CHAPTER 21

FORENSIC
PSYCHOLOGY
 Chapter plan
 INTRODUCTION
 PSYCHOLOGY AND THE LAW
 The meaning of ‘forensic’
 The origins of legal psychology
 EYEWITNESS MEMORY
 An early model of memory
 The strength and validity of the evidence
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CONFESSION
 Voluntary false confessions
 Interrogational tactics
 Coerced false confessions
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF INVESTIGATION
 The cognitive interview
 Detecting lies and deceit
 Offender profiling
 CRIMINOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY
 The Cambridge Study
 Violent offenders
 Working with offenders
 SUMMARY
 Crime is part of our everyday lives:
 Switch on the television and there will be
documentaries about crime, films about crime and
crime stories in the news; pick up a newspaper and
there will be coverage of local crimes, and articles
about crimes of national and international
significance; browse in a bookshop and you will
probably find a crime section with novels about
crime, true crime stories, books about criminals and
books written by criminals.
 Listen to a conversation on the bus or in the pub and
there is a good chance that you will hear someone
talk about a burglary in their street, or their car being
broken into, or a friend’s credit cards being stolen.
 For centuries before psychology appeared on the
scene, philosophers struggled to understand evil
and antisocial acts, while students of jurisprudence
wrestled with issues of criminal law and
punishment.

 It was not until the turn of the 1900s that

psychology was first applied to understanding
criminal behaviour, and forensic psychology did
not really emerge as a speciality until the middle
of the twentieth century.
 Forensic psychology has quickly grown in
popularity, aided and abetted by several well
known television series.

 University postgraduate courses have expanded to

include forensic psychology, and there is now a
range of professional opportunities for those with
the appropriate qualifications.
Forensic psychologists are often called upon to
provide reports on particular individuals for
court hearings. (Fig. 21.1)
 Psychology and the law
The meaning of ‘forensic’
 According to The Concise Oxford English Dictionary,
‘forensic’ means ‘Of, used in, courts of law’; so,
strictly speaking, forensic psychology is the application
of psychology to matters concerning the court of law.
 But ‘forensic psychology’ has also come to be used in a
much broader sense – when psychology is associated
with any topic even remotely related to crime, such as
the development of antisocial behaviour, the study of
different types of offender, and crime prevention.
 In considering the topic of forensic psychology in
the broad sense, it is helpful to distinguish between:

 legal psychology – reflecting any application of

psychological knowledge or methods to the task
facing the legal system;
and
 criminological psychology – reflecting the
application of psychological knowledge and
methods to the study of crime and criminal
behaviour.
The origins of legal psychology
 The application of psychology to the legal arena
took place even as psychology first developed as a
university-based academic discipline.

 In the late 19C and early 20C, Hugo Münsterberg

drew attention to the psychologist’s understanding
of perception and memory; he claimed that
psychological knowledge provided insight into the
reliability of witness testimony (thereby making
the case for the psychologist as expert witness).
 At the time, Münsterberg’s claims for the practical
benefits of psychology in the courtroom drew fierce
attack from the legal profession (Wigmore, 1909).

 But his writings have stood the test of time in

anticipating important areas of research, such as the
study of the reliability of evidence (as seen in
investigations of eyewitness memory and
confessional evidence).
 Eyewitness memory
An early model of memory

 The capacity and fallibility of human memory was

one of the first areas of investigation in
psychological research.

 Through careful experimental work, several

distinguished scholars, including Hermann
Ebbinghaus (1850–1909), began to unravel some of
the fundamental properties of memory functioning
(Ebbinghaus, 1885/1994).
 One model that emerged from this early work
described the three key memory stages of:
1. acquisition (when memories are formed)
2. retention (holding them in storage)
3. retrieval (fetching them from storage).

