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AP-LS Monthly E-News

Welcome to the June 2023

American Psychology-Law Society (AP-LS) Newsletter

 

Our monthly newsletter provides information about activities, upcoming events, and resources to connect the psychology-law community.

 

AP-LS aspires to excel as a valuable, effective, and influential organization advancing the science of psychology-law and the translation of psychology-law knowledge into practice and policy. 

Legal Update: State Bans on Gender-Affirming Care: Current Legal Landscape and Recommendations for Clinicians and Research

State Senator Megan Hunt addressed the Nebraska legislature regarding the state’s proposed ban on gender-affirming care following another senator’s three-week filibuster (Wendling, 2023). For Senator Hunt, the proposed ban was personal: her son had recently come out as transgender. “This is my life and this is my reality, and all of you know me . . . When my son came out to me, the challenges that I felt emotionally around that were private . . . but I was so happy to learn that I had a son.”

 

Though Senator Hunt and her family will be intimately affected if Nebraska passes the proposed legislation, state policies and bans on gender-affirming care for transgender and gender diverse youth will have broader impacts. This Legal Update will describe current state policies addressing gender-affirming care for youth and the legal challenges to these policies. The Legal Update will also briefly summarize research and professional organizations’ position statements regarding these policies, before exploring how these policies will affect psychologists.

 

Read the column.

 
 

Call for Papers: Special Issue on Bias in the Justice and Legal Systems

Bias is a pervasive aspect of human thought and behavior that influences how we perceive, interpret, and respond to the world around us. Individual biases, which may be implicit or explicit, also contribute to structural biases in the systems we create. Bias is a problem in the justice and legal systems because they are built upon assumptions of fairness and equality.

 

Social scientists who study the justice and legal systems can contribute greatly to our understanding of bias and its underlying mechanisms, consequences, and potential interventions. It is critical for social scientists to address these issues and to disseminate our knowledge in an accessible manner.

 

To this end, Law and Human Behavior seeks submissions for an upcoming special issue on "Bias in the Justice and Legal Systems," edited by Lucy Guarnera, Jennifer Perillo, and Kyle Scherr. We define bias as the influence of irrelevant factors (or the misapplication of relevant factors) to create systematic deviations in how people solve problems, make decisions, or form judgments. 

 

We are soliciting submissions that examine the influence of "Bias in the Justice and Legal Systems" including, but not limited, to:

  • Attorneys (charges, disclosure, plea bargains, jury selection)
  • Civil (child custody, personal injury)
  • Education (school discipline, Title IX)
  • Forensic experts (selection of cases, assessment of evidence, formation of opinions, task relevance)
  • Immigration (legal status, deportation)
  • Incarceration and other legal sanctions (risk assessment, mental health, infractions)
  • Judges (excluding/limiting expert testimony, rulings, sentencing)
  • Juries (credibility assessments, deliberation, verdicts)
  • Law enforcement (stops, arrest, use of force, interrogations)
  • Military (courts martial, intelligence interviewing, information gathering)
  • Pretrial (detention, bail, access to quality legal representation)
  • Reentry & community corrections (probation, employment, housing, education)
  • Wrongful conviction, exoneration, & confession

Because these systems consist of multiple decision-points, with the potential for one judgment to influence others, we will give particular preference to papers that examine the accumulation of bias at multiple decision-points within and across systems. Cumulative disadvantage and similar frameworks may be relevant here. We also encourage submissions investigating bias related to individual identities (e.g., race, ethnicity, sexual or gender identities, immigration status), as well as structural biases inherent in conflict resolution and adversarial processes (e.g., accessibility, availability of resources). 

 

We welcome submissions that use quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods to address theoretical, methodological, and practice issues involving bias. To maximize the potential impact of this Special Issue, we ask authors to write in a manner that is accessible to readers outside their discipline, including lay readers. In addition, every submission must contain a section that explicitly addresses the practical and policy implications of the work.

 

Authors interested in contributing a manuscript for the Special Issue should submit a nonbinding letter of intent by July 15, 2023. This letter should include (1) tentative title, (2) brief description of the manuscript in 500 words or less, and (3) all authors and affiliations. Please email letters of intent to LHB.bias@gmail.com.  

 

Authors who submit letters of intent will be notified if they are invited to submit a full manuscript for consideration. The deadline to submit a manuscript is November 1, 2023. Authors should refer to the Submission Guidelines on the Law and Human Behavior website and prepare their manuscripts in accordance with the Seventh Edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. Authors should submit electronically using the Editorial Manager web portal and specify in their cover letters that they would like their submissions to be considered for the Special Issue on Bias in the Justice and Legal Systems.

 

Questions about the Special Issue or the potential appropriateness of particular submissions can be sent to LHB.bias@gmail.com or directed to the editors, Lucy Guarnera (lag8e@virginia.edu), Jen Perillo (JTPerillo@salud.unm.edu), or Kyle Scherr (scher1kc@cmich.edu). 
 

Call for Undergraduate Paper Award

Eligibility

To be eligible for an award, the student must be the major contributor to a project on a topic relevant to psychology and law (i.e., the student had primary responsibility for initiating and conducting the project even though the project will usually be conducted under the supervision of a mentor). Data collection should be complete. Winners will be encouraged to submit their work for presentation at the AP-LS Conference (as first authors). Students may submit their work during their first post-undergraduate year as long as the work was conducted during their undergraduate career.

