent value.

Perhaps the New York Times editorial resonated for me today in particular because I was just involved in a case in which the prosecution is using the felony murder rule to seek a life sentence against a 15-year-old boy. The boy, who had no arrest history and was unarmed, was at the scene when two older youths committed a robbery in which a clerk was killed.

Liptak's editorial, "American Exception: Serving Life for Providing Car to Killers," is online here. Hat tip to the ever-helpful Jane for alerting me to it first.

Juveniles: Go to prison, become violent

Runner-up today is the report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on juvenile recidivism. Transferring juveniles to the adult system and sending them to adult prisons makes them more criminal and more violent, the expert panel concluded.

No, duh! Another government report concluding the obvious. But I'm hoping that the CDC imprimatur leads to change. The report goes hand in hand with a recent report by the Campaign for Youth Justice finding that youths detained in adult jails are more likely to be sexually victimized and to commit suicide. The two reports come as the U.S. Senate prepares to consider reauthorization of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act.

The Washington Post has full coverage here. The Washington State Institute for Public Policy has additional research findings on juvenile recidivism. No surprise – for juveniles, TREATMENT WORKS. And incarceration doesn't. Listen up, legislators!

Loss for prison evangelism

Also in today's news, a federal appeals court has struck down an evangelical prison program that had milked the government of Iowa for $1.5 million. The InnerChange program, run by Chuck Colson's Prison Fellowship Ministries, afforded better housing and expedited access to parole resources to participating prisoners. Prisoners of other faiths were demeaned as "unsaved," "lost," "pagan" and "sinful.” The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that government support for the program violated the Constitutionally required separation of church and state.

Coverage is in the San Francisco Chronicle and at the Real Cost of Prisons blog. See also Slate magazine's 2000 story on the program's leader, Charles Colson: "How a Watergate crook became America's greatest Christian conservative."

Racial disparities in sentencing

And yet another study, this one on racial disparities in sentencing, by the Justice Policy Institute. Once again, the San Francisco Chronicle has a fine report, focusing on the enormous racial discrepancies in that fair city. And, once again, the reports are in. So, now let's get on to the public policy changes.

New police manual on sting operations

The U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) publishes a series of empirically based manuals for police. The latest, Sting Operations, describes the pros and cons of such undercover operations, and explains the various deceptive techniques and how they can be adapted to different types of crimes.

The manual's conclusion:

"Sting operations can be expensive, are demanding on personnel, and generally offer limited relief from recurring crime and disorder problems. This is not to say that they should never be used. They may be beneficial when used in concert with other police responses known to provide long-term solutions to the problem, such as a tool to collect information that will help in mounting other preventative operations. Clearly, they do provide some attractive benefits to police departments, particularly by facilitating investigation, increasing arrests, and fostering a cooperative spirit between prosecutors and police, all of which result in favorable publicity. However, you need to assess these benefits against the negative ethical and legal problems associated with sting operations, especially the finding that in some cases they increase crime, and in the long term, with some exceptions, generally do not reduce it."

The 72-page manual is available online.

Hot off the press: New child custody text

The Art and Science of Child Custody Evaluations

by Jonathan W. Gould and David A. Martindale

Back in the dark ages, a psychologist hired by one parent or the other in a child custody case could waltz into court and give a subjective clinical opinion about which parent was more fit and what would be in the children's best interests. Thankfully, that is no longer the case. Such a psychologist might be legally barred due to inadequate training or experience, or might face legal action by the other parent. Back in 1998 (with a revised edition published last year), Jonathan Gould wrote a really helpful manual called Conducting Scientifically Crafted Child Custody Evaluations. The guide was aimed at helping custody evaluators avoid the many pitfalls and landmines in this litigious subfield of forensic psychology. Now, he has teamed up with fellow expert David A. Martindale to bring us even more of the latest information and advice in this rapidly evolving area.

The authors focus both on the law and on the clinical practicalities. Clear and well-written chapters explore ethics and bias, child interviewing, child development research, assessing parents, child sexual abuse allegations, domestic violence, and child alienation. The authors carefully explain the primary legal standard in child custody work, "The Best Interests of the Child" standard. Of special use to the practitioner, the appendix contains sample letters and statements of understanding, all with permission to freely photocopy.

The overall messages here are ones worth repeating: Know the law, know the science, remain unbiased, and be humble. This updated reference book will be useful not only to child custody evaluators but also to attorneys and to students of forensic psychology.

Study: Sentencing Children to Die in Prison

Test your knowledge:

1. How many nations sentence children to life in prison?

2. What states have the most people serving life for crimes committed before they reached adulthood?

3. What is the minimum age at which a child can be sentenced to life without parole?

4. Which children are most likely to receive life sentences?

ANSWERS ARE BELOW.

ANSWERS:

1. Just two - the United States and Israel. But Israel is in far distant second place, with only seven juveniles serving life as compared with 2,387 in the United States.

2. Pennsylvania is in first place, with 433; California is in second place, with 227.

3. Of the 44 states that permit life without parole for juveniles, 13 have no minimum age, and one sets the minimum at age 8.

4. More than half are first-time offenders. African Americans are 10 times more likely than white juveniles to be sentenced to life without parole. In California, the disparity is twice that – a 20:1 ratio.

These are some of the data from a new study, "Sentencing Children to Die in Prison," by the University of San Francisco's Center for Law and Global Justice. The study was highlighted in the Los Angeles Times on Nov. 19.

The racial disparity is very apparent to me in the cases that I've been involved in. Even when arrest rates are controlled, African American boys are far more likely than anyone else to be sentenced as adults. This is illustrated in the following graph, from California's Center on Crime and Juvenile Justice:


Yesterday's Ledger Dispatch (Amador County, California) has a long article on efforts in many states to undo the knee-jerk tough-on-juveniles statutes of the past decade. The article, "Prosecuting kids as adults: Some say laws too harsh, states taking second look," is available online. California, which you'll recall from the above quiz is #2 in the nation in locking up kids for life, is one of the states with reform legislation pending. The California Juvenile Life Without Parole Reform Act (SB 999) would allow people sentenced for juvenile crimes to apply for parole after serving 25 years. The measure is opposed by police and prosecutor associations.

California also has a pending challenge to the law as cruel and unusual punishment, barred by the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Antonio Nunez was 14 years old when he accepted a ride home from a 27-year-old man he had met at a party. On the way, the adult kidnapped another man. Although no one was injured in the 2003 incident, Nunez was convicted of kidnapping and attempted murder and is serving life without parole.

Juvies is a recent film chronicling the lives of a group of 12 California youngsters prosecuted as adults and sent to adult prisons.

New study: Brooklyn, NY prisoner reentry program

Prosecutors push alternatives to crime

Today's New York Times features an editorial on a pioneering prisoner reentry program in Brooklyn, NY. The ComAlert program has been going strong for eight years, and was just the focus of a study by a criminal justice expert at Harvard.

No surprise, the study found that paroled prisoners are more likely to stay out of trouble if they undergo rigorous counseling and drug treatment along with immediate job training and work experience.

The surprise (which isn't mentioned by the Times) is who is running and promoting the innovative program: The Brooklyn District Attorney's Office. Indeed, ComAlert stands for "Community and Law Enforcement Resources Together."

The New York Times editorial is here. A longer article by researcher Bruce Western is online here. Western is the author of Punishment and Inequality in America, an enlightening look at crime, race, and employment that was published last year.

Calif. court overrules governor on prisoner parole

It's always safer to err on the side of predicting high risk. You can never be proven wrong. If a prisoner is released, he can go out and commit a new crime that can come back to haunt the judge, parole board, or elected official who approved release. If he is not released, he has no way to prove that he would not have committed that next crime.

Nowhere is that defensive posture more in evidence than in California. Former Gov. Gray Davis had a reputation for blocking the release of every convicted murderer that the state's parole board approved for release. That was a spectacular record, considering that the parole board only grants parole to the most stellar success stories - 5% of the cases it hears, and even less than that for murderers.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has largely mimicked his predecessor, vetoing about three-fourths of such paroles. But, in the latest example of a recent trend, a state appeals court has overruled the governor's veto. The case involves Curtis Lee, who spent 22 years in prison for abetting a murder. He was 18 when his friend shot another young man to death on an Oakland street. Convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 17-years-to-life in prison, Lee became a model prisoner, undergoing extensive job training and therapy.

Today's San Francisco Chronicle has the story. The court ruling is here.

Canada: How false confessions occur

Yesterday's Toronto Star, in the latest in a series of excellent articles on criminal justice issues, features an analysis of false confessions. The article, "Pressure of interrogation imperils even the innocent" by Tim Moore, discusses how police bias toward guilt and resultant high-pressure interrogation techniques can coerce innocent people to confess:

The recent [Canadian] Supreme Court decision in R v Singh, in which the court upheld the conviction of a man who confessed after police continued to question him despite his repeated assertions of his right to remain silent, has attracted renewed attention to the protection that the right to silence is supposed to afford….

There is a substantial body of research on the psychology of confessions. We now know that depending on how they are interrogated, actual innocence may put innocent people at risk. Police cautions are imperfectly understood in the first place, especially by young people or adults with cognitive impairments.

Some innocent suspects waive their right to silence because they perceive innocence to be protective and believe that their blamelessness will soon be self-evident. Unrealistically, they anticipate they will be able to explain to investigators the error of their ways. Regrettably, the ensuing interrogation risks eliciting a false confession from an innocent person, possibly contributing to a false conviction.

The article continues here.

Expert witness controversy spreads

Wrongfully convicted woman can sue expert

Last week, I reported on the brewing controversy in England over unfettered reliance on expert witnesses. Now, the Toronto Star has an article focusing on the controversy in Canada, as well as elsewhere in the world.

It's a fascinating look at some of the high-profile cases that have led to the current attitude of skepticism toward expert scientific and medical witnesses.

As the article explains, the adversarial system is premised on an equal fight between
the accused and the government. Yet the criminally accused typically do not have the funds or expertise to obtain their own experts to challenge the government's expert witnesses, who often wear sterling credentials.

