Forensic Psychology

Gerhard Ohrband

ULIM University, Moldova

6th lecture

Punishment and probation

Course structure

Lectures: • 1. Introduction into Forensic and Criminological

Psychology: What are main topics? How did the discipline evolve in history? Communalities with other sciences?

• 2. Psychology of Criminal Behaviour: Etiology – Why do individuals engage in unlawful acts? Which factors moderate their appearance?

• 3. Interrogation in the law system: How should we interrogate victims, witnesses and suspects? How can we determine the veracity of statements? Do lie-detectors work?

• 4. Eyewitness testimony• 5. Jury decision-making

Course structure

• 6. Punishment and probation: What are the effects on the individual? How can we prevent recividism? How effective are different laws in prevention?

• 7. Psychotherapy and Counseling for victims, witnesses, law-enforcement personnel and culprits: trauma therapy, cognitive-behaviour therapy, humanistic psychology, drug therapy, systemic therapies, meditation and relaxation techniques

• 8. Psychological Expertise in the law system: therapy evaluation, testing victims, suspects and law-enforcement personnel; test theory – test construction (e.g., item analysis), descriptive and inferential statistics (e.g., factor analysis, correlation coefficients, significance tests)

Course structure

Seminars / applied group-work: • 9. Child abuse• 10. Prostitution• 11. Rape• 12. Group crime• 13. Serial killers• 14. Tax evasion• 15. Stereotypes and prejudices in the law

system

Study: Prison Officer’s Beliefs Regarding Self-Harm in Prisoners: An Empirical Investigation

Pannell, J., Howells., K. and Day, A. (2003). Prison Officer’s Beliefs Regarding Self-Harm in Prisoners: An Empirical Investigation. International Journal of Forensic Psychology, 1, (1),103-110.

Problem

• Deaths in custody remain a serious concern for many prison systems

• Recent years have seen a series of practical initiatives aimed at reducing suicide and attempted suicide in prisons (Towl,Snow & McHugh, 2000).

Focus on: • Development of risk screening procedures• Management of those identified as being at risk • Associated staff training (Howells, Hall & Day,

1999)

Recent positions

• Increasingly, commentators are pointing to social/interpersonal factors in the prison environment, in addition to intrapersonal factors, as important determinants of suicide and self-injury.

• emerging consensus that the quality of relationships between prison officers and prisoners are an important determinant of rates of suicide and self-injury in prison.

Intervention Strategies

• Dooley (1994): the prison regime itself and the prison culture and atmosphere should be the focus for preventative efforts rather than an exclusive focus on the individual vulnerable prisoner.

• Scott-Denoon (1984): "correctional staff, on recognizing the potential motivators, can make the

single most important contribution in suicide prevention by discussing the inmate's problems,

concerns, anxieties ... and referring for special

medical or psychiatric services.”

Method

A total of 76 correctional officers from twoseparate correctional facilities in South Australiaparticipated in the study. Of these, 61 were maleand 15 female, and 42 worked in a men's prison theremainder working in a male remand facility. Themajority of respondents were aged between 35 and45. Participants came from sectors of the prisondealing with varying prisoner population types andsecurity levels. Length of employment varied fromonly a few months to over ten years. The majorityof officers included in the sample had witnessedthree or fewer self-harm incidents in the previoussix months.

Method

Each participant was asked to read a vignettedepicting one of four scenarios of self-harm inprison. The content of the vignettes was developedfollowing a series of pilot interviews with correctional officers and a correctionalpsychologist. Those involved agreed that thescenarios had high face validity. In this pilot work, respondents were also asked to generate a list ofpossible causes of self-harm in prison. This led tothe development of 17 items perceived as causes of self-harm by correctional staff.

Method

The scenarios varied only in terms of the severity and repetitiveness of the self-harm, giving four possible scenarios • high Severity/high repetitiveness• high severity/low repetitiveness• low severity/high repetitiveness• low severity/low repetitiveness). The questionnaire was given to correctional officer on their normal working location at the beginning of each shift and collected the same day. Participants were randomly allocated to receive one of four versions.

