Forensic Psychology For Dummies

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Authors: David Canter

BOOK: Forensic Psychology For Dummies

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Table of Contents

Introduction

About This Book
Conventions Used in This Book
What You’re Not to Read
Foolish Assumptions
How This Book Is Organised
Part I: Nailing Forensic Psychology: A Moving Target
Part II: Helping the Police Solve Crimes
Part III: Measuring the Criminal Mind
Part IV: Viewing Psychology in Court
Part V: Helping and Treating Offenders
Part VI: The Part of Tens
Icons Used in This Book
Where to Go from Here

Part I: Nailing Forensic Psychology: A Moving Target

Chapter 1: Discovering the Truth about Forensic Psychology
Grasping What Forensic Psychology Is Not
Finding out that forensic psychology isn’t forensics
Distinguishing forensic psychology from psychiatry
Recognising What Forensic Psychology Is
Step 1: Crime starts with a criminal
Step 2: Reporting of the crime
Step 3: Investigation gets underway
Step 4: An offender is apprehended
Step 5: Conviction for a crime
Step 6: After the trial
Reviewing the origins of forensic psychology
Examining the Building Blocks of Forensic Psychology
Experimenting
Studying in the field
Assessing and measuring
Studying individual cases
Getting theoretical
Professional ethics
Working with Others: People and Places That Forensic Psychologists Encounter
In the courts
With victims
In prisons, ‘special hospitals’ and correctional institutions
With the police
Chapter 2: Exploring the World of the Criminal
Defining Criminals and Crimes
Getting caught (or not)
Careering towards criminality
Identifying different forms of similar crimes
Committing a Crime: What Leads Someone to Break the Law
Giving birth to criminals?
Keeping bad company
Abusing substances
Passing it on in the blood
Thinking about crime
Getting personal with the personality of many criminals
Investigating Mental Disorder and Crime
Enjoying the urge to hurt: Sadism
Loving yourself: Narcissism
Sitting on the fence: Borderline personality disorder
Suffering psychosis
Understanding Why Not Everyone Is a Criminal
Factoring in protective factors
Lacking the opportunity
Fearing being caught
Aging: ‘I’m too old for all this!’
Chapter 3: Providing Expert Evidence: Forensic Psychology and the Law
Understanding That Legal Systems Vary Worldwide
Facing up to an opponent: The adversarial system
Keeping things brief in court: The inquisitorial system
Examining the US system: Constitution, federal and state laws
Considering the implications for forensic expertise
Using Your Experience and Knowledge: What Is an Expert Witness?
Being called as an expert in criminal proceedings
Appearing as an expert in civil proceedings
Keeping Your Lips Sealed: What an Expert Can’t Comment On
Staying within your competence
Avoiding the ultimate question
Remaining unprejudiced
Detailing the Dangers: Ensuring Trial by Jury and not Trial by Expert
Accepting the restrictions of being an expert in court
Criticising the role of forensic psychology experts in court

