Criminal Psychology

Positive reinforcement

receiving a reward to increase a desired behaviour

Negative Reinforcement

Removing a negative consequence to increase behaviour

Positive Punishment

Receiving a negative consequence to decrease behaviour

Negative Punishment

Taking away something pleasant as a consequence to decrease behaviour 

Primary Reinforcer

things that satisfy a basic/psychological need

examples of primary reinforcer

food, water, shelter

Has value when associated with primary need

money, verbal praise, good grades

Strength of Operant Conditioning 

• can teach parents/teachers how to use it

• useful to prevent crime

• applicable to certain crimes

weakness of operant conditioning 

• ignores biological factors

• can’t explain all crimes like self-defence, accidental, revenge

• gaps in theory as it can be misused

Vicarious reinforcement

learning from seeing other people get rewarded for doing the right thing

role model

people who are similar to the observer in some way and of a higher status 

modelling

learning new behaviour through paying attention to and retaining and then reproducing behaviour of role model

observational learning

process of learning through watching others and modelling their behaviour

identification

feeling of similarity with a particular role model leads to temporary imitation of their behaviours

vicarious learning

learning from others fortunes or misfortunes

vicarious punishment

learning through observing someone have negative consequences

SLT stages

1. Attention

2. Retention

3. Motor reproduction

4. Motivation

5. Identification

Attention

Individual needs to pay attention to behaviour and its consequences

Retention

Rehearsing info

Motor reproduction

Ability to perform behaviour that the mode, has demonstrated

Motivation

Will to perform behaviour and considering rewards and punishment

Identification

Temporarily adopting behaviours of role models or group

SLT Strength

• Banduras experiment supports the theory

• explains why only some people commit crime as only some had the motivation to do it

SLT weakness

• all crimes cannot be explained like self-defence and revenge as it is not witnessed

• only short-term effect is shown not long-term

Bandura a+p

• Aggressive, non-aggressive and control conditions (no model)

• 72 children - 24 in each condition

• To see if exposure to real life aggressive model increases level of aggression

• 3-5 aged boys and girls

• Lab experiment

• Stanford Uni nursery school

Bandura results + conclusion

Both boys and girls displayed more aggressive behaviour in aggressive condition

Both physical and verbal was imitated

Imitation was stronger if it was same sex model

Boys are more aggressive than girls

BANDURA strengths

Generalisability - 72 participant -equal gender

Reliable -standardised procedure -control group

Application -can be used to explain child crimes -parental support

SS -bandura replicated it 3-4 yrs later and found similar results

Bandura weakness

Low eco validity as it is not everyday task and has artificial setting

Not ethical as it may have had impact on participants life later on

Charlton A+P

to investigate impact of television on social behaviours

natural experiment in st helenas

four months prior the intro of TV- playground behaviour was recorded in 1994

then repeated several years later in 2000

PBOS scale was used and observed pro-social and anti-social acts

Charlton R+C

• no difference in behaviour before and after

• boys displayed more 4x antisocial than girls

• tv had little influence

• close-knit community in st helenas so kids knew people were watching them and knew them

Strengths Charlton

• reliable as standardised procedure was used and used recognised scale

• ethics-parental consent

• valid-natural experiment and real-life behaviour

Weakness Charlton

application-ignores strict parents and what they watched

generalisable- only from one place/school

studies- Banduras ’aggression on film’ refutes it

psychoticism

lack of empathy and anti-social

neuroticism

nervous disposition-prone to anxiety

extroversion

out going, sociable and thrill-seeking

more likely to do aggressive crimes

introvert

reserved, calm and quiet

more likely to plan and execute crime

stable

unreactive- does not over react or be overly emotional/anxious

unstable

highly emotional, quick to overreact and overly emotional

Recidivism

rate of criminals who reoffend

rehabilitation

programmes which are designed to reduce recidivism among offenders

prisons as deterrent strengths

• prisons remove offenders from public life so cannot commit further crimes

• helps keep public safe which is reassuring for families/individuals

• provides rehab to support criminals who need it to reduce recidivism

• allows feeling of justice to victims

prisons as deterrent weakness

• after release, people often find it hard to be employed so some may return to life of crime

• prisoners are exposed to criminal role models who commit more crime so they might learn more about criminality inside prison than outside

community sentence

when you are convicted of a crime and have to do payback community service rather than go to prison

strengths of community sentence

• more humane than prison as they have some freedom

• by not putting first offenders in prison they are less likely to make criminal connections

• rehab is often part of community so allows them to get help

weakness of community sentence

• has higher recidivism rate of 34% compare to prison

• could be seen as soft option as they can still commit crimes

• over 10% fail to complete their community sentencing

restorative justice

when a victim and offender have a chance to communicate to make the offender understand the impact of their crime

• Anger management

A form of rehabilitation for offenders, aimed at reducing recidivism for offender who have been convicted of violent offences due to anger which involves working with a therapist in small group situation

Strength of anger management.

Dowden, Blanchette and Serin found that high risk offenders who received anger management were less likely to reoffend

• the treatment should be effective if the right offenders are completing the programme as there is a link between anger and violent crimes

Weakness of anger management

Offenders can abuse programme by using skills learnt to commit crimes more effectively. Rice (1997)found that psychopaths are more likely to reoffend using skills learnt to manipulate others

• Only effective for people who have committed violent crimes