Criminal psychology

What are the types of crime?

Violent,

Acquisitive

Sexual

Anti-social

Drug related

Violent offenses

Aggressive crimes resulting in psychical harm or death to the victim

Drug related offenses

Crimes involving trading in or using illegal substances

Acquisitive offences

Crimes involving trading in or using illegal substances

Sexual offences

Crimes where the victim is forced to commit or submit to a sexual act

Anti-social offences

Criminal offences that cause harassment, alarm or distress in people who do not share a home with the perpetrator

Subjectivity

Based on person opinion rather than fact. Psychologists believe crime is human nature

Social construct

A concept that exists as a result of interaction between people who make up society e.g euthanasia is considered legally wrong but not in other countries such as Switzerland

Deviation from social norms

when an act or behaviour goes against the standards of society e.g walking around drunk goes against public norms

What are Norms?

Norms are based on what the majority do or expect others to do, e.g most people do not deal drugs, breaks social norms.

Culture and norms

As culture changes so do norms, which leads to changes in the law if there is a strong shift in opinion e.g more anti-smoking laws than in the past

What is culture?

A collective set of norms and values that determine the way of life of a group of people

Anti-social behaviour

Behaviour from a person which causes, or is likely to cause, harassment, abuse or harm to one or more persons not of the same household as that person

Types of reports

Government statistics

Self-report survey’s

Government survey’s

Government records the total number of crimes reported to police and recorded in the official figures

Downsides for Government

statistics

Not all crimes get reported to the police

Self-report surveys

victim surveys

Offender surveys

Victim surveys

where people give information about crimes they have experienced

Offender surveys

Where criminals give the number and types of crimes committed

Why do criminals go unreported?

people may not want to report a crime - embarrassed or scared

People may have forgotten e.g if it was a petty crime

People could be unaware e.g if they were under the influence

Official statistics

They are collected and published by the government. They are based on crimes that have been reported and recorded by police forces.

Downsides to Official statistics

Not all crimes are reported

Some crimes may take place without even being detected

What is SLT?

The theory that we learn criminal behaviors from others through observation and imitation

Role model

Someone held in high esteem

identification

When a person aligns with another person, making them likely to adopt that person’s personality

Observation

When people pay attention to the behaviour of the role model and retain them in their memory

Imitation

When people recall the behaviours and reproduce them in their own actions

Vicarious reinforcement

When behaviour is strengthened by an individual observation someone else gets rewarded. e.g see someone successfully shoplift from a shop, causing individual to want to do the same due to the reward of getting stolen goods

Direct reinforcement

when someone’s behaviour is reinforced because they are rewarded

Internalisation

When a behaviour becomes part of your habit and you don’t have to consciously reinforce it. This means people have learnt to engage criminal b]ehaviour regardless of consequences

Consequences

The negative result e.g getting arrested for shop lifting

SLT does not account for people who were not exposed to criminal role models

Some people might have a good background and family but still turn to criminal behaviour. In these cases, nature plays a role by possibly affecting the person’s brain, causing them to engage in criminal behaviour

If theory is correct, it should be easy to prevent crime

If SLT is correct, crime would be reduced by harshly punishing criminals. Yet, people still commit crimes despite seeing or experiencing the negative consequences, so it suggests being a criminal might been their nature.

SLT does not explain how criminal behaviour begins in the first place

SLT does not tell us the origins of criminal behaviour, we don’t know when the first wave of criminals committed crimes.

If SLT is correct, it should be easier to prevent crimes

If SLT is strengthened by reinforcement, it should be reduced by being punished seeing others getting punished. However, many people still commit crimes despite negative consequences. This suggests that its in their nature to be criminals and it can’t be learnt or changed.

Nature

Our genetics are what decides who we become

what is Nurture

The environment we grow up in shapes who we become

What is Eysenck’s theory?

The theory that suggests that criminal behaviour is linked with the person’s biology, specially with 3 inherited personality types.

What happened during Eysenck’s theory?

He devised a questionnaire EPQ to measure 3 traits we are born depending on our genetic inheritance.

Psychoticism personality

People who score highly on psychotics are impulsive, aggressive and selfish

Extraversion personality

People who score highly on extraversion are out-going, social and confident.

Neuroticism personality

People who score highly on neuroticism are anxious, angry, and prone to feeling guilt.

Psychotcism biology

excess dopaminergic neutrons leads to an overproduction of dopamine which leads to the inhibition of impulses in the brain during synaptic transmission which can cause criminal behaviour

Extraversion

It is caused by the Reticular Activating System (RAS) which is part of the brain that filters out information from our enviroment.

Neuroticism

The Autonomatic Nervous System activates during emotion inducing situations and regulates the limbic system is responsible for emotions and violence.

A Neurotic has a lower threshold so becomes over-aroused leading to more violent behaviour controlled by the limbic system.

Reticular activation system (RAS)

A neural network that mediates consciousness and alertness

Dopamine reward system

a neural network that is responsible for people experiencing pleasure

Automatic Nervous system (ANS)

Responsible for the unconscious control of organs

Limbic system

A neural network that controls emotional expressions

Dopaminergic neurons

Nerve cells that produce the neurotransmitter dopamine

How does Eysenck’s theory ignore individual differences?

Rather than emphasizing the uniqueness of people, he tried rio place them in broad categories.

people think it is wrong to lump together neurotic extraverts band assume they have similar reasons to turn to crime.

