Lecture 4: Violent Offenders Flashcards
What is the purpose of corrections?
- Carry out sentence
- Provide the degree of custody or control necessary to contain offender’s risk - classification
- Encourage offenders to participate in experiences to assist them to become law-abiding citizens
- Encourage offenders to prepare for eventual and successful release
- Provide a safe and healthful environment, consistent with community standards
What are the principles for corrections?
1) Individuals under sentence retain all the rights and privileges of a member of society, except those are restricted by fact of incarceration (Restricting rights requires justification). Punishment consists only of loss of liberty, restriction of mobility. No other punishment should be imposed by correctional authorities
2) Any punishment or loss of liberty that results from an offender’s violation of institutional rules must be imposed in accordance with law
3) Ready access to fair grievance and remedial measure
4) Least restrictive course, consistent with public protection and institutional safety and order
What is the bottom line about risk assessment?
The use of purpose-specific scales is encouraged, as they improve ecological validity and are more defensible in the event of false negatives.
What is the prevalence of violent offenders?
- 26% of charges in adult court are violent (about 14% if common assault & weapons excluded)
- Rate of homicide has dropped since 1979 (< 2 per 100,000)
- Rate of violence crime has dropped since 1992 (~1000 per 100,000)
What are crimes against the person?
- Homicide and related
- Attempted murder
- Robbery
- Sexual assault
- Other sexual offences
- Major assaults (levels 2 & 3)
- Common assaults (level 1)
- Utter threats
- Criminal harassment
- Weapons
- Other crimes against persons
What is the definition of violence?
- Actual, attempted, or threatened physical harm that is deliberate and nonconsenting
- includes violence against victims who cannot give full, informed consent
- includes fear-inducing behavior, where threats may be implicit or directed at third parties
What 2 general explanations have informed assessment and programming for violent offenders?
- Anger/arousal (from 1975 - 2000)
- Information processing/schema (from 1990 – current)
What do the 2 general explanations mean?
- Cognitive schema influence what we attend to and how we interpret external events
- Arousal and impulsivity are related to violence expression
- Violence is a complex interplay among thoughts, emotions, and behaviour (Note: all are targeted in CSC violence programs)
Violence as a choice
- The proximal cause of violence is a decision to act violently
- The decision is influenced by a host of biological, psychological, and social factors: neurological insult, hormonal abnormality, psychosis, personality disorder, exposure to violent models, attitudes that condone violence
- Multiple pathways to violence (multiply-determined)
- the general aggression model
What are the previous strategies to define violent offenders?
Criminal conviction (assaults) Attitudes (hostility) Emotions (anger) Poor self-regulation (impulsivity) Victim selection (spousal assault) Diagnosis (APD)
Is there heterogeneity among violent offenders?
-Yes: Motivation for violence (dystonic/syntonic) Precursors Mental disorders Skills and competence Anger (arousal/reactivity) Problem solving Role of substance abuse Aggression/hostility (schema) Power/control issues Victim affiliation/selection Impulsivity
What are the types of violent offenders?
- Typologies are often used to understand differences among offenders.
- Typologies (theoretical and empirical) identify similarities among offenders in order to assist in determining assessment, programming and supervision strategies.
- Two common examples consider diagnosis (psychopathy) and motivation (instrumental versus affective violence).
How can we code for instrumental violence?
- planning or preparation before the aggression,
- goal directed – the act helped obtain a specific and identifiable goal (e.g., money),
- the aggressive behavior was unprovoked by the victim,
- lack of anger during the aggression, and
- the victim of the aggression was a stranger.
How can we define instrumental or proactive violence?
- violence is not emotionally driven
- violence is precipitated by revenge, power and control, and financial or material gain
- considered gratuitous if violence is excessive and beyond that required to meet goal
- cognitive distortions regarding sense of entitlement and motivations of others are key
- arousal is coincidental and therefore not a legitimate treatment target
- proximal triggers are difficult to identify
What is affective or reactive violence?
-Violence is emotionally driven
-violence has high arousal component and is a legitimate treatment target
-victim injury is often more excessive because of poor internal controls (distinct from sadists)
-cognitive distortions regarding expectations
-Proximal triggers are more readily identifiable (physiological symptoms, faulty thinking)
often offender describes a tenuous ability to “control self”
What actuarial tool is typically used for violence risk assessment?
The VRAG or the VRAG-R. The VRAG-R has slightly better predictive validity. The AUC for the vrag/vrag-r is very good (mid 7’s), it is about as high as it gets.
What does the data suggest about the self-report approach?
The SAQ (self appraisal questionnaire) scores were correlated very highly with other risk scales like the SIR-R1, the LSI-R1, PCL-R, and the VRAG. These data suggest that you can use self-report data. The content in the SAQ looks like the central eight, thus it makes sense that there is high predictive validity
What is an example of a structured professional judgement scale?
- The violence risk scale (The VRS uses 6 Static and 20 Dynamic variables)
- this is one of the best SPJ tools
- each of the items is presented and allocates each item as present, not present or semi present.
- falls into a model called the stages of change
- study: people who score low on the VRS have failure rates of about 8% for violent and 22% for nonviolent return and those who scored high had >50% for non violent and violent. Demonstrates that people’s VRS scores change as a function of that program and it results in better outcomes.
Personality and Crime: The Role of Psychopathy
What is psychopathy? A personality disorder
- inflexible, maladaptive manner of perceiving, relating to, and thinking about oneself and the world
- Specific pattern of interpersonal, affective, and behavioural symptoms (Cleckley)
- AKA sociopathy , antisocial personality disorder
What are the 3 types of assessment methods for psychopathy?
- Diagnostic/expert ratings (DSM-IV, PCL-R, PCL:SV)
- Self-reports (MMPI-2, MCMI-III, PAI, PPI)
- Projectives (RIB, TAT, HTP)
What are the adult DSM-IV criteria for APD?
-Adult criteria (3 of 7) repeated criminal acts deceitfulness impulsivity irritability recklessness irresponsibility lack of remorse
What age do you have to be in order to be diagnosed with APD?
- Current age at least 18
- Conduct disorder before age 15 (3 of 15)
- Aggression (i.e., used weapon, robbed)
- Violated rules (i.e., ran away, truant)
- antisocial acts (i.e., set fires, B&E)
What percentage of all offenders have been diagnosed with APD and Psychopathy?
65% of all offenders have APD and about 20% of that have psychopathy.
can you use the PCL-R to diagnose APD?
- Forensic/correctional populations
- 90% of psychopaths are APD
- 20% of APD are psychopathic
- Most APD do not have the Factor 1 characteristics
What is the description of the Hare scales?
- Symptom construct rating scales: require clinical/expert judgment, based on “all data”
- Data obtained from two primary sources: review of case history (required), interview/observation (recommended)
What are the factor 1 items of the PCL-R
Glibness/superficial charm Grandiose sense of self-worth Pathological lying Conning/manipulative Lack of remorse or guilt Shallow affect Callous/lack of empathy Failure to accept responsibility for own actions
What are the factor 2 items of the PCL-R?
Need for stimulation/-proneness to boredom Parasitic lifestyle Poor behavioral controls Early behavioral problems Lack of realistic, long-term goals Impulsivity Irresponsibility Juvenile delinquency Revocation of conditional release
What are the additional items on the PCL-R?
Promiscuous sexual behavior
Many short-term marital relationships
Criminal versatility
