CRIM 316 Textbook Content [Test 3]

Ch. 7 The media, public opinion and sex offender policy in the U.S.

• Historical analyses documented waves of intense attention to sexual crimes

• Highlighting atypical, sensational cases committed by extreme offenders shaped contemporary sex offender policymaking - perpetuating misconceptions

• 3 stages: 1980s get tough on crime, 1990s sex offender, current containment and management approach

Get tough on crime - 1980s

• Martinson (1974) examining impact of treatment strategies showed that few interventions affected offender behaviour - questioning whether offenders could be reformed

• High violent, homicide crime rates increased 1970-80s

• I.e. the “drug war”, longer prison sentences, rise in capital punishment sanctions, determinate sentencing for convicted offenders rather than one tailored to address potential reform

• Punitive measures built around assumption that retribution and incapacitation was needed

• Media portrayal - more attention given to rare and bizarre cases

• Image of the predatory and recidivist stranger rapist popularized and viewed as rationale for get tough initiatives

  • I.e. “Horton effect” in presidential race, Bush’s campaign messaging centered heavily on crimes of Horton who was released early from prison and recidivated

  • Shaped public viewed about crime policy

• Being “soft” on crime and relying on rehabilitative-minded reforms constituted ineffective crime policy and dimmed public confidence

Decade of the sex offender - 1990s

• Specific legislation appeared and targetted a sub-population of offenders

• Federal and state legislation specific many of the same reforms of 1980s (tougher sentences) + new management strategies (“post-incarceration” requirements that exclusively applied to sex offenders)

• Characterization of sex offenders as homogenous, predatory, not amenable to treatment transmitted via media became unquestioned assumptions

• Number of imprisoned sex offenders increased 7% each year during 1990s; approx 10% of correctional population had at least one sex offender in 1994

3 Initiatives for management

1. Registry and notification

• Community notification

• Laws were in direct response to high-profile cases and sex abuse scandals

• I.e. abduction of children, Catholic Chuch scandal (4% of priests committing majority of sex offences against male youths)

• Timing of campaign to draw attention to homosexual practices to link them with deviant and criminal behaviour coincided with 1980s movement

• Decline of sex offences during this period of policymaking but not a cause

• The Jacob Wetterling Act, Megan’s Law - argued public safety can be improved by community notification of those with prior sex offence records

1. Reintroduction of civil commitment

• Emerged from fear that potentially dangerous offenders would be released and threaten children

• Less than 1% of sex offender population is civilly committed - little support for media’s insistence of homogenous recidivism risks

1. Residence prohibitions

• Bar offended from living near certain child-friendly locations (i.e. playgrounds, schools, school bus stops, daycares)

• Variable but most restrictions enacted specified exclusionary zones in 1000-2000 feet range

• But many restrictions applied to offenders with no prior convictions against children

• Laws unlikely to affect nature and extent of sex offending

• Criminogenic effects of laws (i.e. homelessness, unemployment, stigma)

→ reforms influenced by negative media attention, perpetuating “worst-case” scenarios

• Not designed to address “typical” sex offences - known perpetrators, first-time, rarely involve homicide

Containment and management

• Continued focus on supervising sex offenders post-release with registration and notification procedures

  • Large population of registrants - 900k in 2016

  • 2005: Adam Walsh Act, SORNA to standardize registration and notification practices by classifying offenders into 3 tiers based on their conviction

    • SMART: monitors compliance with SORNA and provides assistance with implementation of policies

  • Increasingly more restrictive criminal justice policies

  • Tightening existing registry procedures by “widening the net” of potential registrants

  • Public support for availability of sex offender information suggests an acknowledgement that policymakers are trying to address the problem and feel safer regardless if they can access the info or not

  • Public favours punitive rather than rehabilitative approaches to address sex crime

  • But supplying additional context regarding treatment effects can impact opinion

• Greater recognition of additional forms and contexts of sexual victimization

  • Within religious, post-secondary institutions, etc.

