Forensic Psychology

by Graham M Davies

  Offender Group Reconviction Scale

  a prediction instrument for use in estimating the likely recidivism rate of a sample of offenders over a two-year period, derived from statistical analysis of a database of criminal records, by the Research, Development and Statistics Director of the UK Ministry of Justice.

  offender profiling

  in its narrowest sense, refers to making predictions about offenders’ characteristics from the way they behaved during a crime.

  offending behaviour programme

  a specially designed and structured sequence of methods and exercises, usually guided by a manual, for direct work with offenders with the objective of the reducing criminal recidivism/offending behaviour.

  Official IRA

  in 1969 the Irish Republican Army split into two factions – the Provisional IRA and the Official IRA. The Official IRA sought to achieve unification of Ireland through largely political means, as opposed to the Provisional IRA, which advocated violent confrontation.

  olfactory aversive conditioning

  a behaviour therapy technique, based on conditioning principles, employed with individuals who have committed sexual offences as a result of socially unacceptable patterns of sexual arousal and associated behaviour.

  PEACE model of interviewing

  mnemonic denoting the phases of an interview: Plan and prepare; Engage and explain; Account, clarify and challenge; Closure; and Evaluation.

  penology

  the study of legal punishment and how it is administered.

  photo-spread

  a lineup of photographs normally consisting of one photograph of the suspect presented amongst foils. The procedure is widely used in the United States for formal identification by eyewitnesses.

  polarisation

  after deliberating with one another, people are likely to move toward a more extreme point in the direction to which they were previously inclined.

  Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984

  known as PACE; Act introduced in England and Wales in 1984 governing the conduct of police investigations and interactions with suspects.

  polygraph

  sometimes called a lie detector. A machine that typically measures galvanic skin response, cardiovascular activity and breathing patterns in suspects under questioning.

  post-event information

  information that a witness may acquire after the relevant incident has occurred. Post-event information may affect a witness’s testimony. Misleading post-event information may result in memory distortion.

  preparation

  at court, this refers to activities concerned with assessing the needs of the witness, providing support, liaising and communicating on the witness’s behalf, and preparing the witness for the trial (e.g. providing information, court visit).

  prima facie

  on the first view; at first glance/sight; on the face of it.

  probative

  serving as proof.

  programme

  a structured sequence of learning opportunities, with objectives and contents planned in advance, designed to support and encourage change; usually accompanied by a manual or other materials.

  programme integrity

  the practice of delivering an intervention in line with the programme manual’s instructions.

  prolonged exposure therapy

  a cognitive-behavioural form of therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder.

  proof beyond reasonable doubt

  the standard in a criminal case requiring that the jury be satisfied to a moral certainty that every element of a crime has been proven by the prosecution. Does not require that the state establish absolute certainty by eliminating all doubt, but that the evidence be so conclusive that all reasonable doubts are removed from the mind of the ordinary person.

  prosecution

  the institution and conduct of legal proceedings against a person; the proceedings brought to put a case against a person; the lawyers acting for the institution to put a case against a person.

  prospective longitudinal surveys

  studies that follow a group of individuals (a cohort) over time, with repeated measures.

  Provisional IRA

  an Irish paramilitary organisation that sought, through armed insurrection and terrorism, to produce a united Ireland. It has been responsible for the deaths of some 1,800 people since 1969.

  psychological stress evaluator (PSE)

  alternative name for voice stress analysis.

  rapport

  preliminary interview phase during which the interviewer attempts to develop a friendly relationship with the interviewee.

  reality monitoring (RM)

  the process by which people distinguish memories of real events from memories of imagined events. The distinction is based on such considerations as contextual information concerning time and place, and semantic information.

  recall

  remembering an item seen or heard previously. Free recall refers to a witness’s own self-generated account. Recall can be cued, for example, by asking questions.

  receiver operating characteristic (ROC)

  a function created by plotting the probability of correctly identifying a guilty suspect against the probability of incorrectly identifying an innocent suspect as a function of response criterion.

  recognition

  a judgement that an item presented during a test has been previously seen or heard, as in a lineup procedure.

  recollection

  often used to distinguish between the subjective experience of conscious recollection of a memory and the recall of an attribute that is not accompanied by a conscious recollection of seeing or hearing it.

