Focusing on juvenile transfer and disposition evaluations, this volume provides an up-to-date integration of current law, science, and practice with respect to juvenile risk assessment, treatment needs/amenability, and sophistication-maturity. Included are perspectives relating to international practices, use of specialized assessment tools, and a separate chapter on resentencing following US Supreme Court decisions on juveniles sentenced to mandatory life without parole. This text will be a useful and comprehensive reference for forensic psychologists and other mental health professionals engaged in juvenile evaluation, as well as legal professionals, juvenile and criminal justice professionals, and others involved with juvenile assessment, decision-making, and rehabilitation.
Focusing on juvenile transfer and disposition evaluations, this volume provides an up-to-date integration of current law, science, and practice with respect to juvenile risk assessment, treatment needs/amenability, and sophistication-maturity. Included are perspectives relating to international practices, use of specialized assessment tools, and a separate chapter on resentencing following US Supreme Court decisions on juveniles sentenced to mandatory life without parole. This text will be a useful and comprehensive reference for forensic psychologists and other mental health professionals engaged in juvenile evaluation, as well as legal professionals, juvenile and criminal justice professionals, and others involved with juvenile assessment, decision-making, and rehabilitation.
Focusing on juvenile transfer and disposition evaluations, this volume provides an up-to-date integration of current law, science, and practice with respect to juvenile risk assessment, treatment needs/amenability, and sophistication-maturity. Included are perspectives relating to international practices, use of specialized assessment tools, and a separate chapter on resentencing following US Supreme Court decisions on juveniles sentenced to mandatory life without parole. This text will be a useful and comprehensive reference for forensic psychologists and other mental health professionals engaged in juvenile evaluation, as well as legal professionals, juvenile and criminal justice professionals, and others involved with juvenile assessment, decision-making, and rehabilitation.
Psychologists have always played a key role in determining how the juvenile justice system assesses and treats young offenders. Recent neuropsychological findings shows that there are important developmental differences between juvenile offenders, such as varying levels of maturity, risk potential, and amenability to treatment, not to mention individualized personality traits and possible mental disorders. Psychologists must therefore strive for targeted rehabilitation services to avoid unfair treatment and redirect youth to healthier life choices. This book is a practical guide that will help psychologists answer important psycho-legal questions to properly assess and treat juvenile offenders. These guidelines primarily focus on disposition evaluations, which describe adolescent offenders and paths to rehabilitation, and transfer evaluations, which determine whether juveniles should be moved to adult courts. Psychological assessments can greatly influence a judge s decision, so this book will help forensic clinicians consider important external factors, such as local laws and the political climate, and present assessment data to judges in a thorough, understandable manner. This book will also be valuable for attorneys, judges, criminologists, and legal scholars who want to understand the psychological science behind juvenile assessment.
Even though youth crime rates have fallen since the mid-1990s, public fear and political rhetoric over the issue have heightened. The Columbine shootings and other sensational incidents add to the furor. Often overlooked are the underlying problems of child poverty, social disadvantage, and the pitfalls inherent to adolescent decisionmaking that contribute to youth crime. From a policy standpoint, adolescent offenders are caught in the crossfire between nurturance of youth and punishment of criminals, between rehabilitation and "get tough" pronouncements. In the midst of this emotional debate, the National Research Council's Panel on Juvenile Crime steps forward with an authoritative review of the best available data and analysis. Juvenile Crime, Juvenile Justice presents recommendations for addressing the many aspects of America's youth crime problem. This timely release discusses patterns and trends in crimes by children and adolescentsâ€"trends revealed by arrest data, victim reports, and other sources; youth crime within general crime; and race and sex disparities. The book explores desistanceâ€"the probability that delinquency or criminal activities decrease with ageâ€"and evaluates different approaches to predicting future crime rates. Why do young people turn to delinquency? Juvenile Crime, Juvenile Justice presents what we know and what we urgently need to find out about contributing factors, ranging from prenatal care, differences in temperament, and family influences to the role of peer relationships, the impact of the school policies toward delinquency, and the broader influences of the neighborhood and community. Equally important, this book examines a range of solutions: Prevention and intervention efforts directed to individuals, peer groups, and families, as well as day care-, school- and community-based initiatives. Intervention within the juvenile justice system. Role of the police. Processing and detention of youth offenders. Transferring youths to the adult judicial system. Residential placement of juveniles. The book includes background on the American juvenile court system, useful comparisons with the juvenile justice systems of other nations, and other important information for assessing this problem.
Major developments in the field since the publication of Learning Forensic Assessment are integrated in this revised edition, including revised editions of the DSM-5, HCR-20 scale, and child custody guidelines. This textbook is designed for graduate students learning forensic assessment and psychologists coming to forensic practice later in their careers. It is organized around five broad areas: Professional and Practice Issues, Adult Forensic Assessment, Juvenile Forensic Assessment, Civil Forensic Assessment, and Communicating Your Findings. Each chapter begins with a strong teaching and learning foundation. The latter part of each chapter is assessment specific, covering available assessment measures and approaches to assessment. The authors go well beyond simple descriptions of assessment measures and provide a conceptual discussion of the evaluation process that helps the reader understand how assessment measures fit into the overall evaluation process. The evaluation component is geared toward assessing the important aspects of the construct as laid out in the early part of each chapter. Each chapter then concludes with a case example to illustrate the measures and techniques described.
