forensic psych

what is forensic psych

• Two branches: 

  • Legal psych - more recent, one of the first attempts of experimental psychology, scientific method, eg accuracy of witness testimonies, false confessions 

  • criminological psych - to do with criminal beh, may be patterns behind people committing crimes that can be attributed psychologically, but not the most scientific as was earlier on, eg the criminal ‘look’ 

  • Forensic psychology has gone through different iterations but people now understand what it is

what does a forensic psychologist do

• Review eyewitness performance

• Assessments - how fit the person is to sit the trial, what disorders they are experiencing , is what they are professing to experiencing accurate

• Research for policy and practice

• Court evidence/reports

• Parole and MH tribunals

• Interview techniques - advise and help research

• Offender treatment - how to support offenders, integration in society

• Counter-terrorism and hostage negotiation

• Intervention for DV/family issues

• Crime analysis/offender profiling

• Treatment for substance abuse

two components of crime in uk law

• Actus reus - the guilty act, offence - crime itself

• Mens rea - the guilty mind, intention - understanding that what's been done is bad and wrong

other aspects of uk law which overlap with our expertise

• Specific constructs - criminal defences (diminished responsibility - murder to manslaughter, duress - loss of control, provocation), legal standards (beyond reasonable doubt - what prosecutors need to convict a criminal, balance of probabilities, how do humans reason if one thing is more likely than another), expert witnesses (go into legal process, give insight on our expertise). 

• General legal concepts - the “man on the clapham omnibus” idea of reasonableness, how anybody in human society would understand the concept of what is the reasonable thing to do in a situation. who decides whats reasonable vs what isnt - psychologists can help inform what is normal beh

categories for why people commit crimes

• person factors

• environmental factors

• hybrid factors

person factors

• to do with the person themself

• Moral reasoning

• Social information processing

• Mental health issues

• Personality disorder and psychopathy

environmental factors

• Lifestyle

• Attachment

• Social learning

hybrid factors

• combination of environment and person

• not a perfect system of categorisation

moral reasoning

• is the crime justified, is it something society considers wrong or do i also consider it to be wrong

gibbs stage model of moral reasoning

• Builds on Kohlberg's (1969, 1984) 6 stage model,

Immature reasoning 

• Stage 1: unilateral and physicalistic - about having authority figures that will punish you if you do things wrong. Can punishment be avoided, can i get away with it

• Stage 2: exchanging and instrumental - basics of social interactions, causes and consequences. do benefits outweigh costs

Mature reasoning

• Stage 3: mutual and prosocial - acknowledges more of the social interaction that happens, rather than just thinking of cost vs benefit, also considering interpersonal expectations, empathy, wanting to contribute to society. Does this maintain the personal relationships i have 

• Stage 4: systematic and standard -  extrapolating that to society, not just about interaction locally, eg parents etc, but actually embedded in society, complex and symbolic ways of representing moral reasoning. maintains society or sanctioned by society

• Questions individuals might ask themselves when justifying a criminal act 

social info processing

• Crick and dodge, 1994 

• Examines how people process info in a social world

• Sequential process model - dif stages that flow from one to another 

• Can also have parallel processes - multiple stimuli and events can be processed at the same time. can interlink 

stages of social info processing

• First stage - what is going on in social world. What are people thinking about this, am i going to be blamed if something goes wrong, will people hate me

• Second stage - relate this into cognitive processes, represent it in your own brain. What the action itself might mean

• Third stage - Clarify what you want to get out of it, aims

• Fourth stage - Evaluate what is likely to happen if it goes ahead, may relate to previous experience 

• Fifth stage - Think about different ways you could respond given the info that you have from the info flow. If this happens this is also likely to happen, this may link in etc

• Sixth stage - Only then do they perform the particular response

• Have dif experiences and social cues - can explain why people evaluate things differently - some people evaluate env and choices in a way that leads to criminal acts

• Looks at typical processing and development 

three key sources of mental health issues around criminal acts

• schizophrenia

• depression

• challenges to intellect

• also personality disorders

schizophrenia

• Disturbance of perception/thought/action/affect (eg hallucinations, delusions, paranoia), detachment from reality

• Prevalence: less than 1% of general population

• prevalence within criminal justice system: 3.6% male, 3.9% female, data comes from 24 countries

• Cause - does the disorder cause criminal activity

• Or is Effect of disorder triggered by system

• Correlate? Other factors? 

depression

• Unipolar (8%) vs bipolar (1%)

• Low mood/poor self-esteem/changes in appetite/fatigue

• Prevalence in offenders m=10.2%, f=14.1%

• Cause or consequence

• Is there a possibility it’s co-occurring but not linked (have depression and criminal but not linked)

