This document discusses various topics related to forensic psychology, including defining and measuring crime, ways of measuring crime, offender profiling approaches, biological and psychological explanations for criminal behavior, and custodial sentencing. Some key points include: - Crime can be defined as an illegal act that results in punishment, but definitions have changed over time and vary culturally. Measuring true crime rates is difficult due to unreported crimes. - Offender profiling approaches include the FBI's "top-down" method of matching crimes to offender templates, and the "bottom-up" data-driven approach of identifying patterns across crimes. - Biological theories have included atavism, genetics, and neurology, but have limitations and may

1. Forensic psychology

2. Defining and measuring crime
• Crime – an act committed in violation of the law
where the consequence of conviction by a court is
punishment, especially where the punishment is a
serious one such as imprisonment.
• Cultural issues e.g. polygamy and bigamy is illegal
but practiced by some cultures.
• Historical issues – changing definitions of crime
skew data e.g. homosexuality.

3. Ways of measuring crime
• Official statistics
• Victim
• Offender surveys –
• Offenders may lie to big themselves up.
• Victims rely on memory to give a recall of events.
• Dark figure of unreported crimes which means official
statistics aren’t a true picture. Police records are no
longer considered official statistics due to the fact that
they are inaccurate.
• Victim surveys are more likely to be accurate and not
mask the dark figure of crime.
• Under-representation of white collar crimes.

4. Offender profiling – top down approach
• American approach used by the FBI, match what is known about the crime to a pre-
existing template of offenders.
• How they construct the profile:
– Data assimilation – profiler reviews the evidence from the crime scene.
– Crime scene classification – either organised or disorganised.
– Crime scene reconstruction – hypothesis in terms of sequence of events, behaviour of
the victim etc.
– Profile generation – hypothesis related to the likely offender e.g. demographics,
background, characteristics and behaviour.
Organised Disorganised
Evidence of planning ahead Little evidence of planning
Victim is specifically targeted Offense may be spontaneous
High degree of control Lower than average IQ
No evidence/clues left at the
scene
History of dysfunction,
sexually and in relationships
Above average intelligence Lives close to the scene

5. Evaluation of the top down approach
• Only applies to particular crimes, such as rape, arson, torture, murder,
dissection.
• Based on outdated models of personality that see behaviour as being driven
by stable dispositional traits rather than external factors that may be
constantly changing.
• Evidence that doesn’t support the ‘disorganised offender’, canter analysed
data from 100 murders in the US. The details were examined with 39
characteristics.
– Evidence showed a distinct organised type.
– There was no clear disorganised type.
• The categories are too distinctive with offenders having characteristics
belonging to each type.
• Godwin – how do you classify an intelligent, sexually competent murderer
who kills/acts spontaneously?
• Holms – there are four types of serial killers; visionary, mission, hedonistic
and power/control.
• Walter – motives are more important than classifying types.
• Canter’s sample was too small and specific to be representative.
• Large amount of influence on how the FBI operate.

6. Offender profiling – bottom up approach
• The profile is data driven based on details of the offense.
• Investigative psychology – attempt to apply statistical procedures alongside psychological
theory, to the analysis of a crime scene. This can create a database for comparison. Specific
details of a crime scene can be matched against this database to reveal important
information about the offender and whether a string of crimes are linked.
• Geographical profiling – Rossmo – uses information to do with the location of linked crime
scenes to make judgements about where the offender is likely to live (crime mapping). Serial
offenders are likely to operate in a certain area with their homes in the middle, this can help
investigators discover when a crime is likely to occur and where.
– Wegwe
– Wegwe
– Wegw
– Weg
Canter’s circle theory:
• The marauder – who operates in close
proximity to their home.
• The commuter – who is likely to travel
away from their usual residence.

