FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY

CHAPTER ONE
1. An Introduction to Forensic Psychology
After the end of this chapter we shall able to learn
 Nature and Definition of Forensic Psychology
 The Relationship between Psychology and Law
 History of Forensic Psychology
 The Importance of Psychologists in the Legal
Setting
 Theories of Forensic Psychology
 Psycho- Legal Research: Methodological
considerations
• Forensic psychology is a field of psychology that deals
with all aspects of human behaviour as it relates to the
law or legal system.
• Forensic Psychology is branch of applied psychology
which is concerned with the collection, examination
and presentation of evidence for judicial purposes.
Dr. Bartol and his wife, Anne, define forensic psychology
as:
(a) The research endeavour that examines aspects of
human behaviour directly related to the legal process
and
(b) The professional practice of psychology within, or in
consultation with, a legal system that embraces both
civil and criminal law.
• Forensic psychology can be conceptualized as
encompassing both sides of the justice system (civil
and criminal) as well as two broad aspects of
psychology (clinical and experimental).
• forensic psychologists can work both within and
outside the legal system.
• Some psychologists provide direct services to the
court through assessments of issues such as
competency to stand trial, criminal responsibility, or
child custody. Others are researchers, typically
based in universities, who conduct basic or applied
research on such topics as eyewitness behaviour or
jury decision making. Still others combine both
1.2 The Relationship between Psychology and Law
1. Psychology and the law; is about psychological
evaluation held by psychologists on a way how legal
principles are applied in ground.
Here psychology is viewed as a separate discipline to the law,
serves to examining and analysing various components of
the law and the legal system from a psychological
perspective. Frequently, research that falls under the
category of psychology and the law examines assumptions
made by the law or the legal system, asking questions such
as:
Are eyewitnesses accurate? Do certain interrogation
techniques cause people to make false confessions?
2. Psychology in the law; is about using psychological
knowledge to help the legal system.
Psychology in the law can take many different forms.
It might consist of a psychologist in court providing
expert testimony concerning some issue of
relevance to a particular case.
Alternatively, psychology in the law might consist of a
police officer using his or her knowledge of
psychology in an investigation.
3. Psychology of the law; the use of psychology to examine the
law itself.
Although often not considered as a core topic in forensic
psychology, it is a new and growing view of psychology.
• It is about psychological study and evaluation of; how law
and legal system itself is contextualized with reference to
social, cultural, psychological, educational, demographic,
economic and global context.
• It addresses questions such as : What role should the
police play in domestic disputes?
• Does the law reduce the amount of crime in our society?
• Why is it important to allow for discretionary decision
making in the criminal justice system?
• 1.3 History of Forensic Psychology
 In application of psychology in legal issues: William
Healy, a physician, to initiate a program to study the
causes of juvenile delinquency. His founding of the
Juvenile Psychopathic Institute in 1909, with a staff that
included psychologist Grace M. Fernald, led to
increased emphasis on the foundations of criminal
behaviour.
 Dr. Fernald was one of the first psychologists to
specialize in the diagnosis and treatment of juvenile
delinquency.
 Also, during the late 1800s and early 1900s, Sigmund
Freud was developing his theory of personality, and his
writings about psychopathology influenced thinking
Development of forensic psychology in academic
base: - But a second thrust came from academic
psychology.
• To answer this Hugo Munsterberg came with the
publication of “On the Witness Stand” in 1908; he
had come from Germany to the United States, by
William James’s invitation to establish the
psychological laboratory at Harvard University.
• Munsterberg is founder/father of forensic
psychology; and also known as one of the founding
members of APA in 1892.
• The works on memory distortions, eyewitness
accuracy, confessions, suggestibility, hypnosis,
crime detection, and the prevention of crime are the
topics of Munsterberg’s 1908 book those able to put
valuable impact legal system even in contemporary.

James McKeen Cattell, was another psychologist

who has put role on the development of forensic
psychology. Cattell had actively researching in
eyewitness reliability and also he has listed as one
of the founding members of APA.
Munsterberg’s Goals for Psychology and the Law:
Munsterberg’s mission has been described as raising
the psychological profession to a position of
importance in public life, and the legal system.
Munsterberg’s Values: Munsterberg’s specific views
toward the court system help us to understand the
actions he took.
• He able to convinced jury systems to accept accurate
and reasonable professionals on the behaviour of
human towards crime.
• Furthermore, our society values the rights of the
accused; it protects suspects against self-
incrimination and places the burden of proof on the
Three Crucial Activities of Munsterberg: Munsterberg
reflected his desire to bring psychology into the courtroom
by:
• 1. Demonstrating the fallibility of memory, including time
overestimation, omission of significant information, and
other errors.
• 2. Publishing “On the Witness Stand”, His goal in these
McClure’s Magazine pieces was to show an audience of
laypeople that “experimental psychology has reached a stage
at which it seems natural and sound to give attention also to
its possible service for the practical needs of life”.
• 3. Offering testimony as an expert witness in highly
publicized trials.
• 4. Munsterberg firmly believed that one of psychology’s
strongest contributions was in distinguishing false memory
• Reaction from the Legal Community: Not
surprisingly, Munsterberg’s advocacy generated
withering abuse from the legal community. One attack,
titled “Yellow Psychology” and written by Charles
Moore, concluded that the laboratory had little to lend
to the courtroom and expressed scepticism that
Munsterberg had discovered a “Northwest Passage to
the truth”.
A Period of Inactivity: Perhaps for these reasons
exaggeration by Munsterberg and avoidance by legal
authorities’ research by scientific psychology
applicable to the courts languished from the First
World War until the latter half of the 1970s. There were
contributions in the 1920s but they were infrequent.
Resurgence in the 1970s: Interest in legal issues from
experimental psychologists and social psychologists
did not resume until the 1970s; with regard to one
example, eyewitness identification, estimated that over
85% of the entire published literature surfaced between
1978 and the publication of their book in 1984.
The Present: Where do we stand now? Psychologists do
research on a number of topics relevant to the real
world of the legal system; beyond the extensive work
on jury decision making, psychologists have studied
such diverse phenomena as sentencing decisions, the
impact of the specific insanity definition, children’s
abilities as eyewitnesses, and the impact of the battered
woman defense.
1.4 The Importance of Psychologists in the
Legal Setting
• In the courts
• Giving help in selecting jury members or giving
lawyers guidance on how to present a case
• Evaluating the competence of a defendant to
stand trial
• Providing risk and other assessments that can
influence the sentencing of a convicted person
• Assessing whether a convicted person is
mentally sound enough to face the death
• They can act for the prosecution or the defence
In civil cases and in quasi-legal settings, including industrial
and employment tribunals or internal reviews of employees:
 Evaluating child custody cases
 Assessing whether child abuse occurred
 Appraising competency of key individuals
 Gauging psychological effects of trauma, personal injury,
product liability, harassment and professional negligence
 Reviewing judgements made about behavioural material,
such as offensive communications
 Depending on the jurisdiction, forensic psychologists can
also offer the same sort of help and expertise in criminal
cases
With victims
 Educating and assisting those who are responsible
for notifying relatives of a victim’s death
 Treating victims or witnesses of crime
 Training people who supply services to victims
In prisons, ‘special hospitals’ and correctional
institutions
Helping to select personnel for employment in the
prisons
Providing support, especially in stress management,
for those working in institutions
Evaluating programmes in use or proposed
programmes for helping offenders from re-
offending, such as the anger management and sexual
awareness programmes
Contributing to decisions about how prisoners are
classified and suitable placements in appropriate
institutions or on the different sorts of programmes
With the police
 Give guidance on the search for an unknown
offender.
 Train and assist in interviews of victims, witnesses
and suspects.
Advise on dealing with mentally ill people.
Offer guidance on handling domestic violence.
Forensic psychologists may also supply
counselling services for police officers
involved in shooting or other traumatic
incidents.
Give support in hostage negotiations.
1.5. Theories of Forensic Psychology
1. Biological Theories of Crime
Sheldon’s (1949) constitutional theory: - Sheldon
proposed that crime is largely a product of an
individual’s body build, or somatotype, which is
assumed to be linked to an individual’s
temperament.
According to Sheldon, endomorphs (obese) are jolly,
ectomorphs (thin) are introverted, and mesomorphs
(muscular) are bold. Sheldon‟s studies indicated
that, due to their aggressive nature, mesomorphs
were more likely to become involved with crime.
Jacobs, Brunton, Melville, Brittain, and
McClemont’s (1965) chromosomal theory: - Jacobs
and her colleagues proposed that chromosomal
irregularity is linked to criminal behaviour.

A normal female has two X chromosomes, whereas a

normal male has one X and one Y chromosome.
However, it was discovered that some men possess
two Y chromosomes, which, it was proposed, made
them more masculine and, therefore, more
aggressive.
Mark and Ervin’s (1970) dyscontrol theory: -
Mark and Ervin proposed that lesions/wound
in the temporal lobe and limbic system result
in electrical disorganization within the brain,
which can lead to a “dyscontrol syndrome.”

According to Mark and Ervin, symptoms of this

dyscontrol syndrome can include outbursts of
sudden physical violence, impulsive sexual
behaviour, and serious traffic violations.
2. Sociological Theories of Crime
 Sutherland’s (1939) differential association theory:
- Sutherland proposed that criminal behaviour is
learned through social interactions in which people
are exposed to values that are favourable to
violations of the law.
More specifically, Sutherland maintained that a person
is likely to become a criminal when he or she learns
more values (i.e., attitudes) that are favourable to
violations of the law than values that are
unfavourable to it.
 Becker’s (1963) labelling theory: - Unlike most
other theories of crime, Becker proposed that
deviance is not inherent to an act, but a label
attached to an act by society.
Thus, a “criminal” results from a process of society
labelling an individual as a criminal.
 Merton’s (1938) strain theory: - Merton proposed
that crime is largely a product of the strain/strive felt
by certain individuals in society (typically from the
lower class) who have limited access to legitimate
means (e.g., education) for achieving valued goals
of success (e.g., money).
3. Psychological Theories of Crime
 Bowlby’s (1944) theory of maternal deprivation: -
Bowlby argued that the early separation of a child
from his mother prevents effective social
development from taking place.
 Gottfredson and Hirschi’s (1990) general theory
of crime: - Gottfredson and Hirschi argue that low
self control, internalized early in life, in the
presence of criminal opportunities explains an
individual’s propensity to commit crimes.
Eysenck’s (1964) biosocial theory of crime: -
Eysenck believed that some individuals (e.g.,
extraverts and neurotics) are born with cortical and
autonomic nervous systems that influence their
ability to learn from the consequences of their
behaviour, especially the negative consequences
experienced in childhood as part of the socialization
and conscience-building process.
Due to their poor condition ability, it is assumed that
individuals who exhibit high levels of extraversion
and neuroticism will have strong antisocial
inclinations.
1.6. Psycho- Legal Research: Methodological
considerations
 The law stresses conservatism; psychology stresses
creativity.
 The law is authoritative; psychology is empirical.
 The law relies on adversarial process; psychology
relies on experimentation.
 The law is prescriptive; psychology is descriptive.
 The law is idiographic; psychology is homothetic.
 The law emphasizes certainty; psychology is
probabilistic.
 The law is reactive; psychology is proactive.
• Psychology discovers, describes and explains
human experience and behaviour through the logic
and method of science. Psychological research and
application is based in a logical, empirical and
analytical approach, and that approach is brought to
bear on an exceptionally wide range of issues.

• On the other hand, Tradition is important to lawyers

put it, law is a practical art, a system of rules, a
means of social control, concerned with the solving
of practical problems.
• Psycho- legal researchers have utilised a variety of research
methods including:
• Incident Studies:- also called the Critical Incident
Technique (CIT) a research method in which the research
participants are asked to recall and describe a time when a
behaviour, action or occurrence impacted a specified
outcome.
• Field Studies:- a kind of research method through which
raw data of a research is collected from a direct source of a
behaviour.
• Archival Studies:- a method by which research data is
exploited and organized from existing file store archival.
• Single Case Studies:- a qualitative research method
through which researcher is interested to collect research
data from a few participants about a one focal issue,
 Chapter Two
Eyewitness Testimony and Memory
2.1. Concepts and Definition of Eyewitness Testimony

• Eyewitness testimony is the evidence given by

witnesses to a crime, typically in the form of a
verbal account or person identification.

• Eyewitness testimony is a form of direct evidence

which may be regarded as valuable for the forensic
purposes.
• In the absence of any other crucial evidence, the
testimony of an eyewitness is considered
putative/accepted by the law enforcement agencies.

• Therefore, the criminal justice system faithfully

relies on an eyewitness testimony to ascertain facts
relating to a crime or an event of miss happening.
2.2. Nature of Eyewitness Memory
Eyewitness memory is a person's episodic memory
for a crime or other dramatic event that he or she
has witnessed.

 Eyewitness testimony is often relied upon in the

judicial system.

can also refer to an individual's memory for a face,

where they are required to remember the face of
their perpetrator, for example.
The way how eyewitness memory processes the scenario
1. Acquisition
 Moment when memories are formed.
In a stressful situation such as a violent crime, a
witness’s attention may narrow to the central (rather
than the peripheral) details of the incident.
The theory assures that, in a stressful situation such
as a violent crime the deployment of attention
narrows to central details of the event, thereby
producing less reliable memory for peripheral detail.
This phenomenon is known as ‘weapon focuses’.
 2. Retention
 a mechanism to preserve events in storage.
 witness memory may be subject to various
influences, such as discussion with other witnesses
and exposure to media accounts of the crime.

 not to mention the fact that memory becomes less

accurate over time.
 So the time interval between acquisition and
retrieval is an obvious consideration.
 The force of the evidence suggests that
identification accuracy does decrease with time.
 3. Retrieval
Extracting expected information from storage as raw
data.
during the retrieval stage, factors that potentially
influence the accuracy of eyewitness testimony
include:
 interview style
 the use of aids to recall, such as the photofit and
identity parades/series.
2.3. Persuasiveness in Eyewitness Identification

• Eyewitness testimony is the most persuasive form of

evidence juries relies than ever source of evidence.

• It can persuade 80% than every source of witness;

even the juries can’t tell the difference between
accuracy and inaccuracy of eyewitness.
Factors Leading to Mistaken Identification
• Stress: people who are under stress when they
observe an event are more likely to misidentify the
culprit.
• Presence of a weapon: more attention on central
incident
• Confidence level: Confident eyewitnesses
sometimes have higher error rates.
• Cross-racial identification: Eyewitnesses are less
accurate when asked to identify someone of a
different race.
• Pressure to choose: Eyewitnesses are more likely to
make mistakes when they feel pressure to make an
identification.
• Influence after the fact: Eyewitnesses are more likely to
make mistakes when they rehash events with other
observers.
• Transference: Eyewitnesses may make a mistaken
identification because they saw the person they identify
on a different occasion.
• Multiple perpetrators: Identification accuracy decreases
as the number of people involved in an event increases.
• Absence of an "employment boost: " Eyewitnesses who
regularly interact with the public (store cashiers, bank
tellers) are no better at making identifications than other
• 2.4. Legal Aspects of Eyewitness Testimony
• The legal system always has relied on the testimony
of eyewitnesses, nowhere more than in criminal
cases.
• Although the evidence eyewitnesses provide can be
tremendously helpful in developing leads,
identifying criminals, and exonerating the innocent,
this evidence is not infallible.
• Even honest and well-meaning witnesses can make
errors, such as identifying the wrong person or
failing to identify the perpetrator of a crime.
2.5. Characteristics of Human Attention, Perception
and Memory
Some Crucial Characteristics of Attention
The following are some of the characteristics of
attention:
 Attention is always changing
 Attention is always an active centre of our experience
 Attention increases the clarity of the object
 Attention is continuous
 The limitation of attention somewhat depends upon
relation between the things
 It is indivisible

