Fixated individuals who send repeated concerning communications to public figures pose a significant challenge, particularly when such communications escalate to approach or violence. The present study examined associations between three sources of threat assessment information-motivational type, structured professional judgment (CTAP-25), and automated linguistic analysis-and concerning behavior in a sample of fixated individuals (n = 117). Levels of concerning behavior constituted merely communicating, traveling toward the target, or approaching them. Motivational type was significantly associated with concerning behavior, with contact-seeking individuals more likely to travel or approach the target compared to aggrieved individuals. With the exception of evidence of displacement, neither individual CTAP-25 items nor the overall level of concern was associated with concerning behavior. Linguistic measures based on the Grievance Dictionary showed no significant associations, suggesting that language use alone may not constitute a reliable cue for future concerning behavior. Further implications for practice are discussed.
Most research on relational aggression has primarily examined these behaviors among children, with limited exploration of its developmental progression during early adolescence and its associations with antisocial behaviors such as alcohol use, physical aggression, and rule-breaking conduct. Guided by current theoretical models, this study employed a latent growth curve model to address these gaps in the literature by (1) examining the developmental onset and growth rate of relational aggression and (2) estimating the effects of its onset and growth on physical aggression, alcohol use, and rule-breaking behavior, while accounting for gender and race differences (N = 4718). Results indicated that relational aggression peaked at Time 1 and declined by Time 3. Additionally, the onset and rate of growth in relational aggression at both Time 1 and Time 3 were positively associated with distal adolescent outcomes, including alcohol use, physical aggression, and rule-breaking behaviors at Time 4. These findings suggest that, although relational aggression increased initially, these tendencies tended to decrease over time during adolescence. Furthermore, adolescents who initially engaged in relational aggression were more likely to develop broader antisocial behaviors, such as substance use, aggression, and rule-breaking conduct. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.
What should be the proof standard for applying preventive criminal sanctions based on an establishment of risk of reoffending? This is an open question in legal systems around the world. Various authors suggest that we can answer it by using decision theory. This approach conceptualises the proof standard as a probabilistic threshold. A person can then only be subjected to a preventive sanction if the probability that they will commit a crime in the (near) future is sufficiently high. How high this probabilistic threshold should be set depends mostly on the relative utilities that society assigns to errors (preventive sanctions applied to non-dangerous individuals and dangerous individuals to whom no sanction is applied). This article explains the problem of unclear standards of proof for future crimes, offers a non-technical explanation of how decision theory may help solve this problem, surveys existing work on this topic, and outlines several questions and worries that require further academic attention.
Child sexual abuse (CSA) cases rely on attorneys, judges, and jurors having an accurate understanding of complex abuse dynamics, including sexual grooming. While sexual grooming is widely used in research and legal contexts, little is known about how attorneys understand and use the construct. This study examined attorneys' knowledge, perceptions, and utilization of sexual grooming in CSA cases. Fifty-one attorneys from 23 U.S. states completed an online survey. Attorneys viewed sexual grooming as useful (M = 8.82/10), with 88% having used it in their cases. Around half (55%) used expert testimony on the topic, which they rated as highly helpful (M = 9.08/10). Most attorneys learned about sexual grooming through professional trainings, and many expressed a need for additional expert witnesses and investigative evidence on sexual grooming. Sexual grooming is valued in CSA prosecution and thus, continued education, expert consultation, and use of current research are important.
Malingering-traditionally defined as the intentional production of false or exaggerated symptoms for external gain-has long been treated as a unitary construct. Yet patients who feign illness do so for widely divergent reasons, from seeking material necessities to avoiding legal accountability. This paper critiques the limitations of "malingering" as a clinical category and proposes a motivation-based taxonomy of feigned symptoms: Resource-Driven Symptom Expression (RDSE), Accountability-Avoidant Symptom Expression (AASE), Care Access Symptom Expression (CASE), and Socially Motivated Symptom Expression (SMSE). By reframing feigned presentations through motive rather than symptomatology, clinicians can bring an individualized, ethical and just approach to a significant clinical challenge.
When children harm children, the conventional victim-perpetrator framework is ill-equipped to address the developmental, relational, and institutional complexities involved. While juvenile justice scholarship increasingly emphasizes rehabilitation, and victims' rights literature has advanced child-sensitive protections, minor-on-minor offending remains underexplored across legal and social science disciplines. Part 1 of this two-parts project developed a four-pillar theoretical framework integrating therapeutic justice, developmental principles, relational procedural justice, and children's rights norms. The present Article considers the implementation of the proposed model through two paradigmatic case studies, concerning victim impact statements and the handling of sensitive disclosures. Through these scenarios, the Article addresses possible critiques against the model and illustrates how it can protect minor victims' rights, foster rehabilitation for juvenile defendants, and mitigate secondary trauma for both parties. Building on the theoretical model and case-study analysis, we offer some guiding principles for promoting a developmentally informed and rights respecting juvenile justice system.
Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a serious and widespread public health concern. Not only has it been the subject of thousands of papers published over the past three decades, but it also appears frequently in legal proceedings across criminal, civil, and family court contexts. To have currency in the field, forensic experts and other individuals working in court systems must identify and synthesize a wide and complex body of literature, from the conceptual underpinnings of IPV to issues of memory and trauma, many of which may affect victim participation, testimony, and credibility. In this review, we provide a comprehensive and concise summary of several foundational IPV studies, as well as some that have built upon these theoretical models and empirically tested the premises, focusing on key findings relevant to legal proceedings. We also spotlight potential avenues of expert testimony, including "counterintuitive" victim behavior, coercive control, persistence in abusive relationships, delayed reporting, technology-facilitated abuse, and factors that may impact the way in which IPV is manifested or reported (e.g., cultural factors, interpersonal context). Finally, we discuss the wider implications of this work for law and policy, focusing on the continuous need for empirically-grounded testimony in the courtroom.
Youth involved in the juvenile justice system carry a significant burden of mental health challenges. Internalizing disorders such as depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder, self-harm, and suicidal behavior are common among justice-involved youth, but often remain overlooked. These conditions influence behavior, increase vulnerability to offending, and heighten the risk of repeated involvement with the juvenile justice system. This review examines the role of internalizing disorders in juvenile offense, and highlights how inward distress can contribute to outward behavioral disturbances. It brings together evidence from multiple countries and shows that untreated internalizing symptoms are linked to higher rates of reoffending, adverse life outcomes, and increased suicide risk. The review also summarizes interventions that address mental health needs among justice-involved youth, including cognitive behavioral therapy, family-based approaches, mindfulness practices, and mentoring models. These interventions show promise for symptom reduction, emotional regulation, and lowering recidivism. The review places special focus on Low- and Middle Income Countries where limited resources, stigma, and gaps in mental health services create major barriers to care. Overall, the findings point to the need for prevention, early recognition and intervention for internalizing disorders within juvenile justice systems.
The United States Supreme Court's proportionality decisions in Atkins v. Virginia and Roper v. Simmons rest on a single constitutional principle: individuals who lack the behavioral and cognitive capacities necessary for full culpability cannot be sentenced to death. Contemporary neuroscience now provides the ability to measure these capacities directly. Research demonstrates that the neural systems supporting judgment, behavioral inhibition, emotional regulation, and future-oriented reasoning mature heterogeneously, vary substantially across individuals, and can be impaired by developmental deviation, psychiatric illness, traumatic injury, or neurodegenerative disease. Quantitative neuroimaging enables these impairments to be identified through norm-referenced structural and functional metrics, revealing when an individual's neural functioning falls below statistically defined thresholds. Behavioral and cognitive equivalence (BACE) operationalizes the Court's constitutional requirement by determining whether an individual's measurable functioning is equivalent to that of categorically exempt groups. Using validated neuroimaging techniques, normative modeling, and network-level analysis, BACE represents a transparent, reproducible method for assessing diminished capacity consistent with Hall v. Florida and Moore v. Texas. Integrating contemporary neuroscience with constitutional proportionality therefore supports extending categorical protection to individuals whose measurable impairments render them functionally incapable of the culpability required for capital punishment.
As adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are increasingly referenced in criminology, several factors question the salience of ACEs to forensic and correctional populations in both the juvenile and adult criminal justice systems. Here, our scoping review of 99 studies examines the ACEs paradigm and its application to forensic/correctional populations by (1) synthesizing research on ACEs among diverse forensic/correctional populations, particularly youth but also among adults for whom childhood and adolescent adversity has sentencing implications, (2) highlighting intervening processes which mediate, moderate, or redirect the effects of ACEs, and (3) identifying methodological issues and potential confounding effects that pose validity threats to ACEs as an explanatory variable among adolescent and adult offenders and regarding downstream justice system outcomes (e.g., recidivism). When mediating variables are considered, the association between ACEs and antisocial conduct is substantially reduced. Among juvenile offenders, temperament, social bonds, current drug use, or psychopathic features account for 40%-100% of the associations between ACEs and recidivism, gang association, or serious, violent, and chronic offending. These intervening effects are so substantial that studies should migrate from simple ACE-offending designs to more complex, ecologically valid models which specify ACEs as a distal predictor, preferably using longitudinal data. In terms of forensic practice, assessment establishes validity only by respecting the unique experience of the individual rather than homogenizing reactions to abusive home environments, or other circumstances that fractured the family unit. Forensic examination should not overlook downstream life circumstances regardless of their statistical association with ACEs. As a person matures, adult events and experiences more directly influence criminal choices and criminal activity relative to adverse experiences during childhood.
