Forensic Psychology Notes

Defining and Measuring Crime

  • Crime: An illegal act punishable by incarceration or other punishment after a legal trial.

  • Historical Issues:

    • What was considered a crime historically (e.g., homosexuality illegal in the UK until 1967) may not be today.

  • Cultural Issues:

    • An act considered acceptable in one culture (e.g., smacking a child) may be illegal in another (e.g., UK's 2004 Child Protection Act).

  • Measuring Crime:

    • Official Statistics:

      • Crimes reported to and recorded by the police; published annually by the Home Office.

      • Susceptible to concealing the 'dark figure' of crime (75% unreported).

      • Farrington and Dowds (1985): Changes in police recording policies (e.g., thefts under £10) can affect official statistics.

    • Victim Surveys:

      • 50,000 randomly selected households self-report crimes committed against them; published annually by the Crime Survey for England and Wales.

      • Less likely to conceal the 'dark figure' of crime due to self-reporting.

      • Suffer from methodological problems like 'telescoping' (victims misremembering when the crime occurred due to trauma).

    • Offender Surveys:

      • Randomly selected cohort of criminals report types and frequency of crimes committed.

      • Recorded by The Offender Crime and Justice Survey.

      • Useful for governmental organizations for understanding crime patterns and informing prevention strategies.

      • Data may be distorted due to offenders exaggerating or under-exaggerating crimes.

Offender Profiling: The Top-Down Approach

  • Uses a pre-established typology and the FBI method to categorize offenders as organized or disorganized.

  • Profile Generation (4 steps):

    • Crime scene classification

    • Crime reconstruction

    • Data assimilation

    • Profile generation

  • Organized Offenders:

    • Socially and sexually competent.

    • Plan crimes, unlikely to leave body or clues.

    • Specific victim 'type'.

    • Attacks carried out in a surgical manner.

  • Disorganized Offenders:

    • Socially and sexually incompetent.

    • Leave body and clues (blood, hair) at the crime scene.

    • Attacks appear random, no specific target.

    • Occur close to their home or operational base ('marauders').

  • Aims to reduce the list of suspects.

  • Limitations:

    • Only suitable for crimes with visible characteristics (rape, sadistic murder).

    • Ineffective for burglary or financial fraud.

    • Oversimplification: Offenders may not fit neatly into organized or disorganized categories.

    • Keppel and Walter (1999): Studying motives may be more useful.

    • Canter et al (2004): Evidence supports organized offender type, but not disorganized.

      • Smallest space analysis of 100 US murders showed disorganised offenders cannot be distinctly identified from organised offenders.

Offender Profiling: The Bottom-Up Approach

  • Uses no pre-established typology; develops a profile through crime scene and eyewitness analysis.

  • Hallmarks: Investigative psychology and geographical profiling.

  • Investigative Psychology:

    • Crimes recorded onto a database, new crimes matched to develop hypotheses about the culprit's characteristics and motivations.

    • Emphasis on scientific methods and statistical analysis.

    • Importance of time and place, interpersonal coherence (how offender treats victim reflects real-life interpersonal functioning).

  • Geographical Profiling:

    • Offender has an operational base, inferred through mapping crime locations.

    • Locations form a circular shape; 'centre of gravity' is the operational base.

    • Jeopardy surface analysis can predict future crimes.

  • Based on the assumption that offenders have a consistent modus operandi.

  • Canter and Larkin (1993): Offenders classified as marauders or commuters.

  • Copson (1995): Offender profiles led to successful identification in only 3% of cases, but were useful 83% of the time.

  • Advantage: Reliance on scientific methods and statistical analysis.

  • Lundrigan and Canter (2001):

    • Smallest space analysis of 120 serial murder cases identified spatial consistency traits.

    • Spatial consistency traits included jeopardy surface and centre of gravity.

Biological Explanations: Atavistic Form

  • Lombroso's theory: Criminals are 'genetic throwbacks' unsuited to civilized society; identified by atavistic characteristics (facial and cranial features).

  • Atavistic Characteristics: long ears, dark skin, extra toes/nipples, curly hair.

  • Certain features associated with certain crimes.

    • Murderers: bloodshot eyes

    • Fraudsters: reedy lips

    • Sexual deviants: glinting eyes

  • Lombroso studied cranial features of 383 dead and 3839 alive criminals; 40% of crime explained by atavistic characteristics.

  • DeLisi (2012): Branded Lombroso's theory as racist.

    • Suggests particular races are more predisposed to crime due to common atavistic traits.