Perception: Perception refers to the occurrence when
the brain performs organization of information it
obtains from the neural impulses, and then begins
the process of translation and interpretation.
Some important characteristics of perception are as
follows:
1. Perception is a selective process
2. Perception requires sensation
3. Perception involves organization
4. Perception involves past experience
5. Change is the basis of perception
6. Perception is objective as well as subjective
Memory: refers to the processes that are used to
acquire, store, retain, and later retrieve information.
There are three major processes involved in
memory: encoding, storage, and retrieval.
Types of Memory: Rechard Atkinson and Rechard
Shiffrin, outlines three separate stages of memory:
sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term
memory.
A. Sensory Memory: During this stage, sensory
information from the environment is stored for a
very brief period of time, generally for no longer
than a half-second for visual information and three
or four seconds for auditory information.
B. Short-term memory: Short-term memory, also
known as active memory, is the information we are
currently aware of or thinking about. In Freudian
psychology, this memory would be referred to as the
conscious mind. Paying attention to sensory
memories generates information in short-term
memory.
C. Long-term memory: Long-term memory stores a
wide range of memories and experiences. Most
memories that people recall, especially those older
than about 30 seconds, are part of long-term
memory. Long-term memory divided into two
subcategories, these are :
A. Explicit long-term memory:
Explicit memories are conscious memories of events,
autobiographical facts, or things a person learns.
This memory is classified as:
1. Episodic memory: These are memories of events or
autobiographical facts.
 Note that: this memory is the most influential and
functional in court system specially
2. Semantic memory: Semantic memories are general
knowledge about the world.
B. Implicit long-term memory: Implicit memories are
memories that influence a person’s behaviour.
This memory is typed as:
1. Procedural memory: Procedural memory helps a person
perform familiar tasks, such as walking or driving.
2. Priming: Priming occurs when experiences influence trusted
Source a person’s behaviour.
Classical and operant conditioning either prime people or
animals to perform specific behaviours in response to certain
experiences.
Long-term memory have a limitless capacity. However, the
quality of memories and their details may vary and change
with time.
Memories may be unreliable. The brain does not record
memories perfectly, so memories may change or disappear
2.6. Variables in the Study of Eyewitness Memory
• Time: psychologists have found that the
likelihood of incorporating misinformation
increases as the delay between the original
event and post-event information increases.
• Source reliability: The more reliable the
source of the post-event information, the more
adopt the information into their memory.
• Discussion and rehearsal: Studies examined
that discussion has effects in groups on
recognition.
• State of mind: Various inhibited states of mind such
as drunkenness and hypnosis can increase
misinformation effects.
• Arousal and stress after learning: Arousal induced
after learning reduces source confusion.
• Anticipation: Educating participants about the
misinformation effect can enable them to resist its
influence.
• Psychotropic placebos: placebo enhanced memory
performance.
• Sleep: Controversial perspectives exist regarding
the effects of sleep on the misinformation effect.
2.7. Variables that Affect Eyewitness Testimony Accuracy

Estimator variables: estimator variables are those

that cannot be controlled by the criminal justice
system. They include simple factors like the lighting
when the crime took place or the distance from
which the witness saw the perpetrator.
 System variables: System variables are those that
the criminal justice system can and should control.
They include all of the ways that law enforcement
agencies retrieve and record witness memory, such
as lineups, photo arrays, and other identification
procedures. System variables that substantially
2.8. The Perpetrator Characteristics and Variables
• Perpetrators are individuals who physically,
mentally, or sexually abuse others or allow it to
happen to others.
• A criminal act occurs when there is a motive, a
means, and an opportunity.
• Criminal behaviors that lead offenders to
recidivate/recommit are often called “risk factors”
or “criminogenic needs”.
• One of the ways to attempt to understand criminal
behavior is to gain comprehension and knowledge
of criminogenic needs. These needs are traits
associated with criminal thinking and behavior.
• Criminogenic needs: - dynamically defined as
crime producing factors that are strongly associated
with risk. There are several factors related to
increasing risk and criminality related to individuals
exhibiting criminogenic traits; however, there is an
identified beginning to criminal behavior and it
starts with biology and genetics.
• Biological risk factors can be defined as anything
that impinges/impacts on the child from conception
to birth. Genes can define an individual’s ability to
control temperament, impulsivity, low self-esteem,
and a lack of empathy. Genes could potentially pass
on those traits that lead to criminal behavior.
• One of the easiest topics to discuss as it relates to
how biological factors can contribute to criminal
behavior would be substance abuse. If physical
characteristics are passed on from generation to
generation, it is certainly possible for psychological
characteristics to be passed on as well.
• Some of those psychological characteristics include
genes that are directly associated with substance
abuse, which can often lead to increased negative
criminal behavior.
• Some other factors related with criminogenics are
prior criminal history, marital status, age, a history
of drug or alcohol abuse, employment and
Some variables related to characteristics of perpetrators:
 Anti-social values: This is also known as criminal thinking.
It includes criminal rationalization or the belief that their
criminal behavior was justified.
 Criminal Peers: Individuals with this trait often have peers
that are associated with criminal activities.
 Anti-social personality: behaviors like running away,
skipping school, fighting, possessing weapons, lying, stealing
and damage to either animals or property.
 Dysfunctional family: One of the most common traits
includes a lack of family support, both emotionally and
otherwise.
 Low self-control: This involves one’s ability to control
temperament and impulsivity.
 Substance abuse: The use of drugs that significantly affect
 2.9. Interrogational Variables and Misinformation to
Source Monitoring Error
• Interrogation is a process where law enforcement
agents try to obtain information about a case by
asking questions to people relevant to the case.

• The ultimate goal of an interrogation is to solve the

crime.

Effect of leading questions: researches show that

even subtle changes in question wording can
influence testimony.
The misinformation effect: The misinformation effect
occurs when a person's recall of episodic memories
becomes less accurate because of post-event
information. Elizabeth Loftus is one of the most
influential researchers in the field.

• One theory is that original information and the

misleading information that was presented after the
fact become blended together.
• The misinformation reflects two of the cardinal
errors of memory:
A. Suggestibility: the influence of others' expectations
on our memory. It is the quality of being inclined to
accept and act on the suggestions of others. One
may fill in gaps in certain memories with false
information given by another when recalling a
scenario or moment.
Suggestibility uses cues to distort recollection: when
the subject has been persistently told something
about a past event, his or her memory of the event
conforms to the repeated message.
B. source monitoring error or source misattribution:
information attributed to an incorrect source. Source
misattribution is the misidentification of the origin of a
memory by the person making the memory recall.
Misattribution is divided into three components, these
are:
1. Cryptomnesia: It involves the unconscious influence of
memory that causes on individuals mistakenly believe that
they are the original generators of the thought.
Sometimes, cryptomnesia arises in literature or scholarly
ideas it is often termed 'inadvertent plagiarism’.
Inadvertent plagiarism takes two forms.
• The first involves the plagiarizer regenerating a previously
seen idea, but believing the idea to be novel. Second, the
plagiarizer recalls the ideas of other author's as their own.
2. False memory: False memories are memories that
individuals believe and recall as true that, in fact,
never occurred. Often, people form false memories
for details of events after hearing others mistakenly
report information about an event.