In reaction to a series of convictions based in large part on the testimony of a government pathologist, Canada has reformed its civil laws to allow people to sue an overzealous expert over his findings. The case was brought by Louise Reynolds against forensic pathologist Dr. Charles Smith, whose testimony led to her conviction in the death of her 7-year-old daughter. It later turned out that the girl was mauled to death by a dog. (See my previous blog post on the judicial inquiry into Dr. Smith's expert findings.)

Such tort law is "a first for the common-law world," according to the Star.

Tasers face growing opposition

U.N. Committee calls it "torture"

In the wake of the deaths of six people in just one week and a videotaped incident at an airport in Canada in which a man died after being tased, calls for the restriction or ban of shock-inducing tasers are becoming increasingly urgent.

On Friday, the controversy grew when a United Nations Committee Against Torture called taser use a form of torture. The comment was embedded in a larger report on the committee’s activities, and focused on the use of tasers in Portugal.

Although public criticism focuses on taser use by police, much more out of sight the weapons are widely used as weapons of control in U.S. prisons and juvenile detention facilities. Such widespread tasering of prisoners is documented in the BBC documentary, "Torture: America's Brutal Prisons."

A CBS news report is online here. An Amnesty International report on taser use is here.

Death penalty: Theory vs. practice

Newsweek magazine has an interesting summary of the state of capital punishment in the United States today. The remarkable disconnect between theory and practice seems like another example of today's cultural schizophrenia. Consider these two competing facts:

• Popular support for capital punishment remains fairly strong, at about 65%.

• Front-line decision makers - judges, juries, and even prosecutors - are less and less willing to impose the ultimate punishment.

The reasons for this disconnect? The Newsweek writers pose a few possibilities, including highly publicized cases of wrongful conviction, increased attention to "mitigating circumstances" (such as child abuse) by the defense, and the skyrocketing legal costs of prosecuting death cases.

A new breed of prosecutor is another factor. As an example, Newsweek gives us Craig Watkins, the District Attorney of Dallas, Texas, the hang-'em-high state. Watkins is African American, a Democrat, and a former defense attorney. "In the near future, we will see the death penalty rarely," Watkins said. An even starker example not mentioned in the Newsweek article is Kamala Harris, the District Attorney of San Francisco, who has taken a public position against the death penalty.

For these and possibly other reasons, "what is acceptable in theory seems less and less tolerable in practice," the Newsweek authors comment. The article, entitled "Injection of Reflection," is online here.

Although it isn't mentioned in the Newsweek article, an intense debate is currently underway about whether capital punishment deters crime. The issue has resurfaced thanks to a series of research studies by economists, suggesting that the death penalty may deter crime. Other scholars, most of them non-economists, are highly critical of the studies. Adam Liptak of the New York Times summarized the competing positions in a Nov. 18 article.

Georgia court overturns sex offender law

I haven't found time yet to read or analyze yesterday's ruling on sex offender laws, but this overturning of residency restrictions looked important enough to immediately pass along to my readers. The full opinion in Mann vs. the Georgia Department of Corrections is here; Greg Bluestein of the Associated Press reports on it as follows:

ATLANTA (AP) - Georgia's top court overturned a state law Wednesday that banned registered sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of schools, churches and other areas where children congregate.

"It is apparent that there is no place in Georgia where a registered sex offender can live without being continually at risk of being rejected,'' read the opinion, written by presiding Justice Carol Hunstein.

The law had been targeted by civil rights groups who argued it would render vast residential areas off-limits to Georgia's roughly 11,000 registered sex offenders and could backfire by encouraging offenders to stop reporting their whereabouts to authorities.

State lawmakers adopted the law in 2006, calling it crucial to protecting the state's most vulnerable population: children.

While many states and municipalities bar sex offenders from living near schools, Georgia's law, which took effect last year, prohibited them from living, working or loitering within 1,000 feet of just about anywhere children gather - schools, churches, parks, gyms, swimming pools or one of the state's 150,000 school bus stops.

It also led to challenges from groups like the Southern Center for Human Rights, which argued that it would force some offenders to live in their cars or set up tents or trailers in the woods, and undermine other efforts to keep track of offenders.

The Georgia Supreme Court ruling said even sex offenders who comply with the law "face the possibility of being repeatedly uprooted and forced to abandon homes."

It also said the statute looms over every location that a sex offender chooses to call home and notes while the case in question particularly involves a day care center, "next time it could be a playground, a school bus stop, a skating rink or a church.'"

Serial killers stalking South Africa

The darker side of international "necrocapitalism"?

Serial killers are trendy. They are the topic of an ever-increasing array of movies, books, and TV shows. One theorist has gone so far to suggest that they are the "gothic double" of the zombie-like consumers wandering the malls of a "necrocapitalist" world, in perpetual quest for another purchase. Indeed, argues Brian Jarvis in "Monsters Inc.: Serial killers and consumer culture," the commodification of violence is an integral aspect of the violence inherent in commodification.

If that is so, then it is no surprise that the United States – where millions of consumers stagger under crippling loads of credit card debt – would lead the world in serial murders. Although I don’t know of a central repository of such data, that is what I've always heard (with Russia following closely on our heels).

