PSY 231

Forensic psychology = field of psych interested in understanding the mechanisms that underlie people's thoughts, feelings, and acitons

• Also involved in other things

• Interested in understanding how people function within a particular context (legal)

Has a short history

1800's

First started as psych of eyewitness testimony

• Found testimony was often inaccurate

  • Done by James Cattell

  • Later done by Alfred Binet

    • Studies child testimony and how questioning affects their answers

  • LATER done by william stern

    • Examined suggestibility of eyewitness

    • Reality experiment

    • Tied inaccuracy to arousal

      • Arousal has negative impact

      • Adrenaline?

Around this time, psychologists began to appear in court cases as experts

• Retroactive memory falsification

  • False memories due to media and press

Munsterberg

• Advocate for disabled people who were charged and given false memories of doing horrific crimes

• Made fun of by Wigmore - said psychology is a sham

  • Led to psychologists retaliating and doing more studies to become more legit

1900's

• Started to incorporate psychologists in court actions

• Believed they were valid opinion

  • Sometimes still ignored and deemed unqualified when it did not suit the judges opinion

• Psychologists are able to testify on:

  • Fitness to stand trial

  • Criminal responsibility

  • Risk assessment

  • Treatment of traumatic brain injury

  • Eyewitness testimony

  • Jury decision making

Canada contributions

• Most contributions within corrections

  • Risk assessments tools and treatment approaches

  • Focused on the individuals

  • Dr. Stephen Wormith

• Typically relied on psychiatrists

  • Because of educational standards

• Canada way slower than USA to include psychologists

  • 1st canadian textbook not till 2001

Forensic psychology is hard to define

• Some say that people who spend too much time only doing research are not true forensic psychologists

  • Need to be involved in assessing, treating, and consulting with clients within the legal system

• Narrow vs broad definitions

Role of forensic psychologist

• Specific issues individual psychologists focus on is shaped by their roles

Clinical forensic psychologist

• Concerned with mental health issues that pertain to legal system

  • Work in private practices, prisons, and hospitals

  • Assess offenders to see if they pose risk to community

  • Do custody mediations

  • Provide expert testimony

  • Make treatment plans

• Must be licensed with masters degree in most areas

  • May need PhD in BC, MB, ON, QB, PEI

Experimental forensic psychologist

• Concerned with mental health in legal system but do the research and experiments

  • Examine effectiveness of risk-assessment strategies

  • Determines what factors influence jury decisions

  • Find better ways to do eyewitness

  • Evaluate offender and victim treatment programs

  • Stduy effects of stress on police

Legal Scholar forensic psychologists

• More informed on legal process and legal system

• Engage in scholarly analysis of mental health law

3 ways psych and law relate

• Psychology AND the law

  • Viewed as diff things

  • Examines assumptions made by legal system or laws

    • Ex - are eyewitnesses accurate

    • Are judges fair

    • Using psychology to understand the law

• Psychology IN the law

  • Use of psychological knowledge in legal system

    • Ex - expert testimony

    • Clinical assessments

• Psychology OF the law

  • Psychology to study law itself

    • Ex - does the law reduce amount of crime in our society?

Psychological experts in court

• Expert witnesses provide assistance to those involved in cases to help form opinions based on knowledge, education, or training

• Expert witnesses can give opinions

  • Needs to be based on education and knowledge

Expert testimony is difficult because psychology and law are different

• Epistemology

  • Psychologists believe there is objective truth

  • Law believes subjective truth

• Nature of law

  • Psych = how and why people behave certain ways

  • Law = tells how we should behave

• Knowledge

  • Psych = based on empirical data

  • Law = analysis of prior court cases

• Methodology

  • Psych = variables

  • Law = case by case

• Criterion

  • Psych = cautious to believe something

  • Law = guilt determined by criteria established

• Principles

  • Psych = multiple approaches to understand something

  • Law = facts

• Courtroom behaviour

  • Psych = limited behaviours allowed

  • Law = lawyers can do way more

Criteria for accepting expert testimony

• Frye v USA

  • Court did not accept his polygraph answers OR allow polygraph expert to testify for him

General acceptance test

• Criteria for testimony's to be accepted

Daubert Criteria

• 4 criteria needed for judges to make decisions by a qualified expert in USA supreme court

