International Journal of Forensic Mental Health

Peer review is a process often viewed as critical to the advancement of science. But, as Norman Poythress and John Petrila make clear in the lead article of this issue of the International Journal of Forensic Mental Health, it is a process that can go awry. They discuss a dispute that arose concerning publication of an article in a peer-reviewed journal, the consequences of which included, certainly, a major delay in publication of the article; probably, an extra round of reviews and required revisions that were unwarranted; and, quite possibly, a chilling effect on research in the field. In this Editorial, I reflect on Poythress and Petrila's cautionary tale and its relevance for the journal's editorial policies and procedures.

Disputes among academicians are not uncommon. They are usually played out in peer review journals in the form of point-and-counterpoint articles, or rebuttals and rejoinders. Recently however, a threat of litigation was issued against the authors of an article and the editor of the scientific journal which had accepted that article for publication following peer review. In this commentary we review legal commentary on litigation (and threats of litigation) involving academic disputes and literature regarding the values that underpin the scientific peer review process. We conclude that the use of threats of litigation to suppress the publication of articles accepted for publication in scientific journals strike at the heart of the peer review process, may have a chilling effect on the values at the core of academic freedom, and may potentially impede the scientific testing of various theories, models and products.

In this article we draw from desistance research and a strength-based rehabilitation theory, the Good Lives Model (GLM), to present a richer way of intervening with sex offenders. First, we define the concept of desistance and outline some of the major research findings concerning the factors that help offenders to cease offending. Second we briefly describe current best practice sex offender treatment and discuss its efficacy. Third, we explore the relationship between desistance research and the GLM, arguing that the GLM provides a useful conduit for desistance ideas into sex offender treatment programs. Fourth, we briefly consider the treatment implications of an integrated desistance-GLM approach.

In this study, we compared 20 criminal psychopaths and 19 nonpsychopaths identified with the PCL-R (Hare, 2003). All participants were adult males confined in a Belgian security hospital. The psychopath group and the control group were equivalent for age, IQ, and social desirability score (Crowne & Marlowe, 1960). First, the two groups completed the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS; Bagby et al. 1994a, b). This self report measure includes three factors: the identification of emotion states; the expression of emotion states to others, and operative thinking. Secondly, each participant completed the TEIque (Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire; Petrides & Furnam, 2003). The full version of this self-report includes 15 scales and 4 main factors. For this study, we selected six scales that were a priori supposed to be strongly involved in emotion processing: “emotional regulation” of self, “emotion management” of others, “relational aptitudes,” “emotional expression,” “emotional perception,” and “stress management.” First, psychopaths presented a lower total score on the TAS. Among the facets of psychopathy, the deficient affective component was the most negatively correlated to the TAS total score. These results disconfirmed the classical hypothesis of a perceived emotion deficit among psychopaths. Concerning the TEIque, psychopaths presented a higher score on both the “emotional perception” and “emotional regulation” scales. Again, among the facets of psychopathy, the deficient affective component was the most negatively correlated to the TEIque total score. The TAS and the TEIque total scores were negatively related (r = .61). The overall results are discussed in light of the recent literature on affects characteristics of psychopaths (Book, Quinsey, & Langford, 2007) and on their potential lifetime strategy (Harris & Rice, 2006).

This study investigated risk factors for juvenile delinquency within family structure, personality, and diagnostic variables in 75 juvenile delinquents referred for forensic assessment. A considerable amount of detrimental family characteristics were demonstrated: 66% of all juveniles had experienced father deprivation, 20% had never been living with the father, and 25% had an alcoholic father. The most negative effects were registered in 32 juvenile delinquents growing up without a father and also reporting a negative relationship to their mother. Here, conduct disorder, alcohol abuse as comorbidity, and paternal alcoholism were diagnosed more often as compared to juveniles experiencing father deprivation but who reported a positive relationship with their mothers. In a comparison between violent and nonviolent offender subgroups, a significantly higher frequency of substance abuse was obtained in the violent offenders. Moreover, trends towards more father deprivation and conduct disorder were registered in the violent offenders. Finally, results from multivariate analyses of all variable sets pointed to a triad of risk factors involved in juvenile violent offending: a diagnosis of conduct disorder, family psychopathology, especially father deprivation, and substance abuse. The role of protective influences and implications for intervention programs and prognosis are discussed.

Little research exists on the prevalence of victimization among young people in juvenile correctional facilities and adult jails and prisons. The limited extant research suggests that youth incarcerated in adult prisons and jails are at greater risk for physical and sexual abuse (Redding, 1999) compared to both adult inmates in the same facilities and youths in juvenile detention centers. Yet thousands of juveniles pass through jails and prisons each year, particularly in America. Advocates of juvenile justice reform argue that the risks inherent in incarcerating juveniles in adult jails and prisons, in terms of both their victimization and recidivism rates, call into question the legislation that allow youth to intermingle with more sophisticated criminals.

Courts and forensic psychologists are more frequently working with interpreters as a result of the increasing linguistic diversity in the United States. This article reviews the published literature on how interpreter-mediated communication impacts the reliability and validity of forensic evaluation. Until there are sufficient numbers of multilingual forensic psychologists, the use of interpreters in forensic practice is unavoidable. Therefore, this article provides forensic psychologists with empirically-based recommendations to improve the reliability and validity of interpreter-mediated evaluations.