almost 50,000 prisoners. According to the authors of
the JSAT, there are several aims involved in screening
for mental disorders in the criminal justice system:
identifying mentally disordered inmates for the pur-
pose of treatment, preventing violent behavior, allo-
cating limited resources for the inmates most in need
of services, and reducing the demands on the criminal
justice, health, and social welfare systems.
Mental health screening should normally be com-
pleted within the first day of admission to jail. The pur-
pose of this screening is to detect serious mental disorder
requiring rapid management, treatment, or further evalu-
ation. It is desirable to minimize false-negative errors at
this screening stage (inmates who have a mental disorder
that is not detected). It will allow those inmates who do
have a mental illness to be evaluated further.
Administration of the JSAT involves a brief inter-
view with the prisoner (i.e., approximately 20 min-
utes) and consideration of relevant history. Although
the interview is brief, the JSAT is designed to elicit
sufficient information to make initial decisions about
the mental health needs of incoming inmates. The
JSAT is designed to be administered by a mental
health professional, most typically a psychiatric nurse,
a clinical psychologist, or an intern.
The screening procedure includes completion of a
brief semistructured mental status interview and a
revised version of the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale.
The interview covers 10 content areas: personal/demo-
graphic information and social background, legal sta-
tus, mental health assessment and treatment, suicide
and self-harm risk, violence issues, criminal history,
recent social adjustment, recent mental status, sub-
stance use and abuse history, and mental health history.
Following the administration of the JSAT, the clinician
makes recommendations for any prisoner needs if
mental health concerns are identified. Typically, a
more comprehensive assessment is then recommended
and undertaken.
The JSAT is not a standardized psychological test
and does not use cut scores for identifying people
requiring further assessment. Rather, the JSAT is an
example of structured professional judgment, a deci-
sion-making approach in which professional judg-
ment is guided by a formal, standardized structure.
The JSAT is also unique in that it involves screening
inmates for violence and victimization as well as self-
harm, suicide, and mental disorder.
Validation data reported by Nicholls and col-
leagues indicated that the JSAT has a very high degreeof validity. The JSAT has been validated for both male
and female prisoners. Indeed, 100% of those identi-
fied as having psychotic illnesses, obsessive compul-
sive illnesses, or suicide risk were subsequently
referred to a mental health program.James R. P. Ogloff and Michael R. DavisSee alsoRisk Assessment Approaches; Structured
Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth (SAVRY); Violence
Risk Appraisal Guide (VRAG)Further Readings
Nicholls, T. L., Lee, Z., Corrado, R., & Ogloff, J. R. P.
(2004). Women inmates’ mental health needs: Evidence of
the validity of the Jail Screening Assessment Tool (JSAT).
International Journal of Forensic Mental Health,
3,167–184.
Nicholls, T. L., Roesch, R., Olley, M. C., Ogloff, J. R. P., &
Hemphill, J. F. (2005). Jail Screening Assessment Tool
(JSAT): Guidelines for mental health screening in jails.
Burnaby, BC: Simon Fraser University, Mental Health,
Law, and Policy Institute.JUDGES’ NONVERBALBEHAVIOR
Early studies by Martin Orne on demand effects and
Robert Rosenthal on experimenter expectancy effects
established the impact of a sender’s nonverbal com-
munication and the way in which it might alter the
behavior of others. In the courtroom, judges’ nonverbal
behavior (e.g., tone of voice, demeanor) often commu-
nicates their expectations (sometimes termed leakage)
about the case at hand. Jurors, for instance, may inter-
pret a judge’s nonverbal cues as evaluations of evi-
dence, attorneys, and parties. In some circumstances,
these inferences may become information that affects
jurors’ decisions, in ways not recorded in the trial
record. One meta-analysis of studies examining the
impact of trial judges’ nonverbal behavior on juror
verdicts found a significant and nontrivial relationship
(r =.14). Therefore, depending on the nature and
extent of the nonverbal cues, the due process rights of
defendants (that is trial fairness) may be impacted.
Research examining judges’ nonverbal behavior has
found four distinct “global” styles (general behavior
that governs interactions that may be verbal or nonver-
bal): judicial, directive, confident, and warm. These388 ———Judges’ Nonverbal BehaviorJ-Cutler (Encyc)-45463.qxd 11/18/2007 12:43 PM Page 388