• Consequence of punishment (ie imprisonment)

• If sample across lifetime, see huge amounts of dep in incarcerated ind.

challenges to intellect

• if iq is lower than society average

• their cog function is impaired

• IQ of 70 = borderline impairment (intellectual disability)

• If add to that impairment + below average social function, then we call this a learning disability

• IQ of 50 = substantial impairment

• Intellectual disability - 2.5% of general population, 0-2.8% of offenders

• BUT - alternative sentence for people with challenges to intellect eg community sentences

• Alternative sentencing nearly doubles - 4.6% (Wheeler et al, 2009), 

• 2-5% of intellectual disability service users have some kind of interaction with the criminal justice system (Lyall et al., 1995; McNulty et al., 1995)

intellectual dis - offender differences

• Disproportionate number of sexual offences (Law et al., 2000)

Differences in nature of offences

• Less planning, fewer personally known victims

• Represents impulsivity/ inappropriateness (cf sexual aggression)

Also seen in violent offences

• Impulsivity/frustration/lack of social skills

mentally disordered individuals

• Legally defined - ‘…Any disorder or disease of the mind’ Mental Health Act, 2007

• Breadth of definition (!) - very broad, what are we actually talking about

• Reciprocal relationship?  (e.g., Fazel & Danesh, 2002) between mental disorder and offenders 

• Prevalence of MD in Offenders

• Prevalence of Offenders with MD

• Is it a cause, predisposition, precipitating factor from the act itself 

The McNaughton rules

• Focus on Utilitarian/Humanitarian approach - benevolent to others that are not in as good of a position of us 

• Basis of insanity defence in English Common Law - system of conventions that become consolidated and crystalised, can be used to charge people, not necessarily set in statue by parliament. emerges through customs, practices and rulings of judges in court

• developed by statute/case law (case law = registered, decided judgements that can be used as precedent)

• High profile murder trial (Daniel M’Naughton; 1843) - tried to kill prime minister but mistook the assistant for him

• The result of this meant it was examined in a much more detailed way - insanity laws

what can we say by common law in relation to mental disorders

• Not guilty, by reason of insanity

• Guilty, but insane and should not be held as culpable

when can you plead insanity

• if - “At the time of the act, the accused was labouring under a defect of reason from a disease of the mind….” so because of a dysfunctional process in the brain, unable to see that what they're doing is wrong

when is it a criminal responsibility

• Act is an offence 

• Offender committed the Act

• At the time, offender knew that… 1) Act was bad (moral) 2) Act was wrong (legal)

• Rebuttable Presumption of sanity - legal system will assume you're sane unless its proven otherwise

• Burden of Proof - balance of probabilities, is it more likely that the person is insane than not

questions about this definition from psychologists

• Gendered behaviour…

• Unconsciousness/Automatism…

• Intoxication… is your mind distorted, is it a disease of the mind?

• Diminished responsibility… temporary state of mental ill health or disruption of normal functioning

• Provocation/Loss of control… what provokes one person is not the same as another person 

psychopathy characteristics

• Personality ‘trait’

• Key aspect of anti-social personality disorder (DSM-5; 2013)

• Hare Psychopathy Checklist (1991)

• Lack of anxiety/stress, fear of being found out/violating social norms

• Socially adept, appear charming, know what to say

• Absence of empathy - don't experience shame/pity when other people are treated badly

what is dif in a psychopaths brain

• Limbic system - dampened amygdala function, less function in areas associated with empathic processing

  • But just because someone’s brain is wired differently, does it mean that they don't know that the act is bad/wrong

  
  
  

benefits of using psych in crime

• Can save lives and money (specific, targeted ways)

crime linkage

• Behavioural analysis - beh seen when committing crime

• Same offender-same behaviour - same offender will show same beh when they commit a crime 

• Temporal/geographical proximity, patterns - same time etc

• Less well known (less well-publicized!)

• Offender Consistency Hypothesis (Canter, 1995) same person will do something in the same ways

• Behavioural Distinctiveness (Woodhams et al., 2007) differences in beh between criminals that mean you can cluster beh under the same person - greater dif between individuals than within

• Typically process in part of the investigation (however sometimes in legal proceedings)

offender profiling

• Deducing characteristics from crime scene behaviour, draw together to think about what this represents in an individual - what is the person committing the crime likely to be like 

• Estimating future level of threat, will they recommit, location, frequency

• Advice to police (e.g., interviewing, media, search, assessment)

difference between offender profiling and crime linkage

• Offender profiling infers an unknown perpetrator's personality and demographic characteristics from crime scene evidence to narrow down suspects. Conversely, crime linkage (case linkage) compares behavioral, geographical, and temporal similarities across multiple crime scenes to determine if they were committed by the same offender

first profiler

• Dr thomas bond 1880s

• doctor, assisted london police in investigation of jack the ripper, advised the police about what to look for - appearance, occupation 

three approaches to profiling

• Used differentially in dif areas of the world

• The Criminal Investigative Approach

• The Clinical Approach

• The Statistical Approach

The Criminal Investigative Approach

• Determined by expert’s knowledge base, have background in forensics, 

• In depth knowledge of similar types of Cases/Investigations/Reviews

• 4 Steps: Assimilation-Classification-Reconstruction (assimilation or collection of knowledge, classify info into dif typologies and identify clusters of beh, form hypotheses about the individual - who they are what they like to do their motivations, this then generates the profile)

clinical approach

• Less coherent/defined approach - much more about the individual that’s doing the profiling 

• Different knowledge base - largely clinical

• Interpretation-Expertise-Theory - looks at collection of info, interprets it very straightforwardly, using their expertise develops a theory of who, why, what

• Emphasises the role of the person doing the interpretation, rather than the info

The Statistical Approach

• Pioneered by Canter 

• Multivariate analysis ( put in all data possible from factors) - Crime scene behaviour, Forensic evidence, Offender characteristics, Psychological processes. Results in statistical probabilities of who the offender is and what they do 

• Assumptions made in profiling procedure - behavioural distinctiveness, offender consistency, if someone starts committing crimes in a particular way they will continue to do so

rachel nickell murder characteristics

• 15th July 1992

• Body of 23 year-old Rachel Nickell is discovered

• Stabbed to death in “frenzied attack’ 

• Found on Wimbledon Common, SW London

• Her 2 year-old son is found at scene “struck dumb

timeline of murder

• july 1992 – Killing of Rachel Nickell

Autumn 1992

• Suspect identified (Colin Stagg)

• Involvement of Paul Britton, Forensic Psychologist - advised police, looked at nature of the crime etc

• Police stage honey trap (use sex to lure someone in) with “Lizzie James”, tried to get him to confess

• August 1993 - CS charged

• November 1993 – New murder (SB & J), fairly similar circumstances, young child also murdered 

• September 1994  – Case against CS collapses

• October 1994 – New investigation launches

• October 1995 – Robert Napper (violent schizophrenic) admits SB killing

• October 2002 - BPS Disciplinary Action (Paul britton accused of unprofessional conduct, but was cleared of this)

• November 2004 - Broadmoor inmate identified as new prime suspect (RN)

• December 2008 – RN convicted of Manslaughter (due to state of mind)

what went wrong in profiling etc

• For every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong

• So need to question everything, evaluate evidence 

3 types of court witness

• ordinary witness

• professional witness

• independent expert witness

ordinary witness

• Witness to the Facts) saw what happened

professional witness

• someone acting in a professional role because of training/practice. May talk about treatment of a person.

• May be a forensic psychologist that has done clinical work etc. usually a doctor, dentist, vet etc who uses their job skills and knowledge to help the court understand something important about a case. eg doctor testifies about injuries

Independent Expert Witness

• detached from the proceedings/person involved - there to speak specifically about the expertise they have outside of the legal proceedings 

• According to the Crown Prosecution Service:
  ‘ a person whose evidence is intended to be tendered before a court and who has relevant skill or knowledge achieved through research, experience or professional application within a specific field sufficient to entitle them to give evidence of their opinion, and upon which the court may require independent, impartial assistance...’ (CPS, 2010, para 36.2)

what does the expert witness do

• Content (training/qualification/experience)

• Process, understand the process they are going to go through (Act of giving evidence - written/oral)

• Educative, clarification role - clarify aspects of the proceedings/case against/in defence of the accused.

• No role in determining issues of fact (what happened)

The Daubert Standard (Dabeurt vs Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals Inc) 1993

• Current standard supplied to expert witnesses 

A new/novel theory or technique has (has the work that they’ve produced)

• Been tested for falsifiability

• Been peer reviewed and published

• Been accepted generally in the scientific community

• A known error rate (do we know how accurate this knowledge is likely to be)

• Standards to control the technique’s operations

• Clear extent of subjectivity in interpretation

• Clear extent of application beyond the courtroom

• Previous case law (frye) - relies on the scientific community giving evidence if they were a scientist 

• Whereas this standard relies on the judge making the decision if someone is an expert