    • Boston Globe, NY Times - sustained media attention toward Catholic Church abuse

    • LA times: theme of addressing sexual assault featured as a social problem - highly publicized

    • Coverage resulted in policy changes at Church-level (educating Church officials in recognizing and reportign abuse and implementing code of conduct around youth)

  • Campus sexual assault - another form of organizational sex offending

    • Media covered abuse and role of institution in responding to and addressing sexual assault - inaction of administrators and employees

    • Concern about accountability

    • New laws controversial - criminalize inaction among employees who do not disclose allegations of assault

• Recent challenges to sex offender management and efforts to “myth-bust” regarding prevalent but distorted images endorsed by public, policymakers, practitioners

  • Legal obstacles concerning widespread legislation and campaigns to clarify distorted images of sex crime

  • USSC struck down sex offender laws judged to be overly broad and ambiguous

    • CPPA criminalized fictionalized depictions of sexual situations involving children (i.e. Romeo and Juliet, possession of virtual CP, computer-simulated images)

    • Individuals can possess computer-generated material but cannot use it obscenely or in any sexually matter involving a minor or to solicit potential victims

    • Registry and notification policies upheld by Court generally, overturned some extreme punishments (i.e. executing child rapists)

    • Historically held impressions of sex offenders challenged - contemporary policymaking includes emphasis on clarifying misconceptions

    • “Mythbusting” focused on changing tendency to victim blame and reducing endorsement of various misperceptions about sex offenders (i.e. stranger danger myth, offenders have certain traits, etc)

    • Low sexual assault reporting challenged previous beliefs (victims report crime) - concern that traditional crime measures (arrest, conviction data) is inadequate in measuring campus sexual assault

    • CSOM: to dispel misperceptions and provide assistance to public and state agencies - publications emphasize that majority of perpetrators are rarely strangers, have low levels of reoffending, responsive to treatment

    • RSOL: grassroots campaigns to reform sex offender laws - focus on reducing use of overly broad and reactionary policies rather than empirically-based ones

Themes of 3 historical portrayals:

• (1) Media’s sustained fascination with sexual offending over last 3 decades

• Particular issues disproportionately emphasized, coverage consistently extended to sex offences and individuals who commit them during certain periods

• (2) causal ordering is unclear, laws and policies seemed to follow/coincide with news coverage and subsequent public concern → powerful impact of media exposure on directing public opinion and policy

• (3) specific mythology that emphasizes distortion regarding nature and extent of sex crimes now exists about sex offenders

Effects of coverage

Direct media factors predictive of views

• Public receives most info about justice system from media sources - local, national news, TV, reality shows

• Concern that mass media portrays false images of crime and perpetuates myths about the functioning of the CJS

  • I.e. Pickett (2015) heavy media reliance correlated with greatest extent of misunderstanding of the correctional system, specifically crime policy and incarceration (general crime)

• Avg respondent agreed that media depictions of sex offenders are overwhelmingly negative and that media coverage is regarded as accurate and shapes views/attitutdes

• Agreed that portrayals adversely affect the reintegration prospects

• Media coverage consumption linked to greater approval for sex offender laws (registration, notification policies)

• Concern that media conveys inaccurate depictions of crime, media relance not associated with increae in factual knowledge about sex offenders or policy among the public

Indirect factors and other traits affecting perceptions

• Indirect - increasing concern about crime/personal victimization

• “Gender gap” in public views - women tend to approve of greater punishment for those with sex crime convictions and especially those who have abused children

• Women more likely to believe sex offenders can be reformed and treated

• Women embrace dual philosophy

• Higher educational attainment - reduced approval for “get tough” sanctioning for CP offenders, detaining past sentences, permitting capital punishment for child rapists

• Having children linked with greater approval for residence restrictions and more likely to support a range of “severe” sanctions like castration and life in prison; less likely to believe treatment reduces the odds of offender recidivism

• Comartin (2009) fear of crime significant predictor for post-incarceration sanctions (registration, notification) and more punitive sanctioning approval (castration, life)

• Myth endorsement about sex crime (stranger danger), reduced support for rehab efforts

  • Myth belief reduced likelihood in judging treatment to be effective in reducing esx crime

→ public perception in comprehending the nature and extent of sexual offending are affected by a range of influences, media exposure and “ingrained mythology” directly and indirectly communicated

Key points

• Historical images of sexual deviance and sex offenders varied across last 3 decades

• Support exists for the “media cultivation hypothesis” (public perception shaped by media); indirect factors (sex, education, parental status, fear, belief in specific crime misperceptions)

• Further focus on emerging sex crime topics, advanced methodology, and social media to improve understanding of relationship between media exposure and sex crime perceptions

Ch. 16 Criminal Investigation of Sexual Offences

• Despite increased focus on criminal investigations of sexual offences, numbers have been stable over past 4 decades

• Gaps in knowledge and police response - feeling of dissatisfaction towards police, miscommunication and misunderstanding about work in this area, misguided responses and practices by police

Investigative Interviewing

• Establishing if crime has occurred, proving guilt: witness/victim statements, physical evidence, confession

