forensic midterm pt 2

Roles of police psychologists

Assessment, clinical intervention, operational support, consulting

Assessment (police psychologist)

Conduct screenings and psychological evaluations of candidates, ensuring that individuals hired for public safety officer positions are psychologically suitable

Fitness-for-duty evaluations FFDEs of officers after critical incidents

Clinical intervention (police psychology)

Provide counseling and debriefing services to officers after traumatic events (shooting, line of duty death, etc)

Offer support services to the families of law enforcement officers and address deep undercover stress reactions

Operational support

Support during critical incidents like hostage negotiations and assist in criminal activity analyses.

Crisis intervention/negotiation (suicide threats, barricades, liability mitigation, program evaluation, conflict management, bias reduction training, and performance training

Consulting

address gender and ethnic/minority issues, concerns about excessive force, police corruption problems, and workplace stressors

Fitness for duty evaluation

Assessment of whether an officer is psychologically fit to perform duties after a critical incident (use of force, behavioral concerns, shooting, etc)

•evaluates emotional stability, judgement, and impulse control

Common stressor cops face

Organizational stress, task related stress, external stress, personal stress

Organizational stress

Emotional effects of the police department’s policies and practices on the individual officer

•poor pay, excessive paperwork, insufficient training, inadequate equipment, weekend duty, shift work, inconsistent discipline or rigid enforcement of rules and policies, limited promotional opportunities, poor supervision and administrative work support, and poor relationships with supervisors or colleagues

Task related stress (cops)

Stress from the nature of their job

•inactivity and boredom, situations requiring the use of force, responsibility of protecting others, the use of discretion, the fear that accompanies danger to oneself and colleagues, dealing with violent or disrespectful individuals, making critical decisions, frequent exposure to death, continual exposure to people in pain or distress, and the constant need to keep one’s emotions under control

Cops’ external stress

An officer’s ongoing frustrations with the court, the prosecutor’s office, the criminal justice process, the correctional system, the media or public attitudes (especially police-citizen relationships that may involve excessive force

Cops’ personal stress

Stressor involving marital or partner relationships, health problems, addiction, peer group pressures, feelings of helplessness and depression, discrimination, sexual harassment, and lack of accomplishment

Crime scene profiling (criminal profiling, offender profiling, behavioral analyses, or criminal investigative analysis)

Examines features of the crime scene to infer or deduct characteristics or motivations of offender

Crime scene profiling Weaknesses

Often based on invalidated assumptions and subject to investigator biases, especially commitment bias, lacks credible and scientific foundations to meet legal standard for admission of scientific evidence in court

Geographical profiling and mapping definition

Analyzes locations associated with an unknown, usually serial offender; analyzes hotspots of crime

Geographical profiling and mapping Key weaknesses

Not helpful if offenders move out of area; does not consider psychological characteristics other than an offender’s comfort zone

Suspect-based profiling definition

Systematic collection of data on previous offenders to identify additional offenders

Suspect-based profiling key weaknesses

Lends itself to illegal or biased profiling based on characteristics such as race, religion, or ethnicity

Psychological profiling definition

Detail description of psychological characteristics of one known individual, not necessarily criminal, used in threat or risk assessment

Criminal profiling

Analyzing crime behavior to infer offender characteristics using information to identify behavioral, cognitive, emotional, and demographic characteristics of someone who may have committed a crime

Goal of criminal profiling

Narrow suspect pool and assist investigations

Key components of criminal profiling (used to get clues about the offender)

Crime scene characteristics,

Behavioral analysis,

Victimology

Crime scene characteristics

Location, condition, and victim selection of the crime scene (organized vs disorganized)

Behavioral analysis

Offender behavior patterns; type of weapon used, for example

Victimology

Studying the characters of the victim, were they targeted for a specific reason-race? Gender?

Methods of criminal profiling

Inductive and deductive

Inductive profiling definition

Generalizing from a group of offenders who have committed similar crimes in the past to infer characteristics about the offender in the current crime

Inductive profiling Characteristics

Based on statistics and patterns from past cases

Example: based on data from previous burglary cases, profilers might infer that the current burglar is likely male, under 30, and lives within a certain radius of the crime scene

Deductive profiling definition

Drawing conclusions about the offender based on the specific crime scene, using logical reasoning and critical thinking to infer characteristics about the offender

Deductive profiling examples

Inferring that the crime was premeditated because of the way the crime scene was meticulously organized

Purpose of psychological assessment

Evaluation competency

Assessing criminal responsibility

Assessing risk

Child custody evaluations

Personal injury evaluations

Profiling

Standard psychological assessment tools

Clinical interview

Intelligence tests (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale)

Personality tests (MMPI3)

Risk assessment tools (Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised PCL-R)

Neuropsychological tests (evaluation cognitive functions, MoCA)

Competency evaluation

Evaluating if a defendant can…

1. Understand legal proceedings

2. Assist in their defense

NGRI: Mental state at the time of the crime

Cognitive prong and volitional prong

Cognitive prong

Defendant needs to understand right vs wrong

Volitional prong

Defendant could control their behavior

Factors affecting eyewitness testimony

Stress and anxiety (both during and when recalling the event)

Reconstructive memory (filling in gaps)

Suggestive/leading questioning

Pretrial publicity

Weapon focus effect (people’s memory/ability to recall other details like the perps appearance is impaired by the presence of a weapon)