No abstract

There is a widely held belief that the use of administrative segregation (AS) produces debilitating psychological effects; however, there are also those who assert that AS is an effective strategy for reducing prison antisocial behavior and prison violence. Given these conflicting opinions it is not surprising that the use of segregation in corrections has become a hotly debated and litigated issue. To clarify the competing perspectives, two independent meta-analytic reviews, in an unplanned systematic replication, were undertaken to determine what effect AS has on inmate's physical and mental health functioning, as well as behavioral outcomes (e.g., recidivism). Collectively, the findings from these two meta-analytic reviews indicated that the adverse effects resulting from AS on overlapping outcomes ranged from d ϭ 0.06 -0.55 (i.e., small to moderate) for the time periods observed by the included studies. Moderator analyses from both investigations further reveal considerably smaller effect sizes among studies with stronger research designs compared to those with weaker designs. These results do not support the popular contention that AS is responsible for producing lasting emotional damage, nor do they indicate that AS is an effective suppressor of unwanted antisocial or criminal behavior. Rather, these findings tentatively suggest that AS may not produce any more of an iatrogenic effect than routine incarceration. Coding for these meta-analyses also revealed serious methodological gaps in the current literature. Recommendations for future research that will provide a much better understanding of the effects of AS are offered.

Bias, or systematic influences that create errors in judgment, can affect psychological evaluations in ways that lead to erroneous diagnoses and opinions. Although these errors can have especially serious consequences in the criminal justice system, little research has addressed forensic psychologists' awareness of well-known cognitive biases and debiasing strategies. We conducted a national survey with a sample of 120 randomly-selected licensed psychologists with forensic interests to examine a) their familiarity with and understanding of cognitive biases, b) their selfreported strategies to mitigate bias, and c) the relation of a and b to psychologists' cognitive reflection abilities. Most psychologists reported familiarity with well-known biases and distinguished these from sham biases, and reported using research-identified strategies but not fictional/sham strategies. However, some psychologists reported little familiarity with actual biases, endorsed sham biases as real, failed to recognize effective bias mitigation strategies, and endorsed ineffective bias mitigation strategies. Furthermore, nearly everyone endorsed introspection (a strategy known to be ineffective) as an effective bias mitigation strategy. Cognitive reflection abilities were systematically related to error, such that stronger cognitive reflection was associated with less endorsement of sham biases.

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How likely are multiple forensic evaluators to agree on defendants' diagnoses in routine forensic mental health evaluations? A total of 720 evaluation reports were examined from 240 cases in which 3 evaluators, working independently, provided diagnoses for the same defendant. Results revealed perfect agreement across 6 independent diagnostic categories in 18.3% of cases. Agreement for individual diagnostic categories was higher, with all 3 evaluators agreeing on the separate presence of psychotic, mood, or substance disorders in more than 64.7% of cases and agreeing on the presence of cognitive or developmental disorders in more than 89.7% of cases. However, evaluators agreed about the combination of psychotic and substance-related diagnoses in only 46.5% of cases. Agreement was enhanced by diagnoses with low base rates, and it was suppressed in evaluations conducted in jails. Psychiatrists and contracted evaluators were more likely to provide dissenting diagnostic categories than psychologists and state-employed evaluators. These results are among the first to document diagnostic agreement among nonpartisan practitioners in forensic evaluations conducted in the field, and they allow for practice and policy recommendations for evaluators in routine forensic practice to be made. (PsycINFO Database Record