This article represents an inchoate step in the process of reflection and reconsideration suggested by the authors of " 'Violent Storms and Violent People." How Meteorology Can Inform Risk Communication in Mental Health Law" (J. Monahan & H. J. Steadman, 1996) in this issue of the American Psychologist. It begins to identify and clarify some considerations relevant to selecting a method for communicating risk assessments for particular legal purposes" in the context of mental health law.
The of "Violent Storms and Violent authorsPeople: How Meteorology Can Inform Risk Communication in Mental Health Law" (Monahan & Steadman, 1996, this issue) have devoted much of their careers to studying the processes by which psychologists assess risk of harm from human conduct. In their article, they redirect their attention somewhat from the accuracy of assessment to the efficacy of certain forms of communication of that assessment. They contend that risk assessment framed in terms of probability in the circumstances contains the most relevant information in principle but that many recipients of this information may not use this information in the most effective manner.I am grateful to Barb Sturgis for comments on a draft of this article.
Clinicians and social scientists exercise judgments and discharge responsibilities while fulfilling several different roles in interaction with a variety of legal institutions. The decisions of the Supreme Court in Daubert and Hendricks provide an opportunity to examine the defensible parameters of several of these roles. Daubert provides criteria for the admission of expert testimony in a variety of hearings, including commitment hearings held under statutes such as that at issue in Hendricks. The authors interpret these Daubert criteria as representing broader underlying principles that can provide useful guidance in establishing defensible parameters of participation in a variety of legal institutions by clinicians and social scientists.
This is a book about the role that psychological impairment should play in a theory of criminal liability. Criminal guilt in the Anglo-American legal tradition requires both that the defendant committed some proscribed act and did so with intent, knowledge, or recklessness. The second requirement corresponds to the intuitive idea that people should not be punished for something they did not do 'on purpose' or if they 'did not realize what they were doing'. Unlike many works in this area, this book addresses the automatism and insanity defences by examining the types of functional impairment that typical candidates for these defences actually suffer. What emerges is a much wider conceptual framework that allows us to understand the significance of psychological states and processes for the attribution of criminal responsibility in a manner that is logically coherent, morally defensible, and consistent with research in psychopathology.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.