This study qualitatively examines factors which exacerbate and alleviate experiences of vicarious trauma (VT) in New Zealand Crown prosecutors. Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with 19 New Zealand Crown prosecutors. Data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Participants perceived personal and work-based protective factors (e.g. safe and supportive work environment, the rewarding nature of the role, engaging in self-care) alleviated experiences of VT, while occupational stressors (e.g. pressures of the role, workplace culture, perception of injustice) and a lack of education, training, and support exacerbated VT. Findings suggest a lack of acceptance or acknowledgment of the emotional and occupational demands of engaging with potentially traumatic material (PTM) in the legal profession creates a barrier to effective management of VT symptoms and individual wellbeing. The need for improved education surrounding the practical realities of working as a criminal lawyer and greater availability of formalised support from peers and professionals is discussed.

Recognising children as developing individuals, legal systems generally protect children from full criminal liability. Further to the minimum age of criminal responsibility, several jurisdictions include additional legal safeguards under the doctrine of doli incapax. This doctrine presumes that children within conditional age ranges (e.g. 10–13 years) are incapable of criminal intent, unless proven otherwise. Courts may seek expert assessment of a child to help determine the applicability of doli incapax, yet no research examines how clinicians undertake these assessments. Drawing on 80 doli incapax assessment reports in Australia, this study sought to identify children’s characteristics, their alleged offending, domains assessed, and other factors considered by clinicians in forming opinions of children’s criminal capacity. Across the reports, 70.0% of children were boys, 32.5% were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, and 75.7% had Child Protection involvement. Furthermore, 60.0% of children had a psychiatric disorder and 11.3% had an intellectual disability or acquired brain injury. Tests of sociomoral reasoning and cognitive development typically informed assessments, and in 48.8% of cases clinicians gave evidence to support doli incapax being upheld. Areas for strengthening consistency included how clinicians should consider the impact of developmental trauma and previous justice system contact on children’s criminal culpability.

Circles of Support and Accountability (CoSA) now exist in many locations across the globe to support core members (those with sexual offence convictions) reintegrate into the community after prison and reduce sexual recidivism. Despite the overrepresentation of culturally and linguistically diverse and First Nations people in prison for sexual offending in many of these locations, no prior research has considered if and how CoSA works for this cohort of core members. Indeed, Barrie (2020) has emphasised CoSA’s ‘whiteness’. To begin to address this gap, and as part of a larger study, we conducted a survey with CoSA staff and volunteers (n = 85) from around the world, with nine of these participants agreeing to a follow-up interview. We also undertook exploratory qualitative interviews with culturally and linguistically diverse and First Nations core members about their experiences of CoSA (n = 5). We make a number of policy and practice recommendations for CoSA programmes based on our findings.

The increasing prevalence of methamphetamine use and its strong association with psychosis is placing significant pressure on legal doctrines of criminal responsibility. Laws governing intoxication and insanity were developed in an era of limited drug use and are ill-equipped to address the complex issues that now arise at the intersection of substance use, mental illness and offending. This article examines how Australian jurisdictions currently navigate this intersection. It argues that they rely on imperfect proxies, such as ‘disease’ and ‘intoxication’, to make an evaluative judgement about whether the accused is sufficiently blameworthy for causing their lack of capacity that they should be held criminally responsible. The article proposes that a blameworthiness-based framework, which directly addresses this question, would offer a more principled alternative. It argues that such an approach provides a clearer, fairer and more coherent basis for resolving these increasingly common and difficult cases.

Vulnerable individuals, such as children and adults with speech, language and communication needs, face barriers when navigating the justice system. An intermediary is a communication specialist who facilitates participation of vulnerable individuals in the justice system. This integrative review seeks to synthesise the literature on intermediary practice, methods and processes. A systematic search of five databases was completed, and additional reports were collated using manual searches. Data were coded and categories were developed to reflect intermediary practice across referral, assessment and intervention processes, as well as factors that influence intermediary practice. This review highlights consistencies and variances across jurisdictions and will inform emerging intermediary practice in the Republic of Ireland. While not standardised, there are salient overlapping procedures evident across referral, assessment and intervention processes, and key principles underpin intermediary practice. Although intermediaries work independently, collaboration with other professionals working in the justice system is paramount for intermediary practice.

Exposure to parental incarceration has been associated with adverse educational outcomes for children. We aimed to identify the educational outcomes associated with exposure to parental incarceration between conception and 18 years of age and explore the strength of that association. The protocol for this review was registered with PROSPERO (ID: CRD42023483182). On 4 October 2023 we searched six databases and conducted backward citation chaining of a previous systematic review. Our findings were synthesised by way of narrative synthesis. Sixteen studies, comprising 301,220 participants, met the inclusion criteria. Educational outcomes included decreased school readiness, reduced literacy and numeracy skills, lower grade point averages in high school, and a decreased likelihood of high school and college completion. The findings may be limited by our focus on English-language longitudinal study designs. The findings indicate that parental incarceration is associated with children’s educational outcomes and underscores the need to gather and utilise research evidence to develop policy platforms to address disadvantage where it is identified.

Many proponents of the UN’s Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities advocate for abolishing capacity law – a body of legislation that determines whether someone is capable of making a decision. They often claim that capacity law is ableist, internalist, individualist and intellectualist, and does not allow for the many ways that people can be supported by others and by their environments to make decisions. Instead, they advocate a rights-focused legal structure for providing people with support to make decisions. I critique their case, arguing that the myriad problems with the implementation of capacity law are not solved by abolishing capacity law in favour of a model of supported decision-making, or by abolishing ‘best interest’ substitute decision-making in favour of models that instead emphasise rights, will and preferences. Rather than avoiding the ableist reality of current medical practice, the proposed approach would simply deregulate, exacerbate and obfuscate that reality.

Rapport building is an important component of forensic interviews with children, especially about alleged sexual abuse. Because interviews are presented as evidence in trials, an important consideration is whether seeing interview rapport affects juror perceptions. We addressed this by examining how rapport, child age and participants’ gender affect perceptions of a child witness and defendant guilt. Participants (N=478, M=36.6 years, SD=12.3, 47% female), recruited via Prolific, read a forensic interview transcript of a child's disclosing sexual abuse that varied interviewer rapport (high, moderate, minimal) and child age (5, 9, 13 years). Participants in the high rapport condition rated the child as more credible and felt more positively about the interviewer, and the 5-year-old was perceived most favourably. Overall, positive effects of rapport building extend beyond their influence on children’s accounts. Presenting rapport building to jurors may help bolster a child's credibility, though other factors (e.g., child age) remain important.

An interviewer’s approach can have a considerable impact on the quality of evidence that children provide. This underscores the need to develop trainee interviewers’ skills in utilising high-quality questioning practices and in applying and refining these skills in the field. Evaluating whether training achieves these outcomes is critical for understanding the effectiveness of that training. This study evaluated an interviewer training course through a novel lens. We explored evidence of 161 trainees’ evaluative judgement capabilities following course completion, since evaluative judgement likely underpins the ability to consistently apply and independently refine questioning skills in practice. Trainees who completed the course participated in a short-answer survey. Responses were analysed using a coding-reliability approach, and the findings indicated the presence of core evaluative judgement capabilities, such as the ability to evaluate their own and others’ questioning performance. These findings have implications for the course and training evaluation designs more broadly.