What is Forensic Psychology?

• Study of the behavior and mental processes of those who

engage in criminal behavior.
• Forensic vs. Clinical psychology
• Forensic vs. Corrections psychology
• How does one get to be a forensic psychologist
– Back to clinical programs
• Research, internships
– Forensic programs
– FBI
 Crime Statistics
• M. Twain
• Government statistics exaggerate some crimes, underreport others:
– Homicide rates probably mildly underreported
– Some crimes like rape and molestation may go unreported
– Crimes perpetrated by women or children may go unreported
– Property crimes probably underreported
– drug crimes probably overreported
• Media reports almost certainly far overexaggerated:
– Ex. “1 in 4 women have been raped” Koss (1987) Ms. Magazine
– Most empirical figures vary around 7-15%
– Ex. 1 in 4 homes are visited by crime each year
– Ex. 1 in 4 Africa-American males become criminals
– The Law of One in Four
 A story….
• Here’s a chance to test your “novice” psychological profiling skills:
– I’ll give you the crime, you tell me whodunnit.
– Think in terms of demographics (age, sex, race) and personality and IQ
• Dec 24, 1990 the perpetrator drugs Tammy Homolka, age 15, with
Halcion and Halothane and rapes her. The perpetrator, with a willing
partner, photographs and videotapes the sex acts with the victim.
Tammy vomits as a reaction to the drugs and suffocates.
• Mid-June 1991, Leslie Mahaffy (15) disappears after phoning a friend
from a 7-11. She is raped and tortured over two days, the proceedings
videotaped. She is discovered piece by piece June 29.
• Nov. 1991 Terry Anderson (14) vanishes
• April, 1992 Kristen French (16) abducted, raped and tortured over
Easter Weekend. She is strangled, her nude body shorn of all hair and
left in a ditch.
Which one is the serial killer?
 Karla Homolka
• With the aid of her husband, rapes and kills first her sister, then three
other girls.
• Attempts to blame her sexual predation on “battered wife syndrome”

However:
It is subsequently revealed that she is an equal
partner in the murders.

Most people believe that almost all violent

offenders are male, when in fact women make
up a sizable percentage (based on type of
crime--15% overall, about 50% of intimates)
Where do we get our perceptions
of crime?
• Our perceptions of criminals are dictated to us by variety of groups:
– Government:
• What is the motivation of government?
• Drug offenses
– Media
• Crime hyperbole
• Presentations of minorities
• Murder She Wrote and CSI
– Political correctness
• Koss “rape is on a continuum with normal male behavior”
• domestic violence statistics (Steinmetz)
• Criminals as a product of environment
 Historical Perspectives in Psychology

• Psychodynamic
• Behavioral
• Humanistic
– None of these spoke specifically about crime
– All three have generally been discarded for
research purposes
– Currently no one centralized theory of
psychology
Current Psychological Perspectives on Crime:

• Generally assumed that criminals are “deviant”

• Psychology recognizes the contribution of:
– sociology
– biology
• However, views these as “risk factors” not causes
– not everyone with a “risk factor” (ex. low SES)
becomes a criminal
– Not all criminals have “risk factors”
 Psychology and Crime

• Crime results through a multivariate combination of risk

factors in an individual whose temperament or personality
already predisposes him/her to criminal behavior.
– No one single cause of crime (even within any one individual)
– Individual contributes to, and thus is ultimately responsible for
own behavior
– however no consensus on “free will” or “nature of man”
– Approach consistent with 2 major psychological approaches to
crime:
• Social Learning Theory
• Diathesis-Stress Model
Social Learning Theory (Bandura, 1977)

I n d iv id u a l

E n v ir o n m e n t B io lo g y
 Social Learning Theory (continued)
• Modeling
– Exposure to child abuse may result in conduct disorder (Olds et
al., 1998)
– However this does not ALWAYS happen
– We choose whom to model (we are not determined or “forced” to
model)
– TV/Movie violence (Columbine, Matrix and availability heuristic)
– Head Start

