Michael Welner's Depravity Standard & Aaron Hernandez

President Trump's pick for assistant secretary of Department of Health and Human Services? Dr. Welner's quest to develop a Depravity Standard is based on a clear need for one in the American criminal justice system.

Pacific Standard

"Our justice system holds that some crimes are more terrible, and thus worthy of harsher punishment, than others. Murder is differentiated by degree; a premeditated killing generally earns you more time than a crime of passion. The presence of certain “aggravating circumstances” — prior criminal history, for example — may result in more significant penalties. The most controversial of these factors is whether a crime can be judged “heinous, atrocious, cruel, or depraved,” language that many states have adopted in some form. The vagueness of this broad standard and its inconsistent application has resulted in a number of important Supreme Court cases about capital punishment. The 1980 Godfrey v. Georgia case concerned Georgia’s version, which applied to murders that were “outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible or inhuman.” Stressing the need for “clear and objective standards” in his opinion, Justice Potter Stewart wrote: “There is nothing in these few words, standing alone, that implies any inherent restraint on the arbitrary and capricious infliction of the death sentence. A person of ordinary sensibility could fairly characterize almost every murder” as meeting the standard. Some states have tried to make their standards more objective by narrowing definitions or adding required elements like torture. But in many states, even the clarified language reads like a thesaurus entry: In Arizona, “especially heinous” is defined as “hatefully or shockingly evil, in other words, grossly bad”; in Oklahoma, heinous means “extremely wicked or shockingly evil,” and atrocious means “outrageously wicked and vile.”

None of these are neat and easy categories. If some murders are especially atrocious or cruel, that implies that there’s also garden-variety atrocity and murders that aren’t merciless. But what does an average atrocity look like? Start trying to rank different kinds of awfulness and you quickly find yourself in the middle of a queasy moral puzzle. It’s no surprise, then, that juries often struggle with these judgments. In April, former football player Aaron Hernandez was convicted of first-degree murder for killing his fiancée’s sister’s boyfriend. The jury determined that his crime was characterized by extreme cruelty or atrocity and sentenced Hernandez to life in prison without the possibility of parole. “The shots. There were six of them. That’s extreme,” juror Rosalie Oliver said in a post-trial press conference. Defense attorneys disagreed: “This is not your classic case of cruelty, where somebody kills someone over a lengthy period of time,” Boston defense attorney Martin Weinberg told the Hartford Courant. Hernandez’s legal team has indicated that a dispute over the definition of “extreme cruelty” will be at the center of its appeal."

 

Participate in the Depravity Standard research here:

 

https://depravitystandard.org/

 

 

John Hinckley, from St. Elizabeth's hospital to Williamsburg, VA

There's a difference between being disturbed and being dangerous. Let's hope the docs at St. E's aren't proven wrong in their assessment. 

NY Magazine

"In his fantasy pursuit of Jodie Foster, [President Reagan's would-be assassin John] Hinckley cast himself as a chivalric knight, but in life, he had never had a girlfriend. In the hospital, that changed. Hinckley became a promiscuous lover of real women, some of whom seemed to love him back — and others who did not. Leslie deVeau was already a patient at St. Elizabeths when Hinckley arrived, having murdered her 10-year-old daughter in her sleep. (She had then turned the shotgun on herself, but missed her heart and blew off her left arm.) She also was white, and from an upper-middle-class family. Hinckley approached her at a Halloween mixer. “I’d ask you to dance if I danced,” he said.

Their courtship blossomed slowly, over 20 years, constrained by stringent rules and schedules. When they could not see each other, they would exchange letters, taping them beneath the dining tables in the cafeteria. But the romance intensified when deVeau was released (in 1990) and began coming to see him during visiting hours. They would hold hands across a large table and talk, under the watchfulness of the hospital guards. deVeau needed someone to mother, she told The New Yorker in 1999. Hinckley, whom others found distant and defensive, was revealing and loquacious with her, she said. When they first started having sex, outdoors, nearly ten years after they met, it wasn’t awkward, despite Hinckley’s inexperience. “It was as if we’d both had this core of loneliness for a hundred years,” said deVeau.

...

