Forensics

?
What is crime?
An act committed in violation of the law where the consequence of conviction by court is punishment (e.g. imprisonment)
1 of 52
What are the problems in defining crime?
Cultural and historical issues
2 of 52
What are cultural issues?
What is considered a crime in one country may not be in another (e.g. in the UK bigamy is illegal, but not in Countries where polygamy is practised)
3 of 52
What are historial issues?
The defintion of crime changes over time (e.g. Homosexuality was considered a crime uptill 1967 in the UK)
4 of 52
What are the 3 ways of measuring crime rates?
Official statistics, victim surveys and offender surveys
5 of 52
What are official statistics?
Official figures based on the no. of crimes reported and recorded by the police, over a specific period of time. They are published annually by Home Office
6 of 52
What is useful about official statistics?
The government can use it to develop crime prevention strategies and policing initiatives
7 of 52
Evaluation of official statistics?
Heavily criticised as unreliable. Approx. 25% of crime is recorded and reported. The dark figure (75%) arises as crimes go unreported by victims + some are unrecorded by the police due to varying recording rules
8 of 52
What are victim surveys?
Questionnaires that record peoples experiences of crimes, over a specific time + whether they have being reported to the police or not
9 of 52
What are some examples of victim surveys in the UK?
The Crime Survey for England + Wales since the 1982 (randomly selects 50,000 households) and survey for 10-15 y/o's introduced in 2009
10 of 52
How often are the results published?
Annually
11 of 52
Evaluation strengths of victim surveys?
More accurate/reliable than official statistics as it's more likely to include details of crimes unreported by victims
12 of 52
Evaluation weakness of victim surveys?
Accuracy is based on respondents having accurate recall of crimes they have been a victim of- telescoping may occur. This may distort the figures.
13 of 52
What is telescoping?
When a victim misremebers an event as happening in the past year, when it didn't.
14 of 52
What are offender surveys?
Self-report measure where individuals volunteer details of the nunmber and types of crimes they have committed. This targets people that have 'high risk of offending' factors
15 of 52
Problem with offender surveys?
Even though confidentiality is assured offenders may conceal or exaggerate no. of offences. Also, due to the targeted nature some crimes may be overrepresented and others unincluded
16 of 52
Strength of offender surveys?
They provide insight into how many people are responsible for certain crimes
17 of 52
What is offender profiling?
An analytical and behavioural tool used to help investigators accurately predict and profile the characteristics of an unknown criminal
18 of 52
What is offender profiling based on?
The idea that an offenders characteristics can be deduced from the characteristics of the offence and particulars of the crime scene
19 of 52
What is the top-down approach?
Profilers start with a pre-established typology and work down assigning the offender to 1 of 2 categories, based on evidence from the crime scene and what's known about the offender
20 of 52
What is the origin of the top-down approach?
It originates from the USA, based on the work of the FBI in the 1970s
21 of 52
What did the FBI do in the 1970s?
The behavioural science unit drew upon data gathered from in-depth interviews of 36 sexually motivated serial killers in the USA including Ted Bundy
22 of 52
How do profilers use the top down appraoch?
They match what's known about the crime and offender to pre-existing templates
23 of 52
What are the pre-existing templates murderers + rapists are classified into?
Organised or disorganised offenders
24 of 52
What is the organised + disorganised classification based on?
The idea that serious offenders have a signature way of working- modus operandi- that correlates with a particular set of social and psychological characteristics present in the offender
25 of 52
Brief characteristics of organised offenders?
Show evidence of planning in advance, deliberately targeted victim suggesting a type, socially and sexually competent, high intelligence etc.
26 of 52
Brief characteristics of disorganised offenders?
Show little evidence of planning, crime scene shows the impulsive nature of attack, leaves lots of evidence, usually socially + sexually incompetent, unskilled job etc.
27 of 52
Steps of constructing an FBI profile?
Data assimilation, crime scene classification, crime reconstruction + profile generation
28 of 52
What is data assimilation?
All evidence is reviewed including crime scene photographs, pathology reports etc.
29 of 52
What is crime scene classification?
Classification of either organised or disorganised
30 of 52
What is crime reconstruction?
Hypothesis based on the sequence of events, victims behaviour etc.
31 of 52
What is profile generation?
Hypothesis related to the offenders likely demographic background, physical characteristics, behaviour etc/
32 of 52
Why is the top-down approach 'limited'?
Because it only can be applied to crimes that reveal important details about the suspect e.g. arson, cult killings and r*pe
33 of 52
What crimes can it not be applied to?
Burglaries, common assault and some murders; that reveal little about the offender
34 of 52
What did Alison et al. criticise about the approach?
That it is naive as it's based on outdated personality models that assume that behaviour is being driven by stable dispositional traits rather than external factors that may be constantly changing
35 of 52
What effect does this have?
The approach is naive and likely to have poor validity in idenitifying a criminal or predicting their next move
36 of 52
What did Carter do?
Used smallest space analysis to analyse the data from 100 murders in the US, and details were related to 39 characteristics associated with organised + disorganised offenders
37 of 52
What did Carter et al. find?
There was strong evidence suggesting a distinct organised type, but none for the disorganised type
38 of 52
What effect does this evidence have on the approach?
It undermines the whole classification system, however, it is still used by professional profilers in the US and supported world-wide
39 of 52
Why is the classification too simplistic?
Because offenders may show a combination of organised and disorganised traits in a crime scene
40 of 52
What did Godwin do?
Asked police how they would classify a murderer who was highly intelligent + competent but committed a spontaneous murder + left the body
41 of 52
What happened as a result?
Some researchers started to propose more detailed typology models e.g. Holmes & Keppel and Walter
42 of 52
What did Holmes propose?
That there were 4 types of serial killers: visionary, mission, hedonistic, power/control
43 of 52
What did Keppel + Walter do?
Focused on the different motivations of offenders rather than particular 'types
44 of 52
What problems are there with the original sample?
Too small + unrepresentative & based on self-report data from killers
45 of 52
What is the bottom-up approach?
Profilers work up from evidence collected from the crime scene to develop hypotheses about the likely characteristics motivations, social background of the offender
46 of 52
What advantage does the approach have against the top-down approach?
It's more grounded in psychological theory
47 of 52
What is the aim of the approach?
To generate a picture of the offender through evidence collected at the crime scene
48 of 52
How does the approach differ from the top-down approach?
It doesn't begin with fixed typologies, but is 'data driven'
49 of 52
What are 2 forms of the bottom up approach?
Investigative psycholgy + geographical profiling
50 of 52
What is investigative pscyhology?
A form of bottom-up profiling that matches details from the crime scene with statistical analysis for typical offendee behaviour patterns; based on psychological theory
51 of 52
What is central to the approach?
Interpersonal coherence, significance of time + place & forensic awareness
52 of 52

Other cards in this set

Card 2

Front

What are the problems in defining crime?

Back

Cultural and historical issues

Card 3

Front

What are cultural issues?

Back

Preview of the front of card 3

Card 4

Front

What are historial issues?

Back

Preview of the front of card 4

Card 5

Front

What are the 3 ways of measuring crime rates?

Back

Preview of the front of card 5
View more cards

Comments

No comments have yet been made

Similar Psychology resources:

See all Psychology resources »See all Criminological and Forensic Psychology resources »