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Forensic Psychology (Definition. What is Forensic Psychology? (Devoted to…

- - - - Background
        David Meirhofer. (1974): offender profiling is used for the first time.
        Mainly USA
      - 3 Approaches:
        
        1. Criminal investigative approach
        Used by law enforcement, e.g.:
        FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit - who help the police by assessing who an offender is by interpreting:
        
        the offender's behavior during the crime
        
        the interactions between the offender and the victim during the crime
        
        the crime scene
        
        3. Scientific statistical approach
        Relies heavily on the multivariate analysis of behaviors and any other information from the crime scene that could lead to the offender's characteristics or psychological processes.
        According to this approach, elements of the profile are developed by comparing the results of the analysis to those of previously caught offenders
        
        a) geographical offender profiling http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/CrimeStat/
        
        b) Offenders typically do not travel far to commit their crime because they are impulsive (and as they offend the crime will come nearer to home as they grow in confidence).
        
        a) The ‘circle rule’: the most violent and sexual offenders will live somewhere within the circle drawn to link the two crimes that are the furthest apart.
        
        2. Clinical practitioner approach
        Individualistic - takes an 'each case is unique' perspective.
        Includes the psychodynamic approach
    - - Memory theories
        
        Elizabeth Loftus:
        
        Witnesses to crimes, rather than recalling events exactly as they happened, create reconstructions of the crime based on their own schematic understanding of the world.
        Any new information about the crime that the witness took in has the potential to distort their recall of events.
        
        Canter
        
        Experiment: subjects were shown pictures of several suspects in a crime and asked to identify who looked like a bomber. One set of researchers were told who the bomber was but another set were not.
        Findings: researchers who know who the bomber was, subtly influenced members of the public into choosing the ‘correct picture’ e.g by unknowingly pausing longer over the picture.
        
        3. Loftus and Palmer (1974)
        Research aim: how does information supplied after an event influence a witness's memory for that event?
        Method: two laboratory experiments http://www.holah.karoo.net/loftusstudy.htm
        Findings: reporting of a car incident varied depending on how a subject was asked a question. Eg. asking the participants if they had seen 'the' broken headlight rather than 'a' broken headlight increased the likelihood that they would report seeing one, even though there was no broken headlight in the film.
        
        George Miller (1956) on average we can only hold 7 chunks of information at a time in our short term memories- a chunk, btw is a coherent meaningful whole so whereas 9 and 11 will be two chunks- put together as 9/11 (a date now synonymous with the attacks on America) they represent one chunk
      - Interview guidance development
        
        Criticism: their techniques have persuade individuals to plead guilty to crimes they have not committed.
        
        Advising on interview techniques with suspects and vulnerable witnesses eg how questions should be asked so as to not ‘lead’ witnesses to give particular answers or not pressurise or traumatise vulnerable people e.g. child witnesses to murder, victims of sex crimes.
      - Technology development
        
        eg. lie detector machine
      - Counter terrorism policy and hostage negotiation techniques
  - - - Weakness: The knowledge base of forensic psychology is contested.
      - Background
        
        Daniel McNaughton shot and killed Edward Drummond, Private Secretary to the then British Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel. The murder was a mistake; McNaughton meant to kill Peel. His defence was based largely around the fact that for years he had suffered from paranoid delusions, namely that Peel's Conservative Party was trying to kill him. McNaughton was found not guilty by reason of insanity, and was committed to Bethlem Hospital, and thence to Broadmoor Criminal Asylum shortly after it opened.
        
        Geat debate over case in the House of Lords, resulting in the
        
        McNaughton Rules
        A person cannot be held responsible for a crime if they were 'labouring under such a deficit of reason from disease of the mind to not know the nature and quality of the act; or that if he did know it, that he did not know that what he was doing was wrong
        
        Psychiatrists and psychologists could now comment on whether people had mens rea or a ‘deficit of reason’ or ‘disease of mind’.
        
        To be found guilty of a crime you have to be shown to have done it (actus rea) and intended to do it (mens rea).