Forensic Flashcards
Defining and Measuring Crime (A01)
- Crime is considered as any illegal act which is punishable by incarceration or another type of punishment, after consideration by a judge and jury in a legal trial. However, there exist historical and cultural issues with defining ‘crime’.
- Historical issues show that what was considered a crime at one point in history, may not be considered a crime according to modern standards e.g. homosexuality only being illegalised in the UK in 1967, through the Sexual Offences Act of 1967.
- Similarly, cultural issues in crime face this same problem. For example, smacking a child in one culture may be seen as acceptable or even encouraged as a form of ‘tough love’, whereas this is not the case in the UK - smacking a child so that a mark is left is now punishable by law, according to the 2004 Child’s Protection Act.
- As well as issues in defining crime, there are also issues in measuring crime, for which there are 3 main methods: Official Statistics, Victim Surveys and Offender Surveys.
- Official Statistics describe the number of crimes reported to and recorded by the police, which have been processed and published by the Home Office on an annual basis.
- Victim surveys involve 50,000 randomly selected households to self-report the number and types of crimes which have been committed against them during the past year, and is published by the Crime Survey for England and Wales annually.
- Lastly, offender surveys target a randomly-selected cohort of criminals, who give details of the types and frequency of crimes they have committed across a set time period (e.g. during the last year), as recorded by The Offender Crime and Justice Survey. This is particularly useful for governmental organisations as a view of the patterns and risk factors for crime at a national scale, and so can be used to inform crime prevention/management strategies.
Defining and Measuring Crime (A03)
— A particular problem associated with official statistics is its susceptibility to concealing the ‘dark figure’ of crime i.e. where 75% of crime goes unreported. This may be due to a lack of standardisation of police recording policies in relation to crime, as well as the victim fearing revenge/retribution or feeling untrustworthy of the police. The effects of these in discrepancies was demonstrated by Farrington and Dowds (1985) who found that sudden increases in incidence rates of theft could be explained by a change in police recording policies, where thefts under £10 were recorded. This therefore suggests that official statistics may be an inaccurate representation of crime!
+ Victim surveys have the advantage, over official statistics, that the ‘dark figure’ of crime is less likely to be concealed or evident due to the self-report technique, where individuals may feel that there are less repercussions for their actions.
— However, victim surveys suffer from the serious methodological problems associated with self- report techniques and, specifically, the idea of ‘telescoping’, where the victim may mistakenly believe that a crime had been committed against them significantly more recently than it actually had been, due to the trauma and distress associated with it. Therefore, victim surveys may be no more accurate than official statistics.
+ Offender surveys have been particularly useful in informing crime prevention and management strategies due to showing the patterns and risk factors of offending behaviour. Therefore, this demonstrates a real-life practical application.
— On the other hand, the data collected from Offender Surveys may be distorted or biased because it has been collected from offenders. These offenders may want to over-exaggerate their crimes to give themselves a feeling of accomplishment and grandeur, or under-exaggerate their crimes to diminish responsibility. This means that too much reliance cannot be placed upon the honesty and integrity of offenders in self-report measures.
Offender Profiling: The Top-Down Approach (A01)
- The top-down approach uses a pre-established typology and the FBI method of profile generation to assign offenders to one of two categories: organised or disorganised offenders.
- Profile generation includes 4 steps: crime scene classification, crime reconstruction, data assimilation and profile generation.
- Organised offenders are socially and sexually competent, showing evidence of planning and so are unlikely to leave the body or clues at the crime scene. They tend to have a specific ‘type’ of victim (e.g. just like in the case of Ted Bundy) and appear to carry out the attack in an almost surgical manner.
- Disorganised offenders have the opposite characteristics, showing no evidence of planning and so frequently leave the body and clues at the crime scene e.g. blood or hair. Their attacks appear to be random, with no specific target and more likely to occur close to their own home or operational base (thus, they are described as ‘marauders’). They are socially and sexually incompetent, often living alone and
being unemployed. - This is all in line with the aims of offender profiling - by reducing the list of suspects, the police can investigate a narrower field of enquiry and so increase the likelihood that the case will be solved.
Offender Profiling: The Top-Down Approach (A03)
— The main limitation is that the top- down approach can only be used to explain crimes where there have obvious, visible characteristics (e.g. rape and sadistic murder) and so are unlikely to be effective in identifying criminals who are responsible for burglary or middle-class crimes, such as financial fraud. This means that the top-down approach may only be an effective method of offender profiling for ‘blue-collar’ crimes.
— It is unlikely that all offenders are able to be identified as either organised or disorganised. Therefore, due to this oversimplication of the classification system, it may be more useful to study the motives that each criminal has, as suggested by Keppel and Walter (1999). In this way, seemingly contradictory crimes can still be explained e.g. a criminal who leaves no clues at the crime scene but appears to be sexually incompetent and who carried out an impulsive attack on a stranger.