3. Source confusion: Source confusion is an attribute

seen in different people's accounts of the same event
after hearing people speak about the situation. An
example of this would be a witness who heard a
police officer says he had a gun and then that
witness later says they saw the gun.
2.10. Repressed or False Memory Syndrome
False memory syndrome (FMS) is a condition in which a
person’s identity and relationships are affected by false
recollections and memories that are factually incorrect yet
strongly believed.

• Repressed memories where first identified by Freud, the

founder of psychoanalysis and are believed to be memories
that have been blocked out because they are associated with
a traumatic event.
• The theory is a controversial one with some psychologists
dismissing the idea due to considerable evidence that the
difficulty with traumatic memories for most people is there
intrusiveness, for example in the case of Post Traumatic
Stress Disorder (PTSD) where sufferers experience recurrent
False Memory Syndrome: is believed to be the result
of Recovered Memory Therapy, hypnosis, sedation
or probing questions which lead to the creation of a
memory of a traumatic event that did not occur.

• Memory has been shown at times to be unreliable

and inaccurate and human beings are very
suggestible, however, this is not to say that all
repressed memories are false. The use of Recovered
Memory Therapy or related practices are now cause
for malpractice.
Ways determine the authenticity of repressed
memories

The American Psychiatric Association states that

without corroborating/genuine evidence it is
impossible to determine the authenticity of
memories recovered in therapy.

However the following may go some way to help

those involved assess the accuracy of repressed
memories of childhood trauma recovered years after
the event:
i. The existence of similar reports by other victims of
the same perpetrator.
ii. The presence of chronic mental health problems
including major depression, anxiety, conduct
disorder, substance misuse, suicidal behaviours and
eating disorders.
iii. How the memory was recovered and the
qualifications and experience of the therapist.
iv. The process of the recovery; traumatic memories are
initially retrieved in a dissociative form with
affective and sensory elements being recovered
without a narrative. A personal narrative will then
slowly emerge sometimes preceded by flashbacks to
2.11. Interviewing Eyewitness Effectively
Interviews are method of questioning witnesses,
devised for use by the police, based on principles
taken from memory research.
 Interviews are one of the most common ways of
gathering information across a range of settings for a
variety of reasons.
The cognitive interview is an attempt to find a
constructive solution to these problems and improve
the accuracy of eyewitness recall.
 Fisher, McCauley and Geiselman (1994) describe
how the original cognitive interview protocol, used by
police officers, incorporated four techniques to
1. Context reinstatement: - the witness is encouraged to
recollect aspects of the situational context (such as sights
and sounds at the time of the event and relevant personal
factors, such as how they felt and what they were thinking
at the time of the incident).
2. Report everything: - the witness engages in perfectly free
recall, unconstrained by focused (and potentially leading)
questioning, or self-censoring of what is reported. The
theory underpinning these two techniques lies in the
contextual similarity between encoding and retrieval.
So if the process of retrieval from memory can take place in
a similar psychological context to that in which the
information was encoded, the witness should have
facilitated access to stored memories, improving the
accuracy and completeness of recall.
3. Reverse order: - the witness is encouraged to begin
their description of an event from different starting
points (such as a mid-point), or to start at the end
and work backwards to the beginning.

4. Change perspective: - witnesses are encouraged

try to give an account of the event from the point of
view of another person, such as another witness or
the victim.
Techniques 3 and 4 are intended to encourage
witnesses to try to use many different paths to
retrieve information from memory.
 Chapter three: Children as Eyewitnesses
Legal Aspects of Children as Witness
• Children become involved in criminal proceedings for
many reasons: as victims, witnesses, and as
defendants.
• There have been swings of opinion on whether
children should be allowed to give evidence at all and
much debate about how to involve them in court.
• An interview supporter, interpreter or intermediary
may be used in an interview to make sure that the
child understands what’s being asked of them.
• Such a person is referred to as an appropriate adult.
Props, such as dolls, may also be employed during the
Children’s Remembering Ability
Brain development is an after-forward process, which
takes a sequence
 from the occipital lobe (visual),
 to the temporal lobe (sensory, auditory and
memory),
 to the parietal lobe (motor, pain, temperature, and
stress), and
 finally to the frontal lobe (language, reasoning,
planning, and emotion).
 All of these brain regions work together to build up
our eyewitness memory.
Major brain regions necessary for eyewitness
performance
1. Hippocampus: -The hippocampus is one of the
brain structures located within the medial temporal
lobe and is considered one of the main structures of
the brain associated with eyewitness testimony
because it is the area that is important for the
formation of long term memories; specially
declarative memories.
• Research on children as eyewitnesses found that
children do not have accurate long term memories
for past events. Hippocampus grows 2-8 and stops
at some stages of adulthood.
2. Prefrontal cortex: - The prefrontal cortex is another
brain region involved in eyewitness testimonies.
Its function in relation to memory is to create memories
that are vivid and that have a lot of contextual detail.
Ability for child eyewitnesses to accurately recall
details of events increases with age, as did the ability
to answer specific questions, identify the confederate
and resist suggestion.
Studies have found that children tend to give few details
of the event and sometimes distort them in eyewitness
testimonies. This brain region is one of the last
regions to develop.
• Short term memory occurs in the prefrontal cortex.
3. Temporal lobe: - functions for hearing, meaning,
auditory stimuli, memory, and speech.
They also play a role in emotion and learning and are
concerned with processing and interpreting auditory
stimuli.
This is a major location for memory storage and is
associated with memory skills.
• Parts of the temporal lobe show late maturation.
These regions are of the last brain regions to mature.
• The gray matter in the temporal lobe continues
developing until it reaches its peak development at
age 16 for both males and females.
4. Amygdala: - The amygdala is located deep within the
temporal lobe of the brain and is involved in the
acquisition and retrieval of information on highly
salient events.
• It is also responsible for what and where memories
are stored in the brain though this determination of
what/where memories are stored is dependent on
how big of an emotional response an event evokes.

• This is related to eyewitness testimonies because

young children usually have poorer recall for details
of events, but when an event evokes a highly
aversive response (unpleasant, arousing), they tend
• It does not stop developing until late adolescence.

• Research studies have found that in normal

developing children, the volume of amygdala
increases substantially between seven and 18 years
of age.

• This influences how children perform as

eyewitnesses because children will have poorer
skills for storing and recalling memories of events
prior to the age of seven.
• Short term memory: there are a number of
differences in memory among adults and children.
With regards to short term memory, a child's
capacity to store and the amount of time elapsed has
impacts on children short term memory
capacity to store: More specifically, evidence has
shown that a five-year-old can only store up to five
items in short term memory, whereas adults are able
to store around seven items.
The amount of time elapsed: from when the child
witnessed the scene to when they give their
testimony is also a contributing factor to how short
term memory influences the accuracy of their recall
Long term memory: The rate of transfer of sensory
information from short term to long term memory is
related to age of the witness. Children’s long term
memory is affected by:
 Information losses: Loss of information during the
process of encoding and storing event than the adults.
 Transferring to long term memory: older children have
higher success rates in transferring memory from short
term to long term than younger children, which plays a
role in why younger children have poorer recall in
eyewitness testimonies.
 Selective attention: this also contributes to the
impairment of younger children's information
encoding process.
 Interviewing Children in Sexual Abuse Cases
Interviewing children needs the following four main
stages:

