
Colleen M. BerryessaRutgers, The State University of New Jersey | Rutgers · School of Criminal Justice
Colleen M. Berryessa
Ph.D.
About
112
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Introduction
I am an Associate Professor at the Rutgers University School of Criminal Justice. My research, utilizing both qualitative and quantitative methods, considers how psychological processes, perceptions, attitudes, and social contexts affect the criminal justice system, particularly related to courts, sentencing, and forms of punishment broadly defined.
Additional affiliations
September 2018 - June 2024
August 2009 - May 2011
August 2014 - May 2018
Education
August 2014 - May 2018
September 2007 - May 2011
Publications
Publications (112)
This is a forthcoming chapter on criminal sentencing for the second edition of the APA Handbook of Forensic Psychology. The chapter begins by describing the historical context, standards, goals, and significance of criminal sentencing in the United States (U.S.). In an effort to elucidate the key influences to and practices by which courts reach se...
Neurobiological and psychological research on the differences between adolescents and adults in criminology and psychology has provided insight into how distinctive developmental processes may contribute to juvenile involvement in crime and the legal system. Literature investigating these differences, particularly regarding deficits in psychologica...
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a spectrum of neurodevelopmental disorders marked by impairments in social interactions, communication, hypersensitivity, and systematic patterns of behavior. Although the large majority of individuals with ASD are law-abiding, many individuals with ASD continue to become involved in the criminal-legal system as de...
Objective(s): This research examines how the cost of incarceration to the state and type of offense affects public support for different levels of sentence reductions (10%, 25%, 50%) via policies that reduce incarcerated populations called “second chance” mechanisms, as well as whether political ideology or affiliation predicts such support.
Hypoth...
Objectives
This study examines how a defendant’s addiction, prior criminal record, race, and drug type impact public support for criminalized and medicalized sentencing approaches to illegal drug use, as well as how such support may be moderated by participants’ levels of essentialist thinking.
Methods
This study is a fully-crossed, randomized exp...
The United States and its criminal-legal system have had a historically turbulent relationship with drugs and substance use. Public rhetoric, political ideology, and resulting policies, shaped by both rehabilitative and punitive ideals, have served as a foundation for the criminalization and mass incarceration of those who possess, distribute, and...
The United States (U.S.) and its criminal-legal system have had a historically turbulent relationship with drugs and substance use. Public rhetoric, political ideology, and resulting policies, shaped by both rehabilitative and punitive ideals, have served as a foundation for the criminalization and mass incarceration of those who possess, distribut...
Objective: Existing literature has yet to conceptualize and consolidate research on psychological essentialism and its relation to the criminal legal system, particularly in terms of explaining how individuals with justice involvement have been and could be differentially impacted across contexts. This article explores essentialism in the criminal...
Purpose: Sentencing practices in cases involving defendants with mental disorders are often opaque, as data on case facts and sentencing decisions are not easily accessible. Methods: This paper reports findings from a national U.S. sample of appellate court cases across 46 states (n = 710) that involved mental health evidence. We collected detailed...
Research suggests that a defendant's history of experiencing childhood abuse, and its effects on their life and later decision‐making, may impact public support for a defendant's sentencing, particularly mitigation. However, no existing research has examined how and why sentencing support may vary based on the time period when the abuse occurs duri...
The present study surveyed judges to examine how they consider and apply scientific information during sentencing determinations. Judges in criminal courts are increasingly asked to assess and make decisions based on evidence surrounding psychiatric disorders, with unclear results on sentencing outcomes. We qualitatively interviewed 34 judges who h...
Background: In contemporary criminal justice systems, the integration of bio-behavioral science evidence into legal proceedings poses complex challenges as well as opportunities. As psychiatric and mental health evidence may often not be accompanied by expert testimony, judges in criminal courts may be tasked with alone interpreting and incorporati...
Purpose
This brief report examines the impact of a defendant’s Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) diagnosis, as well as the influence of expert testimony and genetic evidence, on the perceptions, knowledge, and sentencing views of a sample of state court judges in the U.S.
Methods
Data were collected from sixty-one California Superior Court judges who...
Background
Autism spectrum disorder (hereafter referred to as autism) is characterised by difficulties with (i) social communication, social interaction, and (ii) restricted and repetitive interests and behaviours. Estimates of autism prevalence within the criminal justice system (CJS) vary considerably, but there is evidence to suggest that the co...
Neurobiological and psychological research on the differences between adolescents and adults in criminology and psychology has provided insight into how distinctive developmental processes may contribute to juvenile involvement in crime and the legal system. Literature investigating these differences, particularly regarding deficits in psychologica...
Drawing from semi-structured interviews, this paper examines the perspectives of 14 criminal justice stakeholders who were integral in creating and implementing the New Jersey Public Health Emergency Credits Act (2020). Stakeholders, including police administrators, corrections administrators, parole administrators, prison health administrators, an...
Purpose: Sentencing practices in cases involving defendants with mental disorders are often opaque, as data on case facts and sentencing decisions are not easily accessible. Methods: This paper reports findings from a national U.S. sample of appellate court cases across 46 states (n = 710) that involved mental health evidence. We collected detailed...
The present study surveyed judges to examine how they consider and apply scientific information during sentencing determinations. Judges in criminal courts are increasingly asked to assess and decide based on evidence concerning psychiatric disorders, with unclear results on sentencing outcomes. We qualitatively interviewed 34 judges who have presi...
Scientific evidence is increasingly being presented in criminal courts to explain criminal behavior. While psychological evaluations have long been part of the criminal sentencing process, more recently attorneys have also begun presenting evidence on defendants' genetics or on innate mental disorders, with mixed results on sentencing outcomes. Thi...
Purpose: Neuroscientific research on addictions has prompted a paradigm shift from a moral to a medical understanding – with substantial implications for legal professionals’ interactions with and decision-making surrounding individuals with addiction. This study complements prior work on U.S. defense attorney’s understandings of addiction by inves...
Deepfake technology tools have become ubiquitous, "democratizing" the ability to manipulate images and videos. One popular use of such technology is the creation of sexually explicit content, which can then be posted and shared widely on the internet. This article examines attitudes and behaviors related to non-consensual synthetic intimate imagery...
This special issue of the International Journal on Responsibility (IJR) advances scholarship on the various ways responsibility infuses the roles of criminal justice agents. As the inaugural issue of my tenure as Editor-in-Chief, Volume 6 deepens our understanding of responsibility in the context of the criminal justice system, thereby fulfilling I...
We used an experimental study design with newspaper vignettes to examine how characteristics of gun violence perpetrators including mental illness and previous incarceration influence three categories of firearm policy support in a national sample of U.S. adults (N = 3,387). Depictions of mass shootings elicit greater support for firearm policies t...
This collection presents a comparative perspective on interdisciplinary issues that fall under the emerging field of Neurolaw. The chapters embrace distinct procedural and evidential issues in the courtroom for vulnerable defendants, such as immature defendants, mentally disordered offenders and unfit-to-plead defendants, through a neuroscientific...
This research, using interviews with probation officers in the United States (N = 151) and a constant comparative method for analysis, draws from the focal concerns framework to qualitatively model a process by which probation officers use a defendant's remorse to attribute focal concerns in order to guide their sentencing recommendations in pre-se...
Much is unknown about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the carceral experience. Firsthand accounts, however, can illuminate how the virus traveled through correctional institutions and how operational changes intended to mitigate virus transmission altered daily life for incarcerated people. Analyzing semi-structured interviews with 53 indivi...
This study, using semi-structured interviews with a sample of probation officers (N = 151), develops a model that suggests how officers may weigh psychiatric diagnoses when assessing defendants’ expressions of remorse and how this may shape their presentencing recommendations for sentencing diversion. Results suggest that probation officers conside...
Behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) is a subtype of frontotemporal dementia characterized by changes in personality, social behaviour, and cognition. Although neural abnormalities cause bvFTD patients to struggle with inhibiting problematic behaviour, they are generally considered fully autonomous individuals. Subsequently, bvFTD pa...
This study, using semi-structured interviews with a sample of probation officers (N = 151), develops a model that suggests how officers may weigh psychiatric diagnoses when assessing defendants’ expressions of remorse and how this may shape their presentencing recommendations for sentencing diversion. Results suggest that probation officers conside...
This grant report for the Ohio State Drug Enforcement and Policy Center discusses preliminary results for three experimental studies with national samples of the U.S. public that examine why many members of the public continue to support punitive approaches to the sentencing of different drug offenses. The findings have implications for understandi...
This study identifies factors that contribute to sentencing outcomes for criminally sentenced individuals experiencing mental disorders, in two U.S. states with divergent sociopolitical ideologies. Recent case law (n = 130) from appellate courts in New York and Kansas (from 2020 to 2021) was analyzed using regression and machine learning to predict...
Idiopathic and acquired pedophilia are two different disorders with two different etiologies. However, the differential diagnosis is still very difficult, as the behavioral indicators used to discriminate the two forms of pedophilia are underexplored, and clinicians are still devoid of clear guidelines describing the clinical and neuroscientific in...
When we see others in pain, sympathy is often the instinctive and expected response. Yet in some cases, we may be indifferent to—and even take pleasure in—the suffering of others. Particularly, the public has historically expressed indifference toward and even endorsement of incidental harms experienced by those in the criminal justice system (i.e....
Stemming from interviews with 151 probation officers in the United States, this study produces a qualitative model that illuminates the extent to and ways in which probation officers draw from principles of Therapeutic Jurisprudence to consider remorse as evidence of a client’s potential for rehabilitation (remorse shows “therapeutic guilt” through...
Judges have significant decision-making power that dictates the outcomes of defendants, but their perceptions regarding persons with psychiatric disorders (PPDs) are understudied. This qualitative study explored judges' perceptions of dangerousness of PPDs and the benefits and risks of violence surrounding the use of community-based interventions f...
Although judges may be well intended when taking an oath to be impartial when they reach the bench, psychological and legal literature suggests that their legal approaches, behavior, and decision-making processes are subconsciously impacted by biases stemming from and influenced by their attitudes, ideology, backgrounds, and previous experiences. D...
This study examines how formal education in biological and behavioral sciences may impact punishment intuitions (views on criminal sentencing, free will, responsibility, and dangerousness) in cases involving neurobiological evidence. In a survey experiment, we compared intuitions between biobehavioral science and non-science university graduates by...
The study of social psychological processes and cognition entails unraveling how people perceive, interact in, and react to our social world. Particularly, social psychology relies on disentangling how people’s beliefs and behaviors are influenced by others across different experiences and phenomena. In recent years, this framework has been increas...
Objectives: This study examines how characteristics of victims and types of incidents described in a media account of gun violence affect public support for three categories of policies that regulate firearms.
Methods: A randomized experiment with a sample of U.S. public (N = 3,410).
Results: Victim race, particularly if the victim was Black, was...
This research, utilizing semi‐structured interviews with a sample of U.S. probation officers ( N = 151) and grounded theory, provides the first‐known empirical study to examine ways in which implicit cognitive processes may influence how probation officers evaluate expressions of remorse by defendants during the sentencing of violent offenses. Part...
This chapter examines neuromorality and its implications for criminal punishment. Increasing evidence suggests that morality is neurologically influenced, supporting the concept of neuromorality, according to which brain areas and neural networks underlie morality and moral decision-making. As evidence on neuromorality grows, findings may lead to q...
Original Thesis DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.17052.00641.
Preprint of manuscript submitted for publication 21 Apr 2022 under updated DOI 10.13140/RG.2.2.17052.00641/1:
This study, using a sample of youth offenders from the Pathways to Desistance Study (N=1,354), examines Greenberger and Sorensen's model of "psychosocial maturity" as a predictor of legal socialization (legal cynicism, legitimacy) across the adolescent developmental course and to examine the differential importance of this relationship by age. Psyc...
PREPRINT – Submitted for publication 18/03/2022 in BSL
This research presents three experiments that examine how natural "luck" (social and genetic luck) may affect lay intuitions toward desert-based criminal punishment. Study 1 examined if intuitions surrounding desert-based rewards in relation to good qualities/advantages ascribed to natural luck would extend to desert-based punishments in relation t...
The 13 papers included in this Research Topic approach varied aspects of social cognition and its relationship to legal processes, providing important guidance on how we might explore these questions in future international work across different jurisdictions and countries. We are thrilled that researchers represented in this international collecti...
Individuals reentering society after being incarcerated often face significant challenges that impede successful reentry. Reentry during a global pandemic can further exacerbate bureaucratic hurdles, challenges, and immediate needs of those individuals being released. On November 4, 2020, over 2,000 people were released early from incarceration thr...
Objective
We examine whether affective, verbal, and restitutive displays of remorse are associated with perceived offender immorality, as well as whether displays of remorse exert indirect effects on preferences for criminal sentencing via perceived offender immorality.Method
Data are from an online survey, which included a sentencing vignette with...
Using a national sample of U.S. adults (N = 371), this study experimentally examines (1) public support for the use of strategies that provide early release (i.e., “second chance” mechanisms) to individuals serving long-term prison sentences for drug crimes; and (2) how levels of support, and reasons for support, may vary depending on the type of d...
13 Drexel Law Review (forthcoming 2021).
This Article acts as a toolkit for members of the judiciary on defendants with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), and specifically looks to equip judges with knowledge, evidence, and resources on recognizing and understanding symptoms of ASD in order to better identify and evaluate diagnosed defendants and the...
