Partisan allegiance in legal cases involving sexual assault

The present study involved the assessment of partisan allegiance in expert witnesses in 261 Canadian sentencing decisions, each involving sexual assault. Sentencing decisions were assessed to determine whether risk levels communicated by defense- and prosecution-retained evaluators reflect the prese...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of law, crime and justice crime and justice, 2020-12, Vol.63, p.100423, Article 100423
Main Authors: Adams, Lindsay, Jung, Sandy
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Allegiance
Court hearings & proceedings
Criminal sentences
Decisions
Evaluation
Expert testimony
Expert witness testimony
Partisan allegiance
Prosecutions
Risk assessment
Sentencing
Sex crimes
Sexual assault
Static-99R
Citations: Items that this one cites
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The present study involved the assessment of partisan allegiance in expert witnesses in 261 Canadian sentencing decisions, each involving sexual assault. Sentencing decisions were assessed to determine whether risk levels communicated by defense- and prosecution-retained evaluators reflect the presence of partisan allegiance. A validated risk measure (Static-99R) was used to assess each sentenced defendant based on the information provided in the written decision and served as an anchor (i.e., comparative assessment of risk). The risk levels for each defendant, based on the Static-99R and information in the sentencing decisions, were used to determine if there existed any discrepancy in the reporting of risk levels due to evaluator allegiance. The results revealed that while the prosecution-retained experts' scores correlated with the researchers' risk scores, they tended to provide a greater percentage of risk scores that were higher than the researchers’ risk scores.
ISSN:1756-0616
1876-763X
DOI:10.1016/j.ijlcj.2020.100423