Special measures’ applications for victims and vulnerable and intimidated witnesses in Malaysia: New frontiers to right to a fair trial?

Special treatment for victims and vulnerable and intimidated witnesses (VIWs) in a criminal process has developed over time in Western countries.The development of rights of victims’ and VIWs and awareness on their needs and interests in pre-trial process and court proceedings has initiated the use of special measures’ application. In England and Wales, some measures to lessen stress and trauma of such witnesses undergoing a criminal process were introduced into the legislations. Yet, as many other Asian countries, Malaysia developed her victims’ policy only in 1990s and issues relating to the protection of VIWs were raised within the criminal justice system just recently.The tendency to put the standpoint into practice in the Malaysian legal system is demonstrated in the establishment of the Evidence of Child Witness Act 2007 (ECWA 2007) and the amendment of Section 272B of the Criminal Procedure Code.On the other hand, it is also arguable that special measures’ applications for victims and VIWs will erode the right of defendants to a fair trial. This article aims at evaluating the current position of victims’ and VIWs’ rights and legal protection in the Malaysian criminal justice process.It elaborates on the rights of victims and other VIWs to special measures’ applications in pre-trial process and court proceedings. Special measures such as live TV-link, screens, removal of formal attire, intermediaries and visual aids communication are potential to accommodate victims’ and VIWs to give testimony in court. The use of video-recorded evidence is also evaluated as one of the means to facilitate traumatized victims and VIWs to give evidence and testimony. The possibility to enhance the use of special measures’ applications as one of the ways to advocate the right to a fair trial of victims and VIWs, without eroding the rights of the defendants, is also highlighted in this article

Alkalmazott pszichológiai kutatások a sorozat-bűncselekmények felderítésének szolgálatában

The author provides an overview of how crime-scene offender profiling developed in the past two decades in serial crimes.A szerző áttekintést nyújt arról, hogy a bűncselekmény elkövetői profilalkotása miként történt az elmúlt két évtizedben a sorozat-bűncselekmények során

The Psychology of Investigative Interviewing with Suspects of Serious Offences: An Examination of Empathy

This thesis focuses on the psychology of investigative interviewing with regard to how empathy is defined, understood, displayed and effective within the context of investigative interviewing. Investigative empathy has here been examined through four new, empirical studies. The first study examines police interviewers’ definitions of and employment of empathy in seven European countries. The second study builds on this by examining types of empathy in actual digitally recorded police interviews with suspects and the relationship between empathy displayed by interviewers with information provided by suspects. In the third study the effect on suspects of appropriate versus inappropriate question types when combined with empathy is examined. In Study 4, police interviewers’ responses to questions about one of four vignettes, in which the interviewer’s style are varied, are examined to determine whether officers in Germany (where there is as yet no nationally agreed upon interviewing protocol) produce data in line with other countries that have an interviewing protocol (in line with the evolving literature). In this final study, the possible effect of participants’ own levels of empathy on their responses is also examined. Overall, the findings underline the importance of appropriate types of empathy and how training in this area should be carefully and purposefully conducted. Although the present thesis builds on the theoretical knowledge of investigative interviewing, it may also be beneficial to those working in clinical/therapeutic settings in establishing and maintaining a strong therapeutic relationship between client and the professional

The Science of Solitary: Expanding the Harmfulness Narrative

The harmful effects of solitary confinement have been established in a variety of direct observations and empirical studies that date back to the nineteenth century, conducted in many different countries by researchers with diverse disciplinary backgrounds. This Essay argues that these effects should be situated and understood in the context of a much larger scientific literature that documents the adverse and sometimes life- threatening psychological and physical consequences of social isolation, social exclusion, loneliness, and the deprivation of caring human touch as they occur in free society. These dangerous conditions are the hallmarks of solitary confinement. Yet they are imposed on prisoners in far more toxic forms that exacerbate their harmful effects, are incurred in addition to the adverse consequences of incarceration per se, and operate in ways that increase their long-term negative impact. This broader empirical and theoretically grounded scientific perspective expands the harmfulness narrative about solitary confinement and argues in favor of much greater restrictions on its use