 While memory theory has moved on from this basic

model, it is still useful in a discussion of eyewitness
memory.
 Research into the accuracy of eyewitness testimony
has focused on initial observation of the incident
(acquisition), the period between seeing and recalling
(retention) and finally, giving testimony (retrieval).
 Researchers have engaged with a wide range of
relevant variables over a long period (Goodman et
al., 1999; Ross, Read & Toglia, 1994; Sporer,
Malpass & Koehnken, 1996), including:
 social variables, such as the status of the
interrogator;
 situational variables, such as the type of crime;
 individual variables, such as witness age;
 interrogational variables, such as the type of
questioning.
 Acquisition
 Research has also considered the effect of particular
types of crime; for example, can witnesses to a violent
crime be as accurate as witnesses to a non-violent crime?
 Controlled experimental studies, typically during which
witnesses see videotaped crimes of varying degrees of
violence, suggest that violence results in poorer witness
accuracy.
 But strangely, field studies of real-life witnesses suggest
that those who are exposed to highly violent events can
give very accurate testimony; indeed, adult victims of
rape usually give a reasonably accurate account of this
extreme personal experience of violence.
 One possible explanation for this apparent contradiction
is that, in a stressful situation such as a violent crime, a
witness’s attention may narrow to the central (rather
than the peripheral) details of the incident.
 The theory is that the deployment of attention narrows
to central details of the event, such as the criminal’s
actions, thereby producing less reliable memory for
peripheral detail, such as what colour shirt the criminal
was wearing.
 When the central detail is a life-threatening weapon,
witnesses may pay much more attention to the weapon,
to the exclusion of other details; this phenomenon is
known as ‘weapon focus’.
 It is vital to understand the impact on witness
memory of factors such as the type of crime.

 What is encoded during acquisition is critical

because it forms the basis for what is stored in
memory and eventually retrieved when giving
testimony.
 Retention
 During the retention stage, witness memory may be
subject to various influences, such as discussion with
other witnesses and exposure to media accounts of the
crime, not to mention the fact that memory becomes less
accurate over time.
 So the time interval between acquisition and retrieval is an
obvious consideration.
 Several studies have compared the accuracy of eyewitness
face identification over short and long time intervals; the
force of the evidence suggests that identification accuracy
does decrease with time, although the rates for false and
correct identifications may be different.
 Short delay Long
delay
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
______

Correct IDs 83% 36%

False IDs 0% 35%

The effect of delay on face recognition. (Table
21.1)
 Retrieval
 During the retrieval stage, factors that potentially
influence the accuracy of eyewitness testimony
include interview style and the use of aids to recall,
such as the photofit and identity parades.

 Studies of the impact of leading questions, which

contain information (either intentionally or
unintentionally) that can bias the respondent’s
reply, show that even subtle changes in question
wording can influence testimony.
Speed estimates of collision in response to different
forms of question wording. (Table 21.2)
 Additional studies have established that misleading
information presented to witnesses is more likely to
have an influence on peripheral details than central
events.
 Furthermore, it seems that the effects of leading
questions such as those used by Loftus and Palmer
(1974) are a direct product of the demands of the
questioning procedures, rather than the questions
leading to permanent changes in memory.
 This last point emphasizes that witnesses can give
incorrect replies to questions even though the
memory trace (‘retention’) itself has apparently not
been distorted.
 The strength and validity of
the evidence
 Narby, Cutler and Penrod (1996) have created three
categories of witness-related evidence based on
reliability and magnitude of effect:
1. reliable and strong factors that show consistent
effects on eyewitness memory (e.g. there are
differences in memory performance between adult
and child witnesses; if a person is wearing a disguise,
such as a hat, this influences accuracy of memory;
and the length of time, termed ‘exposure duration’,
that the witness has to observe an incident).
2. reliable and moderate factors that show effects in
some studies but not in others (e.g. the match
between the level of confidence a witness has in
their memory and how accurate it really is;
weapon focus; and crime seriousness);

3. weak or non-influential factors that have little or

no effect on witness accuracy (e.g. witness
gender; the personality of the witness; and –
within limits – the witness’s level of intelligence).
 An issue that is broader than the strength of the
evidence concerns its validity when applied to the
real world.

 Do the findings from psychological studies parallel

what happens to real crime witnesses? Should
research findings be made available to the court to
influence real trials?

 In other words, can psychological studies of

eyewitness memory be generalized to real life?
 Critics such as Konecni and Ebbesen (1986) and Yuille
and Cutshall (1986) note the lack of realism in many
experimental studies, such as the use of filmed crimes,
and the participants’ awareness of the research aims.
 The matter boils down to one of control and ecological
validity.
 The strongest conclusions that can be validly drawn
will most likely be derived from a variety of studies
(including laboratory studies, case studies, field studies
and archival studies) which employ a broad range of
different experimental designs and methodologies.
 The psychology of confession
 In law, a confession is exceptionally powerful
evidence – an irrefutable admission of guilt.

