Relation of Antisocial and Psychopathic Traits to Suicide-related Behavior Among Offenders

Offenders with antisocial traits are relatively likely to attempt suicide, largely because they are more likely to have high negative emotionality and low constraint. Among 682 male offenders, we tested whether negative emotionality, low constraint, and also substance use problems mediated any relationship between antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) and psychopathy on the one hand, and suicide-related behavior (SRB) and ideation on the other. ASPD and the impulsivity/lifestyle features of psychopathy weakly predicted SRB. High negative emotionality and low constraint (but not substance use) mediated the relation between ASPD and SRB. Impulsivity/lifestyle features of psychopathy retained an independent predictive effect. Self-report psychopathy measures added unique predictive variance to the Psychopathy Checklist—Revised. We discuss implications for suicide risk assessment and prevention.

Childhood Exposure to Aggression and Adult Relationship Functioning: Depression and Antisocial Behavior as Mediators

Childhood exposure to family aggression is associated with various harmful outcomes, including poor adult relationship functioning (i.e., greater relationship dissatisfaction and partner aggression). The mechanisms by which this transmission occurs, however, are less well understood. In this study, the mediating effects of adult depression and childhood antisocial behavior on the link between childhood exposure to family aggression and adult relationship functioning were investigated using a community sample of 98 couples expecting their first child. Childhood exposure to aggression was linked to greater relationship dissatisfaction and higher rates of partner aggression perpetration for both men and women. For men, symptoms of depression partially mediated the association between aggression exposure and relationship satisfaction. For women, childhood antisocial behavior fully mediated the link between aggression exposure and both indices of poor relationship functioning (dissatisfaction and aggression). These gender-specific results have implications for improving relationship functioning and breaking the intergenerational transmission of relationship dysfunction.     

Alternative Pathways to Violence in Persons with Schizophrenia: The Role of Childhood Antisocial Behavior Problems

Violence in schizophrenia patients may result from many factors besides the symptoms of schizophrenia. This study examined the relationship between childhood antisocial behavior and adult violence using data from the NIMH CATIE study. The prevalence of violence was higher among patients with a history of childhood conduct problems than among those without this history (28.2% vs. 14.6%; P < 0.001). In the conduct-problems group, violence was associated with current substance use at levels below diagnostic criteria. Positive psychotic symptoms were linked to violence only in the group without conduct problems. Findings suggest that violence among adults with schizophrenia may follow at least two distinct pathways-one associated with premorbid conditions, including antisocial conduct, and another associated with the acute psychopathology of schizophrenia.     

Perceived Sanction Threats and Projective Risk Sensitivity: Auto Theft,Carjacking, and the Channeling Effect

Although sanction threats promote fear, among committed offenders, that fear can become a resource with which to sculpt emerging crime preferences. In such cases, criminality is not deterred but channeled. We explore the channeling process here as it relates to auto theft and carjacking. Our qualitative findings reveal that auto thieves are reluctant to embrace the violence of carjacking due to concerns over sanction threat severity they attributed to carjacking—both formal (higher sentences) and informal (victim resistance and retaliation). Meanwhile, the carjackers are reticent to enact auto theft because of the more uncertain and putatively greater risk of being surprised by victims, a fear that appears to overcome the enhanced long-term formal penalty of taking a vehicle by force. We examine the implications of offenders’ decision-making for the analytic intersection of rational choice and deterrence, offering the notion of projective risk sensitivity to encapsulate the process.     

Young People,Antisocial Behavior and Unemployment: Toward a Trans-Disciplinary Analysis of Criminalization

Critical Criminology - This article considers the diverse use of the concept of criminalization in criminological and socio-legal analyses, the meanings attached to it, and the differentiated modes...     

Preliminary Study of Testosterone and Empathy in Determining Recidivism and Antisocial Behavior

Recidivism, repeated criminal behavior after conviction and correction of prior offenses, is a costly problem across the nation. However, the contribution of empathy in determining the risk of recidivism has received limited attention, although lack of empathy has been related to antisocial personality disorder in various studies. Studies linked testosterone to aggression, antisocial behavior, and criminality, and evidence support hormonal connections between empathy and aggression. Adult male prison inmates convicted of violent or nonviolent offenses were included in a cross‐sectional study of empathy, antisocial behavior, salivary testosterone, and recidivism. Subjects underwent criminal history, Empathy Quotient, Levenson Self‐Report Psychopathy Scale, Beck Depression Inventory, Spielberger State‐Trait Anxiety Inventory, and salivary testosterone assays. Bivariate analyses indicated multiple correlations between variables. Multivariate modeling analyses found a significant relationship between self‐reported conviction number and psychopathy scale score (p = 0.013). These preliminary results suggest avenues of investigation of factors contributing to recidivism risk.     

