Dominic Willmott

Loughborough University | Lough · Department of Social Sciences

Steeped in tradition and historical significance, criminal justice systems throughout the world have long considered jury trials an essential feature of a fair and just due process. Despite vast procedural variation between jurisdictions and long-established criticisms surrounding the use of lay participation within legal disputes (discussed in Cha...

A systematic review of research assessing rape myth acceptance (RMA) interventions within institutional settings was conducted. The aim of this review was to inform the development of an educational intervention for jurors in rape trials that addresses rape myths, given previous evidence that RMA can affect decision-making and verdicts (Dinos et al...

Introduction Trial by jury is a longstanding legal tradition used in common law jurisdictions to try the most serious of criminal cases. Yet, despite hearing the same trial evidence, individual jurors often arrive at different verdict decisions, indicating that they may be impacted by more than the evidence presented at trial. This study therefore...

Over the past forty years studies have investigated the influence of various forms of bias upon jury decision-making. Notably, a wealth of evidence has amassed surrounding the detrimental impact that widespread societal misconceptions and stereotypes towards sexual violence can have on juries within rape trials. These stereotypes, often termed rape...

The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a new measurement tool designed to capture endorsement of myths surrounding female perpetrated sexual violence against men, specifically in ‘forced‐to‐penetrate’ cases. Data were collected among a sample of 4152 UK adults aged 18–55+ (52% female). Dimensionality and construct validity of the For...

The study developed and validated the Modern Adolescent Dating Violence Attitude (MADVA) scale, examining young people's attitudes towards online and offline variants of adolescent dating violence and abuse (ADVA). Data were collected among 2011 adolescents from England, aged 10-25 (M 15.72 years). Dimensionality and construct validity of the MADVA...

This article examines different theoretical explanations for rioting and crowd violence drawing on psychological, sociological and political perspectives. Varied ideas and research that have sought to better understand why people are motivated to riot are discussed whilst considering the history of past riots. The role of the law and in particular,...

Literature is sparse regarding men’s attitudes towards male sexual assault and the role that the sexuality of those involved may have. Despite the high prevalence of chemsex and GHB (gamma-hydroxybutyrate) participation among men who have sex with men, no study has yet investigated attitudes towards such. Utilising a community sample of 141 UK men,...

A systematic review of research exploring the impact of providing rape myth countering information to mock-jurors was conducted. The primary aim of the review was to inform the development of an educational intervention for jurors to reduce potential bias in their decision-making based on belief in prevalent rape myths. In total, the following 12 d...

Purpose This study aims to investigate the experiences of service providers supporting male victims and female perpetrators of intimate partner violence (IPV). The study explored the drivers, methods and treatments of female-perpetrated IPV, the nature and impact of abuse towards male victims, the barriers and facilitators to service provision and...

Sexual offence disclosures are on the rise, thought to be the result of growing numbers of prosecutions brought against well-known public figures and mobilisation of movements such as #MeToo. Despite this, data continues to indicate that most victim-survivors of sexual violence will never report their abuse. This study aimed to explore why women co...

The introduction of ‘special measures’ within England and Wales (i.e. provisions for vulnerable and intimidated witnesses at court) marked a significant change in legal tradition and trial procedure such that victim and witness care was repositioned as a primary concern alongside the longstanding rights afforded to defendants. As public perceptions...

Whilst much is known about the psychosocial correlates of rape myth beliefs regarding female victims, much less research has investigated factors that underlie male rape myth beliefs. The aim of this study was therefore to examine the role of victim empathy and socio-demographics upon male rape myth beliefs. 303 UK adults aged 18 to 74 (M Age = 31....

Previous research has found widespread endorsement of rape mythology throughout global societies. A wide range of psychosocial variables are thought to underpin belief in rape myths, including psychopathic personality traits. However, among the limited studies that examine the relationship between psychopathy and rape myths contradictory findings f...

Purpose Few studies assess how child abuse and neglect (CAN) affects adolescents’ mental health. Further, the majority of studies conducted to date discount the individual CAN items and report overall prevalence rates for different types of abuse and neglect. The purpose of this study was to examine the levels of and gender differences in CAN subty...

Vast research has sought to better understand the origins and development of rape myth beliefs given the problematic influence of such misconceptions throughout global societies and criminal justice pathways. The current research aims to build on this body of literature by examining the contribution that psychopathic personality traits (affective r...

