SexCrimeDefender

Neuroscience & the Law

An interesting article on where the future may lie in lie detector science.  I don't think the lie detector or even this new MRI science will ever be really allowed in the courtroom but it certainly does have implications for those currently dealing with lie detection science and probably for the future of sex offender treatment as well.

"The Brain on the Stand'  From the New York Times

The idea of holding people accountable for their predispositions rather than their actions poses a challenge to one of the central principles of Anglo-American jurisprudence: namely, that people are responsible for their behavior, not their proclivities — for what they do, not what they think. “We’re going to have to make a decision about the skull as a privacy domain,” Wolpe says. Indeed, Wolpe serves on the board of an organization called the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics, a group of neuroscientists, legal scholars and privacy advocates “dedicated to protecting and advancing freedom of thought in the modern world of accelerating neurotechnologies.”

One of the most enthusiastic proponents of neurolaw is Owen Jones, a professor of law and biology at Vanderbilt. Jones (who happens to have been one of my law-school classmates) has joined a group of prominent neuroscientists and law professors who have applied for a large MacArthur Foundation grant; they hope to study a wide range of neurolaw questions, like: Do sexual offenders and violent teenagers show unusual patterns of brain activity? Is it possible to capture brain images of chronic neck pain when someone claims to have suffered whiplash? In the meantime, Jones is turning Vanderbilt into a kind of Los Alamos for neurolaw. The university has just opened a $27 million neuroimaging center and has poached leading neuroscientists from around the world; soon, Jones hopes to enroll students in the nation’s first program in law and neuroscience. “It’s breathlessly exciting,” he says. “This is the new frontier in law and science — we’re peering into the black box to see how the brain is actually working, that hidden place in the dark quiet, where we have our private thoughts and private reactions — and the law will inevitably have to decide how to deal with this new technology.”

Four Stages of Sexual Pedators

From the U.S. Department of Justice's pamphlet:

Use of Computers in the Sexual Exploitation of Children

Child predators—sexual offenders who act on their sexual interest directed toward children—come from all economic and social backgrounds. Other terms used for these offenders
include “pedophile” and “preferential sex offender.” However,
these terms have specific clinical definitions. This guide uses the
term “child predator” because it is a nonclinical term that anyone
can testify to in court.  Experience gained through hundreds of investigations and interviews shows that the behavior of child predators usually develops in four stages:

✹ Awareness. An individual first comes to realize that he has a
sexual interest in children. This interest may manifest itself in
several ways. Usually, the individual gathers as much information
as possible on the subject in an attempt to understand
his feelings. In this early stage, the Internet provides access
both to a variety of information sources—newspaper articles,
newscasts, groups such as the North American Man/Boy Love
Association (NAMBLA)—and to online chats with other individuals
who may have similar interests.

✹ Fantasy. The individual uses the research that he has collected
as a source for sexual fantasizing and stimulation. Eventually,
the fantasy becomes more fixated, with an emphasis on child
pornography. An individual using a computer will exchange email
with others who share the same interests and save these
messages and all other related material using some type of
computer storage medium.

✹ Stalking. Fantasy is no longer enough, and the individual
is now compelled to seek closeness to actual children. The
child predator will loiter at athletic events, parks, playgrounds,
school bus stops, and other locations where children are found
and may seek positions of trust in order to have access to children.
Hardcore child pornography plays an important role at
this stage. An individual using a computer will progress from
online chats with others with the same interests to chats with
potential victims. He may send them photos of himself in sexual
poses and request similar sexual photos in return.

✹ Molestation. The individual molests a child. The predator
using a computer sets up a meeting with the child he has
been corresponding with. Depending on the predator, the
meeting may lead either to a seduction or to abduction of the
child. 

. . .

However, be aware that an individual child predator may demonstrate all, some, or even none of these behaviors. Lack of evidence of the sequence of behaviors described above does not in itself clear a suspect.

Little Positive Impact From Megan's Law?

Via a public defender:

Phase one of the federally funded NJ study of the effectiveness of Megan’s Law is complete and the results are interesting.

A declining trend of sex attacks on children began before the law took effect and has continued, raising the suggestion that New Jersey’s Megan’s Law - one of the first laws of its kind in the nation - may not have influenced the trend, researchers say.

“We don’t know whether Megan’s Law really works,” said Witt [a consultant on the study], who helped create the risk-assessment system used by New Jersey’s courts to classify sex offenders.