  Red Army Faction

  (also known as RAF, Rote Armee Fraktion, Baader-Meinhof Group). A left-wing terrorist group based in Germany that existed from 1970 to the late 1990s. Its origins were in the student protests of the 1960s.

  re-examination

  after cross-examination, the party that called the witness may re-examine him/her, but must limit questions to clarify matters covered during cross-examination.

  rehabilitation

  an objective of sentencing and allied criminal justice initiatives, concerned with constructive efforts to provide education, training or other services to enable offenders to become reintegrated in society, and reduce recidivism.

  relapse prevention

  a self-control programme designed to help people from relapsing into episodes of problem behaviour, often used in the treatment of sex offenders. Originally conceptualised for the treatment of addictive behaviours such as alcoholism.

  relative judgement

  a judgement about which item from a set of alternatives is most likely to have been seen before. Often used to refer to a judgement by an eyewitness about which lineup member is most like the person seen (see absolute judgement).

  report all

  cognitive interview prompt to tell everything about the incident under investigation.

  representativeness

  the degree to which a sample of jurors represents the characteristics of the population as a whole.

  resilience

  no agreed definition, but usually taken to mean the absence of psychopathology and successful functioning over a number of domains.

  response criterion

  the required criterion of the subjective “recognition” required to make an identification from a lineup. It is used as a measure of bias in signal detection theory. A higher criterion indicates more conservative responding, so the witness is less likely to make a mistaken identification but also less likely to identify a guilty suspect.

  responsivity

  a design feature that contributes to effectiveness of intervention programmes with offenders. Can be general (an overall approach) or specific (taking into account factors that reflect diversity amongst participants).

  responsivity principle

  developed by Andrews and colleagu
es alongside the principles of risk and need, this principle proposes that the method of delivery of an intervention should match the learning styles of those to whom it is delivered.

  restoration

  (also restorative justice) a relatively recent departure, entailing services through which offenders make reparations to their victims for the harm they have done, sometimes through a carefully managed negotiation and reconciliation process.

  retribution

  one of the objectives of sentencing, and an influential theory of the sentencing process, based on the proposal that the harm done by offenders requires society to rectify the imbalance created by punishing them appropriately.

  retrieval

  the process of accessing a memory. Retrieval might involve recall, recognition or facilitation on an indirect test of memory.

  retrieval interference

  refers to the fact that more recently encoded or stronger information blocks access to the memory trace of an initially experienced event.

  right-thinking person’s test

  a person, knowing all the facts, would feel that the passing of any sentence other than a custodial one had not done justice.

  risk assessment

  a set of procedures and methods for estimating the likelihood of future offending by an individual or the level of harm that might be caused by it, and for identifying the factors associated with it.

  risk factor

  an individual or environmental variable that has been shown through empirical research to be associated with greater likelihood of involvement in criminal activity (or other type of problem). Static risk factors are historically set by past events (e.g. age at first conviction); dynamic risk factors are more immediate influences on offending behaviour, are likely to vary over short or medium-term periods, and are potentially susceptible to change through intervention efforts.

  risk management

  system of arrangements or interventions put in place to contain or reduce the likelihood of recurrence of harmful behaviour, alongside procedures for monitoring this over time.

  risk principle

  developed by Andrews and colleagues alongside the principles of need and responsivity. States that the level of intervention received by an offender should match the level of risk that offender poses. Higher risk individuals should receive a higher level of intervention than lower risk individuals.

  risk-need-responsivity (RNR) model

  a risk management rehabilitation model that seeks to reduce offenders’ predisposition to reoffend by strengthening, reducing or controlling personality and/or situational variables as appropriate.

  ROC

  see receiver operating characteristic.

  route to verdict

  a series of legal questions to assist the jury in reaching a decision.

  rules of evidence

  standards governing whether evidence in a civil or criminal case is admissible.

  safeguarding

  the process of protecting individuals from abuse or neglect, preventing impairment of their health and development, and promoting their welfare and life chances.

