Chapter 6 starts with an exhaustive summary of the law of criminal provocation. After the mentioned overview, there is an expedient examination of comparatively recent findings within the scope of the self-control theories that raise the issue of several established approaches to frame questions related to a choice and hostile aggressions. Then, there is a concise analysis of the SIP framework of the decision-making process of individuals. This analysis provides the reader with the opportunity to get acquainted with the essentials of the SIP model, which may assist a practitioner in identifying the dysfunction in a social cognitive process. Moreover, it can become clear how the latter interacts with a number of underlying mental elements – starting from attitudes and ending with values, as well as with non-conscious operations that are considerably impacted by an individual’s societal and cultural foundations.
It should be noted that the chapter introduces five steps of the SIP model – encoding of cues, interpretation of cues, the clarification of goals, attempts to access potential responses to relevant societal demands founded on information stored in memory, and the evaluation of the responses (Ashford & Kupferberg, 2013). Hence, the chosen reading shows the essence of the SIP framework, as well as the way it maintains actual evidence-based models of self-control related to evaluating reactive crimes of violence. Then, this pattern gives significant guidance for establishing the link between the life experience of capital defendants and violent choice and action. Finally, it might be assumed that in the micro-social work practice context, the chapter lays out an overall structure for the development of a hypothesis to account for important constraints upon defendants’ volitional capabilities founded on either biological or societal cognitive deficiencies.
Reference
Ashford, J. B. & Kupferberg, M. (2013). Death penalty mitigation: A handbook for mitigation specialists, investigators, social scientists, and lawyers. Oxford University Press.