Prelims
A History of the Assessment of Sex Offenders: 1830–2020
ISBN: 978-1-78769-360-9, eISBN: 978-1-78769-359-3
Publication date: 14 February 2020
Citation
Laws, D.R. (2020), "Prelims", A History of the Assessment of Sex Offenders: 1830–2020, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. i-xii. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-78769-359-320201005
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2020 D. Richard Laws
Half Title Page
A History of the Assessment of Sex Offenders
Title Page
A History of the Assessment of Sex Offenders: 1830–2020
BY
D. Richard Laws
Pacific Behavioural Assessment, Canada
United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China
Copyright Page
Emerald Publishing Limited
Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK
First edition 2020
Copyright © D. Richard Laws, 2020.
Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited.
Reprints and permissions service
Contact: permissions@emeraldinsight.com
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters’ suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-78769-360-9 (Print)
ISBN: 978-1-78769-359-3 (Online)
ISBN: 978-1-78769-361-6 (Epub)
Dedication Page
Everything exists in some quantity and can therefore be measured.
Edward L. Thorndike (1874–1949)
Contents
List of Figures | ix |
Acknowledgments | xi |
Preface | xii |
Part I: Introduction | |
Chapter 1 Contemporary Psychological Assessment | 3 |
Part II: Assessment of Criminal and Sex Offenders: 19th and 20th Centuries | |
Chapter 2 Criminal Statistics and the Identification of Populations | 15 |
Chapter 3 Offender Classification and Registration | 29 |
Chapter 4 Phrenology: Pseudoscience of the Mind or Precursor Science? | 43 |
Chapter 5 Criminal Anthropology: Lombroso’s Search for Criminal Man | 63 |
Chapter 6 Anthropometry: Bertillon’s Measurement of Criminal Man | 89 |
Chapter 7 Fingerprinting: A Document Complete in Itself | 99 |
Part III: Assessment of Sex Offenders: 20th and 21st Centuries | |
Chapter 8 Penile Plethysmography: The Search for the Gold Standard | 113 |
Chapter 9 Viewing Time: An Alternative to PPG | 129 |
Chapter 10 Attention-based Measures: Supplementary Procedures | 141 |
Chapter 11 Polygraphy: The Bogus Pipeline to the Soul | 149 |
Part IV: Assessment of Sex Offenders: Possible Futures | |
Chapter 12 Virtual and Augmented Reality: Being There | 173 |
Part V: Conclusions | |
Chapter 13 What We Learned in 190 Years: 12 Takeaways | 195 |
Index | 205 |
List of Figures
Fig. 1. John Clay’s (1839) Prison Register for the Preston House of Correction. | 33 |
Fig. 2. De Ville’s (1841) Phrenological Head. | 47 |
Fig. 3. Bertillon’s (1896) Signalement Anthropométrique. | 93 |
Fig. 4. Henry Fingerprint Classification System. | 102 |
Fig. 5. Affinity Archetype Ranking Task. | 134 |
Fig. 6. Affinity Image-rating Task. | 135 |
Acknowledgments
Thanks are due to a number of people who have assisted me in preparing this book. I would like to thank the staff members of Emerald Publishing Limited, notably Julia Willan, who liked my original proposal and promoted it to senior staff; Philippa Grand and Rachel Ward who supervised the early stages of preparation, and Hazel Goodes and Alice Ford for the final stages. Other colleagues assisted at various stages of preparation, including Lawrence Ellerby, Richard Packard, Don Grubin, and David Glasgow. Throughout I enjoyed the support and encouragement of my late wife Cynthia Mills.
Conflict of Interest: The author, D. Richard Laws, has, and continues to benefit financially from several products discussed in the work including the ‘Not Real People (NRP) stimulus set’ and ‘Affinity’. The author was a co-owner of the now-defunct ‘Pacific Psychological Assessment Corp’ which was used as the market vehicle for ‘NRP’. Additionally, the author is the current representative for sales for North America of the product, ‘Affinity’.
Preface
There are three related modes of inquiry that fall under the general rubric of criminal identification, which we might call forensic, archival, and diagnostic (Cole, 2001, p. 305).
- (1)
Forensic identification seeks to link a specific criminal act to a specific criminal body. Using a physical trace of a body, an impression on an actual body part or remnant, it attempts to establish the presence of a body at the scene of a crime and hence establish authorship of a crime.
- (2)
Archival identification seeks to link a particular criminal body to itself across space and time. In conjunction with a paper or electronic record, it aims to establish a history of past criminal activities that can be ascribed with confidence to a single body.
- (3)
Diagnostic identification seeks to read the signs of past or potential criminal behavior in the body itself. On the basis of some biological theory of the etiology of criminality, it endeavors to prevent crimes before they occur by identifying and stigmatizing potentially criminal bodies.
This book is primarily concerned with the first two modes of inquiry. The third mode is well beyond the scope of the present work as well as beyond the imagination of the author.
Reference
Cole. S. A. (2001). Suspect identities. A history of fingerprinting and criminal identification. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- Prelims
- Part I: Introduction
- Chapter 1: Contemporary Psychological Assessment
- Part II: Assessment of Criminal and Sex Offenders: 19th and 20th Centuries
- Chapter 2: Criminal Statistics and the Identification of Populations
- Chapter 3: Offender Classification and Registration
- Chapter 4: Phrenology: Pseudoscience of the Mind or Precursor Science?
- Chapter 5: Criminal Anthropology: Lombroso’s Search for Criminal Man
- Chapter 6: Anthropometry: Bertillon’s Measurement of Criminal Man
- Chapter 7: Fingerprinting: A Document Complete in Itself
- Part III: Assessment of Sex Offenders: 20th and 21st Centuries
- Chapter 8: Penile Plethysmography: The Search for the Gold Standard
- Chapter 9: Viewing Time: An Alternative to PPG
- Chapter 10: Attention-based Measures: Supplementary Procedures
- Chapter 11: Polygraphy: The Bogus Pipeline to the Soul
- Part IV: Assessment of Sex Offenders: Possible Futures
- Chapter 12: Virtual and Augmented Reality: Being There
- Part V: Conclusions
- Chapter 13: What We Learned in 190 Years: 12 Takeaways
- Index