  Salafi

  a form of Islam that is defined by its rejection of the “taqlid” (imitation) of the four canonical Islamic madhahib, the traditional schools of Islamic jurisprudence, and suggests it is necessary to return to the original sources in order to make any judgment.

  schemata

  general conceptual frameworks, or clusters of knowledge, regarding objects, people and situations.

  scientific content analysis (SCAN)

  a technique originally developed by Sapir, based on the assumption that a statement based on a memory of an actual experience differs in content from a statement based on invention.

  screens

  one of the special measures permitted by the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999. The use of a screen may allow a vulnerable witness to give their evidence and be examined in court without having sight of the accused.

  script

  a type of schema involving behaviour or action. A representation of the typical format of repeated everyday events, such as buying goods in a shop, eating a meal in restaurant etc.

  self-immolation

  voluntarily setting oneself on fire as a form of protest and suicide.

  self-management

  a form of cognitive behavioural intervention designed to increase an individual’s capacity for exercising internalised control over aspects of their thoughts, feelings or behaviour that are causing difficulty or distress.

  self-manipulations

  hand/finger and leg/foot movements popularly believed to be associated with deception.

  sensitivity

  a term used in signal detection theory to refer to the ability of a memory system to distinguish between a previously encountered item (e.g. the culprit) from a novel item (e.g. an innocent suspect).

  sentence

  the penalty imposed on an individual found guilty of an offence in a court of law; sentencing is the process through which this is decided.

  sequential presentation

  a method in which a lineup is presented one person at a time. The witness decides whether each person is the perpetrator before they see the next person.

  serial murder

  refers to a series of murders that may have been committed by the same individual(s).

  serial offenders

  offenders who have committed more than one offence against different victims. This term can be applied to specific crime types (e.g. serial rape, serial murder or serial burglary).

  severity

  in penology, the magnitude of a punishment or the estimated amount of pain or discomfort a convicted offender would be likely to endure.

  shoemark evidence

  physical forensic evidence left at a crime scene, consisting of an impression of the shoe/footwear worn by the offender.

  show-up

  see confrontation.

  signal detection theory (SDT)

  a theory often applied to analyse data from human studies of perception and memory. The original application was the detection of a signal in background noise. In memory research it is used to measure the sensitivity of a memory system independently of the response criterion or bias.

  simultaneous

  the traditional method of presenting a lineup in which the witness can see and compare all of the members of the lineup at the same time.

  situational factors

  factors within an individual’s environment that influence his/her behaviour.

  social control theory

  a theory proposing that people are inhibited from offending according to the strength of their bonding to society.

  social impact theory

  the likelihood that a person will respond to social influence increases with strength, immediacy, and number.

  social learning theory

  suggests that people learn from one another, via observation, imitation and reinforcement. The theory has been described as a bridge between behaviourist and cognitive learning theories because it encompasses attention, memory, and motivation.

  social loafing

  the phenomenon where people make less effort to achieve a goal when they work in a group than when they work alone.

  social schema and scripts

  cognitive frameworks that guide an individual’s behaviour by providing organisational structures for new experiences or social cues.

  sociocultural factors

  factors within both society and cultures that guide the thoughts and behaviour of people.

  source attribution

  the attribution of a memory to a specific source or episode. A source attribution error refers to a situation when a memory is mistakenly attributed to the incorrect source or episode.

  source-monitoring error

  incorrect attribution of the source of a memory (e.g. confusing internal thoughts with physical reality).

&nbs
p; special measures

  measures, specified in the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999, that may be ordered by the judge for eligible witnesses by means of a special measures direction. They include screens, live links, video-recorded evidence-in-chief, intermediaries and aids to communication.

  stalking

  a range of unwanted and repeated actions directed towards a specific individual that induce fear or concern for safety, or that induce feelings of harassment.

  standards of proof

  indicates the degree to which the point must be proven. In a civil case, the burden of proof rests with the plaintiff, who must establish his or her case by such standards of proof as a “preponderance of evidence” or “clear and convincing evidence”.

  statement validity analysis (SVA)

  a technique, widely used in Germany and Scandinavia, for assessing the veracity of a child’s statement on the basis of verbal content. The overall SVA procedure involves a semi-structured interview, a criteria-based content analysis (CBCA) of the statements made and an evaluation of the CBCA outcome.

  stereotype

  a generalised belief about an entity or a group of people that is often over-simplified and does not take account of individual differences or other variation in everyday situations.