With Cynthia Bruce, another patient at St. Elizabeths, Hinckley cast himself in a savior role. Bruce, several years younger, has severe schizophrenia and has spent her life in and out of hospitals, according to court documents. By 2009, when they became close, the judge had already approved a series of furloughs home for Hinckley — 12-hour day trips in 2003 and then three-day overnights in 2006 — and his focus was on getting released. In the hospital, he and Bruce were inseparable. And when Hinckley was in Williamsburg, to the annoyance of his mother, they talked incessantly on the phone.

But Hinckley had mixed feelings about Bruce. On the one hand, he loved her. The relationship was “pretty intense,” he told a psychiatrist, and he gave her several rings, including one that was “like the one William gave Kate,” he said. Hinckley even told his family they intended to marry, and said he was considering conversion to Catholicism because Bruce was so devout. On the other hand, he hoped to be out of the hospital soon, so “what’s the point of being engaged to her?” (“It’s very confusing, because they are either engaged or not engaged,” his psychiatrist said.) Another doctor expressed concern that Hinckley was being deceitful, leading Bruce on in order to ameliorate his loneliness. Certain people saw the relationship as evidence of his increased empathy; others saw a mind almost weaponized by selfishness. At a hospital Christmas party, Hinckley was gentlemanly when Bruce had an anxiety attack, escorting her to the front gate so she could get home. But when she’d stood outside the hospital, in full-blown psychosis, holding a sign on a pole and screaming religious terms and his name, Hinckley told his doctors he didn’t hear her.

How do doctors decide when a person’s fantasies are dangerous? In assessing patients for release, psychiatrists talk about “state or trait.” Did a person commit murder because of his “state” — hallucinations or delusions or drunkenness? Or was it depression or a mania that is a part of an underlying disorder — a “trait”? How good is the patient at understanding himself, managing his illness, and acting responsibly in his own interest?

Within three years of hospitalization, John Hinckley’s most dangerous symptoms — his obsessive, fantastical, suicidal-homicidal-romantic thoughts — had abated and, his lawyer says, without the help of psychotropic drugs. But whatever mental illness Hinckley had, it was atypical. “For some people, their symptomology doesn’t fit neatly into a category, or even two or three,” says Paul Appelbaum, the Columbia psychiatrist. “The field doesn’t have it all figured out yet. It’s not unusual to see people who have had multiple diagnoses, incompatible diagnoses, and now have a new set of diagnoses.” Eventually, the hospital settled on a durable clinical label for Hinckley’s illness: major depression and nonspecific psychosis, both of which had been in remission since at least 1990. And over time, Hinckley remained symptom-free. Generally speaking, age modulates psychosis and diminishes violent impulses."

Lethal aggression in pan troglodyte, or, Killer Chimps!

In homo sapiens, males account for 90% of the perpetrators of homicide, and 77% of victims (FBI data). The percentages for chimpanzees/bonobos are 92% and 73%. Maybe that Darwin fellow was onto something.

Lethal aggression in Pan is better explained by adaptive strategies than human impacts

• Michael L. Wilson,
• Christophe Boesch,
• Barbara Fruth,
• Takeshi Furuichi,
• Ian C. Gilby,
• Chie Hashimoto,
• Catherine L. Hobaiter,
• Gottfried Hohmann,
• Noriko Itoh,
• Kathelijne Koops,
• Julia N. Lloyd,
• Tetsuro Matsuzawa,
• John C. Mitani,
• Deus C. Mjungu,
• David Morgan,
• Martin N. Muller,
• Roger Mundry,
• Michio Nakamura,
• Jill Pruetz,
• Anne E. Pusey,
• Julia Riedel,
• Crickette Sanz,
• Anne M. Schel,
• Nicole Simmons,
• Michel Waller
• et al.

• Affiliations
• Contributions
• Corresponding author

Nature

 

513,

 

414–417

 

(18 September 2014)

 

doi:10.1038/nature13727

Received

 

03 March 2014 

Accepted

 

04 August 2014 

Published online

 