Juvenile cybercrime is a salient governance challenge in digitalizing societies, yet scholarship concentrates on ex post sanction and under-theorizes the interaction among platform design, the digital risk environment, and minors' developmental vulnerability. Drawing on K.G.M. v. Meta Platforms, this study develops a "front-end governance" framework anchored in the best-interests-of-the-child principle and articulated through three doctrinal pillars, the platform duty of risk mitigation, the regulation of harmful design and risky digital environments, and the foreseeability of risk. An empirical component, based on a cross-sectional survey in China, examines institutional support for prevention. Endorsement is broad, 92% for strengthened market regulation, 91% for cyber-law education, 84% for technical firewalls, and 83% for internet classification and digital curfews. On responsibility allocation, 76% prioritize tri-partite collaborative governance involving families, schools, and society. Multinomial logistic regression indicates occupational positioning is the only significant predictor of priority orientation; regional, income, and educational variation are non-significant once controls are applied, a null pattern we read as suggestive rather than confirmatory. The findings support a shift from ex post sanction to ex ante risk governance, organized around platform accountability, age-appropriate design, rule-of-law education, and graded content ecosystems.
Current theories of punishment and legal decision-making provide useful frameworks for identifying mitigating and aggravating factors in sentencing. However, a key limitation is that these theories typically treat factors as either mitigating or aggravating, without accounting for variables that can function as both (e.g., mental illness, pecuniary gain, or a history of abuse). At present, no comprehensive theoretical model explains why such factors are "context-dependent." This review addresses that gap by examining three independent theories: attribution theory, rational choice theory, and focal concerns theory. Each offers valuable insight into why its respective context-dependent factor may be perceived as mitigating or aggravating, yet none alone accounts for the broader range of context-dependent factors. Building on these insights, this review introduces an integrated model of decision-making to explain how context-dependent factors influence sentencing decisions.
Wrongful convictions continue to occur at high rates. Research has revealed that negative posttraumatic cognitive changes are a risk factor for the development and maintenance of posttraumatic stress disorder, yet little research has examined whether exonerees experience posttraumatic cognitive changes, such as changes to their worldview. Thus, this study aims to understand exonerees' self-reported life changes and worldview changes through the lens of the Shattered Assumptions Theory. Fifty-eight exonerees answered four open-ended questions about changes they experienced following their wrongful conviction, including changes to their worldview. Thematic analysis was used to identify themes. Exonerees reported a variety of positive (42.8%) and negative (78.5%) life changes, including changes to their worldview. The most commonly reported negative worldview changes included loss of faith in the legal system, people, and authority figures. Positive worldview changes included strengthened religious faith, learning that people are willing to help, and learning to control one's attitude and focus on the positive. Results identified commonly reported worldview changes in exonerees, many of which are consistent with the Shattered Assumptions Theory. These findings from the largest qualitative sample of exonerees provides preliminary evidence for areas to be targeted in cognitive therapy in exonerees.
Our research explores the motivations and pathways for engaging in antifascist (Antifa) and far-left violent extremist groups. 10 current or former left-wing violent extremists in the United States participated in qualitative, in-depth, life-history interviews. Informed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation Behavioral Analysis Unit 1's, "Beyond Belief: Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism in America," this study examines leftist violent extremism in terms of common radicalization pull factors, push factors, personal factors, and pathways to engagement. Our study identifies three potential pathways to leftist violent extremism (VE) and closely examines the motivating factors of subjects' involvement. This research is relevant to counter-violent extremism (CVE) scholars, law enforcement personnel, and policymakers because it elucidates how and why some Americans become involved in left-wing VE groups, as well as the similarities and distinctions between leftist VE groups and VE groups with other ideological persuasions. By better understanding motivations and pathways to engagement in leftist VE groups, we hope to inform counter-terrorism prevention and intervention efforts.