— There is evidence to support the existence of an organised offender type, but the same cannot be said for the disorganised type, as suggested by Canter et al (2004). These researchers used the statistical technique of smallest space analysis to analyse the data from 100 murders in the US, with comparisons of each made to 39 typical traits of both offender types. The fact that disorganised offenders cannot be identified as distinctly different from organised offenders suggests that this system lacks validity and breadth.
Offender Profiling: The Bottom-Up Approach (A01)
- The bottom-up approach, in contrast to the top-down approach, uses no pre-established typology but develops a profile as the crime scene and eyewitness testimonies are increasingly analysed. The two hallmarks of the bottom-up approach are investigative psychology and geographical profiling.
- Investigative psychology is the process whereby each crime is recorded onto a database. Then, the details of each new crime are matched with this database in order to develop hypotheses about the likely characteristics, social demographic and motivations of the culprit. Therefore, there is a much greater emphasis on scientific methods of investigation and statistical analysis, compared to the top-down approach.
- Investigative psychology emphasises the importance of time and place (due to their consequent links with geographical profiling) as well as the idea of ‘interpersonal coherence’, which suggests that the manner in which the offender treats the victim reflects their interpersonal functioning/understanding in real life.
- Geographical profiling suggests that each offender has an operational base, which can be inferred through mapping the locations of previous crimes. This should form a circular shape, where the operational base or ‘centre of gravity’ is at the centre, and can also be used to predict future crimes through the analysis of a jeopardy surface.
- This is all based on the assumption that the way and signature of offenders in carrying out their crimes are constant i.e. they have the same ‘modus operandi’. Offenders can be classified as marauders (carrying out crimes close to the centre of gravity) or commuters (carrying out crimes far away from the centre of gravity), according to Canter and Larkin (1993).
Offender Profiling: The Bottom-Up Approach (A03)
— The bottom-up approach is almost certainly a useful method of offender profiling, but it does not always lead to the correct identification of the offender, and so may be considered a failure in this sense, as suggested by Copson (1995). He found that information from an offender profile only led to the successful identification of the offender in 3% of cases, but was useful 83% of the time. This suggests that offender profiling is best reserved for simply narrowing the field of enquiry, as opposed to being relied upon as a chief means of offender identification.
+ A key advantage of the bottom-up approach, compared to the top-down approach, is its reliance on scientific methods of enquiry and the use of statistical analysis. For example, many supporting studies have used the method of smallest space analysis to establish correlations between two variables or offender characteristics. This is more scientific and based on psychological theory compared to the top-down approach, which is over-simplistic.
+ There is evidence to support the use of smallest space analysis in geographical profiling, as a way of narrowing the field of enquiry and identifying offenders as either marauders or commuters, as suggested by Lundrigan and Canter (2001). Following the smallest space analysis of 120 serial murder cases, the researchers were able to identify characteristic traits of spatial consistency, such as the presence of a jeopardy surface (which could be used to predict the locations of future crimes) as well as the centre of gravity (which was often the offender’s operational base). Therefore, this is particularly useful in establishing the modus operandi of the offender.
Biological Explanations: Atavistic Form (A01)
- This is the historical approach to offender profiling and was proposed by Lombroso. He suggested that criminals were ‘genetic throwbacks’ who were not accustomed to the social norms of normal, civilised society and so in this sense were more suited for crime. Criminals could be identified by signature atavistic characteristics i.e. specific facial and cranial features.
- These atavistic characteristics included long ears, dark skin, extra toes and nipples, and curly hair.
- Certain atavistic characteristics were associated with certain crimes. For example, murderers were identified as having bloodshot eyes, fraudsters had reedy lips, whilst sexual deviants had glinting eyes. This has been considered by many modern criminologists as the foundation of offender profiling and criminology.
- Lombroso based his theory upon studying the cranial features of 383 dead and 3839 alive criminals, whereby approximately 40% of crime could be explained using the offender profiles based upon certain atavistic characteristics
Biological Explanations: Genetic and Neural Explanations (A01)
- Genetic explanations of offending mainly focus on the heritability and role of candidate genes in the development of criminal behaviour.
- For example, Christiansen et al (1977) found concordance rates of 33% for identical (87 MZ) twins but only 12% concordance for non-identical (147 DZ) twins. Since MZ twins share 100% of their genetic information with each other, whereas DZ twins share only 50%, then this suggests that there is a moderate genetic or heritable basis of criminal behaviour.
- However, the concordance rates for MZ twins is not 100%, and so this suggests that an interaction between the environment and genetics together produces the outcome of criminality, as suggested by Mednick et al (1984), and so the traditional diathesis-stress model can be used to account for this.