17 September 2014

Observations of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and bonobos (Pan paniscus) provide valuable comparative data for understanding the significance of conspecific killing. Two kinds of hypothesis have been proposed. Lethal violence is sometimes concluded to be the result of adaptive strategies, such that killers ultimately gain fitness benefits by increasing their access to resources such as food or mates^{1, 2, 3, 4, 5}. Alternatively, it could be a non-adaptive result of human impacts, such as habitat change or food provisioning^{6, 7, 8, 9}. To discriminate between these hypotheses we compiled information from 18 chimpanzee communities and 4 bonobo communities studied over five decades. Our data include 152 killings (n = 58 observed, 41 inferred, and 53 suspected killings) by chimpanzees in 15 communities and one suspected killing by bonobos. We found that males were the most frequent attackers (92% of participants) and victims (73%); most killings (66%) involved intercommunity attacks; and attackers greatly outnumbered their victims (median 8:1 ratio). Variation in killing rates was unrelated to measures of human impacts. Our results are compatible with previously proposed adaptive explanations for killing by chimpanzees, whereas the human impact hypothesis is not supported.

Our Miserable 21st Century -- Nicholas N. Eberstadt

One out of eight adult American males is a felon. Super.

Read the whole article. It's insanely depressing. 

Commentary

"Most well-informed readers know that the U.S. currently has a higher share of its populace in jail or prison than almost any other country on earth, that Barack Obama and others talk of our criminal-justice process as “mass incarceration,” and know that well over 2 million men were in prison or jail in recent years.4 But only a tiny fraction of all living Americans ever convicted of a felony is actually incarcerated at this very moment. Quite the contrary: Maybe 90 percent of all sentenced felons today are out of confinement and living more or less among us. The reason: the basic arithmetic of sentencing and incarceration in America today. Correctional release and sentenced community supervision (probation and parole) guarantee a steady annual “flow” of convicted felons back into society to augment the very considerable “stock” of felons and ex-felons already there. And this “stock” is by now truly enormous.

One forthcoming demographic study by Sarah Shannon and five other researchers estimates that the cohort of current and former felons in America very nearly reached 20 million by the year 2010. If its estimates are roughly accurate, and if America’s felon population has continued to grow at more or less the same tempotraced out for the years leading up to 2010, we would expect it to surpass 23 million persons by the end of 2016 at the latest. Very rough calculations might therefore suggest that at this writing, America’s population of non-institutionalized adults with a felony conviction somewhere in their past has almost certainly broken the 20 million mark by the end of 2016. A little more rough arithmetic suggests that about 17 million men in our general population have a felony conviction somewhere in their CV. That works out to one of every eight adult males in America today.

We have to use rough estimates here, rather than precise official numbers, because the government does not collect any data at all on the size or socioeconomic circumstances of this population of 20 million, and never has. Amazing as this may sound and scandalous though it may be, America has, at least to date, effectively banished this huge group—a group roughly twice the total size of our illegal-immigrant population and an adult population larger than that in any state but California—to a near-total and seemingly unending statistical invisibility. Our ex-cons are, so to speak, statistical outcasts who live in a darkness our polity does not care enough to illuminate—beyond the scope or interest of public policy, unless and until they next run afoul of the law.

Thus we cannot describe with any precision or certainty what has become of those who make up our “criminal class” after their (latest) sentencing or release. In the most stylized terms, however, we might guess that their odds in the real America are not all that favorable."

Murder in the Red Barn -- Tom Waits (1992)

There was a murder in the red barn
Murder in the red barn

The trees are bending over
The cows are lying down
The autumn's taking over
You can hear the buckshot hounds
The watchman said to Reba the loon
Was it pale at Manzanita
Or Blind Bob the raccoon?
Pin it on a drifter
They sleep beneath the bridge
One plays the violin
And sleeps inside a fridge
There was a murder in the red barn
A murder in the red barn

Someone's crying in the woods
Someone's burying all his clothes
Now Slam the Crank from Wheezer
Slept outside last night and froze
Road kill has its seasons
Just like anything
It's possums in the autumn
And it's farm cats in the spring
There was a murder in the red barn
A murder in the red barn

Now thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house
Or covet thy neighbor's wife
But for some
Murder is the only door through which they enter life

Now they surrounded the house
They smoke him out
They took him off in chains
The sky turned black and bruised
And we had months of heavy rains
Now the raven's nest in the rotted roof
Of Chenoweth's old place
And no one's asking Cal
About that scar upon his face
'Cause there's nothin' strange
About an axe with bloodstains in the barn

There's always some killin'
You got to do around the farm
A murder in the red barn
Murder in the red barn