  • Unscientific:

    • Dated methodology lacked statistical analysis and a control group.

    • Sample was entirely Italian, findings may not be significant without comparison to a control group.

  • Hollin (1989): Lombroso considered 'the father of criminology'.

Biological Explanations: Genetic and Neural Explanations

  • Genetic Explanations:

    • Focus on heritability and candidate genes.

    • Christiansen et al (1977): Concordance rates of 33% for MZ twins and 12% for DZ twins.

      • 87 MZ twins, 147 DZ twins.

    • Mednick et al (1984): Interaction between environment and genetics produces criminality.

    • Tiihonen et al (2014): Abnormalities in MAOA and CDH-13 genes (related to neurotransmitters) increase the likelihood of becoming criminal by 13-fold.

  • Neural Explanations:

    • Focus on individuals with antisocial personality disorder (APD).

    • Raine et al (2000): Criminals have lower volume and activity (11% reduction) in the prefrontal cortex.

    • Keysers et al (2011): Criminals appear to have a 'neural switch' to turn empathy on or off.

  • Methodological issues with twin studies:

    • Assumes the only difference between twins is the amount of genetic information they share.

    • MZ twins sharing the same environment may explain higher concordance rates.

  • Mednick et al (1984): Strong support for the diathesis-stress model.

    • Analysed court convictions of 14,427 adoptees finding adoptees sharing same biological father with criminal record and siblings adopted separately into different homes, were concordant for convictions.

  • Katz et al (2007): Biological reductionism is a problem.

    • Links between criminal families, pro-criminal attitudes, lack of education, economic difficulties, etc.

Psychological Explanations: Eysenck’s Theory

  • Specific criminal personality (neurotic-extravert) measured across dimensions (neurotic-stable, extravert-introvert, psychoticism).

  • Links with biological explanations: criminal behaviour due to the nervous system activity.

  • Extraverts have an underactive nervous system.

  • Personality and nervous system activity affect the extent of socialization.

  • Those with a (criminal) neurotic-extravert personality are unable to perceive antisocial behaviour as undesirable.

  • Personality measured using the EPI (Eysenck’s Personality Inventory).

  • Mischel (1988): EPI takes on a reductionist approach.

    • Trait-based personality measurement might not represent a complete and accurate view.

  • Bartol and Holanchock (1979): Theory may suffer from cultural bias.

    • Hispanic convicts were found to be less extravert compared to non-criminals.

  • Digman’s Five Factor Model: Oversimplification of criminal classification.

    • Extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness to experience.

Cognitive Explanations for Offending Behaviour

  • Kohlberg's Theory:

    • Three universal levels of moral reasoning characterized with certain logic: pre-conventional level (punishment orientation), the conventional level (maintenance of the social order) and the post-conventional level (morality of contract and individual rights).

    • Chandler (1973): Criminals have an immature reasoning ability corresponding to pre-conventional level.

  • Cognitive Distortions: Dysfunctional thought processing.

    • Hostile Attribution Bias (HAB):

      • Schönenberg and Justye (2014): Offenders view emotionally ambiguous situations as hostile.

      • When 55 violent offenders were exposed to pictures of facial expressions which were neither clearly hostile nor clearly neutral, the overwhelming majority viewed the images as aggressive or hostile.

      • Dodge and Frame (1982): May be the result of being a ‘rejected’ and ‘aggressive’ child.

    • Minimalisation:

      • Pollock and Hasmall (1991): Common among sex offenders, a coping mechanism for guilt involving underexaggerating the significance of their crimes.

      • In their sample, an astounding 35% of child molesters attempted to justify their crimes as non-malicious and simply being a way of showing their affection, while 36% did not accept committing a crime at all as they perceived the child as consenting!

  • Thornton and R.L.Reid (1982): Cognitive theories may not explain all crimes.

    • Intelligence may be a more important factor, as suggested by Langdon (2010).

  • Gibbs (1979): Reframed Kohlberg's stages as mature and immature reasoning.

  • Cognitive therapies, such as CBT, may reduce recidivism rates in sex offenders.

Psychological Explanations: Differential Association Theory

  • Sutherland’s (1924) Differential Association Theory: Crime is a learned behaviour described by social learning theory.

  • Individuals learn attitudes towards crime and skills to carry out crimes.

  • If exposure to pro-criminal attitudes is greater than anti-criminal, the individual is likely to become criminal.

  • Frequency and intensity of exposure to criminal attitudes is difficult to measure objectively.