Increased reports of domestic violence and abuse (DVA) have been identified following football games. Yet, the relationship between DVA and football culture remains underexplored qualita-tively. To better understand this phenomenon, we conducted a focus group with male, non-abusive football youth fans to gain perceptions of why domestic violence in...

Purpose Many women report experiences of street harassment during their lifetime. Previous quantitative survey research has shown the variety of ways in which this type of harassment can impact upon a victim’s life, including restricting their freedom of movement and fear of further victimisation. The purpose of this study is understand the immedia...

Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the moderating role of prison personnel’s years of service working within a prison environment, on the relationship between the three trauma factors (self-harm/death, violent, environmental) measured by the Prison Personnel Trauma Measure (PPTM) and PTSD symptomology. Method: A non-probability con...

Media coverage of rape allegations now generates vast attention across social media. This study investigates perceptions towards a high-profile criminal trial concerning an allegation of rape against professional footballer Ched Evans. Using discourse analysis, we investigate ways in which Twitter users invoked or challenged stereotypes following t...

Understanding of the role that attitudes and beliefs may play on the judgments people make about intimate partner violence (IPV) is becoming increasingly important, notably in the context of the criminal justice process and in recognising IPV as a public health issue. This study aims to investigate the importance of several established factors pred...

This commentary responds to claims that research by Cheryl Thomas ‘shows’ no problem with rape myths in English and Welsh juries. We critique the claim on the basis of ambiguous survey design, a false distinction between ‘real’ jurors and other research participants, the conflation of attitudes in relation to abstract versus applied rape myths, and...

The focus of this paper is to highlight and review evidence surrounding common Intimate Partner Rape (IPR) myths, their prevalence in society, and identify those who are most likely to endorse such beliefs. Six core IPR myths are discussed related to misconceptions surrounding (1) women’s decisions to remain in abusive relationships, (2) why women...

Research indicates substantial overlap between child abuse and neglect (CAN), exposure to domestic violence and sibling abuse, with multiple victimisation experiences conferring greater risk for adverse mental health outcomes than does exposure to a single subtype. The application of latent class analysis (LCA) to child maltreatment has gained mome...

This study explored the prevalence of children’s exposure to adult-perpetrated domestic violence (DV) in Jamaica and investigated the contextual factors of the affected families and the well-being of exposed children. The study was a cross-sectional survey of 7,182 children aged 9 to 17 years, drawn from 20 primary and secondary schools. The sample...

“Rough sex” can be considered an act of sexual violence that is consensual or non-consensual, often resulting in bodily harm and in rare cases, fatalities. The rough sex defense is typically advanced by male perpetrators in an effort to portray a sexual encounter as consensual, to avoid criminal sanctions for causing injury or death. Public attitud...

This qualitative study considers the development of adolescent offending and examines a range of potential causes rooted in the issues of truancy, peer pressure, and educational and parental disengagement. Ten adult offenders recently released from prison were accessed through a probation service in the North West of England. Participants (M age =...

The current study objective was to develop a revised version of the Psychopathic Personality Traits Scale (PPTS-R) with an increased number of indicators to more reliably capture the four dimensions of the Psychopathic Personality Traits Model (PPTM). Dimensionality, construct validity, and reliability of the PPTS-R was examined among general (N =...

Objective The aim of the study was to identify meaningful subtypes of anxiety, depression, and PTSD symptomology amongst Prison Personnel. A further aim was to estimate the association between anxiety, depression and PTSD class membership and typology of Prison Trauma Exposure (Self-Harm/Death, Violent, Environmental) age and years of service, and...

Understanding the interaction between geography and crime has a long tradition throughout the world. If successfully deconstructed and understood, criminal geography can be used to help police strategically target increasingly scarce resources to prevent and reduce crime, as well as helping police investigators to locate and arrest serial offenders...

This paper describes the results of a rapid evidence assessment that aimed to identify the characteristics and efficacy of interventions that aimed to or reportedly changed personal or social identity. Following a rapid but systematic search of the published, peer-reviewed research on identity change, 400 studies or reviews were screened for eligib...

Violence against women and girls is widespread in the Caribbean, which may be due to heightened acceptance of such acts in this specific social context. In spite of this, studies investigating attitudes towards violence and their correlates among participants drawn from the region are missing. In order to address this void in the literature, we exa...