7. Evaluation of the bottom up approach
• Evidence support – Canter + Heritage – content analysis of 66 sexual assault
cases, using ‘the smallest space analysis’ to identify patterns and
correlations across behaviour to help identify whether two or more
offenses were committed by the same person.
• Evidence support for geographical profiling – Lundrigan + Canter – 120
murder cases involving serial killers, bodies were left in a different direction
to the last creating a centre of gravity. The offender’s home was somewhere
in the centre of the circle.
• Scientific basis – bottom up profiling is more objective and scientific than
top down.
• Can be applied to a wide range of offenses, the smallest space analysis and
spatial consistency can be used in the investigation of crimes such as
burglary, and theft as well as murder and rape.
• Usefulness of profiling – Copson – surveyed 48 police forces, they deemed
information from the profiler as ‘useful’ 85% of the time but only 3% of the
time did it lead to accurate identification of the offender.

8. Biological explanations: Atavistic Form
• Lombroso – criminals are genetic throwbacks, a primitive sub-species who
were biologically different from non-criminals.
• Atavistic characteristics:
– Narrow, sloping brow, prominent jaw, high cheek bones and facial
asymmetry, extra ligaments e.g. extra toes or fingers.
– Murderers: bloodshot eyes, curly hair, long ears.
– Sexual deviants: glinting eyes, swollen, fleshy lips.
– Fraudster: thin and reedy lips.
G
– G
• Lombroso examined the skulls of 383 dead criminals
and 3839 living criminals and concluded that 40% of
criminal acts could be accounted for by atavistic
characteristics.

9. Evaluation of the atavistic theory
• Contribution to criminology – he pushed criminology away from morals and
into science. Helped begin the research into profiling.
• Scientific racism – DeLisi – most of the characteristics such as curly hair and
dark skin were more common among people of African descent. – Eugenics
movement.
• Contradictory evidence – Goring – after comparing 3000 criminals with
3000 non-criminals, je concluded that there was no evidence that offenders
are a distinct group with unusual characteristics. However he did find that
most criminals had lower than average IQs.
• Poor control – he didn’t compare his criminal group to a control group of
non-criminals.
• Hadn’t taken into account that many had a history of psychological
disorders which may have confounded the research.
• Characteristics such as thin lips, high cheek bones and a prominent jaw may
be characteristics of malnutrition among the W/C. – Marxism
• Causation not addressed, because people have these characteristics doesn’t
tell us why they are more likely to commit crimes.

10. Biological explanations: Neurology + Genetics
• Neural explanations – study of APD
this is associated with reduced emotional
responses and a lack of empathy for the feelings of
others.
– Prefrontal cortex – Raine – individuals with anti-social
personalities have reduced activity in the prefrontal
cortex, where your emotional behaviour is regulated.
– 11% decrease in grey matter in the prefrontal cortex.
– Mirror neurons – Keysers – individuals aren’t totally
without empathy but may have a neural switch that can
be turned on and off.

11. Genetics
• Crime is inherited through a gene or
combination of genes that make individuals
more predisposed to committing crime.
• Twin studies – Lange – 13 MZ and 17 DZ twins where one of the twins in
each pair had served time in prison. 10/13 MZ, 2/17DZ had a co-twin in
prison.
• Christiansen – 87 MZ, 147 DZ, and found a concordance of 33% for MZ and
12% for DZ.
• Candidate genes – Tiihonen – 900 offenders, abnormalities in two genes
that may be associated with violence – MAOM and CDH13 (also linked to
substance abuse and ADD). high risk combination where 13x more likely to
have a history of violence.
• Diathesis stress model – if genetics have some influence on offending, it
seems likely that this is at least partly moderated by the effects of the
environment. Psychological triggers such as being raised in a dysfunctional
family or having criminal role models may trigger criminality in predisposed
individuals.

