Forensics Evaluations

Question 1

Defining and Measuring crime: Positive Evaluations

Answer 1

1. Victim surveys have the advantage over official statistics. Individuals may feel less repercussions for their actions through self report method
2. Offender surveys have been particularly useful in informing crime prevention and management strategies due to showing patterns and risk factors of offending behaviour.

Question 2

Defining and measuring crime: Negative evaluations

Answer 2

1. Victim survey’s suffer from the serious methodological problems associated with self report techniques - results affected by trauma and stress
2. Data collected from offender surveys may be distorted or biased because it has been collected from other offenders. Too much reliance upon honesty

Question 3

The Top Down Approach: Negative evaluations

Answer 3

1. Unlikely all offenders are able to be identified as either organised or disorganised
2. Evidence to support the existence of an organised offender type, but none for disorganised.
3. Top down approach can only be used to explain crimes where there have been obvious, visible characteristics

Question 4

The Bottom Up Approach: Positive Evaluations

Answer 4

1. Its reliance on scientific methods of enquiry and the use of statistical analysis.
2. There is evidence to support the use of smallest space analysis in geographical profiling

Question 5

The Bottom Up Approach: Negative Evaluation

Answer 5

Doesn’t always lead to the correct identification of the offender

Question 6

Atavistic Form: Positive Evaluation

Answer 6

Lombroso may be considered as ‘the father of criminology’ - his methods of attributing certain atavistic or cranial features to certain types of criminals with specific traits, was the basis from which modern criminal profiling was developed

Question 7

Atavistic Form: Negative Evaluations

Answer 7

1. Many modern researchers have branded Lombroso and his atavistic theory as racist
2. Atavistic form theory is considered by many as unscientific. Didn’t use statistical analysis or a control group from another culture.

Question 8

Genetic and Neural Explanations: Positive Evaluation

Answer 8

Strong support for the use of a Diathesis-stress model in explaining criminality comes from Mednick et al. - Study done to show that “siblings adopted separately into different homes tended to be concordat for convictions, especially if the shared biological father also had a record of criminal behaviour”

Question 9

Genetic and Neural Explanations: Negative Evaluations

Answer 9

1. Methodological issue with the use of twin studies as a means of investigating the genetic basis of behaviour is that such studies assume that the only difference between twins is the amount of genetic info they share
2. The focus on the role of genetics and neural activities as a means of explaining criminal behaviour suffers from the problem of biological reduction.

Question 10

Psychological Explanations - Eyesnck’s Theory: Negative Evaluations

Answer 10

1. The criminal personality theory shares a weakness similar to the top down approach, and that is an oversimplification of the classification of criminals
2. Eysnck’s criminal personality theory may also suffer from cultural bias, due to largely western culture from which the samples were drawn.
3. The EPI takes on a reductionist approach to assessing and measuring personality, as suggested by Mischel (1988).