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- University Of Derby College, Buxton
How the justice system can destroy someone for a crime they did not commit, how wrong it can go and how they sometimes are lazy
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Forensic psychology is nothing more than psychology but linking to the law with the criminaljustice system. The diversity of the field really is a vast prospect therefore can be problematic
defining what forensic psychology is (Howitt, D, 2018). In this field of forensic psychology, I
want to talk about false allegations and how today’s literature and research has helped the
justice system gain a better understanding of how to prevent false allegations.
False allegations can occur through miscommunication around and on content that provides
self-serving wrongful allegations. (McNamara et al., 2012) states that false allegations are
uncommon but have been a concern for many years in the law enforcement as there is little
research on the topic due to funding budgets and resources forced onto other ‘actual’ crimes.
Even though false allegation maybe rare it involves an innocent individual being punished and it
is only overturned by the legal procedures not been met correctly. (Howitt, 2022). False rape
allegations have been found that there are three major functions of the act, seeking revenge,
sympathy and attention, these major functions also link in with mental health illness as it links
with sympathy and attention. This could suggest that because individuals secretly desire
attention and by claiming false allegations this can give them that through gaining support from
family and friends, the individuals that are driven by the attention they desire are quick to cry
out (Kanin, 1994).
Repeated research and studies have shown that the law enforcement does not follow the rules
and wrongly classify crimes as ‘no crime’ due to certain circumstances, studies found shocking
results against the law enforcements as they did not take the job to protect the public properly
and with honour. This is due to evidence been found on 95% coding reports with 8% rape cases
been classes as false allegations due to this ‘coding reports’ and if the police took it seriously
and follow the strict instructions only 3% would have been false allegations (Lisak et al., 2010).
This research could link with bad interviewing as again the law enforcement has a duty of care
to protect and honour the laws, but sometimes things are forgotten or missed. Sometimes in
interviewing false evidence can be formed due to leading questions and can lead to false
allegations due to these leading questions, this can be because there are forced narratives
within the questions. (Ost et al., 2013).
Following on from this another big impact on false allegations is bad memory and trying to
recover memories as there can be blind spots within the human brain and how they recall
memories or think they have recalled a memory when they may be wrong. False memory
syndrome (FMS) is something that occurs through childhood linking to traumatic events, there
is a foundation that can help uncover the truth of the events. This is something that can reoccur
as it is ‘blocking memories’ the brain doesn’t want to engage with, this can suggest that
sometimes individual’s may face false allegations through this blocking memories as everyone
may block different memories throughout their life. This can cause an uncertainty within the
FMS as who is to know what is real or no other than the individual her/himself ( Hovdestad &
Kristiansen, 1996).
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