Evaluating the Probative Value of Child Custody Evaluations

It has previously been argued that a competent forensic work product is defined, in part, by the evaluator's use of conventional forensic methods and procedures applied to child custody evaluations (Gould, 1998) and that the more judges and other legal professionals understand about forensic methods and procedures, the better they are able to critically weigh the substance and merit of a child custody evaluation (Gould & Bell, 2000). These forensic methods and procedures have their foundation in the behavioral sciences and are characteristic of competent and comprehensive forensic evaluations conducted for other legal purposes. In this paper, we provide a more detailed model for critiquing the forensic competence of a child custody report. Such a model better assists courts and lawyers in understanding how to assess the substance and admissibility of custody reports.     

Judicial Discretion and Defendant's Sex

The judicial treatment of adult female relative to male criminal offenders is theoretically and empirically examined in this paper. After discussing various problems with the chivalry hypothesis and labeling theory–the two major explanations of gender disparities-an empirical test is made to determine the accuracy of both perspectives. An analysis of 543 adult felony cases in Dade County, Florida, using multiple regression to control for the effects of relevant legal and nonlegal variables, indicated inconsistent differences in treatment by sex at the h e k of negotiations, prosecution, conviction, and sentence. These differences also vary over the three time periods examined: 1965–1966, 1971, and 1975–1976. The findings do not support any existing theory of the differential legal handling of male and female offenders, clearly indicating a need for the development of theory that takes into account the growing body of empirical work in this area.