Forensic Psychology

Question 1

Crime definitions:

Answer 1

Crime: A violation of law which warrants some kind of punishment.

Changing definitions: Crime is defined differently by different cultures (e.g. polygamy) and at different historical periods (e.g. homosexuality).

Official statistics: Figures based on the numbers of crimes that are reported and recorded by the police.

Victim surveys: A sample of people are asked which crimes have been committed against them, which may or may nor have been reported to the police.

Offender surveys: People record the number and types of crime they have committed over a specified period

Question 2

What is offender profiling: The Top-Down Approach?

Answer 2

Offender profiling: A tool to help investigators to accurately predict likely offenders -developed in the US - used by the FBI

Top-down approach: Offenders are assigned to one of two pre-existing categories based on witness accounts and evidence from the crime scene (disorganised and organised offender)

The FBI then construct a profile using this approach and this consists of: (1) Data assimilation, (2) crime scene classification, (3) crime reconstruction, (3) profile generation.

Question 3

What is the difference between an organised offender and a disorganised offender?

Answer 3

Organised offender: Evidence of planning, targets victim, tends to be socially and sexually competent with higher than average intelligence e.g. Ted Bundy

Disorganised offender: Little evidence of planning, leaves clues, tends to be socially and sexually incompetent with lower than average intelligence.

Question 4

Evaluation of the Top-Down Approach

Answer 4

Only applies to particular crimes e.g. murder and rape

Based on outdated models of personality - implies that behaviour is driven by stable personality traits when personality traits may be constantly changing and influenced by external factors

Classifications are too simplistic - not clear cut - may be a combination of both or other types may also exist

Evidence is based on small samples - unrepresentative

Question 5

What is offender profiling: The Bottom-Up Approach?

Answer 5

Developed by the British - looks at the evidence at the crime scene rather than with fixed typologies - grounded in investigative psychology - tries to work out what the offender is thinking

Investigative psychology - Establishes patterns of behaviour forming a statistical ‘database’.

Geographical profiling- The location of crimes is a clue, ‘marauder’ operates close to home and ‘commuter’ travels.

Interpersonal coherence - Offender’s behaviour at crime scene reflects their everyday behaviour and thus is a clue.

Forensic awareness - Individuals who have been the subject of police interrogation before ‘cover their tracks’.

Question 6

Evaluation of Bottom-Up Approach

Answer 6

Evidence supports the use of investigative psychology and geographical profiling. For example serial killers have been found to sometimes form a pattern in where they pick up bodies or bury victims and this can lead to solutions

More scientific than Top-Down Approach as it is based on scientific theories and it is more objective - less about speculation and hunches

Can be applied to a wide variety of approaches as opposed to Top-Down processing, which is limited.

Sometimes offender profiling can go wrong - they can rule the wrong person out e.g. in the case of Rachel Nickell

Question 7

Summarise the Biological Explanation of Offending Behaviour - Atavistic Form

Answer 7

This is a historical approach - 1876 Lombroso wrote which suggested that criminals were genetic throwbacks and biologically different from non-offenders. The summary of his ideas are:

Atavistic form: Genetic throwbacks, having characteristics consistent with primitive humans.

Cranial characteristics: Narrow, sloping brow, a strong prominent jaw, high cheekbones and facial asymmetry.

Other characteristics: Insensitivity to pain, use of criminal slang, tattoos and unemployment.

Types of criminals: Murderers had bloodshot eyes, curly hair and long ears. Sexual deviants had glinting eyes, fleshy lips and projecting ears. Fraudsters had thin lips.

Evidence: Analysed the facial and cranial features of 383 dead criminals and 3839 living ones. Concluded that 40% of criminal acts could be explained by atavistic characteristics.

