Criminal Notes

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Psychological formulation

Describe

asses what infulneces a offenders behaviour and minimising the potential for recividism

psychologists would look at the person's early experiences from childhood; core beliefs and triggers.

also look at the stituation in which they commited the crime to understand their feelings and physical behaviuor during it.

draws on all psycholical theories to explain the behaviour and from there can be used to come up with a treatment.

treatment involves helping the offender develop skills to that will support them in areas of the formulation tey need more help in.

Evaluation

when drawn in diagrams, they simpilfy the complexity of the offenders behaviour for both the offender and the psychologist and show factors effecting it. this helps to make plans for the offenders future on howto manage emotions in similar situations

may be difficult to gain information from offenders due to problems with remembering the situation, early triggers and the offender not wanting to be honest with the psychologist

individuals may have a disorder they do not know of yet which influences there behaviour. they range of infomation psychologists can get may limit the formulation so cannot draw up on every possible aim for the behaviour.

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Treatments for offenders

Anger Management

Describe

it is a three step process

cognitive preparation: offenders look at situation which provoke anger for them in order to recognise when an outburst may occur. Thought patterns are challenged too

Skill aquisition: coping skills are learned to help deal with those situations e.g., relaxation, avoidance or social skills

Application practice: offenders role pay anger provoking scenarios whilst using their coping skills. conducted in a controlled environment.

Evaluation

only effective for those with problems controlling their anger and not all crimes are committed due to aggression/ not all crimes are committed aggressively.

howells et al. it is only effective for those that are motivated to change

ireland; 92% of prisoners showed an improvement in their anger management

offenders may be dishonest due to self reporting data

Diet

minerals, vitamins and essential fatty acids play a role in human behaviour.

being deficiet in any of these areas may result in an individual acting in a violent manner

low blood sugar levels have notably been known to increase irritability

Evaluate

Benton: increase in irriabilty while blood glucose fell moderatley in 6-7 years while playing a fustrating game

he concluded that diet was not the absolute factor rather that it was provaction of there own social skills

other treatments my be more benefical as they can target the cause of crime

Gesch e al: number of discilinary incidents per 1000 persons- days dropped from 16 to 10. in the active group that took vitamins etc- 35% reduction

placebo group dropped 6.7 percent

violent incidents dropped by 37%

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Self-fulfilling prophecy

Describe

a person or group may believe an individual will act in an antisocial way later and is therefore labelled

the person then believes this about themselves an internalise that label to then go and commit crime

also known as the pygmalion effect

our actions towards other impact others beliefs about us and cause other reactions towards us. this reinforces our beliefs abut us which influence our actions toward others

Evaluate

Jahoda et al.: 22% wednesday and 7% monday

madon et al.: negative correlation between parents who overestimated their child's alcohol and actual alcohol- negative SFP may have a greater effect on behavioyr than positive ones

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Factor effcting eye witness testomonies

Stress and Arousal

Weapon focus

Post event information

Stress and Arousal

EWs are placed under a great deal of stress when witnessing crimes which can impair own performance to remember the event

Yerkes-Dodson Law: there is an optimum amount of arousal needed in order to have optimum performance

when we become too stress this declines

also being too relaxed will lead to less accurate recall

Evaluate

Valentine and Mesout: the females were the most stress and recalled the least amount of accurate information- could be supportive of the fact that too much stress can cause more incaccuracies

Yuille and Cutshall: the greater the arousal the more accurate the testimony

stress and arousal s a factor is better applied to artifical lab experiments rather than field experiments

Weapon Focus

two reasons why weapon focus may be a factor

when there is a weapon it leads to the optimum levels of stress needed to recall the event

this helps to assist recalling of information

secondly the weapon could lead to the witness' attention to only be focused on that

peripheral information is ignored and less accurate recall is caused

Evaluate

Loftus et al.: ppts were shown a series of slides, one with the customer holding a gun the other with the customer holding a chequebook

those that were shown the gun tended to focus on it and were unable to identify the customer in an identity parade

Kerri Pickel: presence of the raw chicken and handgun lead to the poorest recall of the man- high threat and unusualness in items causes low recall

Fawcett et al.: meta analysis weapon presence had a negative effect on both feature and identification accuracy under controlled conditions and in real life.

Post event Information

refers to any information the witness receives after the crime occurs

this becomes a factor because witnesses are interviewed over a period of time after the offence and after the case may go to trial

can impact on what the witness thought they saw leading them to recall inaccurate information

additional information can come from lawyers, other witnesses and the police

idea of reconstructive memory leading to our schemas being impacted by information we have heard

Evaluate