Psychology and Crime

What does a criminological psychologist actually do? Most people picture a modern-day
Sherlock Holmes, helping the police to solve crimes, but the reality is far more interesting
and complex. Psychology and Crime offers a fascinating introduction to criminological
psychology, providing the reader with a comprehensive grounding in everything from
cognitive forensics to police interviewing.
Concise, informative and accessible, the book explores a range of theories to understand
criminal behaviour, from the physiological to the social. It covers a range of contexts
within the criminal justice system where psychology offers unique insights, including
police investigation, the perspective of witnesses and victims, and courtroom proceedings.
Thoroughly updated throughout to reflect developments in the field, and featuring new
chapters covering cybercrime, terrorism and insights from neuroscience, this edition also
includes a student-friendly ‘Apply your learning’ feature and case studies to bring the
research to life.
Accessibly written for all levels and with concise coverage of both classic and
contemporary psychological theory, this is the ideal book for anyone studying criminal or
forensic psychology.

Aidan Sammons has been teaching, writing about, and training teachers of introductory
psychology for over 20 years.

David Putwain has taught psychology from GCSE through to doctoral level for over 25
years. His research interests focus on how psychology can be used in applied contexts.
Psychology and
Crime
2nd Edition

Aidan Sammons and

David Putwain
First published 2019
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 Contents

List of tables x
1 Introduction 1

The origins of criminological psychology 2

Applying psychological principles to crime 3
Forensic psychology 4
Aims, organisation and content of this book 5
2 Defining and measuring crime 6
What is a crime? What is a criminal? 6
The legalistic approach 7
The deviance approach 7
Variables associated with criminality 8
Age 8
Gender 9
Socio-economic status 10
Race and ethnicity 10
Measuring crime 11
Official crime statistics 11
Victimisation surveys 12
Offender surveys 13
Trends in crime 15
Victimisation 16
Property crime 16
Violent crime 16
Intimate violence and sexual crime 17
Repeat victimisation 17
Effects of victimisation 18
Fear of crime 20
Chapter summary 20
Further reading 21
3 Biologically oriented explanations of offending 22
Biological differences between offenders and non-offenders 23
Low heart rate 23
Brain structure and functioning 23
 Contents

Brain chemistry 26
Influences on the nervous system 27
Genetics 27
Genetic influences and evolution 30
Environmental toxins: lead pollution 31
Traumatic brain injury 32
Adverse childhood experiences 33
Biopsychology and offending: general considerations 34
Chapter summary 35
Further reading 36
4 Psychologically oriented explanations of offending 37
Psychodynamic theories 37
Attachment, delinquency and offending 39
Eysenck’s personality theory 39
Psychopathy 41
Moral development 43
Social cognition 45
Cognitive and emotional deficits 46
Moral disengagement 46
Rational choice theory 48
Chapter summary 50
Further reading 50
5 Socially oriented explanations of offending 51
Social learning theory 51
The influence of TV, films and videogames 54
Labelling and self-fulfilling prophecy 57
Social identity theory 60
Poverty 62
Neighbourhood influences 64
Chapter summary 65
Further reading 66
6 Psychology and police investigations 67
The processing of forensic evidence 67
Police interviews 70
The standard interview procedure 70
Cognitive interviewing 71
Interrogation of suspects 73
False confessions 74
Ethical interviewing and the PEACE model 75
Offender profiling 77
Types of profiling 78
Crime scene analysis 78
Clinical profiling 79
Geographical profiling 79
Investigative psychology 80

vi
 Contents

Does profiling work? 81

Chapter summary 83
Further reading 84
7 Witness testimony 85
Cognitive processes and witness testimony 86
Weapon focus 87
Contamination by post-event information 88
Emotional arousal 90
Child witnesses 91
Identity parades (lineups) 93
Facial composites 96
Chapter summary 98
Further reading 98
8 Courtroom processes 99
Trial procedures 99
Juries 100
Jury size and composition 100
Jury deliberation 101
Influences on jury decisions 103
Persuasion by trial lawyers 103
The Yale Model 103
Systematic versus heuristic processing 104
Storytelling in court 104
Courtroom evidence 105
Pretrial publicity 106
Defendant characteristics 108
Attractiveness 108
Gender 108
Race/ethnicity 109
Death penalty decisions 110
Issues arising from mock jury research 111
Chapter summary 112
Further reading 113
9 Judicial responses to offending 114
Imprisonment 114
Does prison work? 115
Retribution 116
Incapacitation 116
Deterrence 117
Reform 118
Why does prison not reform offenders? 119
Effects of imprisonment 120
Imprisonment: general considerations 122
Non-custodial sentencing 122
Fines 123

vi
i
 Contents

Probation and community sentences 124

Restorative justice 126
Chapter summary 127
Further reading 128
10 Crime prevention 129
Approaches to crime prevention 129
Situational crime prevention 130
Improved street lighting 131
Closed-circuit television 131
Defensible space 132
Developmental crime prevention 132
School-based programmes 133
Community-based programmes 133
Family programmes 134
Offender rehabilitation 134
Anger management programmes 135
Sex offender programmes 137
The reasoning and rehabilitation programme 138
Crime prevention: general considerations 139
Chapter summary 140
Further reading 140
11 Contemporary topics: terrorism and cybercrime 141
Terrorism 141
Psychological effects of terrorism 142
Who becomes a terrorist? 143
Explanations of terrorism 144
De-radicalisation 145
Cybercrime 147
Measuring cybercrime 148
Involvement in cybercrime 148
Explanations of cybercrime 149
Personality 150
Social learning theory 151
Routine activity theory 152
Future developments 153
Chapter summary 153
Further reading 154
12 Critical perspectives: crime, gender and race 155
The mainstream view 155
Critical perspectives on crime 156
Feminism, gender and crime 157
Woman offenders 158
Intimate partner violence 159
Feminism: general considerations 161

viii
 Contents

Critical perspectives on ethnicity, race and crime 162

‘Intrinsic criminality’ and racism in criminological psychology
163 Critical Race Theory 164
Chapter summary 167
Further reading 167

References 169
Index 205

i
x
 Tables

1.1 Examples of pure psychology applied to criminological questions 3

4.1 Levels and stages of moral development in Kohlberg’s theory 44
6.1 Interrogation techniques recommended by Inbau et al. (2011) 73
8.1 Stages in jury decision making (Hastie et al., 1983) 102
10.1 Meta-analyses of CBT programmes for sex offenders 138
11.1 Steps in the ‘staircase model’ of terrorist involvement
(Moghaddam, 2005) 144
11.2 Typology of cybercriminal groups (McGuire, 2012) 149

x
CHAPTER

1
Introduction

Imagine asking a member of the public the following question:

■ What is a criminological psychologist?

■ What does a criminological psychologist do?
■ What types of people do criminological psychologists work with?

The answers to these questions are likely to be informed by TV programmes, films and,
possibly, high-profile media cases. In the public imagination, the criminologi-cal
psychologist is a Sherlock Holmes-like figure, solving crimes and mysteries with a
combination of arcane scientific knowledge and penetrating insight into the work-ings of
the criminal mind. This makes good television but it does not represent the reality of
criminological psychology. Criminological psychologists do sometimes contribute directly
to police investigations but this is a relatively minor aspect of a very diverse field.
Psychologists are involved in researching the causes of crime, rehabilitating offenders,
preventing crime, providing expert advice to law enforce-ment and the courts and a great
deal more. Criminological psychology is just one of a number of academic disciplines that
contribute to policing and criminal justice. Others include criminology, sociology,
psychiatry and law. Each has its own pur-pose, assumptions and methods and,
consequently, each has something different to contribute to understanding and tackling
crime.
Psychology is, broadly, the use of scientific methods to understand the behaviour of
individuals. The contribution psychology can make to criminological issues reflects the
strengths and limitations of the discipline as a whole. Psychologists undergo rigorous
training in research methods, which makes them well placed to conduct investigations and
to comment on and evaluate the research and practices of others. However, psychology
tends to over-emphasise individual factors at the expense of social ones. In explaining
crime, psychologists focus on things like brain function, personality and thinking
processes. Sociology and criminology, by con-trast, are much more likely to focus on
social structural factors like inequality and social class. Although they frequently disagree
on where the emphasis should go, each of these disciplines complements the others. In
isolation, each tells only part of the story of crime and victimisation but, together, they
give a more comprehensive

1
 chapter 1 Introduction

picture. Consequently, this book draws on sociological and criminological research as well
as psychological.

The origins of criminological psychology

Criminological psychology emerged as a distinct field in the 1960s but its origins are
much earlier. A key influence was the work of Cesare Lombroso in the late 19th century.
Lombroso was the first to advance the view that criminality is a herita-ble, constitutional
characteristic. He suggested that criminals were a biologically distinct class of people who
exhibited ‘atavistic’ or primitive features. They com-mitted crimes because they were
dominated by their primitive aggressive, sexual and acquisitive urges. Lombroso claimed
that their atavistic nature led not only to criminal behaviour but also to distinct physical
forms. Consequently, he believed that criminals could be identified from their features,
such as heavy brows and strong jawbones. Different types of criminal were said to have
different features, so murderers had bloodshot eyes and curly hair whereas sex offenders
had thick lips and projecting ears. Lombroso supported his claims with measurements
taken from the skulls of known criminals. However, he did not compare these data with
measurements of non-criminals and, consequently, did not establish that the fea-tures he
identified as ‘criminal’ only occurred in the criminal population. He also did not
distinguish clearly between criminals and those suffering from various psy-chological
disorders. It is also the case that Lombroso’s views reflected many of the prejudices of his
time and he was overtly racist in linking criminality with minority ethnicity (Holmes,
2015; see Chapter 12). For these and many other reasons, Lom-broso’s work is rejected
nowadays. However, his important contribution was to insist on empirical evidence and (a
version of) the scientific method in presenting his work. This helped to move discussion of
criminality away from moral and phil-osophical discourse and into the realm of scientific
research.

Another key early influence on criminological psychology was the psycho-logical

laboratory founded by Wilhelm Wundt in Leipzig in 1879 (Gudjonsson & Haward, 1998).
Wundt was instrumental in establishing psychology as a scientific discipline where the
measurement and experimental manipulation of sensory and behavioural phenomena were
foregrounded. Wundt’s students studied a range of psychological processes with
applications to everyday life. This included topics like witness memory, which is still
central to criminological psychology (see Chapter 7). One of Wundt’s students, Hugo
Munsterberg, settled in the United States, where he advocated for the introduction of
applied psychology to the courtroom (with limited success) and carried out extensive
research into the effect of leading ques-tions on testimony, the discrepancies between
witnesses to an event, the impact of attentional focus and the misleading nature of witness
confidence, all of which remain current topics of interest (Memon et al., 2008). However,
while psycholo-gists researched and commented on crime and related topics throughout
the 20th century, it was not until the 1960s that criminological psychology emerged as a
distinct branch of psychology.

2
 chapter 1 Introduction

Applying psychological principles to crime

Criminological psychology is an example of ‘applied’ rather than ‘pure’ psychology. Pure
psychology refers to the type of research usually carried out by academics in universities
pursuing answers to questions about the basic processes of thinking and behaviour.
Although academic psychologists may also be interested in questions about ‘real-world’
processes, they tend to carry out their investigations in the labora-tory. This has the
advantage of controlling for the influence of nuisance and confound-ing variables
encountered in real-life situations. The researcher can create her own ‘micro-world’ where
every variable of interest can be isolated and its effect examined free of other influences.
Pure researchers usually belong to a theoretical tradition that influences the types of
question that interest them and the way they go about answer-ing them. For example,
cognitive psychologists typically use laboratory experiments to investigate phenomena like
attention, memory and problem solving. This is all done without necessarily considering
how such processes might operate in real-life settings.
In criminological psychology, theories and research findings from pure psychol-ogy are
applied to the questions raised by real-life legal and criminal problems. The pure
theoretical approaches can be applied to crime and criminal justice in a number of ways
(see Table 1.1).

TABLE 1.1 Examples of pure psychology applied to criminological questions

Pure psychological areas Criminological psychology topics

Cognitive psychology studies The distorting effect of perceptual, attentional

mental processes including and memory processes on witness testimony
perception, attention, memory and (e.g. the effect of leading questions);
problem solving techniques to improve witness accuracy (e.g.
cognitive interviewing); criminal decision
making (e.g. rational choice theory)
Social psychology studies social Social influences on criminal behaviour (e.g.
interaction and the effect of situational gang membership and learning from the peer
and group influences on behaviour group); group decision making by juries
Developmental psychology studies The role of parental attachment and early
changes in psychological attributes adverse experiences in criminal behaviour; the
over the lifespan, for example, the effect of victimisation on child development;
development of moral reasoning developmental crime prevention
and personality and the influence of
parenting and other environmental
factors on development
Learning theory studies how the The role of learning from the family or peer
environment shapes behaviour group in offending; the use of techniques to
modify the behaviour of offenders
Biopsychology studies the influence The role of genetics, brain structure and
of physiological processes on functioning and neurochemistry in offending
behaviour, including the workings of
the nervous system and the
influence of genetics on behaviour
3
 chapter 1 Introduction

Forensic psychology
The terms criminological, forensic, criminal and legal psychology are often used
interchangeably, which can be confusing. Criminological, criminal and legal psy-chology
all refer in a general way to the application of psychology to crime and the law. Forensic
psychology, however, has a restricted meaning. Forensic psychology denotes expert
professional knowledge of psychology as it applies to the courts and legal processes. The
majority of forensic psychologists work within the court and prison system, giving expert
evidence, advising courts and parole boards, designing and implementing offender
rehabilitation programmes and doing research into offending and rehabilitation. In the UK,
‘forensic psychologist’ is a legally protected title: a person may only use it if he has
completed an approved course of study and accreditation and has been granted a licence to
practise by the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC). Anyone who calls himself a
forensic psychologist but is not registered with the HCPC is breaking the law and may be
prosecuted.

Forensic psychologists may find themselves doing a great range of activi-ties. In their
clinical role, they may be asked to psychologically assess individ-uals who come into
contact with the authorities and advise those authorities accordingly. For example, Brown
(1997) describes a case in which an adolescent complained to the police that she was
receiving frequent, indecent phone calls. Despite continuous monitoring of the phone line,
nothing was intercepted. She then alleged that her property was being smeared with paint
and some items were shown to the police, damaged as described. She became rather
belligerent at the police station and considerable time was spent in enquiries. A forensic
psychologist was asked to provide an assessment as to whether the complainant was
manufacturing the evidence in order to satisfy some psychological need. The result of the
assessment confirmed the police’s suspicion that she had fabri-cated the incidents.

In their experimental role, a forensic psychologist might be asked to investi-gate

questions relating to evidence presented in a criminal case. Brown (1997) gives the
example of a case in which three motorcyclists were charged with caus-ing the death by
dangerous driving of two other riders. The case hinged on a claim by a police officer that
he had seen the motorcyclists speeding and had taken their number plates. But was it really
possible to recall four muddy num-ber plates, two and a half inches high, at a distance of
90 yards? Psychologists set up a laboratory experiment in which 100 participants were
asked to identify four sets of number plates. These were presented in a degraded form to
mimic the real conditions. They found that a few participants could recall one number plate
but none could recall all four. Although this cast doubt on the eyewitness evidence given
by the police officer, the jury was not convinced and all three of the motorcyclists were
convicted.

4
 chapter 1 Introduction

Aims, organisation and content of this book

The aim of this book is to introduce the reader to a range of psychological research into
crime. It is aimed at those who are studying introductory courses in crimi-nal psychology,
those who require a basic overview of the field for professional purposes and those who
are simply interested in the area. A book of this nature cannot hope to cover such a diverse
and complex field exhaustively, so the topics have been selected to reflect what is
encountered in most introductory courses and to illustrate the range of topics that
criminological psychology covers. Chapter 2 addresses basic questions about how crime is
defined and measured and outlines some research on victimisation. Chapters 3, 4 and 5
present a range of explana-tions of offending including biological, psychological and
social causes. Chapter 6 considers how psychological issues come to bear on police
investigations through an examination of how evidence is processed, how police interview
witnesses and suspects, and the controversial area of offender profiling. Chapter 7
examines how psychological processes affect witness memory and Chapter 8 outlines the
psychological processes that affect what happens in a courtroom, with particular emphasis
on how juries reach their verdicts. Chapter 9 discusses what happens to convicted
offenders through an examination of prison and the alternatives, and Chapter 10 extends
this into offender rehabilitation and the contributions of psy-chology to crime prevention.
The field of criminological psychology continually evolves and so Chapter 11 outlines two
areas that are of particular current interest, terrorism and cybercrime. Finally, Chapter 12
presents a range of critical perspec-tives on criminological psychology that offer
alternative views to the mainstream one that dominates both the field and this book. In
each chapter, a section called ‘Apply your learning’ invites you to develop your
understanding of what you read by applying it to real-world questions and, at the end of
each chapter, some further reading is suggested for those who wish to pursue a deeper
understanding of any of the topics presented.

5
 CHAPTER

2
Defining and
measuring crime
The study of offenders and offending requires some agreement between practi-tioners
about which people and acts should be studied. This chapter discusses dif-ferent
definitions of ‘criminal’, the relationship of offending with age, gender and socio-
economic status and different ways of measuring the extent of crime within society. Trends
in crime and victimisation are described. Finally, there is a discussion of the psychological
effects of victimisation and fear of crime in the general public.

What is a crime? What is a criminal?

The most straightforward answer to the question, ‘what is a crime?’ is: ‘any act that breaks
the criminal law’. Under this view, criminal law sets down, in an objective way, those
things that society considers harmful. This apparent simplicity hides a great deal of
complexity, as it does not address the question of why some acts are criminal and others
are not, or why the acts prohibited by law vary between differ-ent places and change over
time. For example, purchase of alcohol by people over the age of 18 is legal in the United
Kingdom but not in Saudi Arabia. An 18 year old purchasing alcohol in the UK has
occasioned no crime but the very same person in many parts of the US has. And between
1920 and 1933, under the ‘prohibition’ laws, most purchase and possession of alcohol in
the US was a crime, regardless of age. So the same act – the purchase of alcohol – either is
or is not a crime depending on where and when it took place. Even the act of deliberately
killing another human being may or may not be a crime depending on whether the killer
did so in order to inherit the victim’s money, to defend herself against a deadly threat, as a
soldier under orders on a battlefield or an official carrying out a judicial execution. No
behaviour is inherently criminal. Rather, societies define certain acts, under certain
circumstances, as criminal for a wide range of reasons. As societies change, so does
people’s understanding of and response to the act considered criminal. In other words,
crime is a social construct.

This raises difficulties for criminological psychologists. If their aim is to study crime
and criminals it is important for them to distinguish between those people who are objects
of study and those who are not. However, the socially constructed

6
 chapter 2 Defining and measuring crime

nature of crime makes this a matter of debate. To shed light on this problem it is useful to
consider two possible approaches to defining ‘criminal’, referred to here as the ‘legalistic’
and ‘deviance’ approaches.

The legalistic approach

The simplest definition of a criminal is a person who transgresses the laws of her society.
The problem with this definition is that it defines as ‘criminal’ many people who would
not normally be considered as such. There are few people who have never broken a single
law. Even someone who uses the work telephone for a per-sonal call, takes home some
office stationery for personal use or who picks up and pockets a banknote he finds in the
street may technically be breaking the law. If we define all such people as criminals then
virtually everyone is a criminal. This is clearly unsatisfactory. An alternative is to define
criminals as those who have been convicted of a crime by the state. It would follow from
this that we should study only those people who have a criminal record. This is also
unsatisfactory. In many cases, those responsible for a crime escape detection. If
apprehended, they may not be prosecuted and, if prosecuted, they may not be convicted.
Thus, many people who have committed criminal acts would not be considered
appropriate for study by criminological psychology. There are other problems with the
legalistic approach. First, the population of convicted offenders inevitably contains people
who have been wrongly convicted. Second, those who have been criminally con-victed
are, in a sense, ‘unsuccessful’ criminals. If we were to restrict ourselves to the study of
such individuals it is likely we would be using samples biased towards those attributes
(e.g. carelessness) that made it more likely they would be caught.

The deviance approach

Some writers (e.g. Sellin, 1938) suggest that the appropriate object of study for
criminological psychology is ‘deviance’, or ‘antisocial behaviour’, of which legally
defined crime is just a part. Under this definition, criminological psychologists should
study those people who behave in antisocial ways. Given the problems with the legalistic
view, this might seem more satisfactory. Unfortunately, the classifica-tion of behaviour as
deviant or antisocial is notoriously subjective and an act might be considered as pro- or
antisocial depending on one’s point of view. For example, defacing a building to draw
attention to the oppression of a particular group of peo-ple might be regarded as antisocial
by the building’s owner but prosocial by those sympathetic to the cause being represented.
This being the case, it is difficult to see how consensus could be achieved among
researchers about the acts they ought to be studying.

Different researchers resolve this issue in different ways but many follow the
suggestions of Blackburn (1993) who makes several useful recommendations. First,
‘criminal behaviour’ should be defined in terms of the conscious breaking of rules. That is,
the people of interest to criminological psychology are those who know what the rules are,
but do something different. This inevitably means that some

7
 chapter 2 Defining and measuring crime

behaviour that is legally permissible is nonetheless of interest to psychologists and

criminologists whereas other behaviour that is technically criminal is not. So those who
park their cars in the spaces reserved for parents with children are not com-mitting a crime
but might still be of interest because there is an underlying simi-larity between this act and
other acts that are illegal. This approach allows us to recognise the continuity between, for
example, conduct problems in childhood and later delinquency and criminality in
adolescence and adulthood. Second, Blackburn recommends that criminological
psychology should focus, in the main, on crime as legally defined. The problems this
raises notwithstanding, it at least offers research-ers a clear framework on which they can
agree.
The majority of ‘mainstream’ criminological psychologists accept this but not all.
Those who adopt one of the more critical perspectives on criminological psy-chology take
issue with this apparent willingness to admit, on the one hand, that ‘crime’ and ‘criminal’
are social constructs but, on the other hand, treat them as if they were natural or objective
facts. Critical perspectives raise questions about how the social construction of crime
relates to issues of power, gender and race in society (see Chapter 12).

Variables associated with criminality

Surveys in which people are asked about their own criminal activities suggest that the
prevalence of criminality (i.e. the number of people in the population commit-ting crimes)
is higher than many people assume. It could even be suggested that petty crime, rather than
being an aberration, is actually a normative activity among certain groups. The fact that
most people will break the law at some point in their lives notwithstanding, a minority of
people commit the majority of criminal offences and certain types of people are over-
represented in the offender population. Some of the variables associated with criminality
are age, gender, socio-economic status and ethnicity.

Age
Surveys of young people indicate that criminal acts are relatively common among this
group. The prevalence and incidence of offending (i.e. the number of offences committed)
starts to rise in adolescence and peaks around the age of 18, falling sharply thereafter. This
relationship is called the age–crime curve. The majority of offenders are in their teenage
years but by the age of 28, 85% of them have stopped committing crimes (Farrington,
1986). However, there are marked differences if different types of crime are accounted for.
Property crimes like theft or vandalism follow this pattern closely but fraud and
embezzlement are more likely to be com-mitted by older adults (Steffensmeier et al.,
1989), principally because opportunities are more plentiful to them.

Moffitt (1993) suggests that the age–crime curve conceals two distinct categories of
offender. Adolescence-limited (AL) offenders follow the pattern described above

8
 chapter 2 Defining and measuring crime

and account for the majority of offenders overall. Life-course-persistent (LCP) offenders
are a smaller group but are criminally active throughout their lives. They start to offend at
an earlier age following a history of conduct problems in child-hood and continue
offending into mature adulthood. Moffitt suggests that the two types of offender represent
distinct developmental processes. AL offending stems from a ‘maturity gap’ between a
person’s biological and social maturity. Although adolescents have reached adulthood
biologically, socially they are restricted from many adult behaviours. Delinquency is a
reaction against these restrictions and is learned from the peer group through social
learning processes (see Chapter 5). As they enter social adulthood, their social maturity
‘catches up’ with their biological maturity and consequently their motivation to offend
disappears. LCP offending, by contrast, is linked to neuropsychological deficits with a
range of causes (e.g. genetics, environmental toxins) which, when combined with an
adverse develop-mental environment (e.g. abuse, neglect) result to produce an antisocial
personality type with a high propensity to offend at all ages (see Chapter 3).

Gender
Criminal statistics consistently find that men commit more crime than women. Data from
the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study, a lon-gitudinal study of
around 1,000 people born in the early 1970s, suggest that this is true for most types of
offence but there are some exceptions. Rates of drug use and domestic violence are similar
between males and females and there are few gender differences in the types of low-level
delinquency that prevail in adolescence (Mof-fitt et al., 2001). The gender–crime gap has
been explained in a number of ways. One possibility is that offending patterns reflect
constitutional differences between women and men. Males have a higher risk of many
types of neurodevelopmental problem that could manifest in an increased tendency to
commit crimes. It is also believed that human males have developed a tendency towards
aggression through evolutionary processes, which might explain the preponderance of
males among violent criminals. However, gender differences in offending might also
reflect dif-ferences in the socialisation of women and men. Box (1983) found that
criminality in women correlated with the degree of female subordination and
powerlessness in society. Possibly, societies that stress a more ‘traditional’ feminine role
restrict the opportunities available to women to become involved in criminal activity.

Crime statistics from recent years have suggested that the gender disparity in offending
is reducing (Lauritsen et al., 2009). It has been suggested that the nar-rowing of the
gender–crime gap represents the ‘dark side’ of gender equality as women act on the
opportunities for offending previously denied them. However, crime has been falling since
the mid-1990s. The gender gap has narrowed princi-pally because rates of offending have
fallen faster in men than they have in women (Lauritsen et al., 2009). Where offending by
women has apparently increased, this may be because attitudes towards arresting and
charging female offenders have changed over time: the actual rate of offending by women
has been stable but an

9
 chapter 2 Defining and measuring crime

increased willingness to process women through the criminal justice system results in a
rise in arrests and convictions (Estrada et al., 2016). Feminist views on gender and
offending are explored in Chapter 12.

Socio-economic status
It is widely believed that there is an inverse relationship between socio-economic status
(SES) and offending. That is, people from lower SES backgrounds are over-represented
among the population of offenders. Early studies of the SES–crime link found that the
relationship between crime and social class was much stron-ger for official figures than for
self-report measures of offending, possibly reflect-ing bias in the way that people from
different social backgrounds are processed by the criminal justice system. Lower SES
individuals might be more likely to be arrested, charged and convicted even if their true
rate of offending were the same as those with higher SES. Self-reports of offending
correlate relatively weakly with SES. Dunaway et al. (2000) collected data from 555 adults
about a variety of demo-graphic variables including personal and family income, use of
welfare services, education and employment. They also asked their respondents about
offences they had committed in the previous year. Dunaway et al. could only find a weak
correla-tion between SES and general offending. There was variation within this, so SES
was a better predictor of violent than non-violent offending and the relationship between
SES and offending was stronger among non-white respondents. Dunaway et al. did find,
however, that poverty was significantly related to offending. The effect of poverty and
neighbourhood conditions is discussed in Chapter 5.

Race and ethnicity

People from minority ethnic groups are over-represented in the crime and victim-isation
statistics. UK data show that black people are eight times more likely to be stopped and
searched by the police than white, 3.5 times more likely to be arrested and four times more
likely to be prosecuted. Although non-white defendants are slightly less likely to be
convicted than white, there are proportionately more black people in prison than white (16
for every 10,000 white people and 58 for every 10,000 black people; ONS, 2017a). The
picture is similar in the US, where black and Hispanic males have a higher lifetime risk of
arrest and imprisonment than white and a higher risk of involvement in serious violence
(Piquero & Brame, 2008). There are two competing explanations for the ethnic disparity in
recorded crime. The dif-ferential involvement hypothesis suggests that black and ethnic
minority (BEM) individuals commit more crime than white and persist in involvement in
crime to a later age than do white individuals typically. Alternatively, the differential
selection hypothesis suggests that the real rate of offending is similar across ethnic groups
but that BEM individuals are more likely to end up in the crime statistics because they are
subject to more police attention through racial profiling and con-sequently are more likely
to be arrested, charged and convicted, especially if, as is sometimes claimed, the courts are
biased in their treatment of different ethnicities

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(see Chapter 8). An associated claim is that the excess of crime among black males is
accounted for by the types of ‘victimless’ crime (e.g. possession of drugs) where the
authorities have more discretion about who to arrest, investigate and charge. Critical
perspectives on race, ethnicity and crime are explored in Chapter 12.

Measuring crime
Just as it may seem simple at the outset to define what a criminal is, it might also seem
relatively straightforward to measure how much crime there is. Surely it is just a matter of
counting how many crimes occur? Again, matters are not so sim-ple. The crime rate of a
given country or area is calculated by counting how many offences occur and dividing by
the number of people who live there. The problem is that there are several ways of
counting crimes and they tend not to agree with one another. The three main sources of
information about the extent of crime are offi-cial statistics, victimisation surveys and
offender surveys. Each of these sources of information has its strengths and limitations but
all of them distort the ‘true’ figure of crime to some extent.

Apply your learning

Two candidates are standing for election as local police commissioner. The current
commissioner is campaigning on the basis that her policies have resulted in a low
level of crime. The challenger is campaigning on the basis that crime is ‘out of
control’ in the locality. How might each justify their campaign position? How might
each criticise their opponent’s stance?

Official crime statistics

In England and Wales, official crime figures are published by the Office for National
Statistics (ONS) on the basis of two sets of data, the crimes recorded by the police and a
victimisation survey now known as the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW).
Similar arrangements are in place in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Self-report
victimisation surveys were adopted as part of the official figures because the police
recorded crime rate heavily underestimates the true extent of crime. For a crime to end up
in the police statistics, someone first has to notice that it has occurred. Then, they must
report it. People may not do this because they believe the crime is too trivial or that the
police can do nothing about it. Crimes involving a ‘willing victim’ (e.g. drug dealing) are
unlikely to be reported. Consequently, a large number of crimes never come to the
attention of the authorities. While many of these offences are relatively minor, a
proportion of unreported crime would be classified as serious.

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The police have substantial discretion about the recording of crime. Even if an incident
is reported there are several reasons why it may not be recorded as a crime in the official
count. The victim may withdraw her complaint. The police may decide that the report is a
mistake, a malicious accusation or that there is insufficient evi-dence that a crime has
actually occurred. The decision to ‘no-crime’ a complaint may reflect an objective,
professional decision on an officer’s part but ‘no-criming’ may also be a response to
pressure from government to meet law enforcement targets or may reflect a police culture
of disbelieving victims. An investigation by Her Maj-esty’s Inspectorate of Constabularies
(2014) estimated that around 800,000 crimes a year went unrecorded in England and
Wales. This included serious offences. The under-recording rate for violence against the
person was 33% and for sexual offences it was 26%. This included 200 reports of rape.

Changes to the way the police record crime can give rise to apparent fluctuations in the
crime rate that do not actually reflect the amount of offending. For example, police figures
for England and Wales in 2017 show a 27% increase in violence against the person
compared with 2016. While this might represent a genuine increase in the level of violent
offending, it is likely that at least some of the increase reflects improvements in police
recording in response to the HMIC (2014) investigation. In addition, victims’ perception
of the police can affect their willingness to report some crimes. For example, victims of
intimate partner violence may not report offences for fear that their complaint will be
dismissed or minimised (Wolf et al., 2003). If the police adopt policies to persuade victims
to come forward this can result in an apparent rise in offending when the actual level of
crime has not really changed.

Victimisation surveys
In a victimisation survey, a large sample of the population are asked about their experience
of crime. In the US, the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) surveys the
experience of crime of around 160,000 people in about 90,000 house-holds and has been
running continually since the early 1970s. The UK followed in the 1980s, starting with the
British Crime Survey (BCS; Hough & Mayhew, 1983). Currently, the CSEW surveys
50,000 households in England and Wales, the Scottish Crime and Justice Survey 6,000
adults each year and the Northern Ireland Crime Survey around 4,000. All use similar
methodologies. In the CSEW, the sample is selected at random from the Post Office’s list
of addresses and approached to take part. Around 75% of those approached participate.
Data collection is by structured interview, with one person from the household answering
questions about whether they have been a victim of crime, the details of the crime (if any)
and their atti-tudes towards crime and policing. The responses are recorded on a computer.
The methodology of the CSEW undergoes revision periodically. For example, in 2009 a
parallel survey for children aged 10 to 15 years was introduced so that offences against
children could be estimated and, in 2015, fraud and cybercrime were intro-duced as
categories. However, the use of a fairly stable methodology over time has allowed the
CSEW to track changes in the incidence of different offences over time.

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Respondents are asked about violence, robbery and theft, vehicle crime and dam-age to
property. Data about sexual offences are collected but are not published as part of the main
survey results because the low numbers of offences recorded make extrapolation to the
wider population difficult.
The CSEW has consistently revealed a far higher number of crimes than do the police
statistics. For the subset of crimes covered by the CSEW, the data suggest that somewhere
between only a third and a quarter of offences that occur get recorded by the police
(Maguire & McVie, 2017). Much of the dark figure consists of relatively minor offences
resulting in little or no personal loss or injury. Victimisation surveys and police statistics
for more serious offences differ less than for less serious ones. In general, where
victimisation surveys employ large samples and robust meth-odology they are regarded as
more accurate and trustworthy than police recorded crime rates. The CSEW has used the
same ‘core’ set of questions since it started, unlike police statistics, which are significantly
affected by changes in recording practices. This makes the CSEW much better as
assessing trends in offending and victimisation.

This does not mean that victimisation surveys are free of problems. The CSEW relies
on respondents’ recall of what has happened in the past year, which may not be accurate.
Victimisation surveys also tend to put an upper limit on the number of crimes that any
single respondent can report. In the CSEW the maximum is five. This is done because
otherwise a small number of respondents could inflate the estimated risk of crime in the
population. However, a small number of people are disproportionately the victims of
repeated offences (Farrell & Pease, 2014) so only recording the first five crimes that a
victim reports risks under-representing the level of offending.

The CSEW does not gather data on all offences. Murder, obviously, is omitted, as are
crimes against businesses and anyone who does not live in an ordinary res-idential street
address. This includes people living in institutions, student halls of residence and homeless
people. Large-scale victimisation surveys tend to under estimate violent crime because
people are unwilling to disclose offences committed by a family member or intimate
partner to a researcher who is a stranger. Jones et al. (1986) developed methodologies with
the aim of gaining respondents’ trust and found that reported rates of sexual assault and
intimate partner violence were much higher than those reported by the British Crime
Survey. They also found that some people’s risk of victimisation was much higher than
others so, for example, young black women were 29 times more likely to be assaulted than
older white women.

Offender surveys
Police and victimisation statistics allow us to estimate only how many offences have
occurred, not how many people are committing them. An alternative way of esti-mating
the extent of crime is to focus on the perpetrators rather than the victims. Offender surveys
help to shed light on whether changes in the crime rate are due to changes in the number of
people committing offences (the prevalence of offending)

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or changes in the number of offences committed by each offender (the incidence of

offending). In the 1990s, offending among young people was measured by the British
government as part of its Youth Lifestyles survey. The 1998 survey indicated that 26% of
young men and 11% of young women had committed an offence in the previous year. Of
these, only 12% reported having been cautioned or prosecuted (Campbell & Harrington,
1999). Although at least some of the remainder is likely to have come to the attention of
the police, these data support the conclusion that a substantial dark figure exists.

Between 2003 and 2006 the Home Office carried out a national, longitudinal self-report
survey of offending called the Offending, Crime and Justice Survey (OCJS). The OCJS
initially recruited a representative sample of people from England and Wales aged
between 10 and 65, to estimate the prevalence of offending in the general population. The
follow-up longitudinal study focused only on those aged 10 to 25, in order to obtain data
about how offending behaviour changed over time. Of the former set of individuals, 41%
of 65 year olds reported committing at least one offence in their lifetime, with men (52%)
more likely to offend than women (30%). The most commonly reported offences were
minor thefts and assaults. Around 20% of offenders had done so only once, with 35–40%
reporting four or more offences in their lifetime. Across the whole sample, about 10% had
committed an offence in the previous year (Budd et al., 2005). As with other research on
age and gen-der, prevalence of offending was highest in the late teens and there were
gender differences in both the amount and type of offending. Males were more likely to
offend than females and engaged in a wider variety of crimes with the majority of offences
by women being minor thefts and assaults. The longitudinal component of the OCJS
tracked respondents over a four-year period. It found that over the four years covered by
the survey 49% of the sample reported at least one offence. Con-sistent with the age–crime
curve, the prevalence of offending peaked in the mid-teens (14–16 years) and declined
subsequently. While the OCJS confirmed that some degree of criminal behaviour is
common in the general population, it also showed that a relatively small number of prolific
offenders accounted for a disproportionate number of crimes. A group of just 4% of the
sample was responsible for 32% of the offences reported (Hales et al., 2009).

Self-report measures seem to agree quite well with other measures of offending such as
peer reports and police records (Hindelang et al., 1981). However, they are subject to some
criticism. First, they rely on the assumption that the respondents are accurate in their
memories and willing to admit to their offences. Given that for-getting increases with time
and since respondents are probably less likely to admit their more serious offences,
estimates of offending may be in the low side. Second, there is a danger of sampling bias
since the most prolific offenders are least likely to be sampled for the survey. For example,
if the respondents are surveyed at school, persistent truants are unlikely to be present.
Since they are also the most likely to offend, estimates of both incidence and prevalence of
offending are likely to be low.
In conclusion, it is impossible to know exactly how much crime is committed. All of
the available methods for gathering this information tend to underestimate

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how much offending there is. At the same time, we should recognise, first, that each
source of information compensates somewhat for the weaknesses in the others, so by
considering them together it is possible to make reasonable estimates of the extent of
crime and, second, that the majority of the dark figure consists of relatively minor and
‘victimless’ offences.

Trends in crime
Despite their limitations, crime statistics allow us to identify some general trends in
offending in the UK. The CSEW/BCS and police statistics show that crime increased
steadily from the early 1980s onwards and peaked around the mid-1990s. Since then,
CSEW crime rates have fallen almost every year up to 2017 (ONS, 2017b). Police
statistics follow largely the same trend, although there are fluctuations caused by changes
in how crimes were recorded.
The long-term drop in crime since the 1990s is paralleled by similar falls in many other
countries. Data from the US, the UK and Western European countries show that all types
of crime rose steadily from the 1960s onward, peaked in the 1990s and have been falling
ever since (Tonry, 2014). The international crime drop is interest-ing because it follows a
very similar pattern in countries that have pursued very different criminal justice policies.
For example, in the 1980s the US adopted zero tol-erance policing and mass incarceration,
with unprecedented use of prison sentences for offending (see Chapter 10). Canada did
neither but the crime drop has been virtually identical. A great number of explanations for
the crime drop have been put forward, including economic factors (a stronger economy
leads to greater wealth and less appetite for stolen goods), demographic factors (increased
immigration and an ageing population leads to lower offending), changes in laws (tougher
fire-arms laws, looser abortion laws), policing (more police, better targeting of crime) and
tougher penalties for crime (greater use of prison and the death penalty). The problem is
that these explanations only apply in certain places whereas the drop is very widespread.
In addition, explanations linked to the functioning of the econ-omy have struggled to
explain why the crime drop has continued even after the global economic crash of 2008.

One hypothesis that might still explain the crime drop is that the rise and sub-sequent
fall in offending is related to the effects of lead pollution on the brain (see Chapter 3). A
second is that offending has fallen as a consequence of the adoption of better security
methods in Western countries. For example, higher standards of vehicle security have
removed opportunities for car theft and, consequently, car crime has fallen. Similarly,
security measures have improved in homes and busi-nesses, making them less attractive
targets (Farrell, 2013). This fits the evidence on acquisitive crime (e.g. car thefts,
burglaries) but it is not obvious how it can explain the reduction in violent offences,
including murder. A third possibility is that criminal activity has actually been falling
steadily since the Middle Ages as a consequences of long-term cultural changes that have
gradually increased people’s

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capacity for individual self-control (Eisner, 2003). In this light, the question is not ‘why
did crime rates suddenly fall from the 1990s?’ but ‘why did they rise in the 1960s?’ Tonry
(2014) suggests that rising crime in the 1960s was a consequence of disruption to the
social order in the post-war period related to decolonisation, glo-balisation, economic
restructuring and the breakdown of political consensus. By the 1990s, Western societies
had largely absorbed this disruption, allowing the longer term decline in crime to resume.
Tonry’s argument is compelling but it is not obvi-ous how it could be tested directly,
leaving it somewhat speculative. Nonetheless, examination of trends in offending,
particularly when different countries are com-pared, represents an important way of testing
theories about the factors that affect offending.

Victimisation
Some people are more likely to become victims of crime than others. The CSEW is useful
because, alongside gathering demographic data showing whether particular age or socio-
economic groups are more or less likely to be victimised, it also gathers data on people’s
attitudes, including their fear of crime. This allows a comparison to be made between a
person’s fear of crime and their chance of victimisation. In general, these data show that
most people’s fear of crime is exaggerated compared with their chance of becoming a
victim of crime.

Property crime
The 2015–2016 CSEW (ONS, 2016) found that the most prevalent types of prop-erty
crime were vehicle-related thefts and criminal damage, both affecting 4% of households.
Thefts from the person and robbery were much rarer, affecting 0.7% and 0.3% of
households respectively. One of the factors influencing property crime victimisation is
geographical location. People living in urban areas were more likely to be victimised than
those in rural areas. The highest rates of property crime were in areas with the highest
level of unemployment and, for most types of property crime, people in rented
accommodation had a higher risk than owner-occupiers. Younger people were more likely
to become victims than older people and people with the lowest household income
(£10,000 per year or less) were more likely to be the victims of all types of property crime
except for criminal damage, which was more common in higher income groups.

Violent crime
Throughout the 1990s the risk in the general population of becoming a victim of violent
crime was around 5%. The 2016 CSEW (ONS, 2017c) found that the risk in 2015–2016
was 1.8%, a substantial reduction. The majority of violent crimes (55%) were classed as
‘violence without injury’. Assault with minor injury accounted for 24%, and 21% of
crimes were classed as ‘wounding’, the more serious category.

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In the majority of violent crimes, the perpetrator was known to the victim, 43% were
carried out by an acquaintance and 20% of crimes were classed as ‘domes-tic violence’
where the perpetrator was a partner, ex-partner or family member (although domestic
violence tends to be under-reported; see above). Women were more likely to be the
victims of domestic violence (7.7% of women; 4.4% of men). In 37% of cases, the
perpetrator was a stranger. As with property crime, some peo-ple are more likely to be
victimised than others. The victims of violence are more likely to be males (2.2% of adult
males compared with 1.4% of females). Younger people (16–24 years) ran a higher risk of
victimisation, as did those living in more deprived areas.

Intimate violence and sexual crime

The 2016 CSEW (ONS, 2017d) found that women were more likely to be the vic-tims of
intimate violence than men. The commonest form of intimate violence for both women
and men was non-sexual partner abuse, affecting 5.4% of women and 2.8% of men. There
were marked differences in sexual assault victimisation: 3.2% of women had been sexually
assaulted compared with 0.7% of men. The majority of sexual assaults were unwanted
touching and indecent exposure; 0.7% of women had been the victim of rape or attempted
rape compared with fewer than 0.1% of men. As with property and other violent crimes,
sexual offences affect some groups more than others. Younger people experienced
domestic violence more frequently than older. Young women aged 16–19 were
significantly more likely than other groups to be the victims of sexual assaults, with 11%
of this group being affected. Those with a lower SES ran a higher risk of victimisation. For
example, 17% of women in the lower income bracket had been the victim of domestic
violence com-pared with 4.3% in the highest income bracket. A similar trend was apparent
for men but it was less marked.

Repeat victimisation
Surveys show that victimisation is not evenly distributed. Many types of crime dis-
proportionately affect younger, poorer people. However, what is not readily appar-ent
from headline figures is how often the same people are victimised repeatedly. One of the
strongest predictors of whether a person will become a victim of crime is whether they
have been victimised in the past. Pease (1998) estimates that 1% of peo-ple are the victims
of 59% of all personal crime. Repeat victimisation often involves the same offenders, who
select the same or similar victims because of past success. Farrell and Pease (2014)
identify a number of reasons for repeat victimisation:
■ Domestic violence gives rise to repeat victimisation because the victim and per-petrator
are likely to reside in the same place; the fact that victims are reluctant to report such
crimes means that there are few restraints on the perpetrators.
■ Some shops are repeatedly targeted because they stock sought-after goods (e.g.
electronics and drugs) and are situated in high-traffic areas.

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■ In hate crimes, the offender(s) may be motivated to victimise an individual in multiple

different ways; and because victims of hate crime are often easily iden-tifiable (e.g.
having a disability or belonging to a minority ethnic group), they may be victimised by
multiple offenders.
■ Workers in some professions, including police officers and nurses, are regularly
exposed to individuals who are likely to attack them.
■ Those who frequently commit offences themselves run a high risk of repeat victi-
misation, since they interact regularly with other offenders and may also possess things
like drugs or cash, which make them an attractive target.
Farrell and Pease distinguish between two explanations of repeat victimisation. The risk-
heterogenity explanation involves a target being victimised by multiple offenders (as when
a shop is targeted by many shoplifters). The alternative is an event-dependent explanation
where a target is victimised because they have been victimised previously. Either process
can give rise to supertargets that account for a disproportionate amount of victimisation.

Effects of victimisation
It is almost inevitable that a person will experiences some degree of distress as a result of
being victimised. Shapland and Hall (2007) identify a range of effects:
1 shock, and a loss of faith in society
2 guilt associated with the idea that they could have avoided victimisation
3 physical injury
4 financial loss, either through loss of property or effects on employment
5 psychological symptoms including anxiety and depression and post-traumatic stress
disorder (PTSD)
6 social effects such as avoiding certain places or activities
7 increased fear of victimisation, and increased actual risk of victimisation (see above).

It is difficult to predict exactly what consequences an individual will suffer since this
depends not only on the offence but also the victim’s personal circumstances, other life
events, previous experiences of victimisation and their personality.
The main determinant of the victim’s reaction is the seriousness of the crime. Vic-tims
of less serious offences typically suffer relatively little distress and victimisa-tion has little
or no impact on their subsequent behaviour (Averdijk, 2011). However, serious, violent
victimisation generally has a highly disruptive effect. Immediately following a serious
crime, victims are likely to experience confusion and disbelief. Assuming that they define
the event as a crime they make a decision about what to do next. This could include doing
nothing, telling someone else (e.g. a friend or family member) or informing the authorities.
As discussed above, much crime goes unreported to the police. Reporting the crime to the
authorities may have a positive

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effect on the victim if the perpetrator is caught as they may feel that justice has been
served or they may be recompensed for their losses (Ruback & Thompson, 2001). By way
of contrast, reporting the crime may have negative consequences if the victim is
disbelieved, if police and other officials are unsympathetic and, if the case goes to trial, if
the defence lawyers treat the victim in an aggressive or humiliating way when they give
evidence (Symonds, 1980).
In some cases, the trauma of victimisation can give rise to PTSD, an anxiety disorder
characterised by (1) re-experiencing the event (e.g. in flashbacks, night-mares or intrusive
mental images); (2) avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma and emotional
numbing; and (3) hyperarousal, irritability, anger, insomnia and problems concentrating.
People with PTSD run a higher than average risk of developing further psychological
problems such as depression, drug and alco-hol problems. Gale and Coupe (2005)
collected data from 149 victims of robbery who were interviewed three weeks after the
crime and again around nine months later. The victims’ immediate response was increased
fear of crime, particularly at night. Nine months later, fear of crime had diminished but
was still elevated. Three weeks after the crime around half the victims had sufficient
symptoms to warrant a diagnosis of PTSD. Nine months later, this had fallen but still a
third of victims met the criteria for PTSD. There was individual variation, so while the
mental health of two-thirds of the victims improved over time, the mental health of 25%
actually deteriorated. A similar, albeit more serious, pattern is identifiable among victims
of sexual assaults. Resick (1987) found that rape survivors experi-enced significant effects
on anxiety, mood, fear of revictimisation and self-esteem. Levels of distress fell for the
first three to six months following victimisation and then stabilised, so that four years later
adverse psychological effects were still present.

Not all victims of violent and sexual crime go on to develop PTSD. Research on trauma
suggests that a range of demographic variables have an influence. Women are at a higher
risk than men, as are members of minority ethnic groups, those with a lower socio-
economic status and those with a history of psychological problems (Kelly et al., 2010).
The risk of PTSD following victimisation depends on several variables including the
seriousness of the crime and the level of social support to which the victim has access.
Resick (1987) found that adjustment following victi-misation was related to the degree of
distress they felt immediately following the crime. Those with the highest distress had the
highest risk of chronic psychological symptoms. More recently, Kunst et al. (2011) asked
172 victims of violent crime about their emotional reactions during victimisation, their
subsequent anger at hav-ing been victimised and their level of PTSD symptoms. Around
46% of victims met the criteria for PTSD. Those who reported the greatest levels of anger
had a signifi-cantly higher risk of PTSD. Kelly et al. (2010) suggest that the risk of PTSD
among victims of serious crime can be reduced by:

■ Engaging with victims as soon as possible, ideally while they are still receiving acute
medical care.

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■ Providing support in victims’ communities.

■ Integrating support services so that the social, financial and mental health needs of
victims are all met.

Fear of crime
Victimisation surveys have generally found that people have a fear of crime that is
disproportionate to their actual chances of being victimised. CSEW data for 2015–2016
(ONS, 2017e) show that the overall risk of victimisation was 15.2% but respondents
estimated their risk at 19.1%. Different groups judge their risk of victi-misation in
different ways, so those most at risk (people aged 16–24 years) tended to underestimate
their risk whereas those aged 35 years and upwards significantly overestimated their
chances of victimisation. Only people in the 25–34 age group were largely accurate.
Despite the continual fall in crime since 1995, 60% of adults believed that crime was
rising but this has dropped in recent years: in 2009 over 80% of respondents believed that
crime was rising.
The main reason for the public’s misperception of their risk of being victimised seems
to be that they gather information about crime from media sources such as newspapers and
television programmes that do not accurately reflect the reality of crime. News media tend
to focus on unusual and horrific events. Murders receive extensive coverage, although
murder, in the UK, remains an extremely rare crime. In order to attract audience share,
news media will tend to focus on sensational events even if these are the exception rather
than the norm. Even where actual crime statistics are reported, news reports tend to focus
on aspects of the data that por-tray a rise in victimisation and pay little attention to
reported falls in the crime rate (Ainsworth, 2000). The result is that the public are
constantly exposed to accounts of murder, rape and abduction, and may come to believe
that the frequency with which these are reported reflects the actual chance of being so
victimised. The same is true of fictionalised crime in films and television programmes that
regularly fea-tures statistically rare crimes such as violent attacks on strangers. In light of
this, it is not surprising that people tend to have an inaccurate perception of the likelihood
that they will be affected by crime. However, people are more accurate in their per-ception
of crime in their locality, presumably because this is based on first-hand experience
whereas perception of crime nationally is more likely to be based on the media (ONS,
2017e).

Chapter summary
There is debate over which people and acts should be studied by criminological
psychologists but most researchers agree that research should focus principally on crime as
legally defined. Although around half the population commits a crime at some point in
their life, criminal behaviour is most frequent among young men.

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Official statistics, victimisation surveys and self-reports are all ways of measuring crime.
They have a tendency to underestimate the extent of crime (particularly police recorded
crime) and there is a ‘dark figure’ of unrecorded criminal activity. However, data from
multiple sources suggest that, in recent years, crime has been falling although there is
dispute about why. Victimisation is not evenly distributed in the population. Young people
and those from low SES groups are most heavily victimised. The psychological effects of
victimisation include anger, depression and anxiety, with victims of more serious crimes at
significant risk of developing PTSD. Generally, people have an exaggerated fear of being
victimised and believe that the incidence of crime is greater than it actually is. The main
reason for this is that they obtain information about crime from media sources that
exaggerate its incidence.

Further reading
The Crime Survey for England and Wales website presents data and analysis from the
CSEW including short reports on different aspects of the criminal statistics. It is
regularly updated. www.crimesurvey.co.uk.

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 CHAPTER

3
Biologically oriented
explanations of offending

Apply your learning

Kai has been convicted of a violent assault. He was standing in the queue at a fast
food outlet having spent the evening drinking with friends. Kai claims that another
customer ‘jumped the queue’ in order to get served before him and insulted him
when challenged. Kai punched and kicked the victim repeatedly, leaving him with
significant injuries. Kai has several previous convictions for violent behaviour and
has been known to the authorities for a long time. As a child, he was put under child
protection because of parental neglect related to drug dependency and his violent
father, who himself had several convictions for violence and theft. Kai’s guilt is not
in doubt, but the judge has asked for reports before passing sentence.

List all the features of Kai’s case that you believe may be relevant to
understanding his offence from a psychological viewpoint. Outline how each feature
could have contributed to what he did. As you read this chapter, add to your analysis
of the case any new ideas you encounter.

Biologically oriented explanations of offending rest on the idea that offenders, as a group,
are different from non-offenders in their biological structure and/or func-tioning. This was
an influential idea in the early days of criminological psychology (see Chapter 1).
However, the idea of the ‘born criminal’ fell out of favour during the 20th century when
criminology shifted to an emphasis on environmental explana-tions (see Chapter 5). In the
1990s there was a resurgence of interest in biological fac-tors and there is now widespread
acknowledgement that theories of offending that do not incorporate them are necessarily
incomplete. This chapter starts by review-ing evidence for some of the biological
differences that have been found between offenders and non-offenders and outlining their
putative role in criminal behaviour. There follows a discussion of where these differences
may come from, focused on a selection of possible causes: genetics, environmental
pollution, traumatic brain injury and adverse childhood experiences.

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Biological differences between offenders and non-offenders

The biological view assumes that an individual’s behaviour is organised by his nervous
system, particularly his brain, and criminal acts are a consequence of this. Biopsychology
does not claim that there are specific brain areas or processes that cause people, for
example, to burgle houses, file false tax returns or assault their spouses. Rather, an
offender’s nervous system interacts with social and other envi-ronmental influences to
give rise to tendencies to behave in particular ways (e.g. aggression) that become criminal
acts when they violate the law. Biopsychological research has tended to focus on
aggressive crime as it is relatively straightforward to identify (unlike, say, financial fraud),
is a pressing social problem and has clear links to the large and well-researched body of
biological knowledge about aggres-sion. This makes it an obvious target for researchers
wishing to investigate biolog-ical influences on offending.

Low heart rate

One of the most consistent findings in the biopsychology of offenders is that they have a
lower heart rate than non-offenders. The association is remarkably robust and is found in
children, adolescents and adults and across different cultures (Port-noy & Farrington,
2015). Low heart rate (LHR) can predict aggression and conduct problems in children and
violence in adults independently of other variables such as personality and family history
(Farrington, 1997). What is not clear is why offend-ers have LHRs. One possibility is that
LHR indicates a chronically low level of activ-ity in the nervous system. The individual
finds this uncomfortable and offending provides risk and excitement, thereby raising their
arousal level to a more comfort-able level (the sensation-seeking hypothesis). A second
possibility is that LHR reflects a diminished capacity to experience fear. Since fear,
intuitively at least, plays a part in stopping people from acting on their antisocial impulses
then fearless people might be more prone to offending (the fearlessness hypothesis).
Relatively few stud-ies have addressed this issue directly, but Portnoy and Farrington
(2015) suggest that using LHR as a biomarker for antisocial behaviour may lead to
practical appli-cations for reducing offending. For example, improving a child’s early
environment with enhanced diet and education seems both to increase heart rate and
reduce later behavioural problems and offending (Raine et al., 2003) and LHR may be
useful in predicting those individuals who may benefit most from treatments designed to
reduce behavioural problems in children (Cornet et al., 2014). LHR is also relatively easy
to measure and therefore to incorporate into studies of how biological and other factors
interact to produce criminal behaviour (Raine & Portnoy, 2012).

Brain structure and functioning

Biopsychologists regard aggression as an innate, genetically influenced, set of responses
that have evolved because they confer a survival advantage. Aggressive behaviour benefits
an animal if it allows it to compete successfully for territory,

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food, mates and so on. Aggression, violence and crime are not synonymous but it is
possible that the same evolved brain systems that regulate aggression in other spe-cies
might be involved in aggressive crime. Aggression in mammals can be pred-atory (as in
hunting for food), social (as when establishing dominance over others of the same species)
or reactive (as when responding to a threat) but it all depends on signaling between several
brain structures including the prefrontal cortex, the amygdala, the hypothalamus and the
periaqueductal grey. Electrical stimulation of the hypothalamus of cats and rats causes
social or predatory aggression, depending on exactly where the stimulation is applied
(Fuchs et al., 1985; Kruk, 1991). Damage to the amygdala in monkeys can either inhibit or
disinhibit aggressive behaviour, again depending on the site of the lesion (Miczek et al.,
1974; Pinel et al., 1977) and damage to parts of the prefrontal cortex can also facilitate
aggressive responses (de Bruin et al., 1983). These structures are also present in the human
brain, raising the possibility that violent offending may result from some degree of
abnormality in one or more of these areas. However, what is true of a rat or cat may not be
true of a human. Their brains are similar but not identical and their evolutionary history is
different. Investigating the human brain through systematic lesioning or electrical
stimulation is impossible for ethical reasons so it is hard to link offending to brain
abnormality purely on this basis.

Some relevant evidence comes from clinical case studies where violent crime correlates
with brain damage caused by disease or injury. For example, in 1966, Charles J. Whitman
murdered his mother and wife before murdering 14 strangers and wounding 31 more.
Whitman was killed by a police officer and, in the subse-quent post-mortem, a tumour was
found that had affected his hypothalamus and amygdala. Whitman’s diary contained
accounts of unpredictable, inexplicable rage in the months leading up to the shooting and
he had sought medical treatment shortly before his shooting spree (Lavergne, 1997).
Whether the tumour actually caused Whitman’s actions is disputed but Siegel and
Victoroff (2009) identify 18 similar cases in which violent and sometimes homicidal
human behaviour was associated with a brain tumour affecting brain areas implicated in
aggression by animal studies. This includes two where surgical removal of part of the
amygdala resulted in a reduction in aggression (Mark & Sweet, 1974; Hood et al., 1983).
These examples imply that the same brain systems govern aggression in humans as in
other animals. However, such cases are also highly unusual: most violent criminals do not
have obvious brain pathologies. Consequently, on their own, they cannot sustain the view
that violent offending is the result of biological abnormality.

Biopsychological research advanced significantly with the development of brain

imaging technology in the 1970s and 1980s. Computerised axial tomogra-phy (CAT) and
magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) allowed researchers to create images of brain structure
with much greater detail than conventional X-rays, which are poor at imaging soft tissues
like the brain. The development of positron emis-sion tomography (PET) and functional
MRI (fMRI) allowed researchers to create three-dimensional images that indicate activity
in different brain areas. They work by tracking the movement of radioactive glucose (PET)
or haemoglobin molecules

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(fMRI). When a brain area grows more active, it uses more oxygen and glucose and
consequently blood flow to that area increases. By measuring changes in blood flow it is
possible to infer brain activity. Volkow and Tancredi (1987) were the first to use PET to
investigate the brains of violent individuals but early investigations were limited by the
relatively poor images produced by the scanners and the prohibitive cost of using them to
investigate large samples. However, technological improve-ments by the mid-1990s had
started to address these issues, allowing Raine et al. (1997) to conduct a landmark
investigation of brain functioning in violent offenders.
Raine et al. used PET scanning to compare brain functioning in 41 people charged with
homicide who were pleading not guilty by reason of insanity (the murderers) with 41 non-
offenders who were matched to be as similar as possible (the controls). All the participants
were injected with a glucose-based radiotracer, after which they completed a continuous
performance task (CPT) in which they watched a screen that projected random stimuli and
pressed a button only when they saw a particu-lar stimulus (the target). A CPT engages a
number of brain systems, making it useful for assessing brain functioning. The murderers’
and controls’ brain activity during the task differed in several ways. The murderers had
lower glucose metabolism in the prefrontal cortex, parts of the parietal cortex and the
corpus callosum (the ‘bridge’ between the two hemispheres of the brain). They also
showed asymmetries of glucose metabolism that were not present in the controls: activity
was lower in the left than the right hemisphere in several structures, including the
amygdala. The differences observed by Raine et al. are important because most of them
related to brain areas that were already implicated in aggression by prior research. For
exam-ple, the prefrontal cortex had long been regarded as playing a role in the inhibition
of inappropriate impulses; this is consistent with the finding that prefrontal activity was
found to be lower in the murderers. Other areas not previously associated with violence
(e.g. the cerebellum) showed no differences.

The investigation of Raine et al. (1997) had a significant impact because it was the first
to use PET scanning with a large enough sample and sufficient controls to support
reasonably firm conclusions about the role of brain abnormalities in vio-lent crime. It
established the paradigm for the use of neuroimaging to investigate offending and gave
rise to a strand of criminological research whose influence has grown in the intervening
years. It is also notable for the caution Raine et al. exer-cised when interpreting their
results and the clarity with which they drew atten-tion to the limitations of their research.
In particular, they emphasised the relatively poor resolution of their scanning technology,
the potentially confounding influence of mental illness among the murderers, the narrow
subset of violent offenders rep-resented by their sample and the fact that no comparison
was made with a group of non-violent offenders, making it impossible to know whether
the differences they detected were due to their being violent or their being offenders. Raine
et al. also stressed that their findings do not mean that violence is caused by biological
factors alone and that violent offending depends on the interaction of these with ‘social,
psychological, cultural and situational factors’ (p.505). This last point is often lost when
such evidence is presented to the public via the mass media, particularly

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when it is accompanied by brightly coloured and impressive looking images that purport to
identify the ‘brain centre’ responsible for crime or some other behaviour (O’Connor et al.,
2012).
Over the past 20 years, evidence has confirmed a great number of initial sug-gestions
from Raine et al. about the role of specific brain areas in offending. The structures most
strongly implicated are the prefrontal cortex and the limbic system, a set of interconnected
structures that includes the amygdala. The most consistent finding is that offenders have
unusually low activity levels in the prefrontal cortex, often accompanied by a reduction in
the volume of grey matter in the same area. Imaging studies have also shown that the
activity of the left and right amygdalae is asymmetric in violent offenders and that
violence is associated with a reduced amygdala volume (Raine & Yang, 2006).

These differences may contribute to criminal behaviour in a number of ways. The

prefrontal cortex is responsible for executive function: planning, decision making and
impulse control. Impairments of the prefrontal cortex limit an individual’s capacity to use
information about emotions to predict the outcomes of their actions. Consequently, their
behaviour is strongly influenced by short-term rewards and they tend to act impulsively
(Damasio, 1996). In this view, then, violent – and other – crime occurs because the
offender is relatively poor at anticipating and learning from punishment, meaning they do
not stop themselves from acting on their impulses where an individual with an unimpaired
prefrontal cortex would be able to do so. The amygdala is involved in emotional regulation
and plays an important role in how mammals respond to threat. In general, as threat
increases, an animal will first freeze, then attempt to flee and then, when no other choice
exists, attack the source of threat. If the functioning of the amygdala is impaired, an
individual might be unusually sensitive to threats and, consequently, violent behaviour
might be triggered by relatively innocuous situations (Blair et al., 2005). Alternatively, a
relatively unresponsive amygdala might impair an individual’s capacity to both experience
fear and recognise it in others. This would remove two important inhi-bitions on
offending: the fear of the consequences and the recognition of the effect offending has on
the feelings of others (Mitchell and Beech, 2011). This may be the underlying problem in
psychopathy (see Chapter 4).

Brain chemistry
The nervous system relies on a vast array of chemicals that transmit signals between its
cells. Normal development and functioning requires these neurotransmitters,
neurohormones and hormones to be present in the correct proportions. Offenders differ
from non-offenders in that they tend to be deficient in the neurotransmitter serotonin. A
review of 20 studies found that low levels of a serotonin breakdown product (5-HIAA)
were reliably associated with antisocial behaviour towards both people and property
(Moore et al., 2002). The relationship between serotonin and offending is stronger in men
than women, which implies that the factors that con-tribute to offending might differ
between genders. In addition, serotonin levels tend

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to increase with age, which may explain why offending generally decreases over the
lifespan. Although studies in this area share the limitation that it is breakdown products
like 5-HIAA that are measured, not actual serotonin levels, the association is robust
enough to support the conclusion that serotonin levels are a contributory factor in
offending. Another neurotransmitter implicated is dopamine. Increases in aggressive
behaviour correlate with increased dopamine levels and when drugs are used to increase or
decrease dopamine activity there is a corresponding effect on feelings of anger and
aggressive behaviour (Seo et al., 2008). In many brain areas, serotonin regulates
dopamine, so where serotonin levels are low, dopamine levels rise excessively. It may be
that low levels of serotonin prevent the prefrontal cortex from successfully regulating
negative emotional states arising in the limbic system, thereby increasing the risk of a
violent response in situations that are interpreted as a threat or a provocation.

Influences on the nervous system

There is now abundant evidence that some types of offending are attributable to
differences between the brains of offenders and non-offenders. However, this leaves
unanswered the question of why these differences exist. There are many influences on the
development, structure and functioning of the nervous system that may be relevant in
understanding crime. Four of these are discussed below, selected because they illustrate
the range of factors that may be involved.

Genetics
Genes are sequences of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) that transmit information from one
generation to its offspring. A human being has around 20,000 genes (Ezkurdia et al.,
2014), inherited from their parents and organised into 23 pairs of chromosomes. Together,
they provide a ‘blueprint’ for the development of the indi-vidual. The majority of genes
are shared by all humans but around 1% of them exist in different forms called alleles.
These contribute to the differences between people, influencing physical traits such as eye
colour and psychological and behavioural traits such as personality. Genes are relevant to
crime because some of them influ-ence the development of the nervous system. They may
therefore be responsible for the differences in the brain that are associated with offending.

The consensus among biopsychologists is that genes influence criminal behaviour. This
view rests on evidence from family history studies, twin studies and adoption studies. A
family history study is conducted in order to ascertain whether a specific trait (in this case,
offending) runs in families. If it does, this provides evidence that genetic influence plays a
role. Osborn and West (1979) report that 40% of the sons of criminal fathers go on to get a
criminal record themselves, compared with only 13% of the sons of non-criminal fathers.
Other studies report similar results (Cloninger et al., 1978; West, 1982). Although
suggestive of a genetic influence on offending, these findings could also indicate an
environmental influence: sons might acquire

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criminal tendencies through social learning or the correlation might be due to the influence
of a third variable that affects both father and son such as social class, deprivation or poor
education (see Chapter 5).
This problem is avoided by the twin study methodology, because it eliminates the
confounding effect of shared environmental influences, at least in principle. A twin study
compares monozygotic (MZ; genetically identical) and dizygotic (DZ; non-identical) twin
pairs. It rests on the assumption that, in both MZ and DZ twins, criminality is affected by
environmental factors to the same extent, because both MZ and DZ twins develop in
equivalent environments: they are born into the same family, at the same time, go to the
same schools etc. If it is found that the MZ twins are more similar in their criminality than
the DZ twins this must be due to their greater genetic similarity. The similarity between
twins is expressed as a correlation or concordance. A 25% concordance means that 25% of
the time both twins show evidence of criminality whereas in the remaining 75% of cases
only one does. Early twin studies showed strong evidence of a genetic influence on
offending but the samples used were small and the methods used to determine whether the
twins were MZ or DZ were unreliable. Large-sample studies using reliable tests of zygos-
ity have been carried out since the 1970s. Christiansen (1977) used 3,586 twin pairs and
found concordance rates of 35% (MZ) and 13% (DZ) for males; 21% (MZ) and 8% (DZ)
for females. Dalgaard and Kringlen (1976) found concordances of 26% (MZ) and 15%
(DZ) for females. These findings indicate a genetic influence on offending. Two points
should be stressed, however. First, the MZ concordances, while greater than the DZ, are
still fairly low, indicating a substantial environmental contribution. Second, there are
questions about the assumption of equal environments in twin studies. The greater
similarity of MZ twins may be due to the fact that they share a closer relationship than DZ
twins and are treated more similarly, especially since a DZ pair may be different sexes
whereas a MZ pair cannot.

Adoption studies compare the rates of criminality between people who were adopted
early in life, their biological parents and their adoptive parents. Broadly, the biological
parents supply the genes and the adoptive parents the environment so where the adoptees
are more similar to their biological parents this suggests a genetic influence on criminality
and where they are more similar to their adoptive parents the environment is a more
significant influence. Crowe (1972) found that where the biological mother of an adoptee
had a criminal record, so did nearly 50% of adoptees. By contrast, where she had no
criminal record, this figure was only 5%. Hutchings and Mednick (1975) examined
criminality in both biological and adoptive fathers. If both had a criminal record, 36.2% of
the sons also became criminals. When only the biological father was criminal 21.4% did
so and when only the adoptive father had a criminal record so did 11.5% of the sons.
When neither father had a criminal record, 10.5% of the sons did. More recently,
Hjalmarsson and Lindquist (2013) analysed data from every person adopted in Sweden
between 1943 and 1967, finding that criminality in the biological parents was significantly
asso-ciated with criminal convictions in the adoptees. As with family history and twin
studies, these findings support the view that offending is genetically influenced.

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Again, there are several reasons to treat these findings with a degree of caution. First, they
also indicate a significant influence of the environment. Second, greater concordance
between offspring and biological mothers may be due to prenatal fac-tors like maternal
stress or drug taking rather than a genetic influence. Third, adop-tees may be placed in
environments similar to those from which they were adopted, possibly another branch of
the same family. Fourth, children may be adopted years after their birth, leaving room for
a significant environmental influence from the biological parents early in life.

These objections notwithstanding, the accumulated evidence supports the view that
offending is influenced by genetics. A systematic review of twin and adop-tion studies by
Mason and Frick (1994) estimates the size of this genetic influence at around 50%; this
figure is confirmed by recent studies using more sophisti-cated methodologies (Beaver et
al., 2009). The influence is not uniform, however. Aggressive offending seems more
influenced by genes than is non-violent offend-ing (Eley et al., 2003), and the genetic
influence appears much stronger in life-course-persistent than in adolescence-limited
offenders (Moffitt, 1993, 2005; see Chapter 2). In general, the question of whether genes
influence offending is widely regarded as settled. Research in recent years has shifted to
focus on the questions of which genes are involved and how they exert their influence.

Where it comes to aggressive offending, several genes have been identified as

potentially significant (Raine, 2008). One is the MAOA gene, which codes for monoamine
oxidase, a chemical that breaks down serotonin. When the MAOA gene is ‘knocked out’
(made inactive) in mice they become very aggressive (Cases et al., 1995). In humans,
MAOA exists in at least two versions (alleles), L-MAOA and H-MAOA. Carriers of the L-
MAOA allele produce less monoamine oxidase than H-MAOA carriers. They also have
lower volumes in several key brain areas including the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala
(Meyer-Lindenberg et al., 2006), structures that are important in offending (see above).
Low-activity MAOA alleles are associated with impulsivity and aggression (Buckholtz and
Meyer-Lindenberg, 2008) and seem to make carriers unusually responsive to provocation.
McDermott et al. (2009) compared L- and H-MAOA carriers on their response to someone
who frustrated them. The participants played a financial game in which they were led to
believe that another player had deprived them of either a small or a large amount of
money. They were subsequently given the opportunity to punish that player by requiring
them to consume a quantity of unpleasant hot sauce. When they had experienced only a
small loss, the L- and H-MAOA carriers responded similarly. However, when they had
experienced a large loss, the L-MAOA carriers were much more likely to punish their
opponent. Although somewhat artificial, and not of offenders, this study by McDermott et
al. goes some way to illuminating how a specific allele may influence behaviour in ways
that may be analogous to offend-ing situations. Other research directly supports an
association with offending. Beaver et al. (2010) found that L-MAOA is more frequent
among gang members and offenders who use weapons and Stetler et al. (2014) compared
violent and non-violent offenders, reporting that L-MAOA was carried by 61% of the
violent but

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only 20% of the non-violent offenders. Carriers of L-MAOA scored higher on mea-sures
of impulsiveness than those with the H-MAOA allele.
Two points should be noted. First, it is difficult integrating these findings with what
else is known about the relationship between serotonin and aggression. If L-MAOA
carriers make less monoamine oxidase we would expect them to have higher serotonin
levels than H-MAOA carriers whereas the evidence suggests an association between low
serotonin and aggression. Second, none of these findings indicates that the L-MAOA allele
inevitably gives rise to aggression or criminality. The expression of the L-MAOA allele in
behaviour depends on other developmen-tal influences. Caspi et al. (2002) and Fergusson
et al. (2011) report that heightened impulsivity and aggression tends to result when L-
MAOA carriers are subjected to early traumatic experiences like violent abuse. Despite
this, and rather mislead-ingly, the association between aggression and L-MAOA has led to
it being dubbed the ‘warrior gene’ (Gibbons, 2004). The L-MAOA allele has been
reported to be more common in some ethnic groups than others (Lea and Chambers,
2007). The argument has been advanced that this reflects an evolved warlike and
aggressive tendency that, in turn, may explain the inflated rates of crime among some
ethnic groups (e.g. the Maori). Those taking a critical perspective on criminological psy-
chology have argued that this represents a form of scientific racism, as the genetic factors
‘inherent’ in the ethnic group are privileged over the societal reasons that may also explain
the inflated crime rates (see Chapter 12).

Genetic influences and evolution

Controversial interpretations aside, the presence of genes that affect impulsivity and
aggression is generally thought by biopsychologists to be the result of evolution.
Evolutionary accounts of offending are rooted in the assumption that the genes that
sometimes manifest as criminal behaviour have arisen and persisted in the human
population because, over evolutionary time, they have conferred an advantage on those
who carried them by allowing to compete successfully with other individuals. There is
evidence that human beings have evolved a general tendency to be aggres-sive as,
compared with other species, human aggression is more often lethal than in other species.
Gómez et al. (2016) compared intraspecific violence in 600 human populations and 1,024
mammal species. The death rate from intraspecific violence in non-humans was 0.3%
whereas in humans it was 2%. The suggestion that aggres-sive traits have evolved to allow
individuals to compete for resources is supported by evidence of human-on-human
violence throughout history. Allen et al. (2016) found that incidence of sharp-force trauma
(i.e. from edged weapons) correlates with times when food was scarce because of famine
or drought.
The evolutionary view would also draw attention to the fact that men are, in general,
more likely to offend than women, especially violent offences. Gottschalk and Ellis (2010)
focus on the role of sexual selection in criminality. Following con-ventional evolutionary
theory, they suggest that human females tend to invest more resources in their offspring
than males and therefore tend to be choosier about their choice of mate. This promotes
competition among males for mating opportunities.

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Among the evolutionarily advantageous strategies males could adopt are some that could
manifest as antisocial behaviours such as:
■ Deception (e.g. promising to be faithful during courtship and then leaving once the
female is pregnant).
■ Intimidating, injuring and killing rival males.
■ Exaggerating their capacity as a provider, e.g. by stealing resources from others.
■ Using force when mating is not voluntary.

An evolutionary account of crimes such as assault, murder, rape, theft etc. is neces-sarily
somewhat speculative but does at least provide a set of grounding assump-tions against
which the operation of genes on the nervous system can be understood. At the same time,
it should be acknowledged that there are competing explanations for the same behaviours
(see Chapters 4 and 5), and that biopsychologists them-selves insist that evolutionary and
genetic influence on offending must be under-stood as just that: influences, rather than
causes. Feminists have also advanced a critical view of such claims (see Chapter 12).

Environmental toxins: lead pollution

One of the most significant challenges to genetics as an explanatory factor in offend-ing is
that crime rates fluctuate (see Chapter 2). While the prevalence of particu-lar genes/alleles
does change with time, over the course of short timescales (i.e. decades) the genetic
composition of the population remains steady while the amount of violent offending can
change markedly. This implies that factors other than genes have an impact on offending.
One potentially important factor is pollution from the environment. A large number of
toxins are known to affect brain development, including methylmercury, manganese and
lead (Grandjean & Landrigan, 2014). Of these, lead has attracted particular scrutiny
because environmental lead levels show a close relationship with levels of violent crime.
This was first reported by Nevin (2000), who collected data about environmental lead
pollution in the US over the course of the 20th century and compared these with crime
data. It emerged that lead levels correlated almost perfectly with the rate of violent crime
committed 23 years later. Environmental sources of lead include paint and petrol, both of
which for-merly contained lead as an additive. Having risen over the course of the 20th
cen-tury, environmental lead levels in the United States peaked in the mid-1970s, falling
thereafter as a result of tougher environmental legislation. Violent crime in the US rose
steadily in the US in the post-war period, peaking in the early 1990s and then falling to a
historic low in 2014. Nevin’s explanation for the relationship is that expo-sure to lead
early in life affects brain development in ways that later increase the risk of offending.
Stretesky and Lynch (2004) compared air-lead levels and crime rates in 2,772 counties in
the US finding a significant correlation between lead levels and both violent and property
crimes. They also found that the relationship was stron-gest in counties with the highest
levels of deprivation. Mielke and Zahran (2012) found the same relationship in an analysis
of six US cities. Research has repeatedly

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confirmed the correlation between lead levels and crime. Nevin (2007) found it in data
from Britain, Canada, France, Australia, Finland, Italy, Germany and New Zea-land.
Significantly, legislation to reduce lead levels in much of Europe was enacted in the 1980s
and the fall in crime rates came correspondingly later than in the US, again after a delay of
around 20 years.
There is a plausible route from lead exposure to offending. Lead exposure results in
lower IQ, poorer educational attainment, generalised cognitive deficits, hyper-activity,
conduct disorders and aggression, all of which are linked to criminality in adulthood
(Narag et al., 2009). The degree to which brain development is affected depends on the
level of exposure and age, so earlier exposure results in greater defi-cits. Neuroimaging
studies using MRI indicate that childhood lead exposure results in a reduction of grey
matter in large parts of the prefrontal cortex (Cecil et al., 2008), which is consistent with
the findings discussed above.
However, there are some difficulties interpreting the evidence linking lead pol-lution
with crime. First, there are inconsistencies between some findings, partic-ularly those
concerning property crime and murder. Reyes (2007) found a strong relationship between
lead exposure and violent assault but only a weak link with murder or property crime.
Second, there are many other variables that plausibly could influence offending rates,
including economic conditions, policing and judi-cial policies and drug use. Because these
can fluctuate alongside environmental lead levels it is difficult to isolate lead as a causal
factor in crime. Similarly, higher lead exposure tends to occur in economically
disadvantaged areas, so factors such as poverty and social disorganisation may explain the
relationship. In the absence of experimental studies, which clearly would be unethical to
conduct, conclusions about a causal link between lead exposure and offending are not
possible. One promising direction for research is the use of prospective, longitudinal
designs. This involves recruiting participants early in life, assessing them for various risk
factors including lead exposure and then following them up at regular intervals. One such
study already shows an association between lead levels at three years of age and
behavioural problems at six years (Liu et al., 2014) but it will be some years before data
are available about adult offending. Until then, the role of lead pollution remains a
speculative, albeit plausible, hypothesis.

Traumatic brain injury

Another potential source of brain deficits is physical injury. Traumatic brain injury (TBI)
refers to injury to the brain incurred through mechanical force to the head and can occur in
many ways including sporting injuries, car accidents and physical violence. TBI can be
focal, where there is clear damage to a specific brain area, but is more often diffuse, where
there is subtler and more widespread injury. Severity can range from the mild disruption
associated with concussion (disorientation but no loss of consciousness) to severe, where
there is lengthy loss of consciousness and a significant risk of psychological impairments
in the longer term. The effects of TBI are cumulative, so repeated mild TBI can still add
up to significant injury over

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a period of time. Around 8.5% of the population have had a TBI but those most at risk are
young men (Yates et al., 2006). Other risk factors are living in a town or city, having lower
socio-economic status, and alcohol and drug use (Williams, 2012).
There is substantial evidence of an association between TBI and offending. Williams et
al. (2010a) surveyed 453 adult offenders in custody and found that 64.9% had experienced
some degree of head injury. In 16% of cases the TBI was moderate to severe and where the
TBIs were mild they were often repeated. Scho-field et al. (2006) randomly sampled 200
Australian adult prison inmates and found that 82% had experienced TBI, 42% having lost
consciousness as a result. Research has focused more on male than female offenders but
the prevalence of TBI may be higher among women (Slaughter et al., 2003). Similar
findings have been found in juvenile offenders (Allely, 2016). There is also some evidence
of a relationship between severity of TBI and severity of offending. Raine et al. (2005)
found that, while TBI was common in adolescent offenders, those who went on to become
persistent offenders in adulthood had significantly more TBIs with loss of consciousness
than those who stopped offending as they entered adult-hood. Similarly, Williams et al.
(2010b) found that young offenders with more TBIs showed a greater level of violence in
their offences.

One interpretation is that TBI leads to diffuse brain injury that produces the defi-cits in
executive functioning, impulse control and emotional regulation that lead to offending (see
above). However, the picture is complicated by the fact that mental illness and substance
abuse are elevated in the prison population and it is not clear whether TBI operates
independently of this or whether, for example, TBI elevates the risk of substance abuse,
which then leads to a greater risk of offending (Williams, 2012). There are also questions
about the direction of causality between TBI and offending. It is possible that those who
commit crime start out with a greater pro-pensity for risk taking or poorer impulse control
that increases both their risk of incurring a TBI and their risk of offending. In an attempt to
resolve this issue, Scho-field et al. (2015) identified 7,694 individuals from Western
Australia who had been admitted to hospital for TBI. These were compared with 22,905
matched individu-als with no TBIs to see if there was a relationship with criminal
convictions. Impor-tantly, people who had been convicted of crimes committed before
they incurred their TBI were excluded. They concluded that TBI was a causal influence on
later offending in both males and females, moderately increasing their risk of criminal
convictions. Although it is very difficult to separate out the influence of TBIs from other
variables, there is sufficient evidence to support the view that addressing TBI in the
criminal justice system would bring significant benefits in the form of reduced offending
rates and more successful rehabilitation.

Adverse childhood experiences

A final influence on brain development that may be relevant in understand-ing offending is
exposure to severe and chronic stress. Maltreatment as a child increases the risk of
offending in adulthood, possibly by as much as 50% (Caspi

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et al., 2002). One way of measuring the impact of negative experiences in child-hood is
the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) scale originally developed by Felitti et al.
(1998). Using ACE involves assessing whether the person experienced any of 10 adverse
events in childhood. These include emotional, physical or sex-ual abuse, witnessing
household violence and having a household member impris-oned. Higher ACE scores are
associated with poorer health, earlier death, greater risk of drug and alcohol abuse and
imprisonment (Felitti et al., 1998). It is possible that stressors experienced in childhood
affect brain development in ways that lead to offending. Stress affects brain structure and
functioning in both animal models and humans (Anda et al., 2010). Bremner and
Vermetten (2001) report that chronic and severe stress causes changes in the prefrontal
cortex and the limbic system and alters the metabolism of both serotonin and dopamine.
Jackowski et al. (2009) found that severe stress is associated with reduced grey matter in
the prefrontal cortex and Ahmed-Leitao et al. (2016), reviewing neuroimaging studies,
report that childhood maltreatment correlates with reduced amygdala volume. While these
studies do not specifically address offending they provide evidence that early adversity
pro-duces measurable changes in the brain. These include the areas relating to executive
function and emotional regulation that are implicated in criminality (see above).

Research using the ACE scale is at an early stage but there appears to be a rela-tionship
with overall risk and severity of offending. Baglivio et al. (2015) found that ACE scores of
six or higher were predictive of earlier first arrest and a pattern of chronic offending. Fox
et al. (2015) studied 22,575 offenders in the US. ACE scores were significantly higher in
chronic, violent offenders than in those who commit-ted a single, non-violent offence.
Suggestive as these findings are, it is necessary to be cautious. High ACE scores are
associated with a number of different outcomes besides offending including increased risk
of victimisation (Ports et al., 2016). It is not yet known how different variables interact to
produce criminal and other out-comes, neither is it clear why some individuals appear to
be resilient to the effects of childhood adversity although the mediating effect of the L-
MAOA and other alleles (see above) may provide part of the answer.

Biopsychology and offending: general considerations

The biological view of crime makes many people uneasy. One criticism is that an
emphasis on genetics implies that crime is an inevitable and insoluble problem. In
response it could be said that, while genes do seem to be an influence on offending,
biopsychology has done much to reveal how genes interact with other influences like
neurotoxins and childhood adversity. Even if nothing can be done about an individual’s
genetic inheritance, biopsychology holds the promise of preventing offending by, for
example, acting to reduce exposure to pollutants, supporting the parents of at-risk children
or by improving children’s diet, education and physical activity in the early years (Raine et
al., 2003). The accusation that biopsychology implies that attempts to rehabilitate
offenders are futile can be answered similarly.

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Far from promoting a fatalistic view, biological psychology may help make rehabil-itation
more effective if it can be used to match offenders with the most appropriate forms of
treatment (Cornet et al., 2014). It also leads to non-obvious but apparently effective
interventions with offenders like giving dietary supplements (Zaalberg et al., 2010).

A second criticism is that biological psychology threatens to undermine the notion of

criminal responsibility. The prerogative of the judicial system to punish a criminal rests on
the understanding that the offender’s actions were freely chosen. If they were influenced
by their genes or their brain structure, then their crimes were not the result of free choice
and, therefore, it would not be legitimate to punish the offender. However, the English
judicial system (along with many others), takes the view that a person lacks criminal
responsibility only if (1) they did not under-stand the nature of their act; or (2) they did not
understand that the act was wrong. Glenn and Raine (2014) point out that even in cases
where there is strong evidence of a genetic or neurological factor in a person’s offence,
this does not, in itself, show that the offender lacks rationality, so it remains for the courts
to judge criminal responsibility, not the scientists. Glenn and Raine do argue, however, in
favour of assessing criminal responsibility on a scale and using neuropsychological testing
as part of the assessment, as is the case in the Netherlands.

A third criticism is that the biological approach invites application in predicting future
offending and this raises ethical concerns. In the case of convicted offenders, attempts to
predict future offending are uncontroversial. Behavioural, psychologi-cal and social
variables are already widely used in prison systems all over the world to make decisions
about whether offenders should be released. The biological understanding of risk factors is
not sufficiently advanced at present to increase the accuracy of the methods already in use
and the measures required (e.g. brain scans) are impractical to take, so there is currently no
justification for using them, although this may change in the future (Glenn & Raine, 2014).
Much more problematic is the possibility of predicting risk of offending in people who
have not committed any crime. On the one hand, there is a potential benefit to society of
identifying those at risk and diverting them from offending through suitable interventions.
On the other hand, there is a threat to civil liberties if an individual’s rights are curtailed on
the grounds that they might commit a crime. This risks undermining the principle that
people are presumed innocent until proved guilty and it is clear how easily a
biopsychological knowledge of offending could be misused if it took the form of, for
example, mass genetic screening (Rose, 2000). It is not yet possible to use bio-logical
factors in this way but this could change as understanding grows, so the ethi-cal and civil
liberties implications of this issue will require continued consideration.

Chapter summary
There is substantial evidence that the nervous systems of offenders are different from those
of non-offenders. Their heart rates are lower and, particularly in the

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case of aggressive offenders, there are structural differences in the limbic system and
prefrontal cortex of the brain. These differences are consistent with the view that offenders
have unusual emotional responses, find it difficult to inhibit their antisocial impulses and
do not learn easily from punishment. There are several fac-tors that could contribute to
these abnormalities. Genetics is one and it is widely accepted that genes that affect the
metabolism of the neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine influence the risk of
criminality, although this is in combination with adverse childhood experiences. Other
influences on criminality include neurologi-cal damage caused by lead pollution and
traumatic brain injury. It is difficult, given the accumulation of evidence, to reject the idea
that offending has a substantial biological basis.

Further reading
Raine, A. (2013). The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime. London: Allen
Lane. An explanation of the field by a world-leading researcher.

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CHAPTER

4
Psychologically oriented
explanations of offending

The previous chapter examined criminality from a biological perspective. This chapter
presents a number of individual psychological perspectives on offending including
unconscious motivations, personality and cognitive processes. The range discussed here is
by no means exhaustive but gives some indication of the diversity of psychological views
on criminal behaviour. The distinction between ‘biological’ and ‘psychological’
perspectives is somewhat arbitrary and, in the case of person-ality theory and psychopathy,
there is inevitably a crossover. This to be expected since a long-term tendency within
psychology as a field is to integrate biological, psychological and social perspectives.

Apply your learning

Alan, a reformed offender, describes how he ended up in prison:
I grew up in the recession of the 1970s. Jobs were scarce. My teachers didn’t
expect much of me and saw me as a troublemaker. My father was violent towards
my mother. I loved my mum and I hated the way he treated her but I came to see
that the world was full of victims and perpetrators and I didn’t want to be a
victim. In my teens I started hanging around with a gang, nothing that serious.
We’d go out drinking and there were rivalries with other gangs. One night we
were in a bar and this lad knocked my drink over. Next thing I knew we were all
over him, kicking and punching him. I stabbed him. I was revolted but at the same
time I needed to show everyone that I was a hard man.

How could the psychological theories discussed in this chapter explain Alan’s
offending? Which do you believe provides the most plausible explanation and why?

Psychodynamic theories
Starting with Sigmund Freud, a number of psychoanalytical thinkers have turned their
attention to crime as one possible manifestation of irrational, unconscious,

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pathological processes. While the psychodynamic approach is no longer a signifi-cant

force in criminological psychology it gave rise to a number of hypotheses about the causes
of offending that remain important, including the notion that criminality is linked to
disruption of early childhood attachments.
The psychoanalytical tradition regards the personality as having three com-ponents. The
foundation of the psyche is the id, which generates self-serving and pleasure-seeking
impulses. If manifested, these would result in highly anti-social behaviour. The pleasure-
oriented demands of the id are redirected by the ego, whose primary orientation is towards
reality. The ego, in turn, is guided by the superego, which embodies the moral rules that a
person acquires during socialisation within the family. If the ego acts contrary to the
superego’s moral rules it is punished with guilt and anxiety. In a well-adjusted person, the
ego is able to act in ways that satisfy the id’s demands for gratification but that are morally
acceptable to the superego. It follows from this that tendencies to behave antisocially are,
from a psychodynamic viewpoint, the result of an inad-equate or dysfunctional superego,
which, in turn, results from an abnormal rela-tionship with the parents during early
childhood. Criminal behaviour can be the result of a superego that is weak, deviant or
overly harsh (Blackburn, 1993). A person with a weak superego would experience little or
no anxiety when con-templating antisocial acts and little or no guilt after committing them.
Since it is this anxiety and guilt that keeps people ‘on the straight and narrow’ they would
have few inhibitions against acting on the selfish and aggressive impulses from their id.
Alternatively, the person could have a deviant superego. If a young boy has a good
relationship with a criminal father he would internalise his father’s pro-criminal values in
the usual course of development, meaning that he would lack any sense that criminal acts
were wrong. Finally, if the superego is exces-sively harsh and punitive the person may
engage in criminal behaviour (e.g. ‘compulsive’ stealing) in order to be punished for it.

There is a tendency to dismiss psychoanalytically derived theories out of hand on the

grounds that they are ‘unscientific’, which is not entirely fair. Two strengths of the
psychodynamic tradition are that it stresses the importance to offending of stable
personality traits and how they interact with the immediate situation and recognises that
there are many routes to offending, so the same behaviour might have different causes in
different individuals (Andrews & Bonta, 2010). It also identifies childhood influences as
significant in crime, par-ticularly poor-quality interactions between child and parent
(Blackburn, 1993). Consequently, psychodynamic theories have contributed to the field by
identify-ing important variables linked to criminality. However, the grounding assump-
tion, that criminal tendencies are a manifestation of unconscious conflicts and motives, is
very difficult to gather direct evidence for. Because the relationships between family
variables and offending can be explained in other ways (e.g. genetics and social learning) it
is relatively rare now for criminological psychol-ogists to draw directly on
psychoanalytical theories.

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Attachment, delinquency and offending

One influential development of the psychodynamic approach is the view that crim-inality
is related to problems forming attachments with primary caregivers early in life.
According to Bowlby’s (1951) ‘maternal deprivation hypothesis’, an infant requires a
close and continuous relationship with its primary caregiver. Because the attachment an
infant forms with its caregiver is a prototype for all the other relationships the child will
form throughout its life, disruption of the attachment relationship results in an inability to
form meaningful relationships with others. In some individuals, this ‘affectionless’
character leads to delinquent and criminal behaviour. Bowlby’s theory was based on a
comparison of 44 juvenile thieves (who had been referred to a child guidance clinic) with a
matched group of adolescents who had mental health problems but no history of criminal
behaviour. Bowlby reported that 39% of the thieves had experienced significant
interruption to their maternal attachment whereas in the non-delinquent group this was
only 5%. While Bowlby’s research has been extensively criticised for its unrepresentative
sample, poor control group matching and the way he classified attachments as disrupted,
and although later researchers did not find as clear-cut a relationship as Bowlby (Rutter,
1971), attachment remains an important theme in criminological psychol-ogy. Bowlby did
not distinguish between disruption of attachments (an attachment forms but is then
discontinued) and distortion of attachments (an attachment forms but is affected by
adverse circumstances such as parental conflict). A more recent psychodynamic theory by
Fonagy (2003) proposes that the attachment relation-ship provides the context within
which an individual learns self-control over their innate aggressive and violent tendencies.
Distorted attachments interfere with the process by which they ‘unlearn’ to be violent early
in life, leaving the person prone to aggression and impulsivity in adulthood because they
have a diminished capacity to understand the mental states of others. There are interesting
parallels between this view and the biological account of offending given in Chapter 3 and
research continues to support the view that attachment is an important influence on
offending. McElhaney et al. (2006) reviewed 74 studies, finding that insecure and
disorganised attachment is significantly associated with antisocial behaviour in
adolescence, and Ogilvie et al. (2014) conducted a meta-analysis of 30 studies, concluding
that insecure attachment is more common in violent, non-violent and sexual offenders than
in non-offenders.

Eysenck’s personality theory

Eysenck’s (1964) theory shares the psychoanalytical assumptions that offending is linked
to stable personality traits and that the root cause of most criminality is the failure to
contain immature pleasure seeking and selfish impulses. However, Eysenck was a
vociferous critic of psychodynamic psychology and, beyond these assumptions, his
approach to crime was very different. Eysenck linked offending to

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three personality traits that he claimed are present in all people: extraversion (E),
neuroticism (N) and psychoticism (P). These should not be thought of as types of people
but as dimensions along which people can vary. An individual’s unique per-sonality is the
result of their individual combination of E, N and P. The dimensions are independent of
each other so two people might have very similar E and N levels but different levels of P.
Eysenck’s central claim is that people who are high in all three traits are particularly prone
to offending. E, N and P are largely genetically determined and relate to general properties
of the nervous system. People who are high in E have a low level of activity in their
nervous system (low cortical and autonomic arousal). They therefore require more
stimulation from their environ-ment than people who score lower in E, and, according to
Eysenck, they are harder to condition. People who are high in N have unstable nervous
systems and react very strongly to aversive stimuli, making them anxious and also less
condition-able. People who are high in P have characteristics associated with mental
disorders like schizophrenia and tend to be cold, uncaring, solitary and aggressive
(Eysenck added the P dimension in later versions of his theory). According to Eysenck, the
high E and N makes a person seek out excitement and risk but they are unlikely to learn
from the punishment that follows antisocial acts. At the same time, their high P steers them
away from social contexts that support prosocial behaviour, resulting in an individual with
a high risk of engaging in crime.

Eysenck’s theory generates predictions that are relatively easy to test. E, N and P are
straightforward to measure using self-report pencil and paper tests. If it is true that high E,
N and P lead to criminal behaviour then we would expect to find higher E, N and P scores
in offenders than in the general population. Although Eysenck himself claimed impressive
support for his theory, others suggest that mat-ters are not so clear. The associations
between E, N, P and offending only appear in very narrowly defined samples (e.g.
psychopaths; see below) and when ‘ordinary’ offenders are analysed, the associations tend
to reduce or disappear (West, 1988). A review by Farrington et al. (1982) found that
‘officially’ defined offenders had high N but not high E, whereas in self-reported offenders
E was high but N was not. Subsequent research has reported similarly inconsistent results.
Although measures of P and N tend to be higher in offenders than non-offenders, some
studies find that offenders have higher E, some lower and some about the same (Hollin,
1989).
Part of the problem may be that samples of convicted offenders only include those who
were caught and found guilty, so studies comparing them with noncriminal controls may
actually only indicate the characteristics of ‘unsuc-cessful’ offenders. Another problem is
that Eysenck’s E actually measures two dif-ferent traits, impulsivity and sociability and
only impulsivity is actually related with criminality. A meta-analysis of 52 studies by Cale
(2006) found that impulsivity was quite strongly related to antisocial behaviour while
sociability and neuroticism showed only a weak relationship. Apart from the inconsistent
findings, others have taken issue with Eysenck’s concept of P because it is not clear what
it measures. It appears to be related to psychopathic tendencies but not in a consistent way
(Black-burn, 1993). It has also been criticised as being circular in that questionnaire items

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that measure P tend to refer to antisocial behaviour, so reporting antisocial behaviour

results in high P scores, which are then used to explain antisocial behaviour.
While Eysenck’s attempt to formulate a ‘unified theory of offending’ is widely
regarded as having failed, his contribution to the field is significant. His theory was
arguably the first fully worked-out psychological theory of offending and remains
impressive for the way it went beyond a merely descriptive analysis of offenders to
provide a causal explanation of criminality that included genetic, biological, psychological
and social processes. Eysenck founded a tradition of research that has identified important
personality influences on offending and many of his ideas have remained influential in the
field. For example, the view that aggressive offend-ing results from a combination of
impulsiveness and an inability to learn from pun-ishment is central to the biopsychological
view of offending discussed in Chapter 3 and has been a significant influence on research
into the relationship between psy-chopathy and offending.

Psychopathy
Psychopathy is a personality disorder with three distinguishing traits: (1) a callous,
unemotional character and a lack of guilt; (2) arrogance, deceitfulness and narcis-sism in
relationships with others; and (3) a tendency towards impulsive, irresponsi-ble and
antisocial behaviour (Cooke et al., 2006). Psychopathy overlaps with other problems
including antisocial personality disorder and conduct disorder but has the distinguishing
feature that, while those disorders are associated with reactive aggression (reacting
violently to threat or provocation), psychopaths are charac-terised by instrumental
aggression: they use aggression as a means to achieve other goals (Frick et al., 2003),
which makes them particularly dangerous. Neumann and Hare (2008) estimate that about
50% of more serious offences are committed by indi-viduals with psychopathic traits, who
are also much more prone to recidivism than other offenders. Psychopathy is usually
identified using a checklist of traits and behaviours such as a lack of empathy,
impulsiveness and a high need for excitement (e.g. the Psychopathy Checklist; PCL-R;
Hare et al., 2000). Diagnosis of psychopathy depends on having a score above a
designated cut-off score but it is best understood as a dimension, so the difference between
a psychopath and a non-psychopath is more a question of degree than of kind.
Psychopathy is not diagnosed in children but psychopathic features, particularly callous
and unemotional (CU) traits, are frequently present in children who later develop the full
disorder. Such individ-uals are unusually aggressive in early childhood, have problems
following rules (e.g. in school) as children, and gravitate towards delinquent peers in
adolescence. In adulthood, they are prolific, non-specialist offenders with an irresponsible
and parasitic lifestyle. The predominant feature throughout life is a lack of empathy and a
disregard for the wellbeing of others (Viding et al., 2014).

Psychologically, psychopaths have a very specific set of deficits: (1) they are rela-tively
unreactive to pain and distress in others; (2) they have difficulty recognising

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fear and sorrow (but not anger) in others; (3) they have an impaired ability to learn from
punishment and other negative experiences; and (4) they have difficulty understanding
moral rules whose purpose is to avoid harming others (White & Blair, 2015). Most people
empathise with others and find their distress aversive. Over the course of their early
development they learn, from this and from externally imposed punishments, that harming
others has negative consequences for them-selves and so they learn an aversion to harming
others. Psychopaths lack empathic responses to others and their capacity to learn from
punishment is impaired, so they do not build up a conscience in the same way as other
people (Viding et al., 2014; cf. Eysenck’s view of criminality).

Lalumière et al. (2008) suggest that psychopathy represents an evolutionary strategy

that allows some individuals to take advantage of the fact that the major-ity of humans
have an evolved inclination to cooperate. In such an environment, a tendency to lie, cheat
and manipulate others could be advantageous, provided that such individuals are not too
common (as otherwise people become more vigilant and opportunities to deceive others
disappear). This is speculative, but psychopa-thy is widely regarded as having a biological
basis and there is certainly evidence that it is influenced by genetics. Beaver et al. (2011)
studied general psychopathic traits in 759 twin pairs, estimating heritability at 44%. In a
study of CU traits Viding et al. (2005) found substantially higher concordance in MZ than
DZ twins, estimat-ing the influence of genes on this trait at 67%. A review of 24 studies by
Dhanani et al. (2017) found good evidence of a genetic influence on psychopathy, this
being strongest for the CU traits. However, these heritability estimates still indicate a sig-
nificant environmental influence. Auty et al. (2015) investigated this by comparing PCL-R
scores from fathers and sons who were participating in a prospective, longi-tudinal study
of factors affecting delinquency. A number of other risk factors were also measured. A
correlation was found between the psychopathy scores of fathers and sons. Psychopathy in
the sons was also associated with the father’s employ-ment problems, alcohol abuse,
family disruption and poor parental supervision. Although supportive of a genetic
contribution, it also seems that the fathers’ psy-chopathic traits made them more likely to
be unemployed, meaning that they spent more time in the home where they consequently
had a negative effect on the sons’ developmental environment.

Brain imaging studies have linked psychopathy with structural and functional
abnormalities. For example, Ly et al. (2012) found evidence that the cerebral cortex was
thinner in psychopaths than controls, particularly in the area of the left insula. Carré et al.
(2013) report that those with stronger psychopathic tendencies show lower levels of
amygdala activity. While these findings are suggestive, there are problems. Griffiths and
Jalava (2017) reviewed imaging studies where psychopathy had been diagnosed using the
PCL-R which should, in principle, make patterns across studies easier to find. Results
regarding the amygdala were inconsistent, with some finding reduced amygdala volumes
and activity, others finding increases and some showing no differences. Evidence of
differences in the hippocampus were more consistent but still many of the studies found no
differences between

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the psychopaths and the controls. Part of the problem is that different studies use different
cut-off scores to distinguish psychopaths and the dimensional nature of psychopathy is
often overlooked, so an individual with a PCL-R score of 25 might be in the psychopath
group in one study, but would be in the control group in a dif-ferent study. In addition,
psychopathy is strongly associated with drug and alcohol abuse, so this could be a
confounding influence in many studies. There are other problems with the evidence base.
Many studies have examined the heritability of antisocial behaviour (see Chapter 3) but
relatively few of these have distinguished between psychopathic and non-psychopathic
offenders, which makes it difficult to say how much of the apparent heritability of
antisocial behaviour is attributable to psychopathy or vice versa. A similar problem exists
with research into the role of brain abnormalities (Lalumière et al., 2008).

Some critics have questioned the usefulness of the entire concept of psychopa-thy on
the grounds that it is circular: psychopathy is diagnosed on the basis of the individual’s
self-reported tendency to commit antisocial acts, which is then used to explain why they
commit antisocial acts (the same point has been made about Eysenck’s P dimension; see
above). Walters (2004) suggests that evidence is lack-ing that psychopaths represent a
discrete, identifiable subgroup of offenders; that the PCL-R has relatively poor predictive
power when identifying recidivists; and that it over-emphasises individual psychological
factors in offending to the exclu-sion of all else. Horley (2011) adds that terms like
‘psychopath’ work against the effective rehabilitation of criminals because offenders
incorporate the label into their own self-concept and because, once they have been labelled
psychopathic, society responds by, for example, imposing harsher punishments or
withholding opportunities for therapeutic rehabilitation (see Chapter 5 on labelling theory
and self-fulfilling prophecies). Defenders of the concept respond that, at the very least,
psychopathy is useful as a predictor of criminality and recidivism. Harris et al. (1991)
found that 80% of psychopathic offenders reoffended within a year of release and that
their psychopathy scores were a stronger predictor of reoffending than 16 other variables
combined. DeLisi (2009) goes further, arguing that since offend-ers have an obvious,
negative effect on others, that we should not be shy of using negative labels like
‘psychopathic’ to describe them. Furthermore, since about 5% of ‘career’ offenders are
responsible for the vast preponderance of crime and since ‘career offender’ overlaps
significantly with ‘psychopath’, psychopathy should actually be regarded as the ‘unified
theory of crime’. While this may overstate the importance of the concept there is no doubt
that it continues to stimulate a great deal of research.

Moral development
The cognitive perspective in psychology is concerned with the processes of think-ing.
Kohlberg (1976) advanced an influential cognitive theory of how moral rea-soning
develops. Although it is not a theory of criminality as such, since criminal

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acts are usually also immoral, it is potentially of relevance to understanding crim-inal

behaviour. Following the work of Jean Piaget, Kohlberg suggested that moral reasoning
advances with increasing age, becoming more complex and abstract in line with more
general intellectual development. Kohlberg investigated moral reasoning in children and
adults by presenting participants with moral dilem-mas, short scenarios that pose a moral
problem. The best known concerns a man whose wife is dying but who cannot afford the
medicine that might save her. The participant is asked whether the man should break into
the pharmacy and steal the medicine. Kohlberg was not so much interested in whether the
participant answered yes or no, but wished to examine the reasoning behind their decision.
From the kinds of justification that people gave Kohlberg distinguished three dis-tinct
levels of moral reasoning. Each level contains two stages, giving six stages in all (see
Table 4.1).

