PsychBLOG.co.uk

We all like to think that we have good memories for events and that if we were to be witness to a crime or incident that we would be able to recall in detail the events of the day. However our memories are not that reliable at all.  This has implications on many levels, but [...]

At this very moment in time there are 82,813 people in prisons in the UK (weekly updates of prison UK populations) whereas in February 2004 there were only 69,122. We are punishing more-and-more people every year with prison but is it effective (a topic for another post) and does it only punish those who were [...]

Within Crime-Victim interaction we look at the ‘fear of crime’ and many students learn about the British Crime Survey as part of this. More-and-more so students are using out-dated versions of the BCS (like pre-2000 which seems to be in many text books) which are methodologically flawed in their delivery. Following [...]

There has been quite a bit of research on the effectiveness of police lineups and whether presentation of the ’suspects’ could affect the reliability of the outcome (see here for a huge list of research). One of the big questions is should we show all the suspects together (as above) or is identification more [...]

The influence of our role models on behaviour is something of particular interest to psychologists and we study it through the entire psychology course. More specifically we look at the research conducted by Bandura and his work into Social Learning Theory (SLT) in the imitation of aggression. In a television advertisement called [...]

The A2 Crime module covers a wide range of areas and the Home Office has an excellent resource which could come of use to you for lessons or just to get a little wider ranging information on crime theories, models and practice.
Over the past 2 decades our understanding of crime and crime reduction has grown. [...]

Manchester Police have just released a new set of television ads to raise awareness of rape and to give support to those who have been the victim of it. The two adverts, one from a man’s perspective the other from the woman’s are aimed separately at men and women.
The ‘male version‘ shows a young [...]

This is a review of an article from The Times – The dubious rise of ‘neurolaw.  The article links in well with the Raine et al. study.  I’ve written before about studies looking at the effect of brain damage on behaviour and if this could mitigate criminal behaviour and it seems that in some cases [...]

When researching crime (and most other things come to think about it) in psychology we tend to have to resort to self-report measures. The gut reaction to any self-report measure when thinking about evaluation issues is that the participants may give socially desirable answers – especially when asking about offending behaviour.
The Deception Blog has recently [...]

In the A2 Crime course we look at Interview and Negotiation techniques and investigate which ones are effective at soliciting the most information out of witnesses to an offence.
Shifting uncomfortably in your seat? Stumbling over your words? Can’t hold your questioner’s gaze? Police interviewing strategies place great emphasis on such visual and speech-related cues, although [...]