Forensic psychology Flashcards
What are the problems with defining crime?
- Context (Historical)
- Culture
- Age of the convicted
- Circumstances
What are the ways in which crime can be measured? (given an example for each)
- Official National Statistics- Any crime that is committed and reported or discovered by police.
- Victim Survey- CSEW (Crime survey for England and Wales). Asks a sample annually of 50’000 randomly selected from Royal Mail address and are interviewed.
- Offender surveys- OCJS (Offending, crime and justice survey) between 2003-2006. Initially studied those aged 10-65, but in subsequent years a sample of 5’000 aged 10-25 were studied longitudinal over the time frame.
What are the stages of the top-down approach?
- Profiling inputs
- Decision process models
- Crime assessment
- Criminal profile
- Crime assessment
- Apprehension
What is the difference between an organised and disorganised type of offender?
Organised: pre-planned crimes, body usually transported from the scene, have violent fantasies and are usually highly intelligent, socially and sexually competent and keep up with crime in the media.
Disorganised: Unplanned crime, random selection of the victim with sexual acts performed after death of body. Likely to leave many clues such as blood, fingerprints or the weapon.
Explain the aspects of investigative psychology.
Approach: proposed by David Canter, who said that profiling should be based on psychological research and theory.
Interpersonal coherence: Idea that people are consistent in their behaviour and therefore will be links between their every day life and their crime.
Forensic awareness: Some behaviours show an understanding of awareness of police techniques (like Ted Bundy) and past experiences of crimes.
Small space analysis: Statistical technique developed by Canter. Data from crime scene and offender characteristics are often correlated so that most common connections can be found.
Explain Canter’s geographical profiling, including Rossmo’s model
Canter proposed that people do not solely reveal themselves by crime, but also through the location. They will analyse patterns of shown by the location or locations of crimes.
Circle theory: they commit crimes in a certain imagined circle which is either marauder (offender’s home is in the vicinity in which the crime is committed) or commuter- travel to another geographical area to commit the crime.
CGT: computerised system composed by Rossmo that creates a 3D map with data on time, distance and movement to and from the crime scene. It is a jeopardy surface.
Top Down approach A03:
Why can the basis of the top-down approach be seen as flawed regarding organised and disorganised crime?
Original data is based on the most dangerous and sexually motivated murderers like Bundy and Manson. Such individuals are unlikely to be good source of reliable information as they were highly manipulative. They are not ‘typical’ offenders.
Top Down Approach A03:
Canter’s counter evidence for organised/disorganised crime. (Study)
Classification has little basis in reality. Analysis of 39 aspects of serial killings from 100 US serial killers showed little evidence for disorganised crime and many types of subsets for organised crime.
Top Down approach A03:
Have the police and FBI found this method useful? What evidence is there to support this?
- US officers were questioned and 90% of sample said they would use it again and 82% found it useful.
- Other evidence points to it being useful for looking at different perspective and opens new avenues for investigation, even if they cannot identify them.
Top Down Approach A03:
Why is this approach seen as ‘junk science’ and why is it harmful?
- Argued they are doing no more than what psychics do
- Is not based or science of theories and the fact that it ambiguous enough in description means it can fit many profiles, much like horoscopes.
- This could lead to harm as it may be misleading when it comes to profiling and lead to incorrect convictions.
Top Down approach: A03
How has the usefulness of this approach been measured, and how is this flawed? (Study)
- By considering how close the profile was to the actual offender characteristics; close means useful.
- But a study showed that judgements are not always reliable. Police officers were given a profile along with two versions of the criminal’s characteristics; one was fake and one was real. Over 50% of the officers rated the profile as generally very accurate, even though half were given a fake version.
Bottom Up approach A03:
How is this approach more scientific?
What are the limitations of this?
- Uses objective statistical techniques, but only good if the data is good and correlations can be made about traits and the crime committed
- Algorithm used in Rossmo may be incorrect and therefore inconsistent in results.
Bottom Up Approach A03:
To what extent is investigative psychology useful?
British police force surveyed and found 75% said it had been useful, but not in identifying the offender.
Only a small amount of the force use it and so it can never be used to its full capacity.
Bottom Up Approach A03:
To what extent is circle theory useful? (Study)
Only somewhat.
Analysis of 45 sexual assaults, 91% were found to be marauders, meaning classification does little for the investigation.
Also if they do not use their home as a base for their circle, it makes the investigation much harder.
Bottom Up Approach A03:
To what extent is geographical profiling useful?
Somewhat efficient for example it is good for identifying spaces and places to check door to door, but doe little for knowing the character of the offender, just their roundabout residence or movements.
Bottom Up Approach A03:
What are the implication of this approach overall?
It cannot actually find who the criminal is, but can narrow it down. However if followed too closely it an lead to wrong profile. In one murder investigation, a profile was given of a Mr Stagg that had killed a 21 year old. Much money and investigation went into hi, but it was found to be Mr Napper, who was ruled out as he was taller than the man in the profile.