How, then, to explain South Africa's claim of passing us by as the world's largest producer of serial killers, surpassing both the United States and Russia?

For one thing, South Africa has a much higher overall murder rate than do either the United States or Russia.

But perhaps a more precise answer will come out of the largest-scale research project on serial murders in the world. The research is being conducted by the specialized Investigative Psychology Unit (IPU) – the South African equivalent of the FBI's Behavioral Sciences Unit – and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice from the City University of New York.

The IPU was established in 1994 by investigative psychologist Micki Pistorius, who became notorious in South Africa and earned praise from legendary FBI profiler Robert Ressler (see my blog essay on profiling). According to a news story this month in South Africa's Daily Star, however, "her methods raised eyebrows in some quarters, and may have contributed to the common public perception that serial killer profiling involves more 'mumbo jumbo' than scientific compilation and analysis of data."

Pistorius theorized that interruption of the normal stages of psychosexual development as posited by Freud could generate a serial killer. She was well known for spending time at the scene of a murder in order to experience the residual energy field the killer left behind.

"I want to retrace the steps of the killer, and it is a place where I can get into his mind. These are the places where they act out their most secret fantasies and I believe the atmosphere is still laden with emotion, waiting for me to tap into it," she once said.

It may have been her emotional approach that caused her to develop post-traumatic stress disorder a few years ago. Such vicarious traumatization is not uncommon among professionals whose work brings them close to trauma survivors and perpetrators.

The brisk business of serial killing in South Africa is keeping the new head of the IPU, psychologist and criminologist Gérard Labuschagne, quite busy. In addition to handling two dozen serial murder investigations over the past six years, he conducts research and provides training to others in South Africa and around the world.

Profiling in South Africa is based not on hunches or emotions but on science and research, taking into account the uniquely South African perspective, Labuschagne insists.

"Our situation is unique in terms of socio-economic and cultural factors," he told the Daily News. "Our high unemployment rate, for instance, makes it easy for killers to lure victims with promises of work."

For a different, and very intriguing, perspective on serial killers, I recommend anthropologist Elliott Leyton's class-based analysis, Hunting Humans: The Rise of the Modern Multiple Murderer. (My review of the book is on its Amazon page.)

Hat tip to Psychology & Crime News for alerting me to the "Monsters Inc." article, which (along with thousands of other articles) is available for free from Sage Publications through the end of November.

Call for juvenile justice reform

The New York Times today issued a radical call for juvenile justice reform. The editorial was triggered by a new report by the Campaign for Youth Justice that lays out the scope of the crisis in juvenile incarceration. As many as 150,000 juveniles are currently incarcerated in adult jails, where they are often raped, beaten, or pushed to suicide. The full report and an executive summary of "Jailing Juveniles: The Dangers of Incarcerating Youth in Adult Jails in America," are available here. The editorial begins:

The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 created a far-sighted partnership between the federal government and the states that agreed to remake often barbaric juvenile justice systems in exchange for federal aid. Unfortunately, those gains have been steadily rolled back since the 1990s when states began sending ever larger numbers of juveniles to adult jails — where they face a high risk of being battered, raped or pushed to suicide. The act is due to be reauthorized this year, and Congress needs to use that opportunity to reverse this destructive trend.

As incredible as it seems, many states regard a child as young as 10 as competent to stand trial in juvenile court. More than 40 states regard children as young as 14 as "of age" and old enough to stand trial in adult court....

Some jails try to protect young inmates by placing them in isolation, where they are locked in small cells for 23 hours a day. This worsens mental disorders. The study says that young people are 36 times as likely to commit suicide in an adult jail than in a juvenile facility. Young people who survive adult jail too often return home as damaged and dangerous people. Studies show that they are far more likely to commit violent crimes — and to end up back inside — than those who are handled through the juvenile courts.

The rush to criminalize children has set the country on a dangerous path. Congress must now reshape the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act so that it provides the states with the money and the expertise they need to develop more enlightened juvenile justice policies. For starters, it should rewrite the law to prohibit the confinement of children in adult jails.

The full editorial is online here. The "Jailing Juveniles" report summarizes data from seven key states: California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, North Carolina, Virginia, and Wisconsin. It calls for radical changes in the way that juveniles are transferred to adult court, such as requiring that a judge - rather than a prosecutor - make that decision. Among the findings:

• Far from the image of the juvenile superpredator, most children tried as adults are charged with non-violent offenses.

• The number of youths being housed in adult jails is increasing, thereby jeopardizing the safety of more and more young people.

• New state laws often contradict core federal protections meant to prohibit juveniles from being confined with adult prisoners.

Expose of FBI's bullet lead analysis

Science discredited, but many remain in prison

For those of you who missed the breaking news this weekend, 60 Minutes and the Washington Post released a devastating critique of the sequelae of bullet lead analyses pioneered by the FBI's crime laboratory.

From the CBS website:

Evidence Of Injustice: FBI's Bullet Lead Analysis Used Flawed Science To Convict Hundreds Of Defendants

Aside from eyewitness testimony, some of the most believable evidence presented in criminal cases in the United States comes from the FBI crime laboratory in Quantico, Va. Part of its job is to test and analyze everything from ballistics to DNA for state and local prosecutors around the country, introducing scientific credibility to often murky cases.

