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Summary AQA A level psychology paper 3 - Forensic psychology
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AQA A level Paper 3 forensic psychology essay plans
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Discuss the top down approach to offender profiling.AO1 The top-down approach originated in the United States as a result of work carried out by the FBI.
- In the top-down approach, profilers rely on previous experiences of similar crime
- From the data gathered at the crime scene, the investigators can identify characteristics of
the offender e.g. lifestyle or personality characteristics
Stage 1 - data assimilation: info gathered from crime scene (witnesses, pics, location)
Stage 2 - crime scene classification: analysis of info suggests criminal type
Profile generation to find the type of offender:
- organised:
- show evidence of planning and control and so are unlikely to leave clues / body at
crime scene
- Tend to have a specific type of victim
- Higher than average intelligence
- Disorganised:
- Opposite characteristics (no evidence of planning) so frequently leave body / clues
at crime scene
- No specific target (attacks seem random)
AO3 It is simplistic
- Keppel and Walter (1999)
- Due to this oversimplification of the classification system, it may be more useful to study
the motives that each criminal has
- In this way, seemingly contradictory crimes can still be explained e.g. a criminal who
leaves no clues at the crime scene but appears to be sexually incompetent and who
carried out an impulsive attack on a stranger.
- Therefore being a limited way of identifying offenders
Top-down profiling is reductionist
- Offenders are not simply either disorganised or organised.
- It may be that there are both organised and disorganised features to all their crimes.
- For example, offenders may start off being disorganised and become more organised as
they commit more
- Therefore being too simple for the classification system of organised/disorganised
There is evidence to support the existence of an organised offender type, but the same cannot be
said for the disorganised type
- Canter et al (2004) analysed 100 murders in the US
- He made comparisons of each made to 39 typical traits of both offender types.
- The fact that disorganised offenders cannot be identified as distinctly different from
organised offenders suggests that this system lacks validity and breadth.
Discuss the bottom up approach to offender profiling.
AO1 the bottom up approach developed in UK
- data-driven approach that makes use of statistical data on similar crimes that have been
committed, to make predictions about the characteristics of an offender
-canter
Two sections of the bottom up approach
1. Investigative psychology
- Process where details of each crime is recorded into a database and if matched
, with a new crime, develops hypotheses about likely characterises of the offender.
2. Geographical profiling
- Suggests each offender has own operational base which can be inferred through
previous crime locations
- This is done by ‘crime mapping’ the location of the offences to find a ‘centre of
gravity’ in which the criminal is likely to live and commit crimes (circle hypothesis)
AO3 Does not always lead to correct identification of offender
- copson (1995)
- He found that info from offender profiles only laws to successful identification of offender in
3% of cases
- But was useful 83% of the time
- Suggests offender profiling is better for narrowing down rather than relying on it for
offender identification
Research support (investigated psychology)
- Canter and Heritage (1990) conducted a content analysis of 66 sexual assault cases.
- Found that the nature of offence was correlated with particular behaviours, eg. Use of
impersonal language
- Suggests that statistical techniques can be useful in identifying behavioural patterns
Research support (geo profiling)
- canter and lundrigan (2001)
- Found that in 120 murder cases, killer disposed body in various locations where their
operational base was located at the centre of this
- Therefore suggesting that geographical profiling helps determine offenders base
the bottom up approach is better than the top down
- wider applications:
- Can be applied to other crimes, not just sexually motivated ones
- Relies on scientific methods
- Use of statistical analysis
- Eg. Supporting studies use analysis to establish correlations
- Therefore being a more scientific theory
Discuss the atavistic form (biological explanations) as an explanation of offending behaviour
AO1 lombroso 1876
- Criminals lack evolutionary development and stay savage(natural tendencies)
- suggests that criminality is inherited, innate and can be identified by the way they look
Criminals can be identified through having atavistic characteristics
- long ears, dark skin, curly hair, extra toes, tattoos, use of slang
- Murderers: curly hair, long ears
- Sexual assaulters: fleshy lips, glistening eyes
- Fraudsters: thin lips
He based his theory on studying features of 383 dead and c.3800 alive criminals
- approx 40% of crime was explainable using offender profiles based on atavistic
characteristics
AO3 Many modern researchers have branded Lombroso and his atavistic theory as racist.
- DeLisi (2012)
- For example, just because an individual had certain atavistic characteristics, does not
mean that they are or are destined to become criminals.
- Following this logic, it appears that certain races are more likely to become criminals than
others, such as African Americans, amongst whom curly hair is common.
- However, attitudes have changed since the 19th century
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