Week 8-History & Culture Flashcards
Who is R v. Hadfield?
-James Hadfield acquired a head injury in battle (hit in head by saber 6 years prior with no mental health issues)
-He attempted to murder King George III (was in an opera house during the national anthem)
-He thought he was King George or thought killing him would bring the second acquisition of Christ
-Tried for high treason
-Was acquitted on grounds of insanity. Burden of proof for insanity is complete derangement at complete loss of senses and judgement of the consequences of their act
-Judge halted trial to an acquittal where he could never go home and was in the system (where parliament added Mental health criminal act)
Who’s R v. McNaughten (1843)?
Lead to the McNaughten Rule (legal test of responsibility) - not criminally responsible if:
-At the time of committing the act, the party accused was labouring under such a defect of reason from a disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing: or if he did know it, he did not know he was doing wrong. (test of insanity in modern times i.e., did you know what you did was wrong)
“The Tories in my native city have compelled me to do this. They followed me to France, into Scotland and all over to England. In fact, they follow me wherever I go… They have accused me of crimes of which I am not guilty; they do everything in their power to harass and persecute me. In fact they wish to murder me.” McNaughton, as cited in Asoken (2007)
-McNaughten experienced delusions of persecution (considered a schizophrenic nowadays) thinking spies, catholic priests and tories were after him
-Told commissioner of the police 18 months prior to assassination about persecution along local sheriff complaining of no help for it
-Went to shoot prime minister (Robert Peel) but instead shot his assistant which everyone was outraged by
What was Lombroso’s (1876) Biological Positivism?
-Criminality is inherited, someone ‘born criminal’ can be anatomically identified by such items as a sloping forehead, ears of unusual size, asymmetry of the face, prognathism, excessive length of arms, asymmetry of the cranium and other ‘physical stigmata’
-An italian physiologist formed term atavism (imperfect facial features)
-Logical positivism-You can only observe what you can see (leading to biological positivism: we can only infer biological stuff from what we see)
-Popular theory in US
-Controversies include Lombroso suggesting physical atavisms mean you are not a homo sapien
-He recognised social problems could contribute to criminality where improving social contexts may prevent that (as a socialist and advocate for working class) YET still eager for his biological positivism
What did Galton (1879) find?
-Claimed to discover the ‘face of crime’ through composite photos - combined multiple exposures of different individuals of a ‘type’ (e.g.,) criminals to produce the ideal, or prototypical
-Galton was the for founder of eugenics
-Galton was trying to find the face of the typical offender (argued for sterilisation of offenders and the simple minded)
-Took pictures of offenders of different types e.g., sex offenders and merged it together to form a picture of an average looking offender
-Galton was published in the highest ranking papers
-Issue is that layering all the pictures just turned it into nothing so no protypical face was found (just normal)
What are the biological theories in Galton & Lombroso’s ideas?
-Underlying theoretical suppression that criminality is innate and that it is expressed in (or related to) physical characteristics
-Painstaking measurements
-“The appearance of a single great is more than equivalent to the birth of a hundred mediocrities” (Lombroso) - Social Darwinism, application of ideas to support stereotypes, e.g., racial biases, eugenics movements
-Theories lack credibility, though should be remembered for developments in research methods
-Predominant view in both early clinical and criminal psychology through phrenology (cranium) studies, work of Caesare Lombroso and Francis Galton
-No control group (so how can we compare what criminals are like?)
What did William Wundt do in 1890 in a Lab in Leipzig?
-Wundt believed as the birthplace of psychology in terms of scientific approach
-Wundt said we could have an experimental psychological basis in law settings and could get rid of juries and barristers
What occured in 1896 with the first recorded example of a psychologist acting as an expert witness
-Albert von Schrenck-Notzing testifying for man who murdered 3 women
-Argued heavy media distribution would cause bias in jury (pre-trial publicity) causing memory falsification
What was included in Freud’s 1906 speech to the Austrian judges?
