Forensics AO3

top down approach AO3

-restricted sample, only 36 serial sex offenders, so the results may not be generalisable to wider population.

-not mutually eclusive, hard to classify someone as either disorganised or organised as you can be categorised as both

-smallest space analysis technique to analyse data from 100 murderers in the USA looked at each case and found a co-occurrence of 39 aspects of serial killings. Revealed a subset of features of organised offenders, some validity

-can’t be applied to all crimes e.g. burglary

-not scientific as it’s based on intuition

Bottom-up Approach AO3

-difficult to know if an offender is a commuter or a marauder befoore being identified. Also difficult to distinguish offences from offenders.

-this approach makes inferences based on statistical anaylysis from published research. more scientific than top down as they rely on intuition.

-Canter 87% of 45 british serial sexual assaulters were marauders, supports the circle hypothesis and the idea that choice of the place of the crime is signiciaant to offender behaviour.

biological explanation historical approach

-lombroso’s work was conducted of careful measurements, paving the way for more scientific approaches to criminal research. rejected free will in favour of biological determinism.

-Lombroso, no control group used

-Goring compared structure of 3000 criminals to 3000 non-criminals, said there was no difference.

-scientific racism towards black people due to their features. This has influenced racial policies which has harmed black communities.

biological explanation genetic and neural explanations

-Raine measured the volume ofthe frontallobe of those with APD compared to control group. People with APD had 11% reduction in prefrontal grey matter.

-biologically reuctionist

-biological determinism

psychological explanation Eysenck’s theory

-research found that using Eysenck’s questionnaire on 100 inmates and 100 student a high number of extravert, neurotic and psychotic personality types in delinquent group.

-biologically reductionist

-biologically determinist

-suggesting criminality is based on the type of nervous system you have raises issues within the justice system

-too simplistic of a model

psychological explanation cognitive explanations (Kohlberg)

-based on hypothetical “dillemma” tasks. due to social desireability bias, most likely these people won’t be truthful. limiting generalisability to real-life offences

-understanding the link between offending behaviour and cognitive processing can help develop/ improve CBT to change the offenders irrational thinking. This application of psychological research could reduce the cost offending has on society.

-when women were tested, they seemed to be less morally developed. as men are significantly more likely to be offenders, this suggests Kohlberg’s theory isnt generalsable.

psychological explanation differential association theory (sutherland)

-explains why certsin crimes are performed by certain social groups of people e.g. white collar crimes.

-difficult to test. it is hard to see e.g. the number of pro-criminal attitudes aperson has.

-this theory wa ssuccessful in moving away from early biological accounts of crime e.g. Lombroso’s ativistic theory. this theory offers s more realistic sultion to the problem of crime instead of eugenics.

psychological explanation psychodynamic explanation

-bowlby suggests a connection between antisocial behaviour in children and poor parenting but this cant be seen as scientific evidence for Freud’s theory for a poorly developed super ego leading to delinquency. freud’s theories are unfalsifiable so you cannot test them, making it unscientific.

-freud’s theory has real world application. Freud’s ideas can be used to ensure a child’s super ego is not underdeveloped/overdeveloped with parenting classes. Bowlby’s ideas are used and applied to reduce maternal deprivation.

-cause and effect cant be established in Bowlby;s 44 theives study so criminal behaviour may be due to other factors.

dealing with offending behaviour : custodial sentencing

-custodial sentencing maybe be counter-productive as it puts large numbers of criminals together which reinforces pro-criminal attitudes and the sharing of criminal skills (link to differential association)

-custodial sentencing is expensive the cost of each prisoner per year is £40,000. As recidivism rates are so high, different approaches are recommended to try

-many believe giving long custodial sentences is an appropriate ounsihment. this rpovides suitable retribution for the victims.

-shhorter than 6-month prison sentennces show to have higher rates of recidivism

dealing with offending behaviour : behaviour modification

-research done on young offenders at a delinquency school. An increase in appropriate behaviour in the students taking part in the token economy progeramme, no improvement in the control group. shows effectiveness.

-only has short term effects. only works in controlled settings e.g. prisons. doesnt have long term effects in reducing recidivism

-token economies cheap and easy to set up within prisons, dont need specialists to make up a system, anyone can do it.

dealing with offending behaviour : anger management

-research into anger management programmes found that the individuals felt a dcreased amount of aggression and anger in themselves than before.

-based on self-report, social desireability bias. may do this to get out quicker.

-skills learnt in anger management can be applied to real world and helping retain employment and relationships

dealing with offending behaviour : restorative justice

-restorative justice schemes shown to reduce recidivism

-restorative justice depends on the victim cooperating, this may not be the case if the victim feels the offender is just agreeing to avoid a harsher sentence

-can be more harmful to the victims and can cause disorders like e.g. PTSD