Making the Punishment Fit the Crime and the Criminal: Attributions of Dangerousness as a Mediator of Liability1

This research examines how individuals use information regarding characteristics of crimes (e. g., crime severity) and characteristics of the offender (e. g, prior criminal record) to form an impression of the criminal as dangerous to society, and to make liability judgments. Two studies presented college students and community members with crime scenarios and asked for ratings of crime severity, likelihood of recidivism, perceived dangerousness of the offender, and liability. Type of crime, severity. and likelihood of recidivism significantly predicted both liability and perceived dangerousness. Further more, in crimes against people only, the effects of severity and recidivism on liability were partially mediated by individuals' perceptions of the offender as criminally dangerous. The discussion examines the implications of these findings for attribution theory and sentencing in the criminal‐justice system.     

Physical Attractiveness,Dangerousness, and the Canadian Criminal Code1

The Canadian Criminal Code contains provisions for labelling certain convicted criminal offenders as Dangerous Offenders. Sentences of indefinite duration are usually imposed on these offenders in place of the fixed sentences that would normally be imposed. The present study examined one potential source of bias in the use of the Dangerous Offender provisions, the physical attractiveness of an offender. Two hundred and eighty-four adults were given information about a hypothetical offender, including a facial photograph and a conviction record. They responded to questions about the dangerousness of the offender, including questions drawn from the Dangerous Offender criteria. Subjects perceived physically unattractive sexual offenders as significantly more likely to fulfill the Dangerous Offender criteria than average-looking and attractive sexual offenders. In particular, unattractive sexual offenders were seen as significantly less likely to restrain their behavior in the future. In light of the fact that there is currently no evidence that physical attractiveness is a valid predictor of sexual offender recidivism, this finding provides grounds to question whether the Dangerous Offender provisions of the Canadian Criminal Code, as they now stand, can be administered impartially.     

Nature,nurture, and capital punishment: How evidence of a genetic–environment interaction,future dangerousness,and deliberation affect sentencing decisions

Research has shown that the low‐activity MAOA genotype in conjunction with a history of childhood maltreatment increases the likelihood of violent behaviors. This genetic–environment (G × E) interaction has been introduced as mitigation during the sentencing phase of capital trials, yet there is scant data on its effectiveness. This study addressed that issue. In a factorial design that varied mitigating evidence offered by the defense [environmental (i.e., childhood maltreatment), genetic, G × E, or none] and the likelihood of the defendant's future dangerousness (low or high), 600 mock jurors read sentencing phase evidence in a capital murder trial, rendered individual verdicts, and half deliberated as members of a jury to decide a sentence of death or life imprisonment. The G × E evidence had little mitigating effect on sentencing preferences: participants who received the G × E evidence were no less likely to sentence the defendant to death than those who received evidence of childhood maltreatment or a control group that received neither genetic nor maltreatment evidence. Participants with evidence of a G × E interaction were more likely to sentence the defendant to death when there was a high risk of future dangerousness than when there was a low risk. Sentencing preferences were more lenient after deliberation than before. We discuss limitations and future directions.     

Learning the unlearnable: the role of missing evidence

Syntactic knowledge is widely held to be partially innate, rather than learned. In a classic example, it is sometimes argued that children know the proper use of anaphoric one, although that knowledge could not have been learned from experience. Lidz et al. [Lidz, J., Waxman, S., & Freedman, J. (2003). What infants know about syntax but couldn't have learned: Experimental evidence for syntactic structure at 18 months. Cognition, 89, B65-B73.] pursue this argument, and present corpus and experimental evidence that appears to support it; they conclude that specific aspects of this knowledge must be innate. We demonstrate, contra Lidz et al., that this knowledge may in fact be acquired from the input, through a simple Bayesian learning procedure. The learning procedure succeeds because it is sensitive to the absence of particular input patterns--an aspect of learning that is apparently overlooked by Lidz et al. More generally, we suggest that a prominent form of the "argument from poverty of the stimulus" suffers from the same oversight, and is as a result logically unsound.     