But a six-month investigation by 60 Minutes and The Washington Post shows that there are hundreds of defendants imprisoned around the country who were convicted with the help of a now discredited forensic tool, and that the FBI never notified them, their lawyers, or the courts that their cases may have been affected by faulty testimony.

The science, called bullet lead analysis, was used by the FBI for 40 years in thousands of cases, and some of the people it helped put in jail may be innocent....

Related links:

Washington Post website on "Silent Injustice"

FBI press release, issued Saturday, announcing that the FBI will work jointly with the Innocence Project (what a first!) to identify prisoners who may have been wrongfully convicted due to the bunk science

"TAINTING EVIDENCE: Inside the Scandals at the FBI Crime Lab," a 1998 journalistic expose of the FBI crime lab's bungling of the Oklahoma City bombing case and other high-profile cases

Call for greater regulation of expert witnesses in England

On CSI, the scientific evidence never lies. In the real world, the truth is far less clearcut. In the wake of a series of highly publicized scandals involving the testimony of expert pediatricians and pathologists, some in England are calling for more professional oversight and regulation of forensic experts. A similar scandal underway in Canada (see Saturday's blog post) could lead to calls for reform in that nation and elsewhere.

The most highly publicized miscarriage of justice in England was the 1999 conviction of Sally Clark for murdering her two children. Clark was eventually exonerated but died earlier this year of likely suicide. In that case, Sir Roy Meadow gave inaccurate testimony that the chances of Clark's two babies having died of natural causes were one in 73 million.

Today's Times of London has an article on the current legal climate vis-à-vis expert witnesses. According to the article, the British public is "clamoring" for legislation to regulate expert witnesses. "But how to do that without calling into question thousands of court decisions will not be an easy task."

Fueling this public sentiment is a recent case in which a bogus scientist, Gene Morrison, was found to have given evidence in 700 cases. Morrison, who in February received a five-year prison term, admitted he pretended to be an expert witness and bought his qualifications on the internet because it "seemed easier" than getting real ones. The Times article cites a study by a senior judge finding that most judges and lawyers do not check experts' qualifications.

But even more worrisome, the article states, has been the recent proliferation of parents convicted of causing cot deaths, shaking babies to death, or harming them by creating symptoms of fictitious illness. Social workers bristle at accusations that these cases are exaggerated, saying that the cases represent heightened vigilance in response to a previous era in which children were left to die at the hands of their parents. "In comparison with the volume of cases, the number of errors is tiny," said one social work official. "We never rely on expert witnesses alone."

The full Times of London article, entitled "The Expert as Judge and Jury," is online here.

More international news

Since we're on an international kick today, here are a few other interesting criminal justice stories from around the world.

Major overhaul of South African justice system

South Africa's criminal justice system is in for a series of far-reaching changes after the Cabinet last week approved a turnaround strategy that goes to the heart of the problems with the country's anti-crime methods and structures.

The story, with lots of relevant links, is here.

Dire prison overcrowding in Great Britain

Since you read the news, you already know about prison overcrowding in the United States. And I've previously blogged about the problem elsewhere in the world, including in New Zealand. Yesterday's Times reported on the dire situation in England these days, with prisoners being driven around for hours in search of a cell to squeeze them in. It sounds like the crisis situation in hospital emergency rooms here in the United States!

Britain’s most senior judge has given warning that the shortage of prison spaces was now "critical" as a result of ministers' failure to take account of the cost implications of their sentencing policies.

Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, the Lord Chief Justice, said that the present prison overcrowding could not continue. And he delivered a stark message to ministers — either they should fund the sentences that judges impose or change the sentencing framework that requires them, often, to jail offenders.

"We are in a critical situation," he said. "The prisons are full to capacity." Prisoners who went to court did not know if they would return to the same cell or even the same prison. Cells designed for one were being used for two and prisons were being forced, literally, to close their doors to more admissions. "Prisoners are being driven around for hours on end in a desperate search for a prison that can squeeze them in," he added. "As often or not 200 or 300 are spending the night in police or court cells. We simply cannot go on like this."

The full article is here.

Expert calls for overhaul of Brazilian criminal justice system

The criminal justice system in Brazil is in fare more dire straits than those in South Africa or England, according to a United Nations expert.

Brazil's police engage frequently in extrajudicial executions and many moonlight in death squads or militias involved in racketeering, an independent United Nations human rights expert said today, calling for wholesale reform of the country’s culture of policing.

Philip Alston, the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, said in a statement detailing his preliminary observations after conducting an 11-day visit to Brazil that its prisons are also severely overcrowded, leading to riots and numerous killings by both guards and inmates.

While Brazil's authorities, especially in its biggest cities, face enormous pressure in protecting citizens from the threats of gang violence, drug trafficking and other forms of organized crime, he said the criminal justice system must be overhauled to stop the routine abuse of human rights.

The U.N. news release is here; the full report is here.

