The Proceedings of the 2007 North American Correctional and Criminal Justice Psychology Conference

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Guy Bourgon, R. Karl Hanson, Joanna D. Pozzulo, Kelly E. Morton Bourgon, and Carrie L. Tanasichuk

Table of Contents

• Introduction
   
• Section A: Challenges of Correctional & Criminal Psychology
  • Systemic Issues and Correctional Outcomes: Expanding the Scope of Correctional Psychology
  • Extensions of the Risk-Need-Responsivity (RNR) Model of Assessment and Correctional Treatment
  • Structured Guidelines for Evaluating Study Quality
  • Sexual Conflict and Coercion
     
• Section B: Risk Assessment
  • Current status of Violence Risk Assessment: Is there a role for Clinical Judgment?
  • Gender Comparisons on the Self-Appraisal Questionnaire (SAQ): A Tool for Assessing the Risk of Violent and Non-Violent Recidivism
  • Assessing the Predictive Validity of the Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory
  • Predicting Criminal Recidivism in Adult Male Offenders: A Four Wave Prospective Study
  • Adapting the Sexual Offender Need Assessment Rating into a Self-Report Measure (SONAR-SR)
     
• Section C: Interventions
  • Risk, Need, and Responsivity: A Heuristic for Evaluating the “Quality” of Offender Interventions
  • Does Treatment Make Psychopaths Worse? A Meta-Analytic Review
  • A Psychologically Informed Meta-Analysis of Sex Offender Treatment Outcome Studies
  • The Vermont Cognitive Self-Change Program: The Case for Risk-Adjusted Classification
  • Prediction of Program Dropout in a High-Intensity Violent Offender Program in Canada
  • Evaluating Sex Offender Treatment Efficacy: A Review of Research Findings from a High Intensity Sex Offender Program
  • Care, Control, and Mental Disorder: Comparing Practices and Outcomes in Prototypic Specialty vs. Traditional Probation
     
• Section D: Police & Court Psychology
  • Clinical Versus Actuarial Geographic Profiling Approaches: A Meta-Analysis
  • Exploring the CSI Effect: Is it Real? If so, What is it?
  • The CSI Effect: An Examination of the Source of Biases toward Forensic Science
  • Blurring the Line between Fact and Fiction: Expert Opinions about Forensic Investigation Tools Represented on CSI
  • Linking Serial Rapes: A Test of the Behavioural Frequency Hypothesis
  • The Influence of Witness Age, Relation to Crime, and Eyewitness Identification Decision on Jurors' Perceptions and Verdicts
  • Preschoolers' Person Description and Identification Accuracy: A Comparison of the Simultaneous and Elimination Lineup Procedures
     
• Section E: Professional & Ethical Issues
  • Ethical Dilemmas in Practicing Correctional Psychology
  • Ethical Dilemmas, Forensic Psychology and Therapeutic Jurisprudence
  • Training Needs for Graduate Students in Forensic Psychology
  • A Distance Learning Course on Mental Health Issues in Jails and Prisons
  • Prison, Stress and the Aging Process
  • The Importance of Context: Probation Officers Working With Adolescent Sex Offenders
  • Juvenile Sex Offending Within an Attachment Theory Framework.
     
• Section F: Special Topics
  • Criminal Trajectories from Adolescence to Adulthood in an Ontario Sample of Offenders
  • Criminal Attitudes in Young Female Offenders: A Psychometric Evaluation
  • The Jesness Inventory-Revised (JI-R) As a Measure of Psychopathology in a Sample of Adjudicated Juvenile Offenders
  • What's Not Working within 'What Works': Executive Cognitive Functioning Capacity of First Time Offenders, Return Offenders, and Controls
  • Autonomous Classification of Sexual Offenders from Eye Pattern Behavior
  • Is Sexual Assault Committed by Hebephiles Different from that Committed by Pedephiles and Rapists?
  • Personal and Criminal Characteristics Distinguishing Pedophiles, Hebephiles, and Rapists
  • An Empirical Taxonomy of Incarcerated Male Sexual Offenders Using Finite Mixture Modeling: Adult Victims
  • Restorative Justice: What Role Can Psychologists Play?

Introduction

Introductory Comments to the Proceedings of the North American Correctional & Criminal Justice Psychology Conference

Correctional and Criminal Justice is a specialty area in psychology. We bring our skills to a specific and unique group of clients – often an underserved client group. It is not simply about taking what works for the general population and putting it to work within a correctional setting. It is about adapting psychology to the client, adapting to the organizations that we work for, and adapting to the systems that we serve with the goal to protect society and to improve the quality of life of individuals who are far too often marginalized.

We need to constantly and consistently frame what we do as a service to public safety. Society's demand for accountability too often translates into punishment. This makes the assessment portion of what we do palatable and popular as it too often focuses on the punitive while at the same time making the treatment portion of what we do optional and suspect. The message we need to repeat is a simple one – when our clients get better – society becomes safer. Treatment and intervention are not options: they are essential to public safety and a cornerstone to Correctional and Criminal Justice psychology.

As a specialty area in Psychology, we need ongoing training and education that meet our specific needs. Cooperative efforts between our respective Criminal Justice Sections such as the NACCJPC, will serve to meet the needs of practitioners who daily face the challenge of a practice behind the wall or fence of a correctional institution. My hope is that this conference may serve as a seed for future cooperative efforts that may take many forms in the years ahead.

The conference was a tremendous success with approximately 350 attendees and featuring well over 200 presentations. A number of those presenters have provided a synopsis of their presentations in these Proceedings, covering a wide area of topics of interest to the correctional and criminal justice psychologist.

I am very grateful to Dr. Guy Bourgon and his editorial volunteers R. Karl Hanson, Joanna D. Pozzulo, Kelly E. Morton Bourgon, & Carrie L. Tanasichuk for their hard work in editing this volume. They stayed long after the party was over to provide us all with a permanent record of some of the excellent presentations made at the conference.

Thank-you very much.

Dr. Jeremy Mills, Ph.D., C.Psych.
Chair - NACCJPC