Judged Person Dangerousness as Weighted Averaging 1

This article reports two experiments requiring subjective evaluative judgments of the potential dangerousness of hypothetical persons. The research operationally fits the paradigm for the study of personality impression formation, and seeks to illuminate the processes by which two offenses combine to evoke a net judgment of dangerousness. The theoretical framework and philosophy adopted is Anderson's information integration and functional measurement theory. In Study 1, all paired combinations of 10 distinctive crimes were each presented as having been committed by the same person on two separate occasions. Subjects judged overall offender dangerousness. In Study 2, judgments of dangerousness were made when the time purportedly elapsing between two crimes was systematically varied over several ranges of up to 41 years. Three key findings emerged. First, judgments of dangerousness result from an averaging process. This result yields paradoxical implications having considerable pragmatic significance. Second, judgments of dangerousness following two sequential criminal acts (one of high and one of low seriousness) are consistently higher when the high seriousness one is the second crime. Third, with certain qualifications discussed in the text, a serious earlier crime appears to elicit an approximately constant magnitude of judged present dangerousness no matter how long ago it was perpetrated. This result implies that subjects infer considerable permanence of criminal predilection to those who have committed a serious crime in the past.     

Can the criminal law ever be therapeutic?

This paper addresses the question of whether criminal law, especially in its sentencing and penological aspects, can be adjusted in its workings to incorporate the perspective of therapeutic jurisprudence. A conceptual framework developed by Wexler, Winick, and their colleagues is employed to provide a basis for reflection on the operation and impact of sentencing processes. Of considerable importance in this exercise is a mounting volume of evidence concerning the outcomes of work with adjudicated offenders, which illustrates the potential of psycho-educational, behavioral-cognitive skills-training, and therapeutic programs for reduction of recidivism. Such intervention programs are currently offered within the limits set by, but are not intrinsic components of, judicial decisions. The psycho-legal implications of these findings are discussed and some possibilities surveyed for tentative exploration of actively therapeutic departures within crimino-legal decision-making.     

Dangerousness and death: a nexus in search of science and reason

An assertion that a capital offender will engage in future acts of criminal violence is a factor in determining "death worthiness" in many jurisdictions of the United States. The legislative conception and court affirmation of this issue as a capital consideration were products of the parole policy and prison capability of an earlier era as well as of the limitations of risk assessment methodology and findings at that time. The intuitive assumptions that support assertions of future dangerousness as a death penalty issue have been rendered irrelevant by changing prison conditions and parole policies or have been refuted by current findings. This raises important questions for a reasoned public policy in capital sentencing. ((c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).     

Torture in the Naked Public Square

Is torture ever ethically permissible? O’Donohue et al. (2014) argued that there are situations in which it is not only morally permissible but actually morally obligatory to torture a prisoner. Arrigo, DeBatto, Rockwood, and Mawe (2015) wrote a critical reply; O’Donohue et al. (2015) have responded. Yet to date, the specifically ethical weaknesses of the O’Donohue et al. position have not been examined; no argument against torture has been offered, nor have the lessons of the CIA’s secret program been taken into account. The present article moves the discussion forward on all three fronts. A case against torture is offered on pragmatic grounds.     

A challenge for Humean externalism

Humean externalism is the view that moral motivation must be explained in terms of desires that are “external” to an agent’s motivationally-inert moral judgments. A standard argument in favor of Humean externalism appeals to the possibility of amoral or morally cynical agents—agents for whom moral considerations gain no motivational traction. The possibility of such agents seems to provide evidence for both the claim that moral judgments are themselves motivationally inert, and the claim that moral motivation has its source in desires external to those judgments. This essay makes the case that, rather than providing a compelling argument in favor of Humean externalism, the argument from amoralism can be recast to set up an important challenge to this view. On one hand, it appears that the central methodological considerations and types of evidence that undergird the externalist argument from amoralism are in tension with a central Humean commitment: namely, that desires can be sources of motivation. While it is possible for Humeans to escape this horn of the dilemma, the most plausible strategies for doing so can be co-opted by internalists to resist the argument’s externalist conclusion.     

