This chapter will discuss the psychological processes by which pretrial publicity (PTP) can affect jurors’ and judges’ decisions. Pretrial publicity includes all media coverage (traditional and social media) of cases making their way to trial. Although many jurors believe they can ignore what they have read or heard about the case, and many judges believe they can effectively rehabilitate jurors exposed to PTP, this is typically not the case. These efforts and their effectiveness are examined in detail. Both positive and negative PTP can influence decisions in a variety of trial types (including civil and criminal). Jurors tend to examine this information through lenses such as predecisional influences that tend to focus on a particular side. Research also suggests they employ long-established narratives such as the story model in these situations. The chapter will synthesize this body of research and offer future directions and implications for the legal field.

People undertake a decision-making process when they perceive a criminal opportunity although these decisions are often not purely rational. To clarify this process, several theories have been developed to explain how criminal decisions are made. Three such theories – deterrence theory, rational choice theory, and routine activity theory – along with major concepts from each theory, are examined in this chapter. Among the topics covered are the celerity, certainty, and severity of punishment, the utility of cost–benefit analysis, and the necessity of considering the role of a motivated offender, a suitable target, and the absence of capable guardians in explaining a criminal event. The limitations of a purely rational approach to criminal decision-making and how opportunity, incentive, emotion, and irrational thinking affect these decisions are also discussed. Finally, the practical and policy implications of these results are explored, after which recommendations for future research focusing on the methodology and domains that influence these decisions are made.

As should be clear from the preceding 50 chapters in this book, the type and number of decisions made in the legal system are virtually endless. In the criminal context, the offenders decide to commit, the victims decide whether to report, and bystanders decide whether to report or cooperate. The police decide if and how they will interrogate. Suspects decide whether to cooperate with police and whether to accept a plea bargain. Attorneys decide whether to prosecute and encourage their clients to settle or negotiate a plea bargain. Psychologists decide if a defendant is competent, insane, and/or amenable to treatment. Jurors decide a verdict (and occasionally, as in death penalty trials, a sentence), and judges decide whether to admit evidence and what sentence a defendant should receive. In the civil context, people harmed decide whether to sue, and attorneys decide whether to take the case and what evidence to rely on. Judges make decisions throughout the civil litigation process, and both jurors and judges can make ultimate decisions (e.g., verdict, damages). Other decisions include legislators’ decisions on defining crime, social workers’ decisions on whether to take action against a parent who is under their supervision, parole board members’ decisions on whether a person in prison should be released, and so on.

Clinicians can play an integral role in the ultimate determination of defendants’ criminal responsibility, given that information gleaned from mental state at the time of the offense (MSO) evaluations influence judges and jurors’ decision-making about a particular case. Such evaluations are particularly complicated due to their retrospective nature, lack of a standardized assessment approach, and variability in criminal responsibility statutes across jurisdictions and time. Yet several legal, clinical, and contextual factors appear to impact clinicians’ decision-making when tasked with these evaluations. In this chapter, we examine the existing literature regarding MSO evaluation referrals, including combined evaluations, to help inform practitioners’ expectations. Next, we review critical components of an MSO evaluation and identify challenges for clinical decision-making. Then we discuss forensic report writing and testifying, as informed by the literature regarding best practices. Lastly, we suggest how field reliability of mental state evaluations might improve through research and policy.

I write from the perspective of a Black woman who is a first-generation American and a clinically trained psychologist. I practice at the intersection of the public mental health and criminal justice systems, as a public sector forensic evaluator. I additionally function as university faculty, tasked with educating and training forensic mental health professionals early in their forensic careers. I carry my identities and roles with me in my daily practice, where decision-making becomes tangled in systems that have multiple and at times competing functions, agendas, resources, and responsibilities.

This chapter will examine treatment amenability decisions in juveniles. The juvenile courts have long focused on rehabilitation instead of the punitive approach of the criminal system. A significant aspect of that process has been the determination of whether a given person is likely to be responsive to intervention or if the needs of society would best be served by placing the person in the criminal justice system. This chapter will examine the history of the use of amenability in the juvenile justice system, the various decision points for the use of the amenability-to-treatment construct, definitions and assessment technology for amenability, factors and processes that contribute to these decisions, and how this information is communicated to the court. In addition, the chapter focuses on what professional training is needed to perform such evaluations. Future research and policy implications are also discussed.

The literature on violence risk assessment has primarily focused on prescriptive approaches, whereby methods are designed to assess risk to arrive at accurate conceptualizations and decisions regarding future risk. However, we have often failed to think about the underlying decision-making process clinicians exhibit, and especially the decision-making within the limitations of their clinical contexts. Understanding this underlying decision-making process is imperative to maximize the success or accuracy of our prescriptive approaches. The current chapter seeks to review the history of decision-making across the generations of violence risk assessment and identify our primary approaches to risk assessment decision-making, or our prescriptive approaches. We then turn our attention toward the decision-making process itself and focus on the information we use to arrive at our decisions regarding violence risk and the use of this information in clinical practice. Finally, we identify areas of future exploration.

