Paper 3

• Forensic psychology topics


  • Offender profiling (top down and bottom up approach)
  • Biological explanations (historical approach, genetic and neural)
  • Psychological explanations (Eysenck's theory, cognitive, differential association theory, psychodynamic)
  • Dealing with offending behavior (custodial sentencing, behaviour modification in custody anger management, restorative justice)
• Offender profiling


  A behavioural and analytical tool that is intended to help investigators accurately predict and profile the characteristics of unknown offenders
• Top down approach to offender profiling

  Profilers start with a pre established typology and work down to lower levels in order to assign offenders to one of two categories based on witness accounts and evidence from the crime scene
• Organised offender


  An offender who shows evidence of planning, targets a specific victim and tends to be socially and sexually competent with higher than average intelligence
• Disorganised offender


  An offender who shows little evidence of planning, leaves clues and tends to be socially and sexually incompetent with lower than average intelligence
• Constructing an FBI profile

  Data assimilation – the profiler reviews the evidence

  2. Crime scene classification- as either organized or disorganized

  3. Crime reconstruction- hypotheses in terms of sequence of events, behaviour of the victim etc.

  4. Profile generation- hypotheses relates to the likely offender e.g. demographic background physical characteristics, behaviour etc.
• Top down approach to offender profiling

  • There is support for a distinct organized category of offender, but many studies suggest that organized and disorganized types are not mutually exclusive and a variety of combinations can occur
• Bottom up approach to offender profiling

  Profilers work up from evidence collected from the crime scene to develop hypotheses about the likely characteristics, motivations and social backgrounds of the offender
• Investigative psychology


  A form of bottom up profiling that matches details from the crime scene with statistical analysis of typical offender behaviour patterns based on psychological theory
• Geographical profiling


  A form of bottom up profiling based on the principle of spatial consistency- that an offender's operational base and possible future offences are revealed by the geographical location of their previous crimes
• Least effort principle


  The closest suitable crime scene to the offender's home base is picked, as this involves fewer crimes further away (distance decay)
• Circle hypothesis


  Crimes radiate out from the offender's home base creating a circle (for marauders) or the offender commutes away from a central base
• Bottom up approach to offender profiling

  • There is support for the basic principles of investigative psychology, but case linkage depends on the database which may only consist of historical crimes that were relatively easy to solve. Geographical profiling may not be sufficient on its own as other factors like timing and offender age/experience are also important
• Lombroso

  An Italian physician who suggested that criminals were genetic throwbacks - a primitive subspecies who were biologically different from non-criminals
• Biological approach

  Offenders are seen as lacking evolutionary development, their savage and untamed nature means they would find it impossible to adjust to the demands of society and inevitably turn to crime
• Atavistic form


  Lombroso argued that offenders had certain 'atavistic' features of the face and head that made them different from non-criminals, such as a narrow, sloping brow, a strong prominent jaw, high cheekbones and facial asymmetry
• Lombroso's procedure


  He examined the facial and cranial features of hundreds of Italian convicts, both living and dead, and concluded that 40% of criminal acts are committed by people with atavistic characteristics
• Lombroso's work was flawed as it lacked a control group, and later research found no physical differences between criminals and non-criminals when controlling for factors like age, class and intelligence
• The atavistic form is an example of scientific racism, claiming biological features identify criminality, which has influenced racist policies of eugenics and biased IQ testing that has harmed black communities
• Genetic explanations


  Inherited genotypes make the display of criminal behaviour (phenotype) more likely, e.g. violence
• Family studies


  • Twin and adoption studies have found higher concordance rates for criminal behaviour in identical twins compared to non-identical twins, suggesting a genetic component
• Candidate genes


  Specific genes like MAOA and CDH13 have been linked to increased risk of violent crime and substance abuse
• Diathesis stress model


  Some genes are only expressed due to an interaction with the environment, e.g. child abuse with the MAOA gene
• Biological explanations: neural


  • Individuals with antisocial personalities have reduced activity in the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that regulates emotional behaviour. They also show differences in mirror neuron activity related to empathy
• The link between brain differences and antisocial personality disorder may be complex, with other factors like childhood experiences also contributing
• Eysenck's theory


  Criminals have a distinct personality type characterized by high extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism, which has a biological basis
• Extraversion


  Offenders have an underactive nervous system and constantly seek excitement and stimulation, leading to risk-taking behaviour
• Neuroticism


  Offenders have high reactivity in the sympathetic nervous system, leading to instability and difficulty controlling impulses
• Psychoticism

  Offenders have higher levels of testosterone and are unemotional and prone to aggression
• Cognitive explanations

  Offenders have distorted ways of thinking, internal mental processes and moral reasoning that lead to criminal behaviour
• Levels of moral reasoning

  Criminals are argued to be stuck at the pre-conventional level, concerned only with how their actions affect them personally rather than progressing to higher levels of moral maturity
• Cognitive distortions

  Failures of the mind in accurately representing reality, such as hostile attribution bias and minimisation, can lead to criminal behaviour
• Culture factors- psychological research in a maximum security prison in new York the researchers divided these offenders into six groups based on their offending history and the nature of their offences. It was found that the all 6 groups were less extravert than a non offender control group whereas Eysenck would expect them to be more extravert this questions how far criminal personality can be generalised and may be a culturally relative concept
• Cognitive explanations


  Suggest that there are ways of thinking, internal mental processes about the world and moral decisions that lead to offending behaviour
• Levels of moral reasoning

  • Pre conventional level: criminals are argued to be stuck at this level, concerned only with how their actions affect them personally, either punishment(stage1) or rewards (stage 2) Don't progress to conventional/post conventional
  • Conventional level
  • Post conventional level
• Cognitive distortions


  Failures of the mind in accurately representing reality, can lead to criminal behaviour
• Hostile attribution bias


  Interference on peoples internal mental states are biased, assuming negative intentions
• Minimisation


  Interpreting our own behaviour as less serious than it really is, e.g. denying actions caused harm
• Moral reasoning refers to the way a person thinks about right and wrong. This is related to moral behaviour the higher the level, the more the behaviour is driven by a sense of what is right and the less it is driven by just avoiding punishment or avoiding the disproval of others
• Research found that the offender group showed less mature moral reasoning than the non offender group, consistent with Kohlberg's predictions