Question 8

Evaluation of the Biological Explanation of Offending Behaviour - Atavistic Form

Answer 8

Involved scientific racism - many physical traits that Lombroso identified e.g. curly hair an dark skin - applied to people from African Descent

Promoted and inspired more research into criminality and investigating patterns of offenders

Labelling and stereotyping people who are poor or with low IQ as potentially criminals - many traits may have been caused by poverty/poor diet

Question 9

Summarise the Biological Explanation of Offending Behaviour - Genetic and Neural Explanations

Answer 9

Suggests that potential offenders inherit or gene or many genes that may lead them to commit crimes

Candidate genes: Two possibilities are the MAOA gene and CDH13.

Diathesis-stress model: Criminal behaviour is due to a combination of inherited factors and environmental influences.

Twin studies: Christiansen (1977) found concordance rates of 33% (MZ) and 12% (DZ).

Adoption studies: Mednick et al. (1984) found 13.5% criminal convictions in adoptive children with no biological or adoptive criminal parents, rose to 20% with one criminal biological parent and 24.5% with one biological and one adoptive criminal parent.

Neural explanations: People with antisocial personality disorder (APD, lack of empathy) have reduced activity in the prefrontal cortex.

Mirror neurons: People with APD did show empathy when asked to – mirror neurons activated (Keysers et al. 2011).

Question 10

Evaluation of the Biological Explanation of Offending Behaviour - Genetic and Neural Explanations

Answer 10

Deterministic and reductionist - saying that genes determine whether a person commits a crime and also too simplistic an explanation

Cannot removal environmental factors from twin studies - some adoption studies may have used children who were adopted later and already exposed to disadvantageous environmental factors

Nature or nurture? Or both

Question 11

Summarise the Psychological Explanation of Offending Behaviour - Eysenck’s Theory

Answer 11

Eysenck looked at different personality dimensions, e.g. introvert and extrovert, and how they affected certain behaviours, and used this to explain criminal behaviour. The traits are biological in origin.

The criminal personality: Scores highly on measures of extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism.

Extraversion: Chronically under-aroused nervous system, which leads to sensation-seeking and risk-taking behaviour.

Neuroticism: Unstable, unpredictable behaviour; moody, insecure and anxious.

Psychoticism: Cold, heartless offender who has an inability to feel remorse or guilt.

Socialisation: Extraverts and neurotics do not condition easily and do not learn to respond to antisocial behaviour by becoming anxious, as most people do.

Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI): A psychological test, which measures extraversion and neuroticism and determines personality type. A later scale was introduced that is used to measure psychoticism.

Question 12

Evaluate Eysenck’s Psychological Theory of Offending Behaviour

Answer 12

Supporting Evidence - Eysenck and Eysenck measured personality traits of prisoners compared to controls - found that prisoners had higher scores of neuroticism, extraversion and psychoticism

Cultural bias - some cultures may be more likely to be extravert - leads to labelling/stereotyping

Use of scales and tests to measure personality traits - social desirability bias - narrow answers

Are our personality traits stable - they may change depending on circumstances - deterministic and reductionist to say personality type may lead to criminal behaviour

Question 13

Summarise Cognitive/Psychology Explanations of Offending Behaviour - Kohlberg

Answer 13

Kohlberg used moral reasoning to explain criminal behaviour. Offenders are less likely to be efficient at moral reasoning:

Level of moral reasoning: A series of progressively more logically consistent stages. An individual uses their own value system to think about whether an action is right or wrong.

Moral dilemmas: Kohlberg used moral stories with his participants to measure level of moral reasoning.

Kohlberg’s theory: Criminal offenders are more likely to be classified at the preconventional level (associated with child-like reasoning)

Question 14

Evaluate the Cognitive/Psychology Explanations of Offending Behaviour - Kohlberg

Answer 14

Application - Kohlberg’s theory has led to CBT of offenders to help them realise the consequences of their actions

Supporting Evidence - Palmer and Hollin (1998) used the Socio-Moral Reflection Measure Short Form which contains moral related stories to test levels of moral reasoning in offenders vs non-offenders. Offenders showed less mature moral reasoning than non-offenders.

