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Many patrons in nightlife settings around the world experience and engage in behavior that some find distressing and others find a useful method of interacting with potential sexual partners. Some ...

In relation to the admissibility of evidence obtained using projective personality tests arose in F v. Bevandorlasi es Allampolgarsagi Hivatam (2018). The Court of Justice of the European Union has...

This book is part of the American Psychological Association’s Psychology, Crime and Justice series of which the overt aim is to showcase psychologists’ contribution to the study of crime and crimin...

Psychologists find it difficult to balance their clients' and society's interests when these interests differ from each other, such as when their clients pose a risk of harm to others. Society's in...

Much of what we know about sexual offenders and risk management is derived from empirical studies on sex offender populations in North America. In comparison to Canada and the United States, the evidence base in Australia on sexual offender risk management is under-developed. In this paper, we describe a current research project tasked with developing a national sex offender recidivism database to advance the evidence base in Australia. It is argued that a national database would advance knowledge and practice in the field of sex offender risk management in Australia in a multitude of ways. Yet there are many obstacles and difficulties in developing such a database. After putting forward a case for the need for such a database, we outline the issues we have encountered and the approaches we have adopted to develop this database. It is intended that this contemporary comment may not only alert readers to this emerging data resource in Australia but also function as a road map to guide future empirical research on offender population databases in Australia.

Forensic psychologists' role is well established, and they are rightly well regulated because their decisions and behaviour can have a significant impact on people's rights and interests. Their ethical integrity, however, partly hinges on the psycholegal research products (data, methods and instruments) that they and others use. The ethical regulation of researchers who produce products and their research processes is, however, fragmented, limited and narrow and largely focuses on domestic research. Relatively few scholars have examined the regulation of psycholegal research or commented on the ethical implications of recent court decisions. The purpose of this paper is to start a debate about the ethical regulation of researchers in the psycholegal field and consider methods of improving it to maintain society's trust in the field.

Terminally ill people might want to discuss the options they have of hastening their deaths with their psychologists who should therefore know the law that regulates euthanasia in the jurisdictions...

The behavior of some nightlife-setting patrons would be unacceptable in workplaces or public settings and could cause distress to other patrons. This quantitative study determined 381 young Austral...

Alexithymia, which involves difficulties identifying, communicating, and thinking about emotions, could be an important factor in violent offending. Our aim with the current study was to explore th...

Professions have a social obligation to ensure that their members’ professional behavior is morally appropriate. The psychology profession in most jurisdictions delegates the responsibility of ensu...

Psychologists need clients’ information to provide a service to them and must do it within the parameters of the normative framework that regulates the collection and management (i.e., storing, accessing, amending, using, and disposing) of client information. Presiding officers’ comments in the course of tribunal hearings and research findings, however, suggest that many psychologists do not fully understand this framework and/or its practical implications. In this article we aim to provide information to psychologists that will allow them to keep records in a ethico-legal defensible manner and to the optimal benefit of their clients and society. We do this by exploring the Australian normative framework, paying special attention to the relevant legal provisions, case law, ethical principles and standards, and the aims of record-keeping. We then use this normative framework to examine the practical aspects of the collection and management of client information.

The aim of this study was to add to the emerging knowledge about the role of bystanders in cyberbullying. To differentiate online versus offline bystander behaviors, 292 Australian children (mean age = 15.2; female = 54.4%) reviewed hypothetical scenarios experimentally manipulated by bystander sex, relationship to target and perpetrator, and severity of bullying incident. In both environments, bystander helping behaviors were more likely when the target was a close friend, perceived harm to the target was high, and when bystanders were female. Bystanders also reported being less likely to approach teachers or publicly defend targets in online versus offline environments. This suggests programs designed to encourage positive bystander behaviors online can be similar to face-to-face approaches, but they need to recognize some aspects unique to the online environment.