Now the woods will never tell
What sleeps beneath the trees
Or what's buried 'neath a rock
Or hiding in the leaves
'Cause road kill has it's seasons
Just like anything
It's possums in the autumn
And it's farm cats in the spring
A murder in the red barn
A murder in the red barn

Now a lady can't do nothin''
Without folks' tongues waggin'
Is this blood on the tree
Or is it autumn's red blaze
When the ground's soft for diggin'
And the rain will bring all this gloom
There's nothing wrong with a lady
Drinking alone in her room
But there was a murder in the red barn
A murder in the red barn

Veteran with PTSD beaten into a coma by jail guards, suit alleges

WaPo

January 18, 2017 

 

"It was the overnight shift at the Montgomery County jail in Dayton, Ohio, and Joseph Guglielmo banged on the door of cell 114 again and again.

The 57-year-old veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder had been arrested at a homeless shelter earlier that night in January 2015. He’d struggled with a security guard at the shelter and against the officers who had come to arrest him. Now he was demanding some unspecified medicine and annoying his guards.

So, his civil rights complaint says, they decided to “teach him a lesson.”

Six guards gathered in front of cell 114, Guglielmo’s attorney said. They massed around the door, blocking the view of a hallway camera.

What happened next is the subject of a federal civil rights complaint from Guglielmo, who served as an operating room technician in the Air Force.

“Three of them went in and beat the crap out of him,” his attorney, Jennifer L. Branch, told The Washington Post.

One guard, Matthew Snyder, “beat Guglielmo repeatedly and threw him against the concrete wall,” the complaint says. Snyder reportedly “delivered closed-fist strikes to Mr. Guglielmo’s head, eye area and abdomen” while other guards watched.

Afterward, a nurse gave Guglielmo ice packs, and guards moved him to a holding cell where he could be closely observed.

But his condition worsened.

Just after midnight, Snyder noticed that although Guglielmo appeared asleep, his feet were twitching, the complaint says. Fifteen minutes later, when guards tried to reposition Guglielmo’s unconscious body to better see him through a window, the 57-year-old was unresponsive.

He was taken to a hospital, where he lay in a coma for four weeks. When he woke up, he was no longer able to walk, his attorney said.

The court documents say he is confined to a wheelchair. He lives in a nursing home and rehabilitation center, and receives round-the-clock care, his attorney said."

 

Man Shoots UPS Driver, thinks he was assassinating Donald Trump

He does seem rather pleased with himself.

  

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Tuesday, December 20, 2016, 4:01 PM

"An Ithaca man accused of fatally shooting a UPS driver outside a Walmart claimed he shot and killed Donald Trump during a court appearance Monday.

Justin Barkley, 38, stood before Judge John Rowley and said he knew where President-elect Donald Trump would be on Dec 8. He then waited for him outside of a Walmart where he said he allegedly killed him, according to the Ithaca Voice.

"I shot and killed Donald Trump purposely, intentionally and very proudly," Barkley said during his arraignment.

Ithaca police and Barkley engaged in an eight-hour standoff on Dec. 8 where they arrested him for fatally shooting 52-year-old William Schumacher and for firing shots at officers.

Barkley was indicted for second-degree murder and menacing a police officer.

Barkley also told the court that he recognized the difference between mistaking a person for Trump and saying that he killed him. Asked whether any evidence could suggest that he killed a person that was not Trump, he answered, “I hope not.”

He tried to enter a guilty plea, but Judge Rowley denied it after he made the Trump allegations.

“The judge would not accept his plea of guilty and instead ordered him to a 730 examination — an order directing psychiatrists to determine whether the defendant is capable of standing trial,” Barkley's attorney, James Baker told the Daily News.

Evaluations could take place in the jail or he could be transferred to a hospital based on the psychiatrist’s recommendation, he said.

Baker expects the process could last until mid-February.

Asked why the judge ordered Barkley to undergo evaluations, Barkley said that he “felt uncomfortable taking his plea without having the examination done first.”

“If the judge decides to move forward, he would complete the arraignment and depending what the plea is, it might be resolved or it might go to trial,” he said."

 

Factitious Disorder in a Patient Claiming to Be a Sexually Sadistic Serial Killer

The person in this photo is not the patient described below. But he is a middle aged Caucasian male security guard. The famous Park Dietz MD, who argued that John Hinckley was not insane, is third author on this great little case report. By the way, if your response to this story is "the poor son of a bitch," then you might have the makings of a clinical psychologist.