If Kohlberg is correct, we might expect that criminals will show a lower level of moral
reasoning than non-criminals, as lower levels afford more justifications for offending than
higher. The majority of studies have focused on adolescents, but there is consistent support
for this prediction. Arbuthnot et al. (1987) reviewed 15 studies and found that, in all but
three of these, significantly more delinquents were functioning at level 2 than level 3.
Thornton (1987) found a correlation between adolescents’ moral reasoning and teacher
reports of their antisocial behaviour. Nelson et al. (1990) reviewed 15 studies and found
the same association between

TABLE 4.1 Levels and stages of moral development in Kohlberg’s theory

Level Stage Description

1. Pre-conventional Obedience and ‘Right’ and ‘wrong’ are determined
Rules and social expectations punishment by what is punished and what is not
are external to the individual orientation
Instrumental ‘Right’ and ‘wrong’ are determined
purpose and by what brings rewards rather than
exchange the avoidance of punishment
2. Conventional Interpersonal accord ‘Right’ is defined in terms of what
The individual has internalised and conformity pleases others
the rules and expectations of Social accord and ‘Right’ is defined in terms of
others system maintenance conformity and respect for authority
3. Post-conventional Social contract, ‘Right’ and ‘wrong’ are determined
The individual adopts utility and moral by values and opinions. Individual
universal moral principles and rights rights can be more important than
distinguishes their rules from laws
the rules and expectations of Universal ethical ‘Right’ and ‘wrong’ are based on
others principles ethical principles adopted by the
person that are essentially separate
from the mores of society although
the two may coincide

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offending and immature moral reasoning. Van Vugt et al. (2011) found a significant
inverse correlation between level of moral reasoning and risk of recidivism among
offenders. Some evidence suggests that offenders’ moral reasoning is only lower in areas
related to their offending. For example, Palmer and Hollin (1998) found that non-violent
offenders’ moral reasoning was lower in areas relating to property and the law but not in
other areas (e.g. helping others). The poorer moral reasoning of offenders may be related
to parenting. Blackburn (1993) suggests that moral devel-opment in children depends on
adequate opportunities for role taking, which may be lacking in the families of delinquents
and offenders. This view is supported by the observation that parental rejection is
associated with poorer moral development (Palmer & Hollin, 1996) and higher levels of
moral development are facilitated by a democratic parenting style where children are
involved in discussion of moral deci-sions with parents and peers (Powers, 1988). Palmer
(2003) suggests that a lower level of moral reasoning influences offending because it
supports an egocentric bias in thinking and hostile attributions about others’ behaviour.
These limit consider-ation of the impact of offending and prime the individual to react
antisocially to other people’s (innocuous) actions.

Although this research supports a link between moral reasoning and offending, several
points should be stressed. First, Kohlberg proposed a theory of moral rea-soning, not a
theory of moral behaviour. The link between thinking and behaviour is rarely
straightforward and it is obvious that anyone can have well-worked-out moral positions
that they fail to act on. Second, the link between moral behaviour and offending is stronger
for some types of crime than others. Thornton and Reid (1982) found that those convicted
of crimes carried out for material gain (e.g. rob-bery and theft) were more likely to show
preconventional moral reasoning than those convicted of impulsive crimes like assault.
This is not surprising since the former type of crime typically involves planning and,
hence, reasoning, whereas the latter type does not. Third, interventions that have tried to
enhance delin-quents’ moral reasoning have met with limited success: moral reasoning
improves but moral behaviour does not (Gibbs et al., 1995). Ultimately, there does appear
to be a relationship between moral reasoning and offending but beyond the work of Palmer
(2003) relatively little research has been done recently to integrate moral reasoning with
other variables in criminality. Since it was not Kohlberg’s intention to produce a theory of
crime, it is fairest to regard it as complementary to other explanations of offending.

Social cognition
Social cognition is a term that covers a range of thinking processes involved in
understanding the self in relation to other people. This includes self-perception, perception
of others, interpreting others’ behaviour and solving problems involv-ing other people. It
would be impossible here to examine all the themes contained

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in the large and well-developed research literature on social cognition and offend-ing (see
Fontaine, 2012), so only two illustrative examples are discussed: the role of cognitive and
emotional deficits in aggressive offending; and the use of cognitive strategies to justify
offending.

Cognitive and emotional deficits

Criminality may be linked to deficits in social understanding. Aggressive/vio-lent
offending may be the outcome of situations in which an individual forms incorrect mental
representations of the consequences of their actions (Richardson et al., 1994). For example,
misunderstanding of others’ motives and goals (e.g. interpreting innocuous or ambivalent
behaviour as provocative or threatening) may incline the individual to respond
aggressively. This idea underpins anger management training (see Chapter 10).
Alternatively, the inability to understand others’ pain and distress may remove an
important inhibition on hurting others. Deficits of this kind may relate to the capacity to
empathise (feel what other people are feeling, an emotional process) or mentalise (work
out what other people are thinking, a cognitive process). For example, Jolliffe and
Farrington (2004) found a weak negative association between aggression and empathy and
a stronger negative association with cognitive perspective taking, although a meta-analysis
by Vachon et al. (2014) found only a weak link between empathy and aggression. One
problem with the evidence base is that these studies rely almost wholly on self-reports,
which are prone to response bias through social desirability. Winter et al. (2017) addressed
this criticism by using more objective measures in a comparison of offenders and non-
offenders. Responses to vid-eos with emotional and neutral content were recorded, along
with performance on a mentalising task and a factual reasoning task. The results suggested
that aggressive offending was associated with deficits in empathy (emotional) rather than
mentalising (cognition). Similarly, Mariano et al. (2017) found that offend-ers were lower
than controls on a variety of empathy measures and had more difficulty recognising the
emotional states of others. Significantly, this is consis-tent with research indicating deficits
in brain areas associated with recognising others’ emotional states (see Chapter 3).

Moral disengagement
Another theme in the social cognition of offenders is the use of moral disengagement
strategies (Bandura, 1990). Individuals who are contemplating a criminal act may
experience an uncomfortable internal conflict (or cognitive dissonance) between, for
example, the desire for material gain and the moral knowledge that stealing from others is
wrong. Moral disengagement describes a set of strategies used by offenders to reduce this
cognitive dissonance. It can take several forms:
■ Moral justification. Deciding that the end justifies the means.
■ Euphemistic labelling. Using language that sanitises antisocial acts.

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■ Advantageous comparison. Identifying other types of offending as worse.

■ Diffusion of responsibility. Sharing the responsibility with co-offenders and so feeling
less individual culpability.
■ Displacement of responsibility. Blaming someone else, e.g. a ringleader.
■ Distortion of consequences. Mentally minimising the amount of harm that would
result.
■ Victim blaming. Attributing the responsibility for victimisation to the victim
themselves.
■ Dehumanising the victim. Regarding the victim as lacking human attributes and
therefore being a legitimate target.
The use of moral disengagement is a significant predictor of offending (Shul-man et al.,
2011) and has been identified in a variety of antisocial and criminal acts including
terrorism, executions, juvenile delinquency and white-collar crime (Fontaine, 2012).
Alleyne et al. (2014) examined the role of moral disengagement strategies in violence by
gang members. Gang membership is a factor in a young offender’s escalation from general
criminality to violent criminality. The social pro-cesses involved in gang membership are
crucial to this escalation as by identifying as a gang member the individual becomes
sensitive to threats to their collective identity (e.g. through rivalry with other gangs). In
order to maintain gang member-ship, the person feels pressured to adopt the gang’s pro-
violence norms (see Chap-ter 5). Alleyne et al. compared gang and non-gang members on
their endorsement of moral disengagement strategies and found that gang members were
significantly more likely to use all the above strategies except for diffusion of
responsibility and distortion of consequences. Dehumanisation emerged as particularly
important in the relationship between gang membership and violence, supporting the view
that a reduction in empathy is an important factor in aggressive crime.

There is substantial evidence for the role of cognitive distortions in a range of offences.
For example, child molesters have a marked tendency to minimise the harm their offences
cause. That said, there is relatively little evidence that sex offend-ers have beliefs that are
qualitatively different from non-offenders; the differences are more often in how strongly
the relevant beliefs are held (Gannon, 2009). Chen and Howitt (2012) examined cognitions
of 290 offenders convicted of drug, sexual, property and violent crimes. All four
categories of offender held beliefs that legiti-mised their own offending but maintained a
negative view of perpetrators of other offence categories. The tendency to make
advantageous comparisons between their own and others’ offending may go some way to
explaining why criminals often specialise in one particular type of offence.

The association between the social cognitions of offenders and their activities is
potentially of use in reducing crime. However, research is a long way from dis-entangling
the relationship between social cognition and offending. It is unclear whether moral
disengagement precedes offending or appears subsequent to it, so it is difficult to tell
whether such cognitions play a causal role in the onset of

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offending or are a consequence of dealing with the moral conflicts that offending raises.
Rebellon and Manasse (2014) suggest that there is a reciprocal relationship between pro-
crime attitudes and offending behaviour but that behaviour influences attitudes more
strongly than vice versa. Gannon (2009) also highlights a lack of evi-dence regarding the
exact role played by social cognition. For example, it is not clear whether sex offenders
actively interpret victims’ behaviour in offence-supporting ways, or whether they do this
only retrospectively. A problem here is that the major-ity of studies use self-reports
measures and offenders are liable to report their think-ing in self-serving ways. Gannon
suggests that understanding of this area will make more progress once researchers more
widely adopt implicit measures of social cog-nition in their research designs.

Rational choice theory

The rational choice theory (RCT) of crime is based on the idea that crime is the outcome
of weighing up the costs and benefits of offending and acting accordingly. It originated in
economics (e.g. Becker, 1968) but has been developed as a psycho-logical theory within
the cognitive tradition by, among others, Cornish and Clarke (1987). RCT starts from the
assumption that people seek to benefit in some way from their actions and that criminal
behaviour is one of several alternatives available. Accordingly, the individual assesses the
potential benefits (e.g. material gain) and the potential costs of offending (e.g. the effort
involved; the risks of getting caught and punished) and makes a comparison with the costs
and benefits of alternative actions. If the benefits of offending outweigh the costs and the
alternatives are less ‘profitable’ then the individual will choose to offend. Unlike in
classical economics, where the person is assumed to be a completely rational actor,
Cornish and Clarke recognise that the decision-making process is not purely logical but is
constrained by a number of factors including the time available, the offender’s cognitive
ability and the information they possess. However, the essential proposition is that offend-
ers choose specific crimes for specific reasons and in order to understand crime it is
necessary to understand that decision-making process.

A number of studies support this general idea. Rettig (1966) gave students a
hypothetical scenario describing an opportunity to commit a crime (e.g. likely ben-efits,
risk of detection, likely degree of punishment) and found that the degree of punishment
had the biggest influence on the decision to commit the crime. Simi-larly, Feldman (1977)
found that respondents were rational the majority of the time, in that they reported
willingness to commit a crime when potential rewards were high and costs low. Of course,
results obtained from simulations may not apply to real offenders and crimes. However,
there is supportive evidence from Bennett et al. (1984), who interviewed convicted
burglars about their decision making during offences. They found that their reasons
clustered around three themes: risk (e.g. the chance of being seen or caught), reward
(potential material gain) and ease of entry

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(how difficult it would be to break into the property). Of these, risk was reported to be the
most important. One criticism of research like that of Bennett et al. is that the offenders
used were unsuccessful ones (i.e. they got caught) and the reason-ing processes of
‘successful’ offenders may be different. Wright and Decker (1994) addressed this by
interviewing 105 active burglars in two US neighbourhoods, 75% of whom had never been
convicted. While they described a largely rational approach to selecting victims and acting
on offending opportunities (e.g. burgling the houses of known drug dealers because the
rewards were greater) Wright and Decker also identified important constraints on
rationality, such as identifying with a ‘street culture’ that effectively ruled out legitimate
employment as an alternative to offending. Other research has produced mixed results.
Piliavin et al. (1986) found that changes to rewards influenced the probability of offending
but changes to costs did not and Nagin et al. (2009) found that changes to the severity of
judicial pun-ishments (e.g. increases to prison terms) make little difference to crime rates.
Apel (2013) found evidence that changes to perception of risk (e.g. increases in police
numbers or police concentration on crime ‘hot spots’) does influence crime rates but only
weakly.

One reason for the relatively weak relationship between rewards, costs and offending is
that RCT assumes that offending is planned behaviour whereas many crimes, especially
violent ones, appear to be impulsive responses to an immedi-ate situation. Cornish and
Clarke acknowledge this limitation and suggest it be regarded as a perspective on crime
from which specific theories of offending can be developed, rather than a general theory of
offending. Another problem is that research into RCT has tended to focus only on financial
rewards and judicial punish-ments and the importance of other types of reward and cost
has not been accounted for. Addressing this criticism, Loughran et al. (2016) took a range
of measures from a sample of 1,354 adolescent offenders. They used self-reports to
measure extent of offending and the perceived risk of a range of crimes including fighting,
armed robbery, assault with a weapon and theft. They also asked about the perceived per-
sonal rewards of offending (how much of a thrill or ‘rush’ it would give); perceived social
costs and rewards (e.g. approval or disapproval from peers); and financial gains from both
legal and illegal activities. They found that the relative value of the rewards and costs
combined correlated closely with severity of offending and that changes to the
costs/rewards were associated with changes in the probability of offending for all types of
crime. This suggests that RCT has potential as a general theory of crime if the
psychological rewards and costs are factored in alongside the external contingencies.
Akers (1990) suggests that such ‘psychological’ formula-tions of RCT add nothing to our
understanding that is not already present in more established theories like social learning
theory (see Chapter 5). However, given the popularity of economic analyses among
policymakers in the form of ‘behavioural economics’ it is likely that RCT will continue to
generate research into crime and crime prevention (see Chapter 10) for the foreseeable
future.

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Chapter summary
Psychological theories of offending explain crime in terms of mental processes, using
theoretical constructs like personality and cognition. The psychodynamic tradition views
criminality as a consequence of unconscious mental processes. It has provided useful
pointers to later researchers but is no longer widely accepted. The exceptions are theories
based on the importance of childhood attachment to later offending, which increasingly
converge with other lines of research. Eysenck explained criminality as being due to a
particular personality pattern (high E, N and P). This theory failed because research did
not find the predicted relationship between personality and offending, and the theory has
been accused of circularity. However, Eysenck’s ideas have been a significant influence
on research in the bio-logical tradition and into psychopathy, a personality disorder with a
strong rela-tionship with offending. Psychopaths lack empathy with others and learn
poorly from punishment. It is claimed that psychopathic offenders are responsible for a
significant proportion of all crime. There is evidence that psychopathy is influenced by
genetics and differences in brain structure and functioning. However, opinion is divided
between those who see it as a viable general theory of offending and those who fear that it
under-emphasises important influences on criminality and may work against attempts to
rehabilitate offenders. In the cognitive tradition, offend-ing has been linked to limited
moral development, although only for some types of crime, and cognitive psychology has
been more influential where theorists have addressed the role of specific cognitive
processes. Research into social cognition has shown that crime is linked to deficits in
social understanding, particularly empa-thy, and there is a great deal of evidence that
distortions and biases of thinking are associated with offending. However, it has yet to be
established that they play a causal role in criminal careers. In recent years there has been
interest in the idea of the ‘rational criminal’, whose decision to offend or not is the
outcome of the calcula-tion of the costs and benefits of offending. There is evidence that
manipulating the costs and benefits of offending can make criminal acts more or less
likely. However, the variety of criminal acts that are possible may mean that no single
general psy-chological explanation of offending is likely to account for all. That said, all
of the theories considered here are useful insofar as all point to ways in which offending
might be prevented.

Further reading
Andrews, D. A., & Bonta, J. (2016). The Psychology of Criminal Conduct, 6th ed. Lon-
don: Routledge. This is probably the most comprehensive presentation of a spe-cifically
psychological view of offending.

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CHAPTER

5
Socially oriented
explanations of offending

This chapter focuses on theories that explain offending in terms of the processes that
happen between people. Social learning theory suggests that criminality is a set of learned
attitudes and behaviours and there is an exploration of the role mass media might play in
offending. Social-psychological and sociological perspec-tives suggest that crime is a
consequence of relationships between individuals and groups and there is a discussion of
three influential theories, labelling, self-fulfilling prophecy and social identity theory.
Finally, there is a review of research into the role of social variables including poverty and
the neighbourhood in crime. As with the previous chapters, the line between
psychologically and socially oriented the-ories is somewhat arbitrary and most of these
theories refer to both individual and social processes.

Apply your learning

Saffi has been caught shoplifting. She is 14 years old and has not been in trouble
with the authorities before. She was with a group of young people who were chased
by a store detective who suspected that they were stealing. Only Saffi was caught and
the shop manager called the police, who arrested her and took her to the police
station. Saffi admitted stealing some low-value items of jewellery. The arresting
officer has a choice: she can arrange for Saffi to be formally cautioned and released
with no further action or she can advise that Saffi be prosecuted.

What justifications could be given for each course of action? What are the pros
and contras? How could social theories of offending guide the officer’s decision?

Social learning theory

Social learning theory (SLT) originated in an earlier explanation of crime called
differential association theory, which suggested that some individuals become

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criminals and others not because of the different people they associate with (Suther-land,
1939). SLT starts from the same assumption: that criminal behaviour is qual-itatively no
different from any other sort and is learned from other people. It was developed as a
general theory of behaviour by Bandura (1977) and as a theory of criminal behaviour by
Akers (1973). In simple terms, an individual learns deviant ways of thinking and acting by
observing the people around them. Whether they then imitate these ways of thinking and
acting depends on the extent to which they are reinforced for doing so. A reinforcement is
any consequence that makes a behaviour stronger. Akers specified four key factors in the
development of deviance and criminality:

■ Differential association (i.e. the people from whom behaviour is learned).

■ Imitation (i.e. the process of acquiring attitudes and behaviour from others).
■ Definitions (i.e. the attitudes and values that support offending).
■ Differential reinforcement (i.e. the perceived consequences of imitation).

Imagine a young person who starts to associate with a peer group that shoplifts. Within the
group they are exposed to pro-criminal attitudes such as, ‘no-one loses out – the shops
don’t even notice the stuff has gone.’ They are also told about, or may observe directly,
members of the group stealing things. They may be told about ways of not getting caught.
Whether the person starts to imitate these attitudes and behaviours depends on whether she
expects that she will be reinforced. Reinforce-ments might be approval from other group
members or material gains from steal-ing. If criminal attitudes and behaviours are
competing with non-criminal attitudes and behaviours whichever receives stronger or
more frequent reinforcement will win out. The family and peer group are clearly important
contexts for the learning of criminality but the school, the neighbourhood and the media
may also act as important influences.

While Akers’s formulation tends to emphasise the contexts in which learning occurs,
Bandura (1977) is more focused on the mechanisms of learning. Behaviour is learned from
other people who act as models. Whether an individual selects another person as a model
depends on a number of variables including their status and their perceived similarity to
the observer. By attending to the model’s behaviour, the observer can form a mental
representation of their behaviour and may then imi-tate it, but only if there is a motivation
to do so. Motivation is based on the person’s expectancies about the likely result of
imitation. If the learner observes that the model is reinforced for her action, she forms the
expectancy that she also will obtain reinforcement and consequently become more likely
to imitate. Conversely, if the model is observed to be punished, then the probability of
imitation will decrease.
Because it was carefully formulated to be so, SLT is open to empirical testing. In a
series of classic studies, Bandura et al. (e.g. 1963) demonstrated that four and five year
olds could learn aggressive behaviours through observing an adult model. They were
shown an adult behaving aggressively (both physically and ver-bally) towards an inflatable
known as a ‘bobo doll’. Some of the children observed

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the model being reinforced for this by being praised by another adult. A second group
observed the model being punished (told off). A control group observed the aggressive
behaviour being neither reinforced nor punished. When later given the opportunity to play
with the bobo doll the children who had observed the model reinforced were seen to
imitate many of the verbal and physical behaviours exhib-ited by the model. Imitation of
the model was also observed in the control group. Those children who had seen the model
punished were comparatively much less likely to behave aggressively towards the bobo
doll. Importantly, all the children had learned the model’s behaviours: when later offered
reinforcement, the ‘punish-ment’ group produced just as many aggressive acts as the group
who had originally seen the model reinforced.

While such studies have gone a long way to identifying the key variables that influence
observational learning they have come under fire for their artificiality and research in the
Bandura tradition has been accused of neglecting naturalistic set-tings. Akers’s research,
contrariwise, has tested SLT using survey data from large samples. Akers et al. (1979)
collected data from 3,065 US adolescents, asking about the extent to which they drank
alcohol and used marijuana alongside other ques-tions about who they had seen doing this,
whether their peers/parents approved or disapproved and the positive and negative
consequences they had experienced or observed. The results showed that, together, the
four mechanisms (differential asso-ciation, imitation, definitions and reinforcement)
explained 68% of the variability in marijuana use and 55% of the variability in underage
drinking. Unfortunately, many subsequent studies have only addressed differential
association (e.g. by using measures of peer delinquency) with the other three mechanisms
being relatively under-researched (Ward & Brown, 2015). However, Pratt et al. (2010)
carried out a review of 133 studies that investigated the four core ideas of SLT. Strong
support was found for the roles of differential association and definitions in crime and
delin-quency and modest support for the roles of differential reinforcement and imita-tion,
which closely matches the findings originally reported by Akers et al. (1979).

A range of other research supports SLT, at least indirectly. If criminality is learned, we

might expect to find it in the families and/or the peer groups of offenders. As was
discussed in Chapter 3, crime tends to run in families. In a longitudinal study of 397
families, Farrington et al. (1996) found that 6% of the families accounted for half of the
criminal convictions received. Having a mother, father, sister or brother with a conviction
predicted strongly whether the son would also get one. This is at least consistent with SLT,
although the same pattern could be explained in other ways: genetic influences; the fact
that family members are exposed to the same risk factors (e.g. poverty); or that the
authorities are biased against the family mem-bers of convicted offenders, resulting in
labelling and self-fulfilling prophecy (see below). Another consistent finding is that
delinquency in the peer group is a predic-tor of delinquency in the individual (Kiesner et
al., 2003). Again, this is consistent with SLT although Blackburn (1993) points out that
this pattern applies mainly to minor offences – vandalism, petty theft and so on – and not
the more serious types of crime. Furthermore, it is not necessarily clear whether peer
delinquency causes

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people to become criminals or whether those with antisocial tendencies seek out a
delinquent peer group, although longitudinal data from the US National Youth Sur-vey
suggests that delinquency in the peer group plays a causal role in later offend-ing, through
its influence on criminal thinking (Walters, 2016).
SLT has reasonable empirical support for its main claims and it has been very
influential, with elements being incorporated into many other theories of offending. It is
applicable to a wide range of types of crime, including violence, drug offend-ing and
‘white-collar’ offending in occupational and professional contexts. Another strength of the
theory is that it stresses the uniqueness of the individual and allows that different people
may commit the same crimes for different reasons because each individual’s motivation
and expectations are based on his unique learning history.
Having said this, SLT does have several significant limitations. The research base relies
heavily on self-reports to measure the key variables; these are susceptible to bias.
Furthermore, much of the research is correlational, making it difficult to draw firm
conclusions about cause and effect relationships with offending. At the same time, the
experimental research that has been done, Bandura’s for example, tends to use rather
artificial designs and measures of behaviour that, while related to offend-ing, are not the
thing itself (for obvious ethical reasons). Another criticism is that SLT gives too little
weight to factors besides learning. Bandura (1986) has since pre-sented a social cognitive
theory of behaviour that gives cognitive processes, such as beliefs, a central role in
determining behaviour. Similarly, Akers (2009) has devel-oped his theory to include the
influence of structural variables such as social class, gender, race and ethnicity. However,
a drawback remains that social learning theory assumes that all the differences that occur
between people are the result of learn-ing, whereas a great deal of evidence now suggests
that biological factors influence people’s vulnerability to criminogenic environments (see
Chapter 3) although Fox (2017) points out that there is nothing in SLT that precludes
integration of the bio-logical and social learning approaches to offending.

The influence of TV, films and videogames

Early studies by Bandura and others showed vividly that young children could easily
acquire aggressive behaviours from models. This observation has fed anxiety about the
possible influence of mass media (e.g. films, television and comics) on antisocial
behaviour and criminality. The link with SLT is clear, as films, televisions and comics
offer a ready supply of models that viewers and readers are actively invited to identify
with. Plots involving aggression, violence and criminality are common. Concerns about
the effect this might have, especially on children, led to the establishment of a line of
psychological research that has been hotly debated ever since.

The news media tend to focus on ‘copycat’ crime, where it is thought that spe-cific
incidents have been inspired by media content. For example, in 2003 in the US, Devin
Moore was arrested for stealing a car. At the police station, he seized a handgun from one
of the officers and killed three people. He claimed that, after

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playing the videogame ‘Grand Theft Auto – Vice City’ for hours on end, he had lost the
capacity to distinguish between the game and real life. This formed part of his legal
defence of ‘not guilty by reason of insanity’. The jury rejected this plea, finding him guilty
and sentencing him to death (Helfgott, 2015). Attention grabbing as they are, incidents like
these have attracted relatively little research from crim-inological psychologists, although
Helfgott identifies 53 such examples, including crimes inspired by fictional books, films,
television and media coverage of other crime. Surette (2013) concludes that, in most cases,
the role of the media is to act as a source of information on how to offend for people who
were anyway going to commit crimes for some other reason.

Research has instead focused principally on the ways in which media exposure may
affect aggression in the general population. Sparks and Sparks (2002) suggest six
mechanisms:
■ Catharsis. It may allow a ‘safe’ way of expressing their aggressive impulses (a
Freudian idea; see Chapter 4).
■ Social learning. It provides examples of aggressive behaviour that people may learn
from.
■ Priming. It puts people in a state of ‘readiness’ to be aggressive, making them more
likely to react in hostile ways.
■ Arousal transfer. It makes people excited and this can then be expressed as aggression
in other situations.
■ Desensitisation. Repeated exposure to violence may reduce people’s empathic response
to others’ distress, removing an inhibitor of aggression.
■ Cultivation of fear. It influences people to construe the world as a threatening and
hostile place.
There is support for all of these mechanisms except catharsis (Kanz, 2015). How-ever,
there is an ongoing debate about what studies of media and aggression actu-ally show,
how relevant it is to offending and whether parents, policymakers and the public should be
worried.
Much early work was conducted in the laboratory. Such studies involve showing
participants either violent or non-violent films and then giving them the opportu-nity to
aggress against someone else by giving them electric shocks (e.g. Berkow-itz, 1969). More
recently, researchers have shifted towards blasts of white noise or the administration of
unpleasant hot sauce as a measure of aggression. Very often, those shown the violent film
give more electric shocks (blasts of white noise, more hot sauce etc.) suggesting a
moderate influence of viewing violence on subsequent aggression (Coyne, 2007).
However, several problems limit the conclusions that can be drawn. First, the laboratory
situation is rather artificial and so may elicit unnat-ural responses from the participants.
Second, the forms of ‘aggression’ used in such studies do not represent real-world
aggression particularly well, so they have little link with real-world crime. Beyond the
experimental approach, researchers have

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looked for correlations between what people watch and how they act. Belson (1978)
questioned teenage boys about the programmes they liked and their aggressive behaviour.
Those who watched a great deal of violent content were more likely to report using
violence in their everyday lives. Again, there are limitations. First, the data were gathered
retrospectively and therefore may not accurately reflect actual viewing or behaviour.
Second, the data are correlational so it is difficult to say whether what they watched
influenced how they acted or whether the more aggressive individuals sought out more
violent content. A development of this early research was the adoption of longitudinal
designs, where the same individ-uals provide data regularly over a period of time.
Milarsky et al. (1982) measured media consumption and aggression in 3,200 children,
finding small associations between early viewing habits and later aggressive behaviour.
Compared with other variables (e.g. the family) the influence was relatively minor.

Other researchers have used situations where television was to be introduced for the
first time. These can be used as natural experiments: if the media have an effect on
antisocial behaviour we might expect an increase in aggression following introduction.
Williams (1986) studied a small Canadian community (‘Notel’) into which television had
recently been introduced. Observational, peer and teachers’ ratings of aggression were
compared with measures taken from other communities where television was already
available. In Notel, over a two-year period, there was a steady increase in measured
aggression whereas in the other communities there was none, suggesting that television
has a real-world impact. Similar research in the US has used actual crime rates as the
outcome measure and found that the introduction of television is accompanied by an
increase in crime (Hennigan et al., 1982) but results have been inconsistent, with Howitt
(1998) finding no such effect in the UK.

Reviews of the large amount of research that now exists suggest that expo-sure to
violent media has a short-term effect on aggressive thinking, emotion and behaviour,
particularly in children (Anderson et al., 2010). Evidence of a longer term effect is weaker
and there is relatively little evidence of a direct link between media consumption and
offending (Browne & Hamilton-Giachritsis, 2005). One reason for the weak association is
that some individuals may be more suscepti-ble than others. Browne and Pennell (1998)
compared the responses of offenders and non-offenders to violent films. The offenders
showed a stronger preference for violent content, got more excited when viewing violence
and identified more with violent characters. Browne (1995) suggests that parental abuse or
exposure to vio-lence in the home might make some individuals vulnerable to the effect of
media violence. Kanz (2015) supports this view with an analysis of longitudinal data from
3,400 young people in Germany. She gathered self-report data on violent media con-
sumption, delinquent and criminal behaviour, pro-violence attitudes and parenting style.
Kanz found that exposure to media violence led to an increase in pro-violence attitudes but
that this was much greater among children whose parents showed little empathy in child
rearing. On balance, then, films and television have a weak but significant effect on
offending in vulnerable individuals.

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More recently, debate has shifted to the impact of videogames. Concerns have centred
on the fact that they have a degree of interactivity that is absent from films and television,
and because, in recent years, videogame hardware has developed to the point where it can
supply a remarkable degree of realism. As with earlier research into films and television,
experimental studies support an effect on aggression. Lin (2013) compared participants
who played a violent game, watched recorded game-play or watched a film. Measures of
aggressive cognition, emotion and behaviour were highest in the players. McGloin et al.
(2013) found that increasing the degree of immersion felt by game players with more
realistic graphics and a more ‘nat-ural’ controller resulted in greater cognitive aggressive
following a boxing game. Lin (2013) did not find that the degree of identification between
the player and the game character affected aggression but Sauer et al. (2015) reports that
where play-ers identify with a heroic character post-game aggression is lower than when
they identify with an anti-heroic one. Again, there are inconsistencies in the findings so
while it is widely reported that violent gaming leads to emotional desensitisation, a brain
imaging study by Szycik et al. (2017) found no differences in the activity of emotion-
relevant brain areas of 28 ‘excessive’ players of violent games and a control group when
they were exposed to distressing images. A meta-analysis by Anderson et al. (2010) found
that violent videogame exposure was associated with increases in aggressive cognition,
emotion and behaviour, increased arousal and reductions in empathy and prosocial
behaviour. However, Ferguson and Kilburn (2010) are critical of these conclusions. First,
they point to the large number of studies using measures of ‘aggression’ of questionable
relevance to real-world violence. Second, they question the evidence selected by Anderson
et al., objecting to their use of unpublished data in their review. Third, they accuse
Anderson et al. of ignoring inconvenient observations, such as the enormous growth in
violent videogaming at a time when violent crime was falling sharply across Europe and
the US. As things stand, there are now entrenched ideological positions on both sides of
the debate so further progress seems unlikely. The American Psychological Association’s
Task Force on Violent Media report on the matter (Calvert et al., 2017) concludes that,
while the current evidence base firmly supports an effect of violent videogames on
aggression, evidence is lacking for a link with criminality.

Labelling and self-fulfilling prophecy

Labelling is a sociological theory associated with the work of Becker (1963). Beck-er’s
interest was deviance, of which crime is just one example (mental illness is another). His
starting point was that no behaviour is inherently deviant. Rather, deviance is created when
a societal group creates rules about what is acceptable and what is not. Certain behaviours
then become deviant insofar as they break those rules. For example, a society may agree
that there is such a thing as ‘private prop-erty’ and that depriving a person of his own
private property is wrong. Such an act would be ‘stealing’ and those who do it would be
labelled by society as ‘criminals’.

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Once a person has been labelled as a ‘criminal’, society assumes the right to treat him
differently because he poses a threat to the social order. He can be imprisoned, made to
pay a fine, ordered to keep away from particular areas or people and so on. The
stigmatisation and sanctions visited on the criminal serve to regulate his behaviour and as
a warning to others. Becker’s theory suggests that, having been defined as a criminal by
society, the individual then takes on the label ‘criminal’ as part of his own identity. He
starts to think of himself as a criminal, defines himself in opposition to those who make
the rules, associates with other ‘outsiders’, adopts their criminal ways of thinking and
acting and so on. So, in Becker’s view, those who become habitual lawbreakers do so as a
consequence of the way society labels them. Because labelling theory recognises that
criminality is defined by society, and some groups within society are more powerful than
others, it raises the possibility that ideas about crime serve the interests of the powerful,
rather than the interests of society as a whole. This has been an influential idea among
those who take a critical perspective on psychology and crime (see Chapter 12).

Labelling theory claims that the deviant/criminal label applied by the authori-ties to the
individual is incorporated into their self-concept. If so, the self-concepts of delinquents
and offenders would be expected to contain more ‘deviant’ elements than those of non-
offenders. There is support for this view. Ageton and Elliott (1974) examined the self-
concepts of adolescent boys who had never come into contact with the police. Those who
were subsequently arrested tended to adopt delinquent self-descriptions while those who
were not labelled by the authorities remained the same. However, several studies have
found that a delinquent self-concept tends to be present before any contact with the
authorities (Gibbs, 1974), which raises ques-tions about the direction of causality: do
people who are labelled start to think in criminal ways or are people who think in criminal
ways more likely to get labelled? McGrath (2014) interviewed 69 female and 325 male
young offenders after senten-cing in New Zealand. Respondents were asked questions
about the impact of being labelled, such as ‘Even though the court case is over, do you still
feel that others will not let you forget what you have done?’ Their responses were used to
assess the level of stigmatisation perceived by each offender. Data were also obtained
about subsequent offending. Interestingly, there was a positive relationship between per-
ceived stigmatisation and reoffending in females but not in males, suggesting that labelling
may interact with gender in influencing criminal outcomes.

Another prediction of labelling theory is that being ‘officially’ labelled by the

authorities will increase an individual’s subsequent risk of offending. It appears so.
Petrosino et al. (2013) reviewed 29 studies that compared subsequent offending in
delinquents who were ‘processed’ by the criminal justice system (prosecuted, con-victed
and punished) with those who were ‘diverted’ from the system (e.g. by refer-ring them to
support services). Compared with ‘diverting’ offenders, ‘processing’ was associated with a
5 to 6% increase in subsequent delinquency. Bernburg et al. (2006) examined the role of
the peer group using longitudinal data from 1,000 ado-lescents who were aged 12 and 13
at the start of the study. The researchers collected self-reports of delinquent behaviour,
delinquency in the peer group and involvement

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with the justice system. They found that involvement with the justice system signifi-cantly
increased the probability of subsequent offending and was associated with increased
delinquency in the peer group, including gang membership. Labelled individuals start to
associate with other delinquents because, having internalised the ‘criminal’ label, they
identify with them and because they are blocked from asso-ciating with non-delinquent
groups as the stigma of being labelled leads to social rejection. Increased contact with
delinquent and criminal peers then leads to greater risk of offending through social
learning (see above). Bernburg et al. suggest that official labelling embeds the individual
in a network of deviant social relationships, increasing their exposure to criminogenic
influences. Some individuals are more susceptible to the effects of labelling than others.
Besemer et al. (2017) found that getting a criminal conviction significantly increased
men’s later self-reported offend-ing, but only in respondents whose parents also had a
criminal conviction. It may be that those whose parents have criminal convictions have
fewer social resources with which to resist the effects of labelling. Being associated with a
‘criminal’ family, they are more likely to be singled out for monitoring and harsher
treatment by the authorities, giving rise to a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Self-fulfilling prophecy (SFP) is a social-psychological idea that overlaps with labelling

theory. In an SFP, a prediction comes true because it has been made. For example, a boy
whose father is a convicted criminal might be expected by other people to develop
criminal tendencies himself. Although he may be no more anti-social than his peers, his
teachers more readily notice his misbehaviour, punish him more harshly and ignore or
explain away any positive and prosocial behaviour on his part. He may receive less time
and attention than the other pupils. Over time, the boy makes less progress in his learning
and develops a negative attitude towards school and authority. Although minor acts of
antisocial behaviour are common in adolescents, this boy might be more likely to be
caught by the police, because his ‘criminal family’ reputation means he is more closely
monitored. If he is caught then he may be more likely to be charged with an offence rather
than let off with a warning. The result is that the boy develops into an adult criminal
because the expectations and behaviour of others smooth the path towards offending,
while simultaneously blocking off the alternatives. The classic study of self-fulfilling
prophecy was by Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968), who randomly selected some primary
school children and informed their teachers that these children had been psychologically
tested and were ‘growth spurters’ who could be expected to make substantial intellectual
gains in the near future. Subsequent testing showed signifi-cant increases in the IQs of the
‘growth spurters’ compared with the other children, presumably as a consequence of their
teacher’s altered expectations. Some have disputed the validity of this finding but there is
strong support for the influence of teachers’ expectations on student progress (Hattie,
2009).

Although plausible, it does not automatically follow that a similar process applies to
offending. It would be unethical deliberately to label a randomly assigned group of
children as ‘future offenders’ to see what might happen and so direct evidence is not
available. However, there is some suggestive research in this area. Meichenbaum

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et al. (1969) repeated Rosenthal and Jacobson’s study in a group of female juvenile
delinquents and found that teachers’ expectations and behaviour did change, lead-ing to
better performance than matched controls in a subsequent examination. This does suggest
that delinquents are responsive to others’ expectations (although in a prosocial direction
rather than an antisocial one). Jahoda (1954) reports that among the Ashanti people of
Western Africa there is a practice of naming boys after the day of the week on which they
were born. The day of birth is believed to determine the boy’s temperament, so boys born
on a Monday are believed to be placid, those born on a Wednesday are supposed to be
aggressive. Police records apparently showed a high number of arrests for men born on a
Wednesday and a low number for those born on a Monday. Jahoda concludes that the
men’s names influenced how they were treated by others throughout their development,
resulting in different patterns of behaviour. However, beyond isolated studies like these,
self-fulfilling prophecy as a factor in offending has received relatively little attention and
the idea has largely been subsumed into the body of research concerning labelling.

Labelling fell out of favour as a theory of crime in the 1980s because, while the
evidence indicates some effect, it is not a major influence on offending (Tittle, 1980) and
because it oversimplifies the relationship between attitudes, self-concept and behaviour
(Blackburn, 1993). A frequent objection to labelling theory is its overly deterministic
view, as if an innocuous individual is one day arbitrarily labelled as a criminal and
instantly turns into a career deviant. An extreme view of labelling is clearly untenable –
there are far too many other processes involved in criminality – but relatively few of those
researching labelling in the 1960s and 1970s ever took such an extreme position, so it has
perhaps been unfairly caricatured (Paternoster & Iovanni, 1989). Recently, there has been
a revival of interest in labelling and the studies discussed above show that it can play a role
in understanding the develop-ment of criminal careers through its effect on social
networks. Such studies, albeit that they rely heavily on self-reports and frequently use
samples that are relatively limited, imply that law and order policies involving
‘crackdowns’ on youth offend-ing may ironically contribute to increased criminality.
Although ‘get tough’ policies often meet with approval in the media, they serve to trap
some individuals in a criminal career that they might otherwise have avoided with negative
consequences for the offender and their victims, and an economic cost for society.

Social identity theory

Social identity theory (SIT; Tajfel & Turner, 1979) is about the relationship between an
individual’s sense of self and the social groups to which they belong. It originated in an
attempt to explain prejudice, discrimination and intergroup conflict but has been applied to
a great range of behaviour, including crime and deviance. It does not present an
explanation of crime as such but is useful in understanding certain types of offending. SIT
claims that a person’s individual sense of identity is based on mem-bership of social
groups. Membership gives the person an understanding of what it

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means to be a group member, what attributes members have and how members dif-fer
from those of related outgroups. For example, someone who categorises herself as a
teacher will assume a set of ideas about what a teacher does (probably involving activities
like planning, teaching and assessing), what a teacher is like (perhaps being interested in
people and committed to helping others) and a set of ideas about other occupational groups
and how they relate to and compare with teachers (for example, seeing teachers as similar
to nurses but quite different from stockbrokers). A per-son’s social identity fluctuates as
their situation makes different group memberships salient (Hogg et al., 2004). People
classify others according to whether they are mem-bers of the salient social group or of a
related outgroup. This serves two purposes. First, it simplifies the world and reduces
uncertainty. Second, it acts as a source of self-esteem. By making favourable comparisons
with outgroups, the person gets to feel good about who she is. Because ingroup
membership is potentially an important source of self-esteem, people are motivated to
protect their social identities. Conse-quently, there is a strong motivation to conform with
the social norms of the ingroup.
Boduszek and Hyland (2011) suggest that criminality can be understood as a way of
achieving a successful social identity. People try to join social groups that will give them a
high status as this will enhance their self-esteem. At school an individ-ual may wish to join
the group representing social popularity, academic success and so on. Those who fail in
their attempts to join the high-status groups (e.g. because of lower intellectual and social
capacities) experience lower self-esteem, rejection and discrimination from the high-status
group. One way of escaping the negative consequences of failure is joining an alternative
social group that provides a more successful identity. They can achieve high status by
joining a deviant or criminal group, especially if it has norms that allow them to define
their failure to join the mainstream as a form of success. For example, Emler and Reicher
(1995) suggest that delinquency in adolescent boys is most common among those who feel
they cannot meet adults’ high academic expectations. They use delinquent acts to estab-
lish a social identity that affords them a favourable reputation among their peers.

One area of criminality in which social identity theory has been applied is in
understanding gang membership. In the US, where it has been studied most extensively, it
is young people aged 14 or 15 who are most at risk of gang involve-ment. Membership
typically lasts two to three years, with a small number becom-ing adult members
(Goldman et al., 2014). Gang membership is associated with increased risk of both
criminal behaviour and victimisation (Taylor et al., 2008) and gang-related activity is
economically and socially costly to the community in which it occurs. Goldman et al.
(2014) analyse gang membership in terms of social identity, highlighting a number of
points:
■ Gang membership is more common among people who feel marginalised, where
opportunities to join high-status groups are limited.
■ Joining a gang offers a way of achieving a distinct identity and a sense of belonging to
people with otherwise poor relationships in the family, school and community.

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■ Members tend to be very loyal to their gang as they need to protect the sense of identity
that comes from gang membership and will remain members even though the costs
(e.g. risk of violence) are very high.
■ Those who join gangs experience a subjectively elevated status, as the social prestige
attached to the gang is experienced personally.
■ Gang members attach a great deal of importance to respect and feel they must retaliate
if any member has been disrespected as their identity is heavily invested in group
membership.
■ Since the norms of the gang include violent criminality, members will conform with
these in order to maintain their status as group members.
As noted in Chapter 4, social identity as a gang member is also associated with a range of
moral disengagement strategies that serve to disinhibit violent behaviour.
SIT makes an interesting contrast with many other explanations of crime in that
offending is regarded as a strategy adopted by the individual to fulfill psycho-logical
needs. In this light, offending is an expression of the same desire for iden-tity, status,
respect and pleasurable experiences that other individuals achieve in prosocial ways
(Goldman et al., 2014). This view draws objections from those who would rather view
criminals as qualitatively different from law-abiding people but it coincides with recent
innovations in offender rehabilitation that view offending as a deviant attempt to satisfy
universal human needs (e.g. the Good Lives Model; Ward & Maruna, 2007). SIT does not
attempt to provide a complete explanation of offending. Rather, it is complementary to
other explanations. While SLT explains how an individual might learn to aspire to gang
membership through exposure to models in the community and the media, SIT explains
why the peer group is such a powerful influence on offending. Analyses like those of
Goldman et al. show clearly how SIT can be integrated with the evidence base on
offending, but the theory has so far stimulated relatively little research designed as a direct
test of hypotheses about offending.

Poverty
There is a link between poverty and offending. Official measures of poverty and offending
show that crime happens disproportionately in poorer areas and that poorer people are
substantially over-represented in prison populations. Harlow (2003) reports that half of US
prison inmates have either lived in social housing or had parents who received welfare
benefits; further, that 60% did not finish high school, compared with 20% of the general
population. It has been argued that official statistics exaggerate the association between
poverty and offending, as it may be that poorer people are more likely to be caught and/or
sanctioned rather than being more likely to offend per se. Tittle et al. (1978) reviewed 35
studies and found only a weak association between poverty and self-reported offending,
lending weight to this view. However, the studies reviewed by Tittle et al. relied on
measures of trivial

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offences or non-offences and used samples that tended to exclude those suffering the
severest deprivation. When these problems are addressed, the evidence shows a significant
effect of poverty (Hay & Forrest, 2009). Wozniak (2016) reviewed 43 studies of the
poverty–offending relationship, reporting a strong association and some indications that
poverty is particularly influential on violent offences. Hay and Forrest (2009) analysed
five years of data from the US National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, gathered from
12,000 people who were aged 14 to 21 at the start of the study. Self-reports of assault,
theft and vandalism were taken, along with data about family income. Forrest found that
children who were living in poverty during their ninth year were 45% more likely than the
general population to offend in their teenage years. Those who spent their first 10 years of
life in poverty had a 79% greater risk of offending. These results confirm that poverty
contributes to offending and suggest a dose-response effect whereby greater exposure to
early deprivation increases the risk of adult criminality.

There are competing explanations of this relationship. The simplest is absolute

deprivation. This view suggests that people commit offences because they are unable to
afford the necessities of life. A related but more sophisticated view is rela-tive deprivation.
This occurs when an individual makes a comparison between their own situation and
members of a reference group (e.g. other people living in their city) and observes that they
are less well off. This gives rise to anger and frustration both of which provide the
motivation to offend. Although there is an association between measures of both absolute
and relative deprivation and offending, neither explanation is widely accepted. Critics
object that both approaches are based on a sentimental view of offenders as being
‘compelled’ to commit crimes and are based on the fallacy that the causes of crime are
essentially economic (Ousey & Lee, 2012).
Current analyses focus on the relationship between structural inequality and processes
that contribute to offending. Poverty causes a range of factors to concen-trate in particular
areas, for example, unemployment and inequality. These combine to undermine the
capacity of the community to control its members through their effect on family structure,
community involvement and the supervision of young people (Wilson, 2012). Support for
this view comes from Bellair (1997), who found that, once the effect of community ties
was controlled, the association between deprivation and offending disappeared. Low
income is associated with poor paren-tal supervision and separation of children from
parents, both of which are signifi-cant influences on adult offending. Those living in
poverty are likely to be juggling several jobs, unable to afford adequate childcare and
enduring significant stress, contributing to high levels of conflict within the family
(Wozniak, 2016). Cohen (1955) suggests that long-term, persistent poverty undermines
commitment to con-ventional values around crime and offending, giving rise to a criminal
subculture. A number of studies implicate poverty in offending via neighbourhood
processes (see below). In addition, poverty increases the risk of neurological damage via
its effect on nutrition, parental drug use, abuse and neglect (Moffitt, 1993). The diffi-culty
is that poverty covaries with many other criminogenic influences and it can be difficult to
disentangle them (such as childhood adversity and environmental

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pollution; see Chapter 3). It should be stressed that poverty is neither a necessary nor a
sufficient explanation for offending. Although they correlate, many people experience
extremes of poverty and deprivation but do not offend and plenty of crimes are committed
by people who have never experienced poverty. Finally, it should not be overlooked that
poverty is also an important factor in victimisation: poorer people, and people living in
deprived areas, are more likely than others to become the victims of crime (see Chapter 2).

Neighbourhood influences
Offending is not evenly distributed across locations; there is more crime in some
neighbourhoods than others. A neighbourhood is a geographical area with an asso-ciated
social community in which people have regular social interactions with each other.
Opinion varies about how many members a typical neighbourhood has, with Antonaccio et
al. (2017) arguing for a figure around 600 people. Poverty tends to be concentrated in
particular neighbourhoods, so there is an association between pov-erty, neighbourhood and
offending. A question that emerges from this is this: Does the neighbourhood play a role in
causing offending? This is difficult to untangle because the three may be connected in
many ways. Poorer people tend to gravitate towards particular neighbourhoods. Those
neighbourhoods tend to be exposed to higher levels of pollutants such as lead, which may
affect development (see Chap-ter 3). Some neighbourhoods attract offenders because they
offer more opportuni-ties for offending as there is a supply of suitable victims and some
criminal activities may generate additional crime in the vicinity (for example, robberies
may increase in close proximity to locations of drug dealing).

The correlational/cross-sectional design of most studies of neighbourhood influ-ences

makes it difficult to identify causal relationships but a rare exception is the Moving to
Opportunity programme sponsored by the United States Department of Housing and
Urban Development in the 1990s (Sanbonmatsu et al., 2011). In this programme, 4,600
volunteer families living in deteriorating social housing were randomly assigned to one of
three conditions: one group received housing vouch-ers that could only be used to rent
homes in low-poverty areas; a second group received vouchers that could be used in any
location and a third group were used as controls. Compared with the other two groups,
youths who moved to low-poverty areas showed a significant reduction in arrests for
violent offences. Because the groups were randomly assigned, this suggests that the
change of neighbourhood had a causal influence on offending.

The neighbourhood may directly affect criminality in at least two ways. The first is
social learning, where the presence of a concentration of offenders in a particu-lar
neighbourhood may facilitate offending by other individuals. Livingston et al. (2014)
analysed 10 years’ worth of crime data from Glasgow, in Scotland. The city was divided
into 600 neighbourhoods and official records were used to plot the location of all reported
crimes, as well as whether each crime was committed by

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an already active offender or a newly active offender. They found that the presence of
already active offenders in a neighbourhood was associated with an increase in newly
active offenders. Controlling for other factors, a 1% increase in already active offenders
led to a 5 to 6% increase in newly active offenders. Livingston et al. sug-gest that the
existing offenders ‘recruit’ new offenders via social learning and peer influence processes.
Mennis and Harris (2011) identify a similar ‘contagion’ effect for juvenile delinquency.
This implies that the authorities in charge of resettling offenders after release should avoid
concentrating offenders in particular neigh-bourhoods. A second influence is collective
efficacy (CE). This is the capacity of a community to enforce desirable social norms.
Where CE is high, social cohesion and trust are present and residents act in ways that
informally police the community, such as reporting truancy and scolding youngsters who
misbehave. This conveys the impression that offending is not tolerated. Where this is
lacking, an important inhibition on offending is removed. Sampson et al. (1997) surveyed
residents of 343 neighbourhoods, measuring CE by asking residents what they believed
their neighbours would do when faced with different situations (e.g. observing someone
spraying graffiti on a local building). CE was assumed to be higher where people reported
that their neighbours would be likely to intervene. Sampson et al. found a negative
correlation: in neighbourhoods where CE was high, crime rates were lower and vice versa.
This finding has since been replicated in many other cities including Stockholm, Los
Angeles, Tianjin and Brisbane (Hipp & Wo, 2015).

Overall, research indicates that some neighbourhoods have features that directly affect
crime rates in the locality. However, research to disentangle the mass of vari-ables
involved in neighbourhood effects is at a relatively early stage and there remain
controversies about the mechanisms involved. For example, Antonaccio et al. (2017)
found that, in Russia and Ukraine, CE did not seem to influence offend-ing but that the
moral attitudes of local residents did and Lieven et al. (2015) found that school influences
accounted for most of the variation in juvenile offending between neighbourhoods,
suggesting that the influence of the neighbourhood on crime is not universal. However,
research on neighbourhood influences is valuable as it may guide policymakers to
intervene in and support communities in ways that reduce offending.

Chapter summary
Socially oriented theories of offending locate the causes of crime in the interactions
between people. The most influential social explanation of offending is social learn-ing
theory. It claims that offending is the result of learning of criminal attitudes and
behaviours from other people, such as family members and the peer group. There is a great
deal of support for SLT, although it has difficulty accommodat-ing individual differences
in people’s response to social influences and should be considered alongside biological
and psychological explanations. An implication of SLT is that exposure to the mass media
(TV, films, videogames and music) affects

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aggressive behaviour. It is widely agreed that the mass media affect aggression but it
remains controversial how profound the influence is and whether it really matters on a
practical level. Labelling theory suggests that criminality is the result of a pro-cess
whereby powerful groups in society define some people as deviant and they become
trapped in a net of social forces that doom them to adopt a criminal career. Although it is
no longer accepted that labelling causes criminality there is evidence that it can amplify
criminal tendencies. Social identity theory is concerned with the role that social groups
play in a person’s identity and behaviour. It is potentially useful in understanding some
types of offence, such as those committed by gang members. Finally, a range of social
variables has been connected with offending, including poverty and neighbourhood
processes. This research has helped to shed light on demographic differences in offending
and has much value as a source of ideas to inform crime reduction policies.

Further reading
Akers, R. L. (2009). Social Structure and Social Learning: A General Theory of Crime
and Deviance. Livingston, NJ: Transaction Publishers. This is the most complete pre-
sentation of social learning theory as it relates to crime.
Becker, H. S. (1963). Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York: Free
Press. A classic of the sociology of crime and deviance and a good starting point for
understanding critical perspectives on offending.

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CHAPTER

6
Psychology and
police investigations

In a Western democracy, the police have a number of interrelated roles including

preventing crime, preserving public order and detecting criminal offences. The
investigation of crimes may be supported by scenes of crime officers (SOCO), who collect
evidence at crime scenes, and forensic investigators and scientists who may be employed
by the police force or by other organisations. A comprehensive survey of the psychology
of policing is beyond the scope of this book. Instead, a selection of topics is presented that
illustrate the intersection of police investigations and psy-chology. There is a discussion of
how the collection, processing and interpretation of forensic evidence may be affected by
psychological processes. There follows a comparison of ‘standard police interviews’ with
psychologically informed alterna-tives including ethical interviewing and cognitive
interviewing. Finally, there is a discussion of offender profiling. Chapter 7 also covers
topics of relevance to polic-ing, including the use of aids to suspect identification.

