Introduction to special issue on social media for forensic mental evaluations.

This special issue of Behavioral Sciences & the Law presents six articles that focus on various issues related to social media in forensic mental health evaluations. These eclectic articles provide updated information about social media's use and navigating difficult ethical concerns. Ranging from violence risk assessment to disability evaluations, the up-to-date information in this special issue allows the forensic evaluator to be more prepared when they inevitably encounter information from social media.

The Internet is a scary place: How does evidence source and examinee race or ethnicity influence determinations of threat?

Violent rhetoric online is becoming increasingly relevant to the practice of forensic mental health assessment as examinee's virtual lives may transform into real-world acts of violence. With the rise of a diverse subculture of violent online communities, the aim of the present study was to inform how concerns with online sources of collateral data and racial/ethnic biases may influence determinations of violence potential. Using an experimental design, jury-eligible participants (N = 278) and forensic mental health experts (N = 78) were presented with mock Twitter (now referred to as X) posts that varied by data source (i.

Psychopathy in Correctional Settings: Considerations for Developing and Implementing a Treatment Program.

Psychopathy is associated with higher levels of violence as well as general and violent recidivism after release from prison. A disorder with a long and rich clinical and research history, psychopathy has gained an undeserved reputation as a syndrome that is unresponsive to treatment. This article presents information that undermines long-standing problematic assumptions regarding the treatability of individuals with psychopathic traits and posits that implementing treatment programs in correctional settings is critical to decrease recidivism and violence.

MMPI-2-RF Differences Between Violent Offending and Institutional Violence Among Incarcerated Women.

The examination of violence perpetrated by female offenders remains an understudied topic, as research typically focuses on male offender samples. As such, it remains unclear what personality characteristics may be associated with the perpetration of violence among female offenders. This study sought to examine the relationship between personality characteristics, as assessed by the MMPI-2-RF, and engagement in violence, within a sample of 228 incarcerated women.

Jail-Based Competency Restoration: What's Out There and What's Missing.

Forensic systems have seen an increase in the number of defendants in need of competency restoration services. Traditionally, competency restoration services have occurred at state psychiatric hospitals. Unfortunately, the waitlists for hospital competency restoration are extensive and result in many defendants waiting in jail for more than 4 months for an inpatient bed.

Conditional release and cannabis use: Concerns and challenges for community reintegration.

This article, which serves as a perspective review, delves into the complexities of cannabis use among individuals preparing for or already on conditional release (CR). These complexities include an association between cannabis use and mental illness and dealing with the fact that the use of illicit substances, such as cannabis, is against CR rules, leading to potential revocation. A focus of this article is the deleterious effects cannabis and synthetic derivatives of cannabis can have for individuals on CR.

Limitations Using Neuroimaging to Reconstruct Mental State After a Crime.

Neuroimaging offers great potential to clinicians and researchers for a host of mental and physical conditions. The use of imaging has been trumpeted for forensic psychiatric and psychological evaluations to allow greater insight into the relationship between the brain and behavior. The results of imaging certainly can be used to inform clinical diagnoses; however, there continue to be limitations in using neuroimaging for insanity cases due to limited scientific backing for how neuroimaging can inform retrospective evaluations of mental state.

Predicting violence risk and recidivism in female parolees: A state-wide sample.

Historically, research on violence risk assessments has primarily focused on male psychiatric patients and/or inmates, with minimal attention given to female patients and/or inmates-two populations likely to differ with regard to violence risk conceptualization. To date, there is no known measure of violence risk specifically tailored to predicting risk for this population that is accurate, brief, and cost-effective. As such, the current study exclusively focused on the predictive ability of the Iowa Violence and Victimization Instrument (IVVI) for female parolees over a 30-month follow-up period.

An update and expansion on the role of the Violence Risk Appraisal Guide and Historical Clinical Risk Management-20 in United States case law.

An individual's risk for future violent behavior may be considered in various legal contexts, including civil commitment, criminal sentencing, or suitability for parole. Among the assessment tools forensic evaluators use to assess violence risk are the Violence Risk Appraisal Guide (VRAG; Quinsey, Harris, Rice, & Cormier, ) and the Historical Clinical Risk Managment-20 (HCR-20)/Historical Clinical Risk Management-20, Version 3 (HCR-20 ) (Webster, Douglas, Eaves, & Hart, and Douglas, Hart, Webster, & Belfrage, , respectively). Previous surveys and case law research suggest that these measures are widely used and perceived to be useful in aiding forensic clinicians.

Reconsidering risk assessment with insanity acquittees.

States continue to rely on conditional release (CR) as an effective and cost-effective way to manage individuals found not guilty by reason of insanity (NGRI). Research has demonstrated that insanity acquittees returning to the community have low recidivism rates and moderately low revocation rates. This study followed 238 individuals found NGRI in Oregon who were evaluated with the Historical, Clinical, Risk-20 (HCR-20; Webster, Douglas, Eaves, & Hart, 1997) and placed in the community on CR.

Using Technology to Improve the Objectivity of Criminal Responsibility Evaluations.

