What is Forensic Psych Flashcards
What is the Definition of Forensic Psychology?
An interdisciplinary branch of psychology, that involves the application and production of psychological knowledge to problems, issues, and circumstances in the civil and criminal justice systems
What are the two areas of legal system?
Civil and Criminal
What is the Civil legal system?
Private Law; disputes between private parties. Does not involve a violation of the Criminal Code
ie. custody battles, defamation and malpractice suits
What is the Criminal legal system?
Public Law; the gov. enforces the rights and interests of the public; involves a violation of the criminal code
Criminal justice (or correctional psychology)
- The “criminal” prong of forensic psych
- Study of the psychological causes and correlates of criminal behaviour
- Applications of this psychological knowledge to offenders in justice settings
What is a more appropriate term for “offender”
-justice impacted person
-justice involved person
What is the definition of Criminal Behaviour?
an intentional act in the violation of the criminal law committed without defense or excuse, and penalized by the justice system as a summary conviction or indictable offense
What is a summary conviction
and What is indictable offense
- less serious
- more serious assault, B&E
What are the three points for criminal behaviour
- Behaviour must be intentional
- Involves the violation of a criminal code
- Person must be able to discern right from wrong to appreciate that the act was illegal
Insanity defense rarely used
Sociological vs Psychological conceptions of crime sociology:
Emphases placed on demographic and group correlates of crime (SAUCER)
Groups of society as a whole and how they influence criminal activity
- e.g unequal power distribution in society
What does SAUCER stand for
Sex, Age, Urbanity, Class, Ethnicity, Religion
Sociological vs. Psychological conceptions of crime Psychology:
Emphases placed on individual differences in variable that contribute to criminal conduct
ie. antisocial attitudes and values, negative peers, etc
What is antisocial behaviour
- Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest.
- Deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure.
PIC-R and the Central Eight
- History of antisocial behaviour
- Antisocial personality pattern
- Antisocial attitudes
- Antisocial associates
- Family/marital
- Employment/Education
- Leisure/Recreation
- Substance abuse
Is the central 8 dynamic or static?
Dynamic, can change with therapy
What does PIC-R stand for
Personal Interpersonal Community Reinforcement (PIC-R) model explains how risk factors and vulnerabilities are expressed in criminal behaviour
AKA - General personality and Cognitive social learning (GPCSL) theory of criminal behaviourW
What are jobs in corrections
- Correctional officer
- Parole and Probation Officer
- Psychologist
- Allied Health Professions such as forensic nursing, social work, addictions
- Academic such as professor
- Government (e.g. research, administration)
Provincials Systems
-Operated by a ministry of corrections or justice
-Sentences <2 years duration
-Short custody and/or periods of probation
-Large number of remands
-Responsibility of Province
Federal Systems
-Correctional Service of Canada
-2 or more years duration, including life sentences
-Mechanisms of preventative detention and conditional release
-Parole Board of Canada release decision making body
-Prisons and regional treatment facilities, half way houses
What does SVP stand for
Sexually violent predator
Canadian Criminal Justice Statistics - Sources of information for crime stats
- uniform crime reports
- victimization surveys
- self-report studies
What are uniform crime reports (UCR)
- most commonly used measure of crime stats
- data sent in the Canadian centre for justice stats (CCJS)
- Criminal justice system acts as a funnel
- Reported crime substantiated by police
- Information used by policy makers and researchers
Designed to provide uniform, comparable, and national stats. Some issues influencing accuracy
MSO rule:
Most serious offense rule: violent offences take precedence
multiple property crimes only recorded as a ___offense
single offense, if they are considered to be a part of the same incident - ie. robbery turned into an assault with a weapon assault with a weapon would be recorded
Police reporting issues
- Discretion Involved
- Decisions are shaped by public perceptions and concerns
Crime severity Index - Advancement on UCR
An index computed by weighting severity of crimes - ie. more “serious crime” weighted more heavily (murder 7042 points)
Victimization surveys - GSS
General social survey - victimization GSS conducted every 5 years
telephone interviews N=26,000 canadians ages 15+
Decrease in violent acts by 28% compared to 10 years prior; no change in ____
sexual assault
What are the 5 steps for conducting a scientific investigation
- Formulating a hypothesis
- Selecting a method and designing the study
- Data collection
- Analyzing the results and drawing conclusions
- Reporting the findings
1 formulating a hypothesis: Hypothesis:
Variable:
Hypothesis: and educated guess or testable prediction made about the relationship between two or more variables
Variable: Any event, conditions, behaviours, etc. that are measured and controlled in a study ie. association between psychopaty (variable) and recidivism (variable)
- Select a research method and design the study
Research method:
Design the study:
Research method: a set of empirical observations and measurements that are taken to examine the associations among variables in study.