This study examined and compared the prevalence and expression of psychopathic traits in a Portuguese sample of prisoners and community members, using the abbreviated version of the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale (SRP-SF). The sample consisted of 766 participants (41.5% prisoners, 58.5% community members) of both sexes. Results indicated that prisoners presented significantly higher levels in all four facets of psychopathy. Males presented higher levels in all facets, regardless of context. The interaction between sex and context was statistically significant only in the affective facet: female prisoners presented similar levels to male prisoners, while females in the community presented lower levels. 31.4% of inmates scored high on psychopathy (≥ 70), compared to 2.2% in the community, demonstrating the discriminant validity of the SRP-SF. The results support the dimensional conceptualization of psychopathy and illustrate the utility of the SRP-SF for forensic screening. Practical implications for forensic assessment, prison intervention, and community prevention are discussed.
We argue that the forensic concept of "dangerousness" should be expanded to protect non-human animals when danger is readily foreseeable and before it materializes into substantial harm. The criminal justice approach is limited in this respect because it relies on cruelty statutes that are largely reactive, embodying the adage that "some must suffer first" before intervention can occur. We demonstrate that dangerousness principles and/or language are already embedded-often implicitly and sometimes explicitly-in at least five areas of animal law. We highlight the well-accepted "grave disability" criteria used in assessing dangerousness to self because of the parallels to the deficits noted in animal hoarding, with the main difference being the absence or presence of animals. A civil approach focused on forfeiture (and when appropriate, mental health intervention) rather than prosecution could help bridge the gap between the care animals deserve and the deficiencies that criminal law will currently tolerate.
Expert opinion about dangerousness or risk is common at sentencing, criminal commitment proceedings and some types of pretrial detention hearings. This article argues that such evidence must be (1) "material" (logically relevant, empirically generalizable, and epistemologically germane), (2) "probative" (a measure of accuracy, which is heightened when the evidence is from an expert), (3) helpful to the factfinder (through promoting "incremental validity"), and (4) presented in a non-prejudicial manner (i.e., in a way that minimizes the possibility it will be misused or misinterpreted).
Though the vast majority of criminal convictions stem from guilty pleas, what occurs after the plea is relatively unknown. Data on appeals of guilty pleas was collected from two states to explore the prevalence and outcomes of guilty plea appeals, in addition to characteristics of those cases. One state produced approximately 5.5 times more plea appeal opinions per month than the other. Interestingly, one state's appeals largely centered around excessive sentencing claims (73.6%), while the other saw a range of grounds (e.g., ineffective assistance of counsel). Appealing defendants in one state almost always lost (only a 2% likelihood of success), compared to higher reversal rates in the other state (near 25%). These results reveal stark variations across states that shed light on how appellate courts review guilty plea appeals. In addition, this study highlights the challenges of collecting appellate court data and points to future areas for research to better illuminate plea processes and appeals.
This is a retrospective case study of an antisemitic lone actor terrorist who completed the deadliest attack against the Jewish community in American history. The analysis through the lens of the Terrorist Radicalization Assessment Protocol (TRAP-18) finds that 72% of the warning indicators were present, including four proximal warning behaviors suggesting high or imminent risk for a targeted attack: pathway, identification, last resort, and energy burst. The case also illustrates the impact of this attack on subsequent violent events through forensic linguistic analysis of Terrorgram and other lone actors' communications. The discussion focuses upon mitigation of such lone-actor violence, including the implementation of behavioral threat assessment and management (BTAM) teams, the use of structured professional judgment instruments (SPJ) to assess risk, the simultaneous and continuous monitoring of both online and on-the-ground activity of the person of concern, the location and speed of movement on the pathway to violence, and disaggregation of the motivation, risk and potential outcome in the case through scenario planning and dynamic management. The authors close with a discussion of pertinent questions for altering the macro environment, particularly online, to mitigate the risk of future attacks.
Bullying, both traditional and cyber, has become a public health concern. Nevertheless, few studies have differentiated between traditional bullying and cyberbullying to examine how their interplay shapes distinct bullying involvement profiles and how these profiles link with well-being and mental health outcomes. Thus, the present two-wave study employed latent transition analysis to investigate adolescents' bullying involvement profiles, focusing on their stability and change as well as differences in life satisfaction and depression. We identified five profiles: severe bully-victims, moderate bully-victims, victims, low-involved, and non-involved. The two bully-victim profiles showed greater transitions, whereas the non-involved profile was the most stable. Boys were at higher risk of the two bully-victim profiles, and older victims were less likely to remain purely victimized. Severe bully-victims reported lower life satisfaction, while non-involved adolescents reported lower depression. These findings highlight the dynamic nature of bullying involvement among adolescents over time, with implications for prevention and intervention.
