Criminal psychology

• violent offence - physical harm or death eg murder, harassment
• sexual offences - making someone submit to a sexual act without their consent eg rape, indecent exposure
• acquisitive offence - taking belongings without consent eg theft, identity fraud
• drug-related offences - trading or using illegal substances eg production of cannabis, possession of class B drugs
• Anti-socials - causing harassment or distress to those who are not your family eg drunk driving, graffiti, possession of firearm
• crime statistics are inaccurate:

  • overreported: seeking revenge, insurance purposes, anonymous
  • underreported: dont want to admit crimes, difficult to resolve, embarrassed
• Social Learning Theory

  child observes rolemodel

  creates a mental representation so are more likely to copy/imitate the behaviour

  vicarious reinforced if they witness positive consequences

  behaviour becomes internalised

  imitate behaviour and is directly reinforced if they receive a reward
• CRITICMS of slt

  • focuses on nurture
  • The theory does not explain where crime originates from as there must have been a generation of criminals who had no-one to imitate
  • if SLT is correct, it should be easy to reduce crime
• Crime is a social construct:

  • deviation from social norms
  • considered illegal now but legal before eg smoking because societies perceptions change overtime
  • criminal laws are different in different countries eg lgbtq laws
• eysenck's personality theory include extraversion, psychoticism and neuroticism
• Eysenck’s theory ignores nurture because it focuses too much on nature by only looking at neurological factors as a cause for criminal behaviour when there is evidence that the environmental factors play a large part in the development of this behaviour
• Heavens study criticisms

  • heavens study on delinquency was only carried out in Australia so its findings may not represent other cultures
  • 20% of the original participants dropped out of the study making it less representative
  • Complex traits like psychoticism and delinquency were measured using rating scales/questionnaires which leads to a lack of construct validity
• extraversion - confident and sociable
• neuroticism - emotional unstable, anxious
• psychoticism - impulsive, irrational, aggressive
• restorative justice- victim meets the person that has offended against them so they can see the consequences
• punishments:

  • prisons - takes away freedom and confines them to an institution
  • community sentences - give up their time to do unpaid work
  • fines - loose their earns or savings
• Heavens study

  • psychoticism, extraversion and self esteem are predictors of selfreported delinquency
  • longitudinal study over 2 years, began measuring the 3 traits and correlated these with self reported delinquency at the end
  • 282 13-15 Australian children from a catholic school
  • closed question questionnaires to measure 3 traits and delinquency
  • 80% original participants were surveyed again after 2 years with the same questionnaires
• Psychoticism is linked to overactive dopamine system, in psychotics there are too many dopamine receptors meaning there is an excess of dopamine. Too much dopamine is related to high levels of violence
• Extraverts need a large stimulus to be aroused because the Reticular Activating system is underactive. This stimulus could be the thrill associated with crimes. The stimulus is sent to the cerebral cortex and wants to be stimulated.

  Extraversion is also linked to the dopamine reward system where dopamine is released in response to pleasurable experiences. Extraverts requite extreme stimuli to produce pleasure. This can be driven to rape or attack because it is their way of meeting their desire for pleasure
• neuroticism is linked to the autonomic nervous system as this part regulates how to respond in stressful situations and is easily aroused because they are anxious. This impacts the limbic system because it is also core part of the brain which is linked to sexual and aggressive urges. If that part is over-active, it can lead to physical and sexual offences
• eysenck's theory criticisms

  • Ignores individual differences and sees criminals as the same because they have the same personality traits.
• cooper and mackie


  84 9-11 years old from new jersey usa

  at the end children completed a questionnaire on their experience playing the game allocated

  laboratory experiment