Design the study: select participants, specify materials (any appareatus or measurement devices required to measure cognitive and behavioural events), and design the procedure
What are the 5 basic research methods
experimentations, correlation, case study, survey, and naturalistic observation
#6 meta analysis
What at the steps in conducting a scientific investigation
- select participants
- Specify required materials
- Design the procedure
- Collect Data - What is data collection
DC = process of collecting measurements of behaviours
(ie. questionnaires, interviews, behavioural observations, psych tests, physiological measurements, archival records, collateral reports and surveys)
- Analyze results and draw conclusions
- Analyze results
AR= two types of analyses conducted :
1. Descriptive: Set of numerical analyses used to describe or summarize data (Mean, median, mode)
2. Inferential: Process of examining the inferences made about population parameters from sample statistics, in order to evaluate the truth or falsity of your hypothesis (correlation, t-test, ROC, regression, ANOVA)
univariate stats : single DV, Multivariate stats: multiple DV’s
- Analyze results and draw conclusions
- Drawing conclusions
DC = state whether hypotheses are supported by results, provide the results of any additional analyses, identify broader implications of results, and generalizability of findings
- Report the findings: 6 steps
Write a research report
1. Abstract - 100-150 words
2. Introduction - review of pertinent literature
3. Method - process of research design
4. Results - usually numeric; significant findings
5. Discussion - summary of main findings and how they tire into previous findings; potential weakness and strengths; suggestions for future research
6. References - all citations listed in alphabetical order
Research Methods: Experimental Design
variables
confounding variable
conditions
random assignment
Advantages
Disadvantages
Looking for causes
under controlled conditions, manipulate a variable (IV) to examine whether there is a predictable and systematic change in another variable (DV)
Variables = manipulated (IV), measured (DV)
Confounding variable = variable other than IV that, unless controlled, can influence DV
Conditions = experimental (receives IV) vs control group
Random assignment = participants have an equal chance of being assigned to a given condition
Advantages = can establish cause-and-effect relationships
Disadvantages = may not be generalizable; cannot be used to investigate all types of problems or research questions in psychology
Research method - Correlational (regression) design
Examining without any manipulation, the relationship between two variables
Correlation: to obtain a statistic expressing the degree of relationship between 2 variables
Regression : to allow prediction of one variable (criterion variable, CV similar to DV) on the basis of knowledge about another variable (predictor variable, PV)
PV : variable from which the prediction is made
CV : Variable to be predicted
Case study
interview, observation, examination of records, & psych tests
- permit detailed
- not generalizable
survey
questionnaire, structured interview gather info about behaviour
- large and representative samples; quick and easy, difficult to observe behaviours
- self-report data may be unreliable, random sampling may not be possible
Naturalistic observation
objectively observe, non-interfering manner, natural environment
- minimized artificiality
- lack of control over variables, prone to bias and distortion, difficult to remain unobtrusive
meta-analysis
collection of studies, combined quantitatively to generate an aggregate finding termed an effect size
- synthesize large number of research results; effect sized efficient and informative stats; can be rigorous
- quality and comprehensiveness of search affects credibility of findings; researcher judgement in coding and aggregating effect sized
Mean:
the arithmetic average of a group of scores
t-test for independent means:
comparing the means from two seperate groups of participants
F-test (analysis of Varience):
similar to t-test for multiple IV’s and/or multiple levels of an IV
Correlation:
the manner in which two phenomena are statistically (usually linearly) associated
Area under the curve (auc)
index of predictive accuracy of binary events (e.g recidivism)
What are the two types of t-tests
- between-subjects design (independent mean comparison)
- Within-subject design (dependent mean comparison)
What is the pearson correlation
- a mathematical index of strength of association between two variables
- a measure of the degree and direction of a linear relationship ranging from -1.0 ( a perfect negative correlation) to +1.0 (a perfect positive relationship). A value of 0.0 represents the absence of a linear relationship
- Additional types of correlation (variations on pearson):
~ Point biserial : one variable continuous, one binary
~ Phi correlation: two binary variables
US has ___ number of inmates per 100,000 people population, Canada has ______
698, 106
- there has been a steady decline of crimes since 1992
which two provinces have the highest rates of homicide (2019-2020)
Manitoba and saskatchewan
Has there been an incline or decline of property crimes (B&E) over time?
Decline
Homicides _____and have stabilized in the past 20 years
declined (Canadians rate of attempted murder and homicide)
How many points does 1st and 2nd degree murder have
7,042
How many points is the average weight of points?
69
There has been a recent uptick of ______crime severity (2017-2020)
general and violent crime severity