-Offered some methods of criminology on psychopathology
-Was more interested in understanding the individual in case studies
-Ink blots gave insight into suppressed emotions to Freud
-Word association test give a bed-rock to the truth according to Munsterberg (clashed with Freud)
-Freud argued we’re such complicated creatures that even if we aren’t guilty of that specific crime, we believe we’re guilty of something meaning we misconstrue
What occured in 1908 when Psychologist Hugo Munsterberg published ‘On the witness stand’?
‘The courts will have to learn sooner or later, that the individual differences of men can be tested today by the methods of experimental psychology, far beyond anything which common sense and social experience suggest.’ (pg. 63)
-Wrote a manifesto on the witness stand (a wishlist for what could potentially happen if we have all the knowledge from the labs)
-Had an ego and was uneasy to talk to (didn’t get on with peers) also believed women were unfit for jury service
-Formed evidence to suggest hitman was guilty when court said otherwise which caused outrage
Whitmore argued:
-Is this novel information
-Is the research rigorous
-Are the methods of analysis agreed upon by peers
-How do we know when we’re wrong? (error rate)
-Munsterberg did none of this (confirmation bias)
-At the time, most of psychology did not fit this bill
-Delay to 1970s in Legal Psychology in the US was partly due to Whittmore
What is the English Convict? (Charles Goring, 1913)
-Goring was chief medical prisoner
-Sponsored by british government and assisted by Pearson
-Measured 95 (check) traits in over 3000 english convicts compared to controls
-Concluded mental and physical constitution of criminals and public, age, race, social status are the same (no anthropologic set for crime)
-Is a certain kind of defective mental capacity and physique of those who were/weren’t convicted of crime (solution was to regulate reproduction of those with those qualities e.g., feeble-minded, epilepsy; further advocating for eugenics)
-Essentially said yes you are a human (unlike Lombroso) but are a defective human
-Argued crime is committed by all social status and those in lower status had shorter sentences (revolving door syndrome i.e., shorter but more frequent sentences) confirming narrative of dominant elite
-Led to a constitutional approach to criminality (Goring led to Kretschmer and Sheldon)
What did Ernst Kretschmer (1921) do?
Physique & Character (applied to clinical populations) inspired the work of Sheldon (1942)
The constitutional approach: What did Sheldon (1942) do?
Different body types were associated with three types of personality characteristics:
1. Endomorph: Viscerotonia (pleasure loving, dependent)
- Mesomorph: Somatotonia (exercise loving, aggressive)
- Ectomorph: Cerebrotonia (withdrawing, unsociable)
-Different body types associated with level of crime
Endomorph-shorter and rounder
Mesomorph-built
Ectomorph-tall and thin
-Researchers would have a scoring type for body type and see if linked to criminality
What body type was most linked to criminality?
-Mesomorph was argued to be most likely to have traits related to delinquency: such as aggression, impulsivity, and risk taking
-Sheldon went on to explore juvenile deliquents (sample had no committed crime and control were university students; believe Clinton is in sample)
-Ectomorphs more likely to commit suicide
-Endomorphs more likely to be mentally ill or commit fraud or dishonesty offences if committing a crime
What did Sheldon find in his 1956 study?
-500 persistent delinquents and 500 non-delinquents matched for age, intelligence, place of residence and ethnic background
-60% of delinquents (but only 30% of non-delinquents) were classified as mesomorph
-The other types did not show this preponderance of mesomorphs
How is the Constitutional approach critiqued?
-Follow up studies to Sheldon’s (1956) study supported the findings (Glueck & Glueck, 1956; Cortes & Gatti, 1972). Though another failed to replicate this finding (McCandless et al., 1972)
BUT the relationship between mesomorphy and crime may not be related to biology in the constitutional way as Sheldon proposed:
-Certain types of body build may be instrumental in attracting police attention and thus over-selected
-The muscular individual might be more likely to be successful in crime (Feldman, 1977)