Fischer, Christopher A.. Journal of Forensic Sciences (2015) ISSN: 0022-1198 Online ISSN: 1556-4029

Case Report

"Mr. S, a middle-aged Caucasian man, was born in the Pacific Northwest to married parents and was the middle of three children. His mother had a history of depression, and his father was an alcoholic. He described his family as being “dysfunctional,” with little, if any, emotional support from an overly intrusive mother, disciplinarian father, and two siblings. Mr. S met his childhood developmental milestones and had no reported history of intellectual or learning disabilities. He described having anxiety growing up, mainly in social situations. He denied childhood sexual abuse, but he did describe corporal punishment from his father. Mr. S had a history of alcohol abuse starting in his mid-twenties and continuing into his early forties. He denied any significant medical history. He denied legal difficulties, psychiatric hospitalizations, and suicide attempts. He was single, had never been married, had no children, and reported having only one close friend for most of his life. He never had a close long-term romantic relationship and stated a clear preference for living a solitary life. After completing high school, Mr. S joined the military and served in various non-combat occupational roles. He enlisted twice in the military and was honorably discharge after each duty. Although he served overseas for a period of time, he did not serve in a combat zone or experience physical or psychological trauma. He did not sustain any known injuries while in the military and he was never diagnosed with, or filled for, a service-connected disability. After discharge from the military, he supported himself by working as a facilities security guard, always taking the night shift given his preference for working alone and avoiding people. While living in the Pacific Northwest, he lived out of his van, which he parked outside of his mother's house. After the death of his father, he assumed the role of primary caretaker for his mother. Mr. S reported that his mother was “frail” and “elderly” but did not report that she was on disability. He reported significant resentment toward his siblings for not participating in their mother's care, prior to his mother moving into a nursing home. Several months after his mother moved into a nursing home, Mr. S relocated out of the Pacific Northwest, found a new facilities security job, moved into a new residence, and no longer lived out of his van.

One year prior to his admission to the psychiatric hospital, Mr. S sought outpatient therapy for depression and engaged in weekly supportive psychotherapy with a young female psychology intern. His psychiatrist started an SSRI antidepressant and a low dose of antipsychotic medication for “depression with psychotic features.” Mr. S's alleged psychosis consisted of “voices” of crowds of people saying things that he could not make out, which he experienced while working the night shift. He consistently attended his therapy sessions and was noted to be making progress. However, several months into his therapy, Mr. S told his therapist that he had been involved in of military combat and described himself as a decorated war hero. After several therapy sessions in which he recounted his combat experiences, Mr. S was queried as to whether he ever killed anyone, to which Mr. S replied, “During the military or after the military?” He then told his therapist that he had followed, raped, and killed numerous women during the 20 years since leaving the military.

Mr. S reported that he would follow a potential female victim for several months before raping and strangling her to death with a rope. Although he claimed to rape and kill the women, he did not describe any sexual arousal from the subjugation, torture, or killing of his alleged victims. He refused to disclose how many women he had killed, where he had killed them, or how he had disposed of their bodies. He described having purchased various supplies to aid in abduction, which he kept in the back of his van while cruising for victims. These supplies included rope and two identical sets of clothes and shoes to help evade detection by the police. He described using various techniques to track his victims, as well as evade surveillance of his activities. He informed his therapist that he was actively following a woman he had encountered in a local public library several days earlier. Mr. S acknowledged that he studied the modus operandi of famous sexually sadistic serial killers by reading books. The patient's therapist, feeling frightened and threatened by these disclosures, transferred his case to her supervisor, who then saw the patient for a few therapy sessions. Mr. S reported worsening depression, hearing more “voices,” and attempting to self-amputate his leg using a tourniquet. Consequently, Mr. S was involuntarily detained as a “danger to self” and “danger to others” for evaluation in the local psychiatric hospital.