Method

Each participant was then asked to rate their agreement with 17 items regarding the causes (i.e. antecedent reasons for the behaviour) of the self-harm incident on a 5 point Likert scale. Each item was preceded with the clause, from your experience, the prisoner may have harmed himself because ... . (see Table 1 for the content of the attribution items). Finally each participant rated the self-harm on seven different possible functions, derived from interviews with prison staff. The term function is used to refer to possible outcomes achieved as a result of the behaviour (i.e. the purpose the self harm served). Table 3 contains the seven function items selected for use.

Results

Results

Factor loadings for perceived cause items

Factor loadings for perceived cause items (continued)/Rank ordering of perceived

functions of self harm

Literature• Bailey, J., McHugh, M., Chisnall, L., & Forbes, D., (2000). Training staff in suicide awareness.

In G. Towl, L. Snow & M. McHugh (Eds), Suicide in prisons. Leicester, UK: British Psychological Society.

• Cutler, J., Bailey, J., & Dexter, P. (1997). Suicide awareness training for prison staff: An evaluation. Issues in Criminological and Legal Psychology , 28, 65-69.

• Dagnan, D., Trower, P., & Smith, R. (1998). Care staff responses to people with learningdisabilities and challenging behaviour: A cognitive-emotional analysis. British Journalof Clinical Psychology, 37, 59-68.

• Dooley, E. (1994). Unnatural death in prison: Is there a future? In A. Liebling & T. Ward (Eds.), Deaths in custody: International perspectives (pp. 28-36). London: Institute for the Study and Treatment of Delinquency.

• Hogue, T. (1993). ‘Attitudes towards prisoners and sexual offenders’. Issues in Criminological and Legal Psychology, 19, 27-32.

• Howells, K., Hall, G., & Day, A. (1999). The management of suicide and self-harm in prisons: Recommendations for good practice. Australian Psychologist, 34, 157-166.

• Lester, D. & Danto, B.L. (1993). Suicide behind bars. Philadelphia: Charles Press.

Literature• Livingston, M. (1997). A review of the literature on self-injurious behaviour amongst

prisoners. Issues in Criminological and Legal Psychology, 28, 21-35.• Lloyd, C. (1990). Suicide in prison: A literature review. Home office research study: 115.

HORPU: London.• Mahaffey, K.J. & Marcus, D.K. (1995). Correctional officers attitudes toward AIDS.

Criminal Justice and Behavior, 22, 91-105.• Pattison, E.M., & Kahan, J. (1983). The deliberate self-harm syndrome. American

Journal of Psychiatry, 40, 867-872.• Rowan, J.R. (1994). Prevention of suicides in custody. In A. Liebling, & T. Ward (Eds.),

Deaths in custody: International perspectives (pp. 166-175). London: Institute for the Studyand Treatment of Delinquency.

• Scott-Denoon, K. (1984). B.C. Corrections: A study of suicides 1970-1980. CorrectionsBranch: British Colombia, cited in Liebling, (1992). Suicides in prison. London: Routledge.

• Sharrock, R., Day,A., Qazi, F., & Brewin, C.R. (1990). Explanations by professional carestaff, optimism and helping behaviour: An application of Attribution Theory. Psychological Medicine, 20, 849-855.

• Snow, L. (1997). A pilot study of self-injury amongst women prisoners. Issues in• Criminological and Legal Psychology, 28, 50-59.• Towl, G., Snow, L., & McHugh, M. (2000). Suicide in prisons. Leicester, UK: British• Psychological Society.• Williams, P. (1983). The rights of prisoners to• psychiatric care. Journal

Study: Utility of the Suicide Intent Scale Within a Prison Setting

Dear, G.E. (2003). Utility of the Suicide Intent Scale Within a Prison Setting. International Journal of Forensic Psychology, 1, (1), 133-137.

Introduction

• Assessing the degree of suicidal intent is an important aspect of a thorough clinical assessment of a client who has engaged in deliberate self-harm (Hawton & Catalan, 1987)

• The degree of suicidal intent is an indicator of subsequent suicide risk particularly if the distress associated with the psychological and/or social problems that precipitated the incident has not yet been alleviated.

• One of the most widely used measures of suicidal intent is the Suicide Intent Scale (SIS; Beck,Schuyler, & Herman, 1974)

Problems with the SIS

• While the SIS was designed for use in a wide range of clinical settings, the items might not be equally applicable to all settings in which self-harm occurs.

• Several of the items rest on an assumption that clients are able to control particular aspects of their environment and that arranging the environment in particular ways indicates a greater or lesser degree of suicidal intent.

