Week 13 - Children, Stalking, Homicide Flashcards
Factors that lead to a renewed interest in child witnesses (Ceci & Bruck, 1993)
- Expert psychological testimony was becoming more acceptable in the courtroom
- Social scientists were interested in research that could be applied to real-world problems
- Studies on adult eyewitness testimonies were increasing
- The legal community became interested in behavioural science research regarding child witnesses
Preschool children as witnesses
believed to be incompetent witnesses because of concerns over their memory limitations, linguistic immaturity, and conceptual underdevelopment
General guidelines for interviewing preschool children (Tang, 2006)
- Child needs to be able to engage in verbal conversations
- Child may need to be older than 3 years old
- The crime must have occurred after the child is 2 years or older
Memory development
Childhood amnesia in children (Fivush et al, 1996)
- Young children are often able to recall events from earlier years of their life over a long period of time
- the youngest was coherent, and results showed coherence increased with age
Visual retrieval aids for preschoolers (Macklin, 1994)
- Benefit from help like visual retrieval age – still in the process of developing pneumonic strategies
Language development
Language development
- Verbal report of an event is frozen in time (Simcock & Haynes, 2003)
Question format
- Yes/No: wont realise they have the option to say idk
- Better to use what, where, who, when, questions
Conceptual development
Recognition task: tend to be as good as older children
Recall question: tend to remember items that are part of their script
- Ornstein: exclude medical procedure that is routine (child knows the script): 42% will recall the omitted step
Recall for events
Free narrative approach tends to be better than direct questioning
- Downside: children tend to report very little with a free narrative approach
- Older children are more resistant to leading questions than younger ones
Two factors influencing suggestibility in children
- Social compliance: they want to help and provide info, good intention
- Changes to the cognitive system: might misattribute an overheard event as their own memories
Recall for people (Leichtman & Ceci,1995)
- Children told someone will be present when the story is being told (SAM)
- Four groups: control, stereotype, suggestion, s&s
- The control was group was the most accurate about Sam
- Stereotype & suggestion group was most biased
Main interview techniques used with children
- Anatomically detailed dolls: for difficulty with verbalization
- Criterion-based content analysis: criteria to distinguish truthful from false statements
- Step-wise interview: designed to start the interview with the least leading and directive type of questioning to more specific forms of questioning
- Narrative elaboration: learn to organize their story into relevant categories – participants, settings, actions, conversation/affective states, and consequences
Children’s abilities in lineup procedures
-Target-present lineup: equivalent success rate as adults
- Target absent lineup: more likely to choose a target than to say its no one (seen in children up to 14) - same reasoning as yes/no questions
Elimination-lineup (Pozzulo et al., 1999)
- All lineup photos are presented to the child and the child is asked to select the lineup member who looks the most like the culprit (relative judgment)
- Different than adults (told to choose the one that looks the MOST similar)
- The goal is to eliminate options before the absolute judgement
- The child is asked to compare his or her memory of the culprit with the most-similar photo selected in the first stage and decide if the photo is of the culprit (absolute judgment)
Courtroom accommodations for children
- A shield/screen to separate the child and defendant’s face
- Allowed to provide testimony via a closed-circuit television monitor
- Support person present
-May be video-recorder while being interviewed about the details of the crime - Statements made by the child during initial disclosure of the abuse may be allowed as evidence (in cases of sexual abuse)
- Courtroom may be closed to the public and/or media
- Publication ban may be granted
Stalking
- A course of conduct directed at a specific person that involves repeated physical or visual proximity, non-consensual communication, or verbal, written, or implied threats sufficient to cause fear in a reasonable person
- Considered to be a crime of intimidation
- The longest in duration, the greater the potential damage to the victim (regardless of the intrusiveness or violence of behaviours)
Findings from the “Stalking in America” survey (Tjaden & Thoeness, 1998)
- Victims: 8% women and 2% men
- Duration: less than 1 year in most instances, but 11% of victims reported having been stalked for more than 5 years
- Stalker: 87% male, 80% white, 50% between the ages of 18 and 35, above-average annual income
- About 50% of the female victims were stalked by their current or a former partner, and about 80% of these women had been physically assaulted by that partner during the relationship, during the stalking episode, or during both
(a) Simple obsession stalkers
- The most common accounting for about 60% of stalkers
- Behaviour that is a continuation of previous pattern of domestic violence and psychological abuse in an intimate relationship
- Victim is usually a former spouse and offenders usually male
- Prompted by feelings low self-esteem, helplessness
- Might take drastic steps if they feel the victim is escaping
- The type that leads to murder most often
(a) Love obsession stalkers
- Most often, stalker and victim and casual acquaintances
- Also includes celebrity stalking
- Primary motivation is to establish a personal relationship with victim
- Self-esteem and helplessness
- Victim displays exceptional qualities, high status = will help the stalker increase their worth
(a) Erotomania stalking
- Offender is often plagued by serious mental disorders, most often schizophrenia; highly delusional
- Believe that the relationship with their victim already exists
- Usually, the least dangerous
- Unpredictable
(a) Vengeance stalkers
- They do not seek a personal relationship with their targeted victim, but rather try to elicit a particular response from their victim
- Vengeance is the prime motive
When does stalking usually stop?
