Lecture 12 - Criminal Offenders: Sentencing and Risk Assessment

1.Retribution NOW

"Just desserts" model of retribution: Criminals deserve the punishments they receive at the hands of the law, and that punishment should be appropriate to the type and severity of the crime

What are protective factors?

- Factors that reduce or mitigate the likelihood of violence - Can help explain why some individuals with many risk factors do not become violent.

what is a risk factor?

- measurable feature of an individual that predicts the behaviour of interest (e.g., violence or psychopathology)

What are the protective factors? For adults:

-Employment stability (for high-risk) -Strong family connections (for low-risk males)

What are the protective factors? For children:

-Prosocial involvement -Strong social support -Positive social orientation (school, work) -Strong attachment (except with antisocial other) -Intelligence

4 Important Risk Factors:

1.Dispositional 2.Historical 3.Clinical 4.Contextual

Modern sentencing practices are influenced by FIVE GOALS

1.Retribution 2.Incapacitation 3.Deterrence 4.Rehabilitation 5.Restoration

What are the 3 types of ASSESSMENT?

1.Unstructured clinical judgement 2.Statistical or Actuarial assessment 3.Structured professional judgement

Rehabilitation NOW / CBT: ABC Technique

ABC technique: Activating events lead to Beliefs which lead to Consequences - the client works to understand this relationship then reframes the situation to re-interpret the situation in a more realistic way.

What are risk factors more likely to be than these 2 dichotomous factors

Along a continuum Static - stable dynamic - acute dynamic

4.Contextual Risk Factors

Current environmental factors •Lack of social support to help individual in his or her day-to-day life •Easy access to weapons •Easy access to victims Keep in mind putting a person back into an environment that lead them to offend in the first place

History of Crime and Sentencing Late 18th-early 19th centuries: Changes from early times

Enlightenment philosophers put an emphasis on deterrence through rational punishment. Severity of punishment became less important than quick, certain penalties

History of Crime and Sentencing Early 20th Century:

Focus on rehabilitation, based largely on Positivist philosophies •Recent thinking has emphasized the need to limit offenders' potential for future harm by separating them from society - Prisons

Rehabilitation NOW

Focus on what does work •More recent studies are more methodologically sound and also slightly more optimistic •Focus now is on "What works?" •Evidence has begun to suggest that effective treatment does exist •However effect sizes are not massive (modest)

2. Incapacitation

Imprisonment The use of imprisonment or other means to reduce the likelihood that an offender will be capable of committing future offences. •This rationale seeks to protect innocent members of society from offenders who might do them harm if they were not prevented in some way. •Goal: Protect innocent

5. Restoration How does this differ from the 4 other goals?

It is focused on the victim, while the first 4 are focused on the offender

What other affector has been shown to affect proportion of people being paroled?

Judges food intake Highest proportion of people released on bail in the mornings, or after meals. Before meals is the lowest Danziger, LEva & Avnaim-Pesso, 2011 in Israel

Unstructured Clinical Judgment Empirical support

Many studies show clinical assessments of risk to be POOR •Clark (1999) reviewed studies and concluded that clinical risk assessment is weak at best, at worst totally INEFFECTIVE. •Even experienced clinicians fail to predict future violence in cases with clear indicators, such as previous recidivism.

Who is impacted by a false positive?

Offender. Assumed they will reoffend and they do not. They will be kept in prison, though they would not have reoffended

How do our BELIEFS affect SENTENCING?

Our beliefs about the causes of crime influence our sentencing rationale eg if we believe that criminal behaviour is a learned behaviour, we'll look a socialising and trying to rehabilitate within their sentence

3. Deterrence

PREVENTION •A goal of criminal sentencing which seeks to prevent people from committing crimes similar to the one for which an offender is being sentenced. •Goal: Crime prevention

What do we want to achieve in these Prediction Outcomes:

We want to Maximise True Positives and True Negatives, Minimise False Negatives and False Positives.

What are the predicted outcomes for a Decision deemed that they will REOFFEND:

Reoffend: True Positive (correct decision) Not Reoffend: False Positive (incorrect)

What are the predicted outcomes for a Decision deemed that they will NOT REOFFEND:

Reoffends: False negative (Incorrect) Not reoffends: True negative (correct)

1.Retribution

Revenge / Pay for the crime •The act of taking revenge upon the criminal perpetrator. •Predicated upon a felt need for vengeance •Goal: Satisfaction

Who is impacted by a false negative?

SOCIETY Assumed they will not reoffend and they do They are let out and have reoffended

What is SENTENCING:

Sentencing: the imposition of a penalty upon a person convicted of a crime.

