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Summary AQA A-LEVEL PSYCHOLOGY FORENSIC REVISION NOTES
Concise AQA A-level forensic psychology notes With a specification included
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FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGYSPECIFICATION:
Offender profiling: the top-down approach, including organised and
disorganised types of offender; the bottom-up approach, including
investigative Psychology; geographical profiling.
Biological explanations of offending behaviour: an historical approach
(atavistic form); genetics and neural explanations.
Psychological explanations of offending behaviour: Eysenck’s theory of
the criminal personality; cognitive explanations; level of moral reasoning
and cognitive distortions, including hostile attribution bias and
minimalisation; differential association theory; psychodynamic
explanations.
Dealing with offending behaviour: the aims of custodial sentencing and
the psychological effects of custodial sentencing. Recidivism. Behaviour
modification in custody. Anger management and restorative justice
programmes.
Problems in defining crime:
Crime – breaks the law leads = punishment
Defining Crimes differ across cultures e.g., forced marriage illegal in UK but
still practiced in some cultures. = culturally relative
Defining crimes change over time – historical changes e.g., homosexuality
was a crime in 1967 but modern-day laws changed – no longer a crime =
time relative
Ways of measuring crime:
Official statistics – Government records of reported crimes against
households/families etc. – develop crime-prevention strategies + published
annually + data recorded by police.
Victim surveys – people's experience of crime
Offender surveys- people self-report crimes they’ve committed - looks at
trends/age/risk factors (alcohol/drugs) - ‘dark figure of crime’
Strength Limitations
,Multidisciplinary approach - combines Statistics may underestimate crimes -
all measures to get a more 75% unreported + referred to as ‘dark
reliable/valid statistic + enables figure of crime’
understanding of trends/patterns over -25% info goes to official statistics
time. -police priorities can distort official
figures.
Greater degree of accuracy of victim Offender surveys - police can conceal
surveys –despite anonymity of crimes or exaggerate them (effect of
offender’s responses, can still be targets)
unreliable- rely on recall + can be -issues with reliability e.g.,
inaccurate so figures can be distorted- underreporting due to poor recall +
exaggerate or conceal serious crimes. sampling issues.
Sampling technique may -middle-class crimes are under-
underestimate ‘middle-class. represented but provide insight.
Offender profiling: The Top-Down Approach (US)
US Approach = Aims to narrow list of suspects
Scene + evidence is analysed to generates hypotheses about the probable
characteristics of the offender (age/background etc.)
Top-down approach – match the crime/offender to pre-existing templates –
developed by the FBI
Murderers/rapists classified into one of these categories ‘organised’ e.g.,
Ted Bundy or ‘disorganised’ based on evidence.
, FBI Profile Construction: Jackson + Bekerian
Stage 1: Data assimilation – review of all evidence available (e.g., crime
scene photos, post-mortem results).
Stage 2: Crime classification – organising the crime into a particular type
(i.e., organised or disorganised).
Stage 3: Crime reconstruction – generation of hypotheses about the
behaviour and events.
Stage 4: Profile generation – developing a profile based on these
hypotheses on the offender (e.g., physical
characteristics/background/personality).
Limitations More Limitations
Disorganised criminals - Analysis of Limited approach – only applies to
100 murders found that there was not certain crimes - common offences
a distinct disorganised type – cannot (burglary) doesn’t tell us about the
be generalised to wider population - offender
despite this, US professional profilers
still use this model.
Self-report data from criminals is Classification system is too simplistic -
unreliable – can result in bias/ lack a lot show characteristics from both
validity. that model can’t explain + based on
assumption that patterns of behaviour
are the same across all contexts = poor
validity predicting next move.
Offender Profiling: The Bottom-up Approach (UK)
Investigative Psychology:
UK approach - ‘data driven’ - no typologies + a profile is found through
analysis of evidence.
Statistical analysis – detects patterns of behaviour across crime database.
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