1. Establishing rapport with the child.

2. Getting a child to provide a free flowing,
uninterrupted narrative of what happens in their
own words.
3. Asking specific questions based on that free
narrative.
4. Obtaining closure (e.g., post-interview counseling).
• Interview aids: - A special case of suggestibility
might be said to arise through the use of some
interview aids, such as anatomically detailed dolls.
First used clinically as a means of communicating
nonverbally about children’s emotional issues,
forensic interviewers began to use anatomically
detailed dolls to assist children in reporting difficult
or embarrassing events i.e., sexual abuse.
Unfortunately, the dolls seemed to be inherently
suggestive, leading some children to demonstrate
genital or anal cavity insertions on the dolls that did
not occur.
Factors that Affect Children as Eyewitness
Attention: One does not necessarily encode into one’s
memory information that did not receive attention.
Prior knowledge: Children’s knowledge, which grows with
age, impacts the accuracy of their event memory as well. It
influences what they attend to, how they understand and
interpret events and what they encode into memory.
Memory strength and scripts: Once encoded, strength of a
memory likely influences a child’s ability to recall that
memory. With sufficient replication, children can develop
scripts, or generalized event representations abstracted
from repeated instances of an event.
Memory storage: Children’s memory capacity grows with
age, such that they become increasingly able to recall larger
amounts of information over time.
Memory retrieval: - When asked to retrieve a memory
(i.e., reconstruct the event from memory storage),
children become increasingly able to structure that
information into narrative form with age.
Communication and linguistic ability: A child who
cannot communicate effectively in the justice system
may lack credibility, leading perhaps to future
victimization or to conviction, in the case of a juvenile
defendant.
Cross-examination: Another challenge for all witnesses
is cross-examination. Unfortunately, research examining
children’s performance under cross-examination
suggests that they risk losing credibility, despite their
cognitive ability to provide accurate information.
Vulnerability to error and influence
Beyond memory issues, additional factors can
influence the accuracy of children’s memory reports
and their vulnerability to influence. These include:
 Source monitoring: Children’s memory reports can
also become inaccurate due to faulty source
monitoring, which is the process of determining the
origin (or source) of their knowledge, memories
and/or beliefs.
 Suggestibility: In a forensic context, this is usually
exhibited by changes in memory reports due to
suggestive questioning by an interviewer.
 Suggestive interview aids: further than memory of
a child, the instruments which used to interview
have their own influence on a way how a child
recalls and narrates the features during the scene of
crime.

 Intelligence and mental health: For child witnesses,

intelligence is most relevant to memory accuracy
and resistance to suggestion. That is, individuals
with higher IQ scores tend to have better memory
skills and to provide more detailed recall when
reporting an event.
To be continued
 CHAPTER FOUR
Lies, Lie Detecting and Credibility: A Polygraph
Analysis
4.1. Nature and Concepts of Lie
Lie is a successful or unsuccessful deliberate
attempt, without forewarning, to create in
another a belief which the communicator
considers to be untrue.

Lie is a statement made by one who does not

believe it with the intention that someone else
shall be led to believe it.

 Lying is making a statement believed to be

false, with the intention of getting another to
It’s not that easy to lie. So people lie in many
different ways:
The most obvious is saying something false as if it
were true.

Leaving out key facts in an account when those

facts are likely to reveal the truth.

Hiding the truth by giving misleading information.

Providing a partial account by omitting certain

facts.
 Lying and Complexity

1. Difficulty: Lying is a complex task and good lying

takes preparation.

2. Concern about giving themselves away:- Liars

often have an idea of what lying looks like and may
work very hard to suppress emotions that might give
them away.

3. In their attempts to sound truthful: Liars tend not

to correct themselves as much as truth tellers and
often will not admit to flaws in their arguments.
 Types of Lie
De Paulo et al. (1996) distinguished between outright
lies, exaggerations and subtle lies.
Outright lies: (also referred to as falsifications) are
lies in which the information conveyed is
completely different from or contradictory to what
the deceiver believes is the truth.

Exaggerated lies: are lies in which the facts are

overstated or information is conveyed that exceeds
the truth.
Subtle lies: involves literal truths that are designed
to mislead.

The former president of the USA, Bill Clinton, was

telling such a lie in 1998 when he said to the
American people that he ‘‘did not have sexual
relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky’’.

The lie was subtle, because the statement implied

that nothing of a sexual nature had happened
between them, whereas he was relying on the
narrower definition by which they did not have
sexual intercourse.
 Frequency of Lying
According to De Paulo the frequency of lying depends on
the following factors:
 Personality: extraverts lie more often than introverts .
However, instead of labelling introverts as ‘‘honest’’,
we often label them as ‘‘socially awkward’’, perhaps
because they are honest and tell fewer social lies.

Gender differences also emerged in the types of lies that

men and women told during a date.

Women more frequently engaged in deceptive acts to

improve their physical appearance; whereas men tended
to exaggerate their earning potential.
Situation: e.g. people lied relatively often to
their romantic partners in the early stages of
their relationship.

Issue: a one to whom the lie is told matters.

E.g. Lowest rate of lying occurred in

conversations with spouses, while the highest
rate occurred with strangers.
 4.2. Major Components of Lies
1. Nonverbal Behaviour: this includes (body
movements, smiling, eye contact, voice pitch, speech
rate, stuttering and so on. This depends on three
processes that a liar may experience:
 Emotions: - Telling a lie might evoke emotions. The
three most common types of emotion associated with
deceit are guilt, fear and duping delight.
 Content complexity: problem of idea fluency and
consistence.
 Attempted Behavioural Control: they will try to
suppress several signs and might engage in
‘‘impression management’’ in order to avoid getting
2. Verbal Behaviour and Deception: Criteria-Based
Content Analysis
 Criteria based content analysis (CBCA) is a forensic tool
that aims at distinguishing true from false statements
made by crime victims.
 criteria-based content analysis (CBCA), a list of 19
verbal criteria expected to be present more often in
truthful statements than in deceptive accounts.
 Trained coders analyse written transcripts and score the
strength of presence of each of 19 criteria, typically on
rating scales ranging from (0) absent to (2) strongly
present.
 The underlying assumption of CBCA is that the higher
the CBCA score, the more likely it is that the statement is
CBCA is the core part of statement validity assessment
(SVA), a procedure which consists of three phases:
 A specific interview procedure to obtain a statement
from the interviewee ( professional interviewing way).

 Coding of the transcribed statement using the CBCA

procedure( transforming obtained information in
universal CBCA language).

 An evaluation of the CBCA outcomes ( giving

evaluation for the gained statements based on CBCA).
3. Physiological Reactions and Deception and The
Polygraph
• The most commonly measured activities are
sweating of the fingers, blood pressure and
respiration.

• The modern way of detecting physiological

activity in liars is by using a ‘‘polygraph’’ (the
term is derived from two Greek words,
‘‘poly’’, meaning ‘‘many’’, and ‘‘grapho’’,
meaning ‘‘to write’’).
4.3. Roles of Psychologists in lies Detection/Investigation
There are four general approaches you can take in detecting
lying or deceit:
 Physiological approach: - which records the physiological
changes in a person’s body when answering specific
questions.
 Behavioural approach: - looks at the way a person is
behaving to see whether the person is showing any of the
emotional or stressful aspects of lying.
 Semantic assessment: - which carefully examines the
words the person is using and the possible meanings in the
answers the person is giving under questioning.
 Legal approach: - where a person is being questioned in a
court of law and being put through a detailed examination
of the plausibility of his statement.
 Cues to Deceit
The followings are some the list of cues to deceit lairs:
1. Liars often speak in a higher register than truth-
tellers: This may be because of nerves.
2. When liars are working hard to sound like they
are telling the truth: liars exhibit more speech
errors, like hesitations, repetitions, incomplete
sentences, and Freudian slips.
3. Liars move their hands less: They make fewer
illustrative gestures and fiddle less with their
fingers.
4. Emotional leakage: the emotions that accompany
falsehoods may be revealed by micro expressions.
4.4. The Nature of Polygraph and Its Limitations
Polygraph is a machine used for measuring small
physiological changes in the body at one and the
same time: heart rate, breathing, sweating and so on.
It’s the best known procedure for detecting lying
(and is usually just called a lie-detector).