Mr. S's admission physical and neurological examinations, routine laboratory results, and urine toxicology screen were unremarkable. His outpatient medications were continued for a provisional diagnosis of major depressive disorder, single episode, unspecified severity, with psychotic features. Mr. S refused to provide identifying information about the woman who he had been following. He shared with the inpatient treatment team that he also was having homicidal ideation toward his former sergeant, who he felt had wronged him during his military service. Efforts to locate the individual named by Mr. S were unsuccessful. Mr. S further reported that several years earlier he had planned to abduct and murder his only friend's girlfriend because she was taking his friend away from him. The inpatient treatment team contacted the District Attorney's office in order to file for continued involuntary hospitalization due to the patient's homicidal ideation and history of violence. Subsequent police investigation and review of records could not substantiate any of the patient's claims of committing multiple homicides in the Pacific Northwest.

Despite his ongoing complaints of severe depression and psychosis, including a new symptom of hearing Italian opera in the hospital at night, Mr. S appeared calm and cooperative, demonstrated bright affect, exhibited good energy and sleep patterns, did not exhibit agitation or psychomotor retardation, was not seen responding to any internal stimuli, and was never confused or disoriented. Serial examinations found no evidence of a formal thought disorder or delusional beliefs.

After the District Attorney accepted the application for the prolonged involuntary civil commitment (180-day hold), Mr. S was confronted with the inconsistencies between his self-reported symptoms and objective findings and the failure to corroborate his claims of prior homicides. In response, Mr. S then confessed that he “had made the whole thing up…about the killings…all of it” because he “wanted attention.” He said that he had never followed, raped, or killed anyone and never had an intention to do so. He said that he did not know why he claimed this, other than an “impulse came over me and I acted on it.” He had believed that his feigned history and symptomatology would make him a “more interesting” patient to his therapist. He reported feeling rejected when his therapist transferred his care to her supervisor. He had little insight into why his therapist may have been frightened by his behavior. Mr. S revealed that following his initial fabrications, and despite his initial involuntary hospitalization, he had felt too embarrassed to admit the truth. He reported that the fear of being placed in prolonged civil commitment and the confrontation by the treatment team changed his mind. The clinical team shared with the District Attorney these developments and the revised clinical judgment about the patient's dangerousness, which was in turn shared with the court. Nevertheless, the patient did not contest his hold and the court certified the patient for the 180- day hold, which was completed in the hospital, at which time the patient was discharged back to outpatient care.

Mr. S's admission diagnosis was eventually revised from major depressive disorder, recurrent episode, severe with psychotic features to factitious disorder with psychological symptoms, and cluster A traits (particularly schizoid and schizotypal traits) without meeting criteria for any one specific personality disorder. Prior to the diagnosis of factitious disorder, treatment team had also considered patient to have a dysthymic disorder, as well as cluster A traits. Therefore, during his initial treatment course and prior to the diagnosis of factitious disorder, Mr. S's antidepressant was slightly increased to target his reported low mood; he subsequently reported immediate disappearance of auditory hallucinations and increase in his mood after only two doses of his slightly higher antidepressant dose. Upon evaluation and diagnosis of factitious disorder, Mr. S's antidepressant and antipsychotic medications were ultimately discontinued without any worsening of his mood or return of his “voices.” Off all medication for several months, he continued to deny homicidal ideation, depression, or perceptual disturbance.

Psychometric testing was performed to further explore his personality traits and confirm the clinical assessment and judgment that he was feigning all of his psychological symptoms. Results of the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory, Third Edition (MCMI-III) were consistent with paranoid, schizotypal, schizoid, and borderline personality traits. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, Second Edition (MMPI-2) profile suggested fabrication of psychotic and psychiatric symptoms and was invalid due to atypical responding (F scale > 120). The Miller Forensic Assessment of Symptoms Test (M-FAST), a semi-structured interview designed to detect feigning or significant exaggeration of psychiatric symptoms, showed slight symptomatic exaggeration that was below the range typically seen in those later judged to be malingering. Rorschach testing showed no evidence of a psychotic process, but instead suggested narcissistic, dependent, and borderline traits. Intelligence testing was not obtained during his hospitalization. However, Mr. S successfully served out two contracts with the military making it unlikely that he had a significant intellectual disability."

Alcoholic narcissist murders his beautiful daughter to spite his wife

Psychodynamic thinking is still going strong in forensic psychology. But I suspect that there are also some discreet theologians in the field. Sustained exposure to evil will do that to you.

 WaPo, 12/11/16

"Daniel Randall, a former pastor who once served as a chaplain in the Air Force, had just completed a 90-day program for alcohol abuse.

