Citation

Vidal S, Skeem JL. Law Hum. Behav. 2007; 31(5): 479-498.

Affiliation

Social Behavior, 3311 Social Ecology II, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, California 92697-7085, USA, skeem@uci.edu.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007, American Psychological Association)

DOI

10.1007/s10979-006-9077-1

PMID

17294135

Abstract

Probation officers exercise substantial discretion in their daily work with troubled and troubling juvenile offenders. In this experiment, we examine the effect of psychopathic features, child abuse, and ethnicity on 204 officers' expectancies of, recommendations for, and approach to supervising, juvenile offenders. The results indicate that officers (a) have decision-making and supervision approaches that are affected by a youth's psychopathic traits and history of child abuse-but not ethnicity; (b) view both abused youth and psychopathic youth as highly challenging cases on a path toward adult criminality; and (c) have greater hope and sympathy for abused youth than psychopathic youth. For abused youth, officers are likely to recommend psychological services and "go the extra mile" by providing greater support, referrals, and networking than is typical for their caseload. For psychopathic youth, officers expect poor treatment outcomes and are" extra strict," enforcing rules that typically are not enforced for others on their caseload.

Language: en