“Just a few studies have looked at whether community notification laws are effective,” he said. “I believe they have very little effect.”

Penile Plethysmograph

From Wikipedia:

The penile plethysmograph (PPG) is a controversial type of plethysmograph that measures changes in blood flow in the penis in response to audio and/or visual stimuli. It is typically used to determine the level of sexual arousal as the subject is exposed to sexually suggestive content, such as photos, movies or audio. Significant suppliers of PPG machines include Behavioral Technology Inc. and Medical Monitoring Systems. There are two types of penile plethysmographs: • Volumetric air chamber: When this is placed over the subject's penis, as tumescence increases, the air displaced is measured. • Circumferential transducer: This uses a mercury-in-rubber or indium/gallium-in-rubber ring strain gauge and is placed around the shaft of the subject's penis to measure changes in circumference. The original air device was developed by researcher Kurt Freund in Czechoslovakia during the 1950s. The motivation for its development was to prevent draft dodgers from claiming that they were homosexual in order to avoid military service. In the past, explicit or pornographic material was used as the stimuli set, but some modern systems use non-pornographic suggestive sets. This shifts the focus to the general arousal patterns rather than a specific arousal point. The penile plethysmograph has value in screening organic versus psychogenic erectile dysfunction. Lack of sexual response during REM sleep may indicate that further evaluation by a urologist is required. The device has also been used in law enforcement and in psychological experiments. One study demonstrated that experimental subjects could be conditioned to show sexual arousal (as indicated by the device) in response to images of shoes, by initially preceding the shoe images with pictures of nude women. The experimenters inferred that the behaviourist concept of conditioning was likely to be an important influence in sexual fetishes. According to Barker and Howell, penile plethysmography (PPG) cannot meet most legal thresholds as a valid or relevant diagnostic tool for the following reasons: • No standardization • Test results are not sufficiently accurate • Results are subject to faking and voluntary control by test subjects • High incidence of false negatives and false positives • Results are open to interpretation [1] In State of North Carolina v. Spencer, the court reviewed the literature and case law and concluded that penile plethysmography was scientifically unreliable: "Despite the sophistication of the current equipment technology, a question remains whether the information emitted is a valid and reliable means of assessing sexual preference." . . . References 1. ^ Barker and Howell, The Plethysmograph: A Review of Recent Literature, 20 Bull. Am. Acad. of Psychiatry and Law 13 (1992) 2. ^ United States v. Weber, 2006 U.S. App. LEXIS 15111 (9th Cir. 2006). External links

• Skeptic's Dictionary on penile plethysmography

• Evidence of Penile Plethysmography, Psychological Profiles, Inventories and Other "Not a Pedophile" Character and Opinion Evidence Offered on Behalf of a Defendant in a Child Sexual Abuse Case is Inadmissible Under Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceutical

• "Can we identify the sexual predator by use of penile plethysmography?"

• Plethysmograph: A disputed device

New Studies on Treatment and Recidivism

Corrections Sentencing points the way and has some extensive abstracts of some newly released studies on sex offender recidivism and treatment:

• Understanding Treatment for Adults and Juveniles Who Have Committed Sex Offenses
  • Crime & Consequences Takes a critical view of sex offender rehab referenced in this study.
• Controlling Sex Offender Reentry: Jessica's Law Measures in California
• Sexual Addiction in Incarcerated Sexual Offenders (cost)

• Implementing Evidence-Based Practice in Community Corrections: The Principles of Effective Intervention

DNA Lab Tech Claims he’s a “Fall Guy”

From the Boston Herald

A state police chemist under fire for allegedly mishandling DNA evidence in rape cases says he’s being scapegoated for a systemic failure in the management of thousands of cold cases that no one is trying to solve.    In his first interview since the allegations surfaced, Robert E. Pino told the Herald he is being judged by superiors who failed to provide him adequate resources to track scores of positive matches in a massive DNA database.

        “I was the only one looking at these cases,” said Pino, a 23-year veteran of the state police crime lab who has been put on paid leave. “I’m being shot because I’m the messenger. They’re trying to say I did this on purpose, and there’s no reason for me to do it.”

        Pino is accused of allowing the statute of limitations to lapse in 21 sexual assault cases before reporting a DNA match to investigators, thus making it impossible for prosecutors to pursue charges. He was in charge of managing the investigative database known as CODIS (Combined DNA Indexing System), which links convicts to genetic material from crime scenes.