News
The impact of migration on criminal courts in Birmingham
Ana Aliverti is currently wiring up her project on the impact of migration on criminal courts in Birmingham and has written a fantastic blog piece on the matter.
In the blog, she explores the struggles encountered by non-native English speakers and the language barriers such defendants face.
“Language should be a vehicle for communication rather than segregation and marginalisation”.
You can read Ana’s blog here: https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/research-subject-groups/centre-criminology/centreborder-criminologies/blog/2016/07/divided-language
Fair lineups for suspects with distinctive features
New Publication!
Melissa Colloff (PhD student, Psychology), Assistant Professor Kim Wade (Psychology), and Deryn Strange (John Jay College, CUNY) have a new publication. Their paper "Unfair Lineups Make Witnesses More Likely to Confuse Innocent and Guilty Suspects" has just been published in a leading psychology journal, Psychological Science.
In a study containing almost 9000 participants, the authors compare three fair lineup techniques used by the police with unfair lineups in which nothing was done to prevent a distinctive suspect from standing out. The paper highlights the importance of constructing fair lineups for distinctive suspects.
Access the press release here:
Access the paper, here:
http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/07/21/0956797616655789.abstract
How the timing of police evidence disclosure impacts custodial legal advice
New Publication!
The new publication by Divya Sukumar, Prof. Jackie Hodgson and Assistant Prof. Kim Wade's article on the impact of police evidence on the advice which solicitor's give to client is now available to be read at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/298789500_How_the_timing_of_police_evidence_disclosure_impacts_custodial_legal_advice
Presently, the police in England and Wales disclose their evidence at different points during the arrest and detention of a suspect. While the courts have not objected to this, past field research suggests that lawyers can only advise their clients accurately when the police disclose their evidence before the police interview. To examine this from a law/psychology perspective, we recruited 100 criminal defence lawyers to participate in an online study. Lawyers read fictional scenarios and provided custodial legal advice to a hypothetical client (Christopher) when given either pre-interview disclosure or disclosure at various points during the police interview (early, gradually or late). Lawyers given pre-interview disclosure provided considerably more informed legal advice compared to those who were only provided with disclosure during the hypothetical police interview. Using an interdisciplinary approach, this article provides further evidence that pre-interview disclosure is essential for lawyers to deliver case-specific legal advice to suspects.
Understanding the Sentencing Process in France
New Publication!
Jackie Hodgson and Laurène Soubise have recently published their article, 'Understanding the sentencing process in France'. You can read the article abstract below, and the full article can be found at: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/685538
French sentencing is characterized by broad judicial discretion and an ethos of individualized justice focused on rehabilitation. The aims are to prevent recidivism, and so protect the interests of society, while reintegrating the offender. By contrast, the political Right, characterized by the recent Sarkozy regime, favours deterrence through harsher penalties, minimum prison sentences, increased incarceration, and preventive detention of offenders considered dangerous. The sentencing process can be understood only within the broader context of inquisitorially rooted criminal procedure. The central part played by the prosecutor (including in case disposition through alternative sanctions) and her role in recommending sentences that the court almost invariably endorses, together with the unitary nature of the judicial profession, means that there is remarkable consistency in penalties imposed. The contraine penale, based on a reconsideration of the range of available penalties put forward by the Consensus Commission and legislated in 2014, is unlikely to have great impact without investment in the probation service and a change in the judicial culture that still favours simple sentencing options, including imprisonment, compared with alternatives now in place.
Strategic Disclosure of Evidence: Perspectives from Psychology and Law
New Publication!
A new publication by Divya Sukumar, Jackie Hodgson & Kim Wade explores perspectives from psychology and law on police disclosure. The abstract can be read below and the article can be found here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304181533_Strategic_Disclosure_of_Evidence_Perspectives_From_Psychology_and_Law
The police frequently present their evidence to suspects in investigative interviews. Accordingly, psychologists have developed strategic ways in which the police may present evidence to catch suspects lying or to elicit more information from suspects. While research in psychology continues to illustrate the effectiveness of strategic evidence disclosure tactics in lie detection, lawyers and legal research challenge these very tactics as undermining fair trial defense rights. Legal research is alive to the problems associated with strategically disclosing evidence to a suspect, such as preventing lawyers from advising the suspect effectively, increasing custodial pressure for the suspect, and worsening working relations between lawyers and police. This paper brings together the opposing research and arguments from the two disciplines of psychology and law, and suggests a new way forward for future research and policy on how the police should disclose evidence.