Park Dietz

The field of psychology–law is extremely broad, encompassing a strikingly large range of topic areas in both applied psychology and experimental psychology. Despite the continued and rapid growth of the field, there is no current and comprehensive resource that provides coverage of the major topic areas in the psychology–law field. The Oxford Handb...

Importance Psychiatry has struggled to clarify the types of mental turmoil that are associated with mass violence. While the problem is complex, it may present an opportunity to improve research, as well as inform public dialogue about what types of mental illness are actually associated with such mass tragedies. Observations Assuring the diagnost...

Two studies using large samples of jury-eligible adults tested whether hindsight influences perceptions of potential grooming behaviours. In study 1, participants (n = 371) were presented with vignettes describing five different interactions between an adult and children and rated the likelihood that these behaviours were indicative of sexual abuse...

This study aims to determine the factors associated with the victim’s death in sadistic sexual crimes. Specifically, this article examined whether the lethal outcome is more likely to be associated with an escalation of violence during the crime-commission process, an instrumental motivation, or the manifestation of specific sadistic fantasies. We...

Offender motivation for child abduction determines both the nature and final outcome of the abduction. Research has identified victim characteristics, offender characteristics, and sexual motivations as factors influencing child abduction and child abduction homicide. We examine 565 child abductions identified through the Federal Bureau of Investig...

A review of empirical studies of offenders—particularly sex offenders, and more particularly those who offend against children—demonstrates that denial of offenses and minimization of offending behavior are quite common at every stage of the criminal justice process. This is true during police interviews, during pretrial and presentencing mental he...

Ken Lanning’s recollections of the origins of the use of the term “grooming” to refer to techniques used by acquaintances to gain sexual access to and control over children is an important contribution to the history of the significant recognition that many cases of child sexual abuse occur at the hands of offenders who are acquaintances of the chi...

Our study examines the association between Historical, Clinical, Risk Management-20: Version 2; Psychopathy Checklist–Revised; and Violence Risk Assessment Guide scores and violence perpetrated during incarceration by male and female inmates. Using a sample of 288 men and 183 women selected from prisons in 2 states, we used receiver operating chara...

Factitious disorder involves the conscious simulation of psychological or physiological symptoms of illness, for the purpose of fulfilling the unconscious desire to be taken care of or to assume the “sick role.” Typically patients with factitious disorder simulate conditions that are designed to arouse feelings of empathy in care providers with the...

This article is based not only on the research literature but also on the extensive field experience of the authors in consulting with investigators, attorneys, and organizations on the prevention, investigation, prosecution, and civil litigation of molestation of children within or in connection with youth-serving organizations. Acquaintance moles...

The concept of studying approaches to public figures (i.e., physical pursuit or stalking) arose as a proxy measure to aid in the development of tools to prevent assassination, a low base rate event. In this commentary, we review the origins of this concept and the historical record of public figure attacks in the United States that formed the empir...

Threat assessment arose in the latter half of the twentieth century through the work of a handful of pioneers of various backgrounds seeking techniques for the analysis of threatening communications. Some public agencies and private employers have developed internal capabilities to evaluate threats, but many threat assessment services are delivered...

The second Innocenti Digest explores violence by and to children, using the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child as its framework. The focus is on interpersonal violence, both intrafamilial and extrafamilial. Sexual abuse and exploitation are included because, although they do not necessarily involve violence or coercion, the vast majority of e...

Evaluations of competence to stand trial (CST) are the most common type of criminal forensic evaluation conducted, and courts tend to defer to clinician opinions regarding a defendant's competence. Thus, it is important to study the ways in which clinicians arrive at opinions regarding adjudicative competence and the data they consider in forming t...

This article addresses common dilemmas faced by mental health professionals working on behalf of law enforcement agencies, focusing on those relating to informed consent; conflicts in values, norms, or their relative importance; and the erosion of professional identity. The authors suggest 10 strategies that mental health professionals may invoke t...

Sanity evaluations are high-stake undertakings that explicitly examine the defendant's culpability for a crime and implicitly explore clinical information that might inform a plea agreement. Despite the gravity of such evaluations, relatively little research has investigated the process by which evaluators form their psycholegal opinions. In the cu...

The authors examine the prevalence of acute traumatic dissociative responses in a group of 115 law enforcement officers involved in critical incidents. Law enforcement officers were retrospectively surveyed for the presence of dissociative symptoms at the time of the critical incident, as well as for the presence of acute stress symptoms and posttr...

Researchers and clinicians have devoted increasing attention to Asperger's syndrome during the past two decades. Although Asperger's syndrome is a developmental disorder, professionals in a variety of settings have begun to consider the diagnosis among adults who manifest social and communication abnormalities. Case studies (e.g., Baron-Cohen, 1988...

This article addresses the value of videotape in forensic mental health evaluations. Literature reviews were conducted using Medline and PsychInfo Databases. The authors briefly describe the general use of videotape, explore the use of videotape within the legal process, respond to opposition to videotape use, discuss confidentiality and consent is...