12. Evaluation of Neurology + Genetics
• Problem with twin studies – Lange’s research was poorly controlled, judgements on
whether a twin was MZ or DZ was done by observation not DNA testing.
• Small sample sizes for twin studies.
• Shared environment may mean that the concordance rate is the result of the same
shared learning experiences.
• Support for the diathesis stress model – Mednick – 13,000 adoptees, when both
the biological and adoptive parents had no convictions, the percentage of adoptees
that did was 13%. If either of the biological parents did the percentage rose to 20%,
if both the biological and adopted parents had convictions the figure became
24.5%.
• Late adoption can mean that they have learnt behaviour from their parent, some
adoptees remain in close contact with their family. These make it hard to assess the
environmental impact that the biological family have had.
• Biological reductionism – crime and criminality is complex, to limit explanations to
a biological or neural level may be over simplistic.
• Biological determinism – influence of free will in making rational choices, would a
biological factor give criminals leeway in the justice system? What would we do
with those who were at risk of becoming criminal if we identify a criminal gene?

13. Psychological explanations: Eysenek’s Theory
• General personality theory – behaviour can be represented along two dimensions:
introversion/extraversion and neuroticism/stability. The two dimensions combine
to form a variety of personality characteristics. Later addition of – psychoticism.
• biological basis – our personality traits are biological in origin and come out
through the nervous system we inherit. Therefore, the criminal personality type
has a biological basis.
– Extraverts have an underactive nervous system which means they constantly seek
excitement and undertake risk-taking behaviours.
– Neurotic individuals tend to be nervous, jumpy and overly-anxious, and their instability
means their behaviours are hard to predict.
• Criminal personality – a combination of all the characteristics and behaviours for
extroverts and neurotics. Criminals will also score highly on measures for
psychoticism.
• The role of socialisation – criminal behaviour is developmentally immature, it is
selfish, concerned with immediate gratification. The process of socialisation is one
where children are taught to become more able to delay gratification and more
socially orientated. Extraverts and neurotics had nervous systems that made them
hard to condition, thus are more likely to act anti-socially when the opportunity
presented itself.
• Measuring the criminal personality – Eyseneck Personality Inventory, a form of
tests which locates respondents along the extravert/introvert and neurotic/stable
scale, to determine personality type.

14. Evaluation of Eyseneck
• Eyseneck + Eyseneck – 2070 male prisoners’ scores on the EPI
with 2422 controls. Groups were divided up into age groups
from 16-69. Across all age groups prisoners recorded higher
scores than controls.
• Farrington – prisoners tend to score highly for psychoticism
but not for extraversion and neurotics. There is also little
evidence of consistent differences in EEG (cortical arousal)
between extraverts and introverts.
• Digman - addition of openness, agreeableness and
conscientiousness.
• Holanchock - cultural bias - african American + Hispanic
offenders in NY, all less extravert than a non-criminal control.
• Low in external validity --> generalisability
• Is it suitable to study personality through tests?
• Biological determinism

15. Cognitive Explanation - Kolberg
• Criminals show a lower level of moral reasoning.
• Heinz dilemma - sick wife, no money to pay for medical
drug, should husband break into the druggist 's house to
steal it?
• Violent youths had lower moral reasoning than control.
criminals are more
egocentric and display
poorer social
perspective-taking
skills.

16. Cognitive Distortion
• cognitive distortion - faulty, biased and irrational ways of thinking that
mean we perceive ourselves, others and the world innacurately -
usually negatively.
Two types:
• hostile attribution bias - the tendency to judge ambiguous situations, or
the actions of others as aggressive and/or threatening - when they may
not be.
--> Justye - aggressive offenders more likely to view emotionally
ambiguous facial expressions as hostile.
--> Frame - children classified as aggressive and rejected were more likely
to view the actions as hostile.
• minimalisation - downplaying the significance of an event or emotion. A
common strategy when dealing with guilt.
--> Barbaree - 24 convicted rapists; 55% denied commiting a crime at all,
40% minimised harm done.
--> Hashmall - 36% of child molesters surveyed said the victim had
concented.

