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Final Exam Study Guide

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Here is a comprehensive study guide designed directly from the professor’s final exam review instructions in Class 11, combined with the specific concepts highlighted as highly testable throughout the term.

Exam Scope & Structure Note: The final exam covers only post-midterm material (Mental Illness in the Court through Homicide). The exam consists of 90 multiple-choice questions and 4 short answer questions.

Important Short Answer Clarification: In Class 11, the professor explicitly stated that the 4 short answer questions will come from four specific topics: Mental Illness in the Court, Psychopathy, Young Offenders, and Homicide. They explicitly noted that Sentencing and Risk Assessment will not have short answer questions (they will be evaluated via multiple-choice).

PART 1: SHORT ANSWER STUDY GUIDE

Focus your short answer preparation heavily on these four core topics and their primary frameworks.

1. Psychopathy

  • The Four Facets of Psychopathy (The “Ingredients”): The professor called the 4-factor model the “most important slide for the whole class”. You must be able to list the facets and their underlying characteristics:
    • Interpersonal: Manipulative, grandiose, deceptive, dominant, insincere, and egocentric.
    • Affective: Lacking remorse, lacking empathy, shallow emotions, and failing to accept responsibility for actions.
    • Behavioral: Impulsive, needing stimulation/excitement, irresponsible, and lacking realistic long-term goals.
    • Antisocial: Early childhood behavior problems, juvenile delinquency, and criminal versatility.
  • Psychopathy and Violence Correlations: This is a major exam trap. You must know that psychopathy is correlated equally with both reactive and instrumental violence. However, when psychopaths commit homicide, it is overwhelmingly instrumental (planned, cold-blooded, goal-directed).
  • The Survival Curve Graph: The professor emphasized knowing how to read the PCL-R survival graph. Know that individuals with a PCL-R score of less than 15 have an approximate 70% probability of surviving in the community for 25 years without receiving a new violent conviction.

2. Young Offenders

  • Trajectories of Youthful Offenders (Moffitt’s Model): The professor stressed this is a “very important model” to know and “show off on the final”.
    • Adolescent-Limited (AL): Normative trajectory encompassing roughly 70% of the population. Antisocial behavior begins and ends in adolescence, is largely influenced by peers, and involves less serious crimes.
    • Life-Course Persistent (LCP): Chronic trajectory beginning in early childhood and persisting into adulthood. It is linked to neurological/neurodevelopmental deficits (e.g., ADHD), adverse environments, poverty, and severe aggression.
  • Why Youth Receive Less Severe Sanctions: Be prepared to list the four core reasons youth are sentenced differently than adults:
    1. They are less likely/able to appreciate the seriousness of their actions.
    2. They are less able to control impulses due to an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex.
    3. They are more susceptible to peer pressure and the influence of others.
    4. There is a greater hope and potential for successful treatment and rehabilitation.
  • Hostile Attribution Bias: A cognitive distortion where a youth interprets ambiguous social situations (e.g., a peer breaking their toy while they aren’t looking) as intentional and hostile, leading to reactive aggression.

3. Homicide

  • Typologies of Serial Killers (Holmes & DeBurger): The professor explicitly stated, “Typologies of serial killers, very important… Everyone’s gonna be really good on this question”. Memorize the four main motives:
    • Visionary: Psychotic; killing in response to delusions or hallucinations (e.g., hearing voices).
    • Mission-Oriented: Targeting and eliminating a specific group of people deemed undesirable (e.g., Gary Ridgway targeting sex workers).
    • Power/Control: Motivated by the desire to have absolute dominance and total control over the victim’s life and death.
    • Hedonistic: Killing for pleasure or gain. Sub-divided into Lust (sexual gratification), Thrill (excitement/adrenaline), and Comfort (financial/material gain).
  • Multiple Murderer Definitions:
    • Mass Murder: Multiple victims in a single event at one general location, with no cooling-off period.
    • Spree Murder: Multiple victims in one continuous event across two or more locations, with no cooling-off period.
    • Serial Murder: Multiple victims in separate events at different locations, with a distinct psychological cooling-off period.
  • Female vs. Male Serial Killers: Understand that female serial killers differ significantly. They are far more likely to be place-specific (e.g., healthcare settings/”Angels of Death” or homes/”Black Widows”), use poison, target known victims or family members, and kill for financial gain (comfort-oriented).