This article explores characteristics and crime scene behavior of 20 sexually sadistic serial murderers. The pairing of character pathology with paraphilic arousal to the control and degradation of others is examined as it manifests itself in their murders. Commonalities across murders and across murderers are highlighted, i.e., the execution of mu...

Excellence in forensic psychiatry requires adopting an appropriate professional role; developing an uncommon depth of knowledge and experience; full disclosure of credentials, biases, and weaknesses to potential clients; wise choices about which assignments to accept; and scrupulous fairness in the presentation of findings and opinions. An elusive...

This is a descriptive summary of the experiences of a sample of women who have been consensually involved with criminal sexual sadists. The paper details the physical, sexual, and psychological abuse to which the women were subject as well as the process by which they were transformed from independent, competent women to the compliant appendages of...

We report two cases in which men used the hydraulic shovels on tractors to suspend themselves for masochistic sexual stimulation. One man developed a romantic attachment to a tractor, even giving it a name and writing poetry in its honor. He died accidentally while intentionally asphyxiating himself through suspension by the neck, leaving clues tha...

Five patterns among mentally disordered offenders are distinguished by the relationship between mental disorder, on the one hand, and criminality, on the other. Pattern 1 offenders are those for whom crime is a response to psychotic symptoms, most often delusions or hallucinations. Pattern 2 offenders commit crimes motivated by compulsive desires,...

Violent offenders who pushed or attempted to push victims onto the subway tracks in New York City during the 17-year period from 1975 through 1991 were studied. Forty-nine incidents involving 52 victims were identified during this period. Of 36 perpetrators who acted alone, 25 (69%) were referred for psychiatric evaluation and treatment, as was one...

The authors examine the characteristics of threatening and otherwise inappropriate communications sent to members of the U.S. Congress by a sample of 86 subjects, 20 of whom threatened assassination. We quote excerpts from these letters and provide quantitative data on such variables as the volume, duration, form, and appearance of such communicati...

This article presents the results of a study of 894 criminal defendants referred by Virginia courts for evaluation of competency to stand trial or criminal responsibility. All evaluations were conducted on an outpatient basis by mental health professionals who had received specialized training in forensic evaluation. Findings as to the referral que...

Examined the characteristics of threatening and otherwise inappropriate letters sent to Hollywood celebrities by 214 Ss, who averaged 8 letters apiece. The authors quote excerpts from these letters, describe objects enclosed with them, and provide quantitative data on such variables as the (a) form, appearance, volume, and duration of such letters;...

This is an uncontrolled, descriptive study of 30 sexually sadistic criminals. All were men, and all intentionally tortured their victims in order to arouse themselves. Their crimes often involved careful planning, the selection of strangers as victims, approaching the victim under a pretext, participation of a partner, beating victims, restraining...

This paper reviews 18 publications that advocate the use of product tampering and other poisoning methods as techniques for exacting revenge against individuals and corporations, as methods of committing murder, and for other criminal purposes. Several of the particular techniques recommended in these publications subsequently have been used in cri...

The rate of change in scientific knowledge and the growing psychiatric sophistication of attorneys and courts have made it increasingly difficult for forensic psychiatrists to retain proficiency in the full spectrum of potential professional activities. As the consumers of forensic services become more sophisticated, forensic psychiatrists have an...

In Reply.— Dr Miller's letter strikes a familiar note. The frustration he conveys is shared by many others who attribute the firearm wound epidemic to the repeated failures of legislators to restrict gun availability. We ask Dr Miller and those who share this prevalent outlook to consider the following points:The significance of a health problem c...

The origins of detective magazines can be traced to 17th and 18th century crime pamphlets and to 19th century periodicals that Lombroso called "really criminal newspapers." Content analysis of current detective magazines shows that their covers juxtapose erotic images with images of violence, bondage, and domination; that their articles provide lur...

Psychiatric opinion as to a defendant's criminal responsibility is divided far less often than press coverage suggests. Evaluations are influenced by the settings in which they occur, the ideology and qualifications of the examiner, and the techniques of interviewing, investigation, and decision making used. If the insanity defense is as important...

The authors conducted a population-based study of prelingually deaf defendants admitted to a maximum security psychiatric facility to determine whether the suggestion of a higher than expected prevalence could be confirmed and to see how such patients fared. A review of the archival records of a midwestern maximum security psychiatric hospital has...

Seclusion incidents were studied irr an undercrowded maximum security hospital where seclusion is used in response to episodes of violent or disruptive behavior. Population-based seclusion rates for days with an above-mean census were compared with those for days with a below-mean census. Contrary to expectations derived from studies of overcrowded...

Questionnaires designed to measure the perceived value of technical terminology for psycholegal reports were completed by 67 judges, 78 forensic psychiatrists, and 126 forensic psychologists. Judges were asked for ratings of the degree to which each term aids their understanding, and clinicians were asked for ratings of the likelihood that they wou...