 But while most confessions are true, some people

have been known to ‘confess’ to a crime they did not
commit.

 Gudjonsson (2003) offers a catalogue of cases in

which people have been imprisoned for long periods,
or even executed, on the basis of a false confession.
 How often such cases arise is impossible to know –
matters of guilt and innocence are not always clear-cut,
and the discovery of a mistake in sentencing can take
years to come to light; undoubtedly, some such errors
never do.
 Why people make false confessions, another issue raised
by Münsterberg (1908), is a very ‘psychological’ question.
 A distinction has been drawn between two types of false
confession – voluntary and coerced (coerced false
confession can be broken down further into two sub-types
– coerced–compliant and coerced–internalized false
confessions).
The famous ‘Birmingham Six’: their case in the UK
is one of a catalogue of cases in which people have
been imprisoned for long periods, or even executed,
on the basis of a false confession. (Fig. 21.2)
 Voluntary false confessions
 A voluntary false confession occurs when, in the
absence of any obvious external pressure, an
individual presents himself to the police and admits
to a crime he did not commit.
 Although this may seem bizarre, Kassin and
Wrightsman (1985) suggest several possible reasons
for this behaviour:
1. the desire for notoriety;
2. the individual may feel guilty about a previous event
in his life, and believe he deserves to be punished;
3. inability to distinguish between fact and imagination;
4. the desire to protect someone else.
 Gudjonsson (2003) notes revenge as another
motive that can lead to a false confession.

 In contrast to voluntary false confessions, the

essential element of a coerced confession is that
the individual is persuaded to confess.

 As Kassin (1997) suggests, to understand coercion

within the context of a false confession it is
necessary to begin with the process of police
interrogation.
 Interrogational tactics
 The laws relating to the conduct of police
interrogation of suspects vary from country to
country; but there are some psychological principles
that can be applied whenever one person is seeking
information from another, irrespective of location.
 Suspects may spend time isolated in police cells
before and during interrogation, an experience that
can be frightening and stressful.
 For some, this situation may create psychological
distress or exacerbate existing psychological and
emotional conditions.
 Police interrogation manuals from both Britain
(Walkley, 1987) and America (Inbau, Reid, &
Buckley, 1986) tell us that, from a police
perspective, the interrogator must overcome the
suspect’s natural resistance to tell the truth, and so
must be skilled in the use of strategies to persuade
the suspect to confess.

 These interrogational tactics, based on the social

psychology of conformity, obedience and
persuasion, increase the pressure on suspects so
that they will fall into line with the interrogator’s
view of events.
 More recently, there have been various legal changes
in the rules governing the conduct of interrogations
to eliminate dubious practice (Gudjonsson, 2003).

 There is guarded optimism that the changes are

having the desired effect.

 But in such a highly charged and complex arena,

where there are often pressures on the police to solve
a high-profile crime, it can be difficult to be certain
of how the minutiae of social exchanges during
interrogation influence the final outcome.
 As the research and practice base developed, so the
protocols for the cognitive interview expanded to
include, for example, a broader range of specific
questioning techniques and the use of guided imagery
(Fisher & Geiselman, 1992).
 According to Milne and Bull (1999), the weight of
evidence shows that the cognitive interview elicits
more correct (that is, truthful) information than other
types of interview.
 While there are some reservations, the technique is
generally well received by police officers and has
become widely used; furthermore, recent research
suggests that it is a reliable and helpful technique with
child witnesses.
 Coerced false confessions
 Gudjonsson and Clark (1986) suggested that a suspect
will come to an interrogation with a general cognitive
‘set’ that may be hostile, suspicious or cooperative.

