Forensic development AO1 and AO3 Flashcards
What is forensic psychology?
The study of psychological aspects of the legal processes including applying theory to criminal investigations, understanding psychological problems associated with criminal behaviour and the treatment of criminals
Why is defining crime difficult to do?
Crime is subjective to culture and changes over time
Outline official statistics as a way of measuring crime
The government records the total number of crimes reported to the police and is published by the Home Office
Outline the victim surveys as a way of measuring crime
A record of experience of crime of the victim through the Crime Survey for England and Wales. 50,000 households are randomly selected
Outline the offender surveys as a way of measuring crime
Offenders volunteer to give details of the number and types of crimes they have committed. It targets people based on social background and previous convictions
What are the strengths of official statistics? (AO3)
- less biased and has no investigator effects
What are the limitations of official statistics? (AO3)
- Underestimates how much crime is committed in the country
- Police recording rules may differ (Nottinghamshire theft law)
What are the strengths of victim surveys? (AO3)
- Less chance of being biased as participants are randomly selected
- Large sample size so there is greater accuracy
What are the limitations of victim surveys? (AO3)
- Victims may have forgotten about crime or they may not accurately recall (telescoping is mis-remembering when an event occurred)
What are the strengths of offender surveys? (AO3)
- Provide insight to how many people are responsible for offences
What are the limitations of offender surveys? (AO3)
- Unreliable responses-may conceal or exaggerate information
- Over-representation of certain offences
Outline the Top-Down approach
- Originated in the USA from FBI work in the 1970s
- Data from interviews with 36 sexually motivated killers (Ted Bundy)
- Offenders have a unique style that informs us about their characteristics (Modus Operandi)
What are the signs of a disorganised offender?
- Little planning done
- Often leave evidence at the scene
- Usually unskilled and unemployed
What are the signs of a disorganised offender?
- Little planning done
- Often leave evidence at the scene
- Usually unskilled and unemployed
Name the four stages of FBI profiling
- Data assimilation
- Crime scene classification
- Crime reconstruction
- Profile generation
Outline the Bottom-Up approach
- The UK’s approach which generates a picture of the offender
- Profile is data driven
Outline investigative psychology (Bottom-Up)
- Establishing patterns that occur across crime scenes
- Offence details are matched with offender details
- Interpersonal coherence: the way an offender acts at the scene may reflect their behaviour in everyday situations
Outline geographical profiling (Bottom-Up)
- Kim Rossmo (1997) developed this method which is about crime mapping
- Establish ‘centre of gravity’ which helps to work out the ‘jeopardy surface’ (where an offender will strike next)
- Carter and Larkin (1993) suggest they may be marauder (home) or a commuder (travels)
Outline the idea that the top-down approach has limited application (AO3)
- It only applies to particular crimes such as rape or murder where the scene reveals information about the offender
- Therefore the application of this approach is limited
Outline the idea that the top down approach is based on outdated models of personality (AO3)
- Previous models see personality as being driven by dispositional traits rather than external factors that may be constantly changing
- This means the approach has poor validity when identifying possible suspects
Outline the fact that evidence doesn’t support the disorganised offender in the top-down approach (AO3)
- Evidence from Canter (2004) analysed data from 100 murderers and tried to classify the characteristics into organised or disorganised offenders.
- There was evidence for the organised offender but not the disorganised offender which undermines the approach
Why is there a problem with the original sample for the top down approach? (AO3)
- The typology approach was developed using interviews from 36 US killers which is too small a sample and is unrepresentative of other criminals
- It isn’t possible to rely on self-report techniques as they may not be accurate and demand charcteristics may occur
Why is the classification too simplistic for the top-down approach? (AO3)
- It would be difficult to classify an offender who fell in both parts of the classification therefore Holmes (1989) suggested that there are 4 types of serial killer and other researchers have focused on the motivation to commit crimes
Outline the definition of biological explanations to offending behaviour
Crime is an innate tendency and is genetically determined or a result of abnormalities in the brain
