Forensic Psyc 1

Question 1

What is Forensic Psychology?

Answer 1

Some people (eg, Blackburn, 1996) argue that
the term Forensic Psychology should only be
used to denote the:
“direct provision of psychological information to the
courts, that is, to psychology in the courts”
• However some psychologists have wanted to
widen this usage to cover all aspects of
psychology that are applied or relevant to the
legal process.

The application of psychological
knowledge and theories to all aspects of
the criminal and civil justice systems,
including the processes and the people

Question 2

Theories of Crime: Historical Perspectives

Answer 2

• Theories of crime are as old as crime
itself
– Aristotle: “Poverty is the parent of
revolution and crime.”
– Religious explanations
– Sir Francis Bacon: “Opportunity makes a
thief.”
– Philosophers such as Voltaire and Rousseau
emphasised free will, hedonism, and flaws
in social contract

Question 3

Classical School of criminology

Answer 3

–Lawbreaking occurs when people, faced with a
choice between right and wrong, freely choose
wrongly
–Punishment should be proportionate to crime
committed

Question 4

Positivist School of Criminology

Answer 4

Emphasises factors determining criminal behaviour
rather than free will
–Believe punishment should fit the criminal rather
than the crime
–Seeks to understand crime through scientific
method and analysis of empirical method

Question 5

Positive theorist

Answer 5

Cesare Lombroso
believed criminals were
atavistic human beings–
throw-backs to earlier
stages of evolution who
were not sufficiently
advanced mentally for
successful life in the
modern world 

Ernest Hooton took physical measurements
of 14,000 criminals and 3000 civilians
– Burglars: short heads, golden hair, undershot jaws
– Robbers: long wavy hair, high heads, short ears,
broad faces

Although early positivists saw
themselves as scientists, their science
was crude and their conclusions are
not taken seriously today

Question 6

Modern Theories of Crime

Answer 6

We will group theories that explain
aggressive crimes into 4 categories:
1. Sociological theories
2. Biological theories
3. Psychological theories
4. Social-psychological theories

Question 7

1. Sociological Explanations

Answer 7

• Explain crime as the result of social or
cultural forces that are external to any
specific individual, that exist prior to
any criminal act, and that emerge from
social class, political, ecological, or
physical structures affecting large
groups of people
• Individual differences are deemphasised

Question 8

Two Types of Sociological Theories

Answer 8

1. Structural Explanations

2. Subcultural Explanations

Question 9

Structural Explanations

Answer 9

–People have similar interests and motivations, but
differ dramatically in opportunities to employ their
talents in socially legitimate ways
–Dysfunctional social arrangements and differential
opportunity (e.g., inadequate schooling, economic
adversity) thwart people from legitimate
attainment
–Discrepancies between aspirations and means
create strains that lead to crime

Question 10

Subcultural Explanations

Answer 10

Crime originates when various groups of people
endorse cultural values that clash with the
dominant, conventional rules of society
– E.g., gangs enforce unique norms about how to
behave

Question 11

Cons of Sociological Theories

Answer 11

–Crimes are often committed by people who have
never been denied opportunities
–Applies only to certain offences
–Does not explain why some people offend and
others do not

Question 12

Biological Theories

Answer 12

Stress genetic influences, chromosomal
abnormalities, biochemical
irregularities, or physical (body type)
factors as causes of crime
• Theorists usually also respect social and
environmental influences as well

Question 13

Two types of biological theories:

Answer 13

1. Constitutional theories

2. Genetic theories

Question 14

 Constitutional theories

Answer 14

– Sheldon suggested 3 somatotypes (body builds)
• Endomorph: obese, soft, rounded
• Ectomorph: tall and thin with well-developed brain
• Mesomorph: muscular, athletic, strong

Sheldon compared 200 delinquent and nondelinquent
men and suggested that mesomorph
most suited to criminal behaviour
– Sheldon believed that mesomorphs exposed to
wrong influences and environment would engage in
more aggressive crimes
– Recent data on bullies suggests that physique (in
combo with environmental factors) might be related
to aggressive behaviour

Question 15

Constitutional theory cons

Answer 15

– Few all-or-none categories oversimplify
– Correlation between physique and behaviour does
not mean causation

