Psychology - Paper 3 Forensic Flashcards
Problems in defining crimes (AO1)
- Deviance involves breaking society’s norms and values
- Crime involves breaking a law
Problems in defining crimes (AO3)
- What is considered a crime may vary across cultures.
- All forensic psychology can be seen as ethnocentric
- Definitions of crime change over time.
Offender profiling
A method of working out the characteristics of an offender by examining the characteristics of the crime and the crime scene
Top-Down Approach AO1- main assumptions
Created by Americans, FBI 1970’s
Starts with crime scene info + knowledge
Becomes more filtered + specific
Profile generated
Where did the Top-Down approach originate from?
FBI - behav unit
Interviewed 36 sexually motivated murderers
Recognised consistencies across the murders
Identified categories and suggested crimes could be looked at the same way.
Steps in Top-Down approach AO1
1) Data assimilation- gather info e.g photographs from cs, pathology reports, witness statements and info on victims.
2) Crime scene classifications- place the crime in to one or two categories. Organised or disorganised offender
3) Crime reconstruction - hypotheses about the sequence of events, the movement of the victim and offender
4) Generate profile - create a profile about likely offender, e.g characteristics, age etc
Organised characteristics
- Plans crime
- Know who they are targeting
- Restraints
- Socially/ sexually competent
- In relationship/ in family
- Like to be in control
- Above average IQ
- Professional/ skilled job
- Doesn’t leave a mess behind
Disorganised characteristics
- Leaves a mess behind
- Impulsive acts
- Lower IQ
- Sexually dysfunctional
- Socially incompetent
- Low paid job
What does Top-Down approach rely on?
Prior knowledge + intuition of the profiler
A03 - Top-Down approach - Copson 1995
184 US Police officers
Answered questionaire
82%= useful
90%= use again
A03 - Top-Down approach - McCary - Case of Arthur Shawcross
Murder 11 prostitutes - beaten, strangled, mutilated left by a river
Top-down profiling used to create profile - profile was accurate
A03 - Top-Down approach - Canter
Analysis of 100 murders in the US - serial killers
Small space analysis, correclation across the murders
Looked at occurence of factors e.g. type of weapon, restraints and torture
Found clear evidence for the category - organised - validity
A03 - Top-Down approach - Copson 1995 - Evaluate research
Culturally biased- ethnocentric- issues of generalisability
1995- lacks temporal validity - outdated
184- small sample - issues with generalisability
Questionaire - self report- relies on honesty of police officers
A03 - Top-Down approach - McCary - Case of Arthur Shawcross - Evaluate research
Case study - issue of replication- unique case - lone case can’t be generalisable
A03 - Top-Down approach - Canter - Evaluate research
Small sample ] issues
US- ethnocentric ] of
Only serial killers ] generalisability
