Forensic Psychology & Law

Forensic Psychology Overview

• Forensic psychologists apply psychological principles to legal and criminal justice systems.
• They are involved before a legal decision is made (pre-adjudication).
• Services include assessment, treatment, research presentation, and training.
• Forensic psychologists deal more with civil cases than criminal matters.
• Only a small percentage (~10%) are primarily criminal profilers, and only 17% consider it scientifically reliable.

Application of Psychology Subsections in Forensics

• Cognitive psychology is used for eyewitness identification and memory analysis.
• Physiological psychology aids in polygraph testing.
• Social psychology informs on jury behavior and eyewitness identification.
• Developmental psychology is relevant in cases involving child testimony and juvenile justice.
• Correctional psychology focuses on prisons and jails.
• Police psychology covers criminal profiling, fitness-for-duty evaluations, and hostage negotiations.
• Clinical psychology is the basis for assessment and treatment within a legal context which includes psychopaths, risk assessment, personal injury etc.

What Forensic Psychologists Do

• Applying psychological principles to legal and criminal justice systems
• Assess offenders, provide expert testimony, assist in criminal profiling, evaluate competency for trial
• Work with law enforcement on investigations and rehabilitation efforts.
• Focus on understanding the causes of criminal behavior.
• Some evaluate consultations of people who were wrongfully accused of crimes and then try to sue the state for holding them against their will.
• Some use genealogy to solve cases

Criminal vs. Civil Law

• Criminal law deals with acts against society, prosecuted by the government.
• It aims to punish offenders and deter crime, focusing on "mens rea" (guilty mind) and questions of insanity.
• Civil law addresses wrongs against individuals, with the harmed person (plaintiff) taking action.
• Civil cases involve torts (wrongful acts causing harm) and often seek monetary compensation.
• Determining Competency Restoration will help an accused become competent to stand trial and move forward with a legal case.

Treatment

• Mental health treatment within legal institutions (jails, prisons, state hospitals, outpatient settings with those on probation/parole)
• Competency restoration: to help an accused become competent to stand trial and move forward with a legal case

Assessment

• Competency to stand trial
• Insanity defense
• Risk of harm, danger to others
• Risk for sexual offending
• Assessing Symptoms

Research

• Factors influence/contribute to false confessions and mistaken eyewitness identification
• Bias in a jury’s decision making
• Understanding memory, perception, confessions, in how they apply to the legal field
• Research can affect court decisions

Workplace

• State forensic hospitals
• Court clinics
• Mental health centers
• Jails, prisons, juvenile treatment centers
• Private practice

Court Systems

• Hierarchy: entry-level court, appeals court, supreme court (state or federal).
• US Supreme Court decisions are not always binding on state courts.

Statutory vs. Case Law

• Statutory law results from legislation, while case law is based on court interpretations where no statute exists.
• Both types of law carry equal weight.
• Passing a law requires approval from both the House and the Senate.

Criminology and Offending in the U.S.

• Criminology is the study of crime and criminal behavior.
• The rate of violent crime decreased between 1993 and 2001 according to the National Crime Victimization Survey.
• However, the rate of violent crime is still relatively high despite recent decreases: 16 of every 1,000 males (highest risk group for violent victimization) experienced violent crime in 2015.
• Crime rates have dropped sharply since the early 1900s.

School Violence

• The perception that school shootings make our schools unsafe has been growing, very likely fueled by immediate and extensive coverage.
• Youth deaths in schools showed no overall increase between 1992 and 2012.
• There were 1,186 homicide deaths of school-aged children, but only 31 happened at school.
• Communication between students and school administrators is important in identifying the planning surrounding school violence and weapons.
• IF YOU SEE SOMETHING SAY SOMETHING
• Common characteristics: experience with guns, social isolation, rejection/torment, difficulty relating to girls, preoccupation with violent media.

School Reforms for Violence

• Some suggestions: requiring school uniforms, enhanced security, stricter gun laws, violence prevention programs, restricting access to violent media, improved communication.

Sensitivity and Specificity

• Sensitivity is the rate of true positives (how accurately a test identifies people who HAVE the disease)
• Specificity is the rate of true negatives (how accurately a test identifies people who do NOT the disease)

Types of Errors

• Type 1 error: false positive
• Type 2 error: false negative

Policy

• "Zero tolerance" policies are ineffective and can harm those mistakenly identified.
• Threat assessment involves evaluating the threat, the individual's risk, and the response needed.

Mass Killings

• Mass killings involve killing/attempting to kill four or more in a public place and are on the rise.
• The majority of perpetrators are single males; many commit suicide.

Ancient Explanations for Crime

• Earliest explanations related crime to sin or religious factors.

Criminological Theories

• Classical criminology emphasized free will and hedonism, advocating punishment fitting the crime.
• The positivist school used the scientific method, suggesting punishment should fit the criminal and emphasizing rehabilitation.