Polygraph machines have since been computerized: so

the magic of pens bouncing across paper with a
dramatic, crunchy upsurge when a ‘lie’ was being
told is no more.
 Weaknesses of Polygraphing Techniques

Emotionally nonreactive

Innocents are equally subjected for the questions

Intentionally responding unexpectedly

Lack of standardization

Ethically suspicious
4.5. Communication and Credibility in Lie Detection Spectrum
• Assessing informants’ credibility is critical to
several aspects of the legal process (e.g., when
jurors evaluate witnesses).
• Specifically, characteristics of the informant, of the
listener, and of the situation affect people’s
perceptions of informants’ credibility.
• Yet people’s reliance on the testimony of others is
pervasive in all sorts of everyday endeavours.
• Many factors affect such judgments some
consciously and some unconsciously including
characteristics of the speaker, of what the speaker
said, of the listener, and of the situation.
 Evaluating Credibility In and Out of Court
Some important ways for assessing evidence that can
be presented to jurors to help them assess credibility
includes:
The ability to cross-examine a witness on the stand.
Conflicting testimony by other witnesses.
 Prior inconsistent statements by the witness,
information about the witness’s past conviction of
certain crimes deemed to be relevant to issues of
credibility.
Testimony regarding the witness’s reputation for
truthfulness.
We believe that calibration is an important,
useful, and understudied cue for assessing
credibility.

Calibration requires the integration of two

cues to credibility: confidence and accuracy.

Calibration is the comparison of measurement

value delivered by a device under test with
those of a calibration standard of known
Some factors affect the credibility of ways to assess
credibility of informants evidence:
 Characteristics of the Informant
Physical attractiveness of informants
Body language, speech patterns, and other “cues to
deception”
Accuracy and details
Confidence
Characteristics of the Listener
Truth bias
Individual differences
Characteristics of the Situation
4.6. Factors that Influence lies Detecting Processes
in Legal Settings
 There are many factors those influence lies detection
process in legal settings; the followings are major
factors which influence lie detecting process in the
legal
 Pinocchio’s Nose: Lie detection is a difficult task, as
there is no give-away cue like Pinocchio’s growing
nose
 Othello Error: The fact that truth tellers and liars
might experience the same processes (emotions,
cognitive load and attempted control) implies that
they might respond similarly, hampering lie
 Incorrect Beliefs: Observers seem to have incorrect
beliefs about how liars behave. Despite the variety
of locations and observers, it appears that there is a
common belief, at least among Western, white
people, about how liars behave.
 Countermeasures: Polygraph test outcomes might
have serious consequences for suspects, as they may
eventually lead to their conviction.
 Adequate Comparisons: People show different
responses in different situations or when answering
different questions. This means that lie detectors
should only compare responses within a person
which are comparable.
CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER
Sexual Offenders/Violence
6.1. Nature and Concept of Sexual Offender/Violence
• Sexual violence is defined as: any sexual act, attempt to
obtain a sexual act, unwanted sexual comments or
advances, or acts to traffic, or otherwise directed,
against a person’s sexuality using coercion, by any
person regardless of their relationship to the victim, in
any setting, including but not limited to home and work.

• Sexual violence includes rape, defined as physically

forced or otherwise coerced penetration even if slight of
the vulva or anus, using a penis, other body parts or an
object. The attempt to do so is known as attempted rape.
Rape of a person by two or more perpetrators is known
as gang rape.
 Observations about Sexual Offenders
 There is no “typical” sexual offender.
 Rapists and child molesters come from all backgrounds and
can often seem like ordinary law abiding people.
 Although most offenders are male, females can also commit
sexual offenses.
 Sexual offenders can range in age, from young teenagers to
senior citizens.
 More than half of adult sexual offenders begin offending in
their teens.
 Although young children can be sexually aggressive or
inappropriate, they are not offenders and are not prosecuted.
 Instead they are treated as children with serious behaviour
problems who should have treatment and be supervised.
Common Behaviours and Characteristics of Sexual Offenders
• Most sexual offenders think about their crimes ahead of time.
• Sexual assault is rarely an impulsive act although sometimes sex
offenders take advantage of opportunity to offend.
• Offenders most often know their victims and use these
relationships to set up situations in which a chosen victim can
be sexually assaulted.
• Sexual assaults can involve physical violence, threats, or
overpowering. In other cases victims go along with the assaults
because they are afraid to resist or to try to get away. Planning
and manipulating relationships over time to commit sexual
offenses is called grooming.
• In these situations victims may come to believe that they are
responsible for what happened even though this is never true.
• After the assaults, offenders often threaten, pressure or use guilt
to keep victims from telling anyone.
 6.2. Types of Sexual Offenders/Violence
 Stranger Rape: It is rape or sexual assault perpetrated by
someone unknown to the survivor.
 Blitz Sexual Assault: The perpetrator rapidly and brutally
assaults the victim with no prior contact. Blitz assaults
usually occur at night in a public place.
 Contact Sexual Assault: The perpetrator works to gain trust
and confidence before assaulting.
 Home Invasion Sexual Assault: Perpetrator breaks into
survivors home to commit the assault.
 Acquaintance Rape: Is an umbrella term used to describe
sexual assaults in which the survivor and the perpetrator are
known to each other, whether by passing acquaintance or
someone the survivor knows intimately. This is the most
common form of rape.
Child Sexual Abuse: Is a form of child abuse that
includes sexual activity with a minor.

 A child cannot consent to any form of sexual

activity, period.

When a perpetrator engages with a child this way,

they are committing a crime that can have lasting
effects on the victim for years.

 Child sexual abuse does not need to include

physical contact between a perpetrator and a child.
 Some forms of child sexual abuse include:
 Obscene phone calls, text messages, or digital
interaction
 Fondling; Exhibitionism, or exposing oneself to a minor
 Masturbation in the presence of a minor or forcing the
minor to masturbate
 Intercourse; Sex of any kind with a minor, including
vaginal, oral, or anal
 Producing, owning, or sharing pornographic images or
movies of children
 Sex trafficking
 Any other sexual conduct that is harmful to a child's
mental, emotional, or physical welfare.
 Statutory Rape: It is defined as unlawful intercourse
with a minor, some county’s law mandates that an adult
cannot have sex with a minor, and a minor cannot have
sex with another minor, even if the intercourse was
consensual.
 Spousal/Partner Rape: Is between two individuals who
are in a relationship. Sexual violence often works
alongside among abusive behavior.
 Incest: Is defined as sexual abuse by a relative, sexual
contact/abuse between family members.
 Serial Rape: Is the most frequently sensationalized
form of rape. Because of the frequently gruesome nature
of the assaults and because of the opportunity to prey on
people’s fears, serial rape is frequently covered
 Substance Facilitated Rape: Occurs when alcohol or
drugs are used to compromise an individual's ability
to consent to sexual activity.
 Multiple Perpetrator/Gang Rape: Occurs when two
or more perpetrators act together to sexually assault
the same victim.
 Sexual Harassment: Is unwanted and unwelcome
sexual behavior that interferes with your life, work,
or education. This behavior can include verbal or
physical acts as well as acts that affect you by
creating an environment that is “hostile.”
 Date Rape: Is a specific kind of acquaintance rape
referring to assault(s) experienced by the victim from
6.3. Phallometry: Sexual Crime Analysis
The Phallometry /penile plethysmograph : is a device
which measures male sexual arousal by means of a
transducer(a device that converts energy from one
form to another) around the subjects’ penis while
various stimuli are presented.
 Originally developed by Kurt Freund to assess
sexual orientation in men, the penile
plethysmograph (PPG) was later adapted to assess
deviant sexual arousal in male offender populations
by Vernon Quinsey.
 The principle behind the instrument could not be much
simpler. One attaches a device to the penis of a subject,
and measures what happens to it when the person is
exposed to a variety of possibly arousing stimuli, either
visual or auditory.
 In a typical phallometric assessment, the subject is seated
privately in a comfortable chair where they can attend to
visual stimuli and auditory stimuli.
 Assuming that penile arousal indicates sexual interest, a
person’s arousal pattern in response to various stimuli
can be measured from the gauge around his penis.
 Often, nonintrusive physiological measures such as
galvanic skin response (GSR), respiration and pulse rate
are monitored in an attempt to detect suppression or
6.4. Major Considerations in Phallometry
• Responsibility for the supervision of the PPG
assessment should rest with a psychologist who is
eligible to be registered as a Chartered Psychologist.
The psychologist should have up-to-date knowledge
of relevant practice, legal issues and literature.