 This cognitive set (itself related to factors such as

intelligence, level of stress and degree of previous
experience of police questioning) will influence the
suspect’s appraisal of the situation, and so affect the
suspect’s strategy for coping with the interrogation.
 Gudjonsson and Clark describe two styles of
initial coping response:
1. a logical, realistic approach, which seeks actively
to deal with the situation and may lead to active
resistance (which may weaken as the interrogation
progresses) to the interrogator’s persuasion to
confess;
2. a passive, helpless stance, which avoids
confrontation with the interrogator, and so reduces
stress but may lead to increased susceptibility to
the interrogator’s persuasive tactics.
 During questioning, the suspect has to recall
information, but she must also make some difficult
decisions.
 She has to decide how confident she is in her
memories, what answer to give the interrogator (which
may not be the same as the suspect’s private knowledge
of events) and whether she trusts the interrogator.
 Resistant suspects are likely to hold onto their own
version of the truth, rebutting persuasive attempts to
bring them to confess; coerced suspects may change
their version of the truth so as to agree with the
interrogator.
 Where a false confession ensues, this process of
coerced agreement can be seen in two distinct ways:
1. The suspect remains aware that her confession and
her private, internal knowledge of the event disagree,
but the suspect nevertheless comes to agree with the
interrogator; this is called a coerced–compliant
false confession.
2. In some circumstances, the suspect’s internal
account of events actually changes to fall into line
with the interrogator, so that, both publicly and
privately, the suspect comes to agree with the
interrogator’s version of events; this is called a
coerced–internalized false confession.
 Coerced compliance
 This might happen for several reasons: the suspect
might wish to please the interrogator, avoid further
detention and interrogation, avoid physical harm (real
or imagined) or strike a deal with the interrogator that
brings some reward for making a confession
(Vennard, 1984).
 Coerced internalization
 The essential element in a coerced–internalized
confession is the suspect’s coming to believe that their
own memory for events is incorrect and that the police
version must therefore be true.
 Kassin (1997) has drawn the analogy between this type
of confession and the phenomenon of false memories.
 There are perhaps also parallels with the notion of
cognitive dissonance (whereby a person comes to
change their attitudes to make them more consistent with
their behaviour) and the kind of obedience which occurs
towards authority figures may well also be relevant here.
 Drawing on the psychology of suggestibility
(Gheorghiu et al., 1989), Gudjonsson (1987)
developed the notion of interrogative
suggestibility – the extent to which, during
intense questioning, people accept information
communicated by the questioner and so change
their responses.
 The psychology of investigation
The cognitive interview
 Interviews are one of the most common ways of
gathering information across a range of settings for a
variety of reasons (Memon & Bull, 1999.
 The less salubrious aspects of police interviewing
have been highlighted by investigators of false
confessions, but there are other, more constructive,
aspects of the interview process to consider.
 A technique known as the cognitive interview
illustrates the application of psychology to facilitate
investigative interviewing.
Interviews are one of the most common ways of
gathering information. (Fig 21.3)
 A great deal of the research on eyewitness
testimony points to the frailties of memory and
questions the reliability of eyewitness evidence.

 The cognitive interview is an attempt to find a

constructive solution to these problems and
improve the accuracy of eyewitness recall.
 This technique includes the concepts of:
1. Context reinstatement – the witness is encouraged
to recollect aspects of the situational context;
2. Report everything – the witness engages in
perfectly free recall;
3. Reverse order – the witness is encouraged to begin
their description of an event from different starting
points;
4. Change perspective – witnesses are encouraged
try to give an account of the event from the point of
view of another person.
 Detecting lies and deceit
 How easy is it to tell when someone is telling lies
and seeking to deceive?
 Kassin (1997) cites several examples taken from
police training manuals that suggest suspects’ verbal
and nonverbal cues can be read to determine if they
are lying.
 It is possible that these general rules are useful, but
the empirical evidence suggests that even skilled
questioners are not good at detecting deceit simply
on the basis of a suspect’s verbal and non-verbal
cues (Ekman & O’Sullivan, 1991).
 Vrij lists seven qualities that make a good liar:
1. having a well prepared story;
2. being original in what is said;
3. thinking quickly when the need arises;
4. eloquence in storytelling;
5. having a good memory for what has been said
previously;
6. not experiencing emotions such as fear or guilt
while lying;
7. good acting ability.
 One approach to detecting deceit involves a highly
structured analysis of verbal content, known as
Statement Validity Assessment (SVA).
 Originally developed as a clinical tool for analysing
children’s statements in cases of sexual abuse
(Undeutsch, 1982), SVA consists of three elements:
1. A statement is taken in a structured interview.
2. The content of the statement is judged by the
forensic psychologist in a criterion-based content
analysis (CBCA).
3. The CBCA is necessarily subjective, and needs to
be evaluated against a standard set of questions
set in the ‘validity checklist’.
 It is clear that SVA represents an attempt to bring
order and rigour to the essentially subjective
matter of judging the veracity and reliability of an
interviewee’s statement.