The authors classified 1,760 heterosexual pornographic magazines according to the imagery of the cover photographs. Covers depicting only a woman posed alone predominated in 1970 but constituted only 10.7% of the covers in 1981. Bondage and domination imagery was the most prevalent nonormative imagery and was featured in 17.2% of the magazines. Sma...

A few sexual fatalities show ambiguous or conflicting evidence of manner of death or, in cases involving partners, of the partner's intent. In such equivocal cases, postmortem behavioral analysis and reconstruction aid in understanding what happened and provide an explainable basis for expert judgment and opinion, even though some cases can never b...

Luteinizing hormone (LH) levels were determined in postmortem blood samples obtained from twenty-eight men who sustained sudden traumatic deaths. Violent antemortem behavior (committing suicide by gunshot or hanging, or killed during a violent attack or physical struggle) was associated with significantly higher LH levels than nonviolent antemortem...

This article has no abstract; the first 100 words appear below. Aggression underlies survival, achievement, and conquest; causes suffering, morbidity, and mortality; and profoundly threatens the perpetuation of our species. An interplanetary traveler would marvel at our ability to deny the threats posed by aggression and our refusal to conceptualiz...

Of 638 reported assaultive and disruptive incidents in 1979 in a maximum security hospital, 221 (34.6%) were batteries. Whether an incident was a battery or not was a function of time and location. Preludes to battery were noted by staff in only 23.1% of cases and were high-frequency behaviors with low predictive value. Impact and injury to patient...

• Of 638 reported assaultive and disruptive incidents in 1979 in a maximum security hospital, 221 (34.6%) were batteries. Whether an incident was a battery or not was a function of time and location. Preludes to battery were noted by staff in only 23.1% of cases and were high-frequency behaviors with low predictive value. Impact and injury to patie...

The reported cases illustrate the complex relationships between the nature of the self-injurious autoerotic activity and the cause of death in autoerotic fatalities. Although the types of autoerotic fatalities mentioned in this paper include only a limited range of injurious agents, it is well to bear in mind that the dynamics of sexual masochism a...

Reviews the most important features of the autoerotic death scene (location, victim position, the injurious agent, the self-rescue mechanism, bondage, masochism, attire, protective padding, sexual paraphernalia, and masturbatory activity) and the principal sources of information regarding the victim's previous experience (i.e., from relatives, perm...

This article has no abstract; the first 100 words appear below. As a sociologist, Donald Light immersed himself for a year in one of the most influential psychiatric training programs of the 1960s. He studied the residency as a participant-observer at ward meetings, rounds, training seminars, and in the inner sanctums of psychotherapy and superviso...

Cross-section survey data were used to test eight hypotheses derived from the New Haven studies of psychiatric treatment practices. Eighty percent of the psychiatrists in Maryland completed a 10-page questionnaire, and those 29 who had used electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) during the preceding year were compared with 441 who had not. Respondents did...

Case illustrations are given to suggest the complexity of the effects on the quality of life of developments in psychotropic medicines, deinstitutionalization, and patients' rights. Community services often do not provide the mentally disabled with the benefits predicted for such programs. Whether the net effect of the revolutionary extrusion of th...

Historically, the forensic psychiatrist has been a physician with a special interest in medicolegal aspects of psychiatry, sometimes but not necessarily supplemented by individual study, specialized training, and appropriate experience. Even today, any physician is free to declare himself a forensic psychiatrist and to deliver forensic psychiatric...

This chapter discusses the services provided by physicians, nurses, psychologists, social workers, and other full-time mental health workers. Mental health services are divided into three delivery sectors: the general medical sector, the private mental health sector, and the public mental health sector. The general medical and private mental health...

The author believes that recent legal decisions against psychiatrists (including class action suits) have their genesis in writings by sociologists and other behavioral scientists, including psychiatrists, who have examined psychiatry in the context of social structure and social processes. The discrediting of the medical model could have been acco...

Every discipline must occasionally take stock of where it has been and where it is going and this is nowhere more important than in a field such as legal medicine in which the practitioners are scattered around the world and have various professional identities and allegiances. Elsewhere the author has described the tripartite structure of American...

Physicians-in-training generally have insufficient exposure to legal medicine to prepare them for the medicolegal problems they will encounter in practice. This Article outlines the current structure of the field of legal medicine in America, and sets forth two strategies with clinical orientations for teaching legal medicine to physicians-in-train...

The behavioral sciences have much to offer medical research and practice, and they are likely to play an increasingly important role in medical education. The need for researchers and teachers trained in both medicine and behavioral sciences has been addressed at Johns Hopkins by the establishment of a joint degree program. Concurrent, as opposed t...

This small book richly deserves its place among the classics; in its 51st year, it has come of age as an historical volume as well. It is written clearly in the English tradition, and the occasional archaic usages ("cannot be gainsaid," "taking unction to oneself") provide a sense of continuity with the past without obscuring the facts.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Johns Hopkins University, 1984. Vita. Bibliography : leaves 522-610. Microfilm.