He left the Liberty Bay Recovery Center in Portland, Maine, at about 10 a.m. Thursday.

Then, police said, he bought a shotgun and drove to his home in Hebron, about 40 miles northwest of Portland.

Several hours later, a neighbor found the 56-year-old lying face down on the porch of his home. The words “VOW BREAKER” were spray-painted on the kitchen counter, Carroll Daggett, who lives a short distance away, told the Portland Press Herald.

Daggett called police.

Officers then found Randall’s 27-year-old daughter, Claire, dead in the bathroom. She died of multiple shotgun wounds, according to the state medical examiner’s office.

Maine State Police said Daniel Randall, who had been estranged from his family and didn’t have a key to the house, broke in through the garage and shot his daughter before shooting himself once in the head. Police said he spray-painted messages on the walls of the five rooms in the house.

Among them was a message to his wife, Anita, who had filed for divorce.

“Anita, it’s all your fault” was written on one of the walls, according to WCSH 6."

Dunedin rides again!

Choice, bro! By age 38, 20% of you will account for 97% of the crimes committed by your age cohort. And we can predict which of you are in that 20% by measuring 1) your parental income; 2) whether you were maltreated as a child; 3) your childhood IQ; and, 4) your self-control as a child.

Nature Human Behavior

Measuring childhood risk factors

We measured risk factors that are thought to augur poor adult outcomes. All risk factor measures have been described in previous reports about this cohort.

Childhood socioeconomic status⁴³ was defined as the average of the highest occupational status of either parent across study assessments from the cohort member’s birth through 11 years (1 = unskilled labourer; 6 = professional), on New Zealand’s occupational rating of the 1970s.

Childhood maltreatment⁴⁴ includes evidence of: (1) maternal rejection assessed at 3 years of age by observational ratings of mothers’ interaction with the study children, (2) harsh discipline assessed at ages 7 and 9 years by parental report of disciplinary behaviours, (3) two or more changes in the child’s primary caregiver, and (4) physical abuse and (5) sexual abuse reported by study members once they reached adulthood. For each child, our cumulative index counts the number of maltreatment indicators during the first decade of life; 63.7% of children experienced no maltreatment, 26.7% experienced one indicator of maltreatment (hereinafter ‘probable’ maltreatment), and 9.6% experienced two or more indicators of maltreatment (‘definite’ maltreatment).

Childhood intelligence⁹ was measured as IQ with the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children – Revised (WISC-R) administered at ages 7, 9 and 11 years. IQ scores for the three ages were averaged and standardized.

Childhood self-control⁹ during the first decade of life was measured using nine measures of self-control: observational ratings of children’s lack of control (ages 3 and 5 years) and parent, teacher and self-reports of hyperactivity, lack of persistence, inattention, impulsive aggression and impulsivity (ages 5, 7, 9 and 11 years). The nine measures were positively and significantly correlated. Based on principal components analysis, the standardized measures were averaged into a single composite comprising multiple ages and informants, with strong internal reliability α = 0.86.


Caspi, A. et al. Childhood forecasting of a small segment of the population with large economic burden. Nat. Hum. Behav. 1, 0005 (2016).

O, Canada. You're letting the psychopaths out on parole.

In Canada, psychopaths convicted of sexual offenses are 2.5 times more likely to be granted parole than non-psychopaths, even though they have worse criminal records. The authors suggest that it is because psychopaths are more adept at "charming" parole boards. Whom do you like better: Someone who is nervous, twitchy, and socially awkward, or the guy who makes you laugh? The psychopaths made it 388 days without being convicted for re-offending, versus 729 days for non-psychopaths.