The processing of forensic evidence

Forensic investigators collect and interpret evidence that may be used to identify suspects,
eliminate people from an investigation and support legal arguments in criminal cases.
They may appear in criminal trials as expert witnesses for either prosecution or defence
and there is an expectation that those working in these roles will be objective in the
collection, processing and interpretation of physical evidence. However, there is growing
recognition that there are limits on forensic investigators’ capacity to do this. Cognitive
forensics (Found, 2015) is a branch of psychology concerned with the application of
knowledge about processes such as perception, memory, decision making and expertise to
forensic science. Until the 1990s, forensic identification evidence such as fingerprints,
toolmarks, handwriting and bite marks presented in criminal cases tended to be accepted
by the court auto-matically and cross-examination rarely questioned the basis of the expert
witnesses’ certainty (Saks & Koehler, 2005). However, the increasing use of DNA
evidence since the 1980s led to a re-evaluation of many forms of expert forensic
testimony. This was partly driven by the large number of ‘DNA exonerations’, in which
people

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imprisoned or executed on the basis of expert forensic testimony were shown to be

innocent. The result has been an increasing focus on the validity of forensic expert
judgements and a growth in psychological studies of how such judgements are made.

A landmark study of forensic judgements was reported by Miller (1984). Student

participants were asked to determine whether the handwriting on some allegedly forged
cheques matched some other handwriting samples. Half the participants were given a
context describing the case, including the information that witnesses had reported seeing
the author of the comparison samples signing the cheques. The other half were given no
context and simply asked to determine if the cheques matched the comparison samples.
Although none of the comparison samples actu-ally matched, the majority of those given
the context information judged that they did. All of the ‘no-context’ group judged
correctly that the samples did not match. This suggests that forensic investigators may
unconsciously take on irrelevant information when making judgements about evidence.
Miller’s study was limited by its small sample of non-expert participants but a follow-up
study in which a larger sample of students was extensively trained in the analysis of hair
samples, produced very similar results (Miller, 1987). Where context information was
given, errors were made in 30.4% of comparisons, while only 3.8% of comparisons with-
out context information were erroneous. While Miller met with resistance from the
forensic science community, there is now much more widespread acceptance of the risk of
bias in forensic evidence analysis (Found, 2015).

In the area of fingerprint analysis, Dror et al. (2006) recruited five expert exam-iners to
check the match between a crime scene fingerprint and a comparison spe-cimen. All were
told that the evidence came from a case where another expert had mistakenly judged that
there was a match. In fact, each expert was given case evi-dence and comparisons from
one of their own prior cases where they had judged that the case evidence and the
comparison sample matched. Three of the five experts reported that there was no match, in
effect, reversing their own judgements under the influence of the context information. This
study used a very small sample and a very strong biasing context but does suggest that the
judgements of forensic experts (as opposed to student volunteers) can be affected by
extraneous case information. There has been some controversy about findings in this area.
Hall and Player (2008) gave 70 fingerprint experts the task of evaluating the match
between a ‘latent’ finger-print on a £50 note and a comparison print. They did this in their
usual workplace, under normal conditions (e.g. there was no time limit). The context was
manipu-lated by supplying information either that the evidence was from a murder case
(high emotion) or from a case of passing forged banknotes (low emotion). Although the
participants reported that they had been affected more by the high-emotion case, Hall and
Player found no difference between the judgements made by the participants in each
condition, suggesting that forensic experts are less affected by context than the student
participants often used in such studies. However, Dror (2009) rejects Hall and Player’s
conclusions, pointing out several problems: some of the experts did not read the context
information, so could not have been biased

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by it; the participants knew it was a study, so they may not have performed as they
normally would when analysing evidence; and there are data in the results that suggest that
the context did have an effect, as those in the ‘high-emotion’ condition were less likely to
report that there was some agreement between the case evidence and the comparison
sample.
Further investigations have explored the conditions that moderate the effects of bias.
Stevenage and Bennett (2017) gave a fingerprint-matching task to student participants.
They were given context information about a DNA analysis of the evi-dence, being told
(1) that DNA evidence suggested the fingerprints should match;
(2) that the DNA suggested they should not match; or (3) that the DNA evidence was
unclear. They found that biased decisions were much more likely when the participants
were under time pressure and the DNA context was misleading. Dror (2017) investigated
the possibility of bias introduced by computer systems used in fingerprint analysis. The
Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) com-pares case fingerprint evidence
against databases of stored prints and produces a candidate list of matches, ordered by
similarity, for the forensic examiner to check. Dror has found that experts tend to spend
less and less time examining each pos-sible match as they work their way down the list
and they tend to make more false positive matches (i.e. concluding that the prints match
when actually they do not) with candidates at the top of the list and more false negative
matches with candi-dates further down.

It is now accepted that the judgements of forensic experts are susceptible to bias,
although in some areas more than others. Analysis of handwriting, hair and fin-gerprints
appear more affected by context information than that of firearms and shoeprints. In any
case, there is a strong argument for forensic examiners to take measures to protect against
bias. Dror (2017) recommends that forensic examiners should be exposed only to the
evidence they are analysing and measures should be adopted to shield examiners from any
other information about the case to reduce the possibility that investigators will be biased
by the case context. Found (2015) suggests that peer review of analyses should be routine,
with results being checked by colleagues who have no knowledge of either the case
context or the results of the first analysis. Unfortunately, these precautions are routine in
very few organisations.

Understanding the impact of human factors on forensic evidence is important since both
prosecution and defence at a criminal trial may draw on expert foren-sic testimony when
constructing their cases. It is in the interests of justice that the testimony offered be as
accurate as possible and that an honest assessment of its limitations is available. This is
because forensic evidence can be especially powerful in the eyes of the jurors who decide
the case. This is partly attributable to the pop-ularity, over the past 20 years, of television
dramas based on the forensic investi-gation of crimes, notably CSI: Crime Scene
Investigation. These programmes present a rather inaccurate view of forensic analysis.
Consequently, many viewers of such programmes hold unrealistic beliefs about forensic
science including that forensic laboratories always have the most up-to-date equipment
and forensic investigators

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almost never make errors (Cooley, 2006). Cooley and Turvey (2014) suggest that the ‘CSI
effect’ leads to expectations on the part of jurors that may impact criminal trials in various
ways. Jury decisions are discussed in Chapter 8.

Police interviews
The police interview people in order to obtain information that may help them to solve
crimes. Gudjonsson (1996) distinguishes four categories of people who may be
interviewed:
■ Victims are the people against whom an offence has been committed.
■ Witnesses are people who may be able to supply information about the offence or
offender.
■ Complainants are the people who report the crime to the police.
■ Suspects are the people whom the police believe may have committed the crime.

These categories are not mutually exclusive. For example, both victims and com-plainants
may also be witnesses. As far as the police are concerned, the important distinction is
between witnesses and suspects. A broad distinction may therefore be drawn between
interrogations, where the purpose is to obtain a confession from a suspect and interviews,
where the police attempt to obtain information from eye-witnesses. Eyewitness evidence is
the mainstay of police investigations and most criminal trials. Accurate eyewitness
evidence therefore improves the effectiveness of police investigations and serves the
interests of justice. Psychologists have con-sequently investigated the ways that the police
interview eyewitnesses and have sought to develop more effective techniques for eliciting
such evidence.

The standard interview procedure

‘Standard interview procedure’ and ‘standard police interview’ are terms used to describe
the way untrained police investigators typically interview witnesses (Geiselman et al.,
1985). The aim of the standard police interview is to obtain as much specific information
as possible about a crime from the witness. According to Gudjonsson (1996), a standard
interview has four stages:
■ Orientation. The purpose of the interview is stated and legal requirements are fulfilled,
such as informing the witness of their rights.
■ Listening. The witness is invited to give a free recall account of events, with min-imal
interruptions.
■ Questions and answers. The interviewer asks questions with the aim of filling in gaps,
reducing ambiguities and obtaining additional information.
■ Advice. The finished statement is read through, final alterations made and the witness
is informed of any further action (e.g. the police may wish to interview them again).

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While this seems an intuitively reasonable approach, a great deal of research sug-gests that
standard police interviews have features that act against the quality of testimony. Fisher et
al. (1987a) analysed police interviews of child and adult wit-nesses and identified several
significant problems. First, the sequencing of ques-tions was determined by the desire for
specific details, so questions were not asked in the order likely to help the witnesses access
their memories effectively. Second, witnesses were frequently interrupted, which is likely
to inhibit the recall pro-cess. When witnesses are frequently interrupted, they stop
volunteering informa-tion spontaneously and wait to be asked things, often giving
superficial answers (Fisher & Geiselman, 1992). Third, interviewers asked predominantly
closed ques-tions, often leading ones. These tend to bias witness statements in the
direction of the interviewer’s beliefs about the crime and can affect subsequent recall of
the event (see Chapter 7). Fourth, interviewers did not use any strategies that might serve
actively to enhance witness recall. While it is recommended that about 80% of interview
duration should be given over to the witness speaking (Shepherd, 2008), a review of field
studies by Launay and Py (2015) found that witnesses spoke for only 30 to 48% of the
time so the process was dominated by the concerns of the investigator rather than the
attempt to elicit accurate and detailed testimony. Where investigators did ask witnesses for
their free recall of events, in 61% of cases it was interrupted by questions about specific
issues and, in many cases, substantial numbers of leading questions were asked. All this
suggests that the standard police interview is a poor way of obtaining good-quality
evidence.

Cognitive interviewing
In response to the shortcomings of the standard police interview, Geiselman et al. (1985)
developed a ‘cognitive interview’ (CI) procedure based on psychological principles.
Research into cue-dependent forgetting has shown that memory traces contain many
different types of information. Some internal factors such as mood and psychological state
and some external cues such as smell and colour of sur-roundings are encoded in memory
alongside other information about experiences. According to the encoding specificity
principle, the retrieval of a memory trace is more likely if the cue information overlaps
with the memory trace. One implication of this is that police should interview witnesses in
ways that maximise the avail-ability of retrieval cues whilst at the same time avoiding
leading questions that may contaminate recall.

The CI requires investigators to use four retrieval strategies when obtaining information
from witnesses:
■ Reinstate the context. The witness is asked to imagine themselves back in the situation
when the events took place, including the physical environment and their own
emotional state.
■ Report everything. The witness is asked to remember everything they wit-nessed, even
only partially, and to report even things that seem irrelevant or insignificant.

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■ Change the order. The witness is asked to recall events in reverse order, starting with
the last thing that happened and working backward.
■ Change the perspective. The witness is asked to recall events from the point of view of
someone else who was present or from a different angle of view.
Subsequent research has elaborated on Geiselman’s original ideas to produce the
Enhanced Cognitive Interview (ECI; Fisher & Geiselman, 1992). This has an addi-tional
focus on the social interaction between the interviewer and witness. For exam-ple, the
interviewer must greet the witness, establish rapport with her and use her name. This helps
reduce the anxiety that witnesses often feel that may inhibit recall. The interview process
should be explained, stressing that the format is designed to help the witness recall as
much as possible but also acknowledge that this might be difficult for her. The interviewer
should then ‘hand control’ of the interview to the witness by stressing that the interviewer
does not know what happened and therefore the witness is the important person in the
process. After reinstating the context, the witness is asked for a free recall account of
events, with no interrup-tions from the interviewer or other distractions, although the
interviewer may give non-directive verbal prompts to keep the account flowing. Only once
the detail has been exhausted should the interviewer start asking questions. During this
phase, forced-choice and leading questions should be avoided.

Establishing the superiority of the CI over the standard interview depends on two
questions: does it improve recall and does it reduce witness error? In a laboratory study,
Geiselman et al. (1986) compared the CI, the standard interview and a hyp-notic interview.
The standard interview produced on average 29.4 correct witness statements, the CI an
average of 41.1 correct statements and recall under hypnosis produced an average of 39
correct statements. So, under laboratory conditions, CIs produced a 30% improvement in
recall with no increase in witness errors. However, Fisher et al. (1987b) found that an ECI
led to a 23% improvement in correct witness statements but also a 28% increase in
incorrect statements.
Memon et al. (2010) reviewed 65 experimental studies carried out over 25 years.
Compared with standard interviews, the CI causes a substantial increase in recall of correct
detail and a small but significant increase in errors. These findings strongly support the
adoption of the CI in all investigations. The increase in errors with the CI might cause
concern, but Memon et al. suggest that it might be countered through clearer instructions
to interviewees, for example, stressing that they should not guess if they don’t know
something and that it is acceptable to say ‘I don’t know’. Unfortunately, despite the
apparent benefits of the CI, there was little evidence in the 1990s and 2000s that police
investigators were actually using the method. For example, Clarke and Milne (2001) found
that 83% of interviews they studied showed no evidence of cognitive interviewing
techniques. However, since cognitive interviewing was integrated more thoroughly into
British police training as part of the PEACE model of interviewing (see below) there are
indications that it has been more widely adopted in everyday policing.

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Interrogation of suspects
The purpose of an interrogation is to extract a confession from a suspect. Many police
forces use one of a number of manuals for interrogators. These tend to be based on the
methods of experienced interrogators rather than on systematic research but they are
psychologically sophisticated and may involve deception, manipulation, pressure and
persuasion. One of the most influential interrogation manuals is by Inbau et al. (2011),
who describe a nine-step process for inducing a suspect to confess (see Table 6.1).

Kassin and Gudjonsson (2004) identify three important processes: (1) custody and
isolation, which puts the suspect under stress; (2) confrontation, in which the interrogator
repeatedly accuses the suspect of the crime and blocks denials; and
(3) minimisation, where the interrogator morally justifies the crime, making the sus-pect
believe that he will be treated leniently. They argue that these increase the risk that an
innocent suspect will make a false confession because he has been isolated,

TABLE 6.1 Interrogation techniques recommended by Inbau et al. (2011)

Step Explanation
1 Direct positive The suspect is told directly that he is considered to have
confrontation committed the offence
2 Theme development The interrogator suggests possible accounts of the crime
that minimise the suspect’s involvement or culpability. The
aim is to show sympathy and understanding
3 Handling denials The suspect is not allowed to repeatedly deny the offence.
The interrogator interrupts denials to prevent the suspect
from gaining a psychological advantage
4 Overcoming objections The interrogator does not acknowledge reasons for the
suspect’s innocence. Once the suspect realises that
objections get him nowhere, he stops making them
5 Procurement and In order to avoid withdrawal on the suspect’s part, the
retention of the interrogator maintains physical proximity, good eye contact
suspect’s attention and uses the suspect’s first name
6 Handling suspect’s The interrogator tries to facilitate a remorseful mood in the
passive mood suspect, for example by focusing on the victim’s distress
7 Presenting an The suspect is presented with two accounts of the crime.
alternative question Both are incriminating but one allows the suspect to
explain why he committed the crime. Inbau et al. suggest
that this alternative is more attractive to the suspect
8 Having suspect orally Having accepted one of the accounts offered in step 7, the
relate details of offence suspect gives an oral confession
9 Converting oral into The oral confession is put down in writing in order to
written confession overcome a later retraction by the suspect

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intimidated, put under high levels of psychological pressure and then offered con-fession
as a way out of the situation.
Research in the UK has shown that police interrogation tactics have changed since the
second half of the 20th century. In the 1970s Softley (1980) found that persuasive and
manipulative techniques were used in 60% of interviews. In the 1980s interview
procedures were greatly affected by the Police and Criminal Evi-dence Act (PACE; 1984),
which limited the use of coercive tactics. Since PACE, inter-views are less likely to be
conducted at night, are better recorded (using audiotape and, nowadays, video) and
suspects are now more likely to consult a legal advisor before interrogation (Irving &
McKenzie, 1989). Moston (1990) analysed 400 audio-taped interrogations carried out by
the Metropolitan Police. Compared with earlier investigations there had been a dramatic
fall in the use of manipulative techniques, presumably as a result of the increased legal
restrictions on police behaviour. In the majority of cases, the police used an ‘accusatorial
strategy’ in which the sus-pect was directly accused of the offence, the evidence against
him was presented and the accusation was repeated. Pearse and Gudjonsson (1999)
analysed interview recordings from 18 serious crimes and found that the most frequently
used tactics were robust challenge (disputing the suspect’s account and accusing them of
lying) and intimidation (emphasising the seriousness of the suspect’s situation). The use of
these tended to increase throughout the interview until the suspect confessed. Of the 18
cases examined, 10 resulted in a conviction. Interestingly, it was found that the tactics used
during interrogation were related to the chance that the confession would be ruled
inadmissible by the court. In four out of six cases where intimida-tion had been used to an
extreme degree, the court refused to admit the confession as evidence.

False confessions
The most serious problem with manipulative and coercive interrogations is the risk of false
confessions. It is impossible to say with certainty how common false confes-sions are but
Sigurdsson and Gudjonsson (1996) found that 12% of prison inmates claimed to have
made at least one false confession in their life, usually in order to escape from police
pressure or to protect another person. Among students who had been arrested at some
point, 1.2 to 3.7% reported that they had made a false confession. The commonest reason
was to protect someone else. In any case, there are sufficient numbers of wrongful
convictions to show that there is a problem. In the UK, the cases of the Birmingham Six
and the Guildford Four brought the issue into the public eye as individuals were convicted
of terrorist offences on the basis of false confessions. In the US, Scheck et al. (2000)
analysed the cases of 62 DNA exonerations, where convicted individuals were later shown
to be innocent by DNA evidence, and found that, in 15 cases, a false confession had been
made.
False confessions may be made for different reasons. Kassin and Wrightsman (1985)
distinguish between voluntary, coerced-compliant and coerced-internalised confessions.
Voluntary false confessions occur when a suspect confesses in the absence of pressure
from the police. This could be because of a desire for notoriety, a

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wish to cause trouble by misleading the police or an inability to distinguish fantasy from
reality (e.g. in the case of some mental illnesses). Coerced-compliant false con-fessions
occur when a suspect admits to a crime they know they did not commit in order to escape
the pressure of the interrogation, avoid a threat or obtain a reward of some sort. In the case
of the Birmingham Six, four of the suspects signed confessions after being physically
beaten, threatened with further violence and confronted with manufactured forensic
evidence by the police officers interrogating them (Gudjons-son, 2003). Coerced-
internalised false confessions occur when the suspect comes to believe that the version of
events suggested by the police is correct and she actu-ally did commit the offence. This
occurs when a person distrusts her own memory and comes to rely on external sources like
the police. It could happen, for example, because the suspect had amnesia caused by
alcohol or head injury for the time of the alleged crime. Kassin and Gudjonsson (2004)
give the example of Peter Reilly, who called the police when he discovered that his mother
had been murdered. The police suspected him to be the killer and interrogated him, telling
him that he had failed a lie detector test and that the test proved he was guilty despite his
lack of memory. Reilly eventually accepted the police’s account and spontaneously started
‘remembering’ committing the murder. Reilly was convicted on the basis of his confession
but it was established two years later that he could not possibly have done it. The actions
he ‘remembered’ were actually false reconstructive memories (see Chapter 7).

Some people are more at risk of making a false confession than others. Kassin and
Gudjonsson (2004) identify characteristics that make people vulnerable including:
■ Personality. People who score highly on the traits of compliance (being eager to please
others and disliking confrontation) and suggestibility (having poor mem-ory, high
anxiety and a lack of assertiveness) are more likely to yield to pressure from
interrogators.
■ Age. Younger people are more at risk of making a false confession because they tend
to be more compliant and suggestible and are more affected by the power and authority
of the police than adults. They are also more likely to waive their legal rights, which
makes them more vulnerable.
■ Mental retardation. People with a low IQ are less likely to understand their legal rights
and tend to be more compliant and suggestible, including a strong ten-dency to answer
‘yes’ to questions even when this is obviously inappropriate (Finlay and Lyons, 2002).

■ Mental illness. Psychotic illnesses, where people lose the ability to distinguish between
reality and ideas, may induce a person to confess falsely either sponta-neously or under
the influence of pressure from interrogators.

Ethical interviewing and the PEACE model

In the early 1990s an attempt was made by the UK authorities to improve the qual-ity of
all police interviews, including interrogation of suspects. The term ‘interroga-tion’ was
dropped in favour of ‘investigative interviewing’ and a national standard

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approach, known as the PEACE model, was developed for all police interviews with
suspects (Milne & Bull, 1999). The latest version is based on seven principles including
that interviewers must approach every interview fairly and without prej-udice and the
interviewer must not be oppressive. The intention is to establish a true and accurate
account of what happened, rather than to elicit a confession of guilt from the suspect.
PEACE describes the phases involved in a good interview and stands for:

■ Planning and preparation. The interviewer must collate the information already known
before the interview, clarify what the aim of the interview is and develop a written plan
for how it will proceed.
■ Engage and explain. The interviewer establishes a rapport with the suspect, explains
the purpose of the interview and the procedures that will be followed and encourage
the suspect to say anything she feels is relevant.
■ Account, clarification and challenge. The suspect is asked to give her account of
events, in as much detail as possible. The interviewer takes an active listener role,
allows the suspect to pause and take her time and uses open prompts to elicit more
information. The suspect’s account is not interrupted or challenged until she has told
her story. Only then is the suspect’s account challenged, with an emphasis on
inconsistencies and conflicts with other evidence. Open ques-tions are preferred and
leading or forced-choice questions are discouraged. The active deception of the suspect
is prohibited.
■ Closure. The interviewer brings the interview to a planned conclusion rather than an
abrupt end, with the suspect given the opportunity to clarify matters or ask questions.

■ Evaluation. After the interview has finished, the investigator makes a decision as to
whether any further action is required, assesses how well the suspect’s account fits in
with the rest of the investigation and reflectively evaluates her own performance during
the interview (National College of Policing, 2016).
Investigators have sought to establish whether PEACE has achieved its aims of improving
the evidence value of interviews with suspects. Early evidence suggested that training in
PEACE techniques produced lasting changes to officers’ interview techniques (McGurk et
al., 1993) but a larger scale review by Clarke and Milne (2001) found that officers were
finding it difficult to put their training into practice and that interviews were frequently
marred by poor planning and poor communi-cation skills. At the same time, however,
Soukara et al. (2002) found indications that the introduction of PEACE had brought about
a shift in the attitudes of experienced detectives, who emphasised the importance of good-
quality training, planning and social skills and disapproval of the use of deception.
Meissner and Russano (2003), comparing interrogations in the US and UK, noted that the
move to ethical inter-viewing in the UK had not reduced the likelihood of obtaining a
confession.
More recent evidence suggests that the PEACE model is now much more firmly
embedded in UK policing. Soukara et al. (2009) used content analysis on audio

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recordings of 80 interviews covering a large range of crimes including violent, prop-erty

and sexual offences. They coded the interviews for 17 different interview tactics including
coercive/manipulative ones (e.g. intimidation and minimisation of the offence) and ethical
interviewing practices (e.g. asking open questions and empha-sising contradictions). They
found very little evidence of problematic interview techniques. Most of the interviewing
was consistent with the PEACE principles, although the use of leading questions was more
prevalent than the model allows. Several investigations have addressed the issue of
whether ethical interviewing is more helpful to investigations that the alternatives.
Oxburgh et al. (2014) content analysed audio recordings of 59 police interviews with
suspects of ‘high-stakes’ crimes (adult and child murder, sexual offences against children).
They found that interviewers who showed more empathy also tended to ask more
appropriate ques-tions (i.e. less use of closed, forced-choice and leading questions) and
elicited more information. This is broadly supporting of an ethical approach. Snook et al.
(2015) interviewed 100 male prison inmates about the style adopted by the officers who
interviewed them, the evidence that was presented during the interrogation and their own
inclination to confess and cooperate with the enquiry. They found that the best predictors
of self-reported cooperation were a humanitarian interview-ing style and strong evidence,
both of which significantly increased the chance of a confession. An accusatorial style and
the use of deception by the interviewer reduced the suspects’ preparedness to cooperate.
Meissner et al. (2014) reviewed both observational field studies and experimental studies
that compared ‘accu-satorial’ with ‘information-gathering’ (i.e. ethical) interview
strategies and found that the accusatorial approach increased the risk of a false confession
whereas the information-gathering approach did not, suggesting that the ethical approach
has the same benefits as the accusatorial one but without the drawbacks.

Kassin et al. (2010) compare the British approach favourably with the US and other
countries in which the Inbau methods predominate, drawing attention to the role of PACE
(1984) in ensuring that suspects are informed of their rights, allowed adequate rest and
assessed as to whether their age or mental functioning requires the attendance of an
‘appropriate adult’ to ensure that the suspect is treated fairly. Kassin et al. argue for reform
of US police interviewing practices in line with UK developments in order to reduce the
risk of false confessions. In particular, they recommend that all police interviews should be
recorded; time limits on interro-gation should be imposed; the use of false evidence should
be curtailed; the use of minimisation tactics should be limited; and police should receive
better training on the identification and treatment of vulnerable suspects.

Offender profiling
It has been suggested that psychology could contribute directly to the apprehen-sion of
criminals through what is variously known as ‘offender profiling’, ‘crimi-nal profiling’ or
simply ‘profiling’. The aim of offender profiling is to predict the

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characteristics of an unknown offender from the characteristics of the offence and the
victims (Farrington, 2007). The basic assumption of profiling is that, just as offenders
leave behind physical evidence in the form of fingerprints, fibres from clothes, bodily
fluids and so on, they also leave behavioural evidence of how they acted during the
offence. In a murder enquiry, this might include how the victim was killed and where and
how the body was left. Physical evidence can be removed by a clever offender but it is
much harder for the criminal to erase the traces of how they acted, especially if they were
unaware that they were leaving such clues behind them. In principle, profiling could assist
a police investigation in many ways. It might link crimes done by the same person, help
predict future offences, allow police to target their resources and narrow down the pool of
potential suspects. For example, the first use of DNA profiling in a murder investigation
involved the DNA testing of all 4,583 men living in the town of Narborough in Leicester,
UK. The offender, who had raped and murdered two young women, was identified and
con-victed but mass screening of suspects on this scale took months and was extremely
expensive. Offender profiling might help police to prioritise some suspects, perhaps
allowing offenders to be caught earlier and with less expenditure of resources. Pro-filing
caught the popular imagination during the 1990s and the criminal profiler has since
become a stock figure in police dramas. The media (and some profilers) pres-ent offender
profiling as a highly accurate process that makes a significant contribu-tion to the solution
of complex cases. However, serious doubts have been voiced as to whether it has anything
to contribute to conventional police investigative work.

Types of profiling
There are several different approaches to profiling. Ainsworth (2001) identifies four types,
each with its own set of assumptions and methods. These are: crime scene analysis,
clinical profiling, geographical profiling and investigative psychology.

Crime scene analysis

Crime scene analysis was originally developed in the US by agents of the Federal Bureau
of Investigation’s Behavioural Science Unit in the early 1970s. It is typically used only in
serial violence and sexual crimes. The fundamental idea is that differ-ent types of offender
have different characteristics and leave behind different types of crime scene. If the
profiler can accurately diagnose the type of crime scene, they can work backwards from
that to the type of offender and from there to the char-acteristics the offender is likely to
have. The profiler starts by assembling as much information from the case as possible,
including the crime scene, the forensic evi-dence, medical reports and the nature of the
victim. This information is then used to make a judgement about whether the crime scene
is organised or disorganised (Hazelwood & Douglas, 1980).

Organised crime scenes show evidence of planning, such as weapons and restraints
being brought to the scene by the offender and the subsequent removal of evidence.
Disorganised crime scenes have a more spontaneous character, with weapons being
improvised from items found at the scene and little attempt to

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conceal evidence. According to Hazelwood (1987), the people responsible for the
organised and disorganised crime scene would be quite different from one another. The
organised offender is manipulative, cunning and capable of concealing a cal-lous and
sadistic personality beneath a mask of outward normality. He is socially and sexually
competent, of at least normal intelligence and likely to be living with a partner. By
contrast, the disorganised offender is likely to be experiencing severe mental illness, to be
socially and sexually inadequate and to live alone, probably close to the scene of the
attack. Although the distinction between organised and disorganised offenders remains
fundamental to the FBI’s approach, a number of additional typologies were subsequently
developed to classify rapists according to their actions during their crimes. These are
claimed to differentiate between differ-ent motives. For example, the ‘power-reassurance’
type is driven by a fear of sexual inadequacy, while the ‘power-assertive’ type is driven by
a desire to assert his mas-culinity through power and dominance.

Clinical profiling
The clinical approach is not a uniform set of profiling techniques and clinical pro-filers
may work in different ways. What they have in common is the use of clini-cal experience,
often in forensic or clinical psychology or psychiatry, as a basis for understanding and
making sense of the offender’s actions. Clinical profilers may analyse violent crimes in
relation to problems such as alcohol abuse and mental illness and try to ‘get inside the
head’ of the offender to reveal insights that will allow his behaviour to be predicted. This
approach is probably closest to the media portrayal of the offender profiler. The most well-
known clinical profiler in the UK is probably Paul Britton, who has published best-selling
accounts of his cases (Britton, 1998). His approach involves immersing himself in the
evidence gathered by the police and generating intuitive insights about the offender by
speculating about his thoughts, feelings and desires as he planned and carried out his
crimes. Rather than working from formal theories and hypotheses about the nature of
offenders generally, Britton prefers to treat each case as unique.

Geographical profiling
Geographical profiling starts with the observation that there are more crimes in some
places and at certain times. Patterns in the location and timing of offences occur because
criminals make choices about where to offend and those choices are shaped by their
understanding of their environment. Their relationship with the environment shapes an
offender’s choices in all sorts of subtle, unconscious ways. Consequently, the distribution
and timing of an offender’s crimes may betray all sorts of other things about the offender.
The basis of this approach is Cohen and Fel-son’s (1979) Routine Activity Theory, which
states that crimes occur where a moti-vated offender encounters a suitable victim in the
absence of a capable guardian. Brantingham and Brantingham (1981) suggest that
offending is an extension of the other things a criminal does in everyday life. The offender
learns of opportunities for crime, potential victims and locations to dispose of evidence in
the course of

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going to work, socialising, pursuing hobbies and other legitimate activities. Con-sequently,
their criminal activities are shaped by their routine activities and so the location and timing
of a series of offences may indicate where an offender lives or the type or location of his
employment. Canter and Gregory’s (1994) ‘marauder’ model of offending is based on this
idea. They suggest that an offender has a home base and travels to find offence
opportunities in the vicinity. Having offended, he returns home and subsequently sets out
again to offend, this time travelling in a dif-ferent direction so as to avoid the area in
which the most recent offence took place. As more offences take place, the crime locations
start to form a circular cluster. An investigator who identifies such a cluster of linked
offences can draw a line between the two crimes furthest from one another and use this as
the diameter of a circle; the offender’s home base is likely to be within the circle.

Other patterns reveal other things, so while a circular cluster may imply that the
offender is based within the area, crime locations strung out in a line along a main road
might suggest that the offender’s actions are shaped by a route he travels fre-quently,
possibly between home and workplace. Although geographical profiling started out with
pins stuck in a map, it now makes use of computers and sophisti-cated statistical analysis
to draw inferences about where an offender may be located. The ‘Dragnet’ system (Canter,
2005) generates maps with coloured overlays, which indicate the relative probability that
the offender is based in different locations. This can be used alongside other evidence to
focus the investigation on some suspects rather than others or to concentrate police
resources in particular areas.

Investigative psychology
Investigative psychology is not really a form of offender profiling; it is much broader than
that, applying the methods of scientific psychology to the whole area of offend-ing, police
investigations and the prosecution of criminals (Canter & Youngs, 2010). It is most
associated with David Canter, who became involved in police work in the mid-1980s
when he was invited to provide psychological input into the investiga-tion of a series of
rapes and murders in the London area. The profile he drew was highly speculative (Canter,
1994) but contained a large number of suggestions that turned out to be correct, including
the offender’s home base, physical characteris-tics, employment and criminal history.
Canter’s profile allowed the police to focus their enquiry on John Duffy, who was
subsequently arrested, tried and convicted. Being a research psychologist, Canter
identified a number of hypotheses from his profile and set about testing them
systematically. This developed into what is now known as investigative psychology.

At the centre of the approach is the ‘criminal consistency principle’ (Canter, 1995),
which states that an offender’s behaviour is consistent across offences and between
offending and non-offending activities. Therefore, the way in which a crime is committed
will reflect the everyday traits and behaviour of the offender. For example, in the case of
male on female rape, the use of impersonal and degrad-ing language would suggest an
offender who objectifies women in everyday life; the profile would suggest failed
domestic relationships or difficult relationships

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with women at work (Canter & Heritage, 1990). Warning a victim not to go to the police
or destroying evidence would suggest knowledge of police procedures that might indicate
a criminal record. Investigative psychology also draws on geograph-ical profiling and the
idea that a criminal’s actions reflect his mental maps of the environment.

Since the early 1990s, investigative psychology has developed to encompass the idea
that criminals organise their offending around personal life stories (criminal nar-rative
themes) that give their criminal actions meaning, so an offender casts himself as a victim,
a hero, a professional or as taking revenge. The narrative influences his criminal actions,
for example, in his choice of victims and the way he interacts with them during offences.
Another hallmark of current investigative psychology is the use of sophisticated statistical
techniques to analyse data about offences. For exam-ple, Smallest Space Analysis and
Facet Theory have been used extensively to anal-yse the relationships between different
types of crime scene behaviour. This can be used to identify ‘themes’ in offending that are
similar to the FBI typologies but that are derived objectively from data from a large
number of crimes. For example, Sal-fati (2000) analysed 247 British homicides and found
that the crime scene behaviours clustered around two styles. ‘Instrumental’ homicides are
those carried out to fulfil a particular aim, such as getting money or sex; the victim as a
person is inciden-tal. Instrumental homicides were associated with neck wounds, the use
of a weapon found at the scene and property being stolen. ‘Expressive’ homicides are
those that are directed at the victim as a person. These crimes are more often associated
with wounding to the face, head and torso and the use of a weapon brought to the scene.

Does profiling work?

Besides pervading popular culture, offender profiling in its various forms has had a
substantial impact on law enforcement (Dowden et al., 2007). However, concern has
mounted over the past decade that profiling does not enhance the effectiveness of police
work and may, in some cases, derail it. The majority of criticisms have been aimed at the
FBI’s approach and at clinical profiling. The FBI’s organised/ disorganised typology was
derived from interviews conducted with 36 incarcerated violent serial offenders who
agreed to be in the study (Douglas & Olshaker, 1996). This is a questionable basis for a
typology that has been widely applied. The sample was very small and included only those
offenders who were willing to cooperate. There is no evidence that a systematic and
agreed-on method for conducting the interviews or recording the data was used, making it
difficult to establish exactly how the data were obtained and impossible to replicate the
study to check reliabil-ity. Furthermore, among the informants were psychopathic and
mentally ill offend-ers, all of whom had strong incentives to deceive and manipulate the
investigators. In addition, no comparison group was used to check whether the
characteristics found in the serial offenders were absent from other people (Devery, 2010).

Relatively little scientific work has been done to check the validity of the FBI cat-
egories. Snook et al. (2007) reviewed the published literature on offender profiling,

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identifying 130 articles. The majority of these offered nothing but anecdotal evidence and
‘common sense’ to support the claims they made about profiling. A minority of articles
reports some sort of scientific evidence but this was frequently of poor qual-ity and
accompanied by errors of reasoning. A meta-analysis comparing the per-formance of
expert profilers with non-profilers indicated that the profilers were no better than the
comparison group at predicting the specific characteristics of offend-ers from crime scene
evidence. Devery (2010) points out that FBI profilers have his-torically been reluctant to
fully explain their methods and data on the grounds that this knowledge would be used by
criminals. While this may be true, it means that the evidence base for crime scene analysis
cannot be evaluated rigorously or its effi-cacy compared with alternative approaches.
Consequently, the widespread belief in the virtues of FBI-style profiling is supported
principally by anecdotal evidence and the mass-market ‘true crime’ books written by
profilers and journalists, which may be inclined to present only those cases that appear
favourable to profiling. Snook et al. (2008) argue that the apparent success of profiling
stems in part from people’s tendency to perceive information that is actually vague and
very general as highly accurate. If a profiler correctly predicts that the offender is a white
male in his 30s who drives a car this may seem remarkably accurate until one considers
that the description could apply to an enormous number of people. Alison et al. (2003)
gave police officers the same vague profile and one of two very different descriptions of
the actual offender. The accuracy of the profile was rated highly, regardless of which
description was given. Such a view of profiling positions it as closer to casting horo-
scopes than doing science.

Clinical profiling emerges as no better that the FBI’s approach, for similar rea-sons.
Clinical profiling is often described as a very intuitive process, making it dif-ficult to
describe objectively what is happening when a profile is drawn up and therefore hard to
assess the validity of the process. Ainsworth (2000), commenting on Britton’s approach,
highlights the speculative nature of his inferences and his tendency to present questionable
assertions about criminal behaviour as incontro-vertible facts. Clinical profiling was
significantly tainted by Britton’s involvement with the investigation of the murder of
Rachel Nickell in 1992. The police identi-fied a suspect, Colin Stagg, and concocted a
‘honey trap’, whereby an undercover woman police officer befriended Stagg and tried to
induce him to confess. Britton was involved as a consultant on the case. The profiling
evidence was ruled inadmis-sible and Stagg was acquitted, the trial judge commenting
scathingly on the abusive and unethical way in which psychology had been used in the
case. Devery (2010) concludes that, while it is difficult to find any cases in which profiling
has contrib-uted decisively to the solving of a case, it is not difficult to find examples
where profiles have sidetracked an enquiry, resulting in the arrest and even conviction of
innocent people and allowing the actual offender to remain at large.

Geographical profiling and investigative psychology are regarded more favour-ably,

although there remain questions about their usefulness to police investi-gations. One
problem is that these approaches rely on accurate data. However, locations may be
misreported by complainants or mis-recorded by police, or the

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systems used to report crime locations may not allow the user to specify exactly where a
crime occurred. Similarly, the crime data relied on by investigative psychol-ogists is
subject to human error and distortion due to recording systems. Inevitably, some
proportion of crime goes undetected so inferences based on the available data may be
biased if certain offences are systematically overlooked. Some critics have suggested that
investigative psychology is too data driven. While the use of statistical techniques helps to
maintain objectivity, Copson et al. (1997) point out that analysis of data about the past
does not necessarily predict the behaviour of future offenders because it cannot necessarily
be assumed that similar offences are carried out by similar people for similar reasons.

Some attempts to replicate key findings in investigative psychology have failed. For
example, Sturidsson et al. (2006) repeated Canter and Heritage’s (1990) investi-gation of
sexual assault motives with data from Sweden and did not find the same pattern. By the
same token, such debates serve to illustrate the value of basing pro-filing on scientific
methods. Geographical profiling and investigative psychology share assumptions about the
need for objectivity, transparency about methods of data collection and analysis, the
testing of hypotheses, the discarding of theories that are not supported by data and the
open publication of findings. These features are what drives progress in scientific
knowledge. In this light, arguments about the validity of data-gathering methods or
analytical techniques are a positive thing.

Chapter summary
The prosecution of criminal suspects relies on evidence gathered by police and other
investigators. Expert forensic testimony is widely assumed to be reliable evidence of guilt
or innocence but research has shown that it can be affected by the biases of the
investigator. Besides physical evidence, police obtain witness evidence by inter-viewing
people. Cognitive interviewing, where the interviewer uses psychological techniques to
increase the detail of witness statements, has consistently emerged as superior to standard
police interviewing techniques, although it does cause a small decrease in accuracy.
Interrogation of suspects is done with the aim of obtaining a confession. Widely used
police tactics, such as intimidation and minimisation of the offence, have been shown to
increase the risk of false confessions. In the UK, such strategies are now no longer allowed
although they remain common in the US and elsewhere. The PEACE interview model, an
information-gathering approach, has now been adopted in the UK. It appears just as
effective for obtaining confes-sions as the accusatorial approach but the risk of false
confessions is significantly lower. Offender profiling is the use of psychological
techniques to identify suspects in criminal investigations. It was pioneered by the FBI in
the US, but several distinct approaches to profiling exist. Typological and clinical
approaches to profiling have been severely criticised as being no better than
pseudoscientific guesswork but geo-graphical profiling and investigative psychology,
being rooted in sound scientific principles, hold the promise of contributing significantly
to solving crimes.

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Further reading
Canter, D. V., & Youngs, D. (2010). Investigative Psychology: Offender Profiling and the
Analysis of Criminal Action. Chichester: Wiley. This textbook gives a comprehen-sive
introduction to the fields of offender profiling and investigative psychology. Gudjonsson,
G. H. (1996). The Psychology of Interrogations, Confessions and Testimony.
Chichester: Wiley. This is the classic text on interrogations and confessions.

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7
Witness testimony

A person can become a witness to a crime in many ways, from being present at a minor
altercation to being the bank cashier during an armed robbery. In an inves-tigation, each
witness may have important details of the event that may help the authorities apprehend
the suspects and mount a prosecution. Witnesses may pro-vide information in a number of
ways. Apart from interviewing (see Chapter 6), police may ask witnesses to help generate
images of suspects or identify an offender from an identity parade of possible suspects. In
court, lawyers may ask the witness to repeat their testimony under oath, ask him questions
or cross-examine him to identify weaknesses in his account of events. This chapter
considers how atten-tional and memory process may affect a witness’s capacity to give
accurate testi-mony through weapon focus, the misinformation effect and the effects of
emotional arousal. Finally, the special problems posed by child witnesses and the use of
like-nesses and identity parades are discussed.

Apply your learning

Witnesses to a crime have been called to give testimony in court. They were in a
coffee shop when two men started arguing loudly. One pulled out a knife and
threatened the other. While everyone was distracted one or more people removed
purses/wallets/phones from the customers’ pockets and bags. When challenged, the
perpetrators ran out.
When the police arrived, an inexperienced officer started asking people who were
still in the room what had happened. He took down notes of what the different
witnesses said. Later on, some of the witnesses were interviewed, shown photographs
of the suspects and asked if they recognised them. Subsequently, some witnesses
were invited to an identification parade, where they were asked to pick some of the
suspects out of the lineup.
How likely is it that the witnesses will be able to give accurate testimony in court?
Identify the features you believe might affect the testimony. As you read this chapter,
check whether the factors you have identified correspond with what the
psychological research suggests.

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Cognitive processes and witness testimony

Cognitive psychologists frequently compare the mind to a computer. Cognition (thinking)
is imagined as information passing through a series of processing mech-anisms. These
translate and impose order on data coming from the outside world (perception), select and
filter information for further processing (attention), tempo-rarily retain information and
perform mental operations on it (working memory) and store some of it in a more
permanent form for later retrieval (long-term mem-ory). A fundamental assumption of this
view is that a person’s capacity for process-ing information is limited. This means that a
person’s mental representation of the world around her is relatively impoverished
compared with the infinite amount of data potentially available in her environment. This
means that what a witness reports may differ markedly from what actually happened.
However, this is not widely recognised. Most people imagine that memory is something
like a video camera, in which remembering is akin to ‘playback’, providing a complete,
accurate and objective record of events. In fact, witness memories may be incomplete,
fuzzy, distorted or downright false, even if the witness is completely confident in their
testimony. This occurs because of some fundamental features of human cognition.

Cognition is an active and selective process. Because our capacity is limited, most of
the data about the people and events around us are simply not processed and never enter
our awareness. This is vividly illustrated by a well-known demon-stration in which around
50% of people focused on the task of counting basketball passes fail to register the
presence of a person in a gorilla suit walking across the screen (Simons & Chabris, 1999).
If a witness’s attention is focused on something else then they may remain oblivious that a
crime has occurred in their immediate vicinity. Consequently, they would be unable to
offer anything of value to the police. Even assuming that a witness were attending to the
events, she may be unable to offer an objective account of what happened. People bring
different influences to any situation and these affect how the situation is perceived. This is
the ‘active’ part of human perception: we are biased in the way we process sensory
information. However, people are rarely aware of these biases as they operate
automatically and outside conscious control. Several factors influence perception,
including expecta-tion, emotion, context and culture. For example, people tend to perceive
‘TA13LE’ as ‘TABLE’ because the context provided by the letters influences them to
perceive the two digits as a letter. Similarly, a witness will not experience a crime
completely objectively and it is likely to contain elements of their interpretation of the
event.
Another issue is that memory is a reconstructive process. The fact that percep-tion is
selective means that there are inevitable gaps in people’s memories. A funda-mental
feature of cognition is that we fill in these gaps with our existing knowledge (Bartlett,
1932). Bartlett’s idea was that we can only understand new information by fitting it into
our existing knowledge (or schemas). When this is difficult to do, for example, because it
is new or complicated, information tends to be distorted or forgotten. The process of
remembering involves reconstructing events out of encoded information and schematic
knowledge, which may produce memories

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that are significantly different from what the person actually witnessed. However, the
individual is unaware of any change. There is an ongoing debate about whether the
original memory is completely lost or still exists somewhere in memory. In any case,
reconstructive memory is sufficient for everyday life, where completely accu-rate and
detailed recall is unnecessary. However, when details are important, as they often are in
eyewitness testimony, reconstructive memory can become a prob-lem. If a witness has
gaps in their memory but is pushed to provide a comprehen-sive story, they could fill in
the gaps with an imaginative reconstruction based on what they would usually expect or
information taken in subsequently from media reports or suggested by an interviewer.
Because of the automatic nature of much cognitive processing, they would be unaware that
they were supplying inaccurate information. In fact, they could be very confident that their
recall is good.

Weapon focus
‘Weapon focus’ refers to the tendency witnesses have, when a criminal is armed, to direct
their attention towards the weapon. As a consequence, their capacity to encode other
information, such as the criminal’s physical appearance, decreases. Loftus et al. (1987)
demonstrated this in a laboratory study where participants viewed a series of slides
depicting a man in a restaurant obtaining some money from the counter. Half the
participants saw the man holding a gun, the other half saw him holding a cheque. Recall of
details from the slides was poorer in the ‘gun’ condition and participants were less
accurate at identifying the target. Participants also focused their gaze for longer on the
critical object when it was a gun. Similarly, Kramer et al. (1990) showed participants
slides of a man carrying either a magazine or a bloody meat cleaver. The weapon lowered
recall of the scene but increased recall of the weapon itself.
Although studies like these suggest that weapon focus affects memory, the use of slides
under laboratory conditions does not directly resemble the conditions of real-world
witnesses. Other studies have therefore used simulations, in which participants are exposed
to events ‘live’. For example, Maass and Köhnken (1989) recruited people to participate in
what they were told was a study on sport and wellbeing. While waiting in an office, the
participant was approached by a nurse carrying either a syringe (the ‘weapon’) or a pen. In
the ‘weapon’ condition, some of the participants were told that they were about to receive
an injection. Maass and Köhnken found that participants in the ‘weapon’ condition were
less accurate in identifying the nurse from a lineup and showed greater recall of the
weapon. How-ever, neither the weapon nor the threat significantly affected recall of facial
details.
Research based on witnesses to real criminal events has not produced the same clear-
cut findings as artificial laboratory and field experiments. Fawcett et al. (2013) reviewed
studies in which witnesses to real crimes were interviewed and archival studies based on
analysis of police records. They found that the presence of a weapon during a crime was
not associated with any decreases in descriptive detail or iden-tification accuracy. This
may be because watching slides or a video is inherently

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less personally relevant than being involved in actual events, especially since the witnesses
to real crimes are also likely to be victims. However, the failure to find the weapons effect
in the real world may also be due to the difficulty of assessing witness accuracy. Unlike
experimental studies, where an objective record of what really happened exists, the
‘ground truth’ of most criminal events is unknown as no external verification of witnesses’
reports is possible.
Two explanations have been offered for the weapon focus effect. One is that the
presence of a weapon increases witnesses’ anxiety levels, causing their attentional capacity
to decrease. The witness focuses on the weapon as it is a threat and periph-eral information
receives relatively little processing. There is mixed support for this idea, as manipulating
the level and direction of the threat does not affect witness accuracy (as in Maass &
Köhnken, 1989). Alternatively, it could be that the weapon receives more attention
because it is unexpected in the context. This view is sup-ported by several studies in which
an unusual object such as a rubber chicken had the same effect on witness accuracy as a
gun or knife (e.g. Erickson et al., 2014). Further support comes from the finding that the
weapon focus effect only appears when a weapon is unexpected. Witness accuracy is not
affected, for example, when the target is holding a gun at a shooting range (Pickel, 2008).

One important question about weapon focus is whether it is under a witness’s conscious
control. Pickel et al. (2006) staged an incident in which a man burst into a lecture carrying
either a book or a gun. The participants had first been given a lecture on either the weapon
focus effect and the importance of attending to facial features or a lecture on another
aspect of witness testimony. Those who had not been instructed about weapon focus
showed poorer recall and more errors when a gun was present. However, in those who
knew about weapon focus, the presence of the gun did not affect accuracy. This suggests
that people can be taught to overcome the weapon focus effect.

Contamination by post-event information

Even if a witness’s attention were directed to the right things they may still have
inaccurate recall of events. Because memory is reconstructive, it is possible for infor-
mation the witness encountered later to contaminate their memory of the event. This can
happen when witnesses discuss the event with other people, including other witnesses.
Alper et al. (1976) staged a theft in a lecture theatre and asked the students present to act
as witnesses. Recall of events was tested individually. The witnesses were then invited to
discuss the event with one another, following which recall was assessed again. After the
discussion recall was more complete – a good thing – but, unfortunately, the witnesses
also tended to report details that did not actually happen. In a similar study, Hollin and
Clifford (1983) planted among the witnesses two confederates who were instructed
deliberately to give wrong answers. When tested for individual recall, the participants
tended to incorporate the misleading information given by the confederates into their
answers.

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Apart from influences from other witnesses, an important source of the misin-formation
effect can be the questions asked by investigators. An investigator may (unwittingly)
include in their questions information that suggests to the witnesses what actually
happened, who was responsible and so on. If information from lead-ing questions is taken
on board by the witness, they may subsequently produce memories that have been
distorted by the investigator’s questions. The classic demonstration of this is a study by
Loftus and Palmer (1974). Participants were shown a video of a car accident. In the course
of recalling the event, all were asked, ‘How fast were the cars going when they ___?’ The
final word in the question was altered for different groups of participants so some were
asked how fast the cars were travelling when they ‘hit’ while for other groups the words
were ‘smashed’, ‘bumped’, ‘collided’ and ‘contacted’. It was found that the word used had
a significant effect on the estimates of speed. ‘Smashed’ produced an average estimate of
40mph, ‘bumped’ an estimate of 38mph and ‘hit’ only 34mph. It might be suggested that
the participants’ memories had not been affected and they were simply giving the answer
that they thought the experimenters wanted. However, Loftus and Palmer later asked the
participants whether they had seen any broken glass in the film (there was none): 32% of
the ‘smashed’ group reported seeing broken glass, com-pared with only 14% of the ‘hit’
group. This suggests that the leading questions caused a lasting change in memory.

Subsequent studies have explored the effect of post-event information in some detail. A
number of variables influence whether post-event information is likely to distort recall.
These include:
■ Time. Misinformation has a greater effect when there is a time lag between the original
event and the presentation of the misinformation. This is because the memory for the
original event has had a chance to fade (Loftus et al., 1978).
■ Centrality. When misinformation concerns things that are central to the origi-nal event
then misinformation has little effect but when it concerns peripheral details the
misinformation effect is stronger (Sutherland & Hayne, 2001).
■ Source reliability. When misinformation comes from a source that is distrusted it has a
weaker effect than misinformation from a trusted source (Dodd & Brad-shaw, 1980).

These variables have their effect because they influence the probability that the wit-ness
will detect a discrepancy between their memory of the original event and the
misinformation supplied by another source (Tousignant et al., 1986). Other research has
identified characteristics that make some people more susceptible to misinfor-mation
effects. Children and elderly people are more prone whereas those with higher IQs and
good working memory appear less susceptible to the effect of post-event information
(Nash et al., 2015).
Loftus originally suggested that the misinformation supplants the original mem-ory in a
way that makes it practically impossible to retrieve. However, others have argued that,
provided that the original event was fully encoded, the memory trace

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persists unchanged somewhere in the memory system (McCloskey & Zaragoza, 1985).
This implies that the misinformation effect can be overcome if suitable ways of accessing
the original memory trace can be found. Cognitive interviewing (see Chapter 6) is
consistent with this idea, using the reinstatement of the original mem-ory context to
provide retrieval cues and thereby enhance recall. It improves the amount of information
successfully recalled but also leads to an increase in errors. It is sensible to warn witnesses
of the potential effects of misinformation as doing so seems reliably to reduce the
distorting effect of misleading information (Blank & Launay, 2014).

Real witnesses may experience fear and anxiety. Field studies have sometimes found
high levels of witness accuracy. For example, Yuille and Cutshall (1986) inter-viewed 13
witnesses who had seen two people shot in broad daylight. They were able to supply high
levels of detail and there was little change from the police state-ments they had given
several months earlier. The researchers attempted to implant misleading information but
were unable to. Similarly, Odinot et al. (2009) inter-viewed 14 witnesses to an armed
robbery, three months after the event. There were CCTV recordings of the crime so it was
possible to check the accuracy of the wit-nesses’ recall. They found that 84% of the details
provided by the witnesses were accurate. Odinot et al. were also able to assess the effect of
misinformation as some of the witnesses had watched a television reconstruction of the
crime, which con-tained several misleading details. These did not appear to affect the
accuracy of those witnesses. Cases like these show that witness memory can be very
accurate but relatively few violent, dramatic crimes occur and so the witnesses in these
stud-ies are not necessarily representative of the majority of cases. Furthermore, DNA
exoneration cases suggest that eyewitness error is a significant problem in criminal cases:
an analysis of 300 wrongful convictions found that 75% rested at least par-tially on
mistaken eyewitness identification (Wells & Quinlivan, 2009).