• Staff participating in this work at any level should

be adequately briefed and have the option not to be
involved should they find the procedure or material
distressing.
• Selection of the stimuli should take into account
ethical consideration of how the material was
produced or obtained, e.g. if it was under abusive
circumstances.

• The PPG test should be carried out only in the

context of an appropriate range of other assessment
and treatment procedures or in the course of
research that has been professionally and ethically
approved by the relevant body.
• Overall, it remains questionable whether the use of a
test is justified when that test is not statistically
validated and where the theoretical basis of the test is
unclear. This is especially true where a negative
outcome on the assessment may have serious
consequences for the subject, as is the case with
phallometry.
• Phallometry is unethical where it is used for the
determination of guilt or innocence and where it is
used as a sole assessment of risk and treatment needs.
• Although the penile plethysmograph is highly regarded
in clinical practice as a client-focused measure of
treatment progress and for targeting treatment needs.
There are several main ethical concerns with the
procedure.
• The first area of concern is the effect on the subject.
Clinicians should respect the client’s privacy and
carefully assess how the subjects will react to the
stimuli.
• The second main area of ethical concern is the
stimulus material. Most governments do not allow
their clinicians to employ pornographic material
depicting children, which makes sense, but
nevertheless reduces the discriminative power and
ecological validity of the assessment.
 6.5. Theories of Sexual Crime
Biological Theories: abnormalities in the structure of
the brain, hormone levels, genetic and chromosomal
makeup and deficits in intellectual functioning.
Evolutionary Theories: human behavior as the result of
millions of years of adaptive changes designed to
meet ongoing challenges within the environment.
Cognitive Theories: when individuals commit deviant
sexual acts, they often try to diminish their feelings of
guilt and shame by making excuses or justifications
for their behavior and rationalizing their actions.
Behavioral Theories: explain sexually abusive
behaviors as a learned condition.
 Personality Theories
 Sigmund Freud: unresolved problems experienced
during the early stages of development
 Due to a lack of empirical evidence, Freud’s
personality theories have fallen out of favor with
etiological researchers in deference to other theories.
 Later personality theorists: early childhood
relationships involving trauma or mistreatment could
lead a child to internalize negative attitudes
 Attachment Theory as part of personality theorists:
Bowlby (1988) explains the relationship between a
child and his or her primary caretaker, and how this
early relationship affects later adjustment.
 6.6. Pedophilia and Child Molestation

Pedophilia: a persistent sexual interest in

prepubescent children, as reflected by one’s sexual
fantasies, urges, thoughts, arousal, or behavior.

In its clearest expression, the individual sexually

prefers children and has no sexual interest in adults.

In other cases, the individual is sexually attracted to

children but also has sexual fantasies, urges,
etcetera, regarding adults.
 6.7. Causes of Pedophilia
• Experts claim that pedophilia is a sexual
orientation, rather than a desire to be socially
deviant.
• Freud claimed that pedophiles are weak
people who cannot control their sexual urges
enough to wait until another adult was
available to occupy their attention and instead
make use of such a substitute.
• Abuse of substances
• A distinction of people with organic brain
conditions who had compulsions towards
children.
• Sexual urges were deeply rooted in the
person’s and therefore unchangeable.
• Pedophilia is a biological condition rooting in
neurological functioning.
Theoretical Perspective
 Emotional Congruence: this theory reveals two things, the
are
i. because children have some especially compelling
emotional meaning for them. We have called this
"emotional congruence" because it conveys the idea of a
"fit" between the adult's emotional needs and the
characteristics of children”
ii. pedophiles have "arrested psychosexual development" and
are emotionally immature.
 Sexual Arousal: Early sexual experiences during childhood
may condition such arousal patterns. The conditioning
might occur through a process proposed by in which early
experiences of arousal become incorporated into a fantasy
that is repeated and becomes increasingly arousing through
 Blockage: Some of the most popular theories about
pedophilia focus on the proposition that individuals
are blocked in their ability to get their sexual and
emotional needs met in adult heterosexual
relationships, and thus turn to children. The more
psychoanalytically oriented see this blockage as
Stemming from oedipal dynamics or "castration
anxiety. Others describe the blockage as stemming
from timidity, unassertiveness, moralism, or lack of
social skills.
 Dis-inhibition: A final set of theories about
pedophilia are essentially accounts of why
conventional inhibitions against having sex with
children are overcome or absent. According to these
theories, some mechanism, process, or condition
works to disinhibit pedophiles so that they are able
to sexually interact with children. Sometimes this
dis-inhibition is seen as the result of a personality
disturbance. Pedophiles are described as having
psychopathic tendencies, being senile, and brain
damaged, retarded, or psychotic. Pedophiles are also
regularly described as persons with alcohol abuse
problems.
 CHAPTER SEVEN
Theoretical Perspective: Mental Illness in Criminal
Justice System
7.1. Mental Illness and Crime

Mental illness, also called mental health disorders,

refers to a wide range of mental health conditions-
disorders that affect your mood, thinking and
behavior.

Examples of mental illness include depression, anxiety

disorders, schizophrenia, eating disorders and
addictive behaviors.
 Symptoms
Signs and symptoms of mental illness can vary,
depending on the disorder, circumstances and other
factors. Mental illness symptoms can affect emotions,
thoughts and behaviors.
Examples of signs and symptoms include:
Feeling sad or down,
confused thinking or reduced ability to concentrate,
excessive fears or worries, or
extreme feelings of guilt,
extreme mood changes of highs and lows,
withdrawal from friends and activities,