The Handbook of Violence Risk Assessment, Second Edition, builds on the first edition’s comprehensive discussion of violence risk assessment instruments with an update of research on established tools and the addition of new chapters devoted to recently developed risk assessment tools. Featuring chapters written by the instrument developers themselves, this handbook reviews the most frequently used violence risk assessment instruments—both actuarial and structured professional judgment—that professionals use to inform and structure their judgments about violence risk. Also included are broader chapters that address matters such as the consideration of psychopathy and how the law shapes violence risk assessment. Already the primary reference for practitioners, researchers, and legal professionals in this area, this second edition’s easy-to-access, comprehensive, and current information will make it an indispensable reference for those in the field.
This edited collection provides an interdisciplinary and cross-national perspective on safeguarding the quality of forensic assessment in sentencing offenders. Taking an in-depth look at seven different Western countries, each chapter provides an overview of the role of assessment in sentencing offenders, as well as a focus on formal ways in which the respective country’s legal system and disciplinary associations protect the quality of forensic assessment. Each chapter explores how to assure better decision making in individual cases based on assessments of psycholegal concepts such as mental disorder/insanity, criminal responsibility and dangerousness. Combining the perspectives of lawyers, legal scholars, and clinicians working in the field, this book is essential for those working in and with forensic assessment. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.
The Routledge International Handbook of Juvenile Homicide is the definitive work on juvenile homicide. This volume provides an up-to-date, comprehensive, and in-depth exploration of what is known about juveniles involved in murder. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to juvenile homicide, this handbook brings together the leading experts in social sciences, mental health, and law from many countries. The volume covers the phenomenon of juvenile homicide from beginning to end, by addressing the questions “why do kids kill?” all the way to “how does society stop them from killing?”. The tough issues involved in sentencing youths who take the lives of others, often deliberately and in horrific ways, are confronted through chapters addressing the legal issues, child development factors, risk assessment, public attitudes, and ethical concerns. The volume brings together research specifically conducted for this volume, in addition to summaries and discussions of clinical and empirical findings. Each chapter ends with key takeaway points. Contributors include psychologists, psychiatrists, criminologists, sociologists, lawyers, economists, biologists, epidemiologists, and public health and public policy experts. Uniquely, they examine murder by juveniles across the globe. The volume includes research pertaining to the causes, correlates, and theoretical explanations of juvenile homicide offending. Moving beyond discussions of juvenile homicide offenders (JHOs) as a homogenous group, the volume includes research on specific types of JHOs and research investigating age and gender differences among JHOs. In addition, it draws attention to the empirical factors associated with juvenile homicide offending, effective treatment of JHOs, recidivism, and prevention of violent behavior. The volume also makes recommendations for policy and practice, including how to shift government policy from punishing lawbreakers to saving lives. This volume is essential reading for scholars and students researching youth violence/juvenile homicide across a variety of disciplines including criminology, criminal justice, law, psychology, psychiatry, sociology, social work, public health, and education. It is also an invaluable reference for mental health professionals, practitioners in the juvenile and criminal justice systems, policymakers, and government leaders.
The field of psychology-law is extremely broad, encompassing a strikingly large range of topic areas in both applied psychology and experimental psychology. Importantly, both applied and experimental psychologists have made meaningful contributions to the psychology-law field, and each of these domains includes a range of well-developed topic areas with robust empirical support. Despite the continued and rapid growth of the field, there is no current and comprehensive resource that provides coverage of the major topic areas in the psychology-law field. The Oxford Handbook of Psychology and Law fills this gap and offers an up-to-date, scholarly, and broad overview of psychology-law topics. David DeMatteo and Kyle C. Scherr have brought together a diverse group of highly esteemed applied and experimental researchers and scholars to discuss key topics in the field from both national and international perspectives. The volume is broadly divided into three sections: foundational psychology-law, applied psychology-law, and experimental-psychology-law. The Foundational Psychology-Law section includes chapters that are relevant to both applied psychology and experimental psychology, making a unique contribution that ties together the applied and experimental aspects of the field. The Applied Psychology-Law section provides coverage of topics related to the provision of forensic services (broadly defined) in criminal and civil legal contexts. Lastly, the Experimental Psychology-Law section covers empirically examined legal system issues and outcomes related to victims, offenders, witnesses, attorneys, and triers of fact. With comprehensive coverage of both applied and experimental topic areas and chapters written by a diverse group of well-established psychology-law scholars and emerging future leaders, this Handbook presents emerging, cutting-edge topics in psychology-law that will continue to grow and meaningfully shape future research programs and policy reform.
