Summary
Summary Psychology: Forensic Psychology Notes
- Module
- Forensics psychology
- Institution
- AQA
Psychology Paper 3 notes on Forensic Psychology including definitions, evaluations and key studies
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Forensic psychology:Offender Profiling - Building a personality profile of an unknown criminal
Offender Profiling
Top Down Approach:
● An American approach developed in 1970s by interviewing 36 sexually motivated
murderers (Resler, (1986))
● Criminals can be divided into two typologies - Organised or Disorganised
● Top down approach takes information from crime scene and then classifies the
criminal as one of the typologies
● Relies on intuition and beliefs of the profiler
Organised Murder:
● Crime is planned with attempt to control victim
● Few clues are left at the scene with the targeted victim being a stranger
● Above average IQ
● Socially and sexually competent
● Experiencing anger/depression at time of attack
● Follows media coverage of attack
● Usually living with partner
Disorganised Murder:
● Little planning or preparation
● Random, disorganised behaviour
● minimum use of constraint with little attempt to hide evidence
● Lives alone, near to crime scene
● Sexually and socially inadequate
● Experiences severe forms of mental illness
● Physically or sexually abused in childhood
● Frightened and confused at time of attack
Stages of Classification:
● Data Assimilation - Gather information from multiple sources
● Crime Scene Classification - Profiler decided if crime scene represents organised or
disorganised behaviour
● Crime Reconstruction - Hypothesis is generated about what happened
● Profile Generation - Profiler generates a ‘sketch’ of the offender including demographic,
physical characteristics and behavioural habits
,Evaluation:
- Low Generalisability - Original sample was based on 36 dangerous and sexually
motivated criminals which isn't very generalisable due to the small sample not
applying to all criminals such as murders who are not sexually motivated
- Classification can be seen as too simplistic - The categories of organised and
disorganised may not fully cover all crimes as some may involve aspects of both
+ Approach is reliable - Can determine certain traits of criminals as they have set stages
for classifying offenders
- Counterpoint - Relies on intuition and beliefs of the profiler to accurately profile
offenders
+ Wide application - it can be adapted to other types of crimes such as burglary with
research by Tina Meketa (2017) reporting that top down profiling has been applied to
burglary leading to 85% rise in solved cases in three US states.
Bottom Up Approach:
Bottom-up approach - Focuses on building up the small details to create a larger picture. This
method is data driven
Bottom up approach is split into geographical profiling and investigative psychology
Investigative Psychology:
● Combines statistical evidence with psychological theory
● Databases are created containing information from crime scene
● Offences can be put into database and compared to others
● Can help inform police if any crimes appear to be committed by the same offender
Interpersonal Coherence:
● States that the way a criminal acts at a crime scene or with a victim may offer up
clues as to how they behave in everyday situation
● Dwyer (2001) found some rapists wanted to have maximum control and humiliate
their victims while others were more apologetic which gives police clues about their
everyday interactions
Significance of time and place:
● Location and timings of crime can suggest where offenders live and leads on to
geographical profiling
Forensic awareness:
● If a criminal appears to ‘cover their tracks’ it may suggest they have been in trouble
before or have a job within the criminal justice system
Geographical profiling - Placing crimes on a map to speculate where the offender might live
, Canter’s Circle Theory:
● Theory states that an offender is likely to live within the ‘circle’ of crimes committed
● Canter and Larkin (1993) said that offenders behave in two ways
○ Marauder - Someone who strikes near their home
○ Commuter - Someone who travels away from home to commit crime
Evaluation:
+ Real World Application - Statistical patterns have lead to creation of the database
called CATCH’EM that contains details of over 4000 child murders which allows police
officers to make statistical predictions about killers such as there being a 70% chance
the killer is a guardian or parent
+ Scientific methods - Canter believes the bottom up approach is more scientific than the
top down approach as it uses data and statistics to support the investigation
+ Research Support - Lundrigan and Canter (2001) collected information from 120
murder cases involving serial killers and found offenders buried bodies in different
directions from the previous creating a circle with the offender based in the middle
- Contradictory Evidence - Copson (1995) spoke to 48 police officers with 83% saying
that the information provided by a profiler was useful but the information was only used
in 3% of cases
- Contradictory Evidence - Kocsis et al (2002) found chemistry students produced more
accurate profiles on solved murder cases than senior detectives
- Profiling doesn't always work - Case of Rachel Nickell who was murdered in 1992 in
which Colin Stagg was convicted for her murder even tho no evidence linked him to the
scene after a poor undercover investigation but in fact the real murder Robert Knapperr
was later arrested after having been previously ruled out due to being 7 inches taller
then profile
Biological Explanations:
Atavistic Form (Historical approach)
Atavistic Form - Characteristics consistent with primitive humans (‘Genetic Throwbacks’)
● Theory created by Cesare Lombroso with theory of the ‘born criminal’ being dominant
in late 19th and early 20th century
● Lombroso was one of the first people in history to use scientific methods to study
crime
● Believed that criminality was inherited and that criminals are genetic throwbacks
that could be identified by physical attributes such as hawk-like noses and bloodshot
eyes
● Post-mortem research found a criminal subject had an indentation at the back of his
skull and concluded from this, as well as from other criminals he studies that some were
born with a propensity to offend
● Lomboso then conducted an examination of the facial and cranial features of 383 dead
convicts and 3839 living ones and found that 40% of criminal acts are committed by
people with atavistic characteristics
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