forensics essay plans Flashcards
Top down AO1
Offender profiling - tool to help investigators predict likely offenders - usually involve careful scrutiny of crime scene and analysis of other evidence to generate hypotheses
Top-down approach - pre-established typology and work down to lower levels until signed to two categories based on witness accounts and crime scene
- Data could be categorised into organised or disorganised crime
- Will collect data about a murder and then decide on the category the data best fits
Organised offender - evidence of planning, targets victim, socially competent with higher than average intelligence
- High degree of control during crime and may operate with almost detached surgical precision
- Little evidence or clues left behind
Disorganised offender - little evidence of planning, leaves clues, socially incompetent with lower than average intelligence, impulsive nature of attack - body still at scene and very little control on part of the offender
The american approach - primarily used in america - offender assigned to one of two pre-existing categories based on witness accounts and evidence from crime scenes
Constructing FBI profile - data assimilation, crime scene classification, crime reconstruction, profile generation
modus operandi- crime isn’t random - criminal signature
Top down AO3
Research support
- Strength - support for distinct organised category
- Canter et al - 100 US murders committed by different serial killer - smallest space analysis - statistical technique that identifies correlations and found o-occurrence of 39 aspects of serial killings - eg torture or restraint, attempt to conceal body, murder weapon, cause of death
- Revealed there is subset of features of many serial killings - which is used in top down approach
however: - Organised and disorganised aren’t mutually exclusive
- Variety of combinations that occur
- Maurice Godwin - classifying killers is difficult - may have contrasting characteristics, high intelligence but commit a spontaneous murder
- Organised-disorganised typology is more of a continuum
Wider application
- Strength of top-down profiling
- Can be adapted eg burglary
- Meketa - top-down profiling recently applied to burglary - 85% rise in solved cases in 3 US states
- Adds two new categories - interpersonal and opportunistic
- Interpersonal - offender knows victim
- Opportunistic - inexperienced young offender
- Top-down profiling has wider application than originally assumed
Flawed evidence
- Limitation - evidence it’s based on
- FBI profiling developed using interviews with 36 US murderers
- Canter et al - sample was poor - FBI agents not randomly select and not large sample nor did sample include different kinds of offender
- No standard set of questions to not really comparable
- Top-down profiling does not have sound, scientific basis
Personality
- Based on behavioural consistency - can be seen across crime scenes
- In contrast
- Situation psychologists - Walter Mischel - behaviour more driven by situation
- Behavioural patterns tell us little about how the individual behaves in everyday life
Bottom up AO1
Offender profiling - tool to help investigators predict likely offenders
Bottom-up approach - work up from evidence from crime scene to develop hypothesis - data driven - British
Aim - generate picture of characteristics, routine behaviour and social background - done by systematic analysis of evidence
Investigative psychology - form of bottom-up approach, establishes patterns of behaviour forming a statistical database - developed by David Canter
Interpersonal coherence - offender’s behaviour at crime scene reflects their everyday behaviour thus acts as a clue - Dwyer - rapists want control
Forensic awareness - individuals who have been subject of police interrogation before cover their tracks
Geographical profiling and canter’s circle theory - form of bottom-up approach - location is clue - based on spatial consistency - creates a circle around their base - marauders close to home - commuters further away
Case study - Railway Rapist - Canter assisted in capturing Duffy - one of 2000 suspects, after the profiling he became one of two.
