Psych 401 - Quiz 3

How many Americans are murdered with guns each day?

32

How much higher is the US firearm homicide rate than other countries?

20 times higher than combined rates of 22 countries

How many people in the US know someone who has been shot?

1 in 3

What percent of people in the US live in a household with a gun?

42%

How many shooters involved in mass shootings were legally prohibited from possessing firearms at the time?

1/3

What percent of shooters involved in mass shootings exhibited warning signs before the shooting?

51%

What percent of shooters involved in mass shootings shot an intimate partner or family member?

54%

What percent of children killed in mass shootings died in domestic or family related incidents?

84%

What percent of mass shootings involve high capacity magazines?

58%

True or False: More Americans have died from guns in the US since 1968 than on all battlefields of all the wars in US history

True

Assumptions about mass shootings

1. Mental illness causes gun violence
2. Psychiatric diagnosis can predict gun crime before it happens
3. US mass shootings teach us to fear mentally ill loners
4. Because of the complex histories of mass shooters, gun control won't prevent another one

What percent of US gun crimes involve people with mental illness?

About 4%

True or false: the percent of people with diagnosed mental illness that are involved in gun crimes is lower than than the national average

True

True or false: people diagnosed with a mental illness are at higher risk for being victims of violent crime

True

True or false: psychiatrists using clinical judgment are much better than chance at predicting which patients will do something violent and which will not

False

Which mental illness was linked with violence and guns in in the 1960s and 1970s?

Schizophrenia

What is the race difference that emerges when politicians react to mass shootings?

It would be political suicide to target white men, so white politicians blame black culture

What percent of homicides in the US are done with a firearm?

70%

What percent of firearm violence is mass murders?

0.8%

True or false: mental illness contributes to a higher percentage of mass murders

True

What percent of the US public believes that people with schizophrenia are likely or very likely to act violently?

60%

What percent of people with schizophrenia display any signs of minor or serious violent behavior?

12%

What percent of mass murders between 2011 and 2013 were committed by individuals with signs of mental illness?

70%

Definition of mass incarceration

A set of laws and policies that result in very high levels of incarceration or that target a group for disproportionate rates of incarceration

True or false: the US now has the highest incarceration rate in world history (excluding POWs in major wars)

True

True or false: the US has 5% of the world's population and 25% of its prisoners

True

What is the incarceration rate in Oklahoma?

1,079/100,000

What is the incarceration rate in the US?

698/100,000

Three strike laws

The third felony conviction carries a mandatory life in prison sentence

Mandatory minimums

Laws that reduces judges discretion in sentencing, requiring a typically long minimum sentence, often life without parole

Truth in sentencing

Laws that eliminated earned parole

Why was John Dilulio's "Superpredator" article incorrect?

He predicted a record increase in violent crimes, when in reality the crime rate is now half what it was in 1991

What are some incorrect theories about why crime has declined?

1. Roe v. Wade
2. Crack epidemic burn out (drug arrests increased while crime rate dropped)
3. Mass incarceration (actually, high incarceration rates increase crime)

What are some theories that could contribute to the decline in crime?

1. Decline in poverty relieves stress on people with little social capital
2. Increase in gender egalitarianism
3. Decrease in alcohol consumption
4. More and better policing

What age group commits the vast majority of crime?

15-30 years old

What political policies do reduce crime?

Early education, better economy, reducing child poverty

What political policies do not reduce crime?

More enforcement, stricter enforcement, longer sentences

Principle of penal proportionality

Punishment should match the degree of culpability

Excuse

Holds the person not responsible for the act, affects guilt or innocence

Mitigation

Limits the person's blameworthiness or culpability, affects the sentence

Affirmative defense

Incorporated into the law, affects guilt

Endogenous mitigation

The person had impaired decision making capacity

External circumstance mitigation

Anyone would have succumbed to the pressures

Out of character mitigation

The person has a good character but did a bad thing

Adolescents die at a higher rate from:

1. Auto accidents
2. Suicide
3. Drowning
4. Other accidents

When do adolescent rates of car crashes peak?

Age 16-19, drop 1/2 by age 23

Disproven hypotheses about adolescents and risk

1. Adolescents do not perceive risk
2. Adolescents are irrational in their thinking about risk
3.Have deficient judgement of the seriousness of consequences of risky behavior
4. Have deficient risk salience

Risk salience definition

The belief that people could be personally harmed by a negative outcome

In terms of emotion, adolescents show higher:

1. Reward sensitivity
2. Novelty seeking
3. Emotional intensity

What accounts for the differences in adolescents' emotions?