Expert witness scandal rocks Canada

Louise Reynolds of Ontario was incarcerated for three years for stabbing her 7-year-old daughter more than 80 times with a pair of scissors. She served most of her prison time in solitary confinement to protect her from other prisoners and guards who wanted to kill her for her vicious crime. Her only visitor was the spirit of her dead daughter, who brought her ghostly comfort from the grave.

Then it turned out Reynolds had been telling the truth when she denied guilt. A pitbull had mauled her daughter to death.

William Mullins-Johnson spent more than 12 years in another Ontario prison for sodomizing and strangling to death his 4-year-old niece.

Then it turned out the little girl had died of natural causes, possibly from complications of a chronic stomach ailment.

The unifying factor identified in these and at least a dozen other wrongful convictions in Canada was the testimony of Dr. Charles Smith, one of Canada’s most renowned pediatric forensic pathologists. The revelations of Dr. Smith's erroneous findings in multiple high-profile cases has severely tarnished the image of the judiciary in the eyes of the Canadian public.

This week, Canada began a judicial inquiry into what went wrong. The hearings, expected to last several months, will examine not only the practice of pediatric forensic pathology but the broader issues of prosecutorial tunnel vision, overreliance on expert testimony, and public overconfidence in forensic science as a result of the "CSI Syndrome."

One commonality among many of the cases is the socioeconomic status of the accused, who included racial minorities, aboriginals, and single mothers, which likely stacked the deck against them.

The scandal follows a highly similar scandal in England over Sir Roy Meadows' testimony falsely accusing dozens of mothers of harming their children due to so-called Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy. Other scandals involving expert scientific testimony have erupted in the United States, including one that I've previously posted about involving forensic odontologist Michael West of Mississippi.

Overall, these scandals are driving home the fact that experts are not infallible.

"We give great deference to experts," said Bill Trudell, chairman of the Canadian Council of Criminal Defence Lawyers. "The [Canadian] inquiry will change that and start people thinking that these experts are human and can make mistakes."

The Toronto Star has all the latest on the hearing, including a detailed list of the cases and the known facts underlying them.

Photo: Pediatric forensic pathologist Charles Smith.

Gory details sway jurors to convict

That's the fascinating finding from new research out of Australia. As reported in today's Sydney Morning Herald:

JURORS given gruesome evidence including pictures of a murder victim or descriptions of torture and mutilation are more than five times more likely to convict than jurors not given gory details, Australian research shows.

Findings from mock criminal trial studies by University of NSW researchers provide the first direct link indicating that juries might be prejudiced by such evidence and might make biased decisions influenced by a desire to punish.

One researcher, a university PhD candidate, David Bright, said both those studies, and a third with similar results involving a mock civil accident damages case, were the first in which "emotional reactions were directly measured in response to gruesome photos which were then shown to have an impact on decisions" of the mock jurors. The results underscore concern expressed more than 20 years ago by the Australian Law Reform Commission that allowing gruesome evidence could be prejudicial to defendants.

Mr Bright, soon to submit his PhD in forensic psychology, said Australian judges were more likely to override defence objections and admit gruesome evidence because its probative value, or ability to prove or disprove a controverted fact, outweighed any potential negative influence.

The story continues here.

Nov. 26 UPDATE: The jury consultation blog DELIBERATIONS has more detail on this topic.

California court upholds indeterminate commitment of Sexually Violent Predators

An appellate court yesterday denied a challenge by a group of civilly committed sex offenders to the state's new Jessica's Law.

The sex offenders had argued that the indeterminate commitment provision of Jessica's Law did not apply retroactively to them. Prior to last year's passage of the Sexual Predator Punishment and Control Act (Proposition 83, or Jessica's Law), civilly committed sex offenders were entitled to a jury trial every two years on the issue of whether they remained mentally disordered and dangerous. Now, commitments are for an indefinite period. A group of previously committed sex offenders whose recommitment petitions were pending when the law passed had argued that they should either be released or, at minimum, should remain entitled to a new hearing every two years. A new law cannot be applied retroactively unless it specifically says so in the text of the law, they pointed out.

In the ruling, Bourquez v. Superior Court, the Third District Court of Appeal disagreed. Using rather strained logic, the court held that it is not a retroactive action to apply the new law's commitment criteria, because an extension hearing is "a new and independent proceeding" aimed at determining the person's current mental state. Under California's SVP law, a sex offender may be civilly committed if he has a mental disorder that keeps him from controlling his sexually violent behavior, making him dangerous and likely to sexually reoffend. (See Hubbart v. Superior Court, 1999, 19 Cal.4th 1138.)

The intention of both Jessica's Law and a similar bill passed by the state Legislature earlier last year (the Sex Offender Punishment, Control, and Containment Act of 2006, SB 1128) was to increase the punishment and control of sex offenders, not to let some SVP's go free, the court pointed out.

Much of the media coverage of Jessica's Law has focused on its residency restrictions banning sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of schools or parks, its longer periods of parole, and its requirement that sex offenders be monitored for life using global positioning technology.

But the changes in the SVP laws under which people may be civilly committed after serving their criminal sentences were also significant. The previous requirement of two separate victims was reduced to only one victim. The single offense may have been committed as a juvenile. And the requirement of "substantial sexual conduct" in crimes against children was eliminated. Theoretically, then, the new law might allow lifetime commitment of a 16-year-old who had fondled a child on a single occasion.