Profiled - Lives in Kilburn, marriage problems, small, martial artists
Duffy - Lives in Kilburn, separated, 5ft4, member of martial arts club
Accurate profile
Bottom up AO3
Evidence for investigative psychology
P - strength as evidence to support it
E - Canter and Heritage - analysis of 66 sexual assault cases - examined using smallest space analysis
E - several behaviours were identified such as impersonal language and lack of reaction to victim - each individual displayed a characteristic pattern of such behaviours - helps to establish whether two or more offences were committed by the same person
L - supports one of the basic principles of investigative psychology - that people are consistent in their behaviour
P - however - case linkage depends on database - only consist of historical crimes that have been solved
E - when solved it may have been because they were straightforward to link
E - this causes a circular argument
L - investigative psychology may tell us a little about crimes that have few links between them and therefore remain unsolved
Evidence for geographical profiling
P - strength as evidence supports geographical profiling
E - Lundrigan and Canter - collated information from 120 murder cases involving serial killers in the US using smallest space analysis
E - spatial consistency was found - location of each body disposal site created a ‘centre of gravity’ as offenders start from home base and go in a different direction each time creating a circular effect around the home base - effect more noticeable in marauders
L - supports the view that geographical information can be used to identify an offender
Geographical information insufficient
P - Limitation as geographical profiling may not be sufficient on its own
E - success may be reliant on quality of data the police can provide, which is not always accurate. About 75% of crimes are not reported to police - DFC
E - questions the utility of an approach that relies on accuracy of geographical data and even if information is correct, critics claim that other factors are just as important such as timing of offence, age and experience of offender - Ainsworth
L - geographical information alone may not always lead to the successful capture of an offender
Mixed results
P - offender profiling has a mixed history and is regarded in different ways by police forces
E - Copson - surveyed 49 police departments - advice provided by profiler was judged to be useful in 83% of cases - valid investigative tool
E - same study revealed in only 3% of cases did it lead to accurate identification of offender - Rachel Nickell case - reminder of how profiling can be misused - Kocsis et al found that chemistry students produced more accurate offender profiles on a solved murder case than experienced senior detectives
L - may question whether the approach is worthwhile
Historical AO1
Atavistic form approach - biological approach that attributes criminal activity to offenders being primitive subspecies ill-suited to conforming to rules of model society - such features are cranial
Who came up with it? - Lombroso
Historical approach - Criminals are primitive subspecies that are different from non-criminals
Biological approach - Offending behaviour is innate, a natural tendency that criminal cannot help so should not be blamed
Offender types - murderers have bloodshot eyes, curly hair and long ears, fraudsters have thin lips
Lombroso’s research - analysed the facial and cranial features of 383 dead criminals and 3839 living ones - 40% of criminal acts explained by atavistic characteristics
Historical AO3
Legacy
P - Strength of Lombroso’s work - changed the face of the study of crime
E - Hailed father of modern criminology - coined term criminology - credited as shifting the emphasis away from a moralistic discourse and towards a scientific position
E - trying to describe how particular types of people are likely to commit particular types of crime, theory heralded the beginning of offender profiling
L - Lombroso made a major contribution to the science of criminology
P - DeLisi questioned whether Lombroso’s legacy is positive
E - This is due to racist undertones of his work - many of features identified are most likely found among people of African descent
E - He suggested that Africans were more likely to be offenders, a view that fitted 19th C eugenic attitudes
L - Suggests that some aspects of his theory were highly subjective rather than objective - racial prejudices of the time
Evidence
P - Limitation - evidence contradicts link between atavism and crime
E - Goring set out to establish whether offenders were physically atypical - 3000 offenders and 3000 non-offenders
E - concluded no evidence that offenders are a distinct group with unusual facial and cranial characteristics
L - Challenges idea that offenders can be physically distinguished from the rest of the population and therefore un
Control
P - Limitation - Lombroso’s methods of investigation were poorly controlled
E - Failed to control important variables as did not compare offender sample with non-offender control group
E - could have controlled for an assortment of confounding variables that might have equally explained higher crime rates in certain groups of people - research has demonstrated links between crime and social conditions
L - Lombroso’s research does not meet modern scientific standards
Biology
P - Lombroso’s work raises question whether criminals born or made
E - Crime has a biological cause and is genetically determined
E - However, this does not mean this is a cause of their offending
L - Facial and cranial differences may be influenced by other factors such as poverty and diet - reductionism?