Examining Predictors Which May Influence Sentencing Outcomes for Individuals Convicted of Offenses against Children: A Brief Report

Numerous studies examine sentencing decisions, yet little attention has been given to sentencing of child maltreatment and, more specifically, on variables that could impact sentencing outcomes for this form of criminality. Using Pennsylvania Sentencing Data for 2006, this research adds to the existing sentencing research by exploring predictors that might influence sentencing decisions for individuals convicted of crimes against children. The findings indicate that offender sex significantly affects the sentencing decision and offender age significantly affects sentencing length. In addition, all offense characteristics significantly influence the sentencing length decision. Implication of these results and directions for future research are discussed.     

Skeptical theism,moral skepticism,and epistemic propriety

Respondents to the argument from evil who follow Michael Bergmann’s development of skeptical theism hold that our failure to determine God’s reasons for permitting evil does not disconfirm theism (i.e. render theism less probable on the evidence of evil than it would be if merely evaluated against our background knowledge) at all. They claim that such a thesis follows from the very plausible claim that (ST) we have no good reason to think our access to the realm of value is representative of the full realm of value. There are two interpretations of ST’s strength, the stronger of which leads skeptical theists into moral skepticism and the weaker of which fails to rebut the argument from evil. As I demonstrate, skeptical theists avoid the charge of moral skepticism while also successfully rebutting the argument from evil only by embracing an equivocation between these two interpretations of ST. Thus, as I argue, skeptical theists are caught in a troubling dilemma: they must choose between moral skepticism and failure to adequately respond to the argument from evil.     

Parts, classes and Parts of Classes: an anti-realist reading of Lewisian mereology

This study is in two parts. In the first part, various important principles of classical extensional mereology are derived on the basis of a nice axiomatization involving ‘part of’ and fusion. All results are proved here with full Fregean (and Gentzenian) rigor. They are chosen because they are needed for the second part. In the second part, this natural-deduction framework is used in order to regiment David Lewis’s justification of his Division Thesis, which features prominently in his combination of mereology with class theory. The Division Thesis plays a crucial role in Lewis’s informal argument for his Second Thesis in his book Parts of Classes. In order to present Lewis’s argument in rigorous detail, an elegant new principle is offered for the theory that combines class theory and mereology. The new principle is called the Canonical Decomposition Thesis. It secures Lewis’s Division Thesis on the strong construal required in order for his argument to go through. The exercise illustrates how careful one has to be when setting up the details of an adequate foundational theory of parts and classes. The main aim behind this investigation is to determine whether an anti-realist, inferentialist theorist of meaning has the resources to exhibit Lewis’s argument for his Second Thesis—which is central to his marriage of class theory with mereology—as a purely conceptual one. The formal analysis shows that Lewis’s argument, despite its striking appearance to the contrary, can be given in the constructive, relevant logic IR. This is the logic that the author has argued, elsewhere, to be the correct logic from an anti-realist point of view. The anti-realist is therefore in a position to regard Lewis’s argument as purely conceptual.     

Anxiety symptom interpretation and performance expectations in high-anxious,low-anxious,defensive high-anxious and repressor individuals

To date, no research has investigated score predictions and anxiety interpretation in high-anxious, low-anxious, defensive high-anxious and repressor individuals. This study examined Eysenck’s (1997) predictions for cognitive biases on future performance expectations in all four groups. This study was conducted in an ecologically-valid sporting environment. Competitive shooters completed the Marlowe–Crowne Social Desirability Scale and the Sport Anxiety Scale prior to a major competition. Percentile splits identified the four defensiveness/anxiety groups. The modified Competitive Sport Anxiety Inventory-2 was used to assess the intensity and direction of anxiety prior to competition. Participants predicted their expected shooting score. The hypothesis that repressors would interpret their anxiety as more facilitative to performance compared to low-anxious individuals was partially supported. Repressors were more optimistic in their performance prediction in contrast to defensive high-anxious performers who, in turn, were more pessimistic compared to the other two groupings. High-anxious performers, contrary to predictions, demonstrated optimism in their future performance. The findings of this study corroborate the theoretical predictions and the evidence from previous studies with sport performers. Future research should continue to investigate the influence of cognitive biases on performance predictions in sporting environments using Weinberger et al.’s classifications.     