Yesterday's ruling will likely further foment the unrest I've been reporting (here and here) among the men being held at Coalinga State Hospital.

The full text of the ruling in Bourquez v. Superior Court (2007 SOS 6712) is available here. The changes to California statutory law made by Jessica's Law are viewable here. (The SVP provisions fall under Welfare & Institutions Code sections 6600 et seq.) California's Department of Mental Health also has a listing of related statutes and legal cases, online here.
Photo credit: lyzadanger - "The End of Coalinga, California" (Creative Commons license)

L.A. Times investigates "Titanic State Hospital"

"BREAKDOWN"

California's sex offender treatment and detention center in shambles

Two days ago, I posted about the continuing problems at Coalinga State Hospital, California's expensive new detention facility for civilly committed sex offenders. Today's L.A. Times features an in-depth look at the institution's problems. The article, "Breakdown: Turmoil replaces treatment at Coalinga hospital," is written by Scott Gold and Lee Romney, who have been covering California's troubled state hospital system over the past couple of years. Astonishingly, the reporters found a former psychiatric technician from the hospital who was willing to assert on record that many of the men being detained at Coalinga pose little risk to the community if released.

Excerpts of the hard-hitting article follow; the full article (plus a photo gallery) is available online.

Two years after California opened the nation's largest facility designed to house and treat men who have been declared sexually violent predators, Coalinga State Hospital is described by both patients and staff as an institution in turmoil.

Convinced that they stand little chance of being released and angry about perceived deficiencies at the hospital, patients are engaged in a tense standoff with administrators, according to interviews with more than 40 patients and staff members.

… "We're calling it the Titanic State Hospital," said a psychiatric technician who, like most other current employees, spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisal from administrators. "We've lost control. I've been saying for a couple of months now that the monkeys are running the circus."

Patients, meanwhile, are despairing.

"It's hopeless," said Robert Bates, 41, who was sent to Coalinga after serving a 10-year prison term for committing a lewd and lascivious act. "This is a therapeutic setting, supposedly. But it's nothing more than a mock-up prison. They can call it what they want. But it's prison."

… Michael Feer, a psychiatric social worker with more than three decades of experience, worked at Coalinga for a year before leaving this spring. He now works in San Diego County with recently paroled sex offenders, men who in some cases committed the same crimes as those at Coalinga but who are being released into the community, he said.

Feer said that although all Coalinga patients qualify as violent predators on paper, he believes that more than a third of them would pose no threat if released.

"They did their time, and suddenly they are picked up again and shipped off to a state hospital for essentially an indeterminate period of time," Feer said. To get out, he added, "they have to demonstrate that they are no longer a risk, which can be a very high standard. So, yeah, they do have grounds to be very upset."

The hospital, Feer said, "is a setup" - ostensibly a treatment hospital but one built with a wink to a public that has little compunction about locking up sex offenders forever....

Article continues here.

Oregon high court clarifies drug-free school zone law

Prosecutor need not prove defendant's knowledge

A drug dealer need not know of his proximity to a school in order to be convicted under a drug-free school zone law, the Oregon Supreme Court has ruled. The ruling follows similar case law in other states.

Oregon's law is intended to protect children "regardless of whether the dealers know they are within 1,000 feet of a school," the ruling states.

"That's typical with drug crimes when you're looking ... at the social harm as opposed to the mental intent of the seller," commented law professor Laura Appleman.

A 2001 study by the Boston University School of Public Health found that a similar drug zone law was not effective in reducing drug sales near schools.

The full AP story is online at the Oregon Statesman Journal website.

Criminal justice news out of Washington

Prisoner reentry

The U.S. House of Representatives has voted overwhelmingly in favor of a bill to provide help to people leaving prison. The Second Chance Act of 2007 would ease the re-entry process by providing increased funding for mentoring programs, substance abuse treatment and job training.

Federal sentencing equity

Earlier this month, the U.S. Sentencing Commission lowered the federal sentencing guidelines for crack cocaine offenses due to widespread concern over racial inequities. That change will likely impact about 3,500 prisoners per year, reducing the average sentence by 15 months.

Yesterday, the commission held a hearing into whether the change should be made retroactive. That would make about 19,500 crack cocaine offenders now in prison eligible for shorter sentences. The U.S. Justice Department strongly opposes retroactivity.

Paul G. Cassell, a law professor at the University of Utah, has an excellent op-ed in today’s Washington Post that provides a lot of background on this issue, along with links to further references.

More information on these and related issues is at The Sentencing Project.

Studies debunk popular beliefs about youth sexuality

Two new studies are contradicting widely held beliefs about adolescents and sex.

Sex and delinquency

The cause-and-effect link between early sexual activity and juvenile delinquency is widely accepted. Teaching youngsters about this link is even a mandated component of federally funded "abstinence-only" school curricula. But researchers from the University of Virginia, studying 500 pairs of twins within a larger data set of 7,000 children, have made a surprising finding: All other things being equal, adolescents who have consensual sex earlier are less likely to end up delinquent.