• No scientific guidance for police interviews

1. Interviewing victims and witnesses

• Many cases involve victim and offender known to each other - to determine whether victim consented

• Stranger assault - identification of offender is important to investigation

• Attempt to identify and understand situational factors leading up to crime

• Past interviewing practices characterized by police interviewers dominating the social interaction with victim/witness asking direct, close-ended Qs

• Victims unlikely to provide unsolicited info, withholding, giving abbreviated As

• Cognitive Interview Technique (CI): best-known interview method in policing

  • 3 basic psychological processes - memory & cognition, social dynamics, communication

  • Memory-enhancing techniques + improving social dynamics (establishing rapport) = communication environment to allow detailed account

  • 4 memory retrieval rules:

  • a) context reinstatement: mentally reconstruct contexts of event

  • b) in-depth reporting: report everything even if partial/incomplete

  • c) variety of perspectives: narrate from own and potential witness

  • d) temporal orders: from start, end, backwards in time

  • Interviewer refrain from interrupting and let victim control process

• CI improves quantity, quality, accuracy of details (25-50%) compared to other methods

1. Interviewing suspects - “interrogations”

• Obtain info from suspect to authenticate involvement in crime and confession

• If no physical evidence, confession needed to lay charges in corroborating incriminating facts and findings from crime scene

• 8-33% of cases, suspect’s guilt would have never been proven without confession

• Confessions have greater impact on jury decisions than witness statements or hard evidence

• Sexual cases dependent on suspect interviews than crime investigations - only evidence is from suspect

• Offender’s decision to confess influenced by seriousness of crime committed

• Sex crime perpetrators less likely to confess crimes during interrogations

  • Unless interrogator develops a positive, empathic, nonjudgmental, respectful relationship

• Likely to deny crime if perceive external pressure from interviewers (i.e. condemnations, humiliation)

• St-Yves (2002): Confessions likely among suspects: white, single, higher IQ, feelings of guilt, dependent personality, sexually but nonviolently victimized a young male victim

• Beauregard et al., (2010): individual, criminological, situational factors determine a suspect’s willingness to confess

  • Factors related to perpetrators: younger, introverted, prior convictions for sex crimes; victims: male, unknown to offender; case: time of day of crime

  • Criminal history of mainly sex offences, younger, committed crime during the day

  • Versatile less likely to confess

  • Target unknown victim not from criminogenic background likely to confess

  • Confession decision-making to clarify motivational factors to confess

Suspect Identification and Prioritization Methods

1. Behavioural crime linkage analysis

• Determine whether multiple crimes committed by same offender

• Forensic evidence preferred method, but often insufficient evidence available for analysis

• Ritual or fantasy-based behaviours, behavioural signatures (MO fluctuates) are stable and reflect psychological needs of offender - rare empirical tests

• But serial killers do not consistently exhibit same ritualistic behaviours or signatures that could link crimes

• Computerized databases that contain info about unsolved crimes (ViCLAS by RCMP in 1990s)

  • Developed primarily for identifying serial criminals operating across jurisdictional boundaries

• 2 assumptions subject to empirical scrutiny: behavioural stability & behavioural distinctiveness

• Possible to use behavioural evidence to link sexual crimes

• Spatial information collected from crime scenes more useful (inter-crime distances) than MO behaviours (similarity in victim selection)

• Crime scene behaviours are situationally driven

• Person-oriented offences (sex): location and times selected not random but controlled and based on info and internal cost-benefit calculation

• Whatever is influencing timing of offence and location also influences timing and location of subsequent offences

• Recurrent sites can indicate offender’s progression and inform police of their “standing” and focus attention on suspects with more/less sexual criminal background

• Behavioural + linkage + geographic profiling info = look at specific sites likely to be used by offenders among identified areas for suspect prioritization

• Studies focused disproportionately on property crimes, only until early 2000s that sexual offences were being examined

  • Learned much about linking process by studying property offences, unclear these findings generalize to sexual offenders

1. Criminal profiling

• Psychologically-based investigative technique for sex offences

• Practice of predicting an unknown offender’s personality, behavioural, demographic characteristics from an analysis of crime scene evidence

• Often used to prioritize suspects

• Assumptions: behavioural stability, homology (if 2 individuals commit similar crimes, they should have similar bg characteristics)

• Individuals who broke into victim’s house 5x more likely to have previous conviction for burglary than those who did not enter by force

• Offenders with extreme violence 3.5x more likely to have previous conviction for violent offence

• Offenders who destoryed semen at scene 4x more likely to have previous conviction for sexual offence

