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 especially in the courtroom and with the police.

For example:

“Some researchers in Bologna demonstrate the spectacular hopelessness of memory. One morning in 1980, a bomb exploded in Bologna station: 85 people died, and the clock stopped ominously showing 10.25, the time of the explosion. This image became a famous symbol for the event, but the clock was repaired soon after, and worked perfectly for the next 16 years. When it broke again in 1996, it was decided to leave the clock showing 10.25 permanently, as a memorial. The researchers asked 180 people familiar with the station, or working there, with an average age of 55, about the clock: 173 knew it was stopped, and 160 said it always had been, ever since 1980. What’s more, 127 claimed they had always seen it stuck on 10.25, ever since the explosion, including – fairly excellently – all 21 railway employees. In a similar study published last year, 40% of 150 UK participants claimed to remember seeing closed circuit television footage of the moment of the explosion on the bus in Tavistock Square on July 7th 2005. No such footage exists”. [From Bad Science via Folens Psychology Blog]

A further example this can be seen here in this video where students at a US University are part of a staged theft. Watch and see how accurate they are and how our perception of an event can be molded so easily be events following an incident.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Loftus & Palmer have put forward the Reconstructive Hypothesis which suggests that our memory is a combination of both things that happen at an event but also can be distorted by events after – either other memories and events or more malicious leading questions during interegation.

They found that events following an incident can have a dramatic effect on a persons memory of that event.  As we saw in the video above one of the student’s memories of the offender was distroted by something as simple as the teacher saying that he had a ‘funny nose’.

How can we ever rely on courtroom testimony if this is the case? Can we really trust memories or are they too fallible?

Tags: Cognitive, courtroom, crime, loftus and palmer, memory, video

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 at fault?

In the first known study of its kind, University of Michigan researchers found that people with a family member or friend in prison or jail suffer worse physical and mental health and more stress and depressive symptoms than those without a loved one behind bars. Moreover, these symptoms worsen the closer the relationship to the person who was locked up

According to the study, those who knew someone in prison had 40 percent more days where poor physical health interfered with their usual activities, including work, and 54 percent more days where poor mental or emotional health interfered with these activities.

Should this be a consideration when deciding on a suitable punishment for an offender?

Many people believe that all offenders should be punished. Some believe individuals can change and can be responsive to rehabilitative interventions, either within prison or the community others feel that prisons should be more strict than they currently are (or at least seem to be if you believe the media).

There are many motivations behind punishments, some negative, so to reinforce the concept that the individual has done wrong, some supportive to help rehabilitate the offender.

Many would consdier these factors when thinking about the punishment of going to prison but it seems that we have ignored those that could be at risk in society – those related to offenders who are sent to prison.

Talking about the study into the effects of prison on ‘loved ones’ the research states: “Our study demonstrates that incarceration is not only enormously expensive economically, it also has public health costs and these should be taken into consideration. In the last 30 years or so, we have seen a more and more punitive system, one where judges no longer have discretion for sentencing.”

Moving toward a rehabilitation model may benefit both the offending individuals and society – but should we?

Kruger, D.J., & De Loney, E. H. (in press). The association of incarceration with community health and racial health disparities. Progress in Community Health Partnerships: Research, Education, and Action.

Tags: crime, prison, punishment

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 a review in 2001 the BCS has altered the methods quite a lot and these flaws have been remedied.

So, it’s important to keep up-to-date with what’s going on and not use the old versions of the BCS (soon out dated BCS’s will not be getting credited in examinations) and ensure that we are teaching the most recent version of the BCS – which is the 2006/07 one.

What is the BCS then?

The BCS is a continuous survey of adults aged 16 or over living in private households in England and Wales. The findings in this bulletin are based on 47,203 face-to-face interviews conducted by BMRB Social Research between April 2006 and March 2007. The sample is designed to be representative of private households, and of adults aged 16 and over living in private households. The overall response rate for the calendar year 2006/07 was 75 percent.

BCS respondents are asked about their experiences of crime-related incidents in the 12 months prior to their interview. In addition, the respondents are asked about their attitudes towards different crime-related issues such as the police, criminal justice system, perceptions of crime and anti-social behaviour. [From the Full 06/07 BCS pg. 22]

The British Crime Survey is a very important source of information about levels of crime and public attitudes to crime; but what actually does the BCS do?

• The BCS measures the amount of crime in England and Wales by asking people about crimes they have experienced in the last year.
• The BCS includes crimes which are not reported to the police, so it is an important alternative to police records. Victims do not report crime for various reasons. Without the BCS the Government would have no information on these unreported crimes.
• The BCS helps to identify those most at risk of different types of crime, and this helps in the planning of crime prevention programmes.
• The BCS looks at people’s attitudes to crime, such as how much they fear crime and what measures they take to avoid it.
• The BCS looks at people’s attitudes to the Criminal Justice System, including the police and the courts.

PDF 2006/07 BCS Resources

• Summary Booklet for 2006/07 Findings (16pgs long)
• Crime in England & Wales 2006/07 (full BCS – 193 pgs long)
• BCS Over 25 Years – commentary on the development of the BCS (32 pgs long)

Tags: 4Teachers, A2, bcs, crime, crime-victim, resources

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 reliable if we present each of the