Criminal responsibility (or insanity) evaluations require forensic clinicians to reconstruct a defendant's decision-making abilities, behavioral control, and emotional state at the time of the criminal act. Forensic evaluators are ultimately tasked to evaluate whether an individual had the capacity to understand right from wrong, and in some jurisdictions, determine whether the defendant lacked substantial capacity to conform his behavior to the requirements of the law as a result of a threshold condition (e.g.

Callous-unemotional traits and early life stress predict treatment effects on stress and sex hormone functioning in incarcerated male adolescents.

The stress response system is highly plastic, and hormone rhythms may "adaptively calibrate" in response to treatment. This investigation assessed whether stress and sex hormone diurnal rhythms changed over the course of behavioral treatment, and whether callous-unemotional (CU) traits and history of early adversity affected treatment results on diurnal hormone functioning in a sample of 28 incarcerated adolescent males. It was hypothesized that the treatment would have beneficial effects, such that healthier diurnal rhythms would emerge post-treatment.

Predicting violence and recidivism in a large sample of males on probation or parole.

This study evaluated the utility of items and scales from the Iowa Violence and Victimization Instrument in a sample of 1961 males from the state of Iowa who were on probation or released from prison to parole supervision. This is the first study to examine the potential of the Iowa Violence and Victimization Instrument to predict criminal offenses. The males were followed for 30months immediately following their admission to probation or parole.

Psychopathy: Relations with three conceptions of intelligence.

Psychopathy is often associated with heightened intelligence in the eyes of clinicians and laypersons despite mixed research support for this possibility. We adopted a fine-grained approach to studying the relations among psychopathy and multiple indices of intelligence, including both cognitively based intelligence (CBI) and emotional intelligence (EI), in a large sample of undergraduates (N = 1,257, 70% female, 82% Caucasian). We found no clear support for marked associations between psychopathy and CB I measures, with the magnitudes of these relations being small.

Psychosis and Substance Use: Implications for Conditional Release Readiness Evaluations.

In Foucha v. Louisiana (1992), the United States Supreme Court ruled that individuals adjudicated not guilty by reason of insanity (NGRI) could not remain in a forensic hospital if they were no longer mentally ill and dangerous. Since this decision, a variety of important questions have arisen related to the insanity defense and what should happen to insanity acquittees post-adjudication.

Projecting Risk: The Importance of the HCR-20 Risk Management Scale in Predicting Outcomes with Forensic Patients.

The present study evaluates data from 116 forensic inpatients who underwent violent risk assessments, which included the Historical, Clinical, Risk-20 (HCR-20), from 2006 to 2013 as part of an opportunity to be conditionally discharged from state forensic facilities. Of the 116 inpatients, 58 were never released, 39 were released and returned to a hospital, and 19 were released and never returned. Results from analyses of variance and multinomial logistic regression found the risk management (R) scale of the HCR-20 successfully predicted group membership in that higher scores were associated with a greater likelihood of not being released from a forensic facility or returning to a forensic facility after release.

Improving the Detection of Feigned Knowledge Deficits in Defendants Adjudicated Incompetent to Stand Trial.

Malingering is relatively common in criminal forensic evaluations as base rates of malingering have ranged from 20% to 30%. Given that the most prevalent criminal forensic evaluation is the assessment of competency to stand trial, the assessment of feigning during competency evaluations is necessary for accurate findings. Most of the response style literature focuses on feigning mental health symptoms, but in competency evaluations, individuals may attempt to feign legal knowledge deficits in order to be found incompetent to stand trial.

Eliciting Responsivity: Exploring Programming Interests of Federal Inmates as a Function of Security Classification.

Research supports the effectiveness of the Risk-Needs-Responsivity model for reducing criminal recidivism. Yet programming interests of inmates--one facet of responsivity--remain an understudied phenomenon. In the present study, we explored the programming interests of 753 federal inmates housed across three levels of security.

Predicting voluntary and involuntary readmissions to forensic hospitals by insanity acquittees in Maryland.

The current study investigated factors associated with voluntary and involuntary readmissions to forensic hospitals 356 insanity acquittees on conditional release in the state of Maryland from 2007, 2008, and 2009 and monitored their community progress for a 3-year follow-up period. The results indicated that voluntarily readmitted insanity acquittees had fewer reported arrests on conditional release and fewer reported instances of non-compliance with treatment compared with insanity acquittees who were returned involuntarily to hospital. As expected, arrests and treatment non-compliance predicted involuntary readmission.

Decision-making in post-acquittal hospital release: how do forensic evaluators make their decisions?

A large number of individuals are acquitted of criminal charges after being found "not guilty by reason of insanity." Most of these individuals are hospitalized and later seek hospital discharge under a court-ordered provision called conditional release ("CR"). Courts rely on opinions from forensic evaluators to determine acquittees' readiness for CR.

Coupling of the HPA and HPG axes in the context of early life adversity in incarcerated male adolescents.

The effects of early life adversity can be observed across the lifespan, and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) and hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal (HPG) axes could be mechanistic intermediaries underlying this phenomenon. The current study examined 50 adolescent males aged 12-18 in a maximum-security correctional and treatment setting. Saliva samples were collected five times a day for 2 days and assayed for cortisol, testosterone, and DHEA.