- Finding of a new love interest
- Law enforcement intervention, with the exception of more formal intervention such as arrest
- Relocation of the victim
Stalking related to violence
- Prior level of intimacy between stalker and victim
- Violent threats and drug abuse
- Juvenile stalkers (more dangerous/direct)
First-degree murder
- All murder that is planned and deliberate
- Murder of a law enforcement officer or correctional staff member
- Murder occurring during the commission of another violent offence
Second-degree murder
All murder not considered first-degree murder
Manslaughter
- Unintentional murder that occurs during the “heat of passion” (anger, provocation, etc) - (intention to harm but not necessarily to kill)
- Criminal negligence
Infanticide
- When a woman kills her newborn due to a mental disorder arising from the effect of childbirth (within 1st year of life)
- Maximum sentence of 5 years in prison
- Controversial: if due to mental illness, why not NCRMD
Bimodal classification of aggression and homicide (Kingsbury et al., 1997)
- Reactive homicide (reactive or affective aggression)
- Violence that is unplanned, immediate, driven by negative emotions, and occurring in response to some perceived provocation (most homicides)
- Instrumental homicide (instrumental or predatory aggression)
- Violence that is premeditated, calculated, motivated by some goal
(Miethe et Drass, 1999)
- Strangers: account for 17% of homicides - 52% were reactive
- Acquaintances: 55% - usually reactive (80%)
- Family/intimate partners: 28% - almost all reactive
(Woodworth et Porter, 2002)
12.8% of homicides = reactive
23.2% = reactive-instrumental,
20% = instrumental-reactive
36% = purely instrumental
Familiy Homicide Terminology
- Uxoricide/feminicide: killing one’s wife
- Matricide/androcide: killing one’s husband
- Neonaticide: Killing a newborn (first 24h)
- Filicide: parent killing one’s child
- Familicide: multiple victim (a spouse and at least one child)
- Parricide: killing a parent
- Fratricide/Sororicide: killing one’s brother/sister
Characteristics of mothers who kill
- Neonaticide: usually young, unmarried, no mental illness, not suicidal, usually concealed pregnancy (fear of rejection/lack of support)
- Battering mothers: kill child impulsively in respond to child behaviors, high level of family stress, financial issues
- Mental illness: tend to be older, married, likely kill older children, multiple victims, diagnosed with psychosis or depression, most likely to attempt suicide after homicides
Fathers who kill
- Usually fatal child abuse (went too far)
- Lower rates of mental illness
- Higher rates of alcoholism or past criminality
Youth who kill
- 1/10 of total homicides
- tend to report amnesia (not because they’re faking)
- parricide: more likely to have been abused, witness parents abuse
Spouses who kill
- usually husbands
- married women 9x more likely to be killed by partner than stranger
- men more likely to commit suicide after
- usually about estrangement from partner or jealousy from perceived infidelity
Serial murderers
- Defined as a minimum 3 murders over time
- Time interval varies – usually a longer cooling off period between murder 1 and 2 (1st is like practice)
- Locations change
Mass murderers
- 3+ murders, 1 point in time, same location, no cooling of period
- More likely to not survive – will try to get killed (lack of data on them)
- Usually depressed, perceive themselves unsuccessful in life, anti social behavior
- Crime planned, will display warning signs
Spree murderers
- 3+ murders, 2+ locations, no cooling off period
- More likely to commit suicide
Characteristics of serial murderer (Hickey, 2006)
- Most serial murderers are male (83% male and 17% female)
- Most serial murderers operate on their own
- Most serial murderers are Caucasian
- Victims of serial murderers are usually young females who are not related to the murderer
Four main categories of serial murderers (Holmes & Holmes, 1998)
- Visionary serial murderer: kills in response to voices or visions telling him or her to kill
- Mission-oriented serial murderer: targets individuals from a group that he or she considers undesirable
- Hedonistic serial murderer: motivated by self-gratification – three subtypes
- Power/Control serial murderer: motivated by wanting to have absolute dominance over the victim
Hedonistic serial murderer sub-types
- Lust serial murderer: motivated by sexual gratification - the process is sexually stimulating (usually includes rape)
- Thrill serial murderer: motivated by the excitement associated with the act of killing - Pleasure seeing other in pain (?)
- Comfort serial murderer: motivated by material or financial gain