Sociological Theories of Crime

• Structural theory: dysfunctional social arrangements make people break the law (person breaks the law because they “need” to)
• Subcultural theory: crime originates when there is a cultural value that clashes with the conventional rules of society (the culture says to steal)

Women of Crime

• Most prevalent crime for women is shoplifting
• Women are increasingly incarcerated

Biological Theories for Violence

• Genetic influence, and neuropsychological abnormalities (however, not a lot of evidence)
• Focus on twin and adoption studies to differentiate genetic vs. environmental factors.
• Twin studies compare concordance rates between monozygotic (identical) and dizygotic (fraternal) twins.

Psychological Theories for Violence

• Psychopaths have repetitive criminal activity with little remorse.
• Antisocial personality disorder is similar to psychopathy.
• Causes of psychopathic behavior: inability to inhibit response and cortical immaturity

Social-Psychological Theories of Crime

• Social learning theory: vicarious learning (learning through observation).

Criminal Profiling

• Focuses on personality, family, and physical characteristics of offenders.
• Most homicides are not serial killings.
• Significant others are most likely to kill you
• Attention is increasingly focused on killers with multiple victims who kill strangers.

Multiple Homicides

• Mass murders: killing four or more victims simultaneously, usually with connections between victims for revenge.
• Spree killers: kill at more than one location, success is measured by number of deaths.
• Serial murderers: kill strangers, enjoy the process, and may evade capture for years.

Characteristics of Serial Offenders

• Commonly white males in their early 30s.
• Around ⅓ are married and employed with moderate education.
• Victims are often white females with sexual motivation.
• Manual methods are favored over guns.
• Souvenirs, sometimes body parts, are often kept.
• Often are not psychotic, but rather personality disorders or lack empathy.
• They often revel in the publicity that their crimes receive

Criminal Profilers:

• Morning crime: involve drugs/alcohol
• Murders committed with whatever weapon happens to be available are more impulsive than murders committed with a gun and may reveal a killer who lives fairly near the victim.

Detecting Deception

• Most people assume stories are the truth (truth bias).
• Truthful statements are correctly identified 61% of the time, lies only 47%.
• Polygraphs are not admissible as courtroom evidence.

Controlled Question Test

• Relevant questions about the crime under investigation
• Comparison questions: designed to give emotional response

Concealed Information

• Detecting Deception
• Concealed information test is to detect the presence of concealed info in the suspects mind, not to detect lying

Behavioral Cues

• People have detected lying through lack of eye contact, fidgety movements, grooming behaviors, and other behavioral cues.

Interrogation Load

• Increase cognitive load: when you are making something up the story begins to snowball

Combat Rehearsal

• Ask out of left-field questions that are unanticipated, 80% accuracy

Miranda Rights

• Only apply when a suspect is in custody.
• Suspects often waive their rights.

Pre Interrogation

• “Softening Up” the suspect
• Want suspect to talk as much as possible because this is where you will find out the most information

Interrogation Tactics

• Negative Incentives: evidence fabrications, attack on the subjects denials, break down a suspect's defenses, lower resistance
• Positive inducements: make them feel better about themselves
• After they begin to talk, than you can become accusatorial, you can use fabricated evidence

Behavioral Confirmation

• A detective assumes that you are guilty, looks for evidence that verifies the belief that someone is guilty, and then the suspect behaves in ways that support that belief.
• Type 1 errors often occur

Confessions

• Internalized false confessions: some suspects convince themselves that they have committed a crime that they did not do.
• Even when there is a false confession: about 80% of them are guilty
• Juries tend to not see situational factors in false confessions .

Factors that influence the public: Recording

• If you have a recording and hear what the police are saying, you think it is more likely to be voluntary because you can hear the tactics
• Situational factors can affect whether there are voluntary or involuntary confessions

Profiling Types

• Crime scene: looking at the behavioral patterns, motivations, and demographic variables of an UNKNOWN offender
• Geographical: figuring out where the offender went.
• Psychological: two different assessment procedures with known person
  • Threat assessment: how serious
  • Risk assessment: probability that individual is going to harm others
• Suspect based (prospective profiling): Identifying behavioral and psychological features of someone you do not know
• Psychological autopsy: analyzing a known persons life

Important Terms

• Modus Operandi: actions and methods an offender uses to commit a crime.
• Personation: behavior beyond what is needed to commit the crime.
• Signature: unique markers left indicating a specific serial offender.
• Staging: altering the scene to hide something about the crime.
• Trophy: symbolizing the offender's triumph over the victim.
• Undoing: offender trying to psychologically "undo" the crime.
• Organized crime scene: Indicates planning and emotional control.
• Disorganized crime scene: demonstrates that the offender committed the crime without premeditation or planning.
• Linkage Analysis: linking one crime to another on the basis of clues
• Clinically produced profiles: Statistical (computer creating profile) Clinically (by people)
• CSI EFFECT: people think that life is like the show, not a crime how
• Frye Vs. Daubert Frye (Frye (1923): Evidence must be "generally accepted" by the scientific community
  • Everyone has to say yes
  • Daubert (1993): Judges act as gatekeepers, considering factors like testability, peer review, error rate, and acceptance. DOES NOT REQUIRE EVERYONE
  • Daubert is the modern standard in federal courts, replacing Frye.

Explore forensic psychology's role in criminal law, pre-adjudication, and social, clinical, developmental, and physiological applications. Understand the differences between criminal and civil law contexts. Learn about interrogation tactics.