 While not a perfect technique, it seems that SVA

does help improve accuracy beyond guesswork
and inaccurate beliefs about how to judge
accuracy.
 Offender profiling
 If ever a topic generated a great deal of heat and
rather less light, offender profiling would be high on
the list of most forensic psychologists.
 Offender profiling can be defined as constructing a
picture of an offender’s characteristics from their
modus operandi together with the clues left at the
crime scene.
 As our knowledge base increases, it is likely that the
technique will become increasingly sophisticated
(Ainsworth, 2001; Jackson & Bekerian, 1997).
 Turvey (2000) draws the distinction between
inductive and deductive methods of profiling.

 Inductive methods rely on the expert skills and

knowledge of the profiler – a method often referred
to as ‘clinical’ in style.

 By contrast, deductive methods rely on forensic

evidence, such as crime scene characteristics and
offence related empirical data – an approach often
referred to as ‘statistical’.
Profiling historical and political figures

 Attempts have been made to construct

psychological profiles of historical figures (from
Jack the Ripper to Adolf Hitler) by systematically
gathering and organizing information in an effort
to understand their motives and behaviour.

 These types of profile typically rely on specialist

knowledge (e.g. military, historical).
Profiling criminals from the crime scene
 Way back in the late 1880s, forensic pathologists
were trying to link series of crimes by the
similarity of crime scene characteristics, such as
the nature of a victim’s wounds.
 More recently, the American Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) pioneered an investigative
system based on central features (such as the
details of a crime scene and forensic evidence) in
order to construct a profile of the psychological
and behavioural characteristics of the criminal.
 While forensic evidence can yield many clues, the
starting point for the FBI was to use the crime
scene to construct a picture of the type of person
who committed the offence.
 This approach yielded various classifications of
types of offender associated with their
psychological characteristics.
 For example, a much used distinction (mainly
concerned with serious offenders such as murderers
or rapists), incorporated within the FBI framework,
is that between organized offenders and
disorganized offenders.
 In terms of psychological characteristics, the
organized offender is seen as intelligent and socially
adjusted, although this apparent normality can mask a
psychopathic personality.
 According to this framework, the disorganized
offender is said to be less intelligent and socially
isolated, may have mental health problems, and is
likely to offend when in a state of panic.
 The obvious criticisms of such distinctions (and the
FBI approach more generally) is that they are
inductive, highly subjective and lacking in robust
empirical validation.
 Profiling common characteristics of known
offenders
 The third approach to profiling is to look to empirical
data, rather than an expert’s opinion, to construct
profiles.
 This approach emphasizes the rigorous gathering of
data about the crime from multiple sources (such as
geographical location and victim statements), the
application of complex statistical analyses to
databases of crime scene details (and other forensic
evidence), and attempts to build a profile of the
offender with theoretical integrity.
 Adopting this approach, Canter and Heritage (1990)
analysed data from over 60 cases of sexual assault
and were able to identify over 30 offence
characteristics, such as level of violence, use of a
weapon, type of assault and use of threats.
 Statistical analyses were used to search for
relationships and patterns between the factors, and
to build up characteristic profiles of types of sexual
assault.
 This and other similar studies provide preliminary
support for the central premises of offender profiling
based on the common characteristics of known
offenders.
 Criminological psychology
 The academic relationship between criminology and
psychology has not always been harmonious.

 In the early twentieth century, the focus in mainstream

criminology shifted from the individual to society, and
psychological theories of criminal behaviour held little
sway compared to sociological theories.

 But since the 1990s, there has been an increasing

dialogue between the disciplines as the study of the
individual has become a concern in criminology.
 The Cambridge Study
Predicting delinquency
 One of the main findings from longitudinal research
is that most juvenile crime is ‘adolescence limited’; in
other words, most young offenders ‘grow out’ of
crime by the time they are 18.
 But some juveniles (called ‘life-course persistent’
offenders) will continue offending into adulthood.
 Developmental criminology attempts to identify the
factors that predict longer-term offending, in turn
contributing to preventative efforts.
Most young offenders ‘grow out of’ crime by
the age of 18, but others continue to offend
into adulthood. (Fig. 21.4)
 The Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development is
an extensive longitudinal study conducted in Great
Britain that has generated a wealth of data.