It seems unlikely all criminals would share similar personalities

If we accept the theory, its hard to accept that something who spontaneously robs people on the street has the same personality characteristics as someone who carefully plans to defraud others

How is the concept of Psychoticism not useful?

Psychologists do not accept psychotics is a trait of criminal behaviour. in fact, they believe psychoticism is the definition of criminal behaviour

How does Eysenck lack emphasis on nurture?

Rather than saying neurotic extroverts are naturally hard to condition. which much a lot of emphasis on nurture, critics say we should focus more on how we try to condition this personality type.

with the right type of environment, these people do not have to turn to crime as much as they do.

What did Eysenck believe?

He believed high levels of Extraversion and Neuroticism lead people to be difficult to condition. As a result, they were resistant to early socialism for moral behaviour

What did Eysenck believe about conditioning?

Eysenck believe that is children were diverted away from the ‘thrill’ of crime they were likely to become politicians or business people to stratify their need for pleasure

What is the Recticular activation system

a neural network that mediates conscious and alertness

What is Cerebral reward system

The outer layer of the brain that responsible for people experiencing pleasure

What are Dompaminergic neurons?

nerve cells that produce the neuronsmitters dopamine

Synaptic transmission

Where neurotransmitters are released by a presynaptic neuron and bind to and activate the receptors of postsynaptic neuron.

What was the aim of Heaven et al (1996?)

To see if psychoticsim, extraversion and extraversion and self-esteem couodbe significant predictors for self-reported delinquency.

Hypothesis for Heaven et al (1996)

Meaure of psychoticism, extraversion and self-esteem are significant predictors overtime of self-reported delinquency

What type of hypothesis did Heaven have?

A two-tailed hypothesis

What type of study was Heaven? (1996)

Lon

What was the design for Heaven (1996)

Longitudinal, previous research was mostly cross sectional

what are longitudinal studies?

studies carried out over a period of time looking at the same group of people

What are cross sectional studies?

Studies carried out over a period of time looking at the same group of people

What was the sample for Time 1?

282 adolescents, aged 13-15

• 146 females

• 136 males

• attending a catholic roman highschool

• relatively wide socio-economic backgrounds

What was the sample for time 2?

235 in total

• 123 females, 84% follow up

• 112 males 82.3% follow up

What were the materials used for Heaven 1996?

• psychoticsm and extraversion

• self-esteem using 10 item measure- global self esteem

• self-reported delinquency using a 6 item measure of vandalism, their respondents used 4 response options from never (scored 1) to often (scored 4)

What did all three questionnaires score?

Scored highly for internal reliability, EXCEPT from psychoticism scale

What is internal reliability?

measures how consistent a questionnaire is

What does table 1 present?

• males more likely to engage in delinquency at times 1 or 2

What does the 2nd table present?

• showed a positive correlation between psychotics and delinquency at time 1 and time 2.

What were the overall results?

• males more likely than females to engage in delinquency at times 1 and 2

• Psychoticism at time 1 and time 2 correlated at time 1 and time 2

• these findings showed that psychoticsm was associated with self-report delinquency

• Extraversion at time 2 correlated with delinquency at time 2, but was a weak correlated

What were the conclusions?

• findings don’t support the hypothesis

• there are psycho-social or environmental factors that affect whether or not children are involved in delinquent behaviour

How was the Heaven et al culturally biased?

Sample used children from Roman Catholic schools.

• Religion has a hug influence on children’s moral behaviour

Sample was made up of children who went ti independent schools so likely had well of families

• income and crime are often linked

Sample was made up of Australian children

• Can’t assume other cultures would have similar results

How did heaven et al have age bias?

Participants are 14 and then 16 when measuring. might have been too old to establish factors that lead to delinquency.

this is because interpersonal violence, these and vandalism almost definitely start much earlier than 14 and 16 for children involved in delinquency

Why did Heaven have potential invalid data?

due to social desirability, participants might not have been honest about information such as how much delinquency they have been involved in or how low their self-esteem was. or participants might not be aware of their personality traits

How does Heaven et al lack construct validity?

Use of closed question and rating scales to measure complex constructs, such as personality and delinquency, may not be appropriate as quantitative data hides the depth of their relationship between different factors

How might the study have biased results?

20% of participants who dropped put of the original study could have biased results. the ones who dropped out may have represented children who were engaged in lots of criminal behaviors which cold affect overall validity of the results.

How does Heaven et al have good replicability?

has standardized procedures, e.g the questionnaires, so anyone can do it

How does Heaven et al have good application?

It can be a predictor for delinquent behaviour so presentations can be put in place.

Punishment

when negative consequences follows a certain behaviour and reduces the chance of that behaviour happening again

Deterrent

Something that reduces the likelihood of a crime happening again e.g police warning.

Prison

removal of someone’s liberty

• not rights or privileges

• poor conditions

Downsides to prison

some people do get privileges from connections

Fines

• minor offense

• monetary impact

• works as a disincentive

• on the spot punishment

Community service

payback society for wrong-doing

contributing something to society

showing public you are being punished

Restorative justice

a way to rehabilitate offenders and giving closure to the victim giving the choice to be aware of the consequences of their actions

Rehabilitation

help offender re-intergrate into society to ensure they don’t commit anymore crimes