This chapter focuses on legal decisions often neglected in the general field of psychology and law: legislative decisions. These decisions establish the legal framework within which other entities operate. The chapter begins with a description of the legislative branch and a summary of different types of legislative decisions. It then differentiates between democratic and nondemocratic settings (e.g. oligarchies, autocracies) and concisely covers theories of power structure – namely, state-centered theory, pluralist theory, and elite-power theory. It then moves on to identifying and expounding the factors that influence legislative decisions. In democratic contexts, these factors include variables internal to the legislature, such as lawmaker demographics, social ties/networks, and party/ideology, as well as external variables such as public opinion, media, and campaign contributions/lobbying. In nondemocratic contexts, however, legislative decisions are largely influenced by power, wealth, and corruption. The chapter concludes by discussing implications for theories of power structure and proposing future directions.

In the United States, jurors serve as the fact-finders for the civil and criminal justice systems and are tasked with making important decisions that impact society (e.g., verdicts and sentences in criminal cases and damages in civil cases). This chapter discusses current models and theories of juror decision-making to frame and provide a foundation for addressing how various types of legal evidence and nonlegal factors affect juror decision-making, including emotional evidence (e.g., victim impact statements and gruesome pictures and videos) and scientific evidence (e.g., DNA, shoe print, and fingerprint evidence). The chapter also examines how “nonevidentiary” extralegal factors, such as characteristics of the trial participants (e.g., age, sex, race, socioeconomic status, and other sociodemographics factors), are incorporated by jurors and influence their evaluation of evidence and decisions during trial. This chapter concludes with proposing various avenues for future research and a discussion of the policy implications of the work reviewed.

The strength of the judiciary depends upon fair and impartial jurists who can make complex decisions while minimizing bias. This chapter provides an overview of how psychological processes can affect judicial decision-making at every stage of the judicial process, including decisions at pretrial hearings related to dispositive motions (e.g., motions to dismiss). The chapter begins with an overview of how judges might use heuristics (cognitive “shortcuts”) when making decisions, followed by discussions of how emotions, inferences, and implicit associations each can affect judicial decision-making. The chapter concludes with recommendations to expand judicial education on issues related to psychological science. For example, although many judicial education courses address implicit bias, research finds that the limited effectiveness and duration of these trainings warrant further study. Overall, we urge judicial educators to familiarize themselves with psychological research, expand course content, and offer an evidence-based educational approach that allows judges to apply lessons from psychology in their chambers and courtrooms.

This chapter will examine complex decisions relevant to family law. Decisions shaped by bias can lead to outcomes that place certain people and groups at an unfair disadvantage while placing others at an unjustified advantage. Implicit bias can have significant implications for outcomes in the legal system, including in family court. Although decision-makers might view themselves as free of bias, decades of research indicates that this is simply not the case. Though it is not possible to completely remove bias from decision-making, awareness can partially mitigate the harm of unconscious bias. In particular, the chapter will address family law decisions and decision-making bias in various domains, including bias in (1) credibility determinations, (2) gender, (3) sexual orientation and gender identity, (4) socioeconomic status, (5) intimate partner violence, and (6) substance use. The chapter will consider both psychological research and legal principles and identify areas where additional research needs to be conducted. Future research and/or policy implications will be discussed.

This personal chapter reflects the experience and observations of a clinical and forensic psychologist that has treated victims and worked in the legal system for decades. The chapter describes the myriad of decisions and barriers victims face when reporting and the unanticipated consequences of reporting.

Children are a critical part of certain legal trials, such as cases involving child abuse and neglect, and especially in cases of child sexual abuse. It is common for the only evidence in these types of cases to be the statement of the child victims. Children’s decisions about if and when to disclose the abuse are affected by many factors, and delays in disclosure are common. Police, forensic interviewers, prosecutors, and other professionals make decisions about when and how to interview children, the accuracy/credibility of their statements, if a case will move forward, and if and how children will testify in court. In some courtrooms, children are given special accommodations (e.g., testifying through closed-circuit TV or being accompanied by a therapy dog). Decisions about evaluating children in these situations have implications for the safety of children and the protection of innocent adults. Future research and policy implications are discussed.

Biases in judicial decision-making are prevalent throughout the criminal legal system. In various chapters of this volume, the contributors have highlighted specific incidents or indicators of biases in decision-making that disproportionally affects minoritized persons and groups. If these biases are inherent in decision-making, is the criminal legal system upholding its aspiration of distributive and procedural justice? What is justice? Justice typically refers to fairness (or equity) for all people. Advocates and scholars have refrained from referring to the system as the criminal justice system because for some victims, victims’ families, defendants, and those who have been convicted, the system is not operating in a just manner. In my view, the US criminal legal system is broken – or, as Hunt (Chapter 3) suggests, operating in the way it was originally intended. The criminal legal system disproportionately targets racial and ethnic minoritized populations, as well as minoritized sexual and gender-diverse populations. This phenomenon, known as disproportionate minority contact (DMC), has been in the purview of the criminal legal system for several decades.