• Vicarious reinforcement
– Bad neighborhoods
 Diathesis-Stress
• A more quasi-medical approach to criminal psychology
than is social learning theory
• Assumes criminal behavior results from a “disorder”
which is internal to the individual
• However, not a deterministic model
– diathesis: Biological or personality predisposition
– stress: life events
• Thus crime (or any disorder) results from an interaction of
a predisposition for that disorder with life stress in the
absence of coping skills.
 Diathesis-Stress (continued)
• Multiaxial classification of disorders:
– Not one, but two types of disorders may produce criminal behavior
– AXIS I: Clinical/Mental Disorders(depression, schizophrenia, etc.)
• Most (e.g. depression) do not imply loss of rational thought
• Generally speaking only psychotic disorders may result in
decreases in rational thought
• Contrary to what you might hear, psychotics ARE somewhat
more likely to engage in crime, however:
– Most crime is “nuisance” crime
– Violent crime is “disorganized” in nature
– Most criminals are not psychotic
 AXIS II
• AXIS II disorders include mental retardation and (more
importantly) personality disorders
• These are not mental illnesses, nor are they generally
curable or treatable
• Personality disorders imply that the person’s thought
patterns, interpretations of the world and behavior are
“deviant”and this is how they “naturally” are
– not a mental illness
– life long and pervasive
– personality is virtually unchangeable--no empirically validated
treatments exist for personality disorders
 Personality Disorders and Crime

• Antisocial Personality Disorder (Psychopathy, Sociopathy)

– Hedonistic calculus
– No empathy/guilt/remorse
– Violate rights/well-being of others
– Usually highly charming, above average intelligence
– Thrill seeking behavior
– 4% of males 1% of females in US
– highly associated with crime in both males and females (e.g.
Salekin et al., 1997; Hare, 1983).
– Sadistic Subtype (Millon, 1996)
– However, not all psychopaths are criminals, not all criminals are
psychopaths
 Borderline Personality Disorder
• Far more common in females (3-1 ratio; APA, 2000)
• Impulsive and self destructive (substance abuse, self-mutilation)
• Manipulative (e.g. parasuicides)
• Excessive use of rationalization, blame others
• intense mood swings (usually socially directed)
• intense fear of rejection
• poor anger control
• poor identity formation
• empirically linked with violent crime in females (e.g. Butler, 1965)
• Sometimes mistaken for Bipolar, due to mood swings, but this is not a
mental illness (Bipolar mood swings take place over days or weeks, not
hours or minutes, and are less superficial)
 Weaknesses of Diathesis-Stress
• Not everyone with AXIS I or AXIS II disorder
commits crime, not everyone who commits crime
has a disorder
• Levels of analysis problem: “But what causes the
personality disorder?”
– No consensus on either biological or sociological origin
of personality
 History of Law
• Legal codes throughout history have tended to be fairly unreliable
• Code of Hammurabi (circa 1750 BC)
• Pax Romana
– allowed for imposition of Roman law over conquered people
– personal freedom
– women’s rights
• Anglo-Saxon law
– Wergild penalties
– Common law
• Normans
– Magna Carta
– Circuit judges
 History of Law Part 2
• American law
– Like most of American government, based on English system
– Torts (civil suits)
• Ozzy, Judas Priest, Styx, and suicide
• Felonies and Misdemeanors
• Mala in Se (murder, incest)
– Is rape Mala in Se?
• Mala Prohibitum
• Organized and Disorganized crimes
 Crime Statistics revisited
• Index Crimes
– Reported in Uniform Crime Reports
– murder, rape, assault, robbery, burglary, arson, larceny, MV theft
– basically counts crimes reported to police
– are all crimes reported though?
– Changes in classification
• ex. Rape in Philadelphia
• National Crime Victimization Survey
– self-report survey
– problems with sampling and question format
• Most crime statistics reported in news based on one of these 2
 Taken with a grain of salt
• Crime had been decreasing (lowest level since 1960s)
– Multinational trend
• Crime rates were highest in the 1930s.
• Crime clocks are misleading:
– Do not take population increases into account
• Which part of the country has the most crime:
– South East
– Texas and Florida are the biggest villains
– Southern Culture of Honor? (Nisbett, 1993)
 Why so much crime in the US
• Actually property crimes in the US aren’t so bad, and may be lower
than many European countries
• We have highest % incarcerated citizens for industrial nation
– War on drugs
• Why are we so violent then?
– TV violence and Bandura
– But we may not really be all that violent
• We have more opportunity for violence
• Guns don’t kill people
– But they DO make it easier for people to kill people
• Majority of gun homicides committed with legally owned handguns
• Do illegal handguns grow on the handgun tree?
 Per Capita Murder/Manslaughter Rate

