An investigation into the usefulness of the MMPI and MMPI-2 in municipal and state police candidate selection

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and the later revision (MMPI-2) have been two of the most frequently employed instruments in the selection of law enforcement officers (Bartol, 1996). In this study, the following three sets of data were collected and analyzed: municipal law enforcement officer candidates tested with the MMPI, municipal law enforcement officer candidates tested with the MMPI-2, and state police trooper candidates tested with the MMPI-2. These three data sets were evaluated for their effectiveness at predicting “pass/fail” status on police candidate interview using multiple linear regression. A combination of subscales were found to be associated with classification as either pass or fail on interview.     

我国刑事赔偿制度之改革

In reference to the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (hereinafter referred to “the Covenants”), the state compensation system of China in criminal justice shall be reformed as such: Compensation for a miscarriage of justice should not be determined by the results of first instance or second instance, but no guilty through retrial in the final trial upon finding of new evidences. If policemen, prosecutors and judiciaries take lawful measures, causing loss to the suspected due to arrest, detention or other enforcement in the criminal proceedings, the suspected should not get the state compensation for that even if he is decided no guilty in the final trial. If the suspected is cooped up illegally, he should get the state compensation even if being decided guilty finally. The measures of search and seizure should be included in coercive measures, hence differentiating the lawful search and seizure and the unlawful infringement of the property rights. Yang Yuguan, Professor of the Procedure Law Institute in China University of Political Science and Law, whose research mainly covers procedure law and human rights law. He wrote many books and essays, for instance, “Computer and Crime” (1986), “On Plea Bargaining” (1986), “Basic Education in Prisons in China” (1995), “The United Nations Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Policy” (1996), “On the Ratification and Implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights” (2000), “On Hearsay” (2001), “On Exclusionary Rule” (2002), “Human Rights Law: Study On International Covenant on Civil and Political Right” (2003), “The International Criminal Court: Idea, reality and Prospective” (2007), “Death Penalty Control with Procedural Law” (2006), “On Due Process of Law and Human Rights Protection” (2005). He was once a researcher fellow of Ministry of Justice of China, a member of the Crime Prevention Branch of the United Nations Office at Vienna, and an editor-in-chief in some books, such as “The United Nations Criminal Justice Norms and Standards”, “The United Nations Human Rights Treaty Bodies and their Comments”, “A Study On UN Convention of Anti-corruption”.     

The political-criminal nexus in the united states

Summary The 1967 Task Force Report on Organized Crime (TFR) found that “...all available data indicate that organized crime flourishes only where it has corrupted public officials.” 48 From that standpoint, neutralizing local law enforcement would appear to be central to criminal operations. That conclusion would depend on (a) how one defines “organized crime” and (b) the assumption that organized crime described by the Task Force covers all cases and species of it including what is referred to as “non-traditional” organized crime. A conclusion that seems unchallengeable in the Report is the observation that it was impossible to determine “the extent of the corruption of public officials in the United States.” The lack of information on this question was aggravated by the fact that many of those who provided information to the Task Force were themselves public officials.     

Organised Criminals as “Agents of Obligation”: The Case of Ireland

Relying on Brown's (2005a, b) thesis that contemporary shifts in penal policy are best understood as a reprisal of colonial rationality, so that offenders become “non-citizens” or “agents of obligation”, this article argues, firstly, that this framework (with certain important refinements and extensions) finds support in developments in Irish criminal justice policy aimed at offenders suspected of involvement in “organised crime”. These offenders have found themselves reconstituted as “agents of obligation” with duties to furnish information about their property and movements, report to the police concerning their location and, importantly, refrain from criminal activity or face extraordinary sanctions. Secondly, it is submitted that this draconian approach to the control of organised crime is built on false premises; specifically the idea that “organised crime” as such exists and is best controlled through restrictions on the freedom of key groups or “core nominals”.     

Tell Me Who is Your Enemy...

The purpose of the article is to show through the analysis of some recent publications, art exhibitions, trials and other types of discourse, who is considered to be “an enemy” in Russia today and how law enforcement and the judiciary respond to so called “threats,” emanating from the constructed enemies. The analysis reveals some dangerous tendencies in the formation of a common identity for people living in Russia. For instance, search for a “national idea,” “traditional roots,” “patriotism,” and “distinctive nature,” aimed at the formation of this common identity and strengthening the state, is implemented in a way, which leads to the exclusion of ‚others’ and thus undermines the possibility to lay the foundation for the multicultural state based on peace, harmony and tolerance. Russia must become a common house for all ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities living in it, and no one representing them should be in a position of the less favored and less protected. National identity in a multinational state can be only a plural identity, providing for the possibility of living in several communities simultaneously.     

