Forensic Psychology

Question 1

What is meant by Crime

Answer 1

An act committed in violation of the law where the consequence of conviction by a court is punishment, especially where the punishment is a serious one such as imprisonment.

Question 2

What is meant by Official statistics

Answer 2

Figures based on the numbers of crimes that are reported and recorded by the police which are often used by the government to inform crime prevention strategies.

Question 3

What is meant by Victim survey (or victimisation survey)

Answer 3

A questionnaire that asks a sample of people which crimes have been committed against them over a fixed period of time and whether or not they have been reported to the police.

Question 4

What is meant by Offender survey

Answer 4

A self-report measure that requires people to record the number and types of crime they have committed over a specified period.

Question 5

What is meant by Offender profiling

Answer 5

Also known as ‘criminal profiling’, a behavioural and analytical tool that is intended to help investigators accurately predict and profile the characteristics of unknown criminals.

Question 6

What is meant by The top-down approach

Answer 6

Profilers start with a pre-established typology and work down in order to assign offenders to one of two categories based on witness accounts and evidence from the crime scene.

Question 7

What is meant by Organised offender

Answer 7

An offender who shows evidence of planning, targets the victim and tends to be socially and sexually competent with higher than average intelligence.

Question 8

What is meant by Disorganised offender

Answer 8

An offender who shows little evidence of planning, leaves clues and tends to be socially and sexually incompetent with lower than average intelligence.

Question 9

What is meant by The bottoms-up approach

Answer 9

Profilers work up from evidence collected from the crime scene to develop hypotheses about the likely characteristics, motivations and social background of the offender.

Question 10

What is meant by Investigative psychology

Answer 10

A form of bottom-up profiling that matches details from the crime scene with statistical analysis of typical offender behaviour patterns based on psychological theory.

Question 11

What is meant by Geographical profiling

Answer 11

A form of bottom-up profiling based on the principle of spatial consistency: than an offender’s operational base and possible future offences are revealed by the geographical location of their previous crimes.

Question 12

What is meant by Atavistic form

Answer 12

A biological approach to offending that attributes criminal activity to the fact that offenders are genetic throwbacks or a primitive sub-species ill-suited to conforming to the rules of modern society. Such individuals are distinguishable by particular facial and cranial characteristics.

Question 13

What is meant by Genetics

Answer 13

Genes consist of DNA strands. DNA produces ‘instructions’ for general physical features of an organism (such as eye colour, height) and also specific physical features (such as neurotransmitter levels and size of brain structures). These may impact on psychological features (such as intelligence and mental disorder). Genes are transmitted from parent to offspring, i.e. inherited.

Question 14

What is meant by Neural explanation

Answer 14

Any explanation of behaviour (and its disorders) in terms of (dys)functions of the brain and nervous system. This includes the activity of brain structures such as the hypothalamus, and neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine.

Question 15

What is meant by The criminal personality

Answer 15

An individual who scores highly on measures of extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism and cannot easily be conditioned, is cold and unfeeling, and is likely to engage in offending behaviour.

Question 16

What is meant by Level of moral reasoning

Answer 16

Moral reasoning refers to the process by which an individual draws upon their own value system to determine whether an action is right or wrong. Kohlberg attempted to objectify this process by identifying different levels of reasoning based on people’s answers to moral dilemmas.

Question 17

What is meant by Cognitive distortions

Answer 17

Faulty, biased and irrational ways of thinking that mean we perceive ourselves, other people and the world inaccurately and usually negatively.

Question 18

What is meant by Hostile attribution bias

Answer 18

The tendency to judge ambiguous situations, or the actions of others, as aggressive and/or threatening when in reality they may not be.

Question 19

What is meant by Minimalisation or minimisation

Answer 19

A type of deception that involves downplaying the significance of an event or emotion. A common strategy when dealing with feelings of guilt.

Question 20

What is meant by Differential association theory

Answer 20

An explanation for offending which proposes that, through interaction with others, individuals learn the values, attitudes, techniques and motives for criminal behaviour.

Question 21

What is meant by Psychodynamic explanations

Answer 21

A group of theories influenced by the work of Sigmund Freud which share the belief that unconscious conflicts, rooted in early childhood and determined by interactions with parents, drive future - and in this case criminal - behaviour.

Question 22

What is meant by Custodial sentencing

Answer 22

A judicial sentence determined by a court, where the offender is punished by serving time in prison (incarceration) or in some other closed therapeutic and/or educational institution, such as a psychiatric hospital.

Question 23

What is meant by Recidivism

Answer 23

Reoffending, a tendency to relapse into a previous condition or mode of behaviour; in the context of crime, a convicted criminal who reoffends, usually repeatedly.

Question 24

What is meant by Behaviour modification

Answer 24

An application of the behaviourist approach to treatment (such as the management of offenders in penal institutions). It is based on the principles of operant conditioning. The general aim is to replace undesirable behaviours with more desirable ones through the selective use of positive and/or negative reinforcement.

Question 25

What is meant by Anger management

Answer 25

A therapeutic programme that involves identifying the signs that trigger anger as well as learning techniques to calm down and deal with the situation in a positive way. The aim of anger management is not to prevent anger but to recognise it and manage it. Anger management can be offered in prison to encourage self-awareness and facilitate rehabilitation.

Question 26

What is meant by Restorative justice

Answer 26

A system for dealing with criminal behaviour which focuses on the rehabilitation of offenders through reconciliation with victims. This enables he offender to see the impact of their crime and serves to empower victims by giving then a ‘voice’.