Background: Youth non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) and suicide are major public health concerns, but limited data are available on the prevalence and correlates of these problems in developing countries. The aim of this study is to describe experiences of three suicidal phenomena (NSSI, suicidal ideation [SI], and suicide attempt [SA]) among childre...

Criminal social identity (CSI) is a factor for criminal behavior. CSI should therefore be a target of interventive strategies aiming to reduce the risk of re-offending. To date, there is limited knowledge on how CSI is expressed among individuals with different criminal histories, undermining the efforts to develop and target appropriate rehabilita...

The aim of this study was to compare prisoners (n = 772), community adults (n = 1201), university students (n = 2080), and adolescents (n = 472) on four sets of psychopathic traits (affective responsiveness, cognitive responsiveness, interpersonal manipulation, and egocentricity), using a psychopathy measure which does not index criminal/antisocial...

The British state’s mechanism for compensating victim-survivors of sexual offences has been critiqued as retraumatising. However, a recent review preliminarily rejected calls to loosen the eligibility rules, stating that the current criteria reflect public attitudes. This article outlines the first empirical study of public opinion on the UK Crimin...

Objective: The aim of the study was to create and validate a brief self-report measure of trauma exposure specific to personnel employed within a prison environment which exhibits predicative validity for a number of adverse psychological conditions shown to be a consequence of working within such prison environments. Method: The Prison Personnel...

Purpose: The study aim was to develop and validate the None in Three Victim Responsiveness Assessment (Ni3: VRA) examining affective and cognitive responsiveness toward victims of intimate partner violence. Design/methodology/approach: Data were collected at two time points in a sample of 359 young people from Barbados and Grenada (56.27% female;...

Childhood abuse is associated with increased psychopathic features among girls, but most prior research is based on data from correctional samples of female delinquents and less is known about how specific forms of childhood abuse affect specific features of psychopathy. Using a school-based community sample of 696 girls aged 9-17 years from Barbad...

Evidence demonstrates that exposure to prosocial video games can increase players' prosocial behaviour, prosocial thoughts, and empathic responses. Prosocial gaming has also been used to reduce gender-based violence among young people, but the use of video games to this end as well as evaluations of their effectiveness are rare. The objective of th...

What if I told you that some jurors do not decide cases on the evidence that they hear, but instead on entrenched prejudices and stereotypes that they cannot shake? That as far as those jurors are concerned, the calling of evidence does nothing more than pay lip-service to the concept of a fair trial? Would you be shocked that people could be convi...

Given the prevalence of suicide and self-harm throughout global societies, the need to more readily manage associated behaviours is of central importance. Particularly as in many countries and cultures harmful acts towards oneself remain a prosecutable crime if the person in crisis survives. Yet despite once constituting a novel approach, mindfulne...

The Psychopathic Personality Traits Scale (PPTS; Boduszek et al., 2016) is a personality-based psychopathy assessment tool consisting of four subscales: affective responsiveness, cognitive responsiveness, interpersonal manipulation, and egocentricity. Although the measure offers a promising alternative to other, more behaviorally weighted scales, t...

Humans vary in many aspects of their psychology with differences routinely found in patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviours, setting individuals apart across time and place. Though many psychologists have attempted to account for these individual differences, one area that has continued to generate interest and disagreement is the concept of...

The current study used latent class analysis to uncover groups of youths with specific abuse (physical, emotional, and sexual) profiles in and outside the family, and identify how membership in each abuse group is associated with behavioral outcomes.Data were collected among a sample of male (n = 662; M age = 13.02 years) and female (n = 689; M age...

For many, the English criminal justice system is considered to be among the best in the world. An important feature of the system’s success is thought to be the jury trial whereby in the most serious of cases, use of ordinary citizens to determine guilt is thought to make for fairer verdict outcomes. Yet despite being a more democratic process, que...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of response bias and target gender on detecting deception. Design/ methodology - Participants were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions: a stereotype condition (bogus training group), a tell-signs condition (empirically tested cues), and a control condition. Parti...

This paper looks briefly at the case study of Russian sexual serial killer Andrei Chikatilo. Whilst serial homicide has received wide ranging attention more broadly in the literature, Chikatilo’s criminality and sexually deviant behaviour have thus far lacked any in-depth psychological explanation, with his crimes attributed tentatively to dysfunct...

The paper presents a psychological analysis of convicted female serial killer Beverley Allitt with reference to psychopathological and social psychological explanations of her crimes. Whilst cases of female serial homicide such as that of Allitt receive a large amount of attention within popular culture literature, less theorising to date has attem...