Some psychologists working in the psychology and law (psycholegal) field feel that the profession does not provide them with adequate ethical guidance even though the field is arguably one of the oldest and best established applied fields of psychology. The uncertainty psychologists experience most likely stems from working with colleagues whose professional ethics differs from their own while providing services to demanding people and the many moral questions associated with the administration of law. I believe psychology’s ethics does, however, provide adequate moral guidance. It has a sound historical basis, has face validity and emphasizes those social moral principles that allow psychologists to best serve individuals and society. Psychologists may nevertheless be confronted with conflicting demands because there are other norm systems that also regulate their behavior as researchers and practitioners, and they, like all people, are influenced by their conscience. Ultimately, psychologists working in...

Our premise is that ethics is the essence of good forensic practice and that mental health professionals must adhere to the ethical principles, standards, and guidelines of their professional bodies when they communicate their findings and opinions. We demonstrate that adhering to ethical principles can improve the quality of forensic reports and communications. We demonstrate this by focusing on the most basic principles that underlie professional ethical standards and guidelines, namely, Fidelity and Responsibility, Integrity, Respecting Rights and Dignity of Persons, and Justice and Fairness. For each principle we offer a brief definition and explain its demands. Then we identify ways in which the principle can guide the organization, content, or style of forensic mental health report writing, offering illustrative examples that demonstrate or abuse the principle.

Researchers have found that disrespectful behaviour can have a notable psychological impact on victims and observers thereof. It is not surprising, therefore, that law and all the major psychology ...

The codes of ethics and conduct of a number of psychology bodies explicitly refer to human rights, and the American Psychological Association recently expanded the use of the construct when it amended standard 1.02 of the Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct. What is unclear is how these references to human rights should be interpreted. In this article I examine the historical development of human rights and associated constructs and the contemporary meaning of human rights. As human rights are generally associated with law, morality, or religion, I consider to which of forms of these references most likely refer. I conclude that these references in ethical codes are redundant and that it would be preferable not to refer to human rights in codes. Instead, the profession should acknowledge human rights as a separate and complimentary norm system that governs the behavior of psychologists and should ensure that they have adequate knowledge of human rights and encourage them to promote hum...

In this article, we present a mixed method study that we undertook as part of a programme of research to explore the utility of the multidimensional theory of apology developed by Slocum et al. in explaining the function of apologies in family group conferences, healing circles, juvenile justice conferencing and victim offender mediation [Slocum, D., Allan, A., & Allan, M.M. (2011). An emerging theory of apology. Australian Journal of Psychology, 62(2), 83–92]. Slocum et al. theorize that an acceptable apology consists of at least one of three components, each of which has a focus continuum that ranges from an exclusive self focus to a self–other focus. The results of Experiment One were counterintuitive in that participants rated the offender significantly more sorrowful and perceived the offender to be significantly more focused on the needs of victims in the self-focused condition than in the self–other-focused condition. The analysis of the qualitative data, however, indicated that participants percei...

Compared to their peers, correctional and forensic psychologists are more likely to encounter legal‐ethical problems and have complaints lodged against them. The problems that confront them are oft...

Section 35(1)(c) of the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law Act (2009) requires the newly formed Psychology Board of Australia (PsyBA) “to develop or approve standards, codes and guidelines.” In 2010 the PsyBA decided to initially adopt the Australian Psychological Society's (APS) Code of Ethics (2007) and develop a new code in the future with the involvement of key stakeholders without deciding what the nature of this code will be. The PsyBA now has to decide exactly how it will proceed in future. My aim in this article is to examine the options available to the PsyBA by exploring the definition and function of codes; presenting a history of the APS Code; and considering approaches that had been followed in Europe, Israel, New Zealand, and South Africa.

There is no consensus in the psychological literature regarding the operational definition of an apology, nor is there a comprehensive theory of apology. The object of this study was to use a herme...

It is possible that the physical and mental health of crime victims might be improved by forgiving those who have offended against them. To date, no research has been undertaken to examine the proc...

Apologies are known to play an important role in the resolution of discrimination and harassment complaints brought under equal opportunity legislation. Sometimes parties agree on an apology as a term on the basis of which a complaint is settled. Occasionally, where a complaint is not settled, a respondent will be ordered to apologize. The ability to order an apology is a distinctive feature of equal opportunity law in Australia. The aim of the researchers was to gather information on the role of apologies in the equal opportunity jurisdiction in Western Australia. Twenty-four complainants and respondents took part in semi-structured interviews. Qualitative analysis of the interview transcripts revealed that participants placed a positive value on apologies in the settlement process. They believed apologies serve a number of functions and have the potential to play a valuable role in the resolution of discrimination and harassment complaints. It appears that respondents may be more inclined to offer apolo...

Apology has recently emerged from being a relatively obscure construct in law to one that is prominent in various areas of law through actual or proposed law reforms. Whilst law reform is welcome, it is important that changes should be grounded in scientifically accepted theories and supported by research data and, furthermore, that the effectiveness of such endeavours should be evaluated before they are further expanded. This cannot be said of the growth of the use of apology in law. In this article I use a model of apology developed by Slocum, Allan and Allan (2006) to examine why apologies may be functional in law. I also examine what form an apology may have to take to be functional in criminal, civil, and constitutional law respectively.

Apology in law, particularly in civil law has become very prominent in Australia with every state and territory introducing legislation that promotes the making of apologetic statement by wrongdoers in civil proceedings. In this article I briefly review some of the arguments that are offered in support of these provisions and then examine some of the questions that arise from them. In this regard I consider the meaning that the construct of apology has in civil justice and the assumption that an apology may avert lawsuits. I conclude by examining the conflicting arguments about the morality of protecting apologies from being admitted as evidence against defendants in civil proceedings.

This paper reports the findings of a retrospective study designed, primarily, to investigate the predictive accuracy of the Rapid Risk Assessment for Sexual Offence Recidivism (RRASOR); the Static 99 and two models developed in Western Australia, namely the Violent Offender Treatment Program Risk Assessment Scale (VOTPRAS) and the 3-Predictor model on a Western Australian sample of violent and nonviolent sexual offenders. A secondary aim was to establish whether the instruments are equally valid for Indigenous and non-Indigenous, and violent and nonviolent sexual offenders. The data of 538 convicted sexual offenders, who were assessed by the Sex Offender Treatment Program of the Western Australian Department of Justice from 1987 to 2002, were used. The predictor variables were the total scores obtained for each instrument and the outcome variable a conviction in a court for a further sexual offence and, in the case of the VOTPRAS, also a further violent offence. In general the predictive accuracy...

Pre-trial detention of defendants has important legal, human rights and practical implications for defendants, their families, and society and therefore the area justifies research scrutiny. However, there is a dearth of empirical studies of bail decision-making and most of them have been retrospective studies. Prior studies have nevertheless identified a number of purported shortcomings in bail legislation and decision-making. The rarely used observational methodology employed in this study provided data that are not normally available from official records. The first appearances of 648 defendants were observed in the lower courts in metropolitan Perth (Western Australia) to identify factors that play a significant role in bail decision-making and to collect baseline data for a longitudinal study. Legal factors made a significant contribution to the bail decision, while extra-legal factors did not.

Using an experimental design that is unique in the study of fear of crime, this study compared the impact of different television report formats (standard, reassuring and remote) of a prison escape on fear of crime (operationalised as state anxiety) experienced by a middle-aged (35 - 45 years) and an older group (65 - 75 years) and male and female subjects. The format of television reporting influenced fear of crime, and the effect was the same for men and women, but older people who viewed the standard format, experienced significantly higher levels of fear than middle-aged people. Furthermore, women experienced higher levels of state anxiety than men after viewing the crime reports.

Juvenile sexual offenders form a substantial part of the sexual offender population and a subset of them will continue offending against the person in general, and sexually in particular, into adulthood. Part of a strategy to reduce offending against the person, and sexual offending specifically, should therefore be to identify and treat high-risk juvenile sexual offenders. To identify the characteristics of such offenders, recidivism studies are traditionally used. After reviewing 11 recidivism studies we briefly discuss the difficulty of comparing the recidivism rates found by them. We then report the findings of a study that examined the official records of 326 male juvenile sexual offenders convicted in Western Australia from January 1990 to June 1998. During the follow-up period almost 7 in 10 of the offenders reoffended. Most were convicted of non-sexual offences, with only 1 in 10 convicted of new sexual offences. Offenders who reoffended against the person (sexual and non-sexual), constituted more...

Very few empirical data are available in respect of juvenile sexual offenders in Australia in general, and Western Australia in particular. In order to address this need a comprehensive study was undertaken to provide, inter alia, a description of juvenile sexual offenders in Western Australia and of their offence histories. The records of 334 juvenile sexual offenders convicted in the Western Australian Children's Court (Children's Court) from January 1990 until the end of June 1998 were investigated using information obtained from official records. Aboriginal offenders were over-represented and 97.6% of offenders were male. Rape was the most prevalent sexual offence. Nearly half of the male offenders had convictions for prior and 27.6% for concurrent non-sexual offences. Property offences were the most common type of non-sexual offence.

The literature in the field of juvenile offending reveals an ongoing debate about whether juvenile sexual offenders form a distinct group when compared to juvenile offenders in general. This is a very complex question because of the dynamics of sexual offending. When we examined the data collected from the official records of 334 juvenile sexual offenders convicted in Western Australia between 1990 and 1998 we found that nearly three-quarters of them were also convicted of other offences. It appeared that for most of them sexual offending was part of a much more pervasive pattern of juvenile offending. Our literature review revealed that most studies that compared juvenile sexual offenders with other juvenile offenders failed to find systematic differences. In order to explore this further we compared the demographic characteristics and offence histories of our sample with that of the total juvenile offender population in Western Australia during the same period using data obtained from the Crime and Justice Statistics for Western Australia. These statistics are published annually by the Crime Research Centre of the University of Western Australia (CRC). In spite of the relatively fewer females and relatively more Aboriginal people among the juvenile sexual offenders, we conclude that there is not a conspicuous difference between the demographic characteristics and offence patterns of juvenile sexual offenders and that of all juvenile offenders in Western Australia.

Psychological tests form a central part of most forensic assessments. However, the tests used, and the manner in which they are used, have been criticised, especially in the United States. In a survey of 79 Australian psychologists who do evaluations for the courts, we tried to determine which psychological tests they use, how frequently they use them, and their reasons for using particular tests. Our survey reveals that the Wechsler Intelligence Scales, Rey Complex Figure Test, and Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) are used most frequently. Notably, 7 of the 10 most frequently used instruments were neuropsychological tests. Respondents most frequently take into account the “suitability to the situation” and the “psychometric properties of the test” when selecting a test. The study demonstrates that the tests used by forensic psychologists are generally well established in the clinical field, and that psychologists doing assessments for the courts must be competent users of neuro...

Forensic psychology is established in Australia. However, unlike in some countries, no survey of forensic psychologists and their activities has been published locally. This paper reports the findings of a survey of 79 Australian psychologists who do assessments for the courts. The results reveal that most of the respondents had post‐graduate qualifications in psychology and were experienced psychologists, but were less experienced in doing assessments for the courts and lacked formal forensic training. The study identifies areas in forensic training that respondents believe were not adequate, including key areas such as childcare and custody evaluations. It highlights the importance of reports in the forensic field because, relative to the number of reports they prepare, it is rare for respondents to testify. Finally the study discloses that while respondents are generally satisfied with the treatment they receive, and the court atmosphere, they believe that their answers and testimony are sometimes dist...