Crime profiles and conditional release performance of psychopathic and non-psychopathic sexual offenders (Porter, ten Brinke, & Wilson, 2009)

Abstract

Purpose. This study investigated the influence of psychopathy and sex offender subtype on criminal history, probability of being granted conditional release, and performance while on conditional release in a diverse group of violent offenders. We predicted that psychopathic sexual offenders would be associated with relatively prolific violent and sexual offending, a high probability of successful conditional release applications despite their past behaviour (resulting from ‘putting on a good show’ in a parole hearing), and poor performance in the community.
Methods. Information was gathered via a correctional file review of 310 Canadian male federal offenders. Offenders were categorized into groups based on their sexual offence history (non-sex offender, rapist, child molester, or mixed rapist/molester) and Psychopathy Checklist – Revised (PCL-R; Hare, 2003) ratings. Their offences (sexual, violent, or non-violent) and their complete conditional release histories were coded.
Results. Psychopathy was associated with more violent and non-violent, but not sexual, offences. A significant interaction between psychopathy and offender subtype revealed that psychopathy was associated with a greater number of sex offences within child molesters. High-psychopathy offenders (both sexual and non-sexual offenders) were about 2.5 times more likely to be granted conditional release than non-psychopathic offenders.
Conclusions. Psychopathy is associated with more prolific sexual offending among child molesters and – despite their extensive criminal histories and high recidivism rate – a great proficiency in persuading parole boards to release them into the community. Specialized education and training in dealing with psychopathic offenders is urgently needed.

Attacks on "Publicly Intimate Figures," 1995 to 2015

Another addition to my Forensic Psych required reading list, thanks again to Dr. Reid Meloy.

Article

An archival descriptive study of public figure attackers in the United States between

1995 and 2015 was undertaken. Fifty-six incidents were identified, primarily through

exhaustive internet searches, composed of 58 attackers and 58 victims. A code book

 

was developed which focused upon victims, offenders, pre-attack behaviors including

direct threats, attack characteristics, post-offense and other outcomes, motivations

and psychological abstracts. The average interrater agreement for coding of bivariate

 

variables was 0.835 (intraclass correlation coefficient). The three most likely victim

categories were politicians, judges, and athletes. Attackers were males, many with a

psychiatric disorder, most were grandiose, and most had both a violent and nonviolent

criminal history. The known motivations for the attacks were often angry and personal,

the most common being dissatisfaction with a judicial or other governmental process

(23%). In only one case was the primary motivation to achieve notoriety. Lethality risk

during an attack was 55%. Collateral injury or death occurred in 29% of the incidents.

 

Only 5% communicated a direct threat to the target beforehand. The term “publicly

intimate figure” is introduced to describe the sociocultural blurring of public and

private lives among the targets, and its possible role in some attackers' perceptions

and motivations. 

Collect DNA prior to prison release, reduce recividism 17%

"Oh, one last thing before you go..."

Boston Globe


"Some have suggested that crime shows lead the public — and thus jurors — to expect amazing evidence at trial. But there’s also good news from the forensic-science department. The act of collecting DNA from convicts deters crime. Comparing recidivism rates for convicts who were released before a collection requirement went into effect to recidivism rates for convicts released after the requirement, an economist found that “the requirement to submit a DNA sample reduces the likelihood of a new conviction within five years by 4.5 percentage points (17 percent) for serious violent offenders.” And given that the incremental cost of collecting DNA from each convict is small, the incremental cost of preventing a serious crime through DNA profiling is estimated to be a tiny fraction of the incremental cost of preventing a serious crime from longer prison sentences or more police officers.


Doleac, J., “The Effects of DNA Databases on Crime,” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics (forthcoming)."

Violent video games don't increase aggression

Does playing video games with violent content temporarily increase aggressive behavior? A pre-registered experimental study (McCarthy et al., 2015)

Article in Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 67 · January 2015 

Abstract

The current study tested whether participants who played a violent video game (VVG) would exhibit increased aggressive inclinations relative to those who played a non-violent video game (NVG). Participants (N = 386) were randomly assigned to play a VVG or a NVG prior to presumably interacting with another (non-existent) participant. We then measured participants' aggressive inclinations: Participants reported how many pins they would like to stick into a “voodoo doll” representing their interaction partner, and participants reported how likely they would be to actually harm their interaction partner. We did not detect any differences between conditions for several outcomes: the amount of aggressive inclinations displayed during the interaction, the number of pins participants chose to stick into a representation of their interaction partner, and participants' self-reported likelihood they would harm their interaction partner. Thus, the hypothesis that playing a VVG would increase aggressive inclinations was not supported in this study. Exploratory analyses revealed associations between (1) participants' self-reported likelihood to aggress and perceptions of the game as frustrating or difficult, (2) gender and higher levels of pin selection, and (3) participants' self-identification as a gamer and lower levels of pin selection.