The effects of psychiatric and “biological” labels on lay sentencing and punishment decisions

Objectives

This research, using focal concerns perspective on sentencing, examines how and why psychiatric labels, and having diagnoses biologically “labeled,” affect sentencing beliefs. Dimensions of public stigma toward psychiatric illnesses are hypothesized to mediate sentencing views.

Methods

This is a 2?×?2 partially-crossed, between-subjects multifactorial experiment with a lay sample (n=?1213), presenting mediation analyses.

Results

Four psychiatric labels (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, behavioral-variant Frontotemporal Dementia, High Functioning Autism, Borderline Intellectual Disability) led to significant beneficial effects on sentencing (less prison/rehabilitation support) as mediated by decreased stigmatization regarding lack of treatability, social acceptance, and personal responsibility. One biological “label” (Pedophilic Disorder) was mediated by decreased stigmatization (dangerousness), resulting in less prison support.

Conclusions

Data support effects of psychiatric labeling on sentencing under focal concerns. As no psychiatric labels resulted in increased discriminatory sentencing and, instead, led to decreased discriminatory sentencing behavior, psychiatric labeling may reduce punitiveness and bolster non-punitive sentencing beliefs. Biological labeling, aside from Pedophilic Disorder, may not affect sentencing.

     

The Relationship Behavior Networks of Young Adults: A Test of the Intergenerational Transmission of Violence Hypothesis

The purpose of this study was to determine how negative relationship behaviors are structured in the semantic networks of young adults from violent versus nonviolent homes. Participants included 110 students (72 females and 38 males) from a large Midwestern university who were enrolled in an introductory psychology class. They completed a sorting task that involved relationship behavior stimuli. As hypothesized, differences were found in the composite sorting patterns, as represented by multidimensional scaling (MDS) solutions, for three different groups categorized by their family-of-origin violence history (i.e., nonvictimized by/did not witness parental violence, None; victimized only, Victim; and both witnessed/victimized, Both). Interpretations of the MDS solutions revealed different associations between violent and nonviolent conflict behaviors for victimized versus nonvictimized individuals, suggesting different semantic associations for conflict for individuals in the two groups. In a second set of analyses, separate solutions were generated for perpetrating and nonperpetrating individuals from violent families. Perpetrator and nonperpetrator solutions were also found to differ significantly. These findings suggest that relationship-specific semantic networks are associated with both past and current experiences with violence. One interpretation of these findings is that cognitive differences, generated in the family of origin, may serve to perpetuate a cycle of violence in subsequent romantic relationships.     

Between welfare medicine and mainstream entitlement: Medicaid at the political crossroads

As the new century begins, the Medicaid program is arguably at a political crossroads. Over the 1980s and 1990s, policy makers enacted major expansions in Medicaid coverage, offering significant new health benefits to poor women and children and other constituencies. In elite rhetoric and political framing, Medicaid was increasingly cast as a broad-based social welfare entitlement of value to all Americans, including middle-class citizens. Some health care advocates began viewing Medicaid expansions as a potential path to achieving universal coverage in the United States. Yet Medicaid remains a means-tested program that has been repeatedly threatened with policy retrenchment. In this essay, we scrutinize Medicaid's current status and future possibilities from a historical-institutional perspective by tracing its complex evolution since its enactment in the Social Security Amendments of 1965. Our core claim is that decisions made at the time of Medicaid's original adoption have fundamentally set the matrix for struggles over the program's unfolding development. We demonstrate that key ambiguities embedded in the 1965 act created largely unintended opportunities for policy entrepreneurs to broaden Medicaid's scale and scope as well as foreseeable vulnerabilities that must be overcome if Medicaid is to realize its full potential.     

A transcultural perspective on women and madness: The case of the mystical affliction

The paper seeks to examine spirit possession in women of traditional societies and syncretic subcultures as a symptom of personal maladjustment and as a form of social protest based on psychosocial, role-related pressures. This is accomplished by consideration of predisposing, precipitating and reactive factors involved in the possession reaction. Analysis of four case histories and availability of cross-cultural data indicate that the precipitation of pathological possession is rooted in the oppressive nature of the female role and that stresses experienced by traditional women are not unlike the difficulties of women in developed, industrialized societies. The possession response, however, is colored by traditional beliefs and superstitions; consequently, hysterical and anxiety symptoms are interpreted in light of the magical model of disease with the pathological reaction attributed to possession by malevolent spirits.     

The importance of forensic evidence for decisions on criminal guilt

Recent studies have found that the general public perceives forensic evidence to be relatively inaccurate and to involve high levels of human judgement. This study examines how important the general public finds forensic evidence by comparing decisions on guilt and punishment in criminal cases that involve forensic versus eyewitness testimony evidence and examining whether a CSI effect exists. Specifically, this experimental survey study utilized a 2 (crime type: murder or rape) × 4 (evidence type: DNA, fingerprint, victim eyewitness testimony, or bystander eyewitness testimony) ? 1 (no victim testimony for murder scenario) design, yielding seven vignettes scenarios to which participants were randomly assigned. Results indicate that forensic evidence was associated with more guilty verdicts and higher confidence in a guilty verdict. Forensic evidence did not change the expected sentence length and did not generally affect the ideal sentence length. However, for rape, respondents believed that the defendant should receive a longer sentence when forensic evidence was presented but forensic evidence did not alter likely sentence that respondents expected the defendant to receive. The results of this study did not support a CSI effect. Overall, this study suggests that forensic evidence – particularly DNA – has a stronger influence during the verdict stage than the sentencing stage.