Forensic Psychology

Definition. What is Forensic Psychology?

  1. Applying psychological theory to criminal investigations (focus on the psych aspects of legal processes and crime):
  1. The treatment of criminals:
  1. collection of evidence:
  1. examination of evidence:
  1. presentation of evidence:

Offender Profiling

a) advising parole boards and mental health tribunals

Interviewing and eye-witness research

c) providing expert testimony in courts.


Used most commonly in cases involving a mentally disordered offender.


Usually evaluating a defendant and testifying to their mental state as it relates to the case (insanity, competency, dangerousness, civil commitment, etc).

  1. Understanding the psychological basis of criminal behaviour:

Acedemic research

providing hard research evidence to support practice

rehabilitation

reducing stress for staff and prisoners

Devoted to psychological aspects of 1. legal processes and 2. crime

A wide-ranging field - difficult to get a universally agreed definition of what it is and where its boundaries are set.

Studies the behaviour and mental processes of those who engage in criminal behaviour and people caught up in that system as workers, witnesses, victims, jurors etc.

Interested in 'Criminal minds', not crime per se. Not interested in broad trends in criminality or how the criminal justice system works. Focuses on the external context only to the extent that it provides insights into, and impacts upon, thinking and behaviour. Asks: ‘What goes on inside people’s minds?’ and ‘Why do some people with the same background commit crimes and others don’t?’

The application of psychological knowledge or methods to the legal system

Contested knowledge base: possible to have a FP for the defence and another for the prosecution in the same case

Forensics. Etymology:

The word Forensic comes from the Latin ‘forens’ meaning ‘The FORUM’ (Blackburn 1995: 310) -and it refers to the above place in Rome where people used to meet to sort out their differences-it was in essence the first court. Anything that provides help to a court- (forum) is now called forensics. As a result you have forensic biologists, forensic anthropologists, forensic archaeologists. David Canter suggests forensic means “of service to the court” (Canter 2010:2)

Background


David Meirhofer. (1974): offender profiling is used for the first time.


Mainly USA

Memory theories

Interview guidance development

Criticism: their techniques have persuade individuals to plead guilty to crimes they have not committed.

Technology development

eg. lie detector machine

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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

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).

Research what works to change offending behaviour

piloting and implementing treatment programmes


Most prisons in the Uk have a psychology department to devise and deliver a range of pre-written or custom made interventions to offenders- examples include the Sex offender treatment programme (SOTP)

History

Lionel Haward (1920-1998): founding father of criminal psychology. In one case Haward was involved in, a local Mayor had been accused of indecency in a public convenience, but he argued the police who caught him were expecting to see people behaving indecently so much, that they mistook the pink scarf he was wearing for his penis. Haward set up an experiment whereby he showed a picture of the mayor wearing the scarf to members of the public, having told then first they would see a rude picture. Haward found that 1 in 8 people when on to report they HAD seen the mayor’s member. This experiment and Haward’s testimony led to the mayor’s acquittal!

b) Undertaking assessments of risk for violent and sexual offenders

Treating offenders with drug or alcohol issues

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.

Counter terrorism policy and hostage negotiation techniques

Focus on crimes with greater deviancy (eg serial killing, mass killing, ritual murder, arson etc). The more deviant the act is, the more likely it is that non-normative psychological factors lay behind it.

Memory is fallible, problematic

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:


  1. the offender's behavior during the crime
  2. the interactions between the offender and the victim during the crime
  3. 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

2. Clinical practitioner approach


Individualistic - takes an 'each case is unique' perspective.


Includes the psychodynamic approach


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.

Trial Consultant: advising on jury selection, development of case strategy, and witness preparation