Forensic Psych Flashcards
roles of forensic psych in legal process
roles:
actuarial
clinical
experimental
working with offenders - clinical
risk assessment + management (reoffending, potential criminals)
counselling + treatment
working with law enforcement (police) (investigative)
eyewitness testimony + memory
eye witness interview techniques
Roles as experts in court/ legal process
To improve decision making:
- Clinical (assessment) - risk assessment for reoffending
- Actuarial - likelihood of future events - stats
- Experimental - test plausibility of testimonies practically
Clinical role (assessment)
conducts clinical assessment (questionnaire) to test for:
- ‘fitness to plead’ - mental competence to stand trial - using ECST-R - clinical diagnosis/ assessment in court
- criminal liability: direct intention (mens rea) vs negligence
mens rea
the intention to commit crime - either:
- direct intention (intent to perform crime knowing outcome) or
- negligence/ recklessness (knowledge of risk but still continues - without direct intent to commit crime)
actus reus
voluntary physical action that lead to crime
ECST-R
Evaluation of Competency to Stand Trial - Revised - American semi-structured interview manual used to test for offenders’ ‘adjudicative competency’
e.g, schizophrenia - don’t understand they are being accused
Sally Clark 1996
prosecutor’s fallacy shows statistical prediction cannot prove guilty
sudden infant death syndrome to both her children 1 year apart
Roy Meadow - paediatrician testified it so rare to occur (2 children to die of sids (1/8500 squared = 1/73 million) = she was guilty for murder
- also incorrect stats, 2 children’s death from sids is not independent - genetic/environmental factors
prosecutor’s fallacy
probability of occurrence (both children dying from SIDS) is much rarer than other causes of death BUT not rarer than mother killing both her children.
- issue: probability of the evidence given she is innocent (sids / other causes of death = low, should be sids / murder = P(innocence)=high
- can be applied to eye witness misidentification - prosecutors fallacy present in determining likelihood of innocence given identified by witness vs probability of identification given they are innocent
Experimental role
perform experiments to test plausibility of eye witness testimonies
ex. Glasgow ice cream war murders 1984-2004 - police collusion of identical reports = unlikely considering our memory
eyewitness misidentification stats
Since 1989, 349 wrongful convictions have been overturned through DNA testing, and eyewitness misidentification played a role in over 70% of those cases—far more than any other contributing cause (Innocence Project, 2016)
post crime interference - (Perlini & Silvaggio, 2007)
single blind police lineup reported increased false identification rates from mock eye witnesses with presenting suspect images simultaneously than when shown sequentially. therefore, to reduce bias show images sequentially to reduce police input or do double blind.
extralegal factors - psychology of the court - credibility cues & complexity of argument
high credibility - heuristic causes jargon to introduce bias to rely on credibility of argument/ evidence
post crime interference - (Perlini & Silvaggio, 2007)
(Lowenstein et al., 2010) - uniform on selecting wrong suspect with children
single blind police lineup reported increased false identification rates from mock eye witnesses with presenting suspect images simultaneously than when shown sequentially. therefore, to reduce bias show images sequentially to reduce police input or do double blind.
