Criminal Profiling and Assessment

Question 1

What is forensic psychology?

Answer 1

Deals with all aspects of human behaviour as it relates to the law or the legal system, e.g., risk assessment, criminal profiling

Question 2

What are the major areas of forensic psychology?

Answer 2

Criminal law (risk assessment, insanity and criminal responsibility) and civil law (child custody, civil commitment)

Question 3

What is criminal law?

Answer 3

Focuses on acts against society, its focus is to punish offenders to maintain a societal sense of justice and deter crime

Question 4

What is civil law?

Answer 4

Concerned with private rights, e.g., tort which consists of a wrongful act that causes harm to an individual - up to the individual to take action nto society

Question 5

What is the relationship between the law and psychology called and explain it.

Answer 5

Therapeutic jurisprudence. It is the use of social science to study the extent to which a legal rule promotes the psychological and physical well-being of the people it affects

Question 6

What are the five differences between psychology and the law?

Answer 6

1. Law tends to be authoritative and psychology tends to be empirically based
2. Differ in the way in which they arrive at their definitions of truth - law uses an adversarial system, psychology uses experimentation through research
3. Law is prescriptive and psychology is descriptive
4. Psychology is nomothetic and law is idiographic
5. Psychology is probabilistic and law is definitive

Question 7

What are the 6 things that forensic psychologists do?

Answer 7

1. Carry out assessments to assess the risk of re-offending, suicide, self-harm, or other high-risk behaviour
2. Develop, implement and review offender treatment and rehabilitation programmes
3. Research situations affecting prisoners
4. Deliver training to support forensic staff
5. Provide expert testimony
6. Contribute to policy and strategy development

Question 8

What did Fazel and Danesh’s (2003) meta-analysis find in terms of prisoner’s mental health?

Answer 8

4% of prisoners have psychosis, 10% have depression, 65% have a PD (majority of those have ASPD)

Question 9

What % of MH professionals endorse criminal profiling as a useful tool?

Answer 9

86%

Question 10

What is criminal profiling based on?

Answer 10

Base rates - the characteristics of the majority of people who’ve committed that crime

Question 11

What did Kocisis et al.’s (2002) study find?

Answer 11

People were better at profiling if they were given no information at all, no relationship between experience and accuracy, chemsitry students (against homicide detectives, police officers) outperformed everyone

Question 12

What did Snook et al.’s (2008) meta-analysis about profiling suggest?

Answer 12

It’s a redundant technique

Question 13

What are the 3 reasons people believe in profiling?

Answer 13

1. Physician’s fallacy - only report when it goes well, incorrect predictions aren’t shown
2. Barnum effect - pick out the bits of a profile that seem to fit even if they just about fit every body
3. Expertise heuristic

Question 14

What are the limitations to profiling?

Answer 14

Is not empirically based - little proper research.

No coherent approach.

Should the same factors be at work for different crimes/countries/etc.

Question 15

What techniques are used in forensic assessment?

Answer 15

Interview, psychometric tests, projective tests, objective tests, physiological and neurophysiological tests

Question 16

What are the 6 ways in which therapeutic and forensic assessment differ?

Answer 16

1. Goals and objectives
2. Relationship of the parties
3. Identity of the client
4. Consequences
5. Examinee’s perspective
6. Confidentiality

Question 17

What are the two additional requirements of a forensic assessment compared to therapeutic assessment?

Answer 17

1. Identification of the legal question
2. Assessment of whether the forensic psychologist can assist the court

Question 18

What is an unstructured interview?

Answer 18

Psychologist does not have a prescribed list of questions

Question 19

What are the strengths and weaknesses of an unstructured interview?

Answer 19

Strengths - good for establishing rapport and gathering information

Weaknesses - may be less consistent and reliable

Question 20

What is a semi-structured interview?

Answer 20

Consists of predetermined questions but more flexibility to answer other questions

Question 21

What is a structured interview?

Answer 21

Consists of specific questions which cannot be deviated from

Question 22

Which clinical skills must be used in interviews?

Answer 22

Opening statements, developing rapport, non-verbal communication, active listening, summarising

Question 23

What are personality tests?

Answer 23

Measure some aspect of an examinee’s normal personality or psychopathology/MI

Question 24

What are projective tests?

Answer 24

Presenting ambiguous stimuli and recording their responses to assess an udnerlying pathology

Question 25

What are examples of projective tests?

Answer 25

Rorschach inblot test/thematic apperception test

Question 26

What assumption are projective tests based on?

Answer 26

Examinee’s overt responses reveal internal dispositions that are not easily discovered

Question 27

Why have projective tests been criticised?

Answer 27

More difficult to standardise, administer and score, and exhibit questionable reliability and validity

Question 28

What are psychometric assessments?

Answer 28

Tests that are a standard and scientific method used to measure individuals’ mental capabilities and behavioural style

Question 29

What are examples of psychometric assessments?

Answer 29

Becks Depression Inventory, Paulhaus Deception Scale, etc.

Question 30

Why is it important to get collateral information for forensic assessments?

Answer 30

More need for accuracy.

High likelihood of secondary gain and so increased likelihood of malingering

Question 31

How can you detect malingering?

Answer 31

Clinical interview and instruments like the MMPI-2, SIRS-2 and TOMM

Question 32

What can physiological assessment infer?

Answer 32

Psychological processes

Question 33

Name two examples of physiological assessment.

Answer 33

Skin conductance response, pupillometry, heart rate, genital response

Question 34

What are the problems of forensic assessment?

Answer 34

Examinee’s may not be honest.

Examinee’s might fake ‘bad’ or fake ‘good’.

Question 35

Why might self-report measures not be most appropriate?

Answer 35

May not understand the questions.

Questions can be comprehended differently by different people.

People have to compare themselves against the ‘norm’ - their norms will differ based on culture/background (reference-group effect)

Question 36

What is faking ‘bad’?

Answer 36

Pretending to have a MI to get a more lenient sentence for example - malingering

Question 37

What is faking ‘good’?

Answer 37

Hide thoughts, intentions, what they think will hinder their progress - impression management

Question 38

What is the polygraph normally used for?

Answer 38

As a ‘bogus pipeline’ - taking the polygraph leads to more disclosure of information despite it not working as it originally should

Question 39

What did Ahlmeyer et al. (2002) find about the polygraph?

Answer 39

In adult male sexual offenders, the more they take the polygraph, the more victims they admit to targeting