• For example, isolating oneself prior to engaging in suicidal behaviour is seen to indicate a greater degree of suicidal intent than engaging in suicidal behaviour in the presence of others.

• However, not all environments are malleable. Prisoners are unable to control many aspects of their environment.

The Suicide Intent Scale (SIS)• administered in a semi-structured interview format to persons who have

enacted deliberate self-harm. • 15 items, each of which examines a specific indicator of

suicidal intent. • Items are equally weighted and scored 0, 1, or 2 according to specific

criteria, with high scores indicating greater intent. • two sections: the first nine items examine circumstances relating to the

self-harm incident (e.g., whether someone was present). The assessorscores these items on the basis of the patient’s self-report, factual information regarding the incident, and information provided by other informants (e.g., the client’s family).

• The second section (Items 10 to 15) comprises self-report data (e.g., whether theperson thought that death was a likely outcome).

• Rather than administering these items as a self-completion questionnaire, the assessor asks open-ended questions and then applies the relevantscoring criteria to the client’s responses.

Reliability, validity• Beck et al. (1974): high inter-rater reliability (r = .95) and internal

consistency (Spearman-Brown coefficient of .82). • Several studies provide evidence of construct validity; for reviews of this

research see Eyman and Eyman (1992), Hawton and Catalan (1987), and Rothberg and Geer-Williams (1992). Most notably, SIS scores have shown significant associations with the medical seriousness of suicide attempts (Hamdi, Amin & Mattar, 1991; Pallis & Sainsbury, 1976), with a suicide risk scale comprising empirically derived demographic and clinical risk factors(Pallis & Sainsbury, 1976), and with subsequent suicide (Pierce, 1981, 1984).

• SIS scores were more strongly associated with hopelessness than withseverity of depression (Beck et al., 1974) in line with other data that indicate that hopelessness predicts suicidal behaviour better than depressiondoes. Similarly, Hamdi et al. found that high SIS scores were associated with feelings of hopelessness and isolation while low scores wereassociated with anger and frustration.

Suggested revisions to the Scoring Criteria for SIS Item 1 and 2

SIS Circumstance items not requiring modification

Literature• Beck, A. T., Schuyler, D., & Herman, I. (1974). Development of suicidal intent scales. In A.

TBeck, H. L. P. Resnik & D. J. Letteri (Eds.), The prevention of suicide (pp. 45-56). Bowie,MD: Charles Press.

• Bogue, J., & Power, K. (1995). Suicide in Scottish prisons, 1976-93. Journal of ForensicPsychiatry, 6, 527-540.

• Dear, G. E., & Allan, M. (1998). Analysis of selfinflicted deaths in Western Australian prisonsbetween January 1990 and June 1998. Unpublished report commissioned by the Western Australian Ministry of Justice.

• Eyman, J. R., & Eyman, S. K. (1992). Psychological testing for potentially suicidalindividuals. In B. Bongar (Ed.), Suicide: Guidelines for assessment, management andtreatment (pp. 127-143). New York: Oxford University Press.

• Hamdi, E., Amin, Y., & Mattar, T. (1991). Clinical correlates of intent in attempted suicide. ActaPsychiatrica Scandinavica, 83, 406-411.

• Hawton, K., & Catalan, J. (1987). Attempted suicide: A practical guide to its nature andmanagement (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Literature• Liebling, A. (1992). Sucides in prison. London: Routledge.• Pallis, D. J., & Sainsbury, P. (1976). The value of assessing intent in

attempted suicide. Psychological Medicine, 6, 487-492.• Pierce, D. (1981). Predictive validity of a suicidal intent scale: A five

year follow up. British Journal of Psychiatry, 139, 391-396.• Pierce, D. (1984). Suicidal intent and repeated self-harm.

Psychological Medicine, 14, 655- 659.• Rothberg, J. M., & Geer-Williams, C. (1992). A comparison and

review of suicide prediction scales. In R. W. Maris, A. L. Berman, J. T. Maltsberger, & R. I. Yufit (Eds.), Assessment and prediction of suicide. (pp 202 – 217). New York: Guilford.

• Towl, G. J., & Crighton, D. A. (1998). Suicide in prisons in England and Wales from 1988 to 1995. Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health, 8, 184-192.

Journal

• Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health

• Journal of Offender Rehabilitation