Question 15

Summarise the Cognitive/Psychology Explanations of Offending Behaviour - Cognitive Distortions Explanation

Answer 15

Faulty thinking may mean that inappropriate behaviour is justified, accepted and continued in the offender

Cognitive distortions: Biased ways of thinking which may be used to rationalise or justify offending behaviour.

Hostile attribution bias: Judging situations as aggressive and/or threatening when in reality they may not be

Minimalisation: Downplaying the significance of an event or emotion as a means of dealing with guilt.

Question 16

Evaluate the Cognitive/Psychology Explanations of Offending Behaviour - Cognitive Distortions Explanation

Answer 16

Explains what is going but does not show where this faulty thinking has come from

Cause or Effect - explain why the person may not feel guilty about the behaviour but not why they did it

Application - faulty thinking can be altered through cognitive behavioural therapy so offenders have more of an awareness of their actions or learn not to misinterpret certain situations as aggressive

Question 17

Summarise Psychological explanation: Differential Association Theory

Answer 17

Premise: Individuals learn the values, attitudes, techniques and motives for criminal behaviour through association and interaction with different people

Differential association theory: It is about who you associate with.

Scientific basis for crime: Sutherland sought a set of conditions that cause crime when present.

Crime as a learned behaviour: Individuals learn the values, attitudes, techniques and motives for criminal behaviour through interaction with significant others.

Pro-criminal attitudes: If the number of pro-criminal attitudes the person comes to acquire outweighs the number of anti-criminal attitudes, they will go on to offend.

Imitation of criminal acts: The would-be offender may also learn particular techniques for committing crime.

Prisons: Reoffending is high because prisoners associate with other prisoners.

Question 18

Evaluation of the Psychological explanation: Differential Association Theory

Answer 18

Explains ‘white-collar’ and ‘blue-collar’ crimes as these people associate in certain groups and behaviour associated with this group becomes the norm (e.g. Peaky Blinders - blue collar, Wolf of Wall Street - white collar)

Moves away from the biological approach and leads to less of a label on people from a working class/deprived areas as the ones who are criminals

Links to the family - if they normalise/encourage criminal behaviour then person more likely to offend

Reductionist/deterministic - there are more factors that cause criminal behaviour than association - not everyone exposed to criminal behaviour goes on to commit crime

Question 19

Summarise Psychological explanations of offending behaviour: the Psychodynamic Approach

Answer 19

Based on Freud’s concepts (he did not explain criminal behaviour officially) - unconscious conflicts drive behaviour - they are rooted in early childhood and the conflicts are also determined by interactions with parents. Main points of theory:

Oedipus complex: Son sees father as rival for mother’s love, but comes to identify with father and develops a superego

Superego: The moral component of the personality.

Weak superego: Child has not identified with the same-sex parent so has no moral code, becomes selfish and aggressive. This could be due to absence of the same-sex parent

Deviant superego: Child identifies with an immoral parent. Freud called this pseudo-heredity.

Over-harsh superego: Identification with a very strict parent leads to excessively punitive superego. This may (unconsciously) drive the individual to perform criminal acts in order to satisfy the superego’s need for punishment.

Maternal deprivation theory: If a child did not form an attachment (long-lasting emotional bond) with their mother (or a primary caregiver) in the first two years of life, this would lead to delinquency and affectionless psychopathy e.g. 44 thieves (see attachment)

Question 20

Evaluate Psychological explanations of offending behaviour: the Psychodynamic Approach

Answer 20

Gender Bias - implies females are inferior to males/have a weaker superego

Lack of evidence to support unconscious conflicts/desires- therefore unscientific

Implies that people raised without same-sex parents are more likely to offend - there is no evidence for this and it is a biased/patronising assumption

Links to Bowlby’s 44 thieves study (see attachment) - but this study focuses on maternal deprivation which is socially sensitive/unethical as it places pressure/guilt on the mother

Question 21

Dealing with offending behaviour - what is custodial sentencing?

Answer 21

For the offender to spend time in a institution for several reasons:

Custodial sentencing: The offender is punished by serving time in prison (incarceration) or in some other place, e.g. a psychiatric hospital.

Recidivism: A convicted criminal who reoffends, usually repeatedly.

Deterrence: Seeing or experiencing the negative consequence means that the offending behaviour should be avoided in the future.

Incapacitation: Sending to prison removes the offender from society, putting the offender out of action

Retribution: Society exacts revenge for unacceptable conduct

Rehabilitation: Objective of prison as not being purely to punish, but to reform through access to development of skills.

Question 22

Evaluation of Custodial Sentencing

Answer 22

Opportunities for training and treatment that they may not necessarily have had access to in their lives

After being labelled as a criminal and spending time in an institution that may find it hard to get a job and be stuck in a vicious cycle of crime

Institutions may led to associations with other criminals and may lead to worse behaviour

Prevention of reoffending - violent criminals given long sentences will be prevented from reoffending and this may keep members of the public safe

Question 23

Dealing with offending behaviour - what is ‘Behaviour Modification In Custody’?

Answer 23

Behaviour modification: Applying behaviourist principles (operant conditioning) to the management of offenders in penal institutions.

Token economy: Reinforcing desirable behaviour with a token that can then be exchanged for some kind of reward (positive reinforcement).

Primary and secondary reinforcers: Tokens are secondary reinforcers that derive value from association with primary reinforcers, e.g. food.

Punishment: Privileges may be withheld.

Behaviour shaping: Desired behaviour is broken down into small steps called increments and behaviours selectively reinforced.

Question 24

Evaluation of ‘Behaviour Modification In Custody’

Answer 24

Easy to implement - no need for professionals/high skill training

No long term training for the offender - as soon as they are elsewhere/rewards removed, the positive behaviour is not sustained

Ethical issues - the choice to remove privileges’ and rewards can lead to a bullying type scenario where offenders’ human rights may be violated

Individually tailored programme suited to each person’s needs is more effective e.g. rewards that they prefer

Question 25

Dealing with offending behaviour - what is ‘anger management’?

Answer 25

Based on Cognitive Behavioural Treatment (CBT)

CBT: Cognitive behaviour treatment aims to change the way you think and the resultant behaviours.

Anger management: Learn to identify the signs that trigger anger as well as learning behavioural techniques to calm down and deal with a situation in a positive way.

1. Cognitive preparation: Offenders reflect on past experience and what causes them anger.
2. Skill acquisition: Offenders learn techniques to deal with anger-provoking situations more rationally and effectively, e.g. positive ‘self-talk’ and methods of relaxation.
3. Application practice: Practise skills through role play, for example.

Question 26

Evaluation of Anger Management

Answer 26

Multidisciplinary approach - combines a number of approaches and acknowledge that cause offending behaviour is complex - non-reductionist

Tackles the cause of the offending behaviour rather than the superficial surface behaviour

Follow up studies show that is low long term effectiveness

Expensive and requires commitment

Anger may not necessarily be the cause of the offending behaviour

Question 27

Dealing with offending behaviour - what is ‘Restorative Justice’?

Answer 27

Victims take an active role in the process- offenders are required to take responsibility

Restorative justice: Rehabilitation of offenders through reconciliation with victims.

Meeting: Supervised meeting with trained mediator between criminal and victim. May not be face-to-face.

Active role: Criminal made aware of emotional distress caused.

Responsibility: Acceptance of the consequences of their behaviour. May make financial reparation.

Positive outcomes: For both criminal and victim.

RJC: An independent body whose role it is to establish standards for the use of restorative justice and to support victims and specialist professionals in the field.

Question 28

Evaluation of Restorative Justice

Answer 28

Emotionally taxing for the victim - very hard to face offender especially in cases of domestic violence. Feminists also highlight that often female victims are blamed or expected to participate when they do not want to.

The system is vulnerable to abuse - offenders may sign up and play the part in order to reduce sentence but may not actually have remorse

Diverse - can often be tailored to fit the needs of the individual - not a one size fits all process like custodial sentencing

Expensive - requires support and training - high dropout rates as it is emotionally draining for victim and offender