Chap 3 Investigative Techniques

Question 1

What is forensic psychology?

Answer 1

A branch of psychology that addresses the collection, examination, and presentation of evidence for legal purposes.

Question 2

What is criminal profiling?

Answer 2

Any process used to infer personality traits, behavioral tendencies, demographic characteristics, or geographical locations of the perpetrator.

Question 3

What are some of the fatal flaws associated with criminal profiling?

Answer 3

1) Many criminal profilers do not have a background in psychology.
2) There are very few job opportunities for criminal profilers. It is an extremely competitive field.
3) Many professionals question the validity of profiling
4) Criminal profilers are likely not to be admissible in court as expert testimony. Many judges have already stated it doesn’t meet the standards established by the Daubert Test.
5) It can lead to racial profiling and discrimination

Question 4

What is an offender description?

Answer 4

A general description including things such as personality traits, psychopathologies, behavior patterns, demographics. This description is concluded from criminal profiling.

Question 5

What is the historical approach of criminal profiling? What are the downsides?

Answer 5

The profiler uses archival and anecdotal data to predict how someone will act based on their psychological profile.
Downsides: Humans are not completely predictable

Question 6

Another form of profiling is profiling criminals’ common characteristics. What are the downsides to this?

Answer 6

1) Most of the research is done with convicted offenders. It doesn’t account for people who aren’t caught
2) The characteristics apply to a small population. Many people in the general population have the same characteristics but they don’t offend

Question 7

What is racial profiling?

Answer 7

Suspecting an individual of an illegal activity because of their ethnic background.

Question 8

What is a criminal profile?

Answer 8

It is a written report that describes a suspect’s characteristics. This occurs before the suspect is known.

Question 9

Behavioral Evidence Analysis (BEA)/Criminal profiling has 2 phases. Describe the phases listed below and list some goals of the stage

1) The investigative phase
2) The trial phase

Answer 9

1) The investigative phase: Analysis of behavioral evidence to develop a description of an unknown offender. Goals include: narrowing down the suspect list, potentially link separate crimes to each other, provide investigators with potential leads, assess the potential of crime escalation.
2) The trial phase: Analyze forensic evidence and the offender to assist in the trial. Goals include: Aid the development of interrogation strategies, provide insight into offender’s motivations, develop insight into the offender’s state of mind before/during/after crime.

Question 10

What is the difference between trans-temporal consistency and trans-situational consistency?

Answer 10

Trans-temporal consistency = behavior is consistent over time

Trans-situational consistency = behavior is consistent across situations