17. Evaluation
• Palmer + Hollin - socio-moral reflection measure-short form (11 moral
related questions). Delinquent group showed less mature moral
reasoning than non-delinquent.
• Gibbs - mature+ immature reasoning.
-mature; empathy, social justice and one's own conscious.
-immature; avoidance of punishment + personal gain.
• stages 5 + 6 are culturally biased
• CBT - offenders need to face up to what they have done and establish a
less distorted view of their actions - reduced risk of reoffending.
• Individual differences - Reid - pre-conventional moral reasoning tends
to be associated with crimes where the oftener believes they will have
less chance of being caught.
• Langdon - intelligence may be a better indicator.
• Descriptive not explanatory

18. Differential Association
• Crime as learnt behaviour - learning occurs through
interaction with significant others. criminality arises
from two factors: learnt attitudes towards crime,
learning of specific criminal acts.
• Pro-criminal attitudes - pro-criminal outweighs the
anti-criminal then the individual will go on to offend.
It is easy to predict that somebody exposed to pro-
criminal attitudes for long periods of time will
offend.
• Learning criminal acts - techniques for commiting
crimes, this tells us how crime can spread. Prisons
act as a university of crime which increases
reoffending.

19. Evaluation
• Farrington - longitudinal study of 411 males, the study followed
them from 8 to 50 - W/C. 41% convicted of at least one
offence, criminal careers lasted between 19-28. Important
childhood risk factors included; family criminality, risk-taking,
low school attainment, poverty and poor parenting.
• Ability to explain prevalence of certain crimes in certain areas.
• Incorporating white-collar crimes.
• Blames the situation rather than the people.
• Difficult to test scientifically as it doesn't operationalise
attitudes and how they can be measures.
• Theory assumes pro outweighs anti.
• Deterministic
• Stereotyping individuals from an impoverished and crime
ridden as inevitably criminal.

20. Psychodynamic approach
• Blackburn - the superego is defective so the Id is given
free reign this causes criminal behaviour.
3 types of inadequate superego:
• Weak - if the same-sex parent is absent during the phallic
stage the child cannot internalise a fully formed
superego.
• Deviant - child internalised an immoral or deviant
superego. A child raised by a criminal father will not grow
to associate guilt with wrongdoing.
• Over-harsh - individual is crippled by guilt and anxiety,
this may lead to the individual to perform criminal acts to
satisfy the superego's need for punishment.

21. • Maternal deprivation - Bowlby - vital mother figure
role, failure to establish this attachment can lead
to effectionless psychopathy.
• Characterised by a lack of guilt, empathy and
feelings for others.
• Maternally deprived individuals are likely to
engage in crime and struggle to form close
relationships with others.
• 44 thieves
14/44 had effectionless psychopathy, 12/14 had
prolonged separation - only 2 out of control group
had this level of separation.

22. Evaluation
• Gender bias - girls have a weaker superego as they don't
face castration anxiety. This is unsupported by evidence
of.
• contradictory evidence - Little evidence of impact of not
having a same-sex parent.
• Socialisation versus deviant superego.
• Inability to falsify as concepts aren't able to be studied
scientifically - pseudoscience
• Hilda - maternal deprivation is not a good indicator of
future criminality. 500 interviews found foundation link
between prolonged separation and criminality but it
doesn't indicate again causal link between deprivation
and crime.

23. Custodial Sentencing
Aims:
• Deterrence
• Incapacitation - keep away from society to prevent offending
• Retribution - society enacting revenge for the crime by making the prisoner
suffer
• Rehabilitation
Psychological effects:
• Stress + depression - ^ suicide rates
• Institutionalisation - adapted to the life in prison so are unable to cope outside
• Prisonisation - behaviour that may be considered unacceptable in the outside
world may be encouraged in prison
Recidivism - reoffending
• 57% of offenders reoffend within a year
• 14 prisons in the UK have reoffence rates of 70%
• Norway has low levels of reoffending due to their very different penal system
• others criticise Norway for being too soft
• Prison systems in the UK and the US don't work

24. Evaluation
• Barton - suicide rates 15x higher than the general public due to
the brutal and demeaning atmosphere in prisons.
• 25% women, 15% men report symptoms of psychosis.
• Experiences of prisons differ as not all prisons are the same.
• Convicted criminals may already have physiological and
emotional difficulties which may explain their offending
behaviour in the first place.
• Many prisons lack the funds and resources to provide
education programmes and anger management schemes
which help improve prospects outside of prison.
• Prisons are universities for crime
• Alternatives to custodial sentencing istnclude: community
service and restoritive justice.