Part II: Helping the Police Solve Crimes

Chapter 4: Interviewing Witnesses and Victims
Understanding the Nature of Interviews: Why Are You Asking Me That?
Interviewing and its connection to other sources of information
Managing the process: Interviews as conversations
Remembering That Memory Can Mislead
Recalling past events
Forgetting: Why do people fail to remember?
Facing up to false memories
Assisting Witnesses and Victims to Remember
Letting someone speak: The cognitive interview
Interviewing suspects
Dealing with false confessions
Using investigative hypnosis
Helping children tell what happened
Looking Into Eyewitness Testimony
Assessing eyewitness accuracy
Understanding unconscious transference
Minimising bias: Good practice recommendations
Chapter 5: Exposing Liars and Detecting Deception
Understanding the Nature of Lying
Discovering the difficulties of successful deception
Summarising why detecting deception is so difficult
Detecting Lies: Some Attempted Procedures
Using physiological approaches
Observing carefully: Behavioural approaches
Studying semantic assessment
Looking at legal approaches
Ways in Which Lying Is Used to Commit Crime
Combating insurance fraud
Discovering false allegations
Tackling extortion
Interviewing Suspects to Sort Truth from Lies
Dealing with false confessions
Encountering the IEE approach in the US
Interrogating suspects
Examining Documents to Help Solve Crimes
Entering the world of document experts
Chapter 6: Profiling Offenders and Distinguishing the Types of Crimes They Commit
Investigating ‘Offender Profiling’
Jack the Ripper
The mad bomber of New York
The railway murderer
Demythologising ‘profiling’
Delving Into Investigative Psychology
Following the investigative cycle
Profiling equations
Facing the challenge of contingencies
Hearing the stories people tell themselves: Criminal narratives
Locating offenders geographically
Distinguishing between Crimes
Dealing with property crimes
Working on violent crimes
Questioning Whether This Chapter Should be Published
Chapter 7: Understanding Victims of Crime and Their Experiences
Suffering at the Hands of Criminals: Who Become Victims of Crime?
Identifying the victims
Breaking the cycle: Criminals becoming victims and victims becoming criminals
Establishing who’s at risk of repeat victimisation
Understanding the Effects of Crimes on Victims
Viewing burglary as violation
Experiencing uncertainty: The worst part is not knowing
Suffering from the trauma of rape
Examining the effects of physical abuse on children
Identifying and handling traumatic brain injury
Assessing the Psychological Effects of a Crime on a Victim
Dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder
Offering restorative justice
Chapter 8: Preventing Crime: Problems, Processes and Perseverance
Understanding the Difficulties of Preventing Crime
Keeping pace with the evolution of crime
Asking whether prison works
Getting tough on the causes of crime
Succeeding only in displacing crime
Examining Ways to Prevent (or at Least Combat) Crime
Making crime more difficult
Ensuring that crime doesn’t pay
Disrupting criminal careers
Changing the law
Using Psychological Understanding to Combat Specific Types of Crime
Negotiating in hostage situations
Tackling criminal street gangs
Using psychology against criminal networks

Part III: Measuring the Criminal Mind

Chapter 9: Measuring, Testing and Assessing the Psychology of Offenders
Introducing Psychological Measurement
Getting to Grips with Psychological Measurement Methods
Talking with people: Interview protocols
Saying what you see: Projective techniques
Assessing intelligence and skills through performance
Standardising psychological tests
Identifying the Different Aspects That Measurement Methods Assess
Thinking ability: Cognitive tests
Discerning a person’s personality
Discovering beliefs: Attitude scales
Classifying mental disorders
Testing the Tests
Aiming for test reliability
Evaluating a test’s validity
Standing up over time: Test robustness
Achieving precision: The need for norms
Creating and Giving Psychological Tests
Chapter 10: Diagnosing Evil: Measuring the Criminal Mind
Uncovering Possible Malingering
Evaluating reported symptoms
Testing memory
Exploring Cognitive Distortions, Justifications and Sexual Deviance
Examining the Inability to Relate: Psychopathy
Getting to grips with psychopathy
The psychopathy checklist
Assessing the Risk of Future Offending
Appraising sexual violence risk
Working with the young: Juvenile Sexual Offender Protocol

Part IV: Viewing Psychology in Court

Chapter 11: Giving Guidance in Legal Proceedings
Assessing Insanity Pleas in Court
Claiming diminished responsibility
Making sense of madness
Examining Issues of Competency
Considering children’s competency
Restoring someone’s competence
Getting Controversial: Examining Syndromes in Court
Post-traumatic stress disorder
Battered woman syndrome
Parental alienation syndrome
Premenstrual stress syndrome
Rape trauma syndrome
Munchausen syndrome by proxy
Making Judgements for Risk Assessment
Psychological Autopsy
Conducting psychological autopsies into possible suicides
Contesting wills
Providing Expert Testimony in Civil Proceedings
Examining the capacity to consent to treatment
Assessing for compensation
Detailing a Forensic Psychologist’s Report
Chapter 12: Making Sense in Court: Psychological Aspects of the Legal Processes
Uncovering Psychology in the Courts
Examining existing legal rituals
Understanding the court process: Order of ceremony
Delving Into Jury Psychology
Facing decision time: How juries act and make decisions
Comprehending the legal rituals and terms
Dealing with inadmissible evidence
Making sense of the evidence
Cross-Examining the Psychology of Cross-Examination
Setting questions and giving answers
Avoiding leading questions
Getting the Desired Jury: How Psychologists Can Help
Selecting juries for scientific trials
Coaching witnesses

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