 It began in 1961 with a cohort of 411 boys aged eight

and nine, and it is still in progress, with over 90 per
cent of the sample still alive.

 The methodology used in the Cambridge Study has

involved not only access to official records, but also
repeated testing and interviewing of the participants,
as well as their parents, peers and schoolteachers.
 Approximately 20 per cent of the young men
involved in the survey were convicted as juveniles,
a figure that grew to 40 per cent convicted
(excluding minor crimes) by 40 years of age.

 The official convictions matched reasonably well

with self-reported delinquency.

 The Cambridge Study strongly suggests that the

intensity and severity of certain adverse features in
early life predict the onset of antisocial behaviour
and later criminal behaviour.
 Farrington (2002) lists these predictive factors as
follows:
1. antisocial behaviour, including troublesomeness in
school, dishonesty and aggressiveness;
2. hyperactivity–impulsivity–attention deficit, including
poor concentration, restlessness and risk-taking;
3. low intelligence and poor school attainment;
4. family criminality as seen in parents and older
siblings;
5. family poverty in terms of low family income, poor
housing and large family size;
6. harsh parenting style, lack of parental supervision,
parental conflict and separation from parents.
 Other studies have found similar predictors for
aggression and violent conduct.

 It is also evident that childhood antisocial behaviour

and adolescent delinquency are related to other
developmental problems.

 Farrington, Barnes and Lambert (1996) also showed

that these developmental problems are frequently
concentrated in specific families – in their sample of
397 families, half the total convictions in the whole
sample were accounted for by 23 families!
 The force of the Cambridge Study and other
similar research is to suggest that we need
prevention strategies to reduce child and
adolescent antisocial behaviour (Farrington, 2002).

 Such strategies might include improving young

people’s school achievement and interpersonal
skills, improving child-rearing practice and
reducing poverty and social exclusion.
 Adult criminals
 A longitudinal study allows us to compare adult
offenders and non-offenders to discover even more
about the pathways to crime.
 When the cohort in the Cambridge Study reached
the age of 18, the chronic offenders had a lifestyle
characterized by heavy drinking, sexual promiscuity,
drug use and minor crimes (mostly car theft, group
violence and vandalism).
 They were highly unlikely to have any formal
qualifications, they held unskilled manual jobs, and
had had frequent periods of unemployment.
 By 32 years of age, the chronic offenders were
unlikely to be home-owners, had low-paid jobs,
were likely to have physically assaulted their
partner, and used a wide range of drugs.

 As you might expect, they had an extensive history

of fines, probation orders and prison sentences.

 It was clear from their life histories and current

circumstances that these men were leading a bleak
and socially dysfunctional existence.
 The data also point to protective factors.

 These are factors that appear to balance the

negative predictors, so that at times when you
would expect offending to occur, it does not (e.g.
forming close relationships in early adulthood
seems to be related to a decrease in offending).

 When males show all the predictive signs for a

criminal career and yet do not commit offences,
Farrington and West (1990) label them ‘good boys
from bad backgrounds’.
 Thus far, there is no grand theory to explain how
the interaction between a young person and his or
her environmental circumstances culminates in
criminality.

 But there are enough positive developments in the

extant literature to indicate that this might be
feasible in the future, at least with respect to
certain probabilities and confidence limits.
 Violent offenders
 Criminal behaviour takes many forms, but there is
little doubt that violent acts are a source of great
public concern.
 A recent World Health Report (Krug et al., 2002)
referred to violence as ‘a global public health
problem’.
 Contemporary psychological theory characterizes
violence in this context in terms of an interaction
between the qualities of the individual and
characteristics of their environment.
 The development of violent
behaviour
 As with delinquency, the development of violent
behaviour can be studied over the lifespan, leading to
the formulation of complex models of violent conduct.