  • Research is peer reviewed

  • Research is testable

  • Research has recognized rate of error

  • Research adheres to professional standards

Mohan Criteria

• 4 Criteria for expert testimony to follow to be reliable in Canada

  • Evidence is relevant

  • Evidence must be necessary for assisting trier of fact

    • Testimony must go beyond basic understanding in the court

  • Evidence must not violate any other rules of exclusion

  • Testimony must be provided by qualified expert

• Added other criteria since then

  • Experts must be independent and impartial

Myths in forensic psychology

• forensic psych and forensic scientists are the same

Police psychology

Police work is very complex, demanding, stressful, and not for everyone

• Needs police selection procedures to pluck out best fits

Police selection

• Psychologists involved since 1900's

  • Stanford Binet Test was used 1917 to test police and firefighters intelligence

  • Recommended a minimum IQ of 80 for them

• Has since implemented higher requirements

  • Cognitive tests, personality tests,

Canadian selection procedures

• Background checks

• Medical exams

• Cognitive ability

• Personality tests

• Sometimes need polygraph tests (Edmonton)

2 stages for police selection

• Job analysis

  • Knowledge, skills, abilities (KSA) are identified

  • Done by psychologists

    • Use surveys and observation

    • Ask peers about what they think is needed to be an officer

  • Hard to determine KSA's because these attributes are not stable over time in people

• Construction and validation

  • Where they actually use tools to see if applicants possess the KSA's

  • Predictive validity = says if there's a relationship between scores found in analysis

    • Collecting data from different tests and seeing if they are similar to scores given by supervisors (Performance scores)

    • If they line up decently, it is said to have predictive validity

      • From -1 → ₊1

Challenges with KSA's

• Hard to measure the performance of an officer

  • Can use complaints, commendations, tardiness, graduation, exam scores, performance ratings, etc. but could be argued that some of these are subjective

  • Also hard to tell which of these is the "best"

Selection interview

• Most common selection instrument

• Often semi-structured

  • Set questions with ability to dive deeper if wanted

• Questions about analytical thinking, self-confidence, communication, flexibility, self-control, relationship building, physical skills,

• Very little research about validity

  • Depends on the job position, academy, interviewer, etc.

Psychological tests

• Cognitive ability tests

  • Verbal, math, memory, reasoning

  • RPAT (RCMP Police Aptitude Test)

    • Tests 7 core skills

      • Composition, comprehension, memory, judgment, observation, logic, computation

  • Most tests only really predict performance during training rather than future work performance

• Personality tests

  • Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

    • Most used now

    • Originally created to identify psychopathological problems

      • Depression, anxiety, paranoia, schizophrenia

    • Low validity for police

  • Inwald Personality Inventory (IPI)

    • Developed specifically for officers

    • Measures personality and behaviour patterns

    • 310 T/F questions

      • Measures stress reactions, drug use, interpersonal difficulties

Assessment centres

• Facility where behaviour of police applicants are observed by multiple observers

  • Situational test = simulations

    • Looks at how they'd respond to IRL scenarios

    • Has higher predictability for on job work than training work

Police discretion

• Allows police the freedom to decide what to do in situations

  • Needs common sense, decision making skills, and problem solving skills

  • Ex - where should I patrol

  • Should I pull that car over for speeding by 3km

• Is police discretion really necessary?

  • Yes

• There is no rulebook or codebook for EVERY situation ever

  • Need to apply own perspective to see what's the best thing to do

  • Laws can be vague and need interpreting

  • Full enforcement of all laws would create distrust in police and undermine their work

  • Full enforcement would also overwhelm the justice system

For this to all work, police NEED to execute their discretion in a non-discriminatory way

• Racial profiling is bad

Mental Illness Discretion

• The deinstitutionalization of mental illness has increased likelihood of encounters with the police

• Police are now trained a bit on how to handle these situations but not in depth

  • 3 things they are trained to do

    • Take to psychiatric hospital

    • Arrest and take to jail

    • Resolve matter informally

  • Access to hospitals are sometimes tricky so jail may be best place sometimes which leads to criminalization of mentally ill

    • 10% more likely to be charged and arrested

    • Is this because of discrimination or do they just commit more crimes?

Use of force situations

• Officers are granted the right to use force to protect the general public and themselves

  • Needs to use discretion

  • If they use more force than necessary it is an inappropriate use of power

    • Authority to use force is laid out in Criminal Code

    • What does "reasonable grounds" mean?