0
2
4
6
8
10
12
1960
1963
1966
1969
1972
1975
1978
1981

Year
1984
1987
1990
1993
1996
1999
2002
Murder Rates

2005
Series1
 Video Games and Crime
300 60

250 50

200 40 Video Games

(Units Sold in
Millions)
150 30
Youth Violence
(Serious Violent
100 20 Crimes)

50 10

0 0

1996 2000 2005

 England hasn’t always been the
gold standard either...
• Victorian England was riddled with crime
• London’s East End-Whitechapel
• England has had a steady century of low
crime since then, with only modest
increases in the last few decades
• Victorian Crime symbolized by the
Whitechapel murders
 WhiteChapel Murders
• 1888, East end London
• “Jack the Ripper” kills 5 prostitutes
• No evidence of rape or any sexual context to the crimes
– Is serial murder a “sex” crime even when there is no
sex?
• Technically speaking this crime is unsolved however:
– Most experts have one particular suspect in mind
– however “armchair” criminology is often given to
mistakes
• No DNA or fingerprint evidence available at the time.
• No useful eyewitness accounts
 Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols
• 42 y.o. prostitute with 5 children
– prostitutes of the time had a tough life
• Killed on street in high prostitution area
• Killer brought weapon with him
• throat slashed 2x, left to right
• stabbed in groin
• breast slashed open
• disemboweled
• nothing taken from victim
• What can we glean from this crime
– Organized or Disorganized?
– Planned or Spontaneous?
 7 Days later...
• Annie Chapman
• 47 y.o. prostitute
• Eyewitness sees her with gentleman just prior to death
– 40ish
– negotiating sex act?
• Throat slashed 2x left to right
• ripped from rectum to breast
• on ground three cones and apron in pan of blood
• “Catch me if you can?”
– real?
• What can we hypothesize about the perpetrator?
• Childhood?
 Elizabeth Stride
• 45 y.o. prostitute
• throat slashed once
• Man on buggy witnesses crime
• No further mutilation of corpse
• Scared off?
• Why target prostitutes?
 As you can imagine Jack is not
pleased...
• That same night, Catherine Eddowes is attacked
• Witness accounts…box in newspaper
• Throat slash 1x left to right
• removed pancreas, liver, 1 kidney, uterus
• This all took 7 minutes
• Washes hands, hankerchief (East End?)
• “The Juwes are not the men who will be blamed for nothing.”
• Nature of mutilation?
• Why are prostitutes still streetwalking?
• Complaint letter
 Mary Kelley
• 5 weeks later, attacked in her home
• Negotiated sex act?
• Mutilations took over 1 hour
• Burned bloody rags in stove
• Cut away all flesh from:
– face
– ribcage
– 1 thigh
• slashed throat
• ripped from rectum to breastbone
• decapitated
• What does THIS tell us?
 WhiteChapel: Sex Crime?
• The FBI argues all serial murders are sex crimes.
• Most experts disagree (e.g. Holmes and Holmes, 1998)
• No clear evidence of sexual element in these crimes
• Most telling is Mary Kelley
– for other crimes it could be argued masturbation fantasies were
subsequent to the murders
– It is unlikely, given the extra time available, that he would have missed
the opportunity to sexualize Mary Kelley if that were his motive
• Probably a more of a “poacher” --hatred of women?
• However, uterocentricism hints at mother focus
 The Usual Suspects:
• Dr. William Gull
– surgical knowledge
– seemed to know much about the crimes
• Prince Albert Victor
– profound hatred of women
– allegedly frequented prostitutes, assaulted some
• Arron Kosminksi
– #1 suspect, fits FBI “cheat” profile
– allegedly molested by his mother as a child
– borderline psychotic
– his incarceration in an asylum ends the Whitechapel murders, though he is
never formally charged with the crime.
• James Maybrick