Deterrence SPECIFIC GENERAL

Specific deterrence seeks to prevent a particular offender from recidivism (repeat offences). OPERANT LEARNING General deterrence seeks to prevent others from committing crimes similar to the one for which a particular offender is being sentenced by making an example of the person sentenced. SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY

2 Types of Risk Factors

Static Risk Factors Dynamic Risk Factors

2.Statistical or Actuarial assessment

Statistics •Decisions based on risk factors that are selected and combined based on empirical or statistical evidence •Calculates risk by comparing characteristics of the individual to those of individuals for whom we know behavior •Evidence favours actuarial assessments over unstructured clinical judgment LACKS: individualised / personalised element

4. Rehabilitation

The attempt to reform a criminal offender. Rehabilitation seeks to bring about fundamental changes in offenders and their behaviour. Training in skills eg conflict management, work skills, etc to live a productive life •Goal: reduce future crime

What is Continued detention orders

allow some offenders to be detained after the end of their sentence if they are regarded as a serious risk Australia and Norway have this

3.Clinical Risk Factors

s/s of mental disorder and substance abuse •Substance use: drugs 15 x more likely to be criminal. 20x more likely to be involved in burglary •Mental disorder -Diagnosis of schizophrenia or affective disorders: in violent crimes -"Threat/control override" symptoms: psychotic symptoms overriding a person's self-control or threatening a person's safety Paranoid types

What part of the continuum of risk factors is the focus of treatment

stable dynamic Eg Criminial attitude, impulse control, coping strateges

History of Crime and Sentencing What was crime due to? Belief about sentencing?

was due to sin suffering was the culprit's due. Judges were therefore expected to be harsh and they would often sentence criminals to capital punishment, torture, and other painful physical penalties.

Rehabilitation NOW / CBT

• One of the most successful and widely employed forms of psychotherapy. Used to treat a variety of disorders • Often used with groups rather than individuals - to show people they are not alone • Our thoughts, feelings and behaviour all interact. Our thoughts influence our feelings and behaviour - so if we can change our thinking we can change problematic behaviour patterns • Results in cycles of thoughts, feelings and behaviours which are self perpetuating

Rehabilitation HISTORY 1930s

•1930s: Therapists such a Freud entered popular culture. Psychology introduced the possibility of a structured approach to rehabilitation through therapeutic intervention (didn't work, 90% recividism)

Rehabilitation HISTORY 1970s

•1970s: 'Nothing works' philosophy. Studies on recidivism showed that rehabilitation didn't work

5. Restoration

•Attempts to make the victim "whole again." •Sentencing options that seek to restore the victim have focused primarily on restitution payments that offenders are ordered to make

Parts of Risk Assessment:

•Components of risk assessment •Types of prediction outcomes •Approaches to the assessment of risk •Risk Factors •Protective factors

1. Unstructured clinical judgement

•Decisions characterised by professional discretion and lack of guidelines •Subjective •No specific risk factors •No rules about how risk decisions should be made eg Dr Death - the hanging shrink, who beleived most people were going to reoffend

1.Dispositional Risk Factors

•Demographics - Age. <14 is more problematic - Gender: male more likely, especially if a violent offense •Personality characteristics -Impulsivity: not able to regulate thoughts and behaviours - Psychopathy: leads to diverse and chronic criminal behaviour

Goal of Deterrence

•Goal: Crime prevention Goal that is future focused, to stop reoffending or stop others offending

Goal of Incapacitation

•Goal: Protect innocent / reduce the risk to society Less emphasis on punishment, more emphasis on keeping them away from people

What is the goal of Retribution:

•Goal: Satisfaction - for the victim and society

Rehabilitation GOAL

•Goal: reduce future crime

Incapacitation THEN

•In ancient times mutilation and amputation of the extremities to prevent offenders from repeating crimes eg can't commit theft if your incapacitate (hands removed)

1.Retribution THEN

•In early societies death and exile were commonly imposed for relatively minor offences •"An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth", often cited as justification for retribution was actually intended to reduce the severity of punishment for minor crimes. eg if stole a bread, it should be a light sentence - not long prison sentence

Incapacitation NOW

•Lock 'em up approach •Goal: restraint, not punishment •Electronic confinement (eg ankle monitors) •Biomedical intervention (e.g., chemical castration)

Why are the types of predictors fuzzy categories

•Many predictive factors are static. This creates some problems - does it mean we cannot change dangerousness? •Also, what about personality factors, are they static or dynamic

2.Historical Risk Factors Events that have occured in their past

•Past antisocial behaviour •Age of onset of antisocial behaviour <14 •Childhood history of maltreatment. 1 time abuse, predicts age of offence. Chronic abuse predicts chronic offending Physical abuse does. Sexual abuse does not •Past supervision failure, escape, or institution maladjustment

3. Structured professional judgement

•Provision of guidelines to help structure clinical decision-making can improve performance (Blackburn,2000) •Decisions guided by predetermined list of risk factors derived from research literature •Judgement of risk level is based on professional judgement •E.g., Hare's Psychopathy Checklist Revised

5 Goals of Modern Sentencing Rationale

•Retribution •Incapacitation •Deterrence •Rehabilitation •Restoration

At what points in time is Risk Assessment conducted

•Risk assessments conducted at major decision points: -Pretrial -Sentencing -Release

What two factors are we trying to predict?

•Risk of offending or risk of offending in a particular way: Predicting likelihood of occurrence •Dangerousness: Predicting likely consequences of offending - how "serious" the offence. •Can predict high risk, but low dangerousness etc. Eg likelihood to get more parking fines

Explain the 2 types of Risk Factors

•Static Risk Factors -Historical -Factors that cannot be changed •Dynamic Risk Factors -Fluctuate over time -Factors that can be changed -Acute vs. stable dynamic risk factors