 Nietzel, Hasemann and Lynam (1999) developed a

model based on four sequential stages across the
lifespan (table 21.3) – an example of an attempt to
integrate social, environmental and individual factors to
characterize the key factors underlying violence.
Distal antecedents Early Developmenta Maintenance
indicators l processes variables
Biological factors Conduct School failure Peers
(e.g. brain disorder Cognitive Opportunities
dysfunction) Poor style (e.g. Socioenconomi
Psychological parenting hostile c deprivation
factors (e.g. Early attributions)
impulsiveness) aggression Substance
Environmental abuse
factors (e.g. high
crime
neighbourhood)

Suggested developmental sequence in the

aetiology of violent behaviour. (Table 21.3)
 At the first stage, there are distal antecedents to
violence.

 These are divided into biological precursors

(including genetic transmission and lability of the
autonomic nervous system), psychological
predispositions (including impulsivity and
deficient problem solving) and environmental
factors (such as family functioning and the social
fabric of the neighbourhood).
 At the second stage, there are early indicators of
violence as the child develops, such as conduct
disorder and poor emotional regulation.

 Third, as the child matures the developmental

processes associated with the intensification of
violent behaviour come into effect, including
school failure, association with delinquent peers,
and substance abuse.
 Finally, as the adolescent moves into adulthood
there is a stage at which maintenance variables
come into force, including continued
reinforcement for violent conduct, association
with criminal peers, and social conditions that
provide opportunities for crime.
 A psychological profile of
violence
 Research has also begun to uncover some of the
psychological processes characteristic of the violent
person.

 For example, the influential work of Dodge and

colleagues has drawn on social information
processing (i.e. how we perceive and understand and
the words and actions of other people) to seek to
understand the psychology of violence.
 Crick and Dodge (1994; Dodge 1997) suggested that
we follow a sequence of steps when we process
social information:
 encoding social cues;
 making sense of these cues;
 a cognitive search for the appropriate response;
 deciding on the best option for making a response;
 making a response;
 Dodge proposed that violent behaviour may result
from deficits and biases at any of these stages.
 The role of anger
 Cognitions interact with emotions, and anger
(particularly dysfunctional anger) is the emotional
state most frequently associated with violent
behaviour (Blackburn, 1993).
 Anger may be said to be dysfunctional when it has
significantly negative consequences for the individual
or for other people (Swaffer & Hollin, 2001).
 It would be wrong to say that anger is the principal
cause of violence, or that all violent offenders are
angry, but clearly it is a consideration in
understanding violence.
 Currently, the most influential theory of anger is
Novaco’s (1975).

 According to Novaco, for someone to become angry,

an environmental event must first trigger distinctive
patterns of physiological and cognitive arousal.

 This trigger usually lies in the individual’s

perception of the words and actions of another
person.
 The relevant cognitive processes (Novaco &
Welsh, 1989) involve various types of information-
processing biases concerned with the encoding of
interpretation and triggering cues.

 The progression from anger to violence is

associated with the disinhibition of internal control,
which can result from factors such as high levels of
physiological arousal, the perception that there is
little chance of being apprehended or punished, and
the perpetrator’s use of drugs or alcohol.
 Anger is the emotional state most often
associated with violent behaviour. (Fig. 21.5)
 Moral reasoning
 There is a long history of research into the relationship
between moral reasoning and offending (Palmer, 2003).
 Gibbs and colleagues have examined the specific
association between moral reasoning and violent
behaviour, focusing on the bridge between theories of
social information processing and moral development.
 They suggest that this bridge takes the form of cognitive
distortions by which we rationalize or mislabel our own
behaviour; these powerful types of distorted thinking
are often socially supported and reinforced by the
offender’s peer group.
 Working with offenders
 Approaches to working with offenders have
inevitably changed as our understanding of
antisocial and criminal behaviour has developed,
moving from psychodynamic psychotherapy,
through group therapy, to behaviour modification.

 Although there are those who see little merit in

using treatment to reduce offending, since the mid
1990s there has been a renewed interest in the
treatment approach, stimulated by a clutch of
studies using meta-analysis.
 Using meta-analysis to inform
treatment programmes
 Meta-analysis allows inspection of the aggregated
findings from a group of studies around a common
theme.