Interpersonal violence iswidespread in the Eastern Caribbean, which may be a remnant of the violent colonisation history noted in the region. Although official statistics on the occurrence of interpersonal violence are collected in Barbados and Grenada, such acts tend to be under-reported. As such, the aim of this project was to gaina better insigh...

Latent class (LCA) and latent profile (LPA) analysis represent methodological approaches to identify subgroups of maltreated individuals. Although research examining child abuse and neglect (CAN) profiles is still rare, the application of person-centered techniques to clarify CAN types co-occurrence has substantially increased in recent years. Ther...

Purpose: The aim of this study was to identify meaningful subtypes of psychopathic traits among prisoners. Another aim was to estimate the association between psychopathy class membership and type of offending (homicide, general violent, property, and white-collar offences). Methods: A systematically selected representative sample of 1,126 adult...

To Cite: Willmott, D., Boduszek, D. and Booth, N. (2017). The English Jury on Trial. The Custodial Review, 82, 12-14.

To cite this chapter: Willmott, D. (2017). Jury Psychology. In B. Baker, R. Minhas, & L. Wilson (Eds.), Psychology and Law: Factbook (2nd ed.). European Association of Psychology and Law. (ISBN 9781326989651)

Over time, the concept of personality has stimulated considerable theorising and debate amongst researchers. Thought to be characteristics within an individual that account for consistent patterns of thought, feelings and behaviours, the quest to understand individual differences between human beings has led to the increased uptake of psychological...

Purpose: Previous research conceptualized murderers as highly callous and self-gratifying individuals, offending as a result of psychopathic tendencies. The current exploration sought to verify whether murderers differ on psychopathy and criminal social identity from recidivistic and first time incarcerated offenders. Methods: The study compared...

To cite this chapter: Willmott, D. & Oostinga, M. (2017). Scientific Jury Selection. In B. Baker, R. Minhas, & L. Wilson (Eds.), Psychology and Law: Factbook (2nd ed.). European Association of Psychology and Law.

Independent Evaluation of Operation Enhance: An Immediate Joint Response Initiative to Domestic Abuse Calls for Service [EMBARGOED]

Although psychopathy construct (SRP-SF) was assessed among various samples, prior research did not investigate whether the model proposed by Hare and colleagues can be used to capture psychopathy scores derived from forensic and non-forensic populations. The main objective of the current study was to test dimensionality, construct validity, and fac...

Whilst those currently serving prison sentences for sexual violence can be identified and receive treatment, the number of prisoners with a history of sexual violence against female partners is unknown. Methods to identify prisoners with a proclivity for such violence and accurately assess the risk they pose before and after incarceration are there...

The present study applied a narrative analysis upon rioter accounts of their motivations during the August 2011 England riots. To the authors’ knowledge, this piece of research was the first to utilise narrative theory to explore the phenomenon of Rioting. Narrative accounts of twenty rioters were compiled from media, online and published sources....

Although previous research has indicated that sequential line-up procedures result in fewer mistaken identifications, this was found to be at the expense of accurate identifications more typical within simultaneous procedures. Hence, there remains a lack of agreement about which procedure is superior, and the interaction such procedures have with e...

For many, the English criminal justice system is considered to be among the best in the world. An important aspect of the system’s success is thought to be the jury trial, where use of ordinary people as the ultimate decision makers is said to make for fairer verdict outcomes. But the question remains: is the jury process actually fairer? And is th...

Purpose- The aim of the current study was to test the construct validity and dimensionality of the Measure of Criminal Social Identity (MCSI) within both a combined sample of American, Pakistani, and Polish inmates, as well as examined as individual country samples. Method- Adopting a cross-sectional survey design, the opportunistic sample consiste...

So here we are. The UK has decided and voted out. We are part of a generation that has never known a Britain not part of the European Union. This is unprecedented change, unsettling times. Our job as criminology postgraduates is research; learning, challenge, discovery. And there is certainly much to learn about the process and outcome of the EU re...

Despite many people assuming rape is committed by strangers lurking in a dark alleyway, statistics show the vast majority of rapes – around 90% – are committed by people already known to the victim. Of these, 56% are committed by a partner or ex-­partner, making what’s termed “acquaintance” and “domestic” rapes much more prevalent than those commit...