FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY: (W25):

  • ‘application of pscyhological research, methods and practice in the legal system’

  • FORENSIC PSYCH:

    • APPLIES: police, investigating, clinical, prison

    • ACADEMIC: biological, developmental, cognitive, social

(NEURO)PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPLANATIONS OF CRIME:

  • SLT, Bowlby attachment, Eysenck personality theory, Freud psychoanalysis, neuropsychological, intelligence, genetics

BRAIN STRUCTURE:

  • insular cortex → ‘social’ emotions, disgust, guilt, shame, lust, pride, moral inhibition

  • orbital prefrontal → emotional regular, expectations of others

  • anterior cingulate cortex → communication, cooperation, empathy, attention

  • amygdala → arousal, control of fear

  • antisocial personality disorder (ASPD)

    • 11% reduction in grey matter of OPFC

  • conduct disorder (CD)

    • small grey matter volumes in the OPFC + temporal lobes

  • psychopaths have reduced activity in the limbic-prefrontal, less likely to recognise fear

  • murderers/violent offenders, reduced glucose metabolism in prefrontal + frontal cortex

  • children/young people with CD have reduced activity in amygdala

LIMITATIONS:

  • brain damage, abnormalities or offending first?

  • does not provide clinicians with preventing/reducing immediately

INTELLIGENCE:

  • lower levels of intelligence = more likely to offend (Finnish males, 1987 born)

  • link is flawed

    • weak correlation, social factors, another facet of impulse control

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY:

  • SLT, Bandura, Miller, Rotter, Patterson

    • Bandura = learning aggression through imitation and vicarious reinforcement

    • Patterson = observed parent-child interactions (longitudinal), parenta style plays a role in child behaviour

EVIDENCE:

  • evidence from longitudinal

  • bad parenting predicts adult conviction

  • SLT - cyber deviance

STRENGTHS: SLT:

  • explains crime in a ‘normal’ process

  • effective training programs

WEAKNESSES: SLT:

  • those who don’t offend

PERSONALITY (EYSENCK):

  • personality is genetically and socially determined

  • criminality is linked to psychoticism, neuroticism + extraversion

    • little empirical support

PSYCHOPATHY:

  • personality disorder

  • pathological lying, manipulation, lack of remorse + empathy, impulsivity, boredom, poor behavioural

  • psychopaths can be made and altered

  • assosicated with crime

MULTIDIMENSIONAL MODELS OF CRIME:

DIAGRAM

EPISODIC:

  • memory for specific events, encoding, storage + retrieval

LIMITATIONS:

  • memory is unreliable → blurred, fill in gaps, personal changes

  • accurate encoding is faulty always

  • Loftus + Palmer - car crash experiment

EYE WITNESS IDENTIFICATION:

  • encoding: stress witnessing a crime, divided attention, other factors

  • storage: post-event discussion

  • retrieval: stress due to police interview, misonformation, sugestibility, line-ups, encoding-retrieval delay

ESTIMATOR VARIABLES - ATTENTION (ENCODING):

DIAGRAM

COGNITIVE INTERVIEW:

1) report everything

2) context reinstatement

3) different perspective recall

4) reverse order recall

EVAL:

  • + standard interview vs CI, more correct info (Geiselman)

  • + independent replication, CI more correct info (Ascherman)

  • - change of perspective may mislead (Meman)

  • - improved recall due to rapport (Kebbel)

CI: ENHANCED:

1) greet + personalise interview, establish rapport

2) explain aims of interview, retrieval, report everything, concentrate, no guessing

3) initiate free report, context reinstate, open-ended question, pauses, non-veral behavior

4) questioning, report everything, no guess, is ok to not know, image, open + closed

5) varied + extensive retrieval, change order, perspective, focus on senses

6) summary

7) closure

EVAL:

  • + produced 47% more correct info than CI (Fischer)

  • + increase amount of info, maintian accuracy

CI/ECI TECHNIQUES WITH VUNERABLE WITNESS:

  • adapted for use with children, not effective

  • problems with components, change of perspective

  • older witness more pliable with 4 techniques

HOLISTIC CI:

  • visualisation + report everything → character + personality of face

  • asks: each characteristic, rate on a sclae of high, medium, low

  • intelligence, health + extraversion

MINDFULNESS IN EYEWITNESS PROCESS:

  • COMPOSITE CONSTRUCTION:

    • completed trait mindfulness questoinnaire (FFMQ - SF)

    • selected target image

    • encoded selective image for 30 seconds

    • briefly introduced to EVOFIT process

    • face composite construction

    • debrief

  • COMPOSITE NAMING:

    • asked to name 10 face composites

    • asked to name 10 target footballers

CRIMINAL PROFILING:

  • profiler = examines evidence from crime scene , victims + witnesses to try and construct accurate psychological and demographic description of the criminal

  • emphasises personality, motives + characteristics

  • physical characteristics

  • elements of crime scene that would indicate more about the situation

  • cross-situational consistency

  • offender-consistency hypothesis

  • homology assumption

ISSUES:

  • not an established science

  • more art than science, based on intuition

    • little empirical evidence, rarely solves the crime

  • Snook et al

    • anecdotes are compelling (failures underreported)

    • repetition of message

    • profilers seen as experts

    • reasoning errors, confirmation bias

    • media influence

CLINICAL CRIME PROFILING:

  • literature review, develop suggesting characteristics

  • focus on congition, effect emotion

  • works wirh police

  • custom made, reflexive

  • Clarke + Carter

    • UK sex offenders

    • 4 profiles for types of sexual murders

    • sexually motivated = sadistic with a primary motive to kill

    • sexually triggered murder = killing to keep victim quiet

    • grievance motivated murder = no prior intent to kill, loss of control

    • neuropsychological dysfunction sexual murder = unclear motivation

STATISTICAL PROFILING:

  • provide more objective measures of offending behaviour

  • nonphysical interactions vs sexual + physical violence

  • almost all serial murderers show a level of organisation

GEOGRAPHICAL PROFILING:

  • criminal investigative methodology - analyses the location of a connected series of crimes, determine residence of offender

  • familiarity with cases, crime scene investigation, neighbourhood demographics

UK: BEHAVIOURAL INVESTIGATIVE ADVISORS: (BIA):

  • does not focus on personality, not extablished science, does not aim to solve crime

  • crime scene analysis

VECTOR, HOODHAMS + BEECH: