Offenders With Intellectual Disability: Characteristics, Prevalence, and Issues in Forensic Assessment
- 6 April 2010
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Taylor & Francis Ltd in Journal of Mental Health Research in Intellectual Disabilities
- Vol. 3 (2), 97-116
- https://doi.org/10.1080/19315861003695769
Abstract
Although the problem of people with disabilities as victims of crime has been well recognized, the known characteristics of people with intellectual disabilities (ID) also make them vulnerable to becoming perpetrators of crimes. Most such crimes are minor, but the 2002 Atkins v. Virginia decision called national attention to people with ID and people with dual diagnoses who commit capital crimes. This article reviews the data on offenders with intellectual and dual disabilities and the challenges related to their diagnoses and their roles in the criminal justice system. Offenders with ID are overwhelmingly individuals with mild intellectual disability, and their characteristics largely resemble those of offenders who do not have an ID diagnosis. They do not engage predominantly in any one form of criminal behavior, and their readily identifiable characteristics do not set them apart from offenders without a disability. However, their intellectual limitations make it more difficult for them to understand their Miranda rights; to work effectively with their attorneys; or for those found incompetent to stand trial, to profit from formal programs to restore them to competency. Assessment methods, particularly assessment of malingering of ID, have many limitations when applied in the criminal justice setting.Keywords
This publication has 49 references indexed in Scilit:
- Susceptibility of current adaptive behavior measures to feigned deficits.Law and Human Behavior, 2009
- The Relationship of IQ to Effort Test PerformanceThe Clinical Neuropsychologist, 2008
- Establishing Mental Retardation in Capital Cases: An UpdateMental Retardation, 2003
- The effect of competency restoration training on defendants with mental retardation found not competent to proceed.Law and Human Behavior, 2002
- Interrogative Suggestibility, Memory and Intellectual DisabilityJournal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities, 2002
- Validity of the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence and Other Very Short Forms of Estimating Intellectual FunctioningAssessment, 2002
- Practice Effects on the WAIS-III Across 3- and 6-Month IntervalsThe Clinical Neuropsychologist, 2002
- Words without Meaning: The Constitution, Confessions, and Mentally Retarded SuspectsThe University of Chicago Law Review, 2002
- Ten psychometric reasons why similar tests produce dissimilar resultsJournal of School Psychology, 1988
- Assorted Imbalances on RetardationContemporary Psychology, 1963