The current study explores if and how dual-process thinking styles (System I/experiential and System II/rational processing) predict and explain the degree to which members of the public express moral panic toward and support for existing sex offender management policies (registration, notification, residence restrictions), regardless of their effi...
Idiopathic and acquired paedophilia are two different disorders with different aetiology, neural basis, modus operandi, and possible treatments. In this chapter, these differences will be summarized and the legal implications for punishment will be discussed for both forms of paedophilia. We conclude that, based on our current scientific knowledge...
Objectives: This study examines U.S. popular support for mechanisms that provide early release and "second chances" for individuals serving long-term prison sentences.
Methods: An experiment using a national sample of U.S. adults (N=836).
Results: Data showed moderate, consistent levels of general support for using a range of commonly available...
This paper discusses how existing legal strategies can be used to help
bring immediate relief to individuals serving long-term prison sentences for drug-related crimes by creating or expanding opportunities for their early release. These strategies, which currently exist at both state and federal jurisdictions, are conceptualized as mechanisms that...
Forthcoming in C. Campbell and J. Holtzclaw, eds. Trends in State Courts 2021. Williamsburg, VA: National Center for State Courts.
Courts occupy a unique position in the justice system that is steeped in tradition and formality. Likewise, any changes from established procedure are likely to invite challenges to decisions and outcomes based on thei...
Although shame and guilt are often conceived as adverse sentiments in criminal contexts, defendants’ expressions of remorse may actually act as an effective “therapeutic tool” in the legal process in order to reduce negative emotions, decrease future recidivism, and increase both community and victim healing, as well as rehabilitation. As such, eva...
People often perceive social groups (e.g., ethnic groups, occupations, gender groups) as having fixed membership and discrete boundaries. This paper proposes that essentialist beliefs about abstract crime concepts, as naturally defined and universally coherent, play a role in culpability and sentencing judgments. In three studies, a general sample...
The current research, using qualitative methodology and grounded theory analysis for model building, examines if and how juvenile court judges draw from Developmental and Life Course Criminology (DLC) in discretionary judicial waivers. This study develops three progressive models, emerging from interviews with juvenile court judges from two large S...
Background: U.S. courts currently show no coherent approach with regard
to how evidence of childhood abuse is considered in sentencing. Existing state and
federal caselaw suggests that courts rarely place significant consideration on evidence
of childhood abuse during sentencing. The reasons why offenders who have been
subjected to childhood abuse...
Recent studies have found that the general public perceives forensic evidence to be relatively inaccurate and to involve high levels of human judgement. This study examines how important the general public finds forensic evidence by comparing decisions on guilt and punishment in criminal cases that involve forensic versus eyewitness testimony evide...
The current study, using a multi-factorial survey experiment with a sample of the general public (N = 800), investigates if and how types of risk information on crime and public safety, such as maps, graphs, or tables, commonly used and communicated by law enforcement elicit dual-process (affective and cognitive) risk information processing in risk...
This chapter explores how structural and functional neuroimaging research on brain abnormalities observed in individuals with pedophilia might potentially influence orthodox legal perspectives on retribution and rehabilitation concerning pedophilic sex offenders in the justice system. Knowledge regarding the neural abnormalities associated with ped...
This research uses experimental methods to gauge how different facets of essentialist thinking toward (1) types of offending and (2) biosocial risk factors for criminality predict lay punishment support. A randomized between-subjects experiment using contrastive vignettes was conducted with members of the general public (N = 897). Overall, as hypot...
We present a qualitative analysis, employing semi-structured interviews and grounded theory, on the perceptions of defense attorneys regarding their roles and duties in contexts involving quasi-coercive offers of biological interventions, such as medication-assisted treatment therapies for opiate dependence or chemical castration, as rehabilitative...
This article discusses the immense need for compassionate release of vulnerable and elderly inmates during the COVID-19 pandemic. Compassionate release will save lives, and asserts the basic rights and protections of the most vulnerable. Many elderly and sick inmates, unless action is taken, will die of COVID-19 while waiting on their compassionate...
Research on how neurobiological evidence influences jurors’ decision-making in adjudications of criminal responsibility is growing. Mock trial studies on this topic have almost entirely considered purposeful violent crimes, but the results of these studies are inconsistent. The present study tests the effects of neurobiological evidence (neuroimagi...
This analysis provides the first known in-depth qualitative inquiry into if and how juvenile court judges take the psycho-social immaturity and development of adolescents into consideration when making attributions of adjudicative competency of offenders in juvenile court. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twenty-seven U.S. juvenile co...
