Midterm 1

Question 1

What is police psychology?

Answer 1

Involves the application of psychology to policing but also includes research done with or on behalf of the police in order to inform applied practice.

Question 2

What’s tasks did Aumiller and Corey find?

Answer 2

Assessment, Intervention, Operational, Consulting.

Question 3

What do police psychologists do in Canada?

Answer 3

Study found that most were satisfied and spent most of their time on pre-employment evaluations and fitness for duty evaluations.

Question 4

What is evidence based policing?

Answer 4

The idea that policing should be based on scientific evidence about what works best and move away from judgements based on untested assumptions.

Question 5

Challenges in police psychology?

Answer 5

Lack of funding from police agencies, difficult security clearance procedures, limited officer cooperation, miscommunication between parties and officer lack of knowledge about psychology.

Question 6

Triple T Strategy

Answer 6

Sherman, 2013: Targeting, testing tracking

Question 7

Key elements of EBP

Answer 7

Research must be usable/relevant.
Involve police in research.
Identify what works.

Question 8

EMMIE (Crime Reduction Toolkit)

Answer 8

Effect
Mediators
Moderators
Implementation
Economic Assessment

Question 9

Why don’t prisons work?

Answer 9

They increase the Big 4 risk factors.
Punishment CAN work if delivered immediately and consistently, this is not the case in prisons.

Question 10

What did studies find about Scared Straight and Scared Stiff programs?

Answer 10

Scared Straight increased youth crime, Scared Stiff had no effect.

Question 11

What are some problems in police recruitment?

Answer 11

Understudied, currently high retirement rate with a youth lack of interest in policing and a previously unseen rate of turnover.

Question 12

What are essential requirements to be a cop in Canada?

Answer 12

Canadian citizen, can operate a firearm, have a driver’s license and are willing to relocate.

Question 13

What are the 3 stages of police research?

Answer 13

Job analysis.
Construction.
Validation.

Question 14

What are some issues with Job Analysis?

Answer 14

How to identify KSAs, are KSAs stable over time, are they different for different jobs? Many KSAs can also be further broken down.

Question 15

What are some issues with Construction?

Answer 15

Should use tools be used or should we develop new ones? And should they be police-specific or directed to the general population, finding tools that are relevant and valid, difficulty assessing KSAs.

Question 16

What are some issues with Validation?

Answer 16

Deciding a scale, accounting for people faking good, range restriction.

Question 17

What are some police screening measures?

Answer 17

MMPI, cognitive aptitude tests, situational tests.

Question 18

Why is validity on police selection measures low?

Answer 18

Test is closer temporally to the academy than actual job performance, socialization may impact on the job actions, and often situational factors cause a dramatic change in performance. Pre-hire tests cannot predict these situations.

Question 19

NUTS

Answer 19

Novelty
Unpredictability
Threat to ego
Sense of control

Question 20

What are some moderators of police stress?

Answer 20

Training to cope, experience with the stressor, support from others, personality factors and coping strategies.

Question 21

Consequences of stress

Answer 21

Weight gain, cardiovascular disease, depression, PTSD, burnout, low morale, absenteeism.

Question 22

Demand-control-support

Answer 22

High job demand + low support + low control = stress.

Question 23

Person-environment fit model

Answer 23

Less compatible = more stress

Question 24

Selye’s GAS model

Answer 24

Alarm –> Resistance –> Exhaustion

Question 25

What are methods of studying police stress?

Answer 25

Self report, psychological, physiological, meta-analysis.

Question 26

What interventions exist of police stress?

Answer 26

CISD, CISM, peer support, CBT, rationale emotive therapy, exercise.

Question 27

Coherence Advantage Program

Answer 27

Stress, resilience and performance enhancement program, gives skills to regulate mental, emotional and physical systems. Specific techniques, easy to learn and employ, shows significant benefits.

Question 28

Suggested moderators of police stress

Answer 28

Length/type of intervention, population, gender, years of police experience. Patterson et al. concluded that moderators and interventions had no significant effect.

Question 29

Investigative Psychology

Answer 29

Developed by David Canter, looks at how to assist police with scientific, empirical applications of psychology to policing.

Question 30

Crime Linkage Analysis

Answer 30

Behavioural evidence that tells the investigators sothing about the person who committed the crime. Allows the police to obtain more severe jail sentences, pool evidence and resources and identify more criminals.

Question 31

Comparative case analysis

Answer 31

Large sample of crimes analysed for potential links.

Question 32

Crime linkage

Answer 32

Index and other offences given to an analyst to determine if they’re linked.

Question 33

Assumptions of crime linkage

Answer 33

Behavioural stability, behavioural distinctiveness.

Question 34

Theory of crime linkage

Answer 34

Rooted in personality psych, personality traits and situational factors impact behaviour, cognition and affect are moderators. Distinctiveness results from offenders understanding and processing information differently, based on their learning history.

Question 35

Modus Operandi

Answer 35

What the offender has to do in order to get away with the crime

Question 36

Behavioural signature

Answer 36

What the offender has to do to feel fulfillment from the crime, not necessary for the completion of it.

Question 37

Linkage databases

Answer 37

Designed to assist linkage and reduce linkage blindness, Clifford Olsen and Paul Bernardo were important CAN cases for this.

Question 38

Potential responses from a yes/no diagnostic task

Answer 38

Hit, False Alarm, True Negative, False Negative,

Question 39

When is linkage the most accurate?

Answer 39

Behaviours related to the offender, not situationally determined, are more accuartely profiled. Where and when of crimes is important, and control behaviours have some significance, especially in sexual crimes. Also higher in interpersonal rather than property crimes.

Question 40

Problems with linkage?

Answer 40

Over-reliance on solved and serial crimes, USA and UK cases, property crimes and having low ecological validity.

Question 41

What are the assumptions of criminal profiling?

Answer 41

Behavioural stability/similarity, homology.

Question 42

What is the theory behind profiling?

Answer 42

Latent traits are assumed to be the driving force behind all behaviours, not just criminal, and this, crime scenes will show behavioural evidence of that individual.

Question 43

Deductive profiling

Answer 43

Based solely on evidence left at the crime scene.

Question 44

Inductive profiling

Answer 44

Based on what we know about other offenders who have committed similar, solved crimes. Most profilers use a combination of both, but most are inductive at their core.

Question 45

Investigative psychology approach to profiling

Answer 45

Determines if structure exists in the way (observable behaviours) or the background characteristics (observable characteristics) of offender. Then, identify relationships between actions and characteristics.

Question 46

What does research say about profiling?

Answer 46

Most papers think it isn’t valid, with little empirical evidence to support it. Allison et al found that only 28% of statements in a sample of profiles were actually personality predictors.