Biological AO1
Genetics - DNA strands that produce instructions for biological structure - may impact psychological features - genes are transmitted from parents to offspring
Twin studies - Christiansen - 3500 twins from Denmark - concordance rate for offending behaviour 35% and 13%
Adoption studies -Crowe - 50% risk of criminal record for adopted children who’s biological mother had criminal record - only 5% when no record
Candidate genes - genetic analysis of almost 800 finnish offenders - MAOA gene regulates serotonin - linked with aggression - CDH13 - substance abuse and ADHD - 5-10% of all severe violent crime in Finland attributable to one of two genotypes
Diathesis-stress - offending behaviour due to combination of predisposition and trigger (environmental influences) - can be inherited so genetic predisposition
Neural explanation - neural differences in brain of offenders and non-offenders - research focus on antisocial personality disorder - reduced emotions, lack of empathy
Prefrontal cortex - Raine et al - APD have reduced activity in prefrontal cortex - 11% reduction in volume of grey matter in the prefrontal cortex of people with APD compared to controls
Mirror neurons - Keysers - ADP showed empathy - but only when asked to - neural switch on and off
Biological AO3
Issues with twin evidence
P - limitation as twin studies assume equal environments
E - researchers studying twins environmental factors are held constant as twins grew up together
E - ‘shared environment assumption’ apply more to MZ than DZ as MZ look identical so people treat them more similarly
L - higher concordance rates for MZs in twin studies may simply be because they are treated more similarly than DZ
Support for diathesis-stress
P - strength as research support
E - study of 13,000 danish adoptees by Mednick et al
E - neither the biological nor adoptive parents had convictions, the percentage of adoptees that did was 13.5%. Figure rose 20% when either of biological parents had convictions and 24.5% when both adoptive and biological parents had convictions
L - genetic inheritance plays an important role in offending but environmental influence is important - support for diathesis-stress model of crime
Nature and nurture
P - nature and nurture - adoptive studies eg Mednick et al good way of separating nature and nurture
E - if crime has a genetic component - adopted child should still experience the influence of biological parent despite not living with them
E - many adoptions take place when children are older, so they spend several years with their biological parents - adoptees encouraged to maintain contact with biological family so biological parents exert an environmental influence
Brain evidence
P - strength as support for link between crime and frontal lobe
E - Kandel and Freed - reviewed evidence of frontal lobe damage and antisocial behaviour
E - People with such damage show impulsive behaviour, emotional instability and an inability to learn from their mistakes - frontal lobe is associated with planning behaviour
L - supports the idea that brain damage may be a causal factor in offending behaviour
Intervening variables
P - limitation is link between neural differences and APD may be complex
E - other factors may contribute to ADP - Farrington et al - studied a group of men who scored highly on psychopathy
E - These individuals had experienced various risk factors during childhood - raised by convicted parent and being neglected - early childhood experiences and neural differences associated with it such as reduced activity in frontal lobe due to trauma
L - Suggests that relationship between neural differences, APD and offending is complex and there may be other intervening variables that have an impact
Biological determinism
P - biological approach suggests that offending behaviour is determined by genetic / neural factors
E - cannot be controlled by the person - person should not be held responsible for a crime
E - however - our justice system is based on the notion that we all have responsibility for our actions
L - identifications of possible biological precursors to crime complicates this principle
Differential association AO1
Differential association theory - explanation through interactions with others - individuals learn values, attitudes, techniques and motives for offending behaviour
Scientific basis - Sunderland - task of developing scientific principles that could explain all types of offending - conditions which are said to cause crime should be present when crime is present and should be absent when crime is absent - Theory discriminate between individuals who become offenders no matter social class or ethnicity
Offending as learned behaviour - process of learning through interactions with someone child values eg family or peers - offending arises from two factors - learned attitudes towards offending and learning of specific offending acts
Learning attitudes - we will go on to offend if we acquire more pro-crime attitudes than anti-crime attitudes of groups we are socialised into
Learning techniques - how to commit offences eg breaking into a house
Socialisation prison - reoffending high because prisoners learn techniques from each other - imitation and direct tuition - however may occur through observational learning
Differential association AO3
Shift of focus
P - strength as it changed focus of offending explanations
E - Sutherland took emphasis away from early biological accounts of offending eg atavistic