 Its use in studies into the effects of offender

treatment has had a profound effect on recent
practice.
 Offender treatment meta-analyses draw the critical
distinction between clinical and criminogenic
outcome variables.
 In this context, ‘clinical outcomes’ refers to changes
in some dimension of personal functioning, such as
psychological adjustment, attitudes or social
competence.
 On the other hand, ‘criminogenic outcomes’ refers
specifically to measures concerned with crime, such
as self-reported delinquency, official reconvictions
and type of offence.
 As the evidence accumulates, a broad consensus has
been reached regarding the characteristics of
treatments that impact on offending:
1. Indiscriminate targeting of treatment programmes is
counterproductive in reducing recidivism.
2. The type of treatment programme is important, with
stronger evidence for structured behavioural and
multimodal approaches than for less focused
approaches.
3. The most successful studies, while behavioural in
nature, include a cognitive component.
4. Treatment programmes should be designed to
engage high levels of offender responsivity.

5. Treatment programmes conducted in the

community have a stronger effect than residential
programmes.

6. The most effective programmes have high treatment

integrity, in that they are carried out by trained staff,
and treatment initiators are involved in all the
operational phases of the treatment programmes.
 The translation into practice of these principles
derived from meta-analysis has become known as the
What Works form of treatment programmes
(McGuire, 1995).

 The possibilities raised by the What Works principles

have been recognized in the UK at a government
policy level (Vennard, Sugg & Hedderman, 1997)
and have significantly influenced work with offenders
in prison and on probation.
 Offending behaviour
programmes – an example
 Aggression Replacement Training (ART) is an
excellent example of a programme approach to
working with offenders.
 ART was developed in the USA during the 1980s as a
means of working with violent offenders.
 This training programme has proved to be an effective
way of reducing aggressive behaviour; ART has
continued to be developed as the evidence base grows
and practice techniques become more refined.
 ART consists of three components, delivered
sequentially, and so would qualify as a
multimodal programme:

1. Skillstreaming involves the teaching of skills

to replace out-of-control, destructive behaviours
with constructive, prosocial behaviours.
2. Anger control training first establishes the
individual specific triggers for anger, then uses
the anger management techniques of:
i. enhancing awareness of internal anger cues
ii. teaching coping strategies
iii. skills training

iv. self-instruction

v. social problem solving

3. Moral reasoning training is concerned with

enhancing moral reasoning skills and widening
social perspective taking.
Offender treatment programmes conducted in the
community have a stronger effect than residential
programmes. (Fig. 21.6)
 Summary
 Forensic psychology covers a great deal of ground,
stretching into many areas including (but not limited
to): cognitive psychology, as seen in the studies of
eyewitness testimony, interview techniques, and
social information processing accounts of violence;
developmental psychology (which is critical for our
understanding of delinquent development); and social
psychology (which plays an important role in theories
of criminal behaviour).
 There are a number of factors that can influence the
accuracy of eyewitness memory, and research into
the accuracy of eyewitness testimony focuses on
three areas: acquisition, retention and retrieval.
Research has also been put to good use in assisting
police in structuring witness interviews
appropriately.

 Sometimes people confess to crimes they did not

commit, but there are important differences between
voluntary and coerced confessions – in the case of
coerced confessions, the suspect may even come to
believe that their own memory for events false.
 During crime investigations, interviewers use a
variety of techniques to enhance memory retrieval in
witnesses. Some of enable the process of retrieval
from memory to take place in a similar psychological
context to that in which the information was first
recorded, while others encourage the witness to try to
use many different paths to retrieve the information.

 Even skilled questioners find it difficult to detect lies

and deceit simply on the basis of a suspect’s verbal
and non-verbal cues, so more advanced approaches
are often needed.
 Thanks to studies such as The Cambridge Study in
Delinquent Development, we now know that there
are factors present during childhood that can
predict adult offending, and important influences
over the lifespan that help to explain and
characterize violent conduct.

 Like all good psychologists (and perhaps unlike

their depiction in the popular media), forensic
psychologists are concerned with evidence (in
terms of methodologies for gathering robust data
and appropriate methods of analysis) upon which to
base appropriate theories and practice.
 Approaches to working with offenders have changed
as our understanding of antisocial and criminal
behaviour has developed, moving from
psychodynamic psychotherapy, through group
therapy, to behaviour modification, and a broad
consensus has been reached regarding the
characteristics of treatments that impact on offending.