Amparo Psychology

[Geraldine Ferraiz]

Therecent, rapid rise of emotional support animals has left colleges and universities struggling to understand the laws and how they can be applied to best support their communities, said Phyllis Erdman, PhD, professor at Washington State University, who chaired a symposium on emotional support animals and service dogs.

College and university counseling centers are seeing an uptick in the number of students seeking mental health services, as students report anxiety, depression and stress about relationships and academic performance, she said.

A service animal falls under the Americans with Disabilities Act and is usually a dog that is trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a physical, sensory, psychiatric or intellectual disability, Emotional support animals are not trained in specific tasks and are not recognized under the ADA. Although emotional support animals are allowed in campus housing, they may not necessarily be allowed in classrooms or elsewhere on campus, according to the study Erdman presented.

Erdman and her colleagues wanted to understand the state of emotional support animal requests on campuses and how colleges and universities are responding. They surveyed 248 university counseling centers about student requests for letters to allow them to have emotional support animals. The survey questions included how often the counseling centers received requests from students, how the schools handled those requests and how they handled requests to diagnose a disability in order to obtain an emotional support animal. It also asked counseling centers if they had emotional support animal policies in place.

Fifty-seven percent of the centers reported almost never receiving such requests. Thirty-one percent did several times a year and only 2 percent got requests more than once a week, according to the study.

Uncertainty about emotional support animals is also occurring in courts, according to Dawn McQuiston, PhD, of Wofford College, who presented her research at the symposium. While objects such as dolls or teddy bears have been used for decades to calm vulnerable witnesses, courts began to include dogs in the mid-1990s to provide emotional support to alleged victims of child abuse. At least 144 courthouse facility dogs are now included in about three dozen states, she said. These dogs are provided by the court at the request of prosecutors to assist victims with the anxiety of testifying and reliving traumatic events.

Supporters say the dogs have made a huge difference in helping children and vulnerable adult witnesses open up on the stand, but some defense attorneys say having a friendly, sweet-looking canine in the witness box can prejudice a jury against a defendant by making the witness appear more believable and sympathetic, according to McQuiston.

McQuiston and her colleagues investigated whether courthouse dogs, compared to inanimate comfort items, resulted in more prejudice against defendants involved in two hypothetical crimes: A child sexual abuse case and a robbery of a child. They set up mock trials in which participants, in the role of jurors, read transcripts of the testimony and were shown several pictures depicting the child witness with a dog, with a teddy bear or with nothing.

The American Psychological Association, in Washington, D.C., is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States. APA's membership includes nearly 115,700 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. Through its divisions in 54 subfields of psychology and affiliations with 60 state, territorial and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to advance the creation, communication and application of psychological knowledge to benefit society and improve people's lives.

In 1997, Universidad Amrica Latina began to offer the majors in Psychology, History, Business Management, and International Commerce to incarcerated people at the CEFERESO No. 2. When I finished high school in 2001 I applied for a scholarship to study a major but the university covered only 25% of the cost, and therefore I could not do it.

As soon as I finished my studies I began to practice with my own legal situation. At that time my sentences added up to 70 years in prison and I was labeled with a high criminological profile that made it impossible to be released from a Federal Center. My first writing was about an unspecified incident, in which I asked the judge for a modification of the sentence; that is, to apply a law that was more favorable to the inmate. It was denied but I did not give up. I then filed an amparo with a district judge with the same request, and it was accepted.

In view of this achievement, some other inmates at the Centro Federal Occidente asked me to help them. I asked the courts for legal information on their cases, I applied for modifications of sentences and filed for direct and indirect amparos, according to the procedure corresponding to their cases, and won 32 of them. After this the Centro Federal made me sign a paper in which I agreed to stop defending my fellow inmates in their legal situation, not in regard to their sentences but in regard to their administrative situation; that is, I was able to continue supporting them on their cases, but I could not file any more amparos against the CEFERESO requesting better living conditions within the prison.

From the 70 years in prison to which all my sentences added up, I was able to reduce my imprisonment to 32 years and eight months, after exhausting the lines of direct amparo. I have also applied the knowledge I have acquired to improving my living conditions in prison, and requested a transfer to a different prison. This request was denied and I filed an amparo, which was also denied on the grounds that I had a high criminological profile, and therefore I should remain in a maximum security prison.

After this amparo, group psychological therapy began to be given to all the people imprisoned at Centros Federales. Five more amparos on this issue were subsequently won at the Supreme Court of Justice, resulting in a law that is now applied in all the centers for re-adaptation. Group psychological therapy is used now in all federal prisons, both for inmates and for prison staff that work at courts, and it is considered in the law to contribute to a better reinsertion into society.

I was transferred to the Reclusorio Metropolitano in Puente Grande, Jalisco, on February 2 2016. My living conditions improved, I was treated better, and I had new opportunities to study and continue learning. After 27 years in prison, I look forward to my release. I am currently conducting my defense in studies of benefits. If I am granted them I can go free; if they are denied, I will continue to fight for them through amparos, because reinsertion into society can only be achieved given the means to achieve it. My dream is to be released and work on cases of inmates who have had no proper defense, so they can be defended according to the law.

2The curriculum consisted of Introduction to the Study of Law, General Theory of Law, Roman Law, Constitutional Law, Civil Law I, II, III and IV, General Theory of the State, Human Rights, Mercantile Law I and II, Agrarian Law, Criminal Law, Administrative Law, Banking Law, Civil Process, Criminal Process, Labor Law, Private International Law, Public International Law, Mercantile Process Law, Legal Medicine, Labor Process Law, Theory of Crime, General Process Theory, Amparo Law, Legal Argumentation, and Professional Labor Ethics.

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