"There is a cultural assumption in the United States that if teens have sex early it is somehow bad for their psychological health," said the study's lead researcher, Paige Harden. "But we actually found that teens who had sex earlier seem to have better relationships later."

The surprise finding "calls into question the usefulness of abstinence education for preventing behavior problems," Harden added. More useful, she said, might be education pertaining to the prevention of contraception and venereal disease.

Hip hop music and sexual activity

Another assumed connection challenged by recent research studies is that between the explicit sexual lyrics of hip hop music and early sexual behavior.

After spending three years studying the hip hop dance club scene in New York, a Columbia University professor said the relationship is more complicated. Rather than music and dancing, it is the old standbys of alcohol, drugs and peer pressure that influenced sexual behavior, found Miguel A. Muñoz-Laboy.

That finding is consistent with last year's research by the Rand Corporation finding that degrading lyrics, not sexual lyrics, are connected with early sex. Out of the 1,400 teenagers interviewed for the Rand study, those who listened to the highest levels of sexually degrading lyrics were twice as likely to have had sex by the end of the two-year study. The researchers defined degrading lyrics as those that portrayed women as sexual objects and men as insatiable.

The San Francisco Chronicle has online coverage of the sex and delinquency research. The Munoz-Laboy study on the hip hop dance scene is in the current (November) issue of the journal Culture, Health, and Sexuality. The New York Times has additional coverage. The Rand study was published last year in the journal Pediatrics.

Problems continue at newest California civil commitment center

I haven't seen much media coverage of a 3-month strike by civilly detained sex offenders at the new Coalinga State Hospital in California.

Today, the detainees issued a press release claiming that a patient's death last Thursday illustrated a pattern of inadequate medical care for the aging men. Frank Valado, 45, apparently collapsed and died while playing basketball last Thursday.

Although hospital administrators are denying the strike's existence, sex offenders say the nonviolent revolt is in its third month and that they have effectively shut down all sex offender treatment. Among the patients' main grievances are inadequate psychological evaluations and medical treatment. The average age of detainees is 51, about 20 years older than the average state prisoner in California, and many of the men have substantial and costly medical problems.

The $400 million hospital, which opened two years ago amid great fanfare, houses more than 600 patients out of a capacity of about 1,500. Most are sex offenders who completed their prison terms and were then civilly committed as Sexually Violent Predators.

The hospital has had enormous trouble recruiting staff; I personally have received multiple enticing offers to relocate to the tiny, out-of-the-way Central Valley hamlet that in my mind will always be connected with its 1983 earthquake. (After the quake, a popular T-shirt read, "Where the hell is Coalinga?") Last year, the L.A. Times reported on unrest among both patients and in-house police over the hospital's suspension of normal staffing levels due to an inability to recruit qualified staff. According to detainee spokesman Michael St. Martin, the hospital currently has only four licensed psychologists and only three psychiatrists, the latter recruited from India.

The latest problems come as the U.S. Department of Justice continues its probe into deficiencies in the state hospital system, including at Coalinga.Four of the five state hospitals in California are operating under a sweeping federal consent judgment reached last year. Earlier this year, staff members at Coalinga and other state hospitals protested outside their facilities to decry unsafe and deteriorating conditions, according to an L.A. Times article on May 22.

The detainees have a web site that is worth checking out. Other sources of information include a web site at Geocities and the Sex Gulag blog. On Aug. 27, KPFA radio also covered the strike, which started Aug. 6.

My related blog posts are here and here.

Mother prosecuted for talking to her children about sex

Just when you think you've heard the most ridiculous extreme to which the current sex hysteria can go, along comes something even more bizarre.

A Wisconsin woman was successfully prosecuted for talking to her children, ages 11 and 15, about sex, according to the Portage Daily Register.

Amy Smalley was prosecuted for the felony crime of exposing children to harmful descriptions, which carries a maximum penalty of three years in prison. She pleaded guilty so that her children would not have to testify. She was sentenced to probation and mandatory counseling.

Smalley's attorneys had argued unsuccessfully that Smalley's conversation with her children was protected free speech, and that the law under which she was prosecuted was aimed at protecting children from pornography, not preventing parents from providing their own children with information about sex.

Do mental health courts work?

From a new study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry:

Many communities have created specialized mental health courts in recent years. However, little research has been done to evaluate the criminal justice outcomes of such courts. This study evaluated whether a mental health court can reduce the risk of recidivism and violence by people with mental disorders who have been arrested. In this study, 170 people who went through a mental health court were compared with 8,067 other adults with mental disorders booked into an urban jail during the same period. Statistical analyses revealed that participation in the mental health court program was associated with longer time without any new criminal charges or new charges for violent crimes. Successful completion of the mental health court program was associated with maintenance of reductions in recidivism and violence after graduates were no longer under supervision of the mental health court. Overall, the results indicate that a mental health court can reduce recidivism and violence by people with mental disorders who are involved in the criminal justice system.

The report, “Effectiveness of a mental health court in reducing criminal recidivism and violence,” is by DE McNiel and RL Binder of the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute in San Francisco. It was published in the September 2007 issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry (Volume 164 Number 9). For a reprint, contact the authors at dalem@lppi.uscsf.edu.