E - Also away from theories explaining offending as product of weakness of immorality. Instead draws attention to deviant social circumstances and environments
L - More desirable because offers more realistic solution to the problem of offending instead of eugenics or punishment
P - Differential association runs risk of stereotypes
E - Such as individuals who comes from impoverished, crime-ridden backgrounds - Sutherland took great care to point out that offending should be considered on case-by-case basis
E - Theory suggests exposure to pro-crime values is sufficient to produce offending in those who are exposed to it
L - ignores fact that people may choose not to offend despite such influences, as not everyone who ix exposed to pro-crime attitudes goes on to offend
Wide reach
P - strength as theory can account for offending within all sectors of society
E - Sunderland recognised some types of crime eg burglary clustered in w/c communities and others in more affluent groups
E - interested in white-collar crimes and how this may be a feature of m//c social groups who share deviant norms and values
L - shows not just lower class commit offences and principles of differential association can be used to explain all offences
Difficulty testing
P - limitation as difficult to test predictions
E - Sutherland aimed to be scientific but problem is many of concepts not testable so cannot be operationalised
E - eg hard to see how the number of pro-crime attitudes a person has or have been exposed to - without measuring these we cannot know at what point the urge to offend is realised and the offending career triggered
L - theory does not have scientific credibility
Nature or nurture
P - Response of family crucial in determining whether likely to offend
E - If support offending then major influence - Farrington et al - such intergeneration offending was key feature of findings
E - However - offending can run in families - biological theories
L - particular combination of genes ir innate neural abnormalities
Eysenck’s theory AO1
The criminal personality - an individual who scores highly on measures of extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism cannot be easily conditioned - likely to engage in offending behaviour
Personality theory - middle of 20th C - behaviour could be represented along three dimensions - introversion-extraversion, neuroticism-stability, psychoticism-sociability
Biological basis - personality traits are biological in origin - type of nervous system - innate biological basis
Extroverts - underactive nervous system - seek excitement and engage in risk-taking behaviours - tend to not condition easily and do not learn from mistakes
Neurotic - high level of reactivity in sympathetic nervous system - respond to threat quickly - general instability so behaviour difficult to predict
Psychotic - higher levels of testosterone - unemotional and prone to aggression
Criminal personality - neurotics - unstable and prone to overreact, extraverts - seek arousal and engage in dangerous activities, psychotics - aggressive and lack empathy
Role of socialisation - personality linked to offending behaviour through socialisation - neurotic-extraverts do not condition easily so do not learn to respond to antisocial behaviour by becoming anxious
Measuring criminal personality - Eysenck personality questionnaire measures variables to determine type
Eysenck’s theory AO3
Research support
P - support as evidence to support argument
E - Eysenck and Eysenck - compared 2070 prisoners’ scores on the eysenck personality questionnaire - 2422 controls
E - on measures of extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism - all age groups - prisoners recorded higher average scores than controls
L - agrees with predictions of the theory that offenders rate higher than average across the three dimensions Eysenck identified
P - limited as Farrington et al conducted meta-analysis of relevant studies
E - found offenders score high on psychoticism but not extraversion and neuroticism
E - inconsistent evidence of differences on EEG measures between extraverts and introverts
L - doubt on the psychological basis of eysenck’s theory - some of central assumptions of criminal personality have been challenged
Too simplistic
P - limitation of idea all offending behaviour explained by personality traits alone
E - Moffitt - distinction between offending behaviour in adolescence - and that which continues into adulthood
E - personality traits - poor predictor of how long offending behaviour would go on for - ‘career offender’ - likely reciprocal process between personality traits and environmental reaction to those traits
L - presents a more complex picture than Eysenck suggested - determined by interaction between personality and environment
Cultural factors
P - Limitation as cultural factors not taken into account
E - Bartol and Holanchock - studied hispanic and african-american offenders in maximum security in new york
E - divided these offenders into six groups based on offending history and nature of offences - all groups less extravert than non-offender control - because sample was a very different cultural group from that investigated by Eysenck
L - Questions how far the criminal personality can be generalised and suggests it may be culturally relative concept
Measuring personality
P - Eysenck’s theory offers way to measure personality through psychological test - EPQ
E - we can see how criminal personality differs from rest of population across different dimensions