The Effect of Variation in Intact Family Forms on Deviant and Antisocial Behavior

Family form sets the stage for a host of adolescent behavioral outcomes. We draw on research, theory, and methodology from within Criminology, Demography, and Family Sociology to examines the effect of variation in intact family form on antisocial and deviant behavior. We find higher antisocial and deviant behavior among youth residing in households where one of the parents has a child from a previous relationship and the parents are currently married but were cohabiting at the time of the birth of their eldest child.     

The Moderating Effect of Criminal Thinking on Certainty of Apprehension in Decisions to Engage in Antisocial Behavior: Replication and Extension

This study explored whether the rational (certainty of punishment) and nonrational (criminal thinking) aspects of antisocial decision‐making interact. A convenience sample of 319 undergraduates (106 men, 213 women) completed a measure of criminal thinking and responded to three fictional vignettes (i.e., cheating on a final examination in a class they were in jeopardy of failing, stealing $50 off a table in a dorm room, and selling marijuana for a friend) at three different levels of risk or certainty of apprehension (50%, 10%, and 1%). Results indicated that participants reported that they would be more likely to engage in antisocial behavior when the certainty of getting caught was low and the level of proactive (P) or reactive (R) criminal thinking was high. An interaction between certainty and criminal thinking was also observed in which the gap between lower and higher criminal thinking respondents grew as the probability of getting caught fell.     

Callous-Unemotional Traits and Social Information Processing: Multiple Risk-Factor Models for Understanding Aggressive Behavior in Antisocial Youth

This study examined multiple risk factor models of links among callous-unemotional traits, aggression beliefs, social information processing, impulsivity, and aggressive behavior in a sample of 150 antisocial adolescents. Consistent with past research, results indicated that beliefs legitimizing aggression predicted social information processing biases and that social information processing biases mediated the effect of beliefs on aggressive behavior. Callous-unemotional traits accounted for unique variance in aggression above and beyond effects of more established risk factors of early onset of antisocial behavior, social information processing, and impulsivity. These findings add to recent research showing that callous-unemotional traits are a unique risk factor associated with aggression and criminal offending and suggest that targeting both affective and cognitive vulnerabilities may enhance clinical intervention with antisocial youth.     

Feeling Things: From Visual to Material Jurisprudence

Law and Critique - In this article I analyse the extent to which there has been a shift in the cultural turn in legal scholarship and specifically from visual to what I call material jurisprudence,...     

Differentiating Between Generally and Partner-Only Violent Subgroups: Lifetime Antisocial Behavior,Family of Origin Violence,and Impulsivity

The present study examined self-reported lifetime antisocial behavior, family of origin violence, and impulsivity/behavioral disinhibition of 73 men entering treatment for partner violence. Participants were designated as generally violent (GV) (n = 46) or partner only violent (n = 27), based on self-reported violence against non-intimate individuals during the year prior to intake. As hypothesized, GV men reported more conduct disorder/delinquent behaviors, lifetime antisocial behaviors, and family of origin violence. The GV men also reported more behavioral disinhibition, however, group differences on impulsivity only approached statistical significance. In addition, as hypothesized, GV men reported they were more psychologically abusive toward their intimate partners. However, contrary to expectations, the subgroups did not differ on reports of physical violence toward their partners. This study employed a fairly simple technique of dividing men into groups based on self-reports of violence over the past year, thereby producing subgroups that differed on a number of important characteristics that may have implications for treatment. An advantage of this technique is that it would be relatively easy for other treatment programs to apply.

Comparing Sexuality,Aggressiveness, and Antisocial Behavior of Alleged Juvenile Sexual and Violent Offenders,

Sexual delinquency in juveniles is insufficiently explored in regard to the specificity of offender characteristics. The aim is to investigate relevant areas for juvenile sexual offending in a precourt, pretreatment group. Thirty‐two alleged juvenile sexual offenders (ASO) referred to by police were compared with 32 juvenile nonsexual violent offenders (VNO) on standardized measures of aggressiveness and psychopathology, antisocial behavior, substance use problems, and sexuality. Less externalizing disorders and antisocial behavior were found among the ASOs than among the VNOs. The ASO group was sexually less experienced, had less trust in their relationship abilities, fewer victimization experiences, and reported more sexual deviance, while pornography use and obscene calls were reported less often. Few juvenile sexual offenders had severe problems in the investigated areas. Including groups of offenders before court, treatment or incarceration in research appears crucial to understand the full spectrum of sexual deviance in youth and avoid misguidance due to selection factors.     

