Incarceration presents significant psychological and emotional challenges, increasing stress and vulnerability to mental health disorders. This study introduces and validates the Sources of Stress and Unease in Inmates Scale (SSUIS), a psychometric tool designed to assess stressors among male incarcerated individuals in Madrid, Spain. A four-phase design included interviews (n = 40), focus groups (n = 120), expert review (n = 11), and administration of a revised 52-item questionnaire to 365 second-degree male incarcerated individuals. Exploratory factor analysis identified five factors explaining 81.35% of the variance: (1) Dissatisfaction with food; (2) Occupational under-engagement; (3) Perceived negative treatment by correctional staff; (4) Poor sleep quality; (5) Perceived crime-based discrimination. All subscales demonstrated high internal consistency (alpha = 0.76-0.94 and McDonald's Omega = 0.79-0.94) and strong convergent validity. SSUIS offers a reliable and valid measure of prison-related stressors, with potential applications in psychological assessment and intervention. Future research should examine its relevance across different institutions, individuals in different security levels, and inmates from other cultural or institutional contexts.
Research on how autistics are sentenced is ambivalent: some studies suggest harsher treatment, while others propose more lenient sentences. However, it is unclear whether lenient sentencing is caused by positive perceptions of autistic people, or because autism is a relevant mitigating factor. Across two studies, we tested how mock jurors evaluated autistic defendants in autism-relevant and autism-irrelevant criminal cases to understand when and why autistic defendants receive leniency. Further, some participants received educational information about ASC, allowing them to recognise when autism is relevant for mitigation in criminal cases (assault and stalking, but not burglary). Autistic defendants only received lower sentences when autism was a relevant mitigation (assault and stalking), but not when autism was irrelevant (burglary). Thus, participants did not simply give preferential treatment to autistic defendants, but considered how ASC was related to the offence. However, providing information about autism weakened these effects, indicating education about autism may not always benefit autistic defendants. Our study highlights the importance of nuanced messaging: Explaining how autistic traits may pose a risk for certain criminal behaviours can mitigate perceptions of responsibility and promote fairer treatment. However, linking autism to criminality risks reinforcing misconceptions of greater danger or reoffending risk.
In the absence of a valid risk assessment tool for adult firesetting, practitioners often use general or violence risk assessment instruments to assess risk of future firesetting. This study aimed to examine the predictive validity of the Historical Clinical Risk Management-20 Version 3 (HCR-20(V3)) for arson recidivism. A pseudo-prospective design was used, with risk assessments scored from file review in a sample of 75 participants assessed for firesetting at a community forensic mental health service in Victoria, Australia between 2003 and 2015. Participants were followed up using police records for a median of 5 years (range: 8 months to 12.6 years; interquartile range: 2 to 7 years). Seven participants (9.3%) received a further arson-related charge. Time-dependent analyses indicated that in the first two years post-assessment, a HCR-20(V3 )Future Violence/Case Prioritisation judgement of high risk showed good predictive validity for future arson. These findings offer preliminary support for the use of the HCR-20(V3 )Future Violence/Case Prioritisation judgement to identify individuals who may be at an elevated risk of arson reoffending in the first two years post-assessment. However, significant methodological limitations mean results must be interpreted with caution and require replication. Furthermore, application of the HCR-20(V3 )to firesetting requires informed adaptation and consideration of fire-related factors.
There has been a growing interest in developing effective intervention programs for individuals who set fires. The Firesetting Intervention Program for Prisoners (FIPP), a structured cognitive-behavioral treatment, has demonstrated improvements in a prison-based group therapy setting. However, no studies have evaluated an individualized version of this program. The present multiple case study aimed to test the preliminary efficacy of individualized FIPP by administering it to three individuals convicted of arson, using a mixed-methods design. A marked improvement was observed in all cases regarding anger expression, active coping strategies, communication, and fire-related factors. This improvement was maintained over a three-month follow-up period. Furthermore, a shift in personal and criminal beliefs occurred, leading to a deeper understanding of their emotions at the time of the crime and a reevaluation of their offenses. These cases demonstrate the initial efficacy of the individualized version of the FIPP for Portuguese offenders detained for arson.
Police often ask a witness for a verbal description of a perpetrator's face immediately after witnessing an event (e.g., Fahsing et al., 2004; Wells et al., 2021). A good description increases the likelihood that police will locate the suspect for later identification. However, this technique provides a conundrum for police as describing a face is shown to make identification from a lineup more difficult, a phenomenon called verbal overshadowing (Schooler & Engstler-Schooler, 1990). Verbal overshadowing occurs because either people are reluctant to make a lineup identification post description, or there is a disruption at retrieval where memory for the perpetrator's face is impaired (Mickes & Wixted, 2015; Protzko et al., 2022). Concerns over the impact of this phenomenon in legal settings are well founded, however, whether verbal descriptions are detrimental to all witnesses is unknown. Some people have low or no visual imagery ability, (aphantasics; Zeman et al., 2015, 2020), and do not have pictures in their 'minds' eye', thus, may not rely on visual mental representations. Without this reliance on mental pictures, aphantasics may rely upon verbal description to retrieve face recognition information. This project investigates whether mental imagery ability and/or verbal description of a perpetrator influence accurate lineup identifications.