• Thematic approach: determine if thematic structure exists in crime scenes and bgs of offenders and see if relationships are significant; treats offending decision-making process as dynamic and occurring across specific phases of an offence

  • Offenders with a “hunter search strategy” (actively seeking out victims within short distance from home) are telio-specific (target adult females with specific physical features) use “home intruder approach” and employ assault stategy based on violence and control - associated with sexually deviant bg, socially isolated, fantasies, voyeurism, poor self-image

Challenges in Sexual Assult and Abuse Cases

1. Interviewing issues

2. Trauma and memory

• Review of exoneration cases show mistaken identification due to trauma/stress experienced by victim/witness leading cause in wrongful convictions - 70% of overturned convictions to date

• Unlikely that the narrative given by victim is entirely true/based solely on facts

• Brain can produce inaccurate memories that may not have occurred

• Trauma impacts memory and trauma-related disruption to memory may contribute to attrition

  • I.e. victims with incoherent account for event during interview less likely to see case move forward

1. False allegations

• Studies may be conducted when disbelief and negative attitudes about sex assault victims were more prevalent among LE agencies

• 3 primary motivations: cover up activity/provide alibi, anger/revenge who rejected them or did them wrong, obtaining sympathy from others and seeking attention

• Leading questions can produce false allegations of sexual abuse

• Factors related to case and description offender and their MO rather than victim profile better to distinguish true from false allegations

• True allegations more likely to include descriptions of theft, pseudo-intimate behaviours, precautionary measures to avoid detection

1. False confessions

• Voluntary: unrelated to police interrogation (confess to crime they did not commit)

• Coerced-compliant: complies with police demands, confessor does not fully accept that they were responsible

• Coerced-internalized: internalizes police suggestions that they have committed a crime

• Leading causes of wrongful convictions

  • Police pressure and interviewing techniques, desire to protect someone else, need to avoid incarceration

  • Isolation, lack of sleep, deprivation of needs - situational factors

  • Interrogator bias - manipulate suspect into believing in guilt (downplaying seriousness of crime to lull into false sense of security)

1. General Investigative issues

2. Cognitive biases

• Confirmation bias: investigators search for evidence that confirms their theories, ignoring contradicting evidence

• Verbal probabilistic expressions can be ambiguous and affect interpretation of a claim: dangerous offender associated with heightened sense of how likely the claim was to be true

• Framing effect: same probabilistic expression was interpreted as denoting a lower level of uncertainty when referring to presence of characteristic in offender rather than absence

• Errors relying on criminal profiles

1. Probability errors

• When investigators try to identify patterns from very small samples of crimes/offenders

• When investigators do not account for the inevitability of finding coincidental relationships in datasets (pure chance)

• When investigators display general lack of understanding about role that base rates play in prediction tasks

1. Organizational traps

• “Bureaucratic inertia” prevents agile organizational responses to changing circumstances

• “Organizational momentum” can lead to serious tunnel vision

• Personal and organizational egos also get in the way, preventing investigators from admitting mistakes, adjusting to new info, seeking alternative explanations to known facts

• Group think - reluctance to think critically when part of a group/challenge dominant thinking

1. Issues with the forensic process

• Tool marks, impression evidence, fibers, hair samples, bodily fluids

• Reputation of “objective” science, subjectivity exists and can be misleading

• Problems with standardizing, reliability, accuracy, error, potential for contextual bias

• Interpretation of DNA and fingerprint evidence - contextual info can cause forensic scientists to give different judgements than they had previously given in a positive identification of suspects

Key Points

• Only victim can provide info that will help accurately identify offender, development of good rapport with victim and efficient interviewing techniques needed - CI best practice

• Sex crime perpetrators less likely than other offenders to confess due to objective severity of their offences

• Identifying and prioritizing suspects - forensic sciences, psychological techniques (i.e. behavioural crime linkage analysis, criminal profiling)

• Need to establish whether assumptions underlying behavioural crime linkage analysis and criminal profiling are valid and test operational utility in naturalistic settings

• Accurate behavioural linkage analysis possible with sex offences, difficult to demonstrate reliable relationships between crime scene behaviours and bg characteristics in context of criminal profiling research

• Offending beahviour is dynamic process, statistical techniques can uncover potentially meaningful relationships

• 2-10% of sex assaults reported to police are false

• Cognitive biases, errors in interpretation of probabilistic info, organizational traps (group think)

• Forensic sciences not immune to problems, cognitive biases when criminal profiling used similar to forensic techniques with fingerprint matching