Forensics Flashcards
What is the top down approach?
A way of narrowing down potential suspects by creating a profile of the most likely offender
How does the top down appraise narrow down potential subjects?
Using data, background info on the victim, and looking at patterns, behaviour, and motivations.
What are the two types of offender that a murderer can be classified into?
Organised
Disorganised
What are the possible characteristics of an organised offender?
Intelligent
Skilled occupational
Socially competent
Angry/depressed
What are the possible crime features of a organised offender?
Planned crimes
Targeted victims - a usually strangers and of a usual type
Self control
Covers tracks
Who is an example of a organised killer?
Ted bundy
What are the possible crime features of a disorganised offender?
Unplanned crimes
Leaves clues
Haphazard
What are the possible characteristics of a disorganised offender?
Poor social skills Poor personal hygiene Low intelligence Psychotic maybe Unable to maintain stable romantic/sexual relationships
Why are disorganised offenders not usually serial killers?
Tend to murder during fits of anger and will be more likely to know the victim and murder them due to a trigger.
Who is an example of a disorganised offender?
Richard Trenton Chase
What are the four steps of making a profile?
- data assimilation
- Crime seven classification
- Crime reconstruction
- Profile generation
What is data assimilation?
Looks at evidence from the crime scene, e.g. photos
What is crime scene classification?
Either organised or disorganised offender
What is crime reconstruction?
What happened? Who did what? How did they behave?
What is profile generation?
Using the above to create the profile of the likely offender
What is the bottom up approach?
More scientific than top down approach - treats every case as if unique - it starts with the bare basics and adds more to their profile as the evidence grows
Who developed geographical profiling?
Rossmo (1997)
What did rossmo believe?
We could use info from locations of linked crime scenes to make inferences about the offender
Who came up with the circle theory?
Canter and Larkin
What is the circle theory?
People operate within a limited spatial mind set that creates imaged boundaries in which crimes are likely to be committed.
Who developed crime mapping?
Rossmo
What is crime mapping?
Looking at locations of linked crimes that help us make inferences about the likely home or operational base of the offender.
What is the assumption used to help crime mapping?
That criminals operate in areas they are facial removal with.
What are the two types of offender?
Marauder
Commuter
What is a marauder?
Offender that works in close proximity to home
What is a commuter?
An offender that travels
What is investigative psychology?
The application of statistics to offender profiling.
What is the aim of investigative psychology?
To establish patterns of behaviour that exist across crime scenes. The patterns form a database of cases and this is used to compare a crime scene to a previous offender snd see if anything matches.
What are the 5 characteristics important in investigative psychology?
Criminal characteristics Criminal career Interpersonal coherence Significance of time and place Forensic awareness
What is criminal characteristics?
Placing criminals into categories
What is criminal career?
This considers how far into their criminal experience offenders are, and how their pattern of crime might progress
What is interpersonal coherence?
This is the way in which an offender behaves at the scene. How they interact with the victim may indicate how they act everyday.
What is the significant of time and place?
This may indicate where the offender is living if the crimes take place within the same forensic ‘centre of gravity’
What is forensic awareness?
This focuses on those who have been the focus of police attention before. Their behaviour may denote how mindful they are of covering their tracks
What is the EPI?
The eyesenck personality inventory
Who came up with the EPI?
Hans Eyesenck in 1947
What type of test is the EPI?
A form of psychological text which located respondents along the E and N dimensions to determine their personality type.
What are the four different types?
Extrovert - sociable
Introvert - unsociable
Stable - emotions don’t vary widely
Neurotic - emotions vary widely
What is the third trait that eyesenck later added?
Psychoticism
Psychoticism
Lacking in empathy, cruel, aggressive and troublesome.
What does the term personality mean?
Used to refer to relatively stable characteristics of a persons that make their behaviour consistent across situations.
What are people who have high E scores like?
Sociable, active, lively and sensation seeking and this is determined by the overall level of arousal in a persons CNS and ANS. They need more stimulation from their environment.
What are people with high N scores like?
Anxious, depressed snd react more strongly to averse stimuli. It is determined by the overall level of liability in the persons CNS. People with a high N score results in a higher degree of instability.
In eyesencks theory, how is personality linked to criminal behaviour?
Via socialisation processes
Why is personality linked with criminal behaviour via socialisation processes?
He viewed criminal behaviour as developmentally immature in that it is selfish and concerned with immediate gratification. In socialisation children are taught to become more able to delay gratification.
What are cognitive explanations of crime based on?
Cognitive distortions
What are cognitive distortions?
Errors or biases in peoples informational processing systems which affects the way people view themselves and others, especially actions.
What is hostile attribution bias?
The tendency to interpret others behaviours as having hostile intent.
What does research suggest about hostile attribution bias?
That propensity for violence is associated with misinterpretations of peoples actions.
What causes hostile attribution bias?
Children exposed to teasing at school or child abused at home are more likely to develop it which leads them to behave aggressively.
Real world application - Holtzworth-Munroe (1993)
Those with hostile attribution bias are over 4 times more likely to die by the age of 50 than adults without.
What is minimilisation?
When criminals downplay or deny their actions to minimalize the effect or guilt
What is minimilisation also known as?
Euphemistic labelling
What doe studies suggest about minimilisation?
Individuals who commit sexual offences are particularly prone to minimilisation.
What did Barbaree find?
Among 26 incarcerated rapists, 54% denied they had committed an offence at all and a further 40% minimised the harm they caused to the victim.
What did Lawrence Kohlberg come up with?
Stages of moral development
Kohlbergs stages
He used moral dilemmas to investigate childrens reasoning, there was six stages concerned with justice.
What did kohlberg investigate in the reasonings?
Didn’t look for what should be done he looked for the reasoning used to justify the response.
What are the two stages of Kohlbergs method involved with crime?
- stage 1 (punishment and obedience)
- stage 2 (reward and self interest)
What is a problem with Kohlbergs method?
The sample is biased.
How is Kohlbergs sample biased?
It was based in an all male sample, which reflects a male definition of morality. Mens morality is based on abstract principles of law and justice while a womens is based on principles of compassion and care.
What did Sutherland say about the differential association theory?
The conditions which are said to cause crime should be present when crime is present, and absent when crime is absent.
What are the two components of the differential association theory?
- pro criminal attitudes
- learning criminal attitudes.
What are pro criminal attitudes?
People socialise in different groups and are exposed to different attitudes. If the pro crime attitudes outweigh the anti crime attitudes, we will become criminals.
Learning criminal acts
Criminals also learn particular criminal techniques. This may be why crimes “breed” in specific social groups and communities.
This could also account for re-offending as criminals learn more techniques in prison.
What crime can differential association theory account for?
All crime but not crimes of passion
What does differential association suggest?
we should be able to mathematically predict how likely it is somebody will commit crime. Frequency, intensity and duration - knowing these means we can predict offending likelihood.
What is rationalisation?
when criminals provide excuses for their actions. This makes it seem like the criminals are in the right and what they are doing is okay.
What does the differential association theory say crime is?
A learned behaviour
The ID
Representing primitive desires and the need for gratification
The Superego
Representing moral and social constraints. Works on the morality principle.
The ego
The role of the ego is to strike a balance between the demands of the id and the constraints imposed by the superego.
How is the superego determined?
In Freudian theory, the structure of the psyche is determined in the first five years of life.
The roots of offending are found in this period, especially in the relationship between the developing child and its parents.
How does the superego cause crime?
Ronald Blackburn (1993) If the super-ego is deficient or “inadequate” then the ID is given free reign to do as it likes.
What does Blackburn believe about the super ego?
There are three types
What are the three types of superego?
Weak superego
Deviant superego
Strong superego
What is a weak super ego?
Having a lack of inhibitions towards anti-social behaviour
How is a weak superego formed?
Through abnormal behaviour with family members
How does a weak superego cause crime?
If no guilt and social restraints you are more likely to commit crimes
What is the deviant superego?
The criminal” superego
How is the deviant superego formed?
Internalising same sex parents values
How does the deviant superego cause crime?
Because our super-ego has no problem with crime
What is the strong superego?
Individual always feels anxious and guilty and they don’t feel punished
How is the strong superego formed?
Caused by really strict parents
How does the strong super ego cause crime?
People with strong super egos commit crimes TO get punished. (subconsciously).
Or
People with a strong super ego supress their criminal urges. This eventually boils over into a very aggressive act.