- Candidate genes each represent slight genetic variations which increase the risk of developing criminal behaviour, in this case, as suggested by Tiihonen et al (2014). Abnormalities in the MAOA and CDH-13 genes, which both code for neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine and so are also implicated in the development of ADHD, increases the likelihood of becoming criminal by 13-fold. This gives further support to the role of a genetic diathesis in the development of criminality.
- Neural explanations mainly focus on individuals with antisocial personality disorder (APD), a disorder which is very common amongst criminals. For example, Raine et al (2000) found that criminals have a lower volume and activity level (11% reduction) in the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for logical thinking and decision making. Therefore, this supports the idea that criminals may have difficulties in regulating their emotions and so make irrational decisions.
- Neural abnormalities associated with criminality were further supported by Keysers et al (2011), who found that criminals appear to have a ‘neural switch’ which they can use to turn their capacities for empathy on or off. This may explain why and how criminals lack empathy towards their victims.
Biological Explanations: Genetic and Neural Explanations (A03)
— A key methodological issue with the use of twin studies as a means of investigating the genetic basis of behaviour is that such studies assume that the only difference between twins is the amount of genetic information they share. This is an incorrect assumption and would be better addressed through the use of an interactionist approach. For example, the fact that MZ twins are likely to share the same environment as opposed to normal siblings may explain why MZ concordance rates are higher than for normal siblings, despite both sharing 50% of their genes. This suggests that causal conclusions about the genetic basis of criminality have incorrectly been reached.
+ Strong support for the use of a diathesis-stress model in explaining criminality comes from Mednick et al (1984). After analysing the court convictions of 14,427 adoptees with adoptive and biological parents, the researchers concluded that 1“siblings adopted separately into different homes tended to be concordant for convictions, especially if the shared biological father also had a record of criminal behaviour”. This supports the idea that criminality is only likely to be an outcome if a genetic susceptibility is paired with environmental (criminal) stressors, as predicted by the diathesis-stress model.
— The focus on the role of genetics and neural activities as a means of explaining criminal behaviour suffers from the problem of biological reductionism, as suggested by Katz et al (2007). Although it does appear that criminality runs in families, so do other risk factors associated with criminality e.g. a high frequency and intensity of exposure to pro-criminal attitudes (similar to Sutherland’s Differential Association Theory), a lack of educational opportunities, economic deprivation etc. Therefore, it is important not to stereotype children from criminal families as ‘criminal’ as this may lead to the realisation of self-fulfilling prophecies.
Psychological Explanations: Eysenck’s Theory (A01)
- Eysenck suggested that there was a specific criminal personality (neurotic-extravert) which could be measured across two dimensions initially (neurotic-stable and extravert-introvert), with the third dimension of psychoticism being added at a later date.
- The criminal personality theory has considerable links with biological explanations of criminality because the theory views criminal behaviour as being due to the activity of the nervous system, which is attributed to specific personalities. For example, extraverts have an underactive nervous system and so are continuously looking for new stimulation, which may explain their nervous and impulsive nature.
- The type of personality a person has and the activity of the nervous system which they inherit, both affect the extent to which the individual is affected by socialisation, which occurs in childhood and aims to teach children essential social communication skills as well as the value of delayed gratification. Those with a (criminal) neurotic-extravert personality are unable to perceive antisocial behaviour as negative or undesirable, and so act accordingly.
- Personality can be measured across the 3 dimensions using the EPI i.e. Eysenck’s Personality Inventory.
Psychological Explanations: Eysenck’s Theory (A03)
— The EPI takes on a reductionist approach to assessing and measuring personality, as suggested by Mischel (1988). Personality traits are unlikely to all be accounted for using only 3 dimensions and measured by being assigned a single number. These traits are also likely to change depending on who we interact with and under what circumstances, thus not always being stable. This means that such a reductionist approach may not offer an accurate account of personality.
— Eysenck’s criminal personality theory may also suffer from cultural bias, due to the largely Western culture from which the sample was drawn, as suggested by Bartol and Holanchock (1979). For example, these researchers found that a group of Hispanic convicts were less extravert compared to non-criminals (a control group), which suggests that Eysenck’s theory is not universal and so lacks generalisability to all cultures.
— The criminal personality theory shares a weakness similar to the top-down approach, and that is an oversimplication of the classification of criminals. It is unlikely that there is only one criminal personality type, as suggested by Digman’s Five Factor Model which suggests that there are additional dimensions along which personality can be measured. 2 These include extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness to experience (or Intellect).
Cognitive Explanations for Offending Behaviour (A01)
- Kohlberg suggested that there are 3 universal levels of moral reasoning, each characterised by a certain logic. These include the pre-conventional level (punishment orientation), the conventional level (maintenance of the social order) and the post-conventional level (morality of contract and individual rights).