We present a series of four between-subject, multifactorial experiments that examine how labeling offenders with addiction, as well as if that psychiatric label is described to be biologically influenced, may affect community perceptions regarding the importance of procedural justice in drug treatment courts. Stigmatization toward addiction is hypo...
We present a qualitative analysis, employing semi-structured interviews and grounded theory, on the perceptions of defense attorneys regarding their roles and duties in contexts involving quasi-coercive offers of biological interventions, such as medication-assisted treatment therapies for opiate dependence or chemical castration, as rehabilitative...
Evidence of perpetrators’ biological or situational circumstances has been increasingly brought to bear in courtrooms. Yet, research findings are mixed as to whether this information influences folk evaluations of perpetrators’ dispositions, and subsequently, evaluations of their deserved punishments. Previous research has not clearly dissociated t...
We present three experimental, between-subject studies, utilizing a lottery win scenario, that attempt to illuminate how different forms of child sex offender stigma lead to support for forms of legal and social punishment in instances of perceived injustice when a “bad” person is randomly rewarded. The first study sought to examine how the child s...
This article identifies and discusses the ways in which biological influences to psychopathy are thematically portrayed in the eighth season of Dexter to describe Dexter’s psychopathy, particularly focusing on fatalism and the inevitability of succumbing to one’s “biological self.” This paper, utilizing traditional content analysis, focuses on seve...
The current study, using a meta-analytic approach and moderation analysis, examines 22 studies reporting how psychopathic “labeling” influences perceptions on 3 punishment outcomes (dangerousness, treatment amenability, and legal sentence/sanction) for 2 types of experimental studies utilizing vignettes: (a) studies in which a defendant with a psyc...
This research, utilizing qualitative methodology with grounded theory, develops a model that illuminates a process by which judicial stereotyping associated with genetic essentialist biases toward mental disorders may affect judges' views regarding the sentencing and punishment of offenders with mental disorder diagnoses presented or understood to...
This paper discusses how biological and psychological literature on the developmental differences between juveniles and adults may affect juvenile judges in their “dual role” as retributive and rehabilitative decision‐makers in juvenile cases, specifically focusing on sentencing. Particularly, it discusses potential influences of this research on a...
Objectives
This research, using focal concerns perspective on sentencing, examines how and why psychiatric labels, and having diagnoses biologically “labeled,” affect sentencing beliefs. Dimensions of public stigma toward psychiatric illnesses are hypothesized to mediate sentencing views.
Methods
This is a 2 × 2 partially-crossed, between-subjects...
In recent years, there has been an increase in empirical literature regarding how and why neuroscience and genetics research on behavior may influence criminal punishment. This dissertation aims to add to this growing body of literature specifically on types of evidence and aspects of sentencing and punishment that have not yet been studied. This d...
In recent years, there has been an increase in empirical literature regarding how and why neuroscience and genetics research on behavior may influence criminal punishment. This dissertation aims to add to this growing body of literature specifically on types of evidence and aspects of sentencing and punishment that have not yet been studied. This d...
Purpose: This brief report presents preliminary survey data measuring attitudes of members of the U.S. public on the importance, existence, and potential legal use of biological risk factors for criminality.
Design/Method: Survey data was collected from an online sample of U.S. public in conjunction with an experiment not included in this report....
This experiment, utilizing a sample of death-qualified jury-eligible public, examines if and how evidence on biological risk factors for criminality might affect views on the death penalty in four contexts: death penalty support, mitigation, future dangerousness, and cruel and unusual punishment. Results suggest that the presentation of evidence on...
The role of the expert witness in legal contexts is to educate fact finders of the court who may have no background in the expert’s area. This role can be especially difficult for those who assist in cases involving individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). As expert assistance on ASD is crucial to ensuring just outcomes for individuals diag...
Capacity to make free choices and moral responsibility are constructs argued to permit blame for and punishment of criminal acts. Thus, a logical and practical use of the moral reason-responsiveness constructionist framework put forth by Farby, Edersheim, and Price would be judges utilizing it to efficiently and uniformly determine criminal punishm...
Supplementary data are available at JLBIOS online.
Although the relationship between criminal activity and ADHD has been heavily studied, this paper reviews a largely neglected area of academic discourse: how symptoms of ADHD that often contribute to offending behavior may also potentially create further problems for offenders with ADHD after they come into contact with the criminal justice system...
ABSTR ACT How does the public view the offer of a biological treatment in lieu of prison for criminal offenders? Using the contrastive vignette technique, we explored this issue, using mixed-methods analysis to measure concerns regarding changing the criminal's personality, the coercive nature of the offer, and the safety of the proposed treatment....