Emotional arousal
It was previously believed that shocking and emotionally significant events (e.g. political
assassinations, declarations of war) were encoded by a special memory system that is
highly accurate and resistant to forgetting (Brown & Kulik, 1977). It has subsequently
emerged that such ‘flashbulb’ memories are prone to forgetting and reconstructive errors,
just like other memories (Hirst & Phelps, 2016). However, it remains a possibility that
emotional arousal affects witness memory. In both Yuille and Cutshall (1986) and Odinot
et al. (2009), witnesses to an unexpected and threat-ening event showed detailed recall,
little forgetting, and resistance to misleading information. Similarly, Christianson and
Hübinette (1993) found that witnesses to armed robberies had very accurate recall of
central details of the event (e.g. actions, weapons and clothing) although their accuracy
about the general circumstances (e.g. the date of the robbery) was lower. In studies in
which people are simply asked to recall as much as they can about negative events in their
life, researchers have

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found a correlation between the intensity of negative emotion and the amount of central
detail recalled. For example, Wagenaar and Groeneweg (1990) compared testimonies from
78 survivors of the Nazi concentration camps and found great consistency between their
accounts even after 40 years.
Laboratory studies have been less consistent and a number suggest that threat and
emotional arousal impair recall rather than enhancing it. Clifford and Scott (1978)
compared participants’ recall of two films, one of which contained a scene of a physical
assault. Recall was poorer for the violent film. Clifford and Hollin (1981) carried out a
similar study but, as well as manipulating the level of violence, changed the films so that
the perpetrator was either alone, with two companions or with four companions. Recall
was worse when the film contained violence. The number of companions made no
difference to recall of the non-violent incident but the addition of more companions made
recall worse for the violent film. Deffen-bacher (1983) reviewed 21 studies and found that,
in half of them, emotional arousal increased accuracy and, in the other half, it got worse.
Christianson (1992) sug-gests that the reason for these contradictory findings is that recall
of emotionally arousing events tends to increase with time. Laboratory studies typically
use fairly short retention intervals (hours or days) so recall accuracy of emotionally
arousing events is lower. However, field studies tend to interview witnesses after intervals
of weeks or months, during which time their accuracy has improved. Intuitively, it might
be assumed that witnesses and victims should be interviewed as soon as pos-sible after the
event in order to record as much as possible before forgetting occurs but Christianson’s
interpretation implies that witness statements might be more informative if collected later.
Overall, it does seem that witnesses have relatively accurate recall of the central features
of emotionally arousing events because such events are distinctive and unusual, receive
relatively more attentional processing and are elaborated on after the event (Christianson,
1992). Consequently, it should not be assumed that the testimony of victims and witnesses
of violent crimes will be subject to the misinformation effect to the same degree as other
witnesses.

Child witnesses
Historically, the legal profession has been suspicious of the testimony of child witnesses,
suggesting at times that they are prone to fantasising and liable to be manipulative (e.g.
Heydon, 1984). It is widely believed that children’s memories are unreliable and that their
statements should be treated with caution. Leippe et al.
(1992) recruited three groups of people to take part in a study of skin conductivity: 5 and 6
year olds; 9 and 10 year olds and college students. During the procedure a female
confederate entered the room, made an enquiry and left. Afterwards, the children and
students were videotaped while they answered questions about the confederate: what had
happened, what she looked like and what she said. They were also asked to identify the
confederate from a range of photographs. Other college students were then asked to rate
the videotaped testimony for believability.

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Believability was much more dependent on age and speaking style than accuracy. Even
though the children were as accurate as the college students, their testimony was rated as
less accurate and less believable. Despite this common perception of child witnesses, they
are capable of high levels of accuracy and detail, although the questioning of child
witnesses needs to be handled carefully.
There are important differences between the memories of children and adults. Some of
these are due to maturational changes in the brain. Others are to do with the child’s
capacity to interpret and organise information. According to Davies (1991) children’s
memories improve rapidly between the ages of 5 and 10 because:
■ A growth in general knowledge helps children locate their experiences.
■ Children learn ‘scripts’ or typical sequences of actions that allow memory to be used
more efficiently.
■ Children develop better strategies for encoding new information.

Because of these differences, child witnesses may need prompts or cues to elicit a
complete account of events. Research has suggested that children are capable of 80–90%
accuracy if questioned in a supportive manner soon after the event has occurred (Westcott,
2006). However, children are more suggestible than adults and so there is a danger that
leading questions and other sorts of misinformation will result in inaccurate testimony. For
example, Cohen and Harnick (1980) showed a 12-minute film to 9 year olds, 12 year olds
and university students. The participants were then questioned about the film. Some of the
questions were misleading (e.g. the question mentioned that a woman in the film was
carrying a newspaper when she had actually been carrying a shopping bag). The 9 year
olds were less accurate than the older participants on both the leading and neutral
questions. Generally, it has been found that by the age of 12 children produce the same
level of detail as an adult and are no more susceptible to leading questions than adults
(Loftus et al., 1990)

Suggestibility decreases with age for several reasons. First, children may be less
effective at encoding new information. Where there are gaps, misinformation from other
sources may be used to reconstruct inaccurate memories (see above). Second, children
may be more likely to take on board misleading information from figures of authority as
their level of trust in these sources is higher than an adult’s may be (cf. Dodd & Bradshaw,
1980). Third, children may register misleading information that comes from an adult and
‘go along with it’ because they believe it is expected of them (King & Yuille, 1986). This
has important implications for children’s testimony. According to Westcott (2006), young
children’s accuracy is typically highest in free recall, where they can give an account of
events in their own words. However, the amount of testimony is typically limited so
investigators then have to question the child about specifics and this is where most
problems occur. Accuracy is highest when interviewers ask open questions that do not
point the witness in a particular direction (e.g. ‘What happened yesterday?’) and when
questions are about specific features of the child’s account, provided they do not lead the
witness. Two types of

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question that should be avoided are those that suggest the answer the investigator expects
(e.g. ‘You saw him take it, didn’t you?’) and those that limit the child to a range of
responses, none of which may be correct. Questions like these are likely to elicit guessing
or compliance, both of which reduce accuracy.
Because of its effectiveness in improving the quality of adult witness testimony,
cognitive interviewing (see Chapter 6) has also been tested with child witnesses. The
results have been favourable, with cognitive interviews producing around 20% more
correct information than a standard interview and, particularly, more forensically relevant
information about the people, locations, objects and actions involved in the event
(Verkampt & Ginet, 2010). Cognitive interviewing with chil-dren is more effective when
specific instructions are used, such as the interviewer telling the child that he, the
interviewer, ‘knows nothing’ about what happened and stressing that it is acceptable for
the child to say ‘I don’t know’ in answer to any of the questions. Verkampt et al. (2014)
involved 59 four and five year olds in a paint-ing session during which student
confederates performed 12 distinct actions (e.g. giving out a flower, a hat and some
stickers). The children were subsequently tested using several variations on a cognitive
interview strategy. The full cognitive inter-view produced 42% more correct information
than a standard interviewer. How-ever, when the ‘interviewer knows nothing’ instruction
was omitted the amount of correct detail fell by 21% and fell still further when the ‘can
say I don’t know’ instruction was also omitted. Besides supporting the use of cognitive
interviewing with children, these findings underline the importance of social interaction as
an influence on the quality of children’s testimony.

Identity parades (lineups)

Psychologists developed the cognitive interview in the 1980s as an aid to witness recall
but other tools have been in use for much longer. In an ID parade (or ‘lineup’) a suspect
stands in line with a number of innocent ‘foils’ who are usually drawn from the public
because they fit the same general description of the suspect. The witness is asked to look at
each person in turn and to make a positive identification if they recognise that person as
the one originally seen committing or assisting the crime. The procedure may be done with
a series of photographs, the suspect’s photo placed among photos of foils. Researchers
distinguish between target-present and target-absent lineups, depending on whether the
suspect/target is in the lineup or not. The police may have identified an innocent person as
a suspect, so the target for whom the witness is looking will not be in the lineup. A
distinction is also made between simultaneous ID parades, where the witness views the
target and foils all together and sequential ID parades, where the witness is shown one
person at a time, with the target placed somewhere in the sequence.

The ID parade is intended to be a fair test of a witness’s ability to recognise the culprit.
The presence of the foils serves to make the witness’s task difficult, so that strong
evidence of guilt results from the witness’s identification. Unfortunately, very

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confident witness identifications are frequently incorrect. Bruce (1988) describes several
cases in which a witness has positively identified a suspect who has then produced an
alibi. It subsequently emerged that the witness had been shown
photographs of the suspect before the lineup. The witness identified the suspect on the
basis of familiarity but could not distinguish whether they recognised the suspect from the
original incident or the photographs (a ‘source-monitoring error’). Because of the potential
for misidentification, the variables that influence witness accuracy in ID parades have been
extensively researched. Influences on witness identifications are generally divided into
system variables (factors the criminal jus-tice system has some control over) and estimator
variables (those over which the system has no control).

Wells and Olson (2003) distinguish four categories of estimator variables:

■ Characteristics of the witness. Very old and very young witnesses perform worse than
young adults, and people are more accurate when identifying some-one from their own
ethnic group.
■ Characteristics of the event. Viewing time and conditions affect accuracy, so if the
light was poor and/or the suspect was only visible for a short time during the original
event accuracy suffers. The use of disguises and increased age impair recognition.

■ Characteristics of testimony. Witness confidence may indicate accuracy when viewing

conditions are good (Brewer et al., 2002). The time taken to arrive at an identification
may be a more useful variable as Dunning and Perretta (2002) found that witnesses
who identified the suspect in under 10 or 12 seconds were 90% accurate whereas those
who took longer were around 50% accurate.
■ Lay observers’ judgements of accuracy. Jurors and other non-experts are gen-erally
poor at judging the accuracy of witnesses’ identification although this applies more
when viewing conditions were poor, where jurors tend to overesti-mate accuracy.

Wells and Olson (2003) also distinguish a number of system variables. These are of greater
interest than estimator variables as if they are properly understood steps can be taken to
minimise sources of error in witness identifications. Important sys-tem variables include
the giving of instructions, the content of the lineup and the presentation method. Instructing
the witness that the target may be absent from the ID parade significantly reduces
misidentifications. A meta-analysis by Steblay (1997) indicates that a warning of this type
reduces misidentifications in target- absent lineups by 41.6% but accurate identifications in
target-present lineups are hardly affected.

The content of the lineup is important as the foils used by the police must closely
resemble the target. If they do not, then the suspect may be identified simply because they
stand out from the others. In the UK, seven foils are typically used but Brigham and
Pfeifer (1994) point out that it is not the number of foils that mat-ters but the number of
foils who actually look like the target. This is known as the

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‘functional size’ of the lineup. In the UK, the majority of ID parades are now con-ducted
by video (Horry et al., 2012). A head and shoulders videoclip of the suspect is taken and
then a computer system such as VIPER™ or PROMAT™ is used. The basic
characteristics of the suspect are entered and the system produces a pool of possible foils
from a database of stored videoclips. Video ID parades have been shown to reduce
incorrect identifications, are fairer to the suspect as misleading ‘guilt’ cues are reduced and
save time and money, since the police no longer have to recruit foils for lineups. They also
increase witnesses’ willingness to take part in lineups because they worry less about not
being anonymous or being threatened by the suspect (Dalton et al., 2013).

The simultaneous ID parade is believed to be the source of many inaccurate iden-

tifications. Part of the problem is that witnesses do not follow the instruction to study the
individual faces of the people in the lineup and match them with their own memory.
Rather, they view the parade as a whole, discount those who do not fit their memory and
select from the remainder the person who most closely matches. The result is a
probabilistic process of recognition rather than a positive identification (Thomson, 1995).
Alternatives to the simultaneous lineup have been proposed. Wells (1984) argues for
presenting a ‘blank’ lineup that does not contain the suspect. Witnesses who make a false
identification are then discarded before the remaining witnesses are shown the real lineup.
However, this method is not favoured by police. Another alternative is the sequential
lineup. Cutler and Penrod (1995) describe a procedure in which the witness is shown faces
one at a time and asked, after each, whether they recognise the face as the criminal.
Importantly, the witness is not told how many faces they will see. This prevents the
witness from making a probabilistic ‘best fit’ judgement. A meta-analysis of 72 studies
showed that, compared with the simultaneous method, the sequential method caused a
22% reduction in mistaken identifications in target-absent lineups, although it also slightly
reduced the number of correct identifications (Steblay et al., 2011).

As a result of psychological research into ID parade identifications, a number of

recommendations are now made for the conduct of lineups, with the intention of reducing
errors and misidentifications (Wells et al., 2012):
■ Double-blind administration. The officer conducting the lineup (and any other official
present) should not know who is the target and who are the foils. This is to avoid the
conducting officer cuing the witness as to the identity of the target (e.g. through a
change in voice when the target is referred to, hand gestures or direction of gaze). The
double-blind procedure eliminates these cues.
■ Unbiased instruction. The witness is clearly told, ‘The culprit may or may not be
present in the lineup.’ This makes it easier for the witness to reject the entire lineup if
she cannot make a positive identification. Without this instruction, there is a tendency
for the witness to assume that the target is present and that it is her job to identify him
(Clark, 2012).
■ Lineup composition. The foils are selected because they plausibly resemble the target.
If the foils are dissimilar from the target, the target is identified because

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he stands out rather than because the witness actually recognises him from the original
event.
■ Sequential lineup procedure. The lineup should be presented one at a time, with no
indication of how many people the witness will be shown (see above).

Facial composites
Facial composites are impressions of an individual’s appearance based on informa-tion
provided by witnesses. They are produced to aid witness identifications and may be used
in public appeals for information about crimes and in police investiga-tions (e.g. making
house-to-house enquiries). The earliest form of facial composite used was the artist’s
impression, which was used in the 1911 search for the mur-derer Dr Crippen, who was
apprehended following the circulation of a sketch of Crippen and his companion (Davies
& Valentine, 2007). Subsequently, police forces have adopted a series of aids to the
construction of likenesses including Identikit, photofit, videofit and genetic algorithms.

An artist’s impression involves an artist drawing a picture of the target based on

information obtained from the witness or witnesses. There is no standard method for doing
this but it commonly involves the artist interviewing the witness to estab-lish the
circumstances of the crime, constructing an initial sketch based on a verbal description and
then gradually refining the image until the witness is satisfied that a good likeness has
been achieved (e.g. Taylor, 2001). The lack of standardisation in the way that impressions
are constructed makes it difficult to evaluate their effec-tiveness and so little research has
been done in this area (Davies & Valentine, 2007). The construction of artist’s impressions
requires that the artist be skilled both in drawing and interviewing witnesses. Such people
are rare so it is both time con-suming and expensive for the police to use them.
Consequently, mechanical and electronic systems have been adopted widely and artist’s
impressions are used only rarely.

Identikit and photofit were developed as methods for creating facial composites without
the need for a police artist. The witness creates a facial likeness feature by feature, by
choosing components until the face is complete. For example, the wit-ness may be shown
40 different chins and asked to select the one that best matches their memory. This is then
slotted together with the rest of the chosen features to create the composite. The earlier
system, Identikit, used hand-drawn facial features. Photofit, developed later, used
photographs of the different facial features. Kitson et al. (1978) surveyed police forces
about the outcomes of cases involving 729 facial composites. While the photofits had been
crucial in 5% of the investigations, in 45% of cases the composites were of little or no use.
There are two main reasons why Identikit and photofit have been relatively unhelpful.
First, these systems necessar-ily comprise only a limited number of face shapes and
features and so witnesses are forced to choose from a selection that may not reflect what
they actually remember.

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There are limited options for varying the relationships between the positioning of the
features and no options for varying their size. The result is that these systems simply
cannot reproduce the possible range of faces the witness may describe. Sec-ond, and more
fundamentally, Identikit and photofit are based on a misconception about how people
encode and recall faces. Rather than processing the features of a novel face one by one (i.e.
serially), people process facial features in parallel and encode the relationship between
them as a ‘gestalt’ (Tanaka & Farah, 2003). Con-sequently, the whole process of building
up a composite feature by feature works counter to the psychological processes of face
memory, which impedes the con-struction of accurate likenesses (Davies & Valentine,
2007).
In the 1980s, personal computers became powerful enough to permit the use of
software to constructive composite images. Early software essentially recreated the
photofit approach on a screen, with some limited capacities for blending and editing
features. Although capable, in principle, of creating highly recognisable composites, it
performed no better than photofit in tests, as it was based on the same ‘serial’ approach
(Kovera et al., 1997). The E-Fit software (Aspley Limited, 1993) adopted by many British
police forces in the 1990s was more flexible than earlier systems and was designed to
accommodate a ‘figural’ approach more closely aligned with the gestalt process of facial
recognition in humans. E-Fit is often used alongside cogni-tive interviewing (see Chapter
6) to maximise witness recall. The witness’s responses to a series of questions are used to
construct a composite image from a database of features and the witness can then refine
the image by altering features or their con-figuration until it matches what they remember.
Unfortunately, E-Fit performs only marginally better than its predecessors. For example,
Davies and Oldman (1999) asked witnesses to work with an experienced E-Fit operator to
construct facial com-posites of famous people either from memory or from photographs.
When these were shown to others to judge, only 10% of the composites created from
photographs were correctly identified and only 6% of the composites created from
memory.
More recently, researchers have developed software capable of representing faces in a
holistic way by analysing the relationships between facial features in a sample of people
using a statistical technique called principal components anal-ysis. Based on information
provided by the witness, this software can generate a range of candidate facial composites.
The witness can then reject some of these and a ‘genetic algorithm’ can be used to ‘breed’
the remainder to create a new genera-tion of composites. This process can go on and on
through many generations until a composite image is produced that the witness is satisfied
with, but without the process of selecting individual facial features. One such system,
EvoFIT (EvoFIT Limited, 2001), has been adopted by a number of UK police forces. A
meta-analysis of 23 evaluation studies found that EvoFIT composites were around four
times more identifiable than composites generated using feature-based systems like E-Fit
(Frowd et al., 2015). This type of system, which aligns with the processes of human facial
recognition more closely than its predecessors, will probably become more widely adopted
in the near future.

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Chapter summary
Laypeople frequently believe that human memory preserves a full and accurate record of
events, but it does not. People encode relatively little information about the events they
witness and this is then subject to forgetting and reconstructive errors. This has
consequences for the quality of witness testimony. A weapon used during a crime attracts
attention and so witnesses often have poor recall of other things. Memory can be
contaminated by post-event information, as people have dif-ficulty distinguishing between
what they encoded during the event and what they learned later. Misleading information
introduced by other witnesses or by lead-ing questions can alter witness testimony. Strong
emotional states increase witness accuracy for central details of events. In all these areas,
there is conflict between the findings of laboratory and field studies. It is widely believed
that child witnesses are inherently unreliable but research suggests otherwise, although
young children do have limited recall and are liable to be influenced by adults who ask
leading questions. Identity parades (lineups) and facial composites are used by police to
enhance witness testimony. Lineups are liable to produce false identifications if strict
procedures to avoid bias are not followed. Facial composites generated by Identikit,
photofit and videofit have been of limited use to investigations as they fre-quently fail to
resemble their target, although new systems based on genetic algo-rithms show more
promise.

Further reading
Loftus, E. (1997). Eyewitness Testimony. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. An
overview of the topic by the researcher who defined the field. The fact that it is still in
print 20 years after publication is testament to its influence.

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8
Courtroom processes

In principle, the outcome of a criminal trial is decided by the evidence presented to the
court. In reality, courtrooms play host to a complex web of people, roles and relationships,
influencing one another both intentionally and unwittingly. The evi-dence is only one
factor that determines whether a defendant is found guilty or not guilty. This chapter
examines some of the psychological processes that influence a trial, starting with a
consideration of different types of trial procedure and how the strength of a case may be
affected by the strategies used by legal professionals. There is then a discussion of some of
the legal and extralegal factors that influence jury decisions including the composition of
the jury, group processes of deliberation and the impact of pretrial publicity and juror bias
on the outcome of trials.

Trial procedures
In most places, trial procedures take one of two forms, adversarial or inquisito-rial. In an
adversarial system, such as the UK or US, criminal cases are contested between the
prosecution and defence, who take opposing positions. Each side tries to establish a
preferred version of events by presenting facts in a particular way and discrediting the
arguments and witnesses of the opposition. In this system, the judge takes a passive role,
ensuring that legal procedures are followed correctly, ruling on the admissibility of
evidence and interpreting the law, but not influencing the way cases are developed or
presented. In an inquisitorial system (such as in France or Italy), the judge takes a more
active role in determining the conduct of the case, preparing evidence and questioning
witnesses. Rather than winning the case regardless, inquisitorial systems see their aim as
establishing the truth; a biased presentation of the facts is discouraged.

Research since the 1970s has addressed the question of whether one system is better
than the other. Thibaut and Walker (1978) investigated this using mock trials. They found
that participants tended to favour the adversarial system as the participants were more
satisfied with the verdicts, the procedure was consid-ered fairer and perceived bias was
reduced. Thibaut and Walker conclude that the adversarial system is objectively superior to
other systems but this has been

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disputed. Hayden and Anderson (1979) argue that although many people subjec-tively
prefer an adversarial system, it does not follow that the adversarial approach is objectively
better, especially since an adversarial system entails monetary and social costs that should
be considered when evaluating systems of justice. Stephen-son (1992) adds that Thibaut
and Walker’s mock trials used civil cases where the facts were not in question, whereas in
many criminal cases the facts themselves are disputed, so the findings may not generalise
well. Subsequent research has sug-gested that non-adversarial procedures are favoured
under some circumstances, such as in collectivist, communitarian cultures (MacCoun,
2005).

Juries
With very few exceptions (e.g. highly complex financial fraud cases), the more seri-ous
criminal trials in the UK are conducted with a jury. The role of members of a jury is to
listen to the arguments presented by the prosecution and defence and to decide,
collectively, whether the prosecution has proved the defendant’s guilt ‘beyond a
reasonable doubt’. The legal system operates on the assumption that juries are rational and
unbiased in their deliberation and that, therefore, the trial will be fair. In reality, the jurors
may understand neither the evidence presented to them nor the legal instructions given by
the judge (Monahan & Loftus, 1982) and they may be unable to separate the courtroom
evidence from their own biases and their other knowledge of the case. Psychologists have
investigated a number of pro-cesses that may affect jury decision making.

Jury size and composition

In the UK and US, juries typically have 12 members but some US courts have exper-
imented with smaller juries. Saks (1977) reports that juries of five or six members tend to
reach their verdict more quickly than do 12. However, they are also less likely to examine
all the evidence in detail, tend to favour the prosecution and are less representative of
society (Hans & Vidmar, 1986). A meta-analysis of 17 stud-ies by Saks and Marti (1997)
concluded that larger juries deliberate for longer, are more likely to contain members of
minority groups, more frequently fail to reach a unanimous verdict and may recall trial
proceedings more accurately. On balance, it would seem sensible to remain with 12-person
juries.
A jury is meant to be representative of the community in which the trial takes place. In
the UK, anyone over the age of 18 and under 70 who is eligible to vote may be called for
jury service and may be fined if he refuses. There are exceptions, including court staff and
legal professionals and others may be disqualified if they have served a prison sentence in
the previous 10 years. In both the UK and US, legal counsel may reject jurors they regard
as unsuitable. This right is not much used in the UK but in the US, where lawyers are
given much more information about prospective jurors, the selection of the jury is a
distinct phase in the trial process

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(the voir dire) and can take a great deal of time. In the US, unsuitable candidates are
screened out using several criteria:
■ Knowledge of pretrial publicity.
■ Attitudes towards the offence.
■ Personal acquaintance with anyone involved with the case.

Some US courts have used a controversial process called ‘scientific jury selection’ (or
‘systematic jury selection’) in which data from attitude surveys are used to try to predict
the likely biases of potential jurors. A sample of people similar to the juror pool is
questioned on issues believed to be pertinent to the trial, such as their authoritarian
attitudes, religious beliefs, assumptions about criminal behaviour and so on (Seltzer,
2006). This is then used to produce a profile of the ‘ideal’ jury, allow-ing legal teams to
screen out ‘unsuitable’ candidates during the voir dire. Both sides in the case may do this,
so the voir dire can be lengthy. Seltzer (2006) identifies four major criticisms of
systematic jury selection. First, it favours rich defendants, as only they have the money to
pay for the process, so equality before the law is under-mined. Second, it undermines the
representativeness of juries because jurors will be dropped simply because they do not fit
the legal team’s profile. Third, it tends to remove the more intelligent jurors, resulting in a
‘dumbing down’ of the jury. Finally, the predictive power of the data used in scientific
jury selection is typically rather low. Overall, there are too few consistent relationships
between the attitudes of mock jurors and the outcomes of trials to justify the time and
effort involved in systematic jury selection.

Jury deliberation
Once both prosecution and defence have presented their case to the jury, delibera-tion can
start. Before this happens, the judge sums up the case for the jury and may explain the
range of verdicts they are allowed to reach and the key questions they need to decide on.
The jurors are then sent to a private room to deliberate and are kept from outside
influences (e.g. in most jurisdictions they must surrender their mobile phones). In England
and Wales, juries are directed to reach a unanimous verdict. If this proves impossible, then
the judge may allow a majority verdict of 11 to one or 10 to two. In the event that the jury
is ‘deadlocked’ (the jury is split between ‘guilty’ and ‘not guilty’), then the judge may
discharge the jury and the case may be retried.

According to Hastie et al. (1983), jury deliberations go through three stages (see Table
8.1).
Because jury decisions are made as a group, they are subject to the effects of group
dynamics. These include: normative influence, where those in the minority feel pressured
to go along with the majority even if they do not agree; leadership, where one member of
the group has additional influence over the group’s direc-tion; and group polarisation,
where the collective decision of the group is more

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TABLE 8.1 Stages in jury decision making (Hastie et al., 1983)

Stage Characteristics
Orientation period Relaxed and open discussion
Set agenda
Raise questions and explore facts
Different opinions arise
Open confrontation Fierce debate
Focus on detail
Explore different interpretations
Pressure on minority to conform
Support for group decision established
Reconciliation Attempts to smooth over conflicts
Tension released through humour

extreme than that which the individuals would have arrived at alone. Because deliberation
is private, it has not been possible to study these processes directly (in the UK, it is illegal
to enquire about what happens in the jury room) but there is no compelling reason to
believe that juries are much different from groups that have been studied in other contexts.
According to Bornstein and Greene (2011), about 90% of the time the majority verdict of
individual jurors before deliberation is the same as the jury’s group verdict after
deliberation. This suggests that social processes within the jury have some impact on the
eventual verdict, but not an enormous amount. There are also some indications that, where
minority jurors change their decision to the majority verdict, this is usually because they
become convinced during discussion that the majority is correct (Salerno & Diamond,
2010), which would suggest that informational influence is more important than normative
influence.

Research using mock juries has shed some light on the processes of jury decision
making. Hastie et al. (1983) observed two distinct approaches to reaching a verdict:
■ Verdict driven. The jury takes an early vote on the guilt or otherwise of the defen-dant
and discusses which of the verdict options open to them is most acceptable to the
jurors. They vote frequently as different options are discussed.
■ Evidence driven. The jury focuses on evaluating the evidence and attempting to reach a
consensus about the truth from the conflicting facts. They vote on the verdict relatively
little.
Hastie et al. found that each approach was used about one-third of the time; in the
remaining third no clear strategy was discernible. Evidence-driven juries deliber-ated for
longer, spent more time discussing the legal guidance they were given and reached more
of a consensus on the evidence. Subsequent research has shown that an evidence-driven
approach is more likely when a unanimous verdict is required (Bornstein & Greene, 2011).

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Influences on jury decisions

In principle, the outcome of a trial should be decided by the evidential factors: the jury’s
assessment of the evidence presented in court and the legal guidance given by the trial
judge. However, the outcome of a criminal trial may also be influenced by extralegal
factors. These include the persuasion skills of the trial lawyers, jurors’ beliefs about the
types of evidence presented, publicity surrounding the trial and the characteristics of the
defendant.

Persuasion by trial lawyers

In an adversarial system, the prosecution and defence compete to establish their version of
events as the true one. Consequently, alongside knowledge of the law, persuasion is an
important capacity for a lawyer to have (Walker, 1980). Relatively little research has
directly examined the effectiveness of courtroom advocacy but a well-developed research
literature exists on persuasion and attitude change. Argument-based persuasion is usually
conceptualised as a cognitive process. In order for an individual to adopt the arguer’s point
of view she must pay attention to the argument, comprehend it and accept it (Jonas et al.,
1995). Ideally, every jury would consist solely of attentive individuals with the
intelligence and knowledge to understand the case. However, jurors, being a representative
sample of the general public, vary widely in these capacities. The first task of an effective
lawyer is there-fore to secure the jurors’ attention and present the case to them in ways that
they are likely to understand.

The Yale Model

Assuming that these conditions are met, the ‘Yale Model’ of persuasive communi-cation
(Hovland & Janis, 1959) describes a number of factors that affect the persua-siveness of an
argument. These include the source, the message, the recipient and the situation in which
persuasion occurs. Kapardis (2002) suggests that attempts to persuade a jury (or judge or
magistrate) are more likely to succeed when the source:
■ Is perceived as objective and knowledgeable.
■ Appears to support a position against their own interests.
■ Is familiar or similar to the recipients in background and attitudes.
■ Is perceived as likeable and physically attractive.
Attitude change research has suggested that the message itself is more likely to per-suade
if it is not structured as an attempt to influence the target (Walster & Festinger, 1962)
although it is difficult to see how a trial lawyer could avoid this, given her role in
proceedings. Perhaps more usefully, arguments are more persuasive if the source
acknowledges both sides of the argument and admits to the weaknesses in her position
while remaining confident of her own case. Admitting to weaknesses (sometimes termed
‘stealing thunder’) serves to inoculate the recipients against counter-arguments raised by
the opposing side (Dolnik et al., 2003).

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Systematic versus heuristic processing

McAuliff et al. (2011) distinguish between two ways in which jurors process the
arguments a lawyer presents in court. When jurors process arguments systemati-cally, they
analyse information in a comprehensive and effortful way, thinking in depth and carefully
assessing the validity of the argument. When they process argu-ments heuristically, they
rely on ‘rules of thumb’ when making their judgements. Such rules might include ‘experts
are usually right’ or ‘the majority opinion is usu-ally the correct one’. With heuristic
processing, the content or logic of the argument is not processed very deeply. McAuliff et
al. suggest that, when their case is strong, lawyers should prompt the jurors to process their
argument systematically. They can do this by selecting jurors likely to be systematic
processors, by ensuring that witness evidence (especially from experts) is comprehensible
by all the jurors and even by testing out arguments on mock juries to check whether the
real jury is likely to adopt systematic processing in response. Systematic processing is
preferred here because it tends to produce more stable attitude change and it is important
that the persuasion of the jury lasts until they start deliberating their verdict, which may be
days or weeks later. However, if the case is weak, then systematic processing should be
discouraged as it means the jurors are more likely to identify flaws in the argu-ment and
are therefore less likely to be persuaded. One way to encourage heuristic processing is to
present the case in a difficult and confusing way. This increases the cognitive load on the
jurors, who adopt heuristic processing in response.

Storytelling in court
Some research has focused on how lawyers structure their presentation of cases. Legal
professionals often assume that jury decisions are based on an assessment of the
probability of each event presented in evidence (Yovel & Mertz, 2004). However,
Pennington and Hastie (1990) have found instead that, as they form their decision about
the case, jurors summarise the case around what they take to be the pivotal facts and fit
these into a story that makes sense to them. Different jurors may tell dif-ferent stories
about the same facts. One may decide that the defendant in a murder trial was frightened
by an altercation with the victim, another that the defendant was angered. The juror
chooses a verdict that matches the story he has constructed about the case. This could
mean the difference between guilty of murder, guilty of manslaughter or even not guilty on
grounds of self-defence, depending on the story. This implies that lawyers should present
their arguments to capitalise on the jurors’ stock of culturally acquired narratives.
Pennington and Hastie (1988) conducted mock trial studies in which juries were presented
with cases organised in either ‘witness order’, where the evidence was sequenced in terms
of which evidence seemed the most compelling, or ‘story order’, where the evidence was
organised to present a coherent narrative of events. When both prosecution and defence
used the same order, the jury convicted the defendant around 60% of the time. However,
when the prosecution used story order and the defence used witness order, the conviction
rate rose to 78% whereas when the defence used story order and the prosecution witness
order, the conviction rate fell to only 31%. It appears, therefore,

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that lawyers should lead the jurors to adopt compelling narratives of the case that support
their position. It also seems that the side that ‘gets there first’ in telling the story has a
distinct advantage. Once a juror has adopted one particular story he tends to evaluative
each new piece of evidence in terms of how well it fits his preferred narrative, assigning
more weight to information that is consistent (a con-firmation bias). Consequently, a
relatively insignificant fact entered into evidence early on may have a disproportionate
effect on the case if it prompts the juror to adopt the right kind of story (Kahan, 2015).

Courtroom evidence
In reaching their verdict, jurors are expected to assess each piece of evidence, weigh-ing
up its credibility and importance to the case as a whole. It has been suggested that jurors
are swayed more by some types of evidence than others.
A confession by the defendant is probably the most influential piece of evidence the
prosecution can present to a jury (McCormick, 1972). Kassin and Neumann (1997)
presented mock juries in a murder trial with different forms of evidence including a
confession, eyewitness identification and negative character witness. The confession
produced the highest conviction rate. However, it is recognised by legal authorities that
confessions are problematic and so most legal systems require that they are corroborated
by other evidence (Kassin & Gudjonsson, 2004). While it is fair to say that, in the majority
of cases, the defendant is guilty of the act to which they have confessed, there is a
significant number of cases in which the confes-sion is false (see Chapter 6). Nonetheless,
jurors tend to discount evidence that sug-gests a confession is false. Bornstein and Greene
(2017) give the example of Chuck Erickson, who was convicted of murder on the basis of
a coerced-internalised false confession. The jury convicted Erickson despite the fact that
none of the forensic evidence recovered from the murder scene matched him and despite
having seen videotape of the interrogation in which police investigators fed him key
details about the murder. Miscarriages of justice, such as that of the Birmingham Six,
show that Erickson’s case is not an isolated one. Fundamentally, jurors do not under-stand
why a defendant would admit to a crime she did not commit, as they lack an insight into
the types of social and psychological process that might induce her to do so. Even when a
confession shows evidence of being coerced and when a judge instructs the jury that it
should be discounted, it still increases the jury’s tendency to convict the defendant (Kassin
& Sukel, 1997).

Research has shown that eyewitness evidence, including descriptions of events and
identification of suspects, can be unreliable (see Chapter 7). However, jurors typically take
a ‘common sense’ view of eyewitness testimony, believing it to be an accurate record of
events and not appreciating the factors that can make it unreli-able. According to
Bornstein and Greene (2017), part of the problem is that the way witnesses are prepared
before trial makes them very confident and jurors assume that confidence is strongly
related to accurately. Penrod and Cutler (1987) found that witnesses who spoke clearly and
without hesitation were perceived as more

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convincing, competent, trustworthy, intelligent and truthful. Unfortunately, the

relationship between confidence and accuracy is not strong (Leippe & Eisenstadt, 2007)
and the consequence of this is a large number of wrongful convictions made on the basis
of mistaken eyewitness testimony.
The use of expert witnesses presenting forensic evidence has grown substan-tially in
recent years. Some have suggested that the unrealistic portrayal of forensic investigators
on the TV and in films has influenced the beliefs of jurors about such evidence. Jurors may
expect that forensic evidence will always be presented, even though this might be
impractical or the case may not require it. On the one hand, jurors might acquit guilty
defendants because their expectation of forensic evidence was not met. On the other hand,
valid defence arguments about the limitations of forensic evidence may be ignored
because jurors assume it is infallible (Cooley & Turvey, 2014). Jurors do seem to place a
high degree of trust in forensic evidence. Lieberman et al. (2008) asked people to rate the
accuracy of nine different forms of evidence. DNA evidence was rated as the most
accurate, with confessions and eyewitness testimony rated least. In line with the Yale
Model, expert witnesses are largely perceived as high-credibility sources of information,
especially if they are also confident when they testify (Brodsky et al., 2010). However, it is
a mistake to assume that jurors automatically accept and overvalue expert testimony.
Statistical evidence, for example, is often given less weight than it deserves (Martire et al.,
2013). Bornstein and Greene (2017) conclude that jurors generally assume that an expert
witness is credible, a rational view given their status as experts. However, they do think
critically and where they perceive that the expert is biased or when they cannot understand
the evidence, they tend to discount the testimony. Conse-quently, anxiety about the ‘CSI
effect’ is probably unwarranted.

Apply your learning

Prianca Patel, a fashion model, and Nigel Bentley, a businessman, are both charged
with separate offences of financial fraud. Each is to be tried by jury in different
courts in London. All other things being equal, do you believe that one is more likely
than the other to be found guilty? Make a note of your views and justifications, then
compare your ideas with what research into jury decisions has found.

Pretrial publicity
When jurors deliberate their verdict, they are instructed to confine themselves to the
evidence presented to the court and to put aside any other knowledge of the case.
Unfortunately, this does not seem to be possible. In a high-profile case, there may have
been considerable media coverage before the trial, particularly in the US, where there are
fewer legal restrictions on what the media may report than in the

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UK. What the jurors learn from newspapers and television may affect their inter-pretation
of the courtroom evidence. Because media coverage is likely to favour one side of the
case, this has the potential to bias the jury’s decision making. In an early study by
Padawer-Singer and Barton (1975), mock jurors were played tapes of a criminal trial and
asked to reach a verdict. Prior to this, one group of participants was given newspaper
cuttings about the defendant’s criminal record and confes-sion, while another group read
newspaper stories that omitted these details. Par-ticipants exposed to negative pretrial
publicity convicted the defendant 78% of the time, compared with only 55% of the time
for the control group. A meta-analysis by Steblay et al. (1999) shows that this finding is
reliable. Exposure to negative pretrial publicity increases the probability of a guilty
verdict, especially in murder, sexual and drug cases. The effect is cumulative, so more
exposure is associated with more guilty verdicts and the strength of the effect increases
with time between exposure to pretrial publicity and the trial. However, the overall
influence of pretrial pub-licity is relatively small. Steblay et al. suggest, following
Pennington and Hastie (1990), that pretrial publicity influences the story that jurors tell
themselves about the case, feeding into an overall belief framework about the defendant’s
innocence or guilt.

Subsequent research has suggested that pretrial publicity need not be specific to the
case being tried to have an effect. Kovera (2002) exposed participants to a tele-vision news
programme about a rape case. Different groups saw either a version biased in favour of the
defence or one biased towards the prosecution. A control group saw no news story. The
participants were then given a different rape case and asked about the evidence they would
require before returning a guilty ver-dict. Compared with the pro-prosecution and control
participants, those who had viewed the pro-defence news story reported needing more
corroborating evidence before they would find the defendant guilty. Kovera’s study is
unusual in also show-ing that pretrial publicity can work in favour of the defence.
Interestingly, exposure to the pro-prosecution version of the news story had no effect.
Kovera suggests that, since the TV news predominantly report rape trials in a prosecution-
oriented way, the control participants had already been exposed to pro-prosecution media
via their usual media consumption, which eliminated the difference between the pro-
prosecution and control conditions in the study.

Daftary-Kapur et al. (2010) consider a number of strategies for reducing the biasing
effects of pretrial publicity including delaying the trial, screening potential jurors and
admonishing the jury to disregard negative publicity. None of these is likely to be
effective. Steblay et al. found that the effect of negative pretrial public-ity increases with
time, so delaying the trial may make matters worse. They also found that asking jurors to
form a verdict before the case – as may happen during voir dire – may backfire, increasing
the impact of pretrial publicity. Admonitions to the jurors apparently have little impact in
reducing bias (Sue et al., 1974), although changing the trial venue can be a useful measure
as surveys have found that, except in very high-profile cases, knowledge of pretrial
publicity is typically confined to one community (Nietzel & Dillehay, 1983).

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Defendant characteristics
In an ideal world, juries would be made up of unbiased and unprejudiced people.
However, juries represent the general public and people hold stereotypes and prej-udices
about the people around them. This creates the potential for jury verdicts to be affected by
irrelevant aspects of the defendant such as their physical attractive-ness, gender or
ethnicity.

Attractiveness
In general, physically attractive defendants are treated more leniently than their
unattractive counterparts. This is principally due to the ‘halo effect’, whereby people with
one positive attribute are assumed to have other positive attributes, so people who are
physically attractive are also assumed to be more successful, happier, more socially
competent, intelligent and so on (Dion et al., 1972). In a jury trial, this can give rise to the
‘attractiveness-leniency effect’ whereby jurors’ decisions about guilt or innocence are
affected by the stereotypes they hold about attractive and unattractive people. Castellow et
al. (1990) asked mock jurors to judge a case in which a 23-year-old woman accused her
male employer of sexual harassment. It was alleged that he had made sexual remarks,
attempted to kiss and inappropriately touch her and described to her sexual acts in which
he wanted to engage with her. The participants were shown combinations of attractive and
unattractive photographs of both the complainant (the woman) and the defendant (her
employer). With an unattractive complainant and an attractive defendant the jurors
convicted 41% of the time. However, with an attractive complainant and unattractive
defendant this rose to an 83% conviction rate. This shows that jurors’ judgements about
the motives and character of defendants are affected by physical appearance. A meta-
analysis by Mazzella and Feingold (1994) exam-ined 25 studies in which defendant
attractiveness was a variable. Unattractive defendants were more likely to be found guilty.
Other studies have confirmed that attractiveness is usually an advantage to the defendant
except where jurors suspect that the defendant used their attractiveness to aid their crime.

Gender
Evidence for an effect of defendant gender on jury decisions is mixed. Ragatz and Russell
(2010) gave participants a scenario in which someone had killed a partner in a ‘crime of
passion’ and asked them to judge how guilty the defendant was and what the resultant
sentence should be. Some participants were told the defendant was male, some female.
The researchers also varied the reported sexual orientation of the defendant. They found
that, compared with other defendants, heterosexual women were judged as less culpable
and were more likely to be found guilty of manslaughter (a lesser crime) than murder.
However, not all studies have found this. Cruse and Leigh (1987) gave mock jurors a case
in which a defendant was alleged to have attacked a former partner with a knife. Some
participants were told that ‘Jack Bailey’ had attacked ‘Lucy Hill’ whereas others were told
that ‘Lucy Hill’

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had attacked ‘Jack Bailey’. When the defendant was male he was found guilty 43% of the
time but when she was female this rose to 69%. The overall picture is that gender does not
systematically affect jury decisions. Mazzella and Feingold’s (1994) meta-analysis found
no general effect of gender on judgements of guilt.
It is probable that the defendant’s gender, the type of crime and the jurors’ atti-tudes
and beliefs about gender interact to influence the verdict. In Ragatz and Rus-sell’s study,
heterosexual females benefitted from ‘benevolent sexism’ that inclined the jurors towards
leniency. By contrast, Cruse and Leigh’s participants’ may have perceived the female
defendant more negatively because her violent act violated gender role stereotypes
(‘double deviance’; see Chapter 12). This is supported by Wiest and Duffy (2013), who
gathered data from media accounts of 81 cases of fili-cide (i.e. the killing of a child by a
parent). Content analysis was used to code each case for a number of features such as the
offender’s marital status, whether they were the child’s primary caregiver, their
employment and their history of mental health problems. Male offenders were more likely
to be found guilty of murder, whereas women were more likely to be found guilty of lesser
crimes or to be found not guilty by reason of insanity, even though rates of mental illness
were similar between the male and female offenders. The men also received harsher
sentences than the women. However, Wiest and Duffy also found that the treatment of the
female offenders depended on how closely they conformed to the ‘traditional’ gen-der role
stereotype. Apart from illustrating the complexity of potential interactions between
different factors in jury decisions, findings like this underline the impor-tance of
considering the attitudes and beliefs of the jury alongside the characteris-tics of the
defendant.

Race/ethnicity
Many people harbour prejudiced attitudes against members of other ethnic groups.
Because juries are a representative selection of community members it follows that
prejudiced people end up on juries. This raises the question of whether members of
minority ethnic groups are at a disadvantage when tried by a jury likely to con-sist mainly
of members of the majority ethnicity. It is not difficult to find individ-ual examples of
prejudiced language and attitudes in English courtrooms (Daly & Pattenden, 2005), but it
is more important to establish whether there is evidence of a systematic race/ethnicity bias
among jurors. Some mock jury studies have found that white defendants are treated more
leniently than black ones. Pfeifer and Ogloff (1991) found that white university students
rated black defendants as significantly more likely to be guilty than white ones. This effect
was more pronounced when the victim was also white but the difference disappeared when
the participants were reminded that all elements of the crime needed to be proved beyond a
reasonable doubt. These results suggest that jurors’ racial biases may affect their verdicts
but also that the legal instructions given by a judge before deliberation may prevent jurors
from acting on their biases.

Meta-analyses of studies of jury decisions have reached different conclusions about the
role of race/ethnicity in verdict and sentencing decisions. Mazzella and

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Feingold (1994) analysed 29 studies looking at verdicts among both black and white
jurors. There was no general effect of race on judgement of guilt. Mitchell et al. (2005)
took a different approach, classifying defendants in terms of whether they were members
of a juror’s racial ingroup or outgroup, thereby allowing for bias by both white jurors
against black defendants and black jurors against white defen-dants. Their meta-analysis
of 34 studies showed that jurors were more likely to find members of other ethnic groups
guilty than members of their own. As in Pfeifer and Ogloff’s (1991) study, the level of
bias was reduced when participants were reminded to consider all the evidence fully and
when participants had to give a clear-cut verdict of guilty or not guilty, rather than
indicating probability of guilt on a scale. Since these conditions more closely resemble
what happens in a real trial it is likely that courtroom decisions are less affected by racial
bias than mock jury studies but, given the consistency of the effect found by Mitchell et al.
it is unlikely that trial procedures eliminate racial (or other biases) completely.

Death penalty decisions

In UK courts, the jury has no involvement in determining the sentence an offender
receives once convicted. The sentence is decided by the trial judge. The same is largely
true for the US but one exception is in states that retain the death penalty. Following a
guilty verdict, the jury may then be called on to decide whether an offender who fits the
eligibility criteria is sentenced to execution. This takes place in a separate ‘sentencing
phase’ of the trial. The jury hears arguments from the prosecution and defence regarding
whether the death penalty should be imposed and then returns a collective decision
following deliberation. The jury must agree unanimously. Jury selection in capital cases is
a somewhat unusual process as the trial jury must be ‘death qualified’. During the voir
dire, any juror who states that he would never impose the death penalty under any
circumstances is screened out (Haney, 2008).

The requirement for death qualification means that some groups (e.g. members of
certain faiths) are systematically excluded from juries in capital cases. It has been asked
whether death qualification biases the jurors’ judgements of guilt or inno-cence. Death-
qualified juries tend to contain a disproportionate number of white men and are more
likely to contain people with a conservative religious outlook (Summers et al., 2010). By
default, death-qualified juries contain more individuals with pro-death-penalty attitudes
and this appears to make them more likely than other groups to convict the defendant
(Bornstein & Greene, 2017). This is probably due to the tendency of people with pro-
death-penalty attitudes to side with the prosecution. It may be exacerbated by the fact that
the process of death qualifi-cation requires jurors to consider before they hear the case
how they would act if they found the defendant guilty. This may serve to increase the
jurors’ belief in the defendant’s guilt at the outset of the trial (Haney, 2008). It may
legitimately be asked whether it is possible for the defendant in a capital case to receive a
fair trial at all.

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It was noted above that the ethnic background of a defendant influences the risk of
being found guilty. This tendency carries over into death penalty decisions. Mock jury
studies have found a tendency for black defendants to be given the death sen-tence more
frequently than white (Lynch & Haney, 2009), although the race of the victim is more of
an influence than the race of the defendant. Analysis of actual cases indicates that death
sentences are imposed more often when the victim is white than when black, particularly
when the defendant is black and the victim white. This reflects a tendency to overlook
mitigating circumstances and identify aggravating factors in the cases of black defendants
(Baldus et al., 1998). The unrep-resentative nature of death-qualified juries seems to
contribute to racial bias in imposition of the death sentence, since the greater the
proportion of white members on the jury, the greater the probability of a death sentence,
especially if the defen-dant is black. However, at the time of writing, the Supreme Court of
the United States retained the view that racial bias in death penalty decisions is not a cause
for concern (Bornstein & Greene, 2017).

Issues arising from mock jury research

The majority of the studies used to understand jury decisions have used the ‘mock jury’
paradigm, in which research participants are recruited, presented with infor-mation about a
hypothetical trial (often in the form of a written case summary) and asked to make
judgements about the culpability of the defendant. The researchers manipulate one or more
variables (e.g. the ethnic group or gender of the defendant or victim or some salient feature
of the evidence) in order to estimate their impact on the participants’ judgements. These
studies are carried out on the assumption that the research situation sufficiently resembles
that of a real trial to generalise from one to the other. This needs critical examination, as
mock jury studies differ from real jury trials in a number of ways. Real jurors hear the case
from lawyers, witnesses and judges whereas mock jurors may just read a summary or
watch a video. Real juries deliberate their decisions before reaching a verdict whereas
mock jurors frequently give individual decisions. Real jurors are also aware that their
decisions can have enormous consequences for defendants, whereas little is at stake in a
mock jury study. Some researchers have assessed the impact of differences like these in
order to evaluate the validity of mock jury studies.

Wiener et al. (2011) argue that, on the one hand, mock jury studies have many features
that increase researchers’ ability to draw valid conclusions from their data (internal
validity) including random assignment of participants to conditions, con-trol of potential
confounding variables, standardisation of procedures and instruc-tions to participants and
sophisticated statistical analyses. On the other hand, such studies generally lack external
validity due to their reliance of samples of students. They also lack construct validity.
Features like the use of case summaries, multiple assessments of the verdict and no
opportunity to deliberate are unrepresentative of real jury decision making. Wiener et al.,
suggest that the emphasis on internal

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validity means that researchers can be less confident that they have learned any-thing
meaningful about actual jury behaviour. The courtroom is a complex system in which
juror characteristics, legal counsel, judges, evidential factors, the nature of the crime and
victim and so on all interact and attempts to break it down into inde-pendent variables
whose effect can be isolated from all the others arguably results in studies that mislead us
about the behaviour of actual juries.
Against this view, a meta-analysis of mock jury studies by Bornstein et al. (2017)
looked for evidence that student samples reached verdicts differently from more diverse
samples. Analysing 40 studies using criminal cases they concluded that using students did
not affect verdicts and ratings of culpability. The only significant effect was that students
gave slightly harsher sentences. This would suggest that the external validity of mock jury
findings is sound. In relation to the construct validity of mock jury studies, Devine et al.
(2016) collected self-report data from judges, lawyers and jurors in 114 criminal trials to
identify the factors that influenced the verdict. They found that the strongest influence on
the verdict was the strength of the prosecution case. The effect of extra-evidential factors
on verdicts was relatively small. Taken together, variables such as pretrial publicity,
defendant attractiveness and ethnicity and jury diversity explained some of the variation in
verdicts but few of them had a significant influence on their own. The exception to this
was jury diversity: juries that contained more women and more non-white people were less
likely to convict the defendant. This suggests that mock jury studies tend to exag-gerate
the effect of extra-evidential factors due to a lack of construct validity.

Chapter summary
Criminal trials take place under either an adversarial system, where prosecution and
defence compete to establish their version of events and the judge plays a pas-sive role, or
an inquisitorial system, in which the judge plays a more active role. Broadly, people are
more satisfied with the adversarial system in the UK and US, although there are
exceptions. Serious criminal cases in the UK and US are decided by a jury, whose task it is
to weigh up the evidence presented in court and decide whether the defendant is guilty or
not. Juries usually have 12 members. Smaller juries tend to favour the prosecution and
spend less time considering their verdict. Trial lawyers have the right to exclude potential
jurors from a trial but this right is used much more often in the US than the UK and there
are questions about the effect this may have on the fairness of the justice system. Juries
reach their verdicts as a group and it is possible that group dynamics affect the verdict
although the deliberation process has only a limited impact on the jurors’ individual
decisions. Jurors can be affected by the strategies used by trial lawyers. These include pre-
senting themselves and the case in line with the Yale Model of persuasion and con-
structing cases in ways that allow jurors to tell compelling stories about the motives and
actions of the defendant. Some forms of evidence are more influential on juries than
others, particularly confessions and eyewitness accounts but, surprisingly,

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jurors tend to give less weight to forensic evidence than it deserves. Mock jury studies
suggest that jury verdicts are also influenced by pretrial publicity and by the characteristics
of the defendant. Pretrial publicity is usually negative about the defendant and therefore
tends to increase the probability of a conviction. Physi-cally attractive defendants are less
likely to be found guilty than unattractive ones, except when the jurors suspect that their
attractiveness helped them commit the crime. Defendant gender does not appear to have a
clear effect on juror decisions. Race/ethnicity of the defendant, however, does seem to
influence verdicts, with jurors tending to treat defendants more leniently when they come
from the juror’s own ethnic group. This bias is also present in death sentence decisions
made by juries and may be exacerbated by the process of selecting ‘death-qualified’ jurors.
Finally, it should be noted that the majority of research findings in this area have been
based on mock jury studies. While these typically have good internal validity, there are
concerns about how well the results generalise to jury decisions in real criminal trials.