  • Determinist approach (increased exposure = criminal) may lead to self-fulfilling prophecies.

  • Environment, not the individual, is to blame.

Psychological Explanations: Psychodynamic Explanations

  • Blackburn (1993): Three types of inadequate superegos are associated with criminality.

    • Deviant superego: The child internalizes abnormal moral standards from their criminal parents.

    • Weak superego: Present due to a lack of identification with the same-sex parent.

    • Over-harsh superego: the child craves punishment due to being accustomed to such a feeling because the child had grown up with over-harsh parents.

  • Dysfunctional superego leads to the id exercising control and demanding instant gratification.

  • Based on Bowlby’s theory of maternal deprivation.

    • Suggested the absence of a mother-figure or mother-substitute during the critical period of attachment formation (the first 2 years of life) would result in irreversible emotional and intellectual consequences, namely affectionless psychopathy and mental retardation.

  • Lewis (1959): Contradicts Bowlby's findings.

    • Lewis (1959) found that maternal deprivation during childhood was not indicative or a reliable predictor of the likelihood of becoming criminal in the future, nor were maternally deprived children at a significant disadvantage in terms of forming close relationships during adulthood.

  • Hoffman (1975): Theory suffers from gender bias.

    • Freud's psychodynamic approach, girls should be at greater risk of becoming criminal because they suffer from penis envy!

  • Concept of superego is unfalsifiable and pseudoscientific, according to Popper’s criterion of falsification.

Dealing with Offending Behaviour: Custodial Sentencing

  • Aims:

    • Deterrence (society and individuals)

    • Incapacitation (protect public)

    • Retribution (eye for an eye)

    • Rehabilitation (training and treatment)

  • Effects: stress, depression, institutionalisation, prisonisation.

    • Constantino et al (2016): 7.5% of women and 6.3% of men in prison suffer from depression.

  • High recidivism rates due to retribution and monotonous prison life.

    • Ministry of Justice: 57% will reoffend within a year after release.

  • Prison does not affect each individual in the same way.

  • Prisoners have opportunities for learning and training.

    • Sex offenders partake in compulsory CBT schemes.

    • Violent offenders partake in anger management schemes.

    • Token economy systems or restorative justice in return for decreased prison length.

  • Custodial sentencing may be influenced by political motives (Davies and Raymond, 2000).

Dealing with Offending Behaviour: Behaviour Modification in Custody

  • Token economies based on operant conditioning (reinforcement).

  • Reinforcement increases the likelihood of desirable behaviors.

  • Tokens (secondary reinforcers) are exchanged for rewards (primary reinforcers).

  • Hobbs and Holt (1976) Significant increase in the displaying of desirable behaviours for criminal male juveniles in the Alabama school who employed token economies.

  • Addresses the proximal cause of offending, not the distal cause.

  • Ethical concerns (Moya and Achtenburg, 1974): Compulsory participation and denial of rights.

  • Flexible (can change according to the aims of each institution) and easy to implement.

Dealing with Offending Behaviour: Anger Management

  • Novaco (1975): Focuses on identifying and dealing with the emotions which precede anger.

  • Three stages:

    • Cognitive preparation: offenders identify and rationalize the patterns of emotion which occurs before, during and after aggression.

    • Skills acquisition: therapist teaches communication skills, breathing techniques, meditation, and positive self-talk.

    • Application practice: offender applies the new techniques or skills in a real-life situation and their positive behaviour , is then positively reinforced by the therapist, during a role play.

  • Keen et al (2000): The majority of prisoners who partaken in the National Anger Management Package were able to control their anger to a greater extent and were more aware of such anger.

  • Loza and Loza-Fanous (1999): Assumption that violent offences are caused by an inability to control anger may be wrong.

  • Limited effect in real-life situations.

  • Incorporates theories and skills from various psychological approaches therefore not an oversimplification.

Dealing with Offending Behaviour: Restorative Justice

  • Braithwaite (2004): Emphasis on giving the survivor a voice and showing the offender the emotional consequences of their behaviour. Also focus is placed up on positive outcomes.

  • Offenders show remorse; apologies made; damages paid.

  • Guidelines set by the Restorative Justice Council.

  • Latimer et al (2005): RJ was significantly more effective than traditional nonrestorative approaches in victim and offender satisfaction, restitution compliance and reducing recidivism.

  • Schemes may take a naïve approach because they assume that the offender and survivor will always show remorse when participating.

  • Criticized by feminists in domestic abuse cases.

  • Flexible and easy to implement in prisons, psychiatric institutions and schools.