Greater dopamine sensitivity in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex

In terms of thinking, adolescents show lower:

1. Future orientation
2. Resistance to peer influences

In terms of character, adolescents have more fluid:

1. Values
2. Life goals
3. Personal standards
4. Sense of identity

Recent MRI studies have shown changes in:

Myelination and pruning

Myelination is inhibited by:

1. Stress hormones
2. Lack of adequate sleep
3. Nutrition
4. Exposure to toxins and drugs

When does susceptibility to peer influence peak?

Age 14

What is the risky shift?

People take more risks in groups than they would individually

Adolescents and future orientation

1. Shorter time frame
2. Shorter term goals
3. Typically consider short term consequences of decisions

Adolescents and assessment of risk

1. Place less value on risk relative to reward
2. More impulsive and emotional

What changes as we age?

1. Social information processing
2. Abstract and future reasoning
3. Emotional regulation
4. Brain structure

Gault (1967)

1. The most important SCOTUS decision affecting Juvenile Court
2. Recognized that children are people
3. Established due process rights

Romper v. Simmons

Bans the death penalty for crimes committed under age 18

Miller v. Alabama

No automatic life without parole, must consider youth and mitigating circumstances

Graham v. Florida

People currently serving LWOP for juvenile crimes have to be re-sentenced considering mitigation

In a retributive justice system, what must the defendant exercise in order to justify punishment?

Free will

What is mens rea?

The criminal intent, an exercise of free will

What does the cognitive prong of insanity require?

The person to have no mens rea

What does partial mens rea affect?

The degree of blameworthiness and therefore the level of appropriate punishment

True or false: partial mens rea affects guilt

False - affects sentencing

What is an accepted limitation to mens rea?

Brain based disorders that impair the individual's capacity to exercise free will

Who was Melanie Klein?

First child psychiatrist in the world, developed play therapy to treat abused children

Paranoid-schizoid position

The child orients to a world that is perceived as essentially threatening and malicious

Depressive position

The child orients to a world that is perceived as essentially uncaring and indifferent

Problematic Behavior Syndrome

Problem behaviors are multi-determined: multiple factors can lead to the same behavior and one factor can lead to multiple types of problem behaviors

Theory of criminology that is related to genetic/temperamental, poverty/sociological, "risk factors"

Theory of Developmental Criminology

Emotional abuse

Humiliation, not feeling loved or valued, degrading treatment, instilling fear of harm

Physical abuse

Being hit, shoved, choked, etc.

Sexual abuse

Any unwanted sexual touching, physical/sexual humiliation/harassment

In the original 1988 survey, what percent of adults reported at least one ACE? At least 4?

52.1%; 6.2%

People with 4 or more ACEs reported are _____ times more likely to report depression in the past year

4.6

People with 4 or more ACEs reported are _____ times more likely to have attempted suicide

12.2

In the 2005 survey, how many youth reported some exposure to ACEs?

1 in 7

True or false: people who report experiencing 6 or more ACEs have a 20 year decrease in life expectancy

True

Dose response

The more ACEs the person had, the greater the likelihood that they will develop negative health outcomes

Hippocampus

Key structure for working memory and anxiety; fails to develop normally in early childhood for those with ACEs

Amygdala

Key structure for emotional processing & fear conditioning; alters the effect of GABA-A transmitters, which are involved with calming and inhibition

Corpus callosum

Stress inhibits myelination & hemispheric integration; impairs reasoning and abstract thinking

For each additional ACE reported, the risk of violence perpetration increased by how much?

Between 35% and 144%

There has been a ____% decline of sexual abuse between 1992-2010

62

There has been a ____% decline of physical abuse between 1992-2010

56

True or false: juvenile courts operate on the police power of the courts

False; operate on parens patriae doctrine

What 4 things does juvenile transfer accomplish?

1. Protect vulnerable juveniles from more hardened, mature, and sophisticated offenders
2. Preserve juvenile programs for less intractable youth
3. Public safety - hold the youth for a longer time
4. Retribution - provide more punishment for the crime

Legislative exclusion

Specified ages or charges are excluded from Juvenile Court (includes lowered age for adult court)

Judicial waiver

A judge makes the decision in response to a petition or otherwise

Prosecutorial discretion

Prosecutors allowed to determine whether to file in criminal or juvenile court

True or false: the "automatic" waiver, involving charges that are excluded from juvenile court by statute, escalated steadily between 1970 and 2000

True

True or false: prosecutorial discretion increased between 1970 and 2000

True

What percent of all juveniles were waived in 1996?

20-25%

What is the main issue in waiver?

The lack of amenability to treatment - whether the youth can be rehabilitated in the time available to juvenile court

How does transfer affect rates of violence?

Transfer increases rates of violence among transferred youth

True or false: juvenile transfer shows a strong general deterrent effect

False - not enough evidence