 

How to Apply

Submit one copy of APA-style paper (Abstract required). The paper should be a maximum of 25 pages of text (12-point font, one-inch margins), including the Abstract and Tables/Figures. The 25-page maximum does not include the Title Page and References. Papers that do not meet these requirements will be disqualified. 

 

Each applicant must have their mentor submit a letter of support to the chair that characterizes the nature and extent of the student’s contribution to the project. This letter should be a maximum of two pages of text (12-point font, one-inch margins). Applications that do not meet these requirements for letters of support will be disqualified.

 

Deadline for receipt of all materials is June 30. The paper and mentor letter should be emailed to Dr. Emily Pica at undergrad_paper@ap-ls.org. 

 

Submissions from students whose mentors are serving on this committee are welcome, but those mentors will not review the papers.

 

See our website for additional details.
 

Career Corner

The Career Corner is intended to highlight the individuals who work at the intersection of law and psychology, where they come from, how they got there, and how their experiences influence their research, teaching, and/or practice. This edition of the Career Corner profiles Dr. Angela van der Walt, Bureau of Prisons- Psychological Evaluations Section. Dr. van der Walt has research interests in forensic evaluation, violence risk assessment, severe mental illness, and policy development. Laura Stevens, a final year Psychology PhD student at the University of Birmingham and 2022-2023 Student Committee Experimental Liaison, interviewed Dr. van der Walt.

 

Read this Column
 

APA Updates

The APA Science Student Council (SSC) seeks new members for the September 2023 - September 2025 term. The SSC is a diverse group of doctoral psychology students who advise the APA Science Directorate on how it can best serve the science student population. Information on eligibility and how to apply before June 15 can be found here.

 

The APA Board of Professional Affairs seeks nominations for three distinguished professional achievement awards: Distinguished Professional Contributions to Applied Research, Distinguished Professional Contributions to Independent Practice, Distinguished Professional Contributions to Institutional Practice, and Distinguished Graduate Student in Professional Psychology. Read information on eligibility and how to apply before July 15.

 

To increase transparency about the role of APA president and mission of APA, current APA President Dr. Thema Bryant provides monthly updates entitled "From the President's Desk." Read her updates, presidential citations, and presidential statements.
 

APA Amicus Program Update

APA’s Amicus Curiae Expert Panel (ACEP) is seeking faculty members or other professionals who would be interested in supervising their students in conducting environmental scans for cases scheduled to be heard by appellate courts that could be informed by psychological science.

 

The ACEP advises the APA General Counsel (Deanne Ottaviano, dottaviano@apa.org) and the APA Board of Directors on whether there are sufficient scientific data to support APA’s submission of amicus briefs to educate the court on the relevant psychological science.

 

The ACEP hopes to systematize the identification of cases that might benefit from the submission of these briefs by recruiting students and their mentors to participate in the environmental scanning process.  

 

For more information, please contact Andre Mansion, Senior Advisor, Volunteer Leadership (amansion@apa.org) or Margaret Bull Kovera, Chair of the ACEP (mkovera@jjay.cuny.edu).
 

Join Division 41 at APA 2023!

This year, Division 41 will feature 11 sessions and 61 posters.


Join us for an incredible conference with an impressive lineup of speakers and sessions that will enlighten and empower you. You won't want to miss our invited session on the Competency Crisis, where experts will address the national public health crisis surrounding competence-to-stand-trial evaluation and restoration services. We also have a social justice advocacy session that explores psychologists' critical role in de-criminalizing mental illness, and we'll hear from a panel of distinguished experts present a scientific review paper (2.0) on police-induced confessions, examining risk factors and recommendations. Our sessions are chaired by top professionals in the field, including Daniel Murrie, PhD, Tomina Schwenke, PhD, and Saul Kassin, PhD, and feature thought-provoking discussions led by esteemed psychologists. Don't miss your chance to join us for this unforgettable event and gain valuable insights into the most pressing issues in psychology and law today. 

 

We will also have our business meeting, our social hour, and several co-listed sessions with other divisions. Register now for an exciting and informative experience!

 

Registration is open. Find pricing and travel information at convention.apa.org.
 

Call for Book Proposals

The American Psychology-Law Society invites proposals for new titles in its book series, which is now published by APA Books. We publish authored and edited volumes on current issues at the intersection of psychology and law. Books are typically a state of the science synthesis of a body of existing research with implications for practice and/or policy. Authors and editors should have a substantial and recent track record of publication and/or practice in psychology or law, and at least one should hold a doctorate in psychology or closely related behavioral science. If you have a proposal for a new book in the series or you would simply like more information, reach out to a member of the editorial team. We would be happy to tell you more.    

 

The editorial board members are:

Monica Miller, Division 41 Book Series Editor (mkmiller@unr.edu)
Monique Bowen, Division 41 Book Series Associate Editor (mbowen2@antioch.edu)
Jemour Maddux, Division 41 Book Series Associate Editor (jm@rule702.com) 
 

Executive Committee

For more information or if you wish to contact a member of the AP-LS Executive Committee, details can be found on our website.

On the Job or Postdoc Market? AP-LS Job Postings

Check out AP-LS's Job Postings Page for up-to-date information on available psychology-law positions.

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AP-LS seeks to advance the science of psychology-law and the translation of psychology-law knowledge into practice. Our mission is to enhance well-being, justice, and human rights through science and practice of psychology in legal contexts.