25. Behaviour Modification
• Behaviourism - rewards encourage behaviours to be repeated.
• Token economy - operant conditioning, reinforcing behaviours with
tokens which van be exchanged for physical rewards. Tokens can be
collected by obeying the rules of the prison.
• Tokens can be exchanged for things like: phone calls, time in the
yard, extra food.
• Rewards may be withheld for disobedience.
Changing behaviour:
• Desirable behavior is broken down by small steps
• Selective reinforcement - reinforcing different behaviours
dependent on the individual's targets.
Example:
• Holt

26. Evaluation
• No special training necessary unlike anger management.
• Blanchard - consistency is key to the effectiveness of the
method.
• Blackburn - behaviour modification may only exist within
prison as there is no token economy and rewards for
behaviour aren't as frequent or as obvious.
• Ethical issues - manipulative and dehumanising, withdraws
rights to exercise and contact with loved ones.
• Surface learning, passive rule following
• Field - not everybody responds to the system equally so it
can be exclusive and counter productive.

27. Anger Management
• CBT - individuals are taught how to recognise when they're about to lose
control and then encouraged to develop techniques to bring conflict
resolution without violence.
Three stages:
• Cognitive preperation - reflect on the pattern of their anger and identify their
triggers. Evaluate whether the interpretation of the event is rational. The
therapist has to break down the automatic anger response.
• Skill acquisition - skills to cope with the event
cognitive; positive self-talk
behavioural; training on how to communicate effectively
psychological; methods of relaxation and/or meditation
• Application practice - given the opportunity to practice their knew skills in a
monitored environment. Role play with offender and therapist reenact a
scenario. Positive reinforcement to follow.
Keen - young offenders aged 17-21 - National Anger Management Package -
positive results; increased awareness towards their anger and increased capacity
to exercise self-control.

28. Evaluation
• Aims to tackle one of the causes of offending unlike behaviour
management which only tackles superficial behaviour.
• Self-discover ways to help themselves outside of prison.
• Blackburn - short term effects, anger management, enter
does little to reduce recidivism.
• The prisoner has to be on board with anger managment; they
have to believe in role play and take the therapy seriously.
• Is anger the real cause of criminal Behaviour? Loza - no
differences in levels levels of levels of anger between
criminals concidered violent and no-violent.
• Expensive; not all prisons have the resources and funding to
spend on anger management.
• Not likely to work on on all on all types of people, including
the young and mentally ill.

29. Restorative Justice
• Rehabilitation of offenders through reconciliation with victims.
Change in emphasis:
• Crimes used to be considered to be done against the state.
• The change towards the crimes impacting the victim.
Process:
• Braithwaite - managed collaboration being tween victim and offender based on the
principles principles of principles of healing principles of healing and empowerment.
• A meeting between the two parties is organised and mediated by trained therapist.
• Victim explains how the crime impacted them and and the offender sees the
consequences of their actions.
Key features:
• Acceptance of responsibility
• Not restricted to the courtroom - informal setting
• Active involvement of both parties
• Focus on postivie outcomes for for both victim and offender.
Variations:
• Not face-to-face but the offender still pays retribution e.g. returning stolen goods or
repairing property.

30. Evaluation
• Some victims of crime may not be ready to forgive
their offender.
• Very flexible; can be used in prisons, schools and
hospitals.
• Adaptable to to the needs of those involved.
• Relies on the offender showing remorse for their
actions, some offenders use the scheme as a way to
avoid prison or get a shorter sentence.
• Cost effective - Shapland £1 spent saved the criminal
justice system £8 in reoffending costs.
• Often thought to to be to be a soft option.