 low energy or problems sleeping detachment from reality
(delusions),
 paranoia or hallucinations,
 inability to cope with daily problems or stress,
 trouble understanding and relating to situations and to
people,
 problems with alcohol or drug use,
 major changes in eating habits,
 sex drive changes, excessive anger,
 hostility or violence,
 suicidal thinking
Sometimes symptoms of a mental health disorder appear as
physical problems such as stomach pain, back pain,
Causes of Mental Illnesses
 Inherited traits: Certain genes may increase your risk
of developing a mental illness, and your life situation
may trigger it.
 Environmental exposures before birth: Exposure to
environmental stressors, inflammatory conditions,
toxins, alcohol.
 Brain chemistry: Neurotransmitters are naturally
occurring brain chemicals that carry signals to other
parts of your brain and body.
The impairment of the the neural networks involving
these chemicals; are impaired, the function of nerve
receptors and nerve systems change, leading to
 Risk of Violence
History of violence: Individuals who have been
arrested or acted violently in the past are more likely
than others to become violent again.
Substance use: Patients with a dual diagnosis are
more likely than patients with a psychiatric disorder
alone to become violent.
Personality disorders: Borderline personality
disorder, antisocial personality disorder, conduct
disorder, and other personality disorders often
manifest in aggression or violence.
 Nature of symptoms: Patients with paranoid delusions,
command hallucinations, and florid psychotic thoughts
may be more likely to become violent than other patients
 Age and gender: Young people are more likely than older
adults to act violently. In addition, men are more likely than
women to act violently.
 Social stress: People who are poor or homeless, or
otherwise have a low socioeconomic status, are more likely
than others to become violent.
 Personal stress, crisis, or loss: Unemployment, divorce, or
separation in the past year increases a patient's risk of
violence.
 Early exposure: The risk of violence rises with exposure to
aggressive family fights during childhood, physical abuse
by a parent, or having a parent with a criminal record.
Theoretical Perspective
1. The Psychodynamic Perspective
 Freud thought that human behavior, including violent
behavior, was the product of
 “unconscious” forces operating within a person’s
mind.
Freud early childhood experiences had a profound
impact on adolescent and adult behavior.
For Freud, aggression was thus a basic (id based) human
impulse that is repressed in well-adjusted people who
have experienced a normal childhood.
When it doesn't well-adjusted in early life, some
aggression can “leak out” of the unconscious and a
2. Behavioral Theories
Behavior theory argue that people are not born with a
violent disposition. Rather, they learn to think and act
violently as a result of their day-to-day experiences.
Behavioral theorists have argued that the following
four factors help produce violence:
A stressful event or stimulus: like a threat, challenge
or assault – that heightens arousal;
Aggressive skills learned through observing others
A belief that aggression or violence will be socially
rewarded
A value system that condones violent acts within
certain social contexts.
3. Cognitive Theories
Focus on how people perceive their social
environment and learn to solve problems.
• Piaget was one of the first psychologists to argue
that people’s reasoning abilities develop in an
orderly and logical fashion.

• Kohlberg applied the concept of moral development,

he found that violent youth were significantly lower
in their moral development than non-violent youth
even after controlling for social background.
4. Personality and Violence
• The psychological concept of “personality” has
been defined as stable patterns of behavior, thoughts
or actions that distinguish one person from another.
• A number of early criminologists argued that certain
personality types are more prone to criminal
behavior.
• For example, personality theorists identified a
number of personality traits that they felt were
associated with violence, including self-
assertiveness, defiance, extroversion, narcissism and
suspicion.
5. Intelligence and Violence
• Another major area of psychological inquiry
involves the possible relationship between
intelligence and crime.
• Criminologists working in the early 20th century
often argued that intelligence is strongly associated
with criminal behavior.
• People with low intelligence, they argued, were
much more likely to engage in crime and violence
than people with high intelligence.
There are Three General Theories of the Etiology of
Mental Illness. These are:
I. Supernatural Theories
• Supernatural theories attribute mental illness to
possession by evil or demonic spirits, displeasure of
gods, eclipses, planetary gravitation, curses, and sin.

• Trephination (the surgical procedure in which a

hole is drilled in the skull and a circular piece of
bone removed) is an example of the earliest
supernatural explanation for mental illness.
II. Somatogenic Theories

Somatogenic theories identify disturbances in physical

functioning resulting from illness, genetic
inheritance, or brain damage or imbalance.
III. Psychogenic Theories

Psychogenic theories focus on traumatic or stressful

experiences, maladaptive learned associations and
cognitions, or distorted perceptions.
Hysteria (behavior exhibiting excessive or
uncontrollable emotion, such as fear or panic,
mental disorder characterized by emotional
excitability, etc., without an organic cause) is typical
example of psychogenic explanation.
 7.2. Insanity defense
The insanity defense refers to a defense that a
defendant can plead in a criminal trail.
It is a criminal defense strategy where the
defendant may plead innocent as the result of
insanity.
The policy supporting the insanity defense is twofold.
These are;
1. An insane defendant does not have control over his
or her conduct. This is similar to a defendant who is
hypnotized, or sleepwalking.
2. An insane defendant does not have the ability to
form criminal intent.
 1. McNaghten Insanity Defense test:
This is defense with cognition/ awareness; so called
right-wrong test. It focuses on the defendant’s
awareness, rather than the ability to control conduct.
The defense requires two elements.
A. The defendant must be suffering from a mental
defect at the time he or she commits the criminal act.
The mental defect can be called a “defect of reason”
or a “disease of the mind,” depending on the
jurisdiction.
B. The trier of fact must find that because of the mental
defect, the defendant did not know either the nature
or quality of the criminal act or that the act was
 2. Irresistible Impulse Insanity Defense
This is defense with violation or free will. It requires
two elements as as M’Naghten did these are: ,
A. The defendant must suffer from a mental defect or
disease of the mind.
B. The concept of volition, or free choice.

Even if the defendant knows the event but cannot

control his or her conduct because of the mental
defect or disease, the defendant’s conduct is excused
even if the defendant understands that the conduct is
wrong.
 3. The Substantial Capacity Test
This is defense with responsibility. The substantial
capacity test is as follows: A person is not responsible
for criminal conduct if at the time of such conduct as a
result of mental disease or defect he lacks substantial
capacity either to appreciate the criminality
(wrongfulness) of his conduct or to conform his conduct
to the requirements of law. The defense has two
elements.
A. The defendant must suffer from a mental defect or
disease of the mind.
B. The insanity should combines the cognitive standard
with volitional, like the irresistible impulse insanity
defense supplementing the M’Naghten insanity defense.
 4. The Durham Insanity Defense
This is defense with causation. The Durham insanity
defense relies on ordinary principles of proximate
causation. The defense has two elements.
A. the defendant must have a mental disease or defect.
B. This has to do with causation. If the criminal
conduct is “caused” by the mental disease or
defect, then the conduct should be excused under
the circumstances.
 Proving Insanity

There is generally a presumption that criminal

defendants are sane, just as there is a presumption
that they are innocent.

Therefore, at a minimum, a defendant claiming

insanity must produce evidence that rebuts/deny this
presumption.
 1. Diminished Capacity
 A claim of diminished capacity differs from the
insanity defense.

 Diminished capacity is an imperfect failure of proof

defense recognized in a minority of jurisdictions.

 Diminished capacity could reduce a first-degree

murder charge to second-degree murder or
manslaughter if the defendant lacks the mental
capacity to form the appropriate criminal intent for
first-degree murder.
 2. Syndrome Defense
• A syndrome that negates the requisite/necessary
intent for the crime could function as a failure of
proof defense in a minority of jurisdictions.

• Some common examples of syndromes the

American Psychiatric Association recognizes in the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders, fourth edition ( DSM-IV ), are antisocial
personality disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder,
and intermittent explosive disorder.
• Some common examples of syndromes identified
but not recognized in DSM-IV are battered woman
or battered wife syndrome and caffeine withdrawal.

• Although successful use of the syndrome defense is

rare, at least one case has excused a defendant’s
drunken driving and assault and battery against a
police officer because of premenstrual syndrome
(PMS).
 3. Mental Competences to Stand Trial
The insanity defense is different from mental
competence to stand trial.
Insanity defense pertains to the defendant’s mental
state when he or she commits the crime. If the
insanity defense is successful, it exonerates the
defendant from guilt.
Mental competence to stand trial is analyzed at the
time the trial is to take place. If the defendant is
mentally incompetent to stand trial, the trial is
delayed until the defendant regains competency.
 4. Guilty but Mentally Ill
A defendant who is found guilty but mentally
ill is not acquitted but punished and treated for
mental health simultaneously while in prison.

Typically, the guilty but mentally ill verdict is

available only when the defendant fails to
prove legal insanity, and requires the
defendant to prove mental illness at the time of
the crime to a preponderance of evidence.
 The end
Thank you for your concern!