Criminal Psychology

• acquisitive - taking money or belongings without the consent/knowledge of the owners

  examples: theft or fraud
• anti-social - causing harassment or distress to people who are not part of your family

  examples: drunk and disorderly or graffiti
• drug-related - trading or using illegal substances

  examples: supplying or buying drugs
• sexual - making someone else submit to a sexual act against their consent

  examples: rapes or use of child pornography
• violent - causing physical harm or even death to someone else

  examples: physical assault or murder
• crime can be measured using:

  official statistics - statistics produced by the Government's Home Office which are based on crimes recorded by the police force

  self-report - victim survey (questionnaires given to the general public to find out what crimes have been committed against them), offender survey (questionnaires given to the general public or to a more specific group of known offenders)
• crime is seen to be a social construct as society decides what is wrong and right based on deviations from norms
• Social Learning Theory - identification, observation and imitation of role models
• vicarious reinforcement - a behaviour is imitated because it is seen to be rewarded
• direct reinforcement - a behaviour is repeated because it has been rewarded
• internalisation - when a behaviour is well learned and will happen whether it is rewarded or punished
• SLT criticisms:

  • if criminal behaviour is imitated from others/learnt, where did the first criminal learn it from?
  • focuses too much on nurture and ignores the role of nature. it believes criminal behaviour can be learned and therefore unlearned however it might be something that is more innate
• Cooper & Mackie's Study

  sample - 84 nine-to-eleven-year-olds from New Jersey

  lab experiment

  hypothesis - playing aggressive video games would have more effect on violent behaviour compared to playing other games

  IV - type of game played

  DV - aggression levels displayed by children after playing the games
• C&M findings:

  • participants in the aggressive game condition spent more time playing with the aggressive toy than participants who played one of the other two games. this was truer in girls than boys
  • type of game played had no effect on interpersonal aggression, however, children showed higher levels of aggression here when they had actually played a game rather than watched it being played
  • the questionnaire showed that boys performed better on the violent game compared to girls and also enjoyed playing it more
• C&M conclusion:

  • children (mainly girls) had played more with the violent toy after playing the violent game because of some levels of imitation
  • the game did not affect interpersonal aggression as the game itself did not involve any human characters
  • what the children had observed happening in the game had some impact on learned behaviour
• C&M criticisms:

  • lacked ecological validity as it was carried out in artificial conditions
  • used independent measures so it is possible that the violent video game condition showed higher levels of aggression because of the individuals who happened to be allocated to that group
  • sample was not representative of other cultures and other age groups as it was carried out on American children and only a narrow age group
  • only the immediate effect of violent games was tested whereas, in reality, playing games like this may have a greater effect over time
• Eysenck's criminal personality theory

  • extraversion - being out-going and confident
  • neuroticism - being anxious and easily stressed
  • psychoticism - being aggressive and not considerate of others
• psychoticism is specifically linked to an overactive dopamine system in the brain

  messages are sent through the brain by passing synapses, which are gaps between nerve cells

  in people who are psychotic, there are too many dopaminergic neurons which means there is an excess of dopamine

  too much dopamine is related to high levels of violence
• extraversion is linked to a number of parts in the brain

  the reticular activating system (RAS) is a part of the brain and sits at the top of the brain stem

  it is like a portal through which most information comes to enter the brain itself

  in introverts, the RAS is highly active so it only needs a small stimulus to produce a large response
• extraversion is also linked to the dopamine reward system which starts in the core of the brain

  dopamine is released in response to pleasurable experiences

  extroverts need more exciting stimuli to produce pleasure compared to introverts

  this is why they may be driven to rape or attack someone, or steal goods - it is a way of meeting their desire for pleasure but has to be quite extreme
• neuroticism is linked to the autonomic nervous system (ANS) as it regulates how we respond to stressful situations

  neurotics' ANS is more easily aroused because they are anxious individuals

  this has an effect on an area of the brain known as the limbic system

  the limbic system is also at the core of the brain and is in control of sexual and aggressive urges

  if this part of the brain is over-active, it can lead to physical and sexual offences
• Eysenck criticisms:

  • underplays individual differences as he sees criminals as being broadly the same as they share the same personality type. other psychologists argue that this is an over-generalisation
  • too deterministic as it says that criminal behaviour is largely genetic but this suggests that there is little that can be done to control it, however, evidence suggests that criminals can be rehabilitated
  • the neurotic extrovert personality links with some crimes better than others.
• Heaven's study:

  • sample - 282 thirteen-to-fifteen year olds from two Catholic independent schools in Australia
  • longitudinal study over two years
  • questionnaires with closed questions were used to measure the three traits
  • self-reported delinquency was also measured using closed question questionnaires
  • hypothesis - measures of psychoticism, extraversion and self-esteem would be significant predictors for self-report delinquency
• Heaven's findings:

  • there was a positive correlation between psychoticism and delinquency at both the beginning and end of the study
  • extraversion showed a weak positive correlation with delinquency at the end of the study
  • no significant correlation between self-esteem and delinquency
  • psychoticism was the best predictor of delinquency
  • males, who made up approximately half of the sample, had higher delinquency scores than females
• Heaven's criticisms:

  • culturally biased as the children were from one religion and on particular country
  • participants may have given socially desirable answers, especially when being asked about delinquency
  • use of closed questions may have led to low construct validity as personality and delinquency are too complex to be reduced to scores
  • not possible to establish cause and effect with correlational studies. it may be that delinquency affects children's personality rather than the other way around
• Rehabilitation:

  • restorative justice - victim meets with the offender so the criminal can literally 'face up' to the consequences of their actions. justice is often restored by the criminal paying for the crime or sometimes as simple as an apology or an explanation
  • use of positive role models - if criminal behaviour is learnt from anti-social behaviour and bad role models then the idea is that they can learn pro-social behaviour from good role models
• Punishments:

  • prisons - taking freedom, as well as other privileges, away from offenders by confining them to an institution
  • community sentences - makes offenders give up their free time to do unpaid work for the community
  • fines - makes offenders pay money for their offence