Psychological Formulations

Question 1

What is phase one (offender analysis) ?

Answer 1

• Offence analysis → forensic psychologists will aim to draw conclusions from similar crimes to identify contingencies (behaviors and issues that go alongside the offence)
• looking for crimogenic factor → e.g. substance abuse, family dysfunction
• links may help to understand the occurrence of the offending behavior - such as education and employment
• offence paralleling → important to help case formulation and evaluation of the treatment
• internal motivation (feelings) → gain power
• external motivator (external motivation) - criminals/peers/parents
• function similarity - criminal behavior that shares the same function

Question 2

What is phase two (risk analysis and understanding the crime) ?

Answer 2

• scenario planning - a process of speculating what might happen in the future in light of information about a person’s violent history
• It considers the different scenarios - such as the worse case scenario where violence increases and a best case scenario where violence decreases.
• The focus on exploring the psychological underpinnings of the offenders behavior

Question 3

What is phase three (application to treatment) ?

Answer 3

• end goal is to establish some form of intervention for the offender based on the conclusions drawn. Reflects on how the offender started, whether they have mental health issues, the risk of re offending and how likely the offender is to stick to the program.

Question 4

Why are case formulations used?

Answer 4

• offenders present with complex problems and treatment is unclear
• unusual crime
• offender is not benefiting from current treatment

Question 5

What are case formulations?

Answer 5

• It is how you come to make sense of a person’s problem and identify dynamic risk factors in the offending behaviour
• formulations need a detailed analysis of the offending behaviour
• understanding of warning signs
• identification of behaviours to monitor