Forensic psychology Key Terms Flashcards
Aims of custodial sentencing
- Incapacitation (to protect other people)
- rehabilitation (using education and treatment programmes to change the offender’s behaviour)
- retribution (to show society and the victim’s family that the offender has been forced to pay for their actions)
- deterrence (to prevent re-offending and show society the consequences of similar actions)
Anger management
Cognitive-behavioural programmes that are designed to help individuals to control their anger. In the context of prisons, the assumption is that anger leads to crime, therefore anger management should help prisoners to restrain themselves from carrying out further crimes in the future. For example, National Anger Management Package (NAMP) helps prisoners to recognise some of the causes of their anger and learn how to control it.
Atavistic form (Lombroso)
A historical approach which argues that criminals are ‘genetic throwbacks’ and a primitive sub-species who are biologically different from non-criminals. The approach claims that there were physical features which offenders had which indicated they were part of this sub-species (such as a sloping brow and high cheekbones).
Behaviour modification (in custody)
Programmes that make use of behavioural principles in order to rehabilitate offenders through operant conditioning, incorporating elements of reinforcement and punishment. In the context of prison, this is known as a token economy as good behaviour is rewarded with tokens and bad behaviour is punished by removing these tokens.
Biological explanations: offending behaviour
Biological explanations explain the causes of behaviour as being physiological in nature (e.g. nature rather than nurture). Early biological explanations focused on on the atavistic form, whereas more recent biological explanations are based on genes, brain structure and neurotransmitters.
Bottom-up approach
A data-driven approach that makes use of statistical data on similar crimes that have been committed, in order to make predictions about the characteristics of an offender.
Cognitive distortions
Patterns of negative or exaggerated thought which can enforce maladaptive behaviour. Two cognitive distortions, which have been researched in relation to offending behaviour, are: hostile attribution bias (offenders will interpret the actions of others as being hostile) and minimalisation (offenders downplaying the severity of their crime).
Top-down approach
Conclusions about an offender are drawn based on the evidence found at the crime scene. As well as this, other cases where criminals have been interviewed are analysed, in order to build a picture of typical offender profiles. This method is typically used for more extreme crimes, e.g. murder and rape.