Further reading
Bornstein, B. H., & Greene, E. (2017). The Jury Under Fire: Myth, Controversy, and
Reform. Oxford: Oxford University Press. A comprehensive, up-to-date and fasci-
nating analysis of research into the jury trial process.

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 CHAPTER

9
Judicial responses
to offending

This chapter discusses some of the ways in which the judicial system may deal with
offenders. Imprisonment is the most obvious way offenders are punished and the chapter
starts with an examination of the purposes of imprisonment, its impact on the individual
and its effect on reoffending. There is then a discussion of some of the main alternatives to
imprisonment including fines, probation, community punish-ments and restorative justice.
Psychological interventions for offending, which may be offered alongside judicial
punishments, are discussed in Chapter 10.

Apply your learning

Marco has admitted a number of credit card fraud offences. The judge is considering
possible sentences of a prison sentence, a suspended prison sentence or a period of
probation. List the possible arguments for and against each and decide which is the
most appropriate sentence. After reading this chapter, review your decision and
reasoning in the light of what you have learned. Would you still recommend the
same sentence?

Imprisonment
When an offender is imprisoned, he is deprived of his liberty and confined in an institution
maintained for that specific purpose. In the UK, male prisoners are clas-sified as category
A to D, with ‘category A’ denoting those who pose the greatest risk of escape and harm to
others. This determines the type of prison to which an offender is sent. The main
distinction is between closed and open prisons. Inmates of open prisons, who must be in
category D, are permitted to leave the prison grounds in order, for example, to work in the
community. The purpose of open prisons is to reintegrate offenders into law-abiding
society.
About 8% of the UK prison population are ‘on remand’. They have not been convicted
of an offence but are awaiting trial and are considered a sufficient risk for them not to be
allowed to remain at liberty. However, the majority of prisoners have

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been convicted of one or more offences and have been sentenced to imprisonment for a
specified period of time. The UK prison population has been growing steadily since 1940
and, at the end of 2017, was around 94,000. This partly reflects growth in the population
of the country as a whole, but the proportion of the population in prison has also increased.
In England and Wales in 1901 there were 86 male prison-ers for every 100,000 people in
the population. By 2016 this had increased to 182 per 100,000. The majority of prisoners
are men. In 2016 the rate of female imprisonment was 16 per 100,000 population. About
75% of UK prisoners in 2016 were serving a sentence of more than four years. The most
common offences for which people were imprisoned were violence against the person,
sexual offences, robbery, theft and drug offences (Allen & Watson, 2017).

The UK’s incarceration rate is high compared with other Western European countries.
In broader comparisons, the UK has a moderate rate of imprisonment, substantially higher
than Finland (54.4 per 100,000), although much lower than Lithuania (295.6 per 100,000).
The US has seen an explosion in imprisonment since the 1970s as the US has pursued a
programme of mass incarceration. Until the 1970s the US rate of imprisonment was
around 110 per 100,000 (Wood, 2009). Over the following decades it rose sharply to peak
at 755 per 100,000 in 2008 and in 2015 stood at 666 per 100,000 population (World Prison
Brief, 2017). There are several reasons for this rise including a shift in social attitudes
away from rehabilitation and towards retribution and a substantial rise in the number of
people impris-oned for non-violent drug offences under the aegis of the US government’s
‘war on drugs’.

Does prison work?

Imprisonment can serve a number of purposes including:

■ Retribution. Making the offender ‘pay’ for their offence by subjecting him to an
aversive environment.
■ Incapacitation. Preventing the offender from committing further offences by iso-lating
him from potential victims.
■ Deterrence. Making potential offenders ‘think twice’ about committing an offence
because of the potential consequences.
■ Reform. Bringing about a change in the offender so that, on release, he does not
commit further offences.
Different people emphasise different functions of imprisonment, often depending on their
political outlook. Conservative commentators tend to emphasise retribu-tion, while more
liberal ones stress the potential of imprisonment to reform the offender. The question of
whether ‘prison works’ is not easy to answer because it depends heavily on what is meant
by ‘working’. Those whose priority is retri-bution may judge prison in terms of how
unpleasant it makes life for prisoners whereas those who are more concerned with reform
are likely to focus on the rate of reoffending.

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Retribution
The rationale for retribution is that an offender has inflicted pain on other individ-uals or
on the wider society and that it is therefore necessary to inflict pain on them in return. As a
form of retribution, prison is unpleasant for those who experience it. Sykes (1958)
identifies five ‘pains of imprisonment’:
■ Loss of liberty. The inmate is confined in the prison, removed from contact with
friends and family, loses civil status and is rejected by the community.
■ Deprivation of goods and services. The inmate loses her material possessions and may
no longer make choices about most things in her life.
■ Frustration of sexual desire. The inmate is deprived of her intimate relationships.
■ Deprivation of autonomy. The inmate must submit to the prison regime and must work,
associate with others and engage in other activities at the time specified by the regime.

■ Deprivation of security. The inmate is surrounded by unpredictable and poten-tially

violent others, resulting in fear and anxiety.
These pains are common to prisons everywhere but prison regimes vary consider-ably
between different countries and states. In Finland, even the highest security closed prisons
have a relatively non-oppressive regime with many opportunities for work and study. At
the other extreme are the ‘supermax’ prisons operating in the US, in which inmates are
kept in conditions of near complete isolation and sensory deprivation, confined to small
concrete and steel cells for 23 hours a day and communication with others, including staff
and other inmates, is forbidden (Kurki & Morris, 2001). In the UK, the popular press
frequently expounds the view that prisons are ‘too soft’. Given that two men may be
sharing an 8x10 feet cell without 24-hour access to toilets, the view that British prisons are
akin to ‘holiday camps’ is a misrepresentation (Jewkes, 2011). Some have nonetheless
argued that prisons should be made more unpleasant (‘penal harm’). This opens up a
debate about human rights and humane treatment that will not be pursued here. How-ever,
making prisons harsher may undermine their capacity to reform offenders. Drago et al.
(2011) used data from the Italian prison system to create a measure of prison harshness
derived from the degree of overcrowding, the death rate of pris-oners and the level of
support and assistance available to inmates. They found that harsher prison conditions
were associated with an increase in criminal behaviour after release.

Incapacitation
In terms of incapacitation, prison works to the extent that the 94,000 people cur-rently
imprisoned in the UK are therefore not out in the community committing fur-ther offences.
It is difficult to quantify how much crime is thereby avoided. Spelman (2000) estimates
that incapacitation reduces serious offending by between 10 and 20 offences per prisoner
per year, although Lofstrom and Raphael (2016) point out that studies like these rely on
data gathered in the 1970s, when the US incarceration rate

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was much lower. Research in Italy and the Netherlands has found a similar effect but there
is a diminishing return. As the imprisonment rate rises there is a reduc-tion in offending
but once it exceeds around 200 per 100,000 further reductions are minimal (Buonanno &
Raphael, 2013). Lofstrom and Raphael (2016) examined the effect of reducing the prison
population in California as the result of sentencing reforms. They found that imprisoning
fewer people had no effect on violent crime but was associated with a modest increase in
property crimes. Cullen et al. (2011) acknowledge the existence of an incapacitation effect
but point out that analyses like these ‘rig the data’ (p.S51) as they compare the effect of
imprisonment with the effect of doing nothing, whereas a fair analysis of the effects of
imprisonment would compare it with other, non-custodial sentences.

Deterrence
Claims about the deterrent effect of prison rest on the idea that there are individuals who
would commit crimes but do not because the threat of imprisonment is suffi-ciently great.
A distinction is made between specific and general deterrence. Specific deterrence refers
to the effect on the individual who has been punished and is dis-cussed below in relation to
reform. General deterrence refers to the effect prison (or another punishment) has on
people in general. General deterrence is allied to social learning theory (see Chapter 5)
since those who observe a model may learn from both the model’s actions and their
consequences. Potential offenders who learn of others who have been sent to prison
experience their punishment vicariously. This increases their own expectancy of
punishment should they commit the same type of crime, so they become less likely to
imitate criminal acts.
In practice it is very difficult to obtain clear-cut evidence for a general deterrence
effect. Ross (1973) studied the effect of increasing the severity of punishment for drink
driving offences in the UK. A deterrence effect was found, as there was initially a
reduction in alcohol-related driving fatalities. Unfortunately, the effect disappeared
quickly. Sherman (1990) suggests that people who are motivated to offend initially reduce
their criminal activities in response to the increased threat of punishment but learn
(through trial and error and the reports of others) that they are unlikely to be caught and so
soon feel able to resume acting on their criminal impulses.
Some researchers have compared offending rates between areas and time periods with
different law and order policies to see if changes in the severity of punishment (e.g.
increased prison terms) correlate with differences in the crime rate. Donohue (2009) found
a negative correlation between imprisonment rates and crime rates, so as the prison
population grows, the crime rate decreases. While this is consistent with a general
deterrence effect, it is equally consistent with an incapacitation effect, as higher
imprisonment rates remove more offenders from circulation. Nagin (2013) argues that,
where deterrence effects are found, it is the certainty of getting caught that deters potential
offenders, not the severity of the punishment that follows. Con-sequently, it is better for
policymakers to focus on policing than imprisonment as policing is more visible to
potential offenders and consequently increases their per-ceived risk of getting caught.

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Reform
If prison is evaluated in terms of its potential to reform the offender, then the key measure
of its effectiveness is the recidivism rate. Recidivism is a return to offend-ing following
punishment. The claim that prison has a specific deterrent effect can be understood in
relation to two general theories of offending. Rational choice the-ory (see Chapter 4)
suggests that offending is the outcome of a rational process where the individual weighs
up the costs and benefits of offending and acts accord-ingly. The threat of imprisonment is
a cost of offending and is weighed against the potential gains, such as money and
enhanced status. Imprisonment can be under-stood in terms of behaviourist learning
theory. Behaviourism holds that behaviour is shaped and maintained by its consequences.
If a behaviour is reliably followed by a punishment, it becomes less likely in future. The
pains of imprisonment should, in principle, act to either increase the perceived costs of
offending (RCT) or to weaken offending actions (behaviourism).

If so, we might expect that those who have been imprisoned would be less likely to
reoffend than those who have had an alternative, non-custodial sentence. The evidence
suggests that imprisonment does not have a specific deterrent effect. In the UK, about 59%
of those released from prison reoffend within two years (Fazel & Wolf, 2015). This figure
has been stable for some time and is similar to that recorded in many other countries.
Bottomley and Pease (1986) found a UK reconviction rate of around 60% and some
estimates suggest that reoffending among young male offenders in the UK is as high as
82% (Home Office, 1994). Figures from the US paint a similar picture. Langan and Levin
(2002) traced US prisoners released in 1994. They found that, within three years of
release, 67.5% were rearrested, 46.9% were reconvicted and 25.4% were sentenced to
another prison term.
These data do not obviously suggest that prison is an effective deterrent against further
offending. However, even if the recidivism rate is high it might still be that prison is a
more effective deterrent than other punishments (e.g. fines, probation or community
punishment). How does prison compare with the alternatives? Gendreau et al. (2000)
reviewed studies comparing prison with community-based punishments and concluded
that prison resulted in a 7% increase in recidivism. Smith et al. (2002) reported that the
recidivism rate was 8% higher in imprisoned offenders. Villettaz et al. (2006) reviewed 27
studies comparing imprisonment and community-based sanctions. Prison emerged as
superior in only two studies. Four-teen studies found no difference between prison and
non-custodial sentences and 11 found that non-custodial sentences had a lower recidivism
rate. These findings are consistent with survey data indicating that some offenders find
community-based punishments more aversive than short-term imprisonment because of
the degree of supervision and requirement for change involved (Moore et al., 2008).

It has been claimed that the experience of imprisonment makes people more likely to
commit subsequent offences. Social learning theory (Chapter 5) sug-gests that criminal
behaviour results from the learning of pro-crime attitudes and behaviours from others. If
so, the wisdom of confining a novice offender with hun-dreds or thousands of experienced
criminals might be questioned. It may also be

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that the labelling that occurs as a consequence of imprisonment may militate against
reform. The ‘colleges of crime’ view has had mixed support. Walker et al. (1981)
compared first offenders given a variety of sentences and found that those given prison or
a fine were less likely to be reconvicted than those given probation or a suspended
sentence, suggesting that imprisonment does not increase subsequent criminality.
However, offenders are not a homogeneous group and neither are pris-ons, so it may still
be that some types of prison increase criminality in some types of offender (Mears et al.,
2015). Cid (2009) compared recidivism rates in 241 offenders sentenced to prison and 304
given a suspended sentence (i.e. they were released under the threat of imprisonment if
they committed any further offences during a two-year period). The offenders were
followed up for eight years. Cid found that imprisoned offenders were significantly more
likely to be re-imprisoned than those given suspended sentences. He suggests that this is
due to the effect of imprison-ment on offenders’ self-definitions, in line with labelling
theory (see Chapter 5).
A limitation of this study is that the offenders were assigned their sentences by judges,
whose sentencing decisions might well reflect their knowledge of reoffend-ing risk in each
case. The ‘prison’ group might always have been at a higher risk of reoffending than the
‘suspended sentence’ group (a selection bias). Ideally, in a study of this sort, offenders
should be randomly assigned to different punishments as this ensures that other risk factors
average out between the groups and the only systematic difference between them is the
type of sentence they are given. For obvi-ous reasons, this rarely happens in the disposal of
real criminal cases. However, Gaes and Camp (2009) report a study in which inmates in
California who were designated ‘Level III’ (medium-high risk) were randomly assigned to
either Level
III or Level I (lower security) prisons. They found that Level III inmates who served their
sentence in a Level III prison had a 31% higher risk of returning to prison than those who
had been in a Level I prison. Since all the inmates had the same risk rat-ing, this suggests
that the environment of the higher security prison increased the tendency to reoffend. Gaes
and Camp suggest that a higher security prison exposes the offender to a harsher
environment where violence is valued by the peer group, resulting in social learning of
pro-violence attitudes.

Why does prison not reform offenders?

The failure of imprisonment to reform offenders can be understood in a number of ways.
Behaviourist theory holds that, in order to be effective, punishment needs to be probable,
prompt and aversive. That is, the punishment must (1) reliably follow the target behaviour;
(2) occur soon after the target behaviour; and (3) be unpleas-ant. Imprisonment does not
fulfil these requirements. First, an offender may com-mit many offences but be punished
only for one or a few of them, so imprisonment is not a reliable consequence of offending.
Second, a long time may separate the offence from the imprisonment as the offender must
first be caught, then charged and tried, so in many cases punishment is not prompt. Third,
prison is already unpleasant and making it more so does not make it any more effective
(see above). It should also be considered that research from the biological tradition has
shown

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that a significant proportion of offenders are impaired in their capacity to learn from
punishment (see Chapters 3 and 4). In addition, an offender may acquire ben-efits from his
crimes (e.g. cash, goods, enhanced social status) so the reinforcements available for
offending in the short term can outweigh the longer term negative consequences.
Cognitive factors may also be relevant, as the offender, rather than interpreting prison as a
consequence of his crime, may instead interpret prison as a consequence of getting caught.
What he learns is not that he should stop offending but that he should be more careful. An
analysis based on rational choice theory would be very similar. In many cases, the
potential offender reasons that although imprisonment is a severe consequence, it is also
an unlikely one and therefore it does not outweigh the anticipated benefits of committing
the crime.

Effects of imprisonment
Imprisonment inevitably affects those who experience it, especially if for the first time.
The exact effects depend on the characteristics of the offender, the offence, the length of
the sentence and the prison regime.
Some research reports significant psychological effects of long-term imprison-ment
including depression, apathy, emotional instability, changes in cognition and personality,
and early onset dementia (Rasch, 1981). However, influential studies by Zamble and
Porporino (1988) and Zamble (1992) found that, while prisoners on remand and early in
their sentences show high levels of anxiety, hopelessness and depression, these effects
decline with time. Zamble (1992) reports that, longi-tudinally, psychological symptoms
decrease and there is an increase in prisoners’ capacity for structured activity. Other
longitudinal studies have reported mixed findings. Brinded et al. (1999) found that
imprisonment resulted in increases in major depression and alcohol and drug abuse but
Dettbarn (2012) found that men-tal health among long-term prisoners actually improved
over time. She analysed data from psychiatric examinations of prisoners taken, on average,
14 years apart. At the first examination 69% of the inmates were diagnosable with
psychological disorders but by the time of the second examination, this had reduced to
48.3%. Most of the reduction was in personality disorders. Many of these inmates had
received psychotherapy while in prison (which is unlikely to be the case for many prisons)
and the prevalence of psychological problems remained very high in com-parison with the
general population. It may also be that longitudinal studies of the effects of imprisonment
depict them as more benign than they actually are because of selective attrition: those most
negatively affected by imprisonment do not appear in the final data set because they have
died (through illness, drug use and suicide) or been transferred to other prisons or hospitals
(Liebling & Maruna, 2005).

Prisoners run a higher risk of suicide than members of the general population. Between
2007 and 2016 the number of self-inflicted deaths in British prisons rose steadily, reaching
an all-time high of 119 people in 2016, meaning that the suicide risk in UK prisons is now
around eight times that in the general population (Min-istry of Justice, 2017b). Liebling
(1992) identifies several risk factors for suicide

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in prison. Many of these are the same as those that exacerbate suicide risk in the general
population: adverse life events, poor education, unemployment, drug and alcohol
problems, and mental health problems. Prison-specific factors include overcrowding,
which is also associated with poorer mental health and higher risk of drug problems.
Suicide risk is highest among prisoners on remand or awaiting sentencing. Self-report data
from prisoners who attempted suicide in prisons in England and Wales found that 84% had
experienced anxiety and/or depression in the previous year, 57% had a personality disorder
and 48% had problems with drug use. Inmates reported a variety of triggering events
including transfer to another prison, loss of custody of children and bullying by other
inmates (Liebling, 2007). The increased suicide risk of prisoners extends beyond their
release. Pratt et al. (2006) found that the suicide risk in prisoners within one year of release
was eight times that in the general population for men and around 36 times the general
pop-ulation risk for women. The greatest risk period is in the first 28 days after release.
Pratt et al. suggest a number of contributing factors including drug use, exclusion from the
community, lack of housing and poor access to mental health support services.

Liebling and Maruna (2005) argue that psychological research into the effects of
imprisonment has used rather limited ways of measuring the harm that prison inflicts.
They identify a number of areas that have been neglected until relatively recently
including:
■ Physical health. As a result of high levels of intravenous drug use, unprotected sex and
tattooing, prisoners run an increased risk of diseases such as hepatitis B and C and
HIV.
■ Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Some groups of prisoners, including those who
have been wrongly convicted and those who have witnessed vio-lence while inside,
show a pattern of symptoms and personality changes that include difficulties forming
close relationships, anxiety, depression, anger and difficulty concentrating. Symptoms
of PTSD may serve to make adjustment to both imprisonment and subsequent release
very difficult.
■ Effects on prisoners’ families. The children of prisoners experience sudden sepa-ration
from an attachment figure, which may have developmental consequences, especially
since the imprisonment of a parent may also result in a deterioration of the material and
social support available to the family.
Wood (2009) observes that the use of mass incarceration in the US has resulted in nearly
3% of children having had a parent in prison, rising to nearly 10% of BME children.
Imprisonment puts a severe strain on spousal relationships, frequently resulting in the
breakup of families and loss of contact with children. Even if the human cost is ignored,
strong relationships with partner and children are reported to be a factor in avoiding
recidivism, and good family networks increase the probabil-ity of employment on release
(since many released inmates in the US are employed by family members), which also
helps reduce recidivism. Beyond the family, there

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is some evidence that high levels of imprisonment disrupt communities. Impris-onment

disproportionately removes individuals from poor, urban neighbourhoods with a high
proportion of minorities. Up to a point, this reduces the local crime rate as offenders are
incapacitated. However, as the number of people incarcerated climbs it becomes difficult
for residents of the neighbourhood to maintain the infor-mal mechanisms that preserve
social organisation (see Chapter 5). Consequently, high rates of imprisonment may,
ironically, contribute to an increased crime rate (Renauer et al., 2006).

Imprisonment: general considerations

Overall, there are relatively few arguments for imprisoning significant num-bers of
offenders. On the one hand, it does serve the functions of retribution and incapacitation.
On the other hand, it is no more effective than non-custodial sen-tencing at reforming the
offender and may sometimes increase recidivism. It is also potentially damaging to
offenders, their families and communities. Alongside this, it is worth considering the
financial costs involved in imprisoning large num-bers. The UK government reports a cost
per prisoner of around £35,000 a year for imprisonment (Ministry of Justice, 2017a). Since
most alternatives are substantially cheaper, there is a strong economic argument against
imprisoning offenders who pose a low risk to society. Marsh and Fox (2008) reviewed
studies of imprisonment and non-custodial sentencing in relation to their cost to the UK
government over the lifetime of an offender. They estimated that, compared with
‘standard’ prison (i.e. the offender is simply confined for the duration of her sentence),
both prison with added elements (such as educational input, drug treatment and sex
offender treatment) and community-based sentences (such as intense surveillance in the
community) were significantly more effective at reducing recidivism. They found that
alternatives to ‘standard’ imprisonment saved significant amounts of public money,
between £19,000 and £88,000 per offender.

Non-custodial sentencing
Besides imprisonment, legal systems have a variety of other means of punishing and
reforming offenders. In the UK and the US, the commonest forms of non-custodial
sentence are fines, probation and community punishment, which are discussed below. In
addition to these, courts in England and Wales may impose other sen-tences (Ashworth,
2010):
■ Absolute discharge. The offender is released with no conditions attached. This is only
very rarely applied, typically for the most minor of offences.
■ Conditional discharge or ‘bind over’. The offender is released on the condition that,
should they commit another offence within a specified time period (up to three years),
they will be sentenced for both that offence and the original one. It is used as a threat to
maintain good behaviour.

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■ Compensation order. The offender is required to pay a specified sum of money to her
victim(s) to recompense for her offence. This is different from a fine, which is paid to
the authorities.

Fines
A fine is a sum of money paid to the authorities by an offender as restitution for her
offence. The amount is set by the trial judge but must be within limits laid down by law.
Caldwell (1965) suggests that fines have a number of advantages over other forms of
punishment. First, the system is economical as it costs little to administer, since it does not
require outlay on the maintenance of the offender (unlike prison or probation) and
provides a source of revenue for the state, country or city. Second, fines do not stigmatise
the offender or expose her to the adverse effects of impris-onment and can be adjusted to
reflect her financial circumstances. Third, fines can be imposed in situations where other
punishments are impossible, such as when a business rather than an individual has broken
the law. Ashworth (2010) adds that, unlike other punishments, fines are reversible if it
emerges that the individual was wrongfully convicted.

Evidence on the effectiveness of fines in reducing recidivism is mixed. Feldman (1993)

states that, for first offenders, fines are more effective than imprisonment or probation in
preventing reoffending and Walker et al. (1981) found they led to lower reoffending rates
than probation or a suspended sentence. One problem with this evidence is selection bias.
The courts decide which offenders get fined and which receive other sanctions and the two
groups may differ in a number of ways. For example, a judge may be more likely to
impose a fine on someone whose life circumstances are stable, has a job and a family, all
of which would give them a lower risk of reoffending, so it is difficult to conclude that
fines are responsible for the lower reconviction rates. Unfortunately, relatively few well-
controlled stud-ies of the comparative effectiveness of fines have been conducted
(Weatherburn & Moffatt, 2011). Bouffard and Muftić (2007) compared recidivism rates in
low-level offenders sentenced either to community service or given a fine. They found that
the community service group were less likely to reoffend, even though they had more
serious criminal histories. However, in relation to general deterrence, a review by
Wagenaar et al. (2007) concluded that areas in which mandatory fines were intro-duced
for drink driving offences had a greater reduction in fatal vehicle crashes than areas where
mandatory prison terms were introduced.

Evidence aside, there are a number of arguments against the use of fines. First, the fine
may be paid by the offender’s family or friends, lessening its impact on the actual
offender. Second, for many offences, such as prostitution and possession of drugs, fines
are used in a routine way with no intention to reform the offender. Third, fines can come to
be seen as an ‘operating cost’ of offending. For example, some companies whose activities
pollute the environment have pursued a policy of paying fines for breaking environmental
protection laws because this is cheaper than making the necessary changes to ensure that
pollution does not take place.

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Fourth, there are arguments about whether fines are a just punishment. A fine has a greater
impact on a poorer person. This could be perceived as unjust, as poorer people are
disproportionately punished. Judges can adjust the size of a fine (within limits) to reflect
the financial circumstances of the offender but imposing bigger fines on richer offenders is
also arguably unjust, because a judicial sanction should be based on the nature of the
offence and the offender’s degree of culpability, not her life circumstances. Finally, there
are offences for which a fine is obviously inap-propriate, such as any offence where there
is a risk to the public if the offender is not incapacitated.

Probation and community sentences

When an offender is placed on probation he is released into the community on the
condition that he submits to the supervision and guidance of a probation officer. Typically,
the offender is under threat of imprisonment if he fails to comply with the probation order.
Depending on the offence, a range of conditions might be spe-cified. In England and
Wales, probation orders are subsumed under the general cat-egory of ‘community
sentences’. A community sentence can require an offender to:

■ Do unpaid work (‘community service’).

■ Undertake specific activities (e.g. restorative justice; see below).
■ Attend a rehabilitation programme.
■ Refrain from specific prohibited activities.
■ Obey a curfew that restricts their movements and times of activity.
■ Stay out of specified places.
■ Reside in a particular area.
■ Receive treatment for mental health problems.
■ Receive treatment for drug or alcohol problems.
■ Submit to regular supervision by a probation officer.

A community sentence may be used as an alternative to imprisonment but proba-tion and

other conditions may also be imposed where an offender has been released from prison but
is expected to complete a period of probation before being dis-charged completely.

Probation has a number of obvious advantages over imprisonment. As with fines, the
offender remains in the community, meaning he is not stigmatised or exposed to the
adverse effects of imprisonment. In addition, a community sentence does not disrupt the
offender’s employment or family ties, both of which help to pro-tect against recidivism.
Probation is also substantially cheaper than prison, costing around a tenth of the cost of
imprisonment. For example, the UK Ministry of Justice (2011) calculated the annual cost
of an intensive probation programme at between £4,000 and £7,000 per offender. At the
time, the estimated annual cost of keeping an offender in prison was around £40,000.

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Although the financial advantage is clear, the key question is whether com-munity
sentences are at least as effective as prison. Broadly, the answer seems to be yes. For
example, Oldfield (1996) tracked the reoffending rate among 857 offenders sentenced to
either imprisonment or to probation with a requirement to
(1) attend a day centre or (2) attend a group work programme. Over a five-year period,
63% of the imprisoned offenders were reconvicted. For those on probation, the
reconviction rate was 63% for the ‘day centre’ group but 41% for those given ‘group
work’. This shows that community sentences can be significantly more effective than
prison but also that it depends on the content of the community sentence. Further support
comes from Roshier (1995) who found two-year reof-fending rates of 64% for
imprisonment, 41% for probation and 37% for probation with a community service/unpaid
work requirement. Wermink et al. (2010) com-pared short-term imprisonment with
community service in a study of 4,246 Dutch offenders. Importantly, they matched the
prison and community service offenders to control for the possibility that the imprisoned
group had a higher general risk of recidivism. Over a five-year follow-up period, the
average offender sentenced to imprisonment received 1.21 more convictions than the
average offender given community service. That is, community service led to a 46.8%
reduction in recid-ivism. Wermink et al. were unable to draw conclusions about why
community service performed so much better than prison but they point out that, in the
Neth-erlands, community service is performed in the offender’s spare time and is not
scheduled to interfere with their usual activities or social networks. This makes it unlikely
that the effectiveness of community service is due to its aversive nature.

Not all research has supported the superiority of community sentences. Killias et al.
(2010) compared 123 Swiss offenders randomly assigned to either community service or a
short prison sentence (maximum 14 days). Over the following 11 years no significant
differences were found in the recidivism rates of the two groups. Kil-lias et al. suggest that
imprisonment is less disruptive to employment and social relationships than is often
assumed. This may be true for the extremely short prison sentences studied, but once a
prison sentence exceeds a few weeks its detrimental effect may become more marked. It
should also be noted that the small sample used by Killias et al. makes it hard to draw firm
conclusions. By the same token, this study does have a significant strength in that the
offenders were randomly assigned to the different punishments. This helps to rule out
selection bias, whereby the offenders assigned to the community sentence were those with
the lowest risk of recidivism. The danger of selection bias is highlighted by a large-scale
review of studies com-paring custodial and non-custodial sentences by Villettaz et al.
(2015). They found, overall, that non-custodial sentences were associated with lower
recidivism. How-ever, the difference was more marked in the quasi-experimental studies
than the true experiments. When offenders were randomly assigned to different
punishments, the differences between prison and non-custodial sentences were not
significant. Villetaz et al. identify a number of other limitations with the research evidence
in this area: the follow-up periods are too short (usually two years); measures of recidi-
vism are relatively poor (over-reliance on official statistics and under-use of offender

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self-reports); and the effects of different types of sentence on areas such as health,
employment, and social and family relationships are rarely investigated. Overall, then, it is
possible that the superiority of community sentences over imprisonment has been
exaggerated by the methods chosen to investigate it. That said, even if com-munity
sentences are only as effective as imprisonment, the cost-effectiveness aspect of the
community option is difficult to argue with.

Restorative justice
Restorative justice is a set of ideas and practices that represent an alternative to the
‘punitive’ model of justice that predominates in the Western world. In the puni-tive model,
justice is served by taking retribution on the offender. In the restorative model, justice is
served by healing the harm (to victims and the wider society) that the offence caused
(Bazemore, 2009). Restorative justice takes many different forms, but the key elements are
(1) that offenders, victims and other stakeholders in the offence voluntarily agree to
participate; (2) that the offender must take responsi-bility for the harm he caused and be
willing to discuss it honestly with victims and the community; and (3) that offender,
victims and others meet face to face to agree on an appropriate way of repairing the harm
(Llewellyn & Howse, 1998). The outcome of a restorative justice approach is typically that
the offender is required to make amends for his offence. This could include apologising to
the victim(s), unpaid work for the community or the victim, or entering into an agreement
about future behaviour (Bazemore, 2009). Restorative justice is not necessarily an alterna-
tive to other judicial sanctions and could be employed at many points in the crimi-nal
justice system. It can be used instead of charging individuals and trying them in court but
equally might be used with a convicted offender as part of a community sentence or as a
condition of parole after a prison sentence (Latimer et al., 2005).

A number of claims are made about restorative justice. First, it is beneficial to victims,
as recognition is given to the harm they have personally suffered and redress is received
from the offender(s). Second, it encourages the reintegration of offenders into the
community after their offence, which may reduce recidivism. Third, it is perceived as
fairer and more just than the punitive model by victims, offenders and communities,
leading to greater satisfaction with justice. There is evidence to support these claims. For
example, Maxwell and Morris (2001) report two schemes run with adult offenders in New
Zealand. The schemes mainly dealt with property offences and minor acts of violence and
the victims were principally friends, family and local businesses. The restorative
programmes included a range of requirements including paying reparations, engaging in
therapy for drugs, alco-hol or violent behaviour and attending driving or parenting courses.
Compared with matched offenders who were processed by the standard judicial trial
process, those on the restorative justice programme were less likely to be reconvicted.
Qual-itative self-report data gathered from the offenders showed that some welcomed the
opportunity to make things right with their victims and that many felt that the experience
had been a positive one.

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A substantial body of research into restorative justice has grown up since the 1970s.
Latimer et al. (2005) reviewed 35 studies in which restorative and non-restorative justice
programmes were compared. Restorative justice resulted in greater victim satisfaction,
greater compliance with sanctions by offenders and lower recidivism rates. No difference
was found for offender satisfaction. However, Latimer et al. noted that in many of the
studies reviewed involvement in a restor-ative justice programme was voluntary – as its
principles require – and so there is a danger that the apparent superiority of restorative
approaches is due to selection bias. Additionally, many of the programmes reviewed by
Latimer et al. were aimed at younger offenders, so it is not clear whether adult offenders
respond similarly. A more recent meta-analysis by Sherman et al. (2015) addresses some
of these con-cerns. They reviewed 10 studies involving both juvenile and adult offenders
and in which offenders were randomly allocated to receive restorative justice or not, thus
avoiding selection bias. With the proviso that restorative justice is only appropriate when
both offender and victim are willing to participate voluntarily, Sherman et al. found that
restorative justice was associated with a small but statistically significant reduction in
reoffending, especially when used to supplement conventional justice (as opposed to
replacing it, where the evidence is equivocal). It remains unclear why restorative justice
should have a greater effect on recidivism than the conventional approach. Sherman et al.
connect the emotional intensity of restorative justice meet-ings with the triggering of
‘turning points’ in a criminal career, when an offender makes a commitment to the idea of
desisting from crime. In support of this, they indicate that restorative justice has a stronger
effect on violent recidivism than in property offences, where the degree of emotional
intensity is typically lower.

Chapter summary
The judicial system responds to offending with a range of sanctions including both
custodial and non-custodial sentences. Imprisonment is the most serious sanction available
in most Western democracies but its use varies widely. In the UK and US, there was a
substantial growth in imprisonment between the 1940s and the pres-ent day. Prison serves
a number of functions including retribution, incapacitation, deterrence and reform of the
offender. Although it is painful for the offender in a number of ways and may affect her
physical, psychological and social wellbeing, there is little evidence to suggest that it
reforms criminals and some that suggests it makes offending worse. However, it does
incapacitate offenders for the duration of their sentence and is a necessary measure in the
case of those who pose a signif-icant risk to society. Imprisonment is comparatively costly
and there are economic arguments for avoiding it in favour of non-custodial sentences
when the risk to the public is low. Non-custodial sentences include fines and community
sentences. Fines have advantages in that they do not disrupt the offender’s life in the same
way as prison and they may generate revenue for the authorities. The evidence for their
effectiveness is not strong, although they do have a deterrent effect on

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some offences. Community sentences involve releasing an offender into society but
imposing requirements (e.g. community service) or restrictions (e.g. a curfew) on her,
under threat of more serious sanctions. Evidence suggests that those who serve community
sentences have a lower recidivism rate than those who are imprisoned and there are
substantial monetary savings. Restorative justice involves offenders, victims and other
stakeholders voluntarily devising ways for offenders to repair the harm they have caused.
It appears to produce better outcomes than conventional justice both in terms of recidivism
and victim satisfaction. However, much of the evidence in the area of non-custodial
sentencing is affected by selection bias, as only in a few studies are offenders randomly
assigned to different punishments. Con-sequently, the evidence base exaggerates the
difference in effectiveness between prison and the alternatives.

Further reading
Liebling, A., & Maruna, S. (2006). The Effects of Imprisonment (Cambridge Criminal
Justice Series). London: Routledge. An authoritative edited volume on the effects of
imprisonment with contributions from a number of influential researchers.

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CHAPTER

10
Crime prevention

The goal of crime prevention is to reduce the amount of criminal activity and the harm that
it causes along with the number of criminal offenders and their victims. Crime prevention
strategies are used by individuals, communities, businesses and government to target those
factors that are known to cause crime in order to facili-tate a reduction in crime. This
chapter surveys some of the ways in which psychol-ogy can contribute to reducing crime.
It starts by distinguishing between different types of crime prevention and then discusses
how crime can be prevented by alter-ing the environment, intervening with people at risk
of involvement in criminal activity and by helping to rehabilitate offenders.

Approaches to crime prevention

The Public Health Model is an approach to crime prevention adopted from the med-ical
profession. The medical approach to, for example, heart disease is not solely based on
emergency procedures that occur once someone has already had a heart attack, but on
ways in which people can reduce their risk of developing heart dis-ease in the first place
(e.g. adopting a healthy lifestyle). In the Public Health Model of crime prevention there are
three interrelated and coordinated approaches for reducing the seriousness and incidence
of criminal behaviour: primary, secondary and tertiary (Mackey, 2012). Primary and
secondary preventions are forms of deter-rence; they try to encourage people not to
commit an offence. Tertiary prevention aims to reform offenders so that they do not
reoffend (see Chapter 9).
Primary crime prevention refers to proactive attempts to prevent crime before it
happens. These include strengthening resiliency factors that help individuals to avoid
criminal behaviours, and reducing risk factors that increase the likelihood of criminal
behaviour. Such programmes could include those in schools designed to reduce risk
factors in children and adolescents that might lead to more serious crim-inal activity later
in life such as drug and alcohol use, carrying a knife and joining a gang (Regoli et al.,
2010).
Secondary interventions refer to attempts to change those people who run a high risk of
offending but are not yet involved in serious criminal activity. These

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programmes target a narrower group of individuals than primary prevention pro-grammes.

In young males, the main risk factors for criminality are hyperactivity, poor concentration,
poor academic achievement, an antisocial father, a large family size, low income, poor
parental supervision and parental disharmony (Farrington, 2000). Thus, secondary
programmes might specifically target such individuals in early adolescence to provide
appropriate mentors, role models and additional aca-demic support in order to divert them
from criminal trajectories.
Tertiary interventions are those that involve working with known offenders already in
the criminal justice system to prevent them from reoffending. These can include drug and
alcohol treatment, further education and training and psy-chological interventions such as
anger management programmes. The aim is to rehabilitate offenders and provides a
somewhat different approach from that of penal harm. Penal harm works on the principle
that if prison is made sufficiently unpleasant (Spartan living conditions, little contact with
other people, reduced access to books, TV and games, etc.) the person will be motivated to
avoid further offences (see Chapter 9). Tertiary interventions work on the principle that
incar-ceration on its own may not be sufficient. For instance, if someone is convicted of
assault and spends time in prison, he may continue to commit further offences of assault if
he does not believe that he has actually done something wrong. Indeed, he may even feel
justified in committing further assault against those responsible for his incarceration.
There is a need to change how that person thinks not just to incarcerate him.

Situational crime prevention

Situational crime prevention is based on the understanding that certain crimes are more
likely to occur in some areas than others (sometimes referred to as crime ‘hot spots’). In
the United States, for example, 60% of crimes occur within the same locations (Eck,
2006). Situational crime prevention is underpinned by Rational Choice Theory (Clarke,
1997; see Chapter 4). Rational Choice Theory proposes that offending behaviour results
from a series of decisions (e.g. effort required, moral costs, severity of punishment, etc.),
background factors (e.g. upbringing, previ-ous experience of crime, etc.) and
environmental cues (e.g. opportunity to commit crime).

The general approach adopted by situational crime prevention is to the reduce the
opportunity for people to engage in criminal behaviour by changing the physi-cal
environment in ways that increase the effort required to commit a crime, enhance the risk
of detection, reduce the gains associated with crime, remove the excuses for committing a
crime and reduce factors that prompt criminal behaviour (Cornish & Clarke, 2003).
Changes to the physical environment to reduce crime are sometimes referred to as crime
prevention through environmental design (CPTED) strategies. These include improved
street lighting, the use of closed-circuit television and cre-ating defensible space.

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Improved street lighting

The idea behind improved street lighting in city and town centres, residential areas and
public housing communities is that natural surveillance is improved. This makes it easier
to see and identify criminals and encourages more pedestrians to use those areas. The
increased risk of being recognised or interrupted while attacking people or property
reduces the likelihood of someone choosing to offend. In a review of 13 studies from the
US and UK, Welsh and Farrington (2009) found an average reduction in crime of 21%
although it was more effective in reducing property crime than violent crime. In nine of
those 13 studies, both daytime and night-time crimes were recorded and showed a 30%
reduction in crime. The remaining four studies only measured night-time crimes and
showed no statistically significant reduction in crime when compared with a control
condition with no improved street lighting. Since surveillance conditions are good in the
daytime, this analysis suggests the effect of improved street lighting may not actually be
due to improved natural surveillance at night but other related factors such as increased
social pride resulting from investment from local authorities and the increased collective
efficacy that results from this (see Chapter 5).
The best evidence for an improved street lighting scheme comes from Stoke-on-Trent.
An experimental area, with improved street lighting, was compared with a neighbouring
area and a control area with no improved street lighting (Painter & Farrington, 1999). The
incidence of crime, based on victim surveys rather than police records, showed a reduction
of crime by 43% in the experimental area, by 45% in the neighbouring area and 2% in the
control area. This suggests that the benefits of improved street lighting may not be limited
to the area in which they are introduced, but diffuse to surrounding areas, too. A financial
cost-benefit analysis of schemes in Stoke-on-Trent and Dudley showed the investment on
installing the new street lighting resulted in substantial saving for victims and the local
council. Every £1 spent resulted in a saving of £6.12 in Dudley and £5.43 in Stoke-on-
Trent (Painter & Farrington, 2001).

Closed-circuit television
Closed-circuit television (CCTV) is another form of surveillance designed to increase the
risk of detection and reduce the likelihood of offending. In a review of 44 studies in which
CCTV was installed in towns and city centres, the use of CCTV had no statistically
significant effect on crime (Welsh & Farrington, 2009). However, CCTV may be effective
under limited conditions, for instance, to reduce vehicle crime in car parks. One evaluation
compared car parks in Coventry, Hartlepool and Bradford where CCTV was installed
(along with notices about the CCTV and the presence of security personnel) with car parks
where CCTV was not installed (Til-ley, 1993). After 24 months there was a 59% reduction
in car crime in the car parks where CCTV was installed compared with a 16% reduction in
the car parks where CCTV was not installed. CCTV in towns and city centres might be
more effective if it is targeted at crime ‘hot spots’ and for specific types of crime (e.g.
property crime). Mobile CCTV facilities could make this a feasible and cost-effective
solution.

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Defensible space
The model of defensible space is derived from research into the failure of high-rise, high-
density housing projects in the United States where communal space was van-dalised,
littered and rendered unusable, and violence, prostitution and drug dealing were
commonplace (Newman, 1972). Newman suggested that the responsibility for maintaining
and securing a public space and for establishing common rules for its use was proportional
to the density of people living in an area. The more people, the less responsibility is taken.
Similar problems have been found in urban projects in the UK such as Hulme area of
Manchester where high-density blocks built in 1972 were demolished in 1996. Newman’s
solution was to create mini-neighbourhoods to create a sense of community with clearly
delineated boundaries through the use of fences, landscaping and creating cul-de-sacs by
breaking up roads with large ornamental gates. Police presence and law enforcement was
enhanced and a home ownership scheme was encouraged in order to reinforce a sense of
neighbourhood identification. In the Five Oaks area of Dayton, Ohio, where Newman’s
ideas were put into effect, violence decreased by 50%, traffic was lowered by one-third,
and two-thirds of residents reported it to be a better place to live in.

These studies have shown that situational crime prevention can be a cost-effective
approach in reducing crime by making changes to the environment that influence
perceptions of the risks of offending or encourage civic ownership and responsibil-ity.
Each type of environment, however, presents unique issues and challenges. For example,
in small commercial premises, such as newsagents and petrol stations, the placement of the
till can be critical in preventing robbery (Crowe, 1991). The cashier should be able to
observe the entry point to the premises and have good lines of sight throughout the shop or
store. For maximum visibility, windows should not be blocked with adverts or product
displays and there should be only one access point to monitor people entering and leaving.

Developmental crime prevention

Developmental crime prevention involves identifying individuals who are at risk of
becoming involved in crime and diverting them before they get involved in the criminal
justice system. It is based on identifying those factors that increase the like-lihood of
offending and taking action to counteract them and identifying those fac-tors that prevent
offending and taking action to boost them. Although many studies identify risk factors in
offending, it is not often clear whether they directly influence the onset, frequency,
persistence or duration of offending or merely correlate with it (Kazdin et al., 1997). For
instance, coming from a large family is correlated with the likelihood of offending and is
therefore a risk factor (Farrington & Loeber, 1999). It is not clear, however, how coming
from a large family is causally related to being an offender. Is it because antisocial people
have more children, because parental super-vision is poorer in large families, or is it a
consequence of poverty? Programmes

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designed to reduce risk factors and boost resilience factors will only be effective if they
target those factors that are causally related to offending. There are many types of
developmental crime prevention programme. These include those designed for parents
(e.g. effective parenting strategies and improving parental education), pre-school and day-
care settings (e.g. to boost cognitive stimulation or reading skills in young children) and
secondary school and community programmes (e.g. academic support, anti-bullying and
mentoring).

School-based programmes
School-based programmes can be effective in helping students to manage their behaviour
in school and stay out of trouble, improve their study skills and learning behaviours. In one
such multi-component study, children aged 6 were randomly assigned to an experimental
condition designed to enhance parental attachment and bonding at school or a control
condition (Hawkins et al., 1991). The experi-mental group intervention involved training
for parents on how to identify and reinforce socially desirable behaviour, training for
teachers on classroom manage-ment and training for students in socially desirable methods
of problem solving. By the age of 12 years, children in the experimental group were less
likely to have engaged in criminal activity or used drugs (O’Donnell et al., 1995). By the
age of 18 years children in the experimental group were less likely to abuse alcohol, were
less violent and had fewer sexual partners (Hawkins et al., 1999). A cost-benefit analysis
showed that for every $1 spent on the programme, $3 were saved in the cost to crime
victims and the US government (Aos et al., 2001).

Community-based programmes
An example of a community-based programme is the ‘Big Brothers, Big Sisters of
America’ (BBBS), a national mentoring organisation founded in 1904 dedicated to
improving the life chances of adolescents at risk of offending. In this programme,
adolescents are paired with an adult mentor who meets with them for three or four times
per month for at least one year. One evaluation compared 1,100 adolescents who were
randomly assigned either to the BBBS mentoring scheme or to a control group that
received no mentoring. Those who received mentoring were 32% less likely to have
engaged in violent behaviour, 46% less likely to have used drugs, 27% less likely to have
used alcohol and 30% less likely to have been absent from school without permission
(Grossman & Tierney, 1998). Aos et al. (2004) estimated that $3 were saved in the cost to
crime victims and the US government for every $1 spent on the programme. A review of
18 mentoring programmes concluded that mentor-ing programmes were effective in
preventing future offending behaviour (Jolliffe & Farrington, 2004). On average,
participants in mentoring programmes were 10% less likely to become offenders than
individuals who did not participate. However, the effectiveness of the interventions
depended on the amount of contact between the mentor and mentee. Programmes with
greater contact were, on average, more effective.

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Family programmes
Family programmes are typically designed directly to provide support for par-ents, teach
effective parenting skills and/or teach children social skills. One such programme,
designed for children aged 6 years who were identified as disruptive (aggressive and
hyperactive), combined parental and child train-ing (Tremblay et al., 1995, 1996). Children
received training in social skills and self-control through coaching and roleplay of
scenarios such as ‘how to react to teasing’ and ‘what to do when you are angry’. Parents
received training in how to reinforce desirable behaviour, discipline children without
punishment and manage family crisis situations. Compared with a control condition in
which no training was provided, children aged 12 in the experimental condition (child and
parent training) committed fewer burglaries, were involved in fewer fights and got drunk
less often (Tremblay et al., 1992). By the age of 24, persons in the experimental condition
were significantly less likely to have a criminal record (Boisjoli et al., 2007).

These studies have shown that developmental crime prevention can be a cost-effective
approach to reducing crime. The particular challenge for studies evaluat-ing this type of
crime prevention is that intervention programmes are often run in childhood or
adolescence and beneficial effects may not been seen for many years until the participants
in those programmes are late adolescents or adults. Nonethe-less, longitudinal studies that
follow individuals over a period of time have shown how it is possible to successfully
intervene during childhood or early adolescence to create a beneficial long-term outcome.

Offender rehabilitation
Recent statistics from the UK showed that from 2014 to 2015 the overall reoffend-ing rate
for persons who had already had contact with the criminal justice system was 25 to 27%
(Ministry of Justice, 2017a). This need not necessarily be a prison term but can include
those cautioned, convicted or released from custody without serving a prison term. For
adults, the reoffending rates were between 24 and 25% and for young offenders 29 and
37%. Clearly, contact with the criminal justice system in itself is not sufficient to prevent
recidivism (see Chapter 9). Attempts to rehabilitate offenders, especially those serving a
prison sentence, were com-monplace in many countries throughout the 20th century. A
now famous report in 1974 reviewed 231 studies of offender rehabilitation programmes,
including counselling, probation and parole, from 1945 to 1967 concluded that they were
largely ineffective (Martinson, 1974). The findings of this report were seized on by those
who were sceptical about the philosophy of rehabilitation. Offender rehabilitation,
however, continues to be the official policy of many governments, including that of the
UK, as complementary to incarceration (Ministry of Justice, 2017b).

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In the years since the Martinson report, there has been an accumulation of evi-dence
that rehabilitation programmes can reduce offending if they incorporate the following
principles (Vennard & Hedderman, 1998):
1 Individuals are classified on their risk of reoffending and more intensive pro-grammes
given to those at high risk.
2 Factors that lead to criminal behaviour are targeted, such as antisocial attitudes, drug
dependency, a low level of education and skills, and poor interpersonal skills.
3 Programmes have high integrity; that is, staff are properly trained and do not deviate
from the aims and methods of the programme.
4 Teaching methods match the learning styles of offenders.
5 Programmes challenge the attitudes, values and beliefs of offenders that support
criminal behaviour; offenders learn how to challenge their own pro-crime atti-tudes,
values and beliefs.
Psychologists have been prominent in developing, delivering and evaluating a wide range
of offender rehabilitation programmes. Such programmes include treat-ment for alcohol
and substance abuse, support for mental health conditions and cognitive-behavioural
programmes for offending behaviour (e.g. sex offenders and anger management),
developing and enhancing family relationships and reducing negative peer relationships.

Anger management programmes

Many types of offending (e.g. rape, assault, bodily harm, manslaughter and mur-der) are
linked to or directly involve aggression and violence. Although there are many causes of
aggression and violence, one common predisposing factor is an inability of the person to
effectively deal with feelings of anger. Most people expe-rience anger at varying times and
at varying degrees of intensity, but can keep their anger in check and do not resort to
physical violence.
Novaco (1975) argued that cognition plays a central role in the emotional arousal that
precedes aggressive and violent behaviour. Anger arises quickly in situations in which a
person feels threatened or insecure because of existing emotional distress about other
things in that person’s life. Those feelings are then transferred to an available target (who
may or may not be related to the anger-provoking situation). Expressing and directing
anger towards that target then provides a sense of control that reinforces the aggressive
behaviour. Novaco’s approach was not to try to pre-vent anger from arising in the first
place but to teach the person to monitor, control and manage her reactions to anger. This
involves teaching new strategies for regain-ing self-control and techniques for resolving
conflict without resorting to violence. Novaco’s anger management programme has three
phases:
1 Cognitive preparation.
2 Skill acquisition.
3 Application practice.

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In the first phase, the person is taught to reflect on and analyse her own patterns of thought
and behaviour when she becomes angry. First, the offender has to identify episodes in the
past when she became angry and responded with violence and then to examine what the
triggers were. The idea is that people learn to identify those situations that are high risk for
their becoming violent. Second, the offender is asked to recall what her patterns of thought
were during those violent episodes and, with the help of a psychologically trained
counsellor or therapist, identify and then chal-lenge irrational thoughts and assumptions
about others. For instance, the offender may have shown patterns of thought that signify a
hostile attributional bias, that is, a tendency to interpret the ambiguous or benign actions or
speech of others as being indicative of a hostile intent. The offender, for example, might
have responded with anger and violence to someone she thinks might have looked at them
in a ‘funny way’. In this way, the offender can break automatic cycles of violent behaviour
by changing her beliefs and attitudes towards others. Third, the offender reflects on the
consequences of anger (e.g. alienating friends, losing her job or being incarcerated).

In the second phase, the person is taught new skills to allow her to deal with anger-
provoking situations in a more effective way. Cognitive skills can involve learning to say
‘stop’ to herself when automatic and irrational thoughts about oth-ers arise (e.g. ‘that
person is looking at me in a funny way’). Social and communi-cation skills involve
learning how to interpret and respond to others in ways that do not escalate aggression.
Problem-solving skills involve learning how to identify alternative solutions to resolve
conflict situations with others without becoming violent.

In the third and final phase, the offender is given the opportunity to practise the new
skills she has learned in a safe and controlled environment. This could be done by
roleplaying situations with a counsellor or therapist or with other offenders on group anger
management programmes. The roleplay situations would be those that have triggered
violent behaviours in the past. These would be practised in a hier-archy, starting with
situations that were only slightly problematic and gradually working up to more
problematic situations as the offender became more practised and confident in using her
new approach.

Apply your learning

Jim describes how he came to commit a violent assault in a bar:

The pub was pretty full and this idiot walked into me as I came back from the
bar and spilled my drink. I said to him, ‘Watch what you’re doing’ and he
was like ‘Yeah mate, whatever’, like he thought I was just nothing. I walked
away but I couldn’t stop going over what he’d said in my head and I could
see his face, like he was laughing at me. Next thing I knew, I’ve gone over to
him and picked up a glass and stuck it in his face. He wasn’t laughing then.

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Identify from Jim’s account the cognitive processes that may have contributed to his
offence. Suggest how a therapist could attempt to reduce Jim’s risk of violence as a
response.

Between 1999 and 2001 20 courts in Washington, USA, dealing with juvenile offenders
implemented an anger management programme called anger replace-ment therapy (ART).
This resulted in 1,500 offenders participating in these pro-grammes. Eighteen months after
participating in ART reoffending rates were down 24% compared with a control group that
did not receive the therapy (Barnoski, 2004). Although this may not sound like a large
reduction, a cost-benefit analysis estimated a saving of $6.71 to crime victims and the US
government for every $1 spent (Aos et al., 2006). This figure rose to a saving of $11.66
where the programme was delivered more competently.