Criminal Behavior: A Real Option Approach With an Application to Restricting Illegal Insider Trading

Traditionally, criminal behavior is analyzed within an expected utility framework. This paper offers an alternative model to analyze criminal behavior based on real option models. It is shown that all criminal decisions can be analyzed as real options, in a sense that they confer the possibility but not the obligation to commit a crime in the future. The criminal option model is a richer model compared to conventional economic models of crime, because it takes into account four additional variables. As such, the conventional economic analysis of crime is a special case of criminal option models. The criminal option model is then applied to the enforcement of illegal insider trading. Based on the six value-drivers of criminal options, an active management strategy can be developed for the criminal as well as for the legislator.     

Getting Real or Staying Positive: Legal Realism(s), Legal Positivism and the Prospects of Naturalism in Jurisprudence

The relationship between Legal Realism and Legal Positivism has been a recurrent source of debate. The question has been further complicated by the related difficulty of assessing the internal relationship between the two main original strands of Legal Realism: American and Scandinavian. This paper suggests considering American and Scandinavian Realism as instantiations of forward‐looking and backward‐looking rule skepticism respectively. This distinction brings into sharp relief not only the fundamentally different relationship between each of these two Realist schools and Legal Positivism but also their equally different potentials as starting points for naturalizing jurisprudence.     

Jurisprudence and Communication: Secular and Religious

In considering Van Schooten’s study of the Eric O. case (s.1), I ask whether the different approaches taken by the two different “legal institutions”—the prosecuting authorities on the one hand, the courts on the other—are reflective of different images of warfare (a semantic difference) or of the different images each group holds of its own role (a pragmatic difference). If we consider these two “legal institutions” as distinct semiotic groups (s.2), is there an inevitable “communication deficit” (Van Schooten) between them (and the public) and how does this relate to the Hartian account of such a “crisis in communication” (s.3)? I agree with Van Schooten about the role of underlying images in the construction of legal sense, and relate this to the issue of intuitional judgment, both in and outside the law (s.4). I then turn to comparable issues which arise in my other research area, Jewish law, which reflects quite different ideological premises (s.5), reviewing the original (biblical) conception of the (intuitive) role and functions of judges (s.5A), decision-making, justification and consequentialist ethics in postbiblical Jewish law (s.5B), and the conclusions drawn, not least for the pragmatics of communication, in a recent research study on the wife’s rights in divorce. Paradoxically, I argue (s.5C), that the system rests at base on trust rather than objective truth. But trust, too, is a form of meaning, and susceptible to semiotic analysis. I suggest, in conclusion (s.6), that this is an issue which should be treated more seriously in the theory of secular law and legal communication.     

两种法理学之争:如何可能与发展

对"法律是什么"的不同回答,形成了两种不同性质的法理学。哈特"法理学"的特点是"描述性"与"中立性",是关于法律的"二阶"理论,其无涉道德评价;德沃金"法理学"的特点是"评价性"与"证立性",是关于法律的"一阶"理论,其关涉道德评价。哈特"法理学"的最大问题是,从法概念中剥离道德,导致不能为法律合法性提供辩护;德沃金"法理学"的关键问题是,用道德对法律合法性进行审查,易于消解法律的独立性,丧失法律的权威性。故此,为维护法律的合法性与独立性并存与统一,可借鉴富勒的"法律内在道德"观念,尝试性地区分法律的外在道德与内在道德,将法律的合法性审查标准限缩在法律的内在道德之中,并借鉴康德的"可普遍化检验"原理,将通过普遍化检验所形成的可普遍化原则作为法律的内在道德的判断标准。     

Debts and Threats: Managing Inability to Repay Credits in Illicit Drug Distribution

This study examines how creditors in illicit drug markets manage debtors’ inability to repay “fronted” drugs. Based on qualitative interviews with 40 incarcerated drug dealers in Norway, we explore four outcomes of unpaid drug debts. Two modes of governance dominated the credit reciprocation processes: Cooperative governance included strategies of accepting loss and refinancing debt and required mutual trust between creditor and debtor. Adversarial governance included extortion of debtors and revenge and was based on threats of violence. We found that creditors preferred refinancing debt or extorting debtors over accepting loss or using violence. We argue that the negotiated outcomes of drug debt have been neglected in research on drug markets, and explore how they require investment from the creditor, either in building trust or in deterring malfeasance through threats of violence. Using insights from economic sociology, the study highlights the importance of social control in illegal drug markets.