E - critics have suggested that personality type may not be reducible to a score
L - personality too complex and dramatic to be quantified - would also apply to personality deemed to be criminal
Cognitive theory AO1
Level of morality - moral reasoning - way a person thinks about right or wrong, higher the level, the more the behaviour is driven by sense of right and less driven by avoiding punishment or disapproval
Stage theory of moral development - Kohlberg - moral reasoning develops through stages that are progressively sophisticated
Moral dilemmas - stage indicates by responses to stories such as the Heinz dilemma
Moral development - Kohlberg - people’s decisions summarised in stage theory - offenders classified as pre-conventional stage - child-like moral reasoning, avoid punishment and gain rewards
Link with criminality - offenders more likely in 1 and 2 - supports by Chandler - offenders more egocentric and display poorer social perspective skills - Non-offenders generally progressed to conventional level and beyond - Supported by studies which suggest offenders are more egocentric and display poorer social perspective-taking skills (Chandler) - Individuals who reason at higher levels show more sympathy
Cognitive distortions - biased and irrational ways of thinking which may be used to rationalise of justify offending behaviour - Research has linked to way in which offenders interpret other people’s behaviour and justify their own actions - Two examples are hostile attribution bias and minimalisation
Hostile attribution bias - judging situations as aggressive or threatening -
Schonenberg and Jusyte - presented 55 violent offenders with images of emotionally ambiguous facial expressions
- When compared with non-aggressive matched control group, violent offenders significantly more likely to perceive the images as angry and hostile
- Root from childhood - Dodge and Frame - chindren video clip of an ambiguous provocation
- children identified as aggressive and rejective interpreted situation as more hostile as others
Minimalisation - downplaying the significance of an event or emotion - studies suggest individuals who commit sexual offences are prone to minimalisation - Barbaree - 26 incarcerated rapists - 54% denied, 40% minimised
Cognitive theory AO3
Research support
P - strength as evidence for link between level of moral reasoning and crime
E - Palmer and Hollin - compared moral reasoning in 332 non-offenders and 126 offenders using SRM-SF
E - this contains 11 moral dilemma-related questions
L - offender group showed less mature moral reasoning than the non-offender group - consistent with Kohlberg’s predictions
Type of offence
P - limitation as may depend on the offence
E - Thornton and Reid - people who committed crimes for financial gain - more likely to show pre-conventional moral reasoning than those convicted of impulsive crimes
E - Pre-conventional moral reasoning associated with crimes where offenders believe have good chance of evading punishment
L - Kohlberg’s theory may not apply to all crimes
Thinking vs behaviour
P - useful as provides insight into mechanics of criminal mind
E - offenders may be more childlike and egocentric when it comes to making moral judgement than the law-abiding majority
E - moral thinking is not same as moral behaviour
L - moral reasoning of the kind Kohlberg was interest in is more likely used to justify behaviour after it has happened
Research support
P - strength as applied to therapy
E - CBT aims to challenge irrational thinking - offenders encouraged to face up to what they’ve done
E - Harkins et al - reduced incidence of denial and minimalisation in therapy is highly associated with a reduced risk of reoffending
L - Suggests that the theory of cognitive distortion has practical value
Type of offence
P - Limitation as depends on type of offence
E - Howitt and Sheldon - questionnaire responses from sexual offenders
E - Found non-contact sex offenders used more cognitive distortions than contact sex offenders - those who had a previous history of offending were also more likely to use distortions as a justificatino
L - Suggests that distortions are not used in same way by all offenders
Descriptive or explanatory
P - Cognitive theories of offending are good at describing the criminal mind
E - May also help in reducing reoffending eg therapy
E - Cognitive theories do not help in predicting future offender behaviour
L - Just because someone tends to have distorted thinking doesn’t inevitably mean they will become an. offender
Psychodynamic explanation AO1
Psychodynamic explanation - perspective that describes different forces, mostly unconscious, operate on the mind and direct human behaviour - Blackburn - deficient or inadequate superego - Id has free reign
The inadequate superego - formed out of phallic stage - unresolved conflict - offending more likely as the superego is inadequate
Weak superego - child does not identify with same-gender parent so does not internalise moral code
Deviant superego - internalises an immoral superego from eg criminal father so no guilt about offending
Over-harsh superego - identifies with harsh same gender parent, overwhelming guilt to offend to satisfy superego’s need for punishment
Role of emotion - allows primitive, irrational, emotional demands to guide moral behaviour - offending behaviour is consequence of emotional demands, lack of guilt is relevant to understanding offending behaviour
Maternal deprivation theory - Bowlby 44 thieves 14 showed affectionless psychopathy - lack of guilt