Sex offender programmes

Core Sex Offender Treatment Programme (SOTP) is a cognitive behavioural
therapy-based programme used with imprisoned men in England and Wales since 1992. It
is based on the principle of identifying and addressing criminogenic needs. These are traits
or characteristics that influence the person’s likelihood of reoffending. It is offered to men
who have been sentenced to a minimum of 12 months in prison, who are willing to engage
in treatment and who are not in denial of their offending. It is used to treat a wide range of
offences including rape, sexual assault, sexual offences with children and the possession
and distribution of banned material. SOTP includes cognitive restructuring to challenge
the thoughts, beliefs and attitudes that support or permit sexual offending, changing
previous dysfunctional behaviours by building new skills and increasing victim empathy.
There is a basic programme with ‘booster’ sessions prior to release and an extended
programme for high-risk offenders.
In an evaluation of SOTP, 647 convicted adult sex offenders who participated in SOTP
from 1992 to 1994 were compared with a similar group of 1,910 sex offenders who were
not treated (Friendship et al., 2003). After two years, those participating in SOTP were less
likely to commit a further sexual or violent crime (4.6%) than those who had not
participated in SOTP (8.1%). While these results are promising, the largest study of SOTP
is less so. Mews et al. (2017) compared 2,562 convicted adult sex offenders from 2000 to
2012 who underwent treatment with 13,219 con-victed sex offenders who had not
undergone treatment. The majority of offend-ers had committed an offence related to
sexual contact with a child aged under 16 years (58%) or rape/serious sexual assault of an
adult (28%). Offenders who had and had not undergone treatment were matched on 87
factors (including age, ethnicity, length of sentence, type of offence, gender of victim and
so on). Offend-ers who had undergone SOTP were more likely to engage in at least one
further

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TABLE 10.1 Meta-analyses of CBT programmes for sex offenders

Author Number of studies reviewed Reduction in reoffending

Gallagher et al. (1999) 25 8%
Hanson et al. (2002) 43 4.5%
Lösel & Schmucker (2005) 69 6%
MacKenzie (2006) 28 10%

sexual offence (10%) than those who had not (8%) and were more likely to reoffend in
relation to child images (4.4%) than those who had not (2.9%). There were no differences
between those who had and had not undergone SOTP treatment on a range of other
outcomes including prostitution, non-sexual violent offences and non-sexual non-violent
offences.
These two studies provide mixed evidence for the effectiveness of SOTP. As these
studies were quasi-experimental and did not randomly assign participants to treat-ment and
control groups, there is a risk of selection bias. It is possible that difference between the
two was confounded by factors that were not included in the matching process such as risk
of reoffending, sexual deviancy or participating in other forms of treatment. For instance,
those at a higher risk of reoffending or with sexual devi-ancy might have entered the
treatment programme and those in the control group might have participated in other forms
of treatment to SOTP. Several meta-analyses of other forms of CBT-based programmes
for sexual offenders do suggest a reduc-tion in offending following treatment (Table 10.1).

The reasoning and rehabilitation programme

Reasoning and rehabilitation (R&R) is a CBT-based rehabilitation programme developed
in Canada that aims to teach the cognitive skills, social skills and val-ues that are required
for prosocial competence (Ross et al., 1988). It is based on the principle that offending
behaviour is underpinned by deficits in cognitive skills resulting from problems in the
environment, poor parental supervision or ineffec-tive education, rather than low
intelligence. As a result, individuals with cognitive deficits have difficulties with self-
control, empathy, taking on the perspectives of others and values. Through teaching
offenders these skills, the R&R programme aims to equip former offenders to be able to
successfully avoid reoffending in the future. R&R is delivered in 35 two-hour sessions for
groups of between six and 12 adults, with between two to four sessions per week. It
includes roleplay, thinking games, learning exercises, dilemma puzzles and problems. The
programme is now used in over 20 countries, including the UK, and represents the most
widely dis-seminated and frequently evaluated offender rehabilitation programme. The
nine elements of R&R are:

1 Self-control. To stop and think about the consequences of an action before mak-ing a
decision.

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2 Metacognition. To understanding that how we think influences how we feel and

behave.
3 Critical reasoning. How to think objectively and rationally without distorting the facts
or blaming others.
4 Social skills. How to interact with others effectively in social situations.
5 Problem-solving skills. Analysing problems to understand and consider the val-ues,
behaviour and feelings of others and how one’s own behaviour can affect others.

6 Creative thinking. How to find prosocial, rather than antisocial, solutions to

interpersonal problems.
7 Social perspective taking. How to consider the thoughts, feelings and views of others.

8 Value enhancement. How to adopt prosocial views.

9 Emotional management. Learning how to control anger.

A meta-analysis of 26 studies based in Canada, the United States, UK and Sweden found
that R&R reduced reoffending by an average of 14% in those who com-pleted the
programme compared with those who did not participate (Tong & Far-rington, 2006). The
programme was equally effective whether delivered in a prison or community setting and
for both low- and high-risk offenders. A cost-benefit analysis estimated that for every $1
spent on the programme, $8 were saved to the victims of crime (Aos et al., 2001).
Although the programme is effective in reducing reoffending behaviour it is not without
critics. One problem is that it focuses solely on the cognitions of the offender and ignores
the social and environmental factors that increase the risk of reoffending such as drug use,
poor living conditions, low income and unemployment (May, 1999).

Crime prevention: general considerations

Psychologists, along with criminologists, the police and other professions in the criminal
justice system, have been instrumental in researching the reasons why people commit
crime, developing theoretical models to explain criminal activity and then using those
theories to create interventions and applications designed to reduce criminal activity and
offending behaviour. The studies described in this chapter suggest that crime reduction is
indeed possible using theoretically informed interventions. Furthermore, many studies
evaluating the outcome of interventions have been accompanied by cost-benefit analyses
that show that the financial ben-efit to victims and authorities outweighs the costs of
implementing those inter-ventions. These achievements are results of a slow accumulation
of evidence over a number of years. The need for an evidence-based approach to policy
decision making around crime, policing and the justice system highlights the need for con-
tinuing high-quality research capable of rigorous evaluation of crime reduction

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programmes. Psychologists are well placed to be able to continue to contribute to these

developments in the future.

Chapter summary
In crime prevention, psychologists distinguish between primary, secondary and ter-tiary
prevention. Primary prevention involves intervening in ways that stop crime before it
happens, by changing the environment. Improved street lighting, CCTV and defensible
space have all be shown to reduce offending in the areas where they are implemented,
although they are more effective against some types of offence and in some areas than
others. Secondary prevention involves targeting individuals who run an increased risk of
becoming involved in crime and diverting them before this happens. School-based
programmes, mentoring and family-based programmes have all been shown to reduce
offending in high-risk groups although their impact is hard to evaluate since the beneficial
effects may not become apparent until many years later. Tertiary prevention aims to
reduce reoffending among those who have been convicted. Given that approximately 25 to
27% of offenders reoffend, in the UK, attempts to reduce reoffending through
rehabilitation are vital. Psychological approaches to rehabilitation focus on changing
thoughts and cognitions that may contribute to reoffending, teaching offenders new skills
to help them deal with sit-uations in ways that will not lead to reoffending, and helping
offenders to identify and break ingrained and destructive cycles of behaviour. Three such
programmes are anger management, the Core Sex Offender Treatment Programme and the
rea-soning and rehabilitation programme. Outcome studies that compare offenders who
have and have not participated in rehabilitation programmes have largely shown positive
results in reducing reoffending.

Further reading
Robinson, G., & Crowe, I. (2009). Offender Rehabilitation: Theory, Research and
Practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. A comprehensive introduction to offender
rehabili-tation, including explorations of the history of the field and the issues that sur-
round implementation and evaluation.
Wortley, R., & Townsley, M. (Eds.) (2016). Environmental Criminology and Crime Anal-
ysis. London: Routledge. An edited text covering environmental approaches to crime
prevention and many related topics, including offender profiling (see Chapter 6). It
includes contributions from many well-known and influential researchers.

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CHAPTER

11
Contemporary topics:
terrorism and cybercrime

The core topics of criminology and criminological psychology have not changed much in
the past few decades: offending, victimisation, policing, courtroom pro-cesses, punishment
and rehabilitation. However, societal change brings with it changes both in criminal
activity and people’s concerns about crime. This chap-ter outlines two areas that have
generated interest in recent years: terrorism and cybercrime.

Apply your learning

Before reading any further, list the characteristics you associate with (1) a terrorist
and (2) a cybercriminal. Give as much detail as you can. After reading the rest of the
chapter, come back to your lists and assess how accurate your idea of these two types
of offender was.

Terrorism
The term ‘terrorist’ broadly denotes individuals and groups who use violent means to
bring about societal change. There are, however, difficulties sur-rounding the term
(Schmid, 2004). Terrorism covers an enormous range of actions, including
religiously, politically and nationalistically inspired violence that may, beneath the
surface, have little in common. It also embodies a judge-ment about the legitimacy of
violence, so what is condemned by some as ter-rorism may be lauded by others as an
act of warfare or a blow for freedom. Nonetheless, terrorism is a major public
concern in Europe and the US. This is reflected in media coverage of terrorist
incidents such as the suicide bombing of the Manchester Arena in May 2017, which
killed 23 people and injured over 500 more. Anxiety currently focuses on Islamic-
inspired terrorism but through-out the 20th and 21st centuries Western states have
been subjected to terrorist acts informed by many causes including nationalism (e.g.
the Provisional Irish Republican Army and the Ulster Defence Regiment in Britain
and Northern

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Ireland) and political extremism from both the left (e.g. the Red Army Faction in
Germany) and right wing (e.g. Timothy McVeigh, the ‘Oklahoma City Bomber’ in the
US).
Worry about terrorism is understandable, given the horrifying nature of such attacks.
However, while it is widely perceived as a major threat, in the West, terror-ism actually
carries a low risk to the individual and does not threaten social order (Bakker, 2015).
Outside Europe and America, terrorism presents a much greater danger. The Global
Terrorism Database (GTD) held by the University of Maryland has compiled records of
terrorist attacks since the early 1970s. By the end of 2017 it contained information about
170,000 incidents. In 2016 13,400 terrorist attacks were logged resulting in 34,000 deaths
(a 10% reduction from 2015). The vast major-ity of attacks, deaths and injuries were in the
Middle East, Africa and South Asia, which together accounted for 97% of the total deaths.
By contrast, attacks in West-ern Europe accounted for 1% of the total and the US for even
less than this (National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism
(START), 2017). In 2016, by far the deadliest terrorist organisation was Islamic State in
Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), responsible for 11,700 deaths in 1,400 attacks with more
attributed to associated groups and individuals. Outside the West, terrorism poses a
significant risk of death and injury and a credible threat to the social order. Besides the
damage inflicted by terrorism itself, insecurity is further heightened by violent antiterrorist
countermeasures by the authorities.

Psychological effects of terrorism

Any shocking and terrifying event that involves significant threat or loss of life is likely to
affect those exposed to it. Terrorist attacks are no exception and some research has
suggested that disasters in which human actions are to blame have an increased
psychological impact (Norris, 2005). In many cases, those directly exposed to terrorist
attacks develop PTSD (see Chapter 2). Two months after the 9/11 attacks on the World
Trade Center in New York, Schlenger et al. (2002) carried out a survey of 2,273 US
adults. As might be expected, the incidence of PTSD symptoms was substantially higher in
New York (11.2%) than in the rest of the US (4%). Those who were directly exposed to
the attack had a higher incidence of PTSD, as did women, younger people and those who
had watched more TV coverage of the attacks in the immediate aftermath. The impact of
terrorist attacks diminishes with time but the effects can be long lasting. Scrimin et al.
(2011) found that 29.3% of a sample of children exposed to a hostage-taking attack in
Beslan, Russia, in 2004 met the criteria for PTSD three years after the event. Consistent
with other research, those directly involved as hostages were most likely to have PTSD.
Longitudinal studies of people affected by the 9/11 attacks found that levels of PTSD
generally declined in the years following the attacks. The exceptions were the emergency
services and recovery workers where, after three years, PTSD symptoms started to rise
signifi-cantly. The reasons for this are not clear but it could be the result of under-
reporting of symptoms by these groups in the immediate aftermath (Lowell et al., 2017).

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Who becomes a terrorist?

It is tempting to believe that only highly disturbed individuals are capable of terror-ist acts.
However, the evidence suggests that terrorists are, as a rule, psychologically normal. Silke
(2008) reviewed evidence in this area, finding no evidence that terror-ism is associated
with personality disorder or mental illness. Terrorist organisations undoubtedly contain
such individuals, but they are the exception and some studies suggest that terrorists are
more psychologically healthy than non-terrorists (Lyons & Harbinson, 1986). Although
psychopathic individuals (see Chapter 4) might be drawn to terrorist activities, Borum
(2008) observes that they make poor terrorists as they typically lack commitment to ideals
and organisations and are not inclined to act in self-sacrificing ways.

Attempts to profile the ‘typical terrorist’ have failed because they are too vague to be
useful. Terrorists are a remarkably heterogeneous group although young males
predominate, consistent with the heightened risk taking and delinquency in this group
(Silke, 2008; see Chapter 2). In other ways, terrorists are unlike typical crim-inals.
Sageman (2004) surveyed members of extremist Islamic organisations and found that the
majority (60%) had some higher education, 75% were from a middle or upper class
background and many were in professional occupations. The major-ity were married,
which again is unlike the typical criminal as marriage is often associated with a move
away from delinquent peers and desistance from crime. They typically had a very strong
affiliation with a Muslim identity but this was not as a result of a highly religious
upbringing or education (83% had gone to secular schools). Rather, they had experienced
an intensification of their faith prior to their involvement in violent activities. Bakker and
De Bont (2016) confirmed many of these findings. Their sample typically had lower SES
and educational attainment but only 2% showed any sign of psychological disorders. Most
had increased their commitment to their faith (e.g. through clothing and religious
observances) shortly prior to any terrorist involvement.

These demographic profiles offer few clues about motives for terrorist involve-ment but
other characteristics may be more significant. A sense of being margin-alised and
discriminated against has commonly been found to be associated with pro-terrorism
attitudes. For example, Catholics in Northern Ireland in the 1970s suf-fered from the
effects of economic deprivation, poor education and a lack of political representation that
led to increased sympathy with Irish republican terrorist groups (O’Leary, 2007). Horgan
(2009) interviewed 60 former terrorists and identified sev-eral common themes in their
thinking. Those open to violent extremism tended to feel angry and alienated, felt that
legitimate political processes did not represent them or their group, identified strongly with
members of their group who had been the victims of injustice and had social networks
containing others (e.g. peers and family members) who were sympathetic to terrorist
causes. Similarly, Silke (2008) observes that Muslims in the UK, compared with other
groups, have higher unem-ployment rates, poorer educational outcomes and are under-
represented in poli-tics, a pattern that is repeated throughout Western Europe. As such,
Muslims could

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justifiably see themselves as unfairly marginalised as a group, which may be a pre-

disposing factor towards involvement with extremism.

Explanations of terrorism
One influential theory of terrorist involvement is the ‘staircase model’ proposed by
Moghaddam (2005). This describes how an individual may become increasingly enmeshed
in a set of psychological processes that culminate in terrorist acts. It is a progressive model
in which many people start out on the lower floors but some climb upwards to higher
levels of involvement. The number doing so gets fewer as they climb higher until only a
few individuals are left who actually commit terrorist acts (see Table 11.1).

Moghaddam sees the potential terrorist as making rational choices (see Chap-ter 4)
guided by his perception of the world. Most significant is the perception that the group he
belongs to has suffered an injustice. This makes the decision to engage with extremism
seem logical to him, although it might not appear so to others. At the higher steps, moral
disengagement strategies (see Chapter 4) are used to justify violent acts and affiliation
with the extremist group promotes a social identity that exaggerates the differences
between the extremist and his ‘enemies’ (see Chapter 5). Most terrorist organisations use a
‘small cell’ structure in which each member only knows a small number of other members,
to reduce the threat of infiltration by coun-terterrorist forces. The small group fosters close
relationships that strengthen the ‘us versus them’ worldview, leading to increased
acceptance of terrorist ideas. Once the individual is fully immersed in the terrorist world,
the final step is the sidestepping of inhibitions against killing. Moghaddam identifies two
mechanisms for this. First, terrorist training encourages recruits to view anyone not
actively opposing the authorities as an enemy (‘anyone not for us is against us’) so there
are no innocent victims. Second, terrorist methods often serve to increase the
psychological distance

TABLE 11.1 Steps in the ‘staircase model’ of terrorist involvement (Moghaddam, 2005)

Step Explanation
Ground floor The individual experiences feelings of injustice and relative deprivation
leading to a sense of grievance
First floor He looks for ways of changing the situation to achieve justice
Second floor Feeling powerless to effect change, he becomes frustrated and
angry. At this point, he is open to influence by leaders who direct his
aggression towards an ‘enemy’
Third floor He adopts pro-terrorism moral values and starts to believe that violence
is justified to achieve justice
Fourth floor He is recruited into a terrorist organisation; the ‘us versus them’
worldview solidifies
Fifth floor The individual is given training to overcome his final inhibitions against
violence

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between aggressor and victim. Reactions of fear and horror and behaviours like pleading
serve to inhibit violence so many terrorist acts are planned to be sudden, with no warning
to or interaction with victims (e.g. bombing).
Lygre et al. (2011) reviewed studies relevant to Moghaddam’s framework to assess its
empirical support. By searching the available literature they identified 38 research studies
covering a variety of processes in the model, finding substantial support. For example, van
Zomeren et al. (2008) found that perceived injustice has a moderately strong relationship
with collective action, which supports the first step in the staircase model. The role of
displaced aggression in step two is well supported by Berkowitz (1959) and others. In step
three, support was found for the use of moral disengagement strategies (Bandura, 1990)
and indoctrination (Grim-land et al., 2006). The processes of conformity and obedience
that allow inhibitions against violence to be sidestepped are very well researched (e.g.
Milgram, 1963). Overall, Lygre et al. conclude that the staircase model is based on
plausible psycho-logical mechanisms that are supported by empirical evidence. However,
they note that there is a relative absence of studies directly related to terrorism and there
are very few investigations that have tested the proposition that the processes in the model
chain together as Moghaddam describes.

Although it oversimplifies the relationship between pro-terrorist attitudes and violent

behaviour (McCauley & Moskalenko, 2017), the staircase model has made a significant
contribution to the psychology of terrorism by helping the field move beyond the
ultimately fruitless search for personality and psychopathological cor-relates of terrorist
activity. It provides an explanation of extremist thinking and behaviour rooted in well-
understood psychological mechanisms. It also has import-ant implications for reducing
terrorism. Moghaddam’s framework stresses that ter-rorist acts are only the final step in a
process that starts much earlier. Prevention of terrorism should focus on people at the
bottom of the staircase by supporting justice and participation in democratic society by
people who feel that their group has been marginalised. Education should be targeted to
undermine rigid, categorical ways of thinking about ‘us and them’. Finally, the authorities
should be prepared to engage in dialogue with extremist organisations. Although this
might seem unpal-atable to some, the success of the Northern Ireland peace process, which
resulted in former extremists on both sides participating in democratic government,
suggests that dialogue has a vital role to play in addressing the roots of terrorist
engagement.

De-radicalisation
While the problem of terrorism ultimately requires political solutions, psychology may
contribute at an individual level by diverting extremists and terrorists away from violent
activities through the process of de-radicalisation. Kruglanski et al. (2007) suggest that an
effective de-radicalisation programme requires three components:
■ A cognitive component addressing the beliefs that support terrorism.
■ An emotional component addressing the anger and frustration that underlie
radicalisation.

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■ A social component addressing the possibility that former terrorists will become re-
radicalised on re-entering their communities.
Kruglanski et al. (2014) have developed programmes informed by the idea that
commitment to violent extremism is based on a quest for personal significance. They
argue that people have a basic human need to matter to other people and that experiences
of loss or humiliation can arouse the goal of achieving significance in the eyes of others. If
they are exposed to an ideology that articulates a grievance, a culprit to blame and a moral
warrant for violence then radicalisation is the likely outcome. Kruglanski’s programme
was implemented with detained members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)
in Sri Lanka. It had three strands:
(1) disconnecting extremists from their leaders, to diminish their sense of group identity as
LTTE members; (2) developing individual identity through activities such as art and yoga;
and (3) providing vocational education to facilitate both eco-nomic success and to provide
a legitimate route to a sense of personal significance. Compared with a matched control
group, those who completed the programme showed significant decreases in support for
violent political actions.
Such interventions provide evidence that de-radicalisation is possible although it is not
clear how long the effects last following release. In the UK, de-radicalisation is a
significant strand of government counterterrorism policy but its success has been mixed. In
line with the staircase model, the ‘Prevent’ strategy was implemented with the goal of
detecting the early signs of radicalisation and diverting people before they break the law.
Prevent is predicated on community involvement since community members are best
placed to detect problems and to contribute to the diversion process. A key component is
‘Channel’, wherein people of concern are referred to the authorities for assessment by
community members or others (e.g. teachers). If assessment indicates that intervention is
warranted, this is carried out by community partners and typically involves counselling,
mentoring and theo-logical support aimed at countering extremist ideology. The whole
process is mon-itored by the police.

It is unclear how many individuals have successfully been diverted from radical-isation
by Prevent and Channel, partly because this is inherently difficult to assess and partly
because planned evaluation studies were abandoned due to government budget cuts
(Griffith-Dickson et al., 2014). Critics have raised several concerns. Pow-ell (2016) argues
that Prevent is counterproductive because it focuses on Islamist religious ideology without
addressing the socio-political concerns that fuel a sense of grievance and injustice.
Consequently, it over-emphasises the role of faith and underestimates the role of economic
and social marginalisation of Muslims and the effects of British foreign policy in the
Middle East. Although Prevent is nominally aimed at addressing all types of extremism,
the focus has been on Islam and the policy is perceived as stigmatising Muslims.
Community members have also voiced suspicion that it is involved in intelligence
gathering by the security services (House of Commons, 2010). Mastroe (2016) suggests
that Prevent has acted to alienate the community support on which it relies. The Channel
programme has also suffered

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from substantial over-reporting of concerns by teachers, who are instructed to treat any
possible sign of radicalisation as a child safety concern. This risks overstretch-ing the
already limited resources available for assessment and intervention.
Government de-radicalisation programmes are in their relative infancy and it is
currently not clear whether they do more good than harm. The success criteria for such
programmes have rarely been made explicit (Horgan, in DeAngelis, 2009). If an individual
desists from terrorist activities but retains their extremist beliefs, does this count as a
success or a failure? Assuming that de-radicalisation programmes remain a fixture of
government policy then systematic research into the effective-ness of such initiatives to
identify what does and does not work is a clear priority.

Cybercrime
There are few aspects of 21st century life that have not been affected in some way by
computers. Around 50% of the people on Earth now have access to the Internet and this
number will inevitably grow. Just as the Internet has created new opportunities for
communication, commerce and social contact, so, too, it has created new oppor-tunities for
criminal activity. Cybercrime is a term used loosely to describe crime in which computers
play a role. It includes:
■ Hacking: gaining unauthorised access to data.
■ Malware: writing or distributing software that disrupts or damages computer systems.

■ Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks: disrupting an Internet service by flooding

it with data requests.
■ Fraud (e.g. credit card fraud or other online ‘scams’).
■ Piracy of music, video and games.
■ Spamming: sending bulk unsolicited messages via Internet or mobile phone.
■ Harassment, bullying and ‘trolling’.
■ Stalking.

The majority of cybercrimes are old crimes committed in new ways, but there are some
offences that would not exist in the absence of the Internet. Therefore, Clough (2015)
distinguishes between cyber-enabled crime (e.g. illegal pornography, stalking) and cyber-
dependent crime (e.g. hacking, DDoS attacks).
Besides causing the same types of problem as offline offending, cybercrime pres-ents a
number of additional challenges. In order for a crime to occur, an offender must come
together with a victim. Because of the scale of Internet use and the fact that a user’s
physical location is largely irrelevant, there are consequently many more opportunities for
crimes to occur. Policing cybercrime is difficult since it may be hard to establish whose
jurisdiction an offence falls within and offenders in many cases are located in a different
country from victims. Its technical nature also

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requires new knowledge and skills for law enforcement agencies used to dealing with
‘real-world’ offences and it creates new risks for law enforcement personnel, such as the
traumatic stress and burnout that may be suffered by those whose work exposes them to
very disturbing material such as child pornography. The Internet also makes it relatively
easy for offenders to maintain anonymity, allowing them to cover their tracks or even hide
the existence of their crimes completely. Cybercrime also presents problems for the courts,
as criminal laws may not be applicable to online offences and juries in cybercrime cases
may have poor understanding of the technical nature of the evidence presented to them.

Measuring cybercrime
Measuring the extent of any type of crime is difficult (see Chapter 2) but this is espe-cially
the case for cybercrime. Clough (2015) identifies several issues. First, there is no widely
agreed definition of cybercrime, so different authorities count differ-ent acts and therefore
arrive at different estimates. Second, cybercrimes that are reported to the police are often
recorded under ‘traditional’ offence categories so the ‘cyber’ element is lost, making it
difficult to know what proportion of recorded crimes involved computers, phones or the
Internet. Third, cybercrime is likely to be under-reported because the victim may fear the
reaction of the police or may not think that the police can do anything about it. In addition,
some victims may not realise they have been victimised or may not categorise what
happened to them as a crime.

Large-scale victimisation surveys have recently started to include cybercrime. In the

US, the National Crime and Victimisation Survey has included a question about
cybervictimisation since 2006 but it does not distinguish between different types of
offence, so it only offers rather limited data. In the UK, the CSEW intro-duced questions
on fraud and damage caused by viruses in 2015. However, while stalking offences are
recorded by the CSEW, cyberstalking is not covered as such. In relation to offender self-
reports, Diamond and Bachmann (2015) conclude that data on cyberoffenders are
‘virtually non-existent’ (p.27). The Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Correctional
Facilities collects data on the use of computers by offenders for a variety of crimes.
Beyond this, the majority of data on the prevalence of offending come from surveys of
college students for minor offences like music piracy.

Involvement in cybercrime
The popular stereotype of the cybercriminal is the ‘lone hacker’, often imagined as a
young male with limited social skills and a high level of technical knowledge. The
pervasiveness of this stereotype masks the fact that a great variety of people are involved
in cybercrime for a range of reasons. One obvious motive is financial gain. However,
McAlaney et al. (2016) suggest that many individuals get involved in cybercrime primarily
because they enjoy it. Cybercrime might also be motivated by political or ideological
concerns and revenge.

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TABLE 11.2 Typology of cybercriminal groups (McGuire, 2012)

Type Explanation
Type I (a) Short-lived ‘swarms’ with no leadership structure who are involved
mainly in ideologically driven offending such as hate crime or politically
motivated activities
(b) Stable and organised groups with a clear leadership structure that are
involved in a wide variety of offences such as piracy, ‘phishing’ scams,
malware and online sexual offending
Type II Groups that switch seamlessly between online and offline offending,
frequently centred on large-scale and systematic card fraud
Type III ‘Traditional’ organised criminal groups that have moved into online
offending, generally in the same areas as their existing activities (e.g.
pornography, gambling and blackmail)

Whatever the goal, cyberoffending is exacerbated by anonymity, since the offender

calculates that the chances of being caught are low (as in rational choice theory; see
Chapter 4). Disinhibition may also play a role, since online acts may not feel ‘real’ to the
offender and, where offending is a group activity, de-individuation may also occur, where
the offenders partially lose their sense of self awareness and, with it, their inhibitions
against harming others.
The majority of cybercrime is carried out by groups rather than individuals and is
mainly profit oriented. McGuire (2012) estimates that 80% of online criminal activity is of
a group character. McGuire distinguishes three types of group (see Table 11.2).

While financial gain predominates as a motive for organised online offend-ing, there is
increasing awareness that some organisations are allied with and/ or sponsored by nation
states. While their organisation and methods parallel the profit-driven groups, their choices
of target (e.g. political figures and parties, mil-itary systems) mark them as distinct. It is
not clear whether state-sponsored cyber attacks should be considered cybercrime as such
or as espionage or warfare.

Explanations of cybercrime
Because cybercrime on a large scale is a relatively recent phenomenon, a number of basic
questions have yet to be resolved. One question is whether those who commit cybercrimes
would otherwise commit offline offences or does cybercrime offer opportunities for
criminal behaviour to people who otherwise would not have offended. A related question
is whether the theoretical approaches devel-oped to explain offline offending are suitable
for explaining online offences or whether new theories need to be devised to explain
cybercrime. So far, it appears that some theories transfer fairly well to the online world
albeit with some modification.

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Personality
Chapter 4 discussed the relationship between personality and offending. In relation to
cybercrime, Rogers et al. (2006) found an association between cyber-offending and an
amoral outlook and low levels of extraversion (which partly coincides with the stereotype
of the cybercriminal) but much stronger links have been found with psychopathy and
related traits. Research has focused on three interrelated characteristics, psychopathy,
narcissism and Machiavellianism, col-lectively known as the ‘dark triad’ of personality
traits (or the ‘dark tetrad’ if sadism is also included). Williams et al. (2001) found that
hacking was associ-ated with high levels of dark triad traits. Seigfried-Spellar et al. (2017)
recruited 235 online volunteers and collected self-reports of personality and a range of
computer-based misbehaviour ranging from the fairly trivial (e.g. guessing pass-words) to
the more serious (e.g. identity fraud) as well as self-reports of offline criminality. Of the
sample, 57% reported some degree of online criminality. There was a negative correlation
between online criminality and the personality traits of agreeableness and openness and a
positive correlation with psychopathic traits. They also found a strong correlation between
online and offline offend-ing, both violent and non-violent. This suggests that there is an
overlap between online and offline offending and that computer crime may be an index of
general criminal behaviour.

This view is supported by research into trolling, defined by Buckels et al. (2014, p.97)
as ‘behaving in a deceptive, destructive or disruptive manner in a social set-ting on the
Internet with no apparent instrumental purpose’. Trolling, while clearly antisocial, is not
specifically an offence in most jurisdictions but has been prose-cuted successfully in the
UK under various laws including the Communications Act (2003). Buckels et al. collected
self-report data from 1,215 respondents about their personality traits and a range of online
behaviour, some of it innocuous (e.g. chatting, debating issues) and some antisocial. They
found a positive asso-ciation between trolling, psychopathic traits and sadism. There was
no relation-ship between these traits and other types of online activity. Lopes and Yu
(2017) asked 135 participants, also recruited online, to view two fake Facebook profiles,
constructed so that one appeared more popular than the other. Respondents were asked
how far they would agree with a range of trolling comments on each pro-file. Personality
measures were also taken. Lopes and Yu found a strong association between dark triad
traits and trolling. They also found that the respondents with higher levels of psychopathy
were more likely to troll the popular profile, possibly because there is more to gain by
inflicting harm on a high-status victim. Buckels et al. found that online antisociality was
related to how much respondents used the Internet. It could be that the online environment,
which creates opportunities both for anonymity and for the construction of new identities,
is attractive to people who wish to be unpleasant to others but feel inhibited from doing so
in the ‘real’ world. Alternatively, it may be that over-immersion in the online world can
have an anti-social influence.

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Social learning theory

Chapter 5 discussed social learning as an explanation of criminal behaviour. There are
indications that social learning is also an important process in some types of online
offending. Involvement in hacking, piracy and online harassment is asso-ciated with
delinquent peers. Morris and Blackburn (2009) recruited 600 college students to supply
self-report data on cyberoffending. They were asked how often they had committed four
types of online crime (guessing passwords, attempted hacking, file manipulation and
malware) in the previous year. They also reported how often their friends engaged in the
same sorts of activity and gave details of their level of computer knowledge and how much
time they spent online. Respon-dents also completed a set of attitude scales to assess
whether they had definitions favourable to computer crime, some questions to assess their
perceived likelihood of being caught for online criminal acts and some questions about
sources from which they had learned about different types of cyberoffence. They found
that social learning variables predicted involvement in cybercrime although not to the
same extent for all types of offence. Guessing passwords was most dependent on holding
pro-cybercrime definitions/attitudes whereas attempted hacking and mali-cious file
manipulation were most strongly influenced by association with peers involved in the
same activities. Malware, by contrast, depended more on exposure to models outside the
peer group. Interestingly, Morris and Blackburn found no gender differences in online
criminality, although this might be due to the unrep-resentative nature of their sample.
Holt et al. (2010) carried out a similar study but with a broader conception of
‘cyberdeviance’, which included software and media piracy, viewing pornography, online
plagiarism, illegally accessing WiFi and hack-ing. They found that involvement in such
activities was quite strongly influenced by social learning but, unlike Morris and
Blackburn, found that men were more likely to be involved than women. Both studies
found that white respondents were more likely to commit offences online than black. It is
difficult to say whether the association between delinquent peers and cyberoffending
represents a direct influ-ence of the peer group on the individuals or whether individuals
attracted to cyber-crime seek out people with similar interests.

Studies like these suggest both that cybercrime is influenced by social learning
processes and, as a corollary, that social learning theory appears to transfer quite well from
the physical to the digital world. However, it should be noted that these studies, and others
like them, have a number of significant limitations. First, they rely entirely on self-reports,
which are subject to many types of bias and it would be desirable to confirm these findings
with more direct observations of behaviour. Sec-ond, the samples are unrepresentative of
the broader population, being young and university educated and with plentiful access to
computer networks and oppor-tunities to acquire computer skills, so it is unclear how far
these findings gener-alise. Third, the offences studied represent the less serious end of the
spectrum of computer crime, omitting both more serious property crimes (e.g. card fraud)
and personal crimes (e.g. harassment). Nonetheless, it is reasonable to conclude that

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social learning has at least a modest effect on cybercrime alongside other influences
including personality.

Routine activity theory

One criminological theory that has been very influential in understanding ‘real-world’
offending is routine activity theory (RAT). RAT is an interesting contrast to most
psychological theories of crime in that it does not speculate about the motives of offenders.
Rather, it takes as given that the population contains a certain propor-tion of people who
wish to commit offences. It focuses instead on the fact that, for a crime to occur, (1) a
motivated offender must (2) encounter a suitable victim or other offending opportunity (3)
in the absence of a capable guardian who would otherwise act as a deterrent (Cohen &
Felson, 1979). RAT has influenced the devel-opment of geographical offender profiling
(see Chapter 6) and situational crime prevention (see Chapter 10). It has also been
suggested as a theoretical framework for understanding cybercrime.

One area to which RAT has been applied is in understanding the growth of cyber-
harassment and cyberstalking. These terms refer broadly to activities like threaten-ing,
insulting and otherwise harming victims through electronic means. It generally denotes
more sustained victimisation than the comparatively transient ‘trolling’. It often has a
sexual element (e.g. unwanted sexual advances, sexual harassment and the sending/posting
of obscene comments and images) (Wick et al., 2017). Cyber-stalking and harassment may
be perpetrated by strangers, as when public figures on social media platforms such as
Twitter are targeted, but is also associated with former and current intimate partners and
acquaintances. These behaviours appear to be growing in prevalence. Finn (2004) found
that 10 to 15% of student samples reported some degree of victimisation, whereas
Melander (2010) found about double this. Wick et al. (2017) suggest, using RAT, that the
growth of these crimes results from steadily increasing take-up of the Internet, which
creates more opportunities for offenders to encounter victims. They surveyed 298 US
university students about their experiences of online harassment victimisation. They also
asked about respondents’ online exposure (e.g. how much they used online shopping,
banking, dating etc.), their level of online disclosure (i.e. the extent to which they shared
personal informa-tion through photographs on social media etc.) and their own
involvement of the vic-timisation of others. Of respondents, 80% reported some degree of
both victimisation and perpetration. Those who had the highest level of online exposure
had the highest risk of victimisation. Findings like these broadly support the idea that
cybervictimi-sation is primarily due to situational factors rather than individual ones and
suggest that RAT may have some utility as an approach to explaining cybercrime.

However, critics have pointed out that the transfer of RAT to the online world may not
be as straightforward as it initially appears. RAT is rooted in the relation-ship between
offending, space and time: offenders and criminal opportunities come together at particular
times and in particular places; understanding how time and place influence offending is
what gives the theory its power. However, the online world renders physical location
largely irrelevant and places far fewer constraints

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on the timing of activities (Yar, 2005), which raises questions about whether RAT is
capable of predicting cyberoffending in the same way as ‘real-world’ offending. Other
aspects of RAT transfer to the cyber realm only with difficulty. For example, offline
offending is influenced by the fact that some physical objects are easier to steal/damage
than others by dint of being smaller/lighter/less durable and so on. Digital targets do not
have the same properties, except perhaps metaphorically. Sim-ilarly, real-world targets
vary in terms of their visibility and accessibility to potential offenders but visibility and
accessibility in the online world need to be understood differently. There is also the
question of ‘capable guardians’. In RAT, this refers both to authorities such as the police
but also to informal surveillance and enforcement of law-abiding norms by members of the
public (this is a similar idea to collective efficacy; see Chapter 5). Again, it is not clear
how the notion of the capable guardian applies in the online world. So while RAT offers
an attractive set of metaphors for discussing cybercrime, there are clearly some ways in
which its core concepts will need to be reformulated. It may yet emerge that theoretical
approaches that view cyberoffending as a distinct category of crime (as opposed to ‘old
wine in new bot-tles’; Grabosky, 2001) may ultimately be more useful.

Future developments
Although research into cybercriminology is at a comparatively early stage it has gen-
erated a great deal of interesting debate and findings. Ngo and Jaishankar (2017) identify a
number of priorities for the emerging field. First, there is a need for work on defining and
classifying cybercrime. There is a proliferation of definitions, which inhibits
communication between scholars. Greater clarity would improve communi-cation and
make it easier to start understanding the scale and scope of cyberoffend-ing. Second, the
measurement of cybercrime is still in its infancy. Although moving in the right direction
(e.g. through the recent inclusion of cyberoffending in the CSEW), there is still far to go in
the acquisition of valid data on the incidence and prevalence of online offending. Third,
the development of knowledge of cybercrime has only just started. Part of the problem is
the apparent lack of interest in cybercrime from ‘mainstream’ criminology and
criminological psychology. Given the opportunities the Internet creates for a single
offender to reach more victims with less risk of detec-tion than in the ‘real world’, this is
unfortunate. Finally, Ngo and Jaishankar point to the need to develop practical
applications for cybercrime prevention. Currently, there is very little systematic
knowledge of what works, what does not and why. However, the existence of so many
gaps in what is undoubtedly an important area seems likely to generate a great deal of
research in the near future, so it is probable that knowledge of online offending will grow
markedly over the next few years.

Chapter summary
Changes in society are reflected in the concerns of psychologists and criminolo-gists. Two
topics of contemporary interest are terrorism and cybercrime. Terrorism

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is the use of violence to bring about political change. High-profile terrorist attacks have
made terrorism a significant concern in the West but the majority of terrorist victims
currently are from the Middle East, Africa and South Asia. Terrorist attacks have lasting
psychological consequences, including PTSD. Those most at risk are those directly
exposed and emergency services and recovery workers are partic-ularly affected in the
long term. Contrary to stereotypes, terrorists are a diverse group and attempts to establish a
‘terrorist profile’ have been unsuccessful. The staircase model of terrorism views the
development of violent extremism as rooted in a sense of injustice, marginalisation and
collective injustice. These thoughts and feelings may be held by many people in a given
community with progressively fewer people advancing towards more direct engagement
with radicalism and very few progressing to actual terrorist acts. There have been some
promising attempts to de-radicalise terrorists but not all have been successful because they
do not ade-quately address the social and political concerns that drive extremist
involvement.
Cybercrime is crime in which computers play a role. It covers a range of activi-ties,
some of which are dependent on computers (e.g. hacking) and some of which are enabled
by computers (e.g. fraud). Cybercrime presents new challenges to law enforcement
because of its technical nature and the opportunities it creates for offenders to target
victims anywhere in the world. The scale of cybercrime is cur-rently unknown. The
stereotype of the ‘lone hacker’ is misleading since the majority of cybercriminals offend in
groups. Theories from ‘traditional’ criminological psy-chology have had some success in
explaining cyberoffending. Personality research has identified traits of psychopathy,
narcissism, Machiavellianism and sadism as significant influences on cybercrime. Social
learning theory has highlighted the role of the peer group in activities like hacking and
software piracy. Routine activity the-ory has been used to predict victimisation in online
stalking and harassment. How-ever, it is currently unclear whether new theories will be
required to adequately understand offending in the online world.

Further reading
Horgan, J. (2012). The Psychology of Terrorism, rev. 2nd ed. London: Routledge.
A comprehensive overview of research in the field by an acknowledged expert.
International Journal of Cybercriminology publishes academic research into cyber-crime
and is open access. It makes fascinating reading. http://www.cybercrime journal.com/.

Kirwan, G., & Power, A. (2013). Psychology of Cybercrime. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press. Although a few years old in a field that changes rapidly, this is the
standard introductory text to the field.
National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism houses the
Global Terrorism Database and publishes regular bulletins and articles on the subject.
http://www.start.umd.edu/.

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CHAPTER

12
Critical perspectives:
crime, gender and race
The view of criminological psychology presented in this book could be regarded as the
mainstream of theory and research in the field. However, there is a long tra-dition of
critical thinking in research into crime, victimisation and criminal law that calls into
question the assumptions, methods of enquiry and conclusions of the dominant view. This
chapter explores some of the themes and ideas developed by critical researchers into
criminology and criminological psychology. The term ‘critical perspectives’ covers a great
range of viewpoints and it would be impos-sible in a single short chapter to do justice to
this diversity. Consequently, what is presented here should be taken only as a very general
introduction to the area. The chapter starts by identifying key features of the majority view
and contrasting this with some of the assumptions critical perspectives tend to share. There
is then an exploration of how critical thinking about gender and race has led to conceptions
of crime, criminality and victimisation that contrast with those of the mainstream.

The mainstream view

The majority of criminological psychology is based on a philosophical view-point called
positivism. Essentially, positivism claims that there is an objective, physical world ‘out
there’ and that it is possible to establish what it is like and how it works using the methods
of science. As applied to the study of crime, positivism assumes that there are people in
the world who do things called ‘crimes’. Crimes have an objective existence that makes
them different from other acts that are not crimes. Positivism further assumes that crimes
are done by a distinct type of person we call a criminal, who is measurably different from
other people who are not criminals. It also holds that the things that happen in the world
have causes and that it is possible, using objective methods, to estab-lish which causes
have which effects. The positivist approach to understanding crime is, broadly, to establish
(1) what makes criminals different from non-crim-inals and (2) how they come to be that
way. To illustrate, recall the biological view of criminality presented in Chapter 3.

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Biopsychologists argue that there are detectable differences between the brains of
criminals and non-criminals in areas such as the frontal cortex and the amyg-dala. The
consequence of these differences is that affected individuals either have abnormal
emotional responses to others or are unable to restrain themselves in act-ing in ways that
violate the moral consensus of society. These brain differences are thought to have a
variety of causes, including genetic influences, physical damage to the brain and stress
resulting from childhood adversity. The methods chosen to investigate the area aim to
establish objective facts about the causes of crime, for example, by comparing people with
and without criminal convictions on mea-sures of brain structure and functioning, such as
data from brain imaging studies. These are selected to avoid subjectivity or interpretation,
as this may result in a loss of objectivity. The biopsychological view of crime conforms to
the positivist model very closely in its emphasis on an objective, knowable reality
underlying criminal acts.

Critical perspectives on crime

Collectively, critical perspectives on crime, psychology and criminology challenge the
mainstream, positivist view. Chapter 2 discussed how the socially constructed nature of
the phenomenon makes crime difficult to define in the clear and objec-tive terms required
by scientific enquiry. While mainstream criminological psy-chology has acknowledged a
difficulty here it has tended to sidestep the problem and focus on crime as legally defined
nonetheless. In contrast, critical perspectives have opened up debate about the implications
of the socially constructed nature of crime. For example, Becker’s (1963) labelling theory
(see Chapter 5) asserts that no behaviour is inherently criminal; rather, acts become
criminal when defined as such by society. Some groups in society have more power than
others to influence which acts are defined as criminal and hence which acts are policed and
punished. A crit-ical perspective on crime might ask, therefore, whether the psychological
study of crime, criminals, policing and justice really only serves the interests of a powerful
few, even though it is presented as an objective description of reality.

Critical perspectives are plural: there is no single theory that can be called ‘crit-ical
criminological psychology’ or ‘critical criminology’. The critical stance encom-passes a
range of viewpoints and perspectives although there are ideas held in common between
them. Broadly, critical perspectives assert that the mainstream, historically, has
investigated crime and related topics in a very narrow way, focus-ing mainly on individual
offenders and on crime as defined by the state (Friedrichs, 2009). Besides accepting legal
definitions of crime in an uncritical way, mainstream criminology and criminological
psychology have tended to focus only on a limited range of harmful acts. No reasonable
person would deny the harm caused by street robbery or interpersonal violence. However,
a critical perspective might ask why corporate fraud, unsafe working conditions, violation
of environmental legislation and the incitement of conflict in other nation states attract
relatively little public

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disapproval, condemnation from the authorities or investigation by academics even though

they also result in economic and ecological harm and loss of life. A possible answer lies in
the way the mass media, under the influence of powerful elites, direct public attention and
concern toward only certain crimes, typically those commit-ted by poor, uneducated and
marginalised people (Box, 1983). Critical researchers, then, open up questions about
power relations and social control and ask how insti-tutions like the police, the courts, the
government, the media and, indeed, academic research may play a role in producing and
perpetuating inequality and injustice.
Although they use a wide variety of methodologies, there is a tendency for those
working within the critical perspectives to question the claim that objective, scien-tific
methodology should have a privileged status. Some believe that the purported objectivity
of scientific methods is, in itself, an ideological position that serves the powerful.
Consequently, many critical researchers favour qualitative, interpretive methodologies that
allow them to engage with people’s lived experience and sub-jective social reality. In
relation to their theorising about crime, critical perspectives tend to emphasise the role of
social processes and forces in producing criminality and victimhood. Along with this there
comes a scepticism about essentialist expla-nations that locate the causes of behaviour
inside the individual. Further, many of those working within critical perspectives reject the
idea that academic research should be separated from activism. Rather than aiming merely
to describe how the world is, they seek to bring about social change through their research
activities. Friedrichs (2009) identifies a number of issues around which critical research
into crime has tended to coalesce including:

■ Understanding crime in relation to economic inequality under a capitalist sys-tem (e.g.

why are poorer people over-represented in the criminal statistics?).
■ Understanding violent and sexual crime in relation to gender as a cultural force that
both drives offending and marginalises its victims (e.g. why is male violence against
women so prevalent?).
■ Understanding crimes perpetrated by the advantaged or privileged in society against
those who are relatively powerless (e.g. why do people commit ‘hate crimes’ against
ethnic and sexual minorities or people with disabilities?).
■ Understanding the crimes of the powerful (e.g. why are the people responsible for
corporate or ecological crime so rarely held accountable?).

Feminism, gender and crime

Over the second half of the 20th century feminism rose to prominence as the leading
critical perspective on crime, criminology and criminological psychology. Defini-tions of
feminism vary but they centre on advocacy for women’s rights and gender equality. In
relation to crime, as in other fields, the feminist project has been not just to understand the
role of gender in crime and victimisation but also to press for practical changes that
address injustice and support gender equality. Like other

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critical perspectives, feminism includes a plurality of viewpoints and its foci have changed
over time in response to societal conditions and critiques that have come from both inside
and outside the feminist movement.
An early feminist critique of mainstream criminology was that women were largely
absent from it (e.g. Heidensohn, 1968; Smart, 1976). There are obvious sex differences in
the rate of recorded crime but until relatively recently they went unremarked on in the
academic literature. Until the 1980s almost all research on offenders used male samples
and so practically nothing was known about wom-en’s offending. This androcentric bias
meant that when women were discussed as offenders, explanations were generally based
on questionable generalisations from male offenders or on stereotypes about the biological
or psychological ‘nature’ of women. Feminist critics suggested that women in the criminal
justice system were treated by the authorities as ‘doubly deviant’, first for committing a
crime and sec-ond for transgressing against the stereotypes of women as passive and
maternal. The experiences of women offenders were largely unresearched.

In relation to the victimisation of women, violence in the family tended to be ignored or

not considered in the light of gender inequality. As researchers started to conduct studies
of girls and women in the criminal justice system, new empha-sis was given to
victimisation, and particularly the way in which societal power relations around gender
conspired to render ‘invisible’ crimes that most frequently affect women. For example,
until 1991 there was no legal concept of rape within marriage in UK law, even though a
1989 survey of 1,007 women found that 14% of respondents reported having been forced
to have sex by their husbands against their will (Painter, 1991). Similarly, until the 1970s
it was rare for police to intervene in cases of domestic violence, which was widely
regarded as a ‘private matter’ by law enforcement, a situation that has improved markedly
in recent years due to feminist activism (Houston, 2014).

In recent years, attention has moved to the intersection between gender, race and class.
This shift is rooted in a critique of some earlier feminist views that presented an
essentialist view that assumed that the experiences and characteristics of women were
universal. Contemporary analyses point to how people are affected by over-lapping
systems of oppression. The experiences of a white, middle class woman in relation to
crime and justice may be very different from those of a black, lower class woman
(Crenshaw, 1989), a fact to which the over-representation of indigenous and minority
ethnicity women among the prison populations of many countries attests (Carrington &
Death, 2014). Although the foci of feminist perspectives on crime have changed over time,
there has been a constant emphasis on the relationship between gender and power and on
how the social construction of gender operates to uphold men’s power over women.

Woman offenders
A consistent feminist criticism of mainstream theories of crime is that they are actually
theories of male criminal behaviour, based almost exclusively on research using male
offenders against a backdrop of stereotypes about women. Apart from

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perpetuating gender stereotypes, this is bad science as the field collectively has failed to
gather data about woman offenders (Naffine, in Carrington & Death, 2014, p.104). As a
consequence there has been a neglect of how gender might influence men’s and women’s
pathways into crime, the types of crime they commit, their selection of victims and their
treatment by the authorities. For example, social learn-ing theory (see Chapter 5) puts
great emphasis on the peer group as a source of pro-crime attitudes, models and
reinforcement for criminal acts. While this may be true for men, women’s pathways into
offending are often different. Women are more likely to be recruited into offending by an
intimate partner with delinquent tenden-cies (Sharp, 2009). According to Sharp, part of the
problem is that mainstream aca-demic research into crime has a close relationship with the
criminal justice system and tends to reflect its concerns. Since the criminal justice system
is most concerned with crimes that immediately threaten public safety, and these crimes
are usually committed by men, women’s offending has comparatively been ignored.

Chesney-Lind and Pasko (2004) argue that the patriarchal nature of Western society
means that any explanation of women’s offending must take as its starting point the ways
in which women are systematically disadvantaged. Their status as second-class citizens
exposes them to early experiences of powerlessness and victimisation, which, in turn,
provide the context for their later development of a delinquent or criminal career. Based on
investigations with young female offenders in the US, Chesney-Lind and Pasko found that
girls’ first encounter with the criminal justice system tends to be for ‘status offences’ (acts
that are only illegal when the person is underage), such as truanting, running away or
engaging in sexual activity. Girls are sanctioned for such actions more heavily than boys
because of the sexual double standard, whereby females are condemned as immoral for
sexual behaviour that, in males, is tolerated or even encouraged. Acts such as running
away and early sexual activity are often linked to abuse within the home or family so
young women’s offending is driven by their response to abuse. The moral condemnation it
attracts, however, leads to label-ling (see Chapter 5), which affects their self-concept and
limits their opportunities to establish a legitimate status and identity. Drug and alcohol use
are common in female offenders and contribute significantly to their imprisonment
(Heidensohn & Silvestri, 2012), which further serves to lock female offenders into
criminal trajectories. Female prisoners frequently have multiple vulnerabilities including
drug and alcohol mis-use, poor physical and mental health, the effects of earlier
victimisation and a lack of education and employability skills. Female prisoners are also
more likely than male to have dependent children; imprisonment frequently results in their
removal, fur-ther increasing their vulnerability. Sharp (2009) argues, therefore, that
because wom-en’s and men’s pathways into offending are different, it is inappropriate to
subject female offenders to a prison system designed to reform men.

Intimate partner violence

Another strand of feminist enquiry concerns how gender inequality affects the vic-
timisation of women. It was noted above that early feminist critics highlighted the
processes by which female victims have tended to be ‘erased’ by legal and policing

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arrangements that conspire to render them invisible. Much research has focused on
heterosexual intimate partner violence (IPV) and violence in domestic settings, where
feminists have generally argued that domestic violence is asymmetric (that is, men are
more likely to be the perpetrators and women the victims). This claim has been disputed
on the basis of data that suggest that women are violent towards their male partners at least
as often as men are towards their female ones (e.g. Stein-metz, 1977). Dobash and Dobash
(2015), however, point to a weakness of the ‘objec-tive’ data that come from such surveys
in that merely counting kicks, punches, slaps and so on strips violence of its meaning: it
matters whether an act was carried out in order to threaten, intimidate, retaliate or in self-
defence. When contextually sen-sitive measures of violence are used, the majority of
perpetrators are men and the majority of victims of IPV are women. Using data from the
US National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS), Breiding et al. (2014)
estimated that 8.8% of women are raped by an intimate partner during their lifetime; the
corre-sponding figure for men being 0.5%. During their lifetime 15.8% of women and
9.5% of men experienced other forms of sexual violence. Severe physical violence was
experienced by 22.3% of women and 14% of men. While these estimates do indicate that
men are subject to violence in intimate relationships, the risk run by women is
proportionally higher. Data from the 2013–2014 CSEW show that 46% of female murder
victims were killed by a current or former intimate partner whereas the same was true of
only 7% of male murder victims (ONS, 2017f).