Question 16

 Genetic theories

Answer 16

– Early studies looked at genealogy, but this method
does not tell us what the family transmits
(psychological, environmental etc)
– Adoption studies:
• Men with biological parents who had criminal records were 4x more likely to be criminals than those with noncriminal biological parents and 2x as likely to be criminal as adoptees whose adoptive parents were criminal but whose biological parents were not.
• Adoptees who had both biological and adoptive criminal parents were 14x more likely to be criminal than those with no criminality in background (Cloninger et al., 1982)

Question 17

Genetic theories unpopular because:

Answer 17

• Fear that if we attribute crime even partly to genetic factors,
then social and environmental causes will be neglected
• Concern that it will lead to some people being designated
genetically “inferior” and this could lead to forced sterilisation,
genocide…
• The extent to which any behaviour is inheritable within one
group of people can not explain differences between groups of
people
• It is unclear what exactly is inherited

Question 18

5 possibilities about what is inherited:

Answer 18

• Constitutional predisposition
• Neuropsychological abnormalities
• Autonomic nervous system differences
• Physiological differences
• Personality and temperament differences

Question 19

3. Psychological Theories

Answer 19

• Crime results from personality
attributes possessed by the potential
criminal
• Emphasize individual differences about
the way people think or feel about
behaviour

Question 20

Types of psychological theories

Answer 20

1. Psychoanalytic Theories
2. Personality Traits
3. Personality Disorder

Question 21

 Psychoanalytic theories (Freud)

Answer 21

1. A weak ego and superego that cannot
   restrain the anti-social instincts of the id
2. A means of obtaining substitute gratification
   (sublimation) of basic needs that have not
   been satisfied

3. Thanatos, the desire of
animate matter to return
to the inanimate, leads to
dangerous or selfdestructive
behaviours or
may result as in
unconscious efforts to get
caught

– The most commonly
blamed factor is
inadequate identification
by a child with his or her
parents
– Theories are no longer
favoured in modern
criminology because
research doesn’t support

Question 22

 Personality Traits

Answer 22

• Eysenck believed that there are three major, largely
unrelated, components of personality
• Extraversion: active, assertive, creative, carefree, lively,
sensation-seeking, venturesome
• Neuroticism: anxious, depressed, emotional, guilt feelings,
irrational, low self-esteem, moody, shy, tense
• Psychoticism: aggressive, antisocial, cold, creative,
egocentric, impersonal, impulsive, tough-minded, lacking
empathy
• According to Eysenck, criminals show higher levels of
all of these traits

Question 23

 Personality Disorder

Answer 23

Antisocial Personality Disorder
 “…a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of,
the rights of others that begins in childhood or early
adolescence and continues into adulthood.” (DSM-IV)
– Psychopathy:
 Typically engage in frequent criminal activity for which
they feel little or no remorse
 Psychopaths account for a small percentage of law
violators, but they commit a disproportionately large
percentage of violent crimes

Question 24

Social-Psychological Theories

Answer 24

• Bridges gap between environmentalism
of sociology and individualism of
psychological or biological theories
• Crime is learned, but theories differ on
what and how it is learned

Question 25

• 3 types of social-psychological theories

Answer 25

1. Control theories
2. Learning theories
3. Social-labelling

Question 26

Control theory

Answer 26

People will behave antisocially unless they learn,
through a combination of inner controls and
external constraints on behaviour, not to offend
– It is largely external containment (e.g., social
pressure and institutionalised rules) that controls
crime, but if these controls weaken, control of crime
must depend on internal restraints

Question 27

Learning Theory

Answer 27

−People directly acquire specific criminal behaviours
through different forms of learning
−Operant learning: a person behaves criminally when
such behaviour is favoured by reinforcement that
outweighs punishment
−Social learning theory: behaviour is learned by
observation through modelling

Question 28

• Social-labelling

Answer 28

Deviance is created by the labels that society assigns
to certain acts
−Stigma of being branded a deviant can create a selffulfilling
prophecy
 A prediction that comes true because it has been
made.
 E.g., Ashanti people of Western Africa (Jahoda, 1954)
 E.g., Juvenile Delinquent Study (Meichenbaum et al, 1969)
 Little research due to ethical considerations

Question 29

What is the Best Theory of Crime?

Answer 29

It depends on the type of crime!
• Most theories can explain certain types of
crime, but none of them explain all forms,
and some explain very little