Effects of neuroimaging evidence on mock juror decision making

During the penalty phase of capital trials, defendants may introduce mitigating evidence that argues for a punishment "less than death." In the past few years, a novel form of mitigating evidence-brain scans made possible by technological advances in neuroscience-has been proffered by defendants to support claims that brain abnormalities reduce their culpability. This exploratory study assessed the impact of neuroscience evidence on mock jurors' sentencing recommendations and impressions of a capital defendant. Using actual case facts, we manipulated diagnostic evidence presented by the defense (psychosis diagnosis; diagnosis and neuropsychological test results; or diagnosis, test results, and neuroimages) and future dangerousness evidence presented by the prosecution (low or high risk). Recommendations for death sentences were affected by the neuropsychological and neuroimaging evidence: defendants deemed at high risk for future dangerousness were less likely to be sentenced to death when jurors had this evidence than when they did not. Neuropsychological and neuroimaging evidence also had mitigating effects on impressions of the defendant. We describe study limitations and pose questions for further research.     

Wegner on hallucinations,inconsistency, and the illusion of free will. Some critical remarks

Wegner’s argument on the illusory nature of conscious will, as developed in The Illusion of Conscious Will (2002) and other publications, has had major impact. Based on empirical data, he develops a theory of apparent mental causation in order to explain the occurrence of the illusion of conscious will. Part of the evidence for his argument is derived from a specific interpretation of the phenomenon of auditory verbal hallucinations as they may occur in schizophrenia. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the validity of the evidence on auditory verbal hallucinations as employed by Wegner. I conclude that auditory hallucinations do not provide solid evidence for Wegner’s theory. Moreover, the phenomena in schizophrenia provide, in fact, an argument against part of Wegner’s theory of apparent mental causation.     

Examining the prevalence, role and impact of evidence regarding Antisocial Personality, sociopathy and psychopathy in capital cases: a survey of defense team members

Although anecdotal case accounts suggest that evidence concerning Antisocial Personality Disorder (APD), sociopathy and psychopathy is frequently introduced by the prosecution in capital murder trials, to date there has been no systematic research to determine the actual prevalence, role, or perceived impact of such evidence in these cases. Survey data collected from attendees at a national capital mitigation conference (n=41) indicated that prosecution evidence concerning APD was quite prevalent, with "sociopath" and "psychopath" labels being introduced less frequently. Evidence concerning these disorders, which were assessed primarily via DSM criteria and self-report personality inventories, was most often introduced by the prosecution in the sentencing phase to address a defendant's ostensible risk of future dangerousness and/or to rebut mitigating evidence-although it was also introduced frequently in the guilt/innocence phase of these trials to rebut mental health evidence offered by the defense. Survey respondents believed that evidence concerning APD, sociopathy, and psychopathy had a considerable impact on trial outcomes. Also, although defense objections were common, such evidence was rarely ruled to be inadmissible in these cases.     

Race, youth violence, and the changing jurisprudence of waiver

This article analyzes the legal history and jurisprudential theory of legislative offense-exclusion and prosecutorial waiver laws over the past quarter-century. Initially concerns about racial discrimination and civil rights motivated the Supreme Court in Kent v. United States to require due process in judicial waiver hearings. Offense-exclusion and "direct file" laws evolved and expanded in direct reaction to Kent as lawmakers sought simple and expedient alternatives to judicial waiver hearings. The "just deserts" sentencing movement of the 1970s, which advocated determinate and presumptive offense-based sentences, provided a conceptual alternative to judicial discretion and a jurisprudential rationale for offense exclusion laws. Research on delinquent and criminal careers in the 1970s, which initially promised empirically grounded selective incapacitation sentencing strategies, provided another conceptual foundation for offense-based waiver laws that focused on youths' prior records. Finally, offense exclusion provided a politically attractive strategy for "get tough" public officials who proposed to "crack down" on "baby boom" increases in youth crime. The jurisprudential shift in sentencing emphases from considerations of the offender to characteristics of the offense relocated waiver and sentencing discretion from judges to prosecutors. By the early 1990s, as a result of political "crack-downs" on youth crime, the scope of excluded offense legislation increased substantially, became overly inclusive and excessively rigid, and exhibited many of the negative features associated with mandatory sentencing laws.