Abstract:
The prevention of sexual violence is a major goal of sexual health. In cases of accused sexual offenders, the assessment of diminished criminal responsibility of the accused is one of the most important procedures undertaken by experts in the German legal system. This assessment follows a two-stage method assessing first the severity of a paraphilic disorder and then second criteria for or against diminished capacity. The present study examines the predictive validity of two different sets of criteria for the assessment of criminal responsibility in the context of paraphilic disorders combined with sexual offending. Two exemplary case vignettes of two suspected sexual offenders were developed to assess the criteria. For each participant, one of the two exemplary case vignettes was randomly presented. The presentation of the two different sets of criteria was also randomized, so that each participant was assigned only one of the two criteria sets to rate one of the presented cases. N = 349 participants from different professional backgrounds (mental health and legal professionals) completed their assessments and were included in the data analysis. The data were evaluated using logistic regression. Results show that the more recently published criteria set (Briken and Müller, 2014) predicts both the severity of the disorder as well as the diminished capacity twice as good as the older criteria set of Boetticher et al. (2005) currently used regularly for forensic court reports. In preliminary conclusion, the new criteria of Briken and Müller (2014) form an empirically based assessment of criminal responsibility. However, the proposed criteria cannot replace an extensive exploration of the accused person and a careful file analysis. Validity and reliability of the results are also limited due to the methodical choice of a vignette study.
摘要:
预防性暴力是性健康的主要目标。在被指控的性犯罪者的案件中,对被告刑事责任减少的评估是德国法律制度专家采取的最重要程序之一。该评估遵循两阶段方法,首先评估亲合性障碍的严重程度,然后评估针对或针对能力减弱的第二个标准。本研究考察了在性交障碍和性犯罪的背景下评估刑事责任的两套不同标准的预测有效性。开发了两个涉嫌性犯罪者的示例性案例,以评估标准。对于每个参与者,随机呈现了两个示例性案例中的一个。两组不同标准的呈现也是随机的,因此,每个参与者只被分配了两个标准集中的一个,以评估其中一个案例。来自不同专业背景(心理健康和法律专业人员)的349名参与者完成了他们的评估,并被纳入数据分析。使用逻辑回归对数据进行评估。结果表明,最近公布的标准集(Briken和Müller,2014)预测疾病的严重程度以及减少的能力是Boetticher等人的旧标准集的两倍。(2005)目前经常用于法医法院报告。在初步结论中,Briken和Müller(2014)的新标准形成了对刑事责任的基于经验的评估。然而,拟议的标准不能取代对被告的广泛探索和仔细的档案分析。由于插图研究的方法选择,结果的有效性和可靠性也受到限制。