FPSYC3400: What is Investigative Psychology? (Definitions)

Lecture 1

Salience (Central Psychology)

aspects of a crime are the salient/behavioural important ones

• most relevant about the offender

Investigative Psychology

is the study of offenders and the processes of apprehending them and bringing them to justice. It deals with what all those involved in crime and its investigation do, feel, and think

• concerned with the psychological principles, theories, and empirical findings that may be applied to investigations and the legal process

•  investigative information, its retrieval, evaluation, and utilization; police actions and decisions, their improvement and support; and the inferences that can be made about criminal activity

•  The objective of improving criminal and civil investigations, legal processes.

Consistency

consistent salient features from one context, or crime, to another to form the basis for considering & comparing them with other offences/offenders

• Issues: comes from the source of the data

• police or investigative data = evidence

Development & Change

considered natural variation; indicates stability

• the situation and the context plays a role

Differentiation

characteristic of each individual

• discriminating features for distinguishing between offences and offenders

• what is different between offenders

• difference in styles/themes of offending

Inference

when consistency & differentiation are established, what is the operational significance of these with regards to the actions & characteristics of the offender & offence

• operates at a thematic level rather than individual

• can’t use individual characteristics to determine from one offender to the next

Suspect Elicitation

searches of police records, or other sources of information that is carried out to help identify the offender

• eyewitness testimony, line ups, previous offences that occured over months/years

• dominate features of the offender

Suspect Prioritisation

the possible suspects are most likely to have committed the crime

• rank ordering

Offender Location

when the offender most likely to have a base

• geographic profiling

• what are should we focus on and who their next target may be

• can be used for burglary/car theft

• doesn’t have to be where they live

Linking Crimes

crimes that are likely to have been committed by the same perpetrator(s)

Prediction

where and when the offenders commits their next offence & the form that it takes

• will they offend again

• will they escalate

Investigative Decision-making

the ways in which the investigative process can be improved

• better protocols

• better decision support tools

  • linkages across crimes

Information Retrieval

the collection of information in an investigation be made more effective

• interviewing

• how to get the most & accurate information from the person you’re interviewing

• cognitive psychology

• implanting memories

Evaluation of information

information becomes available in order to be assessed

• deception detection

• if theories are reliable and valid

Preparing a case

what sense can be made of the offence that will help to organize the legal case

Effective Information

suggest directions for investigative action

• reliability

• validity

• trustworthiness

• detail

• accuracy issues

Appropriate Inference: A → C Equation

 Links the Actions occurring during a crime (when, where, to whom) and Characteristics of the offender (criminal history, background, relationship)

Link A →

variables restricted to those known prior to any suspect being identified

Link C →

variables limited to those on which the police can act

Action: Decision Making

Based on information and inferences focus decisions of which actions will move the investigation towards an arrest or conviction of the offender

• decision support systems

Decision Support Systems

organise the information and possible inferences in more useful ways to help investigators visualise and summarise the material

• Visualisations; Summary Descriptions; Psychological Models

  • Bar charts, software, maps, base rates, thematic classification, etc.

Approaches to Information: Data

• ­Cumulates to help develop theories and models

• Used for gaining general knowledge

• Collected in controlled, scientific manner

• May be used in future studies

Approaches to Information: Evidence

• Collecting information/material pertinent to a specific case(s)

• Used for supporting case in court

• Not collected in controlled conditions

• Issues with trustworthiness, reliability, validity, discrepancies, etc.

Schematic Summary of Investigation Psychology

methodology → areas of crime → applications

Standardising recording procedures

the decision of what data to collect has grown up over years of police custom and practice, influenced by requests from government and other agencies who require particular details, say on “street crimes”, because of policy objectives.

conceptualising and treating this “evidence” as data & treating the ways in which it is obtained as research processes

allows the use of psychological principles and knowledge to evaluate and improve the information that detectives need to progress an investigation or to support a case in court.

• Corroboration from different sources and multiple distinct law-enforcement agencies.

• Content dictionary