- Kohlberg proposed that criminals have a childlike, immature sense of reasoning, and so reason at the pre-conventional level, whilst non-criminals will reason at the conventional or post- conventional levels, thus being able to display more civilised and empathic behaviours, as suggested by Chandler (1973).
Cognitive distortions are a major feature of cognitive explanations for offending behaviour. These distortions are examples of dysfunctional thought processing where we show errors in our logic. The two main types of cognitive distortions attributed to criminality are hostile attribution bias (HAB) and minimalization. - Hostile attribution bias is the tendency for offenders to view emotionally ambiguous or non- threatening situations as hostile and threatening, and so is an automatic reaction to novel situations, as suggested by Schönenberg and Justye (2014). 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. This may be the result of being a ‘rejected’ and ‘aggressive’ child, according to Dodge and Frame (1982).
- Minimalisation is particularly common amongst sex offenders, and is used as a coping mechanism for guilt or regret, where offenders will under-exaggerate the significance of their crimes and the emotional consequences suffered by their victims, as suggested by Pollock and Hasmall (1991). 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, whilst 36% did not accept committing a crime at all as they perceived the child as consenting.
Cognitive Explanations for Offending Behaviour (A03)
— Cognitive theories may not be able to explain all examples of offending behaviour, and specifically not all types of crimes. For example, impulsive crimes appear to be carried out by offenders with no reasoning whatsoever, whilst middle-class financially-driven crimes are more frequently carried out by offender who display pre-conventional reasoning, as suggested by Thornton and R.L.Reid (1982). As suggested by Langdon (2010), intelligence may be a more important factor in determining the likelihood of an individual committing a crime, and is a more quantifiable and objective characteristic compared to levels of moral reasoning. Therefore, cognitive explanations are only suited towards explaining specific types of crime.
— Although Kohlberg’s three stages of moral reasoning are comprehensive, other researchers have suggested a different method of organising and naming these stages, for example Gibbs (1979). His ideas of mature and immature reasoning are very similar to Kohlberg’s levels, with immature reasoning being represented by the pre-conventional level and mature reasoning being represented by the conventional level, whilst the ‘culturally biased’ post-conventional level was removed. Therefore, this suggests that the theoretical basis of Kohlberg’s ideas were sound, but a modern update on the organisation of his theory increases the validity.
+ An improved understanding of cognitive biases and their relationship to specific crimes and criminals has a real-life practical application, particularly in the case of sex offenders. Since such offenders are especially susceptible to using minimalization to justify their crimes, cognitive therapies such as CBT may specifically tackle this problem and result in reduced recidivism rates. This offers a refreshing alternative or addition to the traditional morality solution to criminality, which would be lengthy incarceration with few opportunities for learning and rehabilitation.
Psychological Explanations: Differential Association Theory (A01)
- Sutherland’s (1924) Differential Association Theory suggests that crime is essentially a learned behaviour, and can be explained using the principles of social learning theory where the ‘role models’ are criminal peers or a ‘criminal university’ (in the form of a prison). The scientific emphasis of this theory suggests that it is possible to accurately predict the likelihood that an individual will become criminal, based on their exposure to pro-criminal and anti-criminal attitudes.
- Observers/individuals learn general attitudes towards crime as well as the skills and knowledge required to carry out specific crimes. If the frequency and intensity of an individual’s exposure to pro-criminal attitudes is greater than their exposure to anti-criminal attitudes (using the same mathematical terms of frequency and intensity), then it is highly likely that the individual will become criminal.
Psychological Explanations: Differential Association Theory (A03)
— Although Sutherland placed a great scientific emphasis upon his theory, the frequency and intensity of exposure to criminal attitudes is very difficult to objectively and reliably measure. This means that any conclusions or predictions drawn about the likelihood that an individual will become criminal is likely to be lacking in validity. Even if such a measure was created, it would be a self-report measure which does not avoid the problems of retrospective research and memory decay.
— It is incorrect to assume that simply because an individual has been exposed to more pro- criminal attitudes compared to anti-criminal attitudes, then this does not necessarily mean that they will become criminal. Such a determinist approach may lead to increased crime itself through the realisation of self-fulfilling prophecies or, in addition, may lead to ‘scientific justification’ for discrimination and justification.
+ A major advantage of Sutherland’s Differential Association Theory is that it offers a refreshing approach towards the explanation of crime - one where the environment, as opposed to the individual, is blamed. This means that the extreme policies of eugenics (the solution for criminality from a biological perspective) are rightfully not an option as a method for dealing with offending behaviour. Therefore, this theory provides a fair and realistic explanation of crime which does not hold the individual entirely accountable, and rightfully so!
