criminal psychology

• What is crime?


  The breach of one or more rules or laws for which some governing authority or force may ultimately prescribe a punishment or treatment
• Cognitive interviewing


  - Questioning technique to improve testimony so that it is reliable and not affected by how an interview is done.

  - Based on reconstructive theory of memory of confabulation
• Police standard interview


  - Short attempt to establish rapport

  - Direct questions 'Tell me what happened'

  - Outburst of crime-related facts from the witness

  - Interruptions where the interviewer asks short direct questions

  - Leading questions

  - Interviewer dominated the interview with replies being rather brief, so witness stays passive
• Four main techniques used within cognitive interviews

  1. Reinstate the context at the time of the event, recall specific cues to help put them back in the time of the incident.

  2. Report everything, free recall without interruption.

  3. Change order of recall. Recall in reverse order can help avoid skipping information, interrupts schema activation and prevent story formation.

  4. Change perspective, by adopting the viewpoint of a different witness
• Strengths of cognitive interviewing

  - Aims to get as much detail as possible

  - Holliday (2012) found more correct details in cognitive interview compared to standard interview

  - Studies looking at EWT found leading questions unreliable (Loftus and Palmer), so in favour of open questioning techniques used in cognitive interviewing
• Weaknesses of cognitive interviewing

  - Specialist training and expertise are required, costly to police

  - What is planned in theory might not be easy to do in practice. Relies on building rapport, giving control to interviewee and letting them lead

  - Asking a witness to consider another perspective might result in speculation.
• Psychological formulation


  A way of making sense of a person's difficulties, by looking at relationships, biological and social circumstances, life events, and how they have interpreted the events that happened to them.
• What do they look for in a psychological formulation?

  1. Early experiences

  2. Core beliefs (thought that are important)

  3. Triggers

  4. Situation

  5. Thoughts

  6. Behaviour

  7. Feelings

  8. Physical symptoms
• Strengths of psychological formulation

  - Help simplify complex information and explain factors influencing the offender's behaviour to other professional

  - Explain to the offender themselves what led to them committing crime

  - Support them to make changes

  - Holistic approach as it looks at all the aspects, helps find effective treatment
• Weaknesses of psychological formulation

  - Difficult to gain all the information

  - Relies on offender being able to remember all events and willingness to share to psychologist

  - There may be medical or mental health diagnoses the individual does not know they have
• Labelling


  When general and broad terms are used to describe members of a group. A group sees another group as inferior, creating superior group. Negative ideas to inferior group and are treated according to the label
• Stereotypes


  Overgeneralised belief about someone or something typically based on limited information
• Prejudice


  Dislike or unfair behaviour based on false or misguided opinion
• Discrimination


  Practice of treating one person or group differently from another in an unfair way
• Effects of labelling


  1. Affect the individual's self-concept and lead to SFP

  2. Can affect the way others treat you and may lead to SFP

  3. Society may label people according to the way others treat you leading to SFP
• Self-fulfilling prophecy


  A prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true, by the very terms of the prophecy itself, due to positive feedback between belief and behaviour.

  When a person unknowingly causes a prediction to come true by the fact that he or she expects it to come true.
• SFP supporting evidence


  - Jahoda (1954): Males born on Wednesday, named Kwadku, (aggressive and short tempered) have higher arrest rate 22% than males born on Monday, named Kwadwo, (mild mannered) 6%.

  - Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968): students labelled as bloomers had improved IQ scores and thrived for the next 2 years Teachers responded differently to them.
• Strengths of SFP


  - Supporting evidence

  - Valid data comes from crime records
• Weaknesses of SFP


  - Fails to account for other factors that may influence a person's behaviour

  - Limited research in crime, mostly education settings e.g. Rosenthal and Jacobson

  - Ethical and moral issues with research into SFP
• Social Learning Theory


  - Antisocial behaviour is modelled and imitated

  - Observed being aggressive

  - Retained information

  - Reproduce in a similar situation

  - Motivated
• Internal motivation / Self-reinforcement

  Self-motivational factors associated with crime as internal needs are satisfied. Such as doing it for the thrill
• External motivation


  If criminal act has been acquired through SLT and behaviour is successful it is likely to be repeated. Such as positive and negative reinforcement
• Vicarious reinforcement


  How an individual learns by watching others being rewarded or punished. Such as if the role model is praised
• Bandura (1961)


  Children imitated an adult role model hitting a Bobo doll. Boys were more physically aggressive than girls who showed more verbal aggression.
• Anderson and Dill (2000)

  - 210 psychology students split into 2 groups, either violent or non-violent game

  - After playing, asked to begin competitive game involving reaction test

  - Person who pressed button fastest would be able to give the opponent the punishment of loud noise

  - Winner would set the volume and duration of noise

  - Loudest and longest blasts were from violent game participants, women gave greater punishments
• Strengths of SLT explanation

  - Research concentrated on influence of violent media on aggression.
• Weaknesses of SLT explanation

  - Influence of social class, lower socioeconomic status watch more television

  - Experiments focus on behaviour of children after aggression, children are naive and do not fully understand consequences.

  - Examines short term not long term

  - No evidence that criminality is due to observational learning
• Retrospective labelling


  Going back into the past and using current label or stigma to explain retrospectively someone's past behaviour
• Projective labelling


  Using a current label or stigma to predict future behaviour
• Brain injury and crime

  - Offending behaviour and damage to brain

  - Williams et al 2010, 60% of 196 prisoners received a form of TBI. Relatively younger when they went to prison.
• Amygdala and crime


  - Pardini: 26 yr old men with lower amygdala volumes were more than 3x more likely to be aggressive, violent and show psychopathic traits

  - Responsible for controlling human emotions, such as fear, and damage to it can cause them to react unemotional or excessively
• Sham rage and crime

  - Cannon and Britton (1925)

  - Emotional state found in animals

  - Severed neural connections to the cortex of cats (decorticate cats)

  - When provoked, showed behaviour associated with rage and aggression

  - When this was ablated/ taken away, animals became more placid, but if stimulated the area, aggression displayed
• Raine and crime


  - Showed lower levels of glucose metabolism in the prefrontal cortex of murderer's brains

  - Differences in amygdala and hippocampus
• What is XYY syndrome?


  Chromosomal abnormality where males have an additional Y chromosome
• Symptoms of XYY syndrome

  - Sterility

  - Weaker muscles

  - Greater height

  - Poor coordination

  - Less body hair

  - Smaller genitals

  - Breast growth

  - Less interest in sex

  - Intelligence is normal, but reading difficulties and problems with speech are common
• XYY syndrome evidence: Jacobs (1965)


  Over-representation of males with XYY syndrome in prison. 15 XYY per 1000 prisoners, compared to 1: 1000 in normal population
• XYY syndrome evidence: Witkin (1976)


  4590 tall males and found only 12 cases of XYY males. 41.7% of XYY males were more likely to be engaged in crime compared to only 9.3% XY males.

  XYY tended to have lower intelligence and poor attainment, may lead to criminal behaviour due to social reaction.
• XYY syndrome evidence: Stocholm (2012)


  161 males with XYY significant increase in crime compared to XY controls.

  When controlled for education, fatherhood and relationships, differences were very small. Raised risk of offending was due to socio-economic condition related to XYY not direct cause.
• XYY syndrome evidence: Theilgaard (1984)


  Men with XYY are likely to have lower levels of intelligence. Higher than expected number of XYY men in offender population may be consequence of learning difficulties rather than XYY
• Strengths of XYY


  - Supporting evidence

  - Biological explanation is scientific

  - Credible