Forensic Psychology - Evaluation Flashcards
Defining crime evaluation
- Official statistics have been criticised as unreliable as they underestimate the true extent of crime = only 25% of offences are in official figures = 75% is the dark side of crime which don’t appear in OCS due to mistrust of police/victim fears reprisal & are not recorded due to police recording rules = a study found Nottinghamshire police were more likely than other regions to record thefts under £10 = explains the ‘spike’ of thefts = suggests policing priorities may distort official statistics
+ Victim surveys are more accurate than official statistics as they include details of crimes that were not reported to the police= 2006 OCS suggested a 2% decrease in crime from the previous year but the British crime survey showed a 3% increase = victim surveys rely on accurate recall of the crimes that people were the victim = ‘telescoping’ is where a victim misremembers an event as happening in the past year when it didn’t = may be due to trauma fresh in the mind, making it seem recent = may distort figures
+ Offender surveys provide insight into how many people are responsible for certain offences = confidentiality is assured in offender surveys but responses may be unreliable = offender wants to conceal more serious crime they’ve committed or exaggerate the number of reasons of bravado = also the targeted nature of the survey means that certain types of crime (burglary) are over-represented but m/c corporate crime are not included
- All measures have issues with reliability and validity of the data they produce = this means that all crime figures should be carefully scrutinised and interpreted with caution = researchers recommend a multidisciplinary approach when measuring crime: a combination of all available methods provides the best insight into the true extent of offending
Offender profiling: Top-down approach evaluation
- Only applies to specific crimes: rape, arson & macabre practices: sadistic torture, body dissection = top-down profiling best suits crime scenes that reveal details about the suspect = common offences: burglary don’t lend themselves to profiling as the crime scene reveals very little about the offender = this is a limited approach to identify a criminal
- Alison suggested that the top-down approach is based on out-dated models of personality as this approach is naive and informed by out-dated models that see behaviour as having stable dispositional traits than external factors that change = this means the top-down approach has poor validity when identifying possible suspects and predicting their next move
- Canter found evidence that does not support the disorganised offender = analysed 100 murders in US, using the technique: smallest space analysis = the details of each case were examined using 39 characteristics thought to be typical of organised/disorganised killers = found evidence of an organised type but not for disorganised which undermines the classification system as a whole = thus the organised/disorganised types are still used for professional profilers in the US with widespread support
- Classification is too simplistic as the behaviours that describe the organised/disorganised types are not exclusive because there are many combinations that could occur in any murder scene = Godwin asked how police investigators would classify a killer with high intelligence and sexual competence who commits a murder with the victim’s body left at the crime scene = this prompted other researchers to propose more detailed typology models
Offender profiling: Bottom-up approach evaluation
+ Lundigran and Canter collated information from 120 murder cases involving serial killers in the US = smallest space analysis found spatial consistency in the behaviour of the killers = the location of each body disposal site was in a different direction from the previous, creating a ‘centre of gravity’ where the offender’s base was located in the centre of the pattern = the effect was more noticeable for marauders (travel short distance) = this supports Canter’s claim that spatial information is a key factor in determining the base of an offender
- Kocsis et al found that chemistry students produced a more accurate offender profile on a solved murder case than experienced senior detectives = despite the many successes of the bottom-up approach to profiling, there have been some significant failures; producing mixed results for profiling
+ Canter says the bottom-up approach profiling is more objective and scientific than the top-down approach as it’s more grounded in evidence & psychological theory & not based on predictions and speculations = artificial intelligence helps investigators to manipulate geographical, biographical, psychological data quickly to produce insights and results that helps the investigation = also, investigative psychology has recently expanded to include suspect interviewing and examination of material presented in the court = supports its utility in the judicial process
+ Bottom-up approach can be applied to a wide range of offences = techniques like smallest space analysis and the principle of spatial consistency can be used in the investigation of crimes (burglary, theft) and serious offences (murder, rape)
Biological explanation of offending behaviour: atavistic form evaluation
- Lombroso has androcentric ideas about women; suggests gender bias = believed women are naturally jealous, passive, low intelligence but this is not the case = women have a maternal instinct which balances negative traits, making the less likely to be criminals = but, women who did become criminals had masculine characteristics which were seen fine for a man but causes the women to be criminal
+ Lombroso is the ‘father of modern criminology’ = the emphasis in crime research was rigorous and scientific through evolutionary influences and not judging offenders as weak-minded = His theory created the start of criminal profiling by describing the types of people likely to commit particular crimes thus, contributing to criminology
- Goring found contradictory evidence who wanted to establish whether there’s any physical or mental abnormalities among criminal classes = after comparing 3000 criminals with 3000 non-criminals = found no differences and no distinct group with unusual characteristics = suggested criminals had below average intelligence, giving limited support to his argument that criminals are ‘sub-species’ = this questions his theory that criminals are different with their appearance
- Poor control found in Lombroso’s research = he didn’t compare his criminal sample with a non-criminal control group = if he did compare these groups, the significant differences in atavistic form that Lombroso reported may have disappeared - he failed to account other important variables within his research = the criminals he studied suffered from a history of psychological disorders which may have confounded variables
(biological) Genetic and Neural explanations of offending behaviour
- Early twin studies of criminality were poorly controlled and judgements related to if twins were MZ or DZ, being based on appearance rather than DNA tests thus, lacking validity = also, twin studies involve small sample sizes so they are unrepresentative of the population & most twins are reared in the same environment is a confounding variable as concordance rates may be due to shared learning experiences rather than genes
- There’s biological reductionism = these explanations are inappropriate and simplistic as they reduce offending behaviour = crime can run in the family, in mental illness and emotional instability = makes it difficult to disentangle the effects of genes and neural influences from other factors = whilst there’s a difference in concordance rates between MZ and DZ twins & MZ pairs don’t show 100% concordance
- There’s biological determinism = the concept of the ‘criminal gene’ creates a problem = the legal system says criminals have responsibility for their crimes and may have a mental illness where they claim they’re not acting under their own free will = this raises ethical questions about suspects with ‘criminal genes’ and the implications on sentencing