Mainstream explanations of IPV tend to locate the causes of men’s violence towards
women inside the individual. For example, an evolutionary view might suggest that IPV in
men reflects an evolved behavioural tendency. Unlike women, men cannot be sure that any
offspring from their partnership actually carry their genes as the woman may have mated
with another male. This introduces a risk that a man might invest his resources in rearing
children who do not propagate his genes. In this view, sexual jealousy and the violence
that goes with it serve to reduce the risk that a female partner will mate with someone else
and, consequently, is an adaptive behaviour because it increases the probability of a man
passing his genes on to his offspring (Goetz et al., 2008; see also Chapter 3).

Feminist analyses of IPV tend to reject the essentialism of the evolutionary account and
point instead to its role in upholding the legitimacy of male violence against women.
Feminists also tend to reject individualistic accounts of victimisation such as ‘battered
woman syndrome’ (Walker, 1984), which construe the responses of vic-tims of IPV as in
some way defective or pathological. Rather, feminists have pre-ferred to understand male
violence as embedded in a multiplicity of social systems whose effect is to uphold men’s
dominance and privilege over women in intimate relationships. In this view, violence
serves to intimidate and control women and isolate them from the support networks that
otherwise might help them escape it. Women frequently remain in violent relationships
because of the threat of further violence, economic disadvantage (which itself is related to
gender inequality) and because of the prevailing ‘moral order’ that stresses a woman’s
obligations toward her family as part of her feminine identity.

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Feminism has made a significant impact on how the police and the courts treat violence
in domestic settings (Hoyle, 2007). In the 1970s the authorities typically did not take
domestic violence seriously. The police were reluctant to intervene in IPV cases,
preferring to refer them to social services when they took action at all. Under pressure
from feminist researchers, policing moved towards arresting and charging perpetrators.
Some police forces have removed ‘taking no action’ as an option for officers investigating
IPV cases, leading to substantial increases in arrests for domestic violence. Legislators
were also influenced by feminist research. For example, the Domestic Violence, Crime
and Victims Act (2004) made common assault and breach of a non-molestation order
arrestable offences, enabled the use of restraining orders on IPV perpetrators and extended
legal protection to cohab-iting couples on the same basis as married ones. However
welcome these changes have been, there is now recognition that increased use of criminal
sanctions may not protect victims of IPV adequately. The most vulnerable victims, those
who are poor, of minority ethnicity, insecure immigration status and those with a criminal
record, are still reluctant to report IPV to the authorities since by doing so they risk
separation from their children, being arrested, deported and so on.

Chapter 10 discussed the use of psychological interventions in the rehabilitation of

offenders. Besides offering insight into the needs of female offenders, feminist research
has also addressed the issue of reforming perpetrators of IPV. According to Hoyle (2007),
the majority of programmes aimed at addressing IPV are based on the Duluth Model, a
framework for intervention based on the assumption that domestic violence is about power
and control of women in the context of a patriarchal society. It is an educational approach
that helps offenders recognise the relationship between their abusive actions and their need
for power and control. The intention is to bring about attitude change in offenders so they
become more favourable toward equality-based relationships. Although widely adopted,
Duluth-based programmes have had a lim-ited impact on IPV recidivism (Feder & Wilson,
2005). Hoyle (2007) suggests that the assumption that IPV is all about male power over
women has meant that individual factors in IPV are sidelined when, in reality, a
consideration of the risk factors that apply to individual perpetrators would make
intervention more effective. Dutton and Corvo (2007) go further, questioning the core
assumptions of the Duluth Model. They dispute the feminist claims that male IPV is not
anger driven and that IPV is strongly related to patriarchal beliefs. They also question the
view that power, control and vio-lence are exclusively male issues, arguing that IPV is
more symmetrical than Duluth proponents allow. Ehrensaft (2008) criticises the Duluth
Model for its lack of a devel-opmental perspective on violence and a reluctance to
consider that female partners may contribute to a violent relationship out of a fear of
victim blaming.

Feminism: general considerations

The limited success of attempts to reform IPV offenders notwithstanding, the impact of
feminism on the study of crime and victimisation is unarguable. Femi-nism’s activist
stance has driven enormous advances in raising awareness of, and

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mobilising responses to, domestic violence. The foregrounding of feminist concerns has
inspired research across the whole field of criminology and thereby addressed significant
gaps in our understanding of offending and victimisation.
Perhaps inevitably, there has been backlash against feminism’s influence on the study
of crime and on society more generally. For example, since the 1990s there has been much
discussion of a claimed rise in violence among young women. It was suggested in Chapter
2 that the narrowing of the gender gap in crime statistics actually reflects changes in the
authorities’ willingness to recognise and respond officially to violence by women.
However, there has been no shortage of commenta-tors ready to blame feminism for
promoting female violence as a side effect of gen-der equality. Chesney-Lind and Pasko
(2013) suggest that much of the media hype surrounding ‘girl gangs’ in the US is actually
driven by concern about race. The gangs identified and condemned in the media are
primarily black and Latina girls and women. Such gangs have been a constant feature in
the US for many years but, prior to the 1990s, were largely ignored by the police, who
were more concerned with policing girls’ sexual behaviour.

Feminism has always been characterised by internal debate and so feminist ideas about
crime and victimisation continue to change and develop. For example, there is increasing
uneasiness about theories that position all crimes by women, including violent ones, as
being a response to victimisation on the grounds that such expla-nations undermine
women’s agency and risk construing them as passive victims of circumstances (Carrington
& Death, 2014). Such debates will no doubt continue to enliven a critical perspective that
has gone, since the 1960s, from the marginal con-cern of a handful of fringe researchers to
a mainstay of academic research into crime.

Critical perspectives on ethnicity, race and crime

Like feminism, critical perspectives on ethnicity, race and crime have challenged widely
held assumptions about the nature and causes of offending, victimisation and the workings
of the criminal justice system. In doing so, they have uncovered many ways in which
mainstream criminological psychology and criminology have served to perpetuate racist
and discriminatory ideas and practices.
A central question of critical perspectives on race and crime is why BEM groups are
over-represented in the crime statistics. Chapter 2 identified two explanations. According
to the differential involvement hypothesis, members of BEM groups commit more crime
whereas the differential selection hypothesis suggests that they are more likely to end up in
the crime statistics. If we accept differential selection then it becomes necessary to identify
the ways in which BEMs are treated differ-ently from white people in the criminal justice
system. There are many possibilities. For example:

■ Legislators may make laws that focus on the types of offence that are more likely to be
committed by BEMs or which criminalise behaviour associated with minority groups.

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■ Police may scrutinise minorities more systematically than white people and are
therefore more likely to observe illicit activity, leading to more arrests.
■ The courts may be biased in their decisions about which criminal cases to pursue and
the trial process may discriminate against minority groups either directly by returning
biased verdicts (see Chapter 8) or indirectly by, for example, providing poor-quality
legal representation to minority defendants.
The view that the criminal justice system is systematically biased against ethnic minorities
has been developed in the US under the rubric of Critical Race Theory (see below).

If, by way of contrast, we accept the differential involvement view it is neces-sary to

explain why BEM groups commit more crime. Broadly, there are two types of
explanation. The social causation view is that minority groups are affected by their
environment in ways that the white majority are not. Relevant factors could include
poverty, environmental conditions, the experience of discrimination and so on. Under this
view, crime is a consequence of structural inequalities in society. These factors tend to be
foregrounded in critical perspectives on race, ethnicity and crime. The alternative is the
‘intrinsic criminality’ view, which suggests that there is something inherently criminal
about members of minority ethnic groups. This notion has been present in criminological
psychology since its early days. Those taking a critical perspective on the field link it with
racism.

‘Intrinsic criminality’ and racism in criminological psychology

Chapter 2 described how members of ethnic minorities in the UK and US are over-
represented in the crime statistics as both offenders and victims. The same pat-tern is
discernible in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, where visible minorities including
indigenous groups run a significantly higher risk of arrest and incarcer-ation than white
people (Gabbidon, 2010). The relationship between ethnicity and crime has been the
subject of discussion since criminology was founded in the 19th century (see Chapter 1)
and from its inception it has embodied racist understand-ings of people and society. For
example, Lombroso suggested that the ‘coloured races’ of Europe were under-evolved and
innately prone to savagery (Holmes, 2015). Such overt racism is relatively uncommon in
the academic investigation of crime nowadays. The idea of a direct, biological link
between a person’s race and his risk of criminality was based on the understanding that
each ‘race’ represented a distinct subgroup of the human species with many shared
features. Investigation of the human genome has shown that, beyond the genes that affect
skin coloration and physical stature, there are practically no genetic group differences
between people classified as belonging to different ‘races’ (Cavalli-Sforza et al., 1994) and
people classified as belonging to the same ‘race’ can be genetically very unalike (Bamshad
& Olson, 2003). The majority of researchers, consequently, regard ‘race’ as a social
construct rather than a biological one.

However, critical researchers have suggested that the theme of race as a biological
influence on criminality has not disappeared from criminological psychology but

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rather has assumed different, subtler forms. Miller (1996) describes how individual-istic,
essentialist notions about the relationship between race, genetics, intelligence and
criminality reappeared in the late 20th century in books such as Crime and Human Nature
(Herrnstein & Wilson, 1985) and The Bell Curve (Herrnstein & Murray, 1996). Miller
argues that such works, which are presented as academic research, are highly problematic
in that they lend legitimacy to racist attitudes by attaching to them the credibility of
science. The linking of crime to the ‘hard science’ of biology effectively closes down
discussion of the social determinants of crime in minority groups. Not only does this
confirm members of the public in racist attitudes they may hold but it also makes the
public receptive to law and order policies that discriminate against minority groups (for
example, mass incarceration; see Chapter 9). In Miller’s anal-ysis, the search for biological
correlates of criminality should be treated with great suspicion as it inevitably ends up
being used to support racist and discriminatory ideas, regardless of the intentions of the
original researchers.
A more recent example is furnished by research into genetic influences on sero-tonin
metabolism and their relationship with violence (see Chapter 3). Gibbons (2004) identified
a variant of the MAOA gene linked with aggression, violence and risk taking, especially
where the carrier had experienced abusive treatment as a child. Lea and Chambers (2007)
observed that the MAOA variant occurred more frequently in some ethnic groups
including Chinese, African and Polynesian sam-ples. Gibbons used the term ‘warrior gene’
to denote the variant and this term was repeated both in academic research and the popular
media. Gillett and Tamatea (2012) highlight a number of unfortunate consequences of this.
The notion of a ‘warrior gene’ that is responsible for aggressive behaviour promotes an
essential-ist view of crime that is linked to ‘race’ via biology. First, this serves to
legitimise punitive and reactionary law and order policies such as ‘three strikes’ laws and
‘boot camps’ that are used in a discriminatory way against members of marginal-ised
groups such as the Maori in New Zealand. Second, it distracts attention from the social
conditions that contribute to high rates of offending among indigenous groups in post-
colonial societies, such as poverty and poor education. Third, it pro-motes a stereotype of
Maori people that reduces them to a single idea – that they are aggressive people – while
simultaneously denigrating the meaning of ‘warrior’ to Maori culture by linking it with
impulsivity, recklessness and selfishness rather than discipline and the use of aggression in
collective and goal-directed ways. Importantly, Gillett and Tamatea do not allege that
Gibbons and others hold con-sciously racist or discriminatory attitudes or that they
deliberately set out to uphold injustice through their research. Rather, they were oblivious
to the consequences of their actions in the context of a society that systematically
disadvantages members of minority groups.

Critical Race Theory

Critical Race Theory (CRT) is centred on the study of race, racism and power. It emerged
in the US as a critical perspective on crime (among other things) in the

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1970s. CRT draws on a variety of intellectual influences including Marxism, femi-nism

and the US civil rights movement of the 1960s. Like feminism, CRT is transfor-mative in
that it explicitly aims to change society by eliminating racism from social institutions,
including education and the criminal justice system (Ugwudike, 2015). Because it
originated in the US, much of its critique is focused on US laws and insti-tutions but its
key ideas are gaining traction in the UK and elsewhere. According to Ross (2010), the
grounding assumptions of CRT are (1) that the law is principally a pretext for the
maintenance of white power over non-whites and (2) that this pur-pose is hidden by the
purported rationality and objectivity of legal reasoning. CRT shares with (many aspects of)
feminism the idea that ‘reality’ is socially constructed and bound up with the operation of
power within society. Just as feminism argues that gender is central to understanding
social processes, CRT argues that the func-tioning of a society like the US cannot be
understood independently of the concept of race. It rejects the idea that racism is the result
of the actions of a few individu-als who hold racist attitudes. Rather, racism is perpetuated
by all sorts of every-day actions by ordinary people who may actually be avowedly anti-
racist in their views. Racism is produced by actions so pervasive that their significance is
easily overlooked. Nonetheless, these everyday processes subordinate ethnic minorities in
ways that confer an advantage on the privileged white majority. As we might expect, CRT
rejects the notion of race as a biological phenomenon that underlies psychological and
behavioural differences between people and groups. Instead, it holds that the inequalities
that exist between different ‘racial’ groups result from social processes.

CRT’s critique of racism is much broader than just crime and the justice sys-tem but
many topics of interest to criminological psychologists and criminologists fall within its
purview. For example, it argues that crime is defined in ways that reflect the concerns of
the powerful. There are many acts that harm others but they are only criminalised by the
law where it serves the interests of the dominant white majority. Consequently, financial
malpractice that deprives people of their employment or savings goes unchallenged
whereas activities like congregating in groups, graffiti or even the wearing of certain types
of clothing are aggressively policed because they are things that black and Hispanic people
do (Ross, 2010). When black communities were affected by the US crack cocaine
epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s, this was treated as a law and order issue and resulted in
the ‘war on drugs’ and mass incarceration (see Chapter 9) whereas the recent steep rise in
the abuse of prescription opioids among white Americans is presented as a public health
issue requiring medical intervention (Yankah, 2016). The differential crimi-nalisation of
white and non-white drug use is reflected in media coverage of drug use. A content
analysis of representations of drug use in US newspapers between 2001 and 2011 showed
that opioid addiction was depicted in markedly different ways depending on whether the
people concerned were white or black/Hispanic (Netherland & Hansen, 2016). Stories
about opioid use by white people tended to present addiction as surprising and unusual, as
a tragic waste of life and in terms that construed addicts as blameless or sympathetic
victims of circumstances. In

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contrast, drug use by non-whites was presented as typical; voluntary criminality was the
central theme.
In CRT, media representations are important because they contribute to differ-ential
racialisation. This is a key concept in CRT that draws attention to the fact that different
racial groups have different histories and this is reflected in their experiences of everyday
reality. Consequently, the lived experience of a black, His-panic and Jewish person will be
qualitatively different. It also means that the same racial group may be treated differently
at different times. This is often linked to economic factors. For example, an undocumented
immigrant might be welcomed as a ‘migrant worker’ when she acts as a source of cheap
labour but an ‘illegal alien’ if economic circumstances alter (Ross, 2010). Popular media
representations (e.g. newspapers, cartoons, films etc.) of different racial groups then alter
corre-spondingly. For example, black Americans have variously been depicted as simple
and carefree at some times and as brutish and threatening at others, according to prevailing
social and economic conditions (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012). These representations do not
only reflect societal views; they also inform and sustain them. This has an impact on how
minorities are treated both individually and by institutions such as the police and courts.
For example, between the 1980s and the 2000s, media representations of Muslims in the
British media changed from an older stereotype of ‘Asian passivity’ to one of aggressive
militancy and unwilling-ness to integrate with British (i.e. white) society (Saeed, 2007).
Such representations feed a suspicion of the ‘otherness’ of British Muslims and have made
them a target for racist attacks by the public and surveillance and intervention by the
authorities. The increased differential racialisation of Muslims may ironically fuel the
percep-tion of group injustice that may incline marginalised people to become radicalised
(see Chapter 11).

CRT’s critique of mainstream criminology and criminological psychology goes beyond

adding race/ethnicity as another variable to analyse, inviting us instead to consider
fundamental questions about what crime is and how it is produced as a social process. It
also asks us to consider whether academic disciplines like criminological psychology and
criminology might play a role in upholding and reproducing the racism that CRT claims is
at the heart of society. Its critics have accused CRT of ‘playing the race card’, that is,
blaming racism whenever a black person loses in the criminal justice system. Others have
derided it as a paranoid mode of thinking that attributes racist intent to legal processes
where there is none (Ross, 2010). The social constructionist stance of many critical race
theorists, together with their preference for qualitative research methods that explore the
subjective experiences of BME people have drawn criticism from those who regard it as
unsci-entific and resting on an evidence base that is difficult to verify. It is also the case
that, originating in the US, CRT tends to reflect the history and experiences of black
Americans so some of its insights may not readily transfer elsewhere. However, CRT is
becoming established in other countries in a variety of academic fields and it is to be
expected that locally relevant variants will develop over the next few years.

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Chapter summary
Critical perspectives on crime are those that question the positivist assumption that there is
an objective reality to crime and criminality that can be established using the methods of
science. Critical perspectives typically emphasise the socially constructed nature of crime
and the role of social and economic power in defin-ing social reality. They raise
fundamental questions about what criminological psychologists should study and how.
Many critical researchers have approached criminology from a feminist perspective,
arguing that women have been ignored and stereotyped by the field. Feminist researchers
have extended the study of crime to include women as offenders, arguing that the nature
and motivation for their offending differs from that of men. Others have addressed the
invisibility of women victims of IPV, where the activism of feminist researchers has
brought about signifi-cant changes to police practices and the law. The over-representation
of BME people in crime statistics has been a question for criminological research since its
inception. Critical perspectives on crime, race and ethnicity have highlighted how
biological and psychological research into the causes of crime has been used to uphold
racist ideas. Critical Race Theory (CRT) has emerged since the 1970s as a
multidisciplinary project to challenge societal and institutional racism. Among other
things, it has analysed the centrality of race to how crime is defined and policed and the
interplay between law and order policies, social attitudes and representations of race in the
mass media. Both feminism and CRT have been critiqued on political grounds, for their
social constructionist standpoint and their preference for qualitative research
methodologies that acknowledge subjective experience. Feminism has weathered this
backlash to establish itself as an essential viewpoint in the academic study of crime. It is,
as yet, too early to conclude whether CRT will manage to do the same.

Further reading
Ugwudike, P. (2015). An Introduction to Critical Criminology. Bristol: Policy Press. A
comprehensive introduction to critical perspectives on crime and criminology exploring
a very broad selection of viewpoints including both historical and con-temporary
thinking.

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References to tables are shown in bold.

9/11 attacks (New York, US) 142 Anderson, J. K. 99–100

Andrews, D. A. 50
absolute discharges 122 anger: anger management programmes 46,
activism, and academic research 157 135–7, 140; anger replacement therapy
adversarial system of justice 99–100, (ART) 137
103, 112 antisocial behaviour see deviance
Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Antonaccio, O. 64, 65 Aos, S. 133
scale 34
advocacy see persuasion (by trial lawyers) Apel, R. 49
age: and criminality 8–9; and offender applied psychology 2, 3
surveys 14; and serotonin and offending apply your learning: anger management
26–7; see also victimisation programmes 136–7; biological perspective
age-crime curve 8–9, 14 22; judicial responses 114; jury decisions
Ageton, S. S. 58 106; measuring crime 11; psychological
aggression: and brain chemistry 26–7; and perspectives 37; socially oriented
brain structure and functioning 23–6; and perspectives 51; terrorism and cybercrime
childhood attachment 39; and 141; witness testimony 85
cognitive/emotional deficits 46; and appropriate adult 77
empathy 46, 47; and evolutionary theory Arbuthnot, J. 44–5
30–1; and low heart rate (LHR) 23; and artist’s impressions 96
MAOA gene 29–30, 34, 164; and mass Ashworth, A. 123
media exposure 54–7, attachment 3, 39, 50
65–6; and psychopathy 41; and social attractiveness-leniency effect, and jury
learning theory 52–3; see also anger decisions 108, 113
Ahmed-Leitao, F. 34 Automated Fingerprint Identification
Ainsworth, P. B. 78, 82 System (AFIS) 69
Akers, R. L. 49, 52, 53, 54, 66 Auty, K. M. 42
Alison, L. 82
Allen, M. W. 30 Bachmann, M. 148
Alleyne, E. 47 Baglivio, M. T. 34
Alper, A. 88 Bakker, E. 143
American Psychological Association, Task Bandura, A. 52–3, 54
Force on Violent Media 57 Bartlett, F. C. 86
amygdala 24, 25, 26, 29, 34, 42–3 Barton, A. H. 107
Anderson, C. A. 57 Beaver, K. M. 29, 42

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Becker, H. S. 57–8, 66, 156 Brantingham, P. J. and P. L. 79–80

behaviourist learning theory: and Breiding, M. J. 160
imprisonment 118, 119–20; see also Bremner, J. D. 34
CBT-based programmes Brigham, J. C. 94
The Bell Curve (Herrnstein and Brinded, P. M. J. 120
Murray) 164 British Crime Survey (BCS) 12, 13, 15
Bellair, P. E. 63 Britton, Paul 79, 82
Belson, W. A. 56 Brown, M. J. 4
Bennett, A. 69 Browne, K. 56
Bennett, T. 48–9 Bruce, V. 94
Berkowitz, L. 145 Buckels, E. E. 150
Bernburg, J. G. 58–9
Besemer, S. 59 Caldwell, R. G. 123
‘Big Brothers, Big Sisters of America’ Cale, E. M. 40
(BBBS) scheme 133 Camp, S. D. 119
‘bind over’ (conditional discharge) 122 Canter, D. V. 80, 83, 84
biological perspective: basic idea 3, 22, Carré, J. M. 42
156; brain chemistry 3, 26–7; brain Caspi, A. 30
structure and functioning 3, 23–6; Castellow, W. A. 108
criticisms of biopsychology 34–5; CBT-based programmes: reasoning and
genetics 3, 27–31; interaction between rehabilitation (R&R) programmes
nervous system and environmental 138–9, 140; sex offender programmes
influences 23, 25–6; lead pollution and 137–8, 138, 140; see also behaviourist
crime 31–2; low heart rate (LHR) 23; learning theory
negative childhood experiences 33–4; CCTV (closed-circuit television), and
summary and further reading 35–6; crime prevention 130, 131, 140
traumatic brain injury (TBI) 32–3 Chambers, G. 164
biopsychology see biological perspective Channel programme (UK) 146–7
Birmingham Six (UK) 74, 75, 105 Chen, C.-A. 47
Blackburn, A. G. 151 Blackburn, R. 7–8, Chesney-Lind, M. 159, 162
45, 53 child witnesses 91–3, 98
Boduszek, D. 61 childhood attachment 3, 39, 50
Bonta, J. 50 childhood maltreatment 3, 33–4; see also
Bornstein, B. H. 102, 105, 106, 112, 113 maternal deprivation hypothesis
Borum, R. 143 Christiansen, K. O. 28 Christianson, S.
Bottomley, A. K. 118 Å. 90, 91 Cid, J. 119
Bouffard, J. A. 123
Bowlby, J. 39 Clarke, C. 72, 76
Box, S. 9 Clarke, R. V. 48, 49
brain chemistry (neurochemistry) 3, 26–7 Clifford, B. R. 88, 91
brain imaging (neuroimaging): brain clinical profiling 79, 81, 82, 83 closed-
imaging studies 42–3; computerised axial circuit television (CCTV), and
tomography (CAT) 24; functional MRI crime prevention 130, 131, 140
(fMRI) 24–5; magnetic resonance Clough, J. 147, 148
imaging (MRI) 24, 32; positron emission cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) see
tomography (PET) 24–5 CBT-based programmes
brain structure and functioning: and cognitive deficits 46, 50
psychopathy 42–3, 50; role of in cognitive forensics 67
offending 3, 23–6 cognitive interviewing 71–3, 83, 90, 93, 97

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 Index

cognitive perspective (Kohlberg’s theory) summary and further reading 112–3;

43–5, 44 validity of mock jury research 111–2
cognitive processes: and anger crime: defining 6–8; fear of 16, 20;
management 135–6; and witness measuring 11–5; summary and further
testimony 86–7 reading 20–1; trends and crime
cognitive psychology 3, 3, 86; see also drop 15–6; variables associated with
moral development; rational choice criminality 8–11; victimisation 16–20;
theory; social cognition see also criminological psychology;
Cohen, A. K. 63 critical perspectives; victimisation
Cohen, L. E. 79 Crime and Human Nature (Herrnstein and
Cohen, R. L. 92 Wilson) 164
collective efficacy (CE) 65, 153 crime ‘hot spots’ 49, 130, 131
community-based crime prevention crime prevention: developmental
programmes 133 crime prevention 3, 132–4; offender
community-based sentences 118, 122, 123, rehabilitation 134–9, 140; psychologists’
124–6, 127–8 role in evidence-based research 139–40;
compensation orders 123 Public Health Model 129–30; situational
complainants, and police interviews 70 crime prevention 130–2, 152; summary
computer crime see cybercrime and further reading 140; see also
computerised axial tomography (CAT) 24 developmental crime prevention; offender
conditional discharge (‘bind over’) 122 rehabilitation; situational crime prevention
confessions, false confessions 74–5,
83, 105 crime prevention through environmental
Cooley, C. M. 70 design (CPTED) strategies 130–2
Copson, G. 83 crime scene analysis 78–9, 82
‘copycat’ crime 54–5 crime statistics, official statistics 11–2, 15
Core Sex Offender Treatment Programme Crime Survey for England and Wales
(SOTP) 137–8, 140 (CSEW): cybercrime 148, 153; fear of
Cornish, D. B. 48, 49 crime statistics 20; intimate violence and
Corvo, K. 161 sexual crime 17; murders by intimate
Coupe, T. 19 partners 160; property crime 16; trends
courtroom evidence 105–6, 112–3 in crime 15; victimisation survey 11, 12–
courtroom processes: adversarial vs 3; violent crime 16–7; website 21
inquisitorial trials 99–100; composition
and size of juries 100–1; courtroom criminal justice policies, and crime
evidence and juries 105–6; death penalty rates 15
decisions and juries 110–1; defendants’ criminal psychology, use of phrase 4
attractiveness and juries 108; defendants’ criminal responsibility, and biological
gender and juries psychology 35
108–9; defendants’ race/ethnicity and criminological psychology: defining and
juries 109–10; jury decision making stages origins of discipline 1–2; mainstream
102; jury deliberation and group dynamics view 8, 153, 155–6; psychological
3, 101–2; persuasion by lawyers and principles applied to crime 3, 3;
storytelling 104–5; persuasion by lawyers specificity of forensic psychology 4;
and systematic vs heuristic processing structure of book 5; see also critical
104; persuasion by lawyers and Yale perspectives
Model 103, 106; pretrial publicity 106–7; Crippen, Dr 96
‘scientific/ systematic jury selection’ 101; critical perspectives: defining crime 8, 156–
7; ethnicity, race and crime 162–6;

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feminism, gender and crime 157–62; Dettbarn, E. 120

further reading 66, 167; mainstream developmental crime prevention: aim 3,
view 155–6; summary 167; see also 132–3; community-based programmes
feminism; race/ethnicity 133; family programmes 134, 140;
Critical Race Theory 163, 164–6, 167 school-based programmes 133, 140
Crowe, I. 140 developmental psychology 3
Crowe, R. R. 28 Devery, C. 82
Cruse, D. 108–9 deviance: and defining crime 7–8;
CSEW see Crime Survey for England and and psychopathy 43
Wales (CSEW) Devine, D. J. 112
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (‘CSI effect’) Dhanani, S. 42
69–70, 106 Diamond, B. 148
Cullen, F. T. 117 differential association theory 51–2
Cutler, B. L. 95, 105–6 DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid): DNA
Cutshall, J. L. 90 evidence 67–8, 69, 74, 90, 106; DNA
cybercrime: definitions and challenges 147– profiling 78; and genes 27
8; measuring cybercrime 148; Dobash, R. E. and R. P. 160
personality and cybercrime 150; domestic violence 9, 17, 158, 160, 161–2;
psychological profiling of cybercriminals see also intimate partner violence;
148–9; routine activity theory 152–3; sexual offences
social learning theory 151–2; state- Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims
sponsored cyberattacks 149; suggestions Act (2004, UK) 161
for future research 153; summary and Donohue, J. J., III. 117
further reading 154; theoretical issues dopamine 27, 34
149; typology of cybercriminal groups Dragnet system 80
(McGuire) 149, 149 Drago, F. 116
Dror, I. E. 68–9
cyberharassment 147, 151, 152, 154 Duffy, John 80
cyberstalking 147, 148, 152, 154 Duffy, M. 109
Duluth Model 161
Daftary-Kapur, T. 107 Dunaway, R. G. 10
Dalgaard, O. S. 28 Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health
‘dark triad/tetrad’ (of personality and Development Study 9
traits) 150 Dunning, D. 94
Davies, G. M. 92, 97 Dutton, D. G. 161
De Bont, R. 143
death penalty decisions 110–1, 113 E-Fit 97
Decker, S. H. 49 Ehrensaft, M. K. 161
defendant characteristics, and jury Elliott, D. S. 58
decisions 108–10, 113 Ellis, L. 30–1
defensible space, and crime prevention embezzlement, and age of criminals 8
130, 132, 140 Emler, N. 61
Deffenbacher, K. A. 91 emotional arousal, and witness testimony 90–
deficits, cognitive and emotional 46, 50 1, 98
DeLisi, M. 43 emotional deficits 46, 50 empathy:
deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) see DNA and aggression 46, 47;
(deoxyribonucleic acid) and psychopathy 41, 50 Enhanced
de-radicalisation programmes 145–7, 154 Cognitive Interview 72 environmental
deterrence, and imprisonment 115, 117, criminology 140; see also
118, 127 situational crime prevention

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 Index

Erickson, Chuck 105 Frick, P. J. 29

ethical interviewing, and PEACE model Friedrichs, D. O. 157
72, 75–7, 83 functional MRI (fMRI) 24–5; see also
ethnicity see race/ethnicity evidence: magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
courtroom evidence 105–6,
112–3; DNA evidence 67–8, 69, 74, Gaes, G. G. 119
90, 106; forensic evidence 67–70, 83, Gale, J. A. 19
106, 113 Gallagher, C. A. 138
EvoFIT 97 gang membership: girl gangs 162; and
evolutionary theory: and genetics 30–1; labelling theory 59; and moral
and intimate partner violence 160 disengagement 47, 62; and social
expert witnesses 67, 106; see also identity theory 61–2, 66; and social
forensic evidence influences 3
Eysenck, H. J. 37, 39–41, 43, 50 Gannon, T. A. 48
Geiselman, R. E. 71–2
Facet Theory 81 gender: and criminality 9–10; and
facial composites 96–7, 98 evolutionary view of aggression
false confessions 74–5, 83, 105 30–1; and jury decisions 108–9, 113;
family crime prevention programmes and labelling theory 58; and offender
134, 140 surveys 14; and prison population 115;
Farrell, G. 17–8 and PTSD 19; and serotonin and
Farrington, D. P. 23, 40, 46, 53, 131 offending 26; see also feminism;
Fawcett, J. M. 87–8 victimisation
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI, US), Gendreau, P. 118
profiling typology 78, 79, 81–2, 83 genetic algorithms, and facial composites 96,
Feingold, A. 108, 109–10 97, 98
Feldman, M. P. 48, 123 genetics: and aggression 29–30; and
Felitti, V. J. 34 evolutionary theory 30–1; MAOA gene
Felson, M. 79 29–30, 34, 164; and offending 3,
feminism: approaches to crime 157–8, 27–9; and psychopathy 42, 50; and race
161–2, 167; critical views of genetic/ 163–4; ‘warrior gene’ 30, 164
evolutionary theory 31; intimate partner geographical profiling 79–80, 81,
violence 159–61, 167; woman 82–3, 152
offenders 158–9, 167 Gibbons, A. 30, 164
Ferguson, C. J. 57 Gillett, G. 164
Fergusson, D. M. 30 girl gangs 162
films, violent films and aggression 56 Glenn, A. L. 35
fines 119, 122, 123–4, 127–8 fingerprint Global Terrorism Database (GTD) 142, 154
analysis 68–9 Finn, J. 152 Goldman, L. 61–2
Gómez, J. M. 30 Gottschalk,
Fisher, R. P. 71, 72 M. 30–1 Greene, E. 102, 105,
Fonagy, P. 39 106, 113 Gregory, A. 80
forensic evidence 67–70, 83, 106, 113 Griffiths, S. Y. 42
forensic psychology 4 Forrest, W. 63
Groeneweg, J. 91
Found, B. 69 Gudjonsson, G. H. 70, 73, 74, 75, 84
Fox, B. H. 34, 54 Guildford Four (UK) 74
Fox, C. 122
fraud, and age of criminals 8 hacking 147, 150, 151, 154; see also
Freud, Sigmund 37–8 cybercrime

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 Index

Hall, L. J. 68–9 mass incarceration (US) 15, 115, 121,

Hall, M. 18 164, 165; reform (of offenders) 115,
Hanson, R. K. 138 118–20, 122, 127; retribution and prison
harassment see cyberharassment; sexual regimes 115, 116, 122, 127; suicide rates
harassment 120–1
Hare, R. D. 41 Inbau, F., interrogation techniques 73,
Harlow, C. W. 62 73, 77
Harnick, M. A. 92 incapacitation, and imprisonment 115,
Harris, G. T. 43 116–7, 122, 127
Harris, P. 65 inquisitorial system of justice 99–100, 112
Hastie, R. 101, 102, 102, 104, 107 International Journal of
hate crimes 18 Cybercriminology 154
Hay, C. 63 interrogation techniques 70, 73–4, 73, 77,
Hayden, R. M. 99–100 83; see also ethical interviewing; false
Hazelwood, R. R. 79 confessions
Health and Care Professions Council interviewing procedures see police
(HCPC, UK) 4 interviews
heart rate see low heart rate (LHR) intimate partner violence 17, 159–61, 167;
Helfgott, J. B. 55 see also domestic violence; sexual
Heritage, R. 83 offences
Herrnstein, R. J.: The Bell Curve ‘intrinsic criminality’ view, and racism
(Herrnstein and Murray) 164; Crime 163–4
and Human Nature (Herrnstein and investigations see police investigations
Wilson) 164 investigative psychology 80–1, 82, 83, 84
heuristic processing (of arguments), vs Irish terrorism 141–2, 143, 145
systematic processing 104 Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)
Hjalmarsson, R. 28 142, 143–4
Hollin, C. R. 45, 88, 91 Islamic-inspired terrorism 141, 143, 146
Holt, T. J. 151
homicides, instrumental vs expressive 81 Jackowski, A. P. 34
Horgan, J. 143, 154 Jacobson, L. 59, 60
Horley. J. 43 Jahoda, G. 60
Howitt, D. 47, 56 Jaishankar, K. 153
Hoyle, C. 161 Jalava, J. V. 42
Hübinette, B. 90 Jolliffe, D. 46
Hutchings, B. 28 Jones, T. 13
Hyland, P. 61 judicial responses: imprisonment 114–22;
non-custodial sentencing 122–7;
Identikit 96–7, 98 summary and further reading 127–8; see
identity parades (lineups) 93–6, 98 also imprisonment; non-custodial
imprisonment: characteristics of UK sentences
prison population 114–5, 127; closed vs jury trials see courtroom processes
open prisons 114; deterrence 115, 117,
118, 127; does prison work 115; Kanz, K. M. 56
economic argument against Kapardis, A. 103
imprisonment 122, 127; effects of Kassin, S. M. 73, 74–5, 77, 105
imprisonment on communities 122; Kelly, V. J. 19–20
effects of imprisonment on prisoners Kilburn, J. 57
and families 120–1, 122, 127, 128; Killias, M. 125
incapacitation 115, 116–7, 122, 127; Kirwan, G. 154

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 Index

Kitson, A. 96 Kohlberg, McElhaney, K. B. 39

L. 43–5, 44 Köhnken, G. McGloin, R. 57
87, 88 Kovera, M. B. 107 McGrath, A. J. 58
Kramer, T. H. 87 McGuire, M. 149, 149
Kringlen, E. 28 Machiavellianism 150, 154
Kruglanski, A. W. 145–6 MacKenzie, D. L. 138
Kunst, M. J. J. 19 McVeigh, Timothy (‘Oklahoma City
Bomber’) 142
magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) 24, 32;
labelling theory 43, 51, 57–9, 60, 66, 119, functional MRI (fMRI) 24–5
156; see also self-fulfilling prophecies mainstream view of criminological
Lalumière, M. L. 42 psychology 8, 153, 155–6; see also
Langan, P. A. 118 criminological psychology; critical
Latimer, J. 127 perspectives
Launay, C. 71 Manasse, M. E. 48
lawyers see persuasion (by trial lawyers) Manchester Arena suicide bombing
Lea, R. 164 (UK, 2017) 141
lead pollution: and crime drop 15; and manganese 31
neighbourhood influences 64; and MAOA gene 29–30, 34, 164
violent crime 31–2 Mariano, M. 46 Marsh, K.
legal psychology, use of phrase 4 122
legalistic approach (to defining crime) 7 Marti, M. W. 100
Leigh, B. C. 108–9 Martinson, R. 134–5
Leippe, M. R. 91 Maruna, S. 121, 128
Levin, D. J. 118 Mason, D. A. 29
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) mass incarceration (US) 15, 115, 121,
(Sri Lanka) 146 164, 165
Lieberman, J. D. 106 mass media: crime reporting and critical
Liebling, A. 120–1, 128 perspectives 157; crime reporting and
Lieven, J. 65 Critical Race Theory 165–6; exposure to
limbic system 26, 27, 34 and aggression 54–7, 65–6; exposure to
Lin, J. H. 57 and social learning theory 51; reporting of
Lindquist, M. J. 28 rape cases 107
lineups (identity parades) 93–6, 98 Mastroe, C. 146
Livingston, M. 64–5 Lofstrom, M. maternal deprivation hypothesis 39
116–7 Maxwell, G. 126
Loftus, E. F. 87, 89, 98 Mazzella, R. 108, 109–10
Lombroso, Cesare 2, 163 Mednick, S. A. 28
Lopes, B. 150 Lösel, F. Meichenbaum, D. H. 59–60
138 Meissner, C. A. 76, 77
Loughran, T. A. 49 Melander, L. A. 152 Memon,
low heart rate (LHR), and offending 23 A. 72
Ly, M. 42 memory 2, 86–7, 98; see also
Lygre, R. B. 145 witness testimony
Lynch, M. J. 31 Mennis, J. 65
methylmercury 31
Maass, A. 87, 88 Mews, A. 137
McAlaney, J. 148 Mielke, H. W. 31
McAuliff, B. D. 104 Milarsky, J. R. 56
McDermott, R. 29 Miller, J. G. 164

211
 Index

Miller, L. S. 68 non-custodial sentences: absolute

Milne, R. 72, 76 discharges 122; community-based
Mitchell, T. L. 110 sentences 118, 122, 123, 124–6, 127–8;
Moffitt, T. E. 8–9 compensation orders 123; fines 119,
Moghaddam, F. M., ‘staircase model’ theory 122, 123–4, 127–8; probation 122, 123,
of terrorist involvement 144–5, 144, 154 124–5; restorative justice 124, 126–7,
128
Moore, Devin 54–5 Northern Ireland Crime Survey 12
moral development 43–5, 44, 50 Novaco, R. W. 135–6
moral disengagement strategies 46–8, 62,
144, 145 Odinot, G. 90
Morris, A. 126 offender profiling: basic assumption 77–8;
Morris, R. G. 151 clinical profiling 79, 81, 82, 83; crime
Moston, S. 74 scene analysis 78–9, 82; FBI typology
Moving to Opportunity programme (United 78, 79, 81–2, 83; geographical profiling
States Department of Housing and Urban 79–80, 81, 82–3, 152; investigative
Development) 64 psychology 80–1, 82, 83, 84; see also
MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) 24, 32; environmental criminology
functional MRI (fMRI) 24–5 offender rehabilitation: anger
Muftić, L. R. 123 management programmes 46,
Munsterberg, Hugo 2 135–7, 140; perpetrators of intimate
Murray, C., The Bell Curve (Herrnstein and partner violence 161; reasoning and
Murray) 164 rehabilitation (R&R) programmes
138–9, 140; rehabilitation programmes
Nagin, D. S. 49, 117 principles 135; reoffending rates (UK)
narcissism 150, 154 134; sex offender programmes 137–8,
narratives, and juries 104–5, 112 138, 140; see also reform (of offenders)
National Consortium for the Study offender surveys 11, 13–5 Offending,
of Terrorism and Responses to Crime and Justice Survey
Terrorism 154 (OCJS) 14
National Crime Victimization Survey Office for National Statistics (ONS,
(NCVS, US) 12, 148 England and Wales) 11
nationalism-related terrorism 141–2 Ogilvie, C. A. 39
neighbourhood influences 51, 64–5, 66; see Ogloff, J. 109, 110
also poverty ‘Oklahoma City Bomber’ (Timothy
Nelson, J. R. 45 McVeigh) 142
Neumann, C. S. 41 Oldfield, M. 125
Neumann, K. 105 Oldman, H. 97
neurochemistry (brain chemistry) 3, 26–7; Olson, E. A. 94
see also brain structure and functioning ‘on remand’ prisoners 114, 120, 121
neuroimaging see brain imaging online piracy 147, 148, 151, 154; see also
neuropsychological testing 35 cybercrime
neurotransmitters see dopamine; Osborn, S. G. 27
serotonin Oxburgh, G. 77
Nevin, R. 31, 32
Newman, O. 132 PACE (Police and Criminal Evidence Act,
Ngo, F. 153 1984, UK) 74, 77
Nickell, Rachel 82 Padawer-Singer, A. 107
‘no-criming’ 12 Palmer, E. J. 45

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 Index

Palmer, J. C. 89 positivism 155–6, 167

Pasko, L. 159, 162 positron emission tomography (PET) 24–5
PEACE model of interviewing (UK) 72, post-event information, and witness
75–7, 83 testimony 88–90, 98
Pearse, J. 74 post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) 18,
Pease, K. 17–8, 118 19–20, 121, 142, 154
peers: learning from peer groups 3; peer poverty: and criminality 10, 51, 62–4, 66;
reports 14; see also social learning theory see also neighbourhood influences
Pennell, A. 56 Powell, L. 146
Pennington, N. 104, 107 Power, A. 154
Penrod, S. D. 95, 105–6 Pratt, D. 121
Perretta, S. 94 Pratt, T. C. 53
personality: and cybercrime 150, 154; prefrontal cortex 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 32, 34
personality theory (Eysenck) 37, 39–41, pretrial publicity 106–7, 113
43, 50 Prevent programme (UK) 146
persuasion (by trial lawyers) 103; prevention see crime prevention
storytelling in court 104–5, 112; prisons see imprisonment probation
systematic vs heuristic processing 104; 122, 123, 124–5; see also
Yale Model 103, 106, 112 community-based sentences
Petrosino, A. J. 58 profiling see offender profiling
Pfeifer, J. E. 94, 109, PROMAT™ 95
110 photofit 96–7, 98 property crime: and age of criminals 8;
Piaget, Jean 44 Pickel, rates and risks of victimisation 16
K. L. 88 Piliavin, I. 49 psychoanalytical theories 37–8
psychodynamic theories 37–9, 50
piracy see online piracy psychological perspectives: diversity
Player, E. 68–9 of and crossover with biological
police: official crime statistics 11–2, perspective 37; moral development and
15; see also police interviews; Kohlberg’s cognitive perspective 43–5,
police investigations 44; personality theory (Eysenck) 37, 39–
Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE, 41, 43; psychodynamic theories 37–8;
1984, UK) 74, 77 psychodynamic theories and attachment
police interviews: categories of interviewees 39; psychopathy 37, 41–3; rational choice
70; cognitive interviewing 71–3, 83, 90, theory 3, 48–9; social cognition 45–6;
93, 97; ethical interviewing and PEACE social cognition and cognitive/emotional
model 72, 75–7, 83; false confessions 74– deficits 46; social cognition and moral
5, 83, 105; interrogation of suspects 73–4, disengagement
73, 77, 83; standard interview procedure 46–8; summary and further reading 50
70–1, 83, 93 psychology: pure vs applied 2–3; see also
cognitive psychology; criminological
police investigations: forensic evidence 67– psychology; developmental psychology;
70; interviewing procedures 70–7; investigative psychology; psychological
offender profiling 77–83, 84; summary perspectives; social psychology
and further reading 83–4; see also
offender profiling; police interviews psychopathy 37, 41–3, 50, 150, 154
political extremism-related terrorism 142 PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) 18,
pollution see lead pollution 19–20, 121, 142, 154
Porporino, F. J. 120 Public Health Model 129–30
Portnoy, J. 23 Py, J. 71

213
 Index

race/ethnicity: and criminality 10–1; critical Russano, M. B. 76

perspectives on ethnicity, race and crime Russell, B. 108, 109
162–3, 167; Critical Race Theory 163,
164–6, 167; and death penalty decisions sadism 150, 154
111; ‘intrinsic criminality’ view and Sageman, M. 143
racism 163–4; and jury decisions 109– Saks, M. J. 100
10, 113; and PTSD 19; scientific racism Salfati, Gabrielle 81
30 Sampson, R. J. 65
Ragatz, L. L. 108, 109 Sauer, J. D. 57
Raine, A. 25–6, 33, 35, 36 Scheck, B. 74
rape: by intimate partner 160; within Schlenger, W. E. 142
marriage 158; profiling of rapists 79, 80– Schmucker, M. 138
1; rape survivors and PTSD 19; rates and Schofield, P. W. 33
risks of victimisation 17; under-recording school-based crime prevention
rate 12; TV news’ reporting of rape cases programmes 133, 140
107; see also sex offender programmes; scientific racism 30, 163–164
sexual offences Scott, J. 91
Raphael, S. 116–7 Scottish Crime and Justice Survey 12
rational choice theory 3, 48–9, 50, 118, Scrimin, S. 142
120, 130, 149 security measures, and crime drop 15
reasoning and rehabilitation (R&R) Seigfried-Spellar, K. C. 150 self-fulfilling
programmes 138–9, 140 prophecies 43, 51, 59–60;
Rebellon, C. J. 48 see also labelling theory self-report
recidivism (reoffending) rates 118–9, victimisation surveys 11 Seltzer, R.
134, 140 101
Red Army Faction (Germany) 142 reform sentences see judicial responses; non-
(of offenders): and imprisonment custodial sentences; suspended
115, 118–20, 122, 127; see also offender sentences
rehabilitation serotonin 26–7, 29, 30, 34, 164
rehabilitation see offender rehabilitation sex offender programmes 137–8, 138, 140
Reicher, S. D. 61 sexual harassment 108, 152; see also
Reid, R. L. 45 cyberharassment; cyberstalking sexual
Reilly, Peter 75 offences: and crime scene analysis
reoffending (recidivism) rates 118–9, 78, 79; and PTSD 19; rates and risks of
134, 140 victimisation 17; under-recording rate
Resick, P. A. 19 12; and victimisation surveys 13; see
restorative justice 124, 126–7, 128 also domestic violence; intimate partner
retribution, and imprisonment 115, 116, violence; rape; sex offender
122, 127 programmes
Rettig, S. 48 Shapland, J. 18 Sharp, S.
Reyes, J. W. 32 F. 159 Sherman, L. W.
Robinson, G. 140 117, 127 Siegel, A. 24
Rogers, M. 150 Sigurdsson, J. F. 74
Rosenthal, R. 59, 60 Silke, A. 143
Roshier, R. 125
Ross, H. L. 117 situational crime prevention: aim 130;
Ross, L. E. 165, 166 closed-circuit television (CCTV) 130,
routine activity theory 79, 152–3, 154 131, 140; defensible space 130, 132, 140;

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improved street lighting 130, 131, 140; 77, 83; PEACE model of interviewing
and routine activity theory (RAT) 152 72, 75–7, 83
Smallest Space Analysis 81 suspended sentences, and recidivism
Smith, P. 118 119, 123
Snook, B. 77, 81–2 Sykes, G. 116
social cognition 45–6, 50; cognitive systematic processing (of arguments), vs
and emotional deficits 46; moral heuristic processing 104
disengagement 46–8 Szycik, G. R. 57
social identity theory 51, 60–2, 66 social
learning theory 3, 49, 51–4, 65–6, Tamatea, A. J. 164
159; and cybercrime 151–2, 154; Tancredi, L. 25
and imprisonment 117, 118 television: exposure to and aggression 56;
social psychology 3 TV news’ reporting of rape cases 107; see
socially oriented perspectives: labelling also mass media
theory 43, 51, 57–9, 60; mass media terrorism: definition and risk levels 141–2;
exposure 51, 54–7; neighbourhood de-radicalisation programmes 145–7;
influences 51, 64–5; poverty 10, 51, psychological effects of terrorism 142;
62–4; self-fulfilling prophecies psychological profiling of terrorists 143–4;
43, 51, 59–60; social identity theory 51, ‘staircase model’ of terrorist involvement
60–2; social learning theory 49, 51–4, 65– (Moghaddam) 144–5, 144; summary and
6; summary and further reading 65–6 further reading 153–4

socio-economic status: and criminality 10; Thibaut, J. 99, 100

and PTSD 19; see also victimisation Thornton, D. 45
Softley, P. 74 Tittle, C. R. 62–3
SOTP (Core Sex Offender Treatment Tonry, M. 16
Programme) 137–8, 140 Townsley, M. 140
Soukara, S. 76–7 traumatic brain injury (TBI) 32–3
Sparks, G. G. and C. W. 55 trial procedures 99–100; see also
Spelman, W. 116 Stagg, courtroom processes
Colin 82 trolling 147, 150, 152; see also cybercrime
‘staircase model’ of terrorist involvement Turvey, B. E. 70
(Moghaddam) 144–5, 144, 154
stalking see cyberstalking Ugwudike, P. 167
standard police interview 70–1, 83, 93 United States Department of Housing
Steblay, N. M. 94, 107 Stephenson, G. and Urban Development, Moving to
100 Stetler, D. A. 29–30 Opportunity programme 64

Stevenage, S. V. 69 Vachon, D. D. 46
storytelling (in courtroom) 104–5, 112 street Van Vugt, E. 45
lighting, and crime prevention 130, Verkampt, F. 93
131, 140 Vermetten, E. 34
Stretesky, P. B. 31 victimisation: effects of 18–20, 142; effects
Sturidsson, K. 83 of on child development 3; intimate
suicide, in and after prison 120–1 violence and sexual crime 17; and
Surette, R. 55 poverty 64; property crime 16; repeat
suspects: false confessions 74–5, 83, 105; victimisation 17–8; violent crime 16–7;
interrogation techniques 70, 73–4, 73, see also feminism

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victimisation surveys 11, 12–3, 15; self- ‘willing victim’ 11

report victimisation surveys 11; see also Wilson, J. Q., Crime and Human Nature
Crime Survey for England and Wales (Herrnstein and Wilson) 164
(CSEW) Winter, K. 46
‘victimless’ crime 11, 15 witness testimony: child witnesses 91–3;
victims: and police interviews 70; cognitive processes and memory 2,
‘willing victim’ 11 3, 86–7; contamination by post-event
Victoroff, J. 24 information 88–90; different uses of
videofit 96, 98 witness testimony 85; emotional arousal
videogames, and aggression 54–5, 57 90–1; facial composites 96–7; identity
Viding, E. 42 parades (lineups) 93–6; and jurors 105–
Villettaz, P. 118, 125–6 6; police interviews
violent crime: and lead pollution 31–2; and 70–3; summary and further reading 98;
PTSD 19; rates and risks of victimisation weapon focus effect 87–8; see also
16–7; under-recording rate 12; serial expert witnesses
violence and crime scene analysis woman offenders 158–9, 167; girl
78; victimisation surveys 13; see also gangs 162
aggression; homicides; intimate partner women see domestic violence; feminism;
violence; rape; sexual offences; terrorism gender; intimate partner violence; rape;
VIPER™ 95 sexual offences
voir dire 101, 107, 110 Wood, P. B. 121
Volkow, N. D. 25 Wortley, R. 140
Wozniak, K. H. 63
Wagenaar, A. C. 123 Wright, R. T. 49
Wagenaar, W. A. 91 Wrightsman, L. S. 74–5
Walker, L. 99, 100 Wundt, Wilhelm 2
Walker, N. 119, 123
Walters, G. D. 43 Yale Model (of persuasive
‘warrior gene’ 30, 164 communication) 103, 106, 112
weapon focus effect, and witness young people: and criminality 8–9; and
testimony 87–8, 98 offender surveys 14; see also childhood
Wells, G. L. 94, 95 attachment; childhood maltreatment;
Welsh, B. C. 131 developmental crime prevention; gang
Wermink, H. 125 membership
West, D. J. 27 Youngs, D. 84
Westcott, H. L. 92 Youth Lifestyles survey 14
Whitman, Charles J. 24 Yu, H. 150
Wick, S. E. 152 Yuille, J. C. 90
Wiener, R. L. 111–2
Wiest, J. B. 109 Zahran, S. 31 Zamble, E.
Williams, K. M. 150 120 zero-tolerance policing
Williams, T. M. 56 15 Zomeren, van M. 145
Williams, W. H. 33

216