Serial sexual murder by juveniles and the role of sexual sadism: An international study.

This is a descriptive study of 21 cases of serial sexual murder by children and adolescents spanning nearly the past century and a half. No earlier cases worldwide were identified. Each of these youth committed two or more sexual homicides prior to age 18.

Risky Sexual Behavior, Paraphilic Interest, and Sexual Offending: The Study of a Community Sample of Young Adults in Hong Kong.

Limited information is available on the prevalence and nature of sexual offending in Hong Kong. This cross-sectional study seeks to explore the role of risky sexual behavior (RSB) and paraphilic interests in self-reported sexual offending behavior (i.e.

Revenge filicide: An international perspective through 62 cases.

Filicide is the purposeful killing of one or more children by a parent, step-parent, or other parental figure. Revenge filicide is a poorly understood, rare form of filicide in which a parent murders their child to cause emotional harm to the child's other parent. This descriptive study presents an international case series consisting of 62 revenge filicide cases from nine countries.

Mosaic trisomy 20 and mitigation in capital crimes sentencing: A review and case report.

Trisomy 20 is a genetic abnormality in which individuals have an extra copy of chromosome 20. Complete trisomy 20 is rare and believed to be incompatible with life. A mosaic form of trisomy 20, in which only some cells or tissues contain the extra chromosome, is a relatively commonly encountered chromosomal abnormality found during prenatal testing, and c.

An Updated Sexual Homicide Crime Scene Rating Scale for Sexual Sadism (SADSEX-SH).

The Sexual Homicide Crime Scene Rating Scale for Sexual Sadism (SADSEX-SH) is a rating scale which dimensionally measures the degree of offender sexual sadism in suspected sexual homicide cases. Scoring is accomplished using crime scene and related investigative information. Preliminary norms for the SADSEX-SH prototype indicate that it correctly classified offenders with and without sexual sadism.

Sexual Homicide by Older Male Offenders.

Recent research has expanded our understanding of sexual homicide offenders (SHOs). However, little exists beyond case reports for older SHOs. We characterized male SHOs ≥ 55 years, comparing them to typical adult male SHOs who are in their 20s.

Challenges and Limitations to Treating ADHD in Incarcerated Populations.

An often underappreciated and hard-to-treat condition in correctional institutions is attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Although there are many effective psychopharmacologic treatments for ADHD, such as various formulations of amphetamines, many physicians are hesitant to prescribe controlled stimulants in correctional settings because of concerns about abuse and safety. Although nonstimulant alternatives are available, they are generally seen as less effective than stimulants.

Commentary: Bringing Order to Chaos--How Psychiatrists Know the Standard of Care.

In this commentary, we explore the clinical and educational implications of the study by Recupero and Harms on the standard of care (SOC) as it pertains to obtaining psychiatric outpatient clinical records of prior treatment. We discuss differences between the legal and clinical SOCs and make recommendations to incorporate risk management training and education about the medicolegal aspects of SOC in psychiatry residency curricula.

Sexual homicide in the USA committed by juveniles and adults, 1976-2007: Age of arrest and incidence trends over 32 years.

Background: Reliable epidemiological data on sexual homicide are sparse, especially on trends in its incidence over time and age at arrest.

Aims: Our main aims were to study age at arrest and incidence trends for sexual homicide in the USA over about three decades (1976-2007).

Methods: We conducted longitudinal analyses of data from the largest USA homicide database available for the years 1976-2007.

Should AAPL enforce its ethics? Challenges and solutions.

Ethics enforcement in psychiatry occurs at the district branch and American Psychiatric Association (APA) levels under the guidance of American Medical Association (AMA) and APA ethics documents. Subspecialty ethics consequently have no formal role in the enforcement process. This reality challenges practitioners to work according to guidelines that may not be sufficiently relevant and challenges ethics reviewers to apply frameworks not intended for the subspecialties.

Single-victim and serial sexual homicide offenders: differences in crime, paraphilias and personality traits.

Background: Information on psychopathological characteristics of sexual homicide offenders is scarce.

Aims: To investigate criminal, paraphilic and personality trait differences between serial and single-victim sexual homicide offenders.

Methods: All 73 single-victim and 13 serial sexual homicide offenders presenting within a cohort of 671 men sentenced for sexual crimes between 1994 and 2005 and serving their sentence in one high-security Canadian prison and who consented to interview were assessed and compared on their offending patterns, personality pathology and paraphilic behaviours.

Toward a more holistic understanding of filicide: a multidisciplinary analysis of 32 years of U.S. arrest data.

Filicide is the killing of one or more children by a parent, stepparent, or other parental figure. This study presents the first comprehensive analysis of U.S.

Commentary: the insanity defense and youths in juvenile court.

Juveniles, like adults, should be afforded the right to raise an insanity defense. In this commentary on the article by Morse and Bonnie on the abolition of the insanity defense, we explain why so few juveniles across the United States are granted access to the insanity defense and the reasons that they should have that option. We also consider whether the Delling case was the best suited vehicle to argue for extending constitutional protection to the insanity defense nationwide.

Female sexual homicide offenders: an analysis of the offender racial profiles in offending process.

Despite the recent effort by Chan and Frei in studying female sexual homicide offenders (SHOs), much is still unknown about this underresearched offender population. One largely unexplored area is how female SHOs of different races commit their killings. Using FBI Supplemental Homicide Reports (SHR) data (1976-2007), 105 White and 94 Black female SHOs (N=204) were examined for their differential offending patterns.

Prevalence and Assessment of Malingering in Homicide Defendants Using the Mini-Mental State Examination and the Rey 15-Item Memory Test.

This study surveyed malingering prevalence in pretrial homicide defendants and assessed the usefulness of the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) and the Rey 15-Item Memory Test (FIT) in detecting malingering among them. Malingering prevalence was 17%. MMSE and FIT scores were positively correlated.

Juvenile and adult offenders arrested for sexual homicide: an analysis of victim-offender relationship and weapon used by race.

Limited information is available on racial offending patterns of sexual homicide offenders (SHOs). This study used a 30-year U.S.

Juvenile homosexual homicide.

Limited information exists on juvenile homosexual homicide (JHH), that is, youths who perpetrate sexual homicides against same-sex victims. Only a handful of cases from the United States and internationally have been described in the literature. This study, the first of its kind, examines the epidemiology, victimology, victim-offender relationship, and weapon-use patterns in JHH offenders using a large U.

Commentary: Perception of remorse by mock jurors in a capital murder trial.

The study by Corwin et al. adds to the emerging but limited data on the impact of defendant remorse on sentencing decisions. The authors studied verbal and nonverbal expressions of defendant remorse and whether they were perceived as remorseful by mock jurors.

Adolescent parricide and psychopathy.

Most cases of juvenile parricide are believed to be the result of child abuse, yet the vast majority of abused children do not kill their parental abusers. This study explored the role of psychopathy in 10 adolescent parricide offenders tried in adult court who were referred for pretrial psychiatric evaluation. In addition, psychopathological findings, crime-related behaviors, and judicial outcomes are described.