Detection of deception in law enforcement applicants

Using the MMPI and the IPI, the present study examined the differences in psychometric defensiveness between two groups of law enforcement applicants: applicants identified as being deceptive and a comparison group of candidates for whom no deception was indicated. Significant differences were found on the traditional validity (minimization) scales for both instruments as well as several supplemental scales and indexes from the MMPI. A new index (Es-K) from the MMPI showed a highly significant difference between groups and good classification accuracy. The results suggest that deceptive applicants show more defensiveness on psychometric testing and that test results may assist in raising the index of suspicion for detecting deception in law enforcement applicants.     

Incremental validity of MMPI and MMPI-2 clinical scales in detecting malingering

The efficacy of the F scale and F-K index in detecting faking of a mental illness was investigated for both the MMPI and MMPI-2. A total of 72 undergraduate students completed the MMPI and 74 completed the MMPI-2 after receiving instructions to feign severe mental illness. Student responses were analyzed against MMPI (n=180) and MMPI-2 (n=76) data obtained from psychiatric inpatients diagnosed with severe mental illnesses. Multiple regression analysis of the validity scales and F-K index indicate that the F scale is the best predictor of malingering both for the MMPI (r=64) and MMPI-2 (r=.74) and the two samples combined (r=.71). The Si and D scales accounted for statistically significant, yet small, amounts of incremental validity. The presence of a “sawtooth” pattern did not add any incremental validity. Though an F scale cut-off score of T>109 resulted in an 85.9% classification accuracy rate, it appears that categorizing scores into one of five ranges results in better classification accuracy than a single cut-off score.     

Crimes against water: non-enforcement of state water pollution laws

In the United States water pollution is a serious problem criminalized not only by the federal government, but by all states. These laws vary greatly in content, but are widely disobeyed and universally under-enforced. Statutes, case law, histories and journalism show “law in action” typologies of non-enforcement efficacious for analysis including: (1) jurisdiction issues like federal pre-emption, inter-state compacts, and constitutional limitations; (2) legislative issues such as failure to legislate, or legislating ineffectively; (3) agency issues, including administrative obstacles, delegation, power vacuums, procedure, and “agency capture”; (4) policing issues like apathy, under-funding/training, jurisdictional confusion, and “following the path of least resistance”; (5) prosecutorial issues, including isolation, intimidation, and ideological priority bias; (6) trial and appellate court issues, including unclear culpability, erroneous holdings, bias, and lack of judicial independence; and (7) citizen, victim, and defendant issues, including legal intellectual influence, environmentalist criminalization apathy, industry lobbying, environmental justice, reporting failures, self-policing, ethics and flight. The conclusion is non-enforcement in this area of criminal law shows that while federally there may exist a relatively consistent, content neutral enforcement system, at the state level resistance to enforcement is seen across a number of fronts. Ultimately, states can be seens as colonized frontiers servicing venture capitalism, consistent with a “race to the bottom.”     

Child soldiers and distributive justice: addressing the limits of law?

This paper discusses the limitations of legal responses to the problem of child soldiery, beginning from the premise that the crime of using child soldiers is comprised of both the recruiter and the recruit. While legal approaches are addressed to the recruiter, because of the dearth of enforcement mechanisms, the protections established in international law have failed to prevent the recruitment of under-aged combatants. It remains to be seen how efficacious a deterrent the precedent-setting recent and on-going prosecutions of recruiters will be. Nonetheless, legal approaches do not address the recruit, and thus they fail to account for the complex of social reasons that prompt many children to join armed groups “voluntarily”. This paper argues that the conditions that lead children to join armed groups are structural and, thus, must be addressed structurally through developing greater “distributive justice”.     

Local television news and voter support for law enforcement

Television has become “the” medium of the masses in contemporary America. However, there has been very little systematic investigation about television’s impact upon agents of political authority, such as municipal police agencies. This research analyzes potential linkages between voter support for local police and voter viewing habits of local television news. The impact of television news upon voter support for police is assessed in the context of a multivariate model, which includes media and non-media predictor variables. Voter “support” for a municipal police agency is deemed a multidimensional concept and is measured in absolute and relative terms. The findings of this exploratory study suggest that local television news has minimal or no impact (positively or negatively) upon voter attitudes toward local police agencies. The inability of mediaand non-media variables to explain voter support for municipal law enforcement indicates the need for a completely new paradigm to guide research in this niche of criminal justice.     

“Guide to developing a culture of lawfulness,”

This paper has argued that regulatory and law enforcement measures cannot, on their own, deal with the scope of global crime and corruption. Rather, they need to be complemented and supported by a society that embraces a culture of lawfulness. This is difficult to establish. Yet, there are examples, in diverse circumstances, of major changes in values and attitudes towards the rule of law within a relatively short time frame. While there is no “one size fits all” approach, certain key principles can provide a useful guide for societies seeking to foster a culture of lawfulness. These have been found in the most successful and enduring programs.     