• Use of Force in Canada is not very common (2006-2013)

  • Only 0.1% of all police interactions

    • Single use force is most commonly used

    • Of these force incidents, 16.6% reported having to go to hospital or emergency room

Controlling police discretion

• Charter of Rights and Freedoms

• Police services Act

• Administrative policies that control use of force

Incident Management/Intervention Model

• IMIM

• Circle chart which shows typically which tactical response police will use based off their situational perceptions

Police stress

• One of most stressful occupations

• Organizational stressors

  • Within and between organizations

  • Back the blue stress

    • Intra-organizational = paperwork

    • Inter-organizational = lack of cooperation between organizations

• Occupational stressors

  • Stress relating to the job

  • Human suffering

• Criminal justice stressors

  • Stress from court decisions

• Public stressors

  • Stress from media and press

Consequences of police stress

• Physical health

  • Depletes body of stress response system

  • Digestive disorders

  • Cancer

  • Cardiovascular disease

  • High blood pressure, high cholesterol,

    • Hard to determine if these are also from job and stress or from diet and lifestyle, alcohol consumption

• Psychological and personal

  • Depression, PTSD, drug and alcohol use, marital problems, suicide

    • Alcohol consumption was not found higher than firefighters, correctional officers, nurses

    • Suicide rates also not significantly different from male population

    • Divorce for police is lower than average population

• Job performance problems

  • Decrease in work efficacy, impaired job performance, absenteeism, tardiness, early retirement

  • More sick days

Preventing and managing police stress

• Support networks, counselling, family assistance, physical fitness programs, special assessments after traumatic events

Resiliency training

• Mental preparedness

  • Psycho-education

  • Relaxation exercises

  • Mental skills

Psychological debriefings

• Intervention after exposure to event that creates psychological distress

  • Revolve around group or individual

  • Wants long term help

  • Venting of emotions through discussion

• May only work for PTSD

  • Hard to tell if they work because there are a bunch of different factors in play

    • Different facilitators, different personalities of people

Psychology of police investigations

Police interrogations

• Confessions are most potent weapon

  • Still needs evidence but can be used very heavily in court

  • In some countries, can convict someone purely based on confession

• Police interrogations are used to obtain confessions

1900's

• Whipping and torture was used to get confessions

Replaced with psychological torture which is arguably worse

• Makes you question reality

• Harder to use in a settlement case, hard to prove it was used

Mr. Big Technique

• Non-custodial procedure

• Happens outside of interrogation room

• Undercover police posing as criminals to lure suspect into criminal activity

• Makes them confess crimes to join a big gang - uses this against them and take them to jail

• 75% success rate

  • Is this entrapment?

    • Make them commit small crimes leading up to the big crime

    • This is making them commit a crime. Hard to say if they would have done it otherwise

  • Hard to tell if confessions are true or if they are saying something just to get into the gang

Interrogations based on Criminal Interrogation and Confessions by Inbau

Reid Model

• 3 part process

  1. Gather evidence related to crime and interview witnesses and victims

  2. Conduct non-accusatorial interview of suspect

  3. Conduct accusatorial interview with intent to get confession

     1. Confronted with guilt, can lie and say they have evidence against them

     2. Psychological themes

        • Say you understand why they did the crime, the victim was a bad person, etc

     3. Interrupts any denials to ensure suspect does not get upper hand

     4. Interrogator overcomes objection to charges

        • Try to get them to waive their rights

     5. Make sure no distractions are in the room, get close to them to keep attention

     6. Sympathy and understanding

        • Tell them they are not a bad person

     7. Suspect offered explanations for crime - tell them it was an accident

     8. Suspect accept responsibility and confesses

     9. Need the confession written down and signed

• Based on idea that people will make choices that will maximize their well-being given constraints they face

Minimization techniques

• Soft tactics to weaken suspects front

• Sympathy and understanding

Maximization technique

• Scare tactics

• Will go to jail regardless so may as well confess so you can make a deal

• Gaslighting

Interrogators do not always follow this 100%

• May just use some suggestions from this technique

Problems with Reid Model

• Ability of investigators to detect deception

• Ability to detect biases due to accusatorial practices

• Coerciveness can lead to false confessions

Detecting deception

• Third stage of Reid model relies on the accuracy of detecting guilt

  • Is the suspect deceiving OR are they actually guilty but just anxious

  • Even after specialized training in deception it can still be hard to accurately tell

Myths about police interrogations

• Become physical like in movies

• They aren't allowed to use trickery or deceit

• Confessions automatically mean guilt

Investigator bias

• 3rd step begins with idea that suspect IS guilty

  • Ask more questions when you think they are guilty

  • Leading questions to assume guilt

Interrogation practices

• Need to consider whether the confession was voluntary or not

• Were they mentally stable at the time?

  • Competency

Alternative to Reid Model

• England and Wales try to change these practices

• PEACE model

  • Planning and preparation

  • Engage and explain

  • Account

  • Closure

  • Evaluation

• Provides inquisitorial framework and based on interview method of conversation management

  • Information gathering rather than securing a confession

• Has similar numbers of confessions but less psychological misconduct

False confessions

• Intentionally fabricated or not based on actual knowledge of the facts

Retracted confessions

• Individual declaring that the confession they made was false

Disputed confessions

• Disputed at trial

  • Due to legal technicalities or because suspect disputes that the confession was ever made

Frequency of false confessions

• Hard to determine

Types of false confessions

• Voluntary

  • Voluntarily confess to a crime they did not commit without any elicitation from police

    • May be due to notoriety

    • Cannot differentiate fantasy from fact

    • Need to make up for pathological guilt

    • Protect someone else

• Coerced-compliant

  • Confess even when they know they did not commit the crime

  • Most common false-confession

  • Caused by coercive interviewing

    • Want to avoid further punishment

    • Get it over with

• Coerced-internalized

  • Confess because they believe they did it

  • Guy with his dads murder that wasn’t even dead???

    • May be due to mental health

    • Substance use

False confessions in the lab

• Cannot ethically research how false confessions occur

• Tried doing it with typing and saying if they pressed the alt key everything would delete - automatically deleted - wanted to see who would confess

  • Can help us see how it happens but this is VERY different than false justice confessions

  • Brought in a witness to say they saw it

    • Most people would confess when witness said they saw it

Compliance - accept responsibility in order to comply with what others say

Internalization - acceptance of guilt even if the person did not commit the crime

Confabulation - adding details that never happened

Again - hard to relate to justice interviews and stuff because these people had nothing to lose from admitting that they did it

Consequences of false confessions

• Hard to re-prove innocence

  • Jurors will prob not believe a false-confession as being false after its been told because they are often very similar to the real confessions

  • Hard to believe you made up a very true-fact sounding confession and then want to take it back

• False confessions before evidence is found may skew evidence to make them seem more guilty

• False confessions take time from officers to find real convict

• Takes up resources

Criminal profiling

• No single definition

• Technique for identifying the major personality and behaviours of someone based on the crimes they committed

• Helps with

  • Finding offender

  • Determine if they are high risk

  • Advice on how to interrogate

  • Tells prosecutor how to break down defendants in cross-examination

Profiling

• Based on personality, behavioural, age, sex, race, intelligence, education, hobbies, family background, employment, etc.

History

• Believed FBI developed in 1970's

• Dates back to 1888

  • Jack the Ripper

• 1970's is when FBI made the criminal profiling program

  • Training now provided on making criminal profiles

Investigative psychology

• David canter

• Look at behaviour

• Test validity of profiling links to the criminal

  • Does this by looking at solved cases and how close the profiling was

ViCLAS

• Violent crime linkage analysis system

• 1990's

• Booklet to link behaviour to crime

Deductive criminal profiling

• Predictions of offenders background characteristics by looking at evidence at crime scene

Inductive criminal profiling

• Predictions of offenders background characteristics by comparing them to other criminals of the same crime

Organized-disorganized model

• Look at crime scenes

Organized

• Planned, use of restraints, sexual acts, use of vehicle, corpse not taken, little evidence at scene, high intelligence, good job, lives with partner, lives and works far from crimes, follows crimes in media

Disorganized

• Spontaneous, no restraints, no vehicle, corpse taken, evidence left at scene, low intelligence, mid job, lives alone, little interest in media

Cluster analysis

• Looks at how sex offenders search for victim

  • Hunters

    • Victims close to home

  • Poachers

    • Travel long distances for victim

  • Trollers

    • Encounter victim during their routine (stalker)

  • Trappers

    • Put self in position to have access to victim (stalker hardcore)

• Cluster of victims

  • Telio specific

    • Offenders target adult females with specific physical features

  • Pedo/hebe specific

    • Offenders target child or young person with specific physical features

  • Non-specific

    • Offenders who do not have specific victim type

• Cluster of approach behaviours

  • Opportunistic cons/tricksters

    • Use ruse to approach victim

  • Home intruder

    • Forces way into victims home

  • Non-violent persuasion

    • Use gifts to get close to familiar victims

• Cluster of assault

  • Violence and control

    • Verbal and physical

  • Attempt

    • Little physical force but verbal threats

  • Persuasion and sexual

    • Persuasive tactics but no force

• Cluster of background characteristics

  • Socially contempt

  • Antisocial generalist

  • Sexually deviant

Criminal profiling validity

• Lacks empirical support

  • Based on classic trait model which is not empirically based

• Very broad with profiles

• Professional profilers are no better than regular people

Based on 2 assumptions

• That criminals behave in stable fashion across the crimes they commit

• That reliable relationships exist between the crimes someone commits and their background characteristics

Ambiguous profiles

• Can fit many suspects

• Too broad

Accuracy

• Professional profilers no better than regular people attempting to profile

Geographic profiling

• Use crime scene locations to predict where offender lives

• Used for violent crimes

• Good to use when you have a bunch of suspects

• Most serial offenders stay close to the crimes