4. Mental Illness in the Court

  • Fitness to Stand Trial vs. NCRMD:
    • Fitness deals with the defendant’s mental state at the present time of the trial (can they understand the charges, the consequences, and communicate with counsel?).
    • NCRMD (Not Criminally Responsible) deals with the defendant’s mental state at the time the offense was committed (did a disease of the mind prevent them from knowing the nature/quality of the act?).
  • Automatism: Understand the difference between non-mental disorder automatism (involuntary behavior due to an external factor like a physical blow, sleepwalking, or carbon monoxide, leading to a not guilty verdict) and mental disorder automatism (which results in an NCRMD verdict). The Kenneth Parks sleepwalking case is the prime example of non-mental disorder automatism.

PART 2: MULTIPLE-CHOICE HIGHLIGHTS

While not on the short answer section, the professor emphasized several specific items that are highly testable via multiple choice.

Risk Assessment

  • Decision Errors (The 2×2 Matrix): The professor said you “just have to hammer it into your mind” because it is tricky.
    • False Positive: Predicting a person is high risk/violent, but they actually do not reoffend. This unjustly violates the offender’s rights by keeping them locked up unnecessarily.
    • False Negative: Predicting a person is low risk/safe, but they actually do go on to commit a violent act. This compromises public safety.
    • Note: The “Base Rate Problem” dictates that predicting extremely rare events (like school shootings) inevitably leads to a massive number of False Positives.
  • Types of Risk Factors: The professor warned they will likely give you a hypothetical risk factor and ask you to categorize it:
    • Static (Historical): Unchangeable facts from the past (e.g., age of first arrest, experiencing child maltreatment, having a past criminal record).
    • Stable Dynamic: Variables that can fluctuate over long periods and be changed via treatment (e.g., antisocial attitudes, substance abuse problems, ongoing symptoms of trauma).
    • Acute Dynamic: Variables of short duration that change rapidly and usually immediately precede an offense (e.g., sudden intoxication, extreme anger).
  • Risk Assessment Approaches: Know the comparison table intimately:
    • Unstructured Clinical Judgment (UCJ): Subjective, informal, lacks guidelines, and is highly prone to “illusory correlations” (false beliefs that intuitive feelings correlate with actual danger).
    • Actuarial: Purely statistical, heavily relies on static/historical items, and produces exact mathematical risk estimates/probabilities (e.g., Static-99R). Very consistent, but inflexible as it ignores dynamic/protective factors.
    • Structured Professional Judgment (SPJ): A middle-ground that systematically reviews a predefined list of static and dynamic factors but leaves the final decision (Low, Moderate, High) up to clinical judgment (e.g., HCR-20). Highly flexible but lacks exact probability estimates.

Sentencing and Parole

  • The RNR Model (Risk, Need, Responsivity):
    • Risk: Match the intensity of the intervention to the offender’s risk level (high-risk gets intensive treatment; low-risk gets minimal/no treatment).
    • Need: Target only criminogenic needs (changeable factors reliably linked to crime, like antisocial associates and substance abuse, not general mental health issues like low self-esteem).
    • Responsivity: Match the treatment delivery to the offender’s learning style (e.g., using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy/CBT).
    • Effectiveness: Reductions in recidivism are highest when all RNR principles are applied in a community setting.
  • Release Success Rates: Know that offenders granted Full Parole are more likely to be successful upon release than those granted Statutory Release.

Disparities in the Justice System

  • Sentencing Disparity Types:
    • Systematic Disparity: Consistent differences between different judges (e.g., one judge is always exceptionally harsh, another is always lenient).
    • Unsystematic Disparity: Inconsistencies within the same judge over time, often due to mood, fatigue, or extraneous daily factors (e.g., Judge Lee denying all bail because she got a speeding ticket that morning).
  • Indigenous Offender Statistics: Indigenous offenders are roughly 3 times more likely to receive a harsher sentence compared to non-Indigenous people, despite being less likely to commit violent crimes on average.