Using the good cop/bad cop profile with the MMPI-2

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) has been widely used in a variety of ways to screen candidates for law enforcement positions. This study extends the use of the MMPI Good Cop/Bad Cop (GC/BC) profile (Blau, Super, & Brady, 1993) to the MMPI-2. The MMPI-2 profiles of 39 veteran police officers were used to predict their performance (No Apparent Problems, Borderline, or Serious Problems Possible), and these predictions were compared with supervisors’ ratings of the officers’ actual performance. The MMPI-2 predictions were accurate for 46% of the officers, a rate that was significantly better than chance (p=.024). Based on the current data, the best selection outcome would be obtained by accepting officers whose MMPI-2 profiles place them in the No Apparent Problems or Borderline groups, and rejecting officers whose profiles suggest Serious Problems Possible. This could be accomplished simply by rejecting any officer who obtained a score above 65T on any of the clinical scales. This selection strategy would have resulted in the acceptance of 22 officers, 19 of whom were highly rated by their supervisors, and the rejection of 17 officers, 11 of whom were rated as borderline or poorer by their supervisors. It would also result in the erroneous rejection of 6 officers who were highly rated by supervisors. AUTHOR NOTE: An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1994 annual meeting of the Society for Police and Criminal Psychology, in Roswell, New Mexico. The authors wish to thank Jim Herndon, Ph.D., for this comments on this study.     

Young Children’s Competency to Take the Oath: Effects of Task,Maltreatment, and Age

This study examined maltreated and non-maltreated children’s (N = 183) emerging understanding of “truth” and “lie,” terms about which they are quizzed to qualify as competent to testify. Four- to six-year-old children were asked to accept or reject true and false (T/F) statements, label T/F statements as the “truth” or “a lie,” label T/F statements as “good” or “bad,” and label “truth” and “lie” as “good” or “bad.” The youngest children were at ceiling in accepting/rejecting T/F statements. The labeling tasks revealed improvement with age and children performed similarly across the tasks. Most children were better able to evaluate “truth” than “lie.” Maltreated children exhibited somewhat different response patterns, suggesting greater sensitivity to the immorality of lying.     

Methods and motives: Exploring links between transnational organized crime and international terrorism

The nexus with transnational organized crime is increasingly a focus for security planners in their analyses of terror groups. Their approach is best described by the phrase “methods, not motives.” While the motives of terrorists and organized criminals remain divergent most often, our research indicates this is not always the case. For that reason, this report argues that such a general approach has become too restrictive and can be misleading since the interaction between terrorism and organized crime is growing deeper and more complex all the time. In short, the lines of separation are no longer unequivocal. The report analyzes the relationship between international organized crime and terrorism in a systematic way in order to highlight the shortcomings of the “methods, not motives” argument. In so doing, the report considers the factors that most closely correspond to crime-terror interaction and identifies those regions of developed and developing states most likely to foster such interactions. Likewise, the paper will suggest an evolutionary spectrum of crime-terror interactions that serves as a common basis for discussion of such often used terms as “nexus.” The centerpiece of the report is a groundbreaking methodology for analysts and investigators to overcome this growing complexity, identify crime-terror interactions more quickly and to assess their importance with confidence. The approach is derived from a standard intelligence analytical framework, and has already proven its utility in law enforcement investigations. The report is the product of a recently concluded and peer-reviewed 18-month NIJ sponsored research project, and includes empirical evidence drawn from numerous case studies developed in the course of the research program. This project was supported by Grant No. 2003-IJ-CX-1019 awarded by the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. Points of view in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the US Department of Justice. Research assistance on this project was provided by Allison Irby, Douglas M. Hart, Patricia A. Craig-Hart, Dr. Phil Williams, Steven Simon, Nabi Abdullaev, and Bartosz Stanislawski. Drafting and editing help was provided by Laura Covill.     

Organized economic crime and corruption in Urkraine: The problem of countermeasures

The collapse of communism in Ukraine created opportunities for organized criminal groups to expand their economic criminal activities in the “shadow economy” by penetrating all levels of public and economic administration. Ukrainian law enforcement agencies are poorly equipped to handle this increase in criminal activity, especially with respect to uncooperative foreign and domestic economic institutions. State machinery for regulation and control of industry and commerce was easily accessible to organized crime through bribing of state officials, who received no supervision during economic restructuring. Notwithstanding the active assistance of corrupt government officials, organized economic crime has benefited from chaos and lost government control as the result of recent economic reforms in Ukraine. Researchers in this study hypothesize that the social and economic disorder, as well as a common and justified mistrust of state officials, fosters a pessimism and erodes moral standards, which in turn fosters criminal activity. Of late, judicial sentencing for those convicted of economic crimes has become lighter while many economic criminal cases are never investigated or prosecuted in the first place. In order to combat large-scale corruption, there must be better supervision of government officials and better monitoring of foreign economic transactions. One of the most disastrous consequences of the collapse of the Ukrainian communist system has been the widespread increase of economic crime. This phenomenon is self-sustaining, penetrating all levels of Ukraine's economy and administrative sectors. Criminal activity helps to sustain the shadow economy in Ukraine, which has been estimated by various sources to constitute 50 to 60 percent of the economy. Law enforcement and administrative efforts have been largely futile in curbing this corruption. Nevertheless, it is possible to overcome the criminal social and economic order that has become ingrained in this “shadow economy.” This paper seeks to propose policy solutions for Ukrainian economic crime and corruption that could be implemented at the national level.     

The police subculture and occupational socialization: Exploring individual and demographic characteristics

Popular in the law enforcement literature, the concept of the “police subculture” traditionally has been predicated on homogeneous personnel selections. Although female and minority representation has increased in law enforcement, the impact of females and minorities on the police subculture has not been empirically evaluated. Traditional research in this area has suggested that the socialization process is so intense and the subculture so strong that individual characteristics are quickly overwhelmed. However, these studies were undertaken prior to the mandated introduction of female and minority officers. Results of this study show no significant relationship exists between occupational identification and demographic characteristics; however, level of socialization does show a significant relationship to demographic variables. The sample consisted of four regularly scheduled academy classes with varying levels of police experience. This sample was selected due to the diversity in the level of police experience among respondents. It was hypothesized that demographic variables, such as race, gender, age, military experience and level of police experience, would not significantly affect occupational identification or levels of socialization. The data indicated that individual characteristics, such as race, gender, age, military experience, and level of police experience, did not appear to have a significant effect on occupational solidarity. These individual characteristics, however, were found to display significant relationships with level of socialization.     

Policing the industrial reserve army: An international study

Over the past three decades, the industrialized world has witnessed four resilient social trends: (1) the consistent erosion of union-membership; (2) an increase in income polarization and inequality; (3) a dramatic resurgence in popular protest; and (4) a steady rise in public and private policing employment. In this paper, we examine the relationship between these trends by theorizing and operationalizing the notion of the “industrial reserve army” and a series of related tenets in order to conduct an international (N = 45), empirical test of a nascent Marxian model of policing. By treating total policing employment as an empirical barometer of bourgeois insecurity we find that this insecurity is conditioned by two elements of Marxian political economy: (1) relative deprivation (income inequality) and (2) the rise of an industrial reserve army (manufacturing employment and unemployment). Second, while surplus value and labour militancy (strikes and lockouts per 100,000 population) rise along with union membership, the presence of higher rates of unionization appears to ameliorate the need for more policing in all but post-USSR countries. While unions assist in checking the immiseration of workers through labour actions, union membership is nonetheless inversely correlated to policing employment, giving credence to the Marxian idea that while unions help mitigate against the exploitation workers, they also act as “lieutenants of capital,” performing an essential policing function under capitalism.     

Nigeria

Conclusion Organized crime activities flourish in Nigeria because law enforcement is weak or nonexistent at all levels. The police were corrupt even before organized crime emerged in its present form in Nigeria. Since “corruption is necessary for the successful operation of organized crime,”⁹⁴ the structure and operation of the Nigerian police, together with the activities of corrupt heads of state and corrupt politicians, made Nigeria fertile ground for organized crime. When those who make the laws and those who enforce the law are shamelessly corrupt, then the entire society is cor-rupted. These leaders are supposed to be the role models of the younger generations in Nigeria. Instead, they represent what Gresham Sykes and David Matza have termed the “appeal to higher loyalty”—a technique for rationalization of wrongs by under-privileged elements of Nigerian society who willingly engage in criminal activity.     

The Role of Beliefs,Attitudes and Adverse Childhood Experiences in Predicting Men’s Reactions Towards Their Spouses’ Violence

The purpose of the present article was to determine the ability of cognitive factors (beliefs and attitudes) and adverse childhood experiences to predict men’s reactions towards their spouses’ violence. To do so, 120 males who had referred to family court to seek divorce due to spouses’ violence were randomly selected and an author’s -made questionnaire containing 27 subscales was administered to them. Four of the 27 subscales comprised of 22 questions regarding “types of reactions towards spouses’ violence”, “attitudes towards spouse”, and “experiencing family violence during childhood”. Our results showed that witnessing violence during childhood could positively predict reactions such as “cessation of relationship” and “reprisal”. Men’s beliefs regarding “permission to use violence” could positively predict reaction such as “cessation of relationship”. Furthermore, factors such as “Believing his wife is more knowledgeable” and “Wife’s Physical Appearance” negatively predicted reactions such as “Cessation of relationship” and “Tolerance”. Also “Man’s perceived career success” positively predicted the reaction of “Attempts to Resume Relationship”. These results are discussed in the context of the existing literature.