Paper 3 - Forensic Psychology - Theories Of Offending Flashcards
Define crime
an act committed in a violation of the law where the consequence of conviction by court is punishment possibly jail time
State some stats
In 2020 there was a 20% increase in domestic aggression
100 murders in the UK since start of lockdown until end of 2023`
What are the 2 main catagories in the problems with defining crime?
Cultural and Historical
Explain the problem with defining crime: Cultural
Different cultures have different crimes
Forced marriage was made illegal in the UK in 2014, however it is practice i other countries
Explain the problem with defining crime: Historical
Things may have changed from being a crime to being legal
Homosexuality is still illegal in many parts of the world and was only made legal in the UK since 1967. A parent could still smack their child was outlawed in 2004
In the UK at what age can you be charged with a crime
10
What are the 3 ways of measuring crime
Official statistics
Victim surveys
Offender surveys
Explain the way of measuring crime: Official Statistics
How can they be used
Reported crime is recorded as official figures that allow the government to formulate plans to try to reduce future crime and to formulate police initiatives. These are published by the Home Office as a “snapshot” of the number of crime committed across the country.
Explain the way of measuring crime: Victim Surveys
These are the publics experience of crime over a particular period
Normally over 50000 HH are chosen randomly to report crime that they have been a victim of in the past year. This data is them compiled in the Crime Survey for England and Wales
Explain the ways of measuring crime: Convicts Surveys
This is when individuals self report on the types of crime that they have committed. Its aim is to try and identify trends in offending and the relationships perpetrators and victims
What are the evaluative points of Official Statistics
They are more unreliable as they significantly underestimate the true extent of crime
• only 25% of offences are included in the official statistics
• 75% is referred to by criminologists as the “dark figures of crime” (unreported crime)
• There are many factors that would effect reporting of crime
• Farrington and Dowds (1985) - found that in Nottingham petty crime were reported more than in the surrounding areas
Urban areas reported more crime than rural areas.
What are the official rape stats?
Rape offence increased substantially, reaching a high of 70,00 offences in the 2021/22 reporting year, before falling slightly to 69,000 in the 2022/23
What are the evaluations of Victim Surveys
Greater degree of accuracy (although still full of SDB)
■ 2006/7 official statistics suggested a 2% decrease in crime from the year before-
■ But 2007-2019 average of 3% increase
■ Recall- telescoping could distort figures
■ Telescoping - The telescoping effect refers to inaccurate perceptions regarding time, where people see recent events as more remote than they are (backward telescoping), and remote events as more recent (forward telescoping). This mental error in memory can occur whenever we make temporal assumptions regarding past events
What are the evaluations of offender surveys?
It may provide insight into why people commit crimes and how many people are responsible for certain crimes
But they have so subject to SDB
- Lawrence and Perry (2018) they suggested that most offenders do not admit to their crimes, giving us unrealistic statistics.
What are white colar crimes?
White collar crimes involve money, for example, money laundering and fraud (typically known as middle class crimes)
What are blue colar crimes
blue collar crimes are petty crimes such as theft (known as lower economic status crimes)
What is a negative evaluation of all of measuring crime
The extraneous variable of politics
Define offender profiling
a behavioural and analytical tool that is intended to help investigators accurately predict and profile the characteristics of unknown criminals.
Generally state what offender profiling is
Generally: narrow down the field of enquiry and the suspect pool then analyses the crime scene and evidence, then generate hypothesis eg age gender, ethnicity
What is the american approach also known as?
The top down approach
Explain the top down approach
profilers start with a pre- established typology and work down in order to assign offenders to one of two categories based on witness accounts and evidence from the crime scene.
Using previous data from crime to create typologies. The current crime scene is analysed and matched with the closest typology to narrow down the field of potential suspects?.?.