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Risk assessment instruments are an important tool for assessing an offender’s risk of recidivism. However, concerns have been raised regarding their applicability to different cultural groups, and ...

Jurors sometimes consider inadmissible evidence in their verdicts, despite judicial instructions to disregard that evidence. Procedural justice research suggests this is because jurors are motivate...

Risk assessment instruments are frequently employed in criminal justice settings to predict recidivism and inform treatment plans for offenders. Modern approaches to risk assessment, (i.e. Structur...

Preventive detention legislation allows for ongoing detention or supervision following completion of an offender’s sentence. Consideration of public protection should drive the administration of pr...

We explored interviewing practitioners’ views about the effectiveness of a range of diverse interview strategies in the field. An online survey examined 73 interviewing practices comprising six bro...

Preventive-detention legislation has been introduced in various forms in legal systems around the world to allow for the ongoing detention or community supervision of sex offenders following the completion of their custodial sentences. The stated purpose of these laws is utilitarian: they are intended to protect the community and allow for the ongoing rehabilitation of the offender. However, judges and legal scholars have expressed concern that retributive, rather than utilitarian, motives might drive decisions regarding the ongoing management of sex offenders. These concerns align with psychological research on procedural and distributive justice. In this article, we review the relevant psychological literature, which shows that notions of morality and deservingness are key motives underlying justice reasoning and sentencing decisions. We discuss the ways in which retributive and utilitarian motives may impact upon preventive detention decisions, and how this psychological research can inform legal schol...

(2014). Protecting human rights in Australian investigative interviews: the role of recording and interview duration limits. Australian Journal of Human Rights: Vol. 20, Special Issue: Policing and human rights, pp. 107-132.

One procedural feature on which restorative justice conferencing models differ is the identity of the convenor, with some conferencing models being administered by police. This study investigates how convenor type affects decisions to participate in conferences. Research regarding power–distance (Hofstede, 1980, 2001) suggests that this factor may differentiate responses to conferencing among participants from different cultural backgrounds. Convenor type (police vs. civilian) was varied in a between-subjects quasi-experimental design, to determine whether participants' choice to engage in conferencing was affected by their beliefs about police, or by power–distance values. Results showed that participants overestimate the effect of convenor identity on their preferences: although self-report responses indicated a preference for civilian-convened conferences, between-groups effects indicated that participants chose police-convened conferences as frequently as civilian-convened conferences. Also, high powe...

Psychological research indicates that trust in the independent third party affects the way in which disputants rate the fairness of legal procedures. This article addresses procedural variation in restorative justice practices, in the context of psychological research on procedural and distributive fairness. In particular, we describe differences in the ways in which high and low power-distance participants determine fairness in conferencing procedures. This article outlines the way in which convenor variation in conferencing programs may affect participants' perceptions of bias in these conference procedures, and the moderating effect of power-distance on the consequences of this perceived bias. The authors argue that a sensitive analysis of the ability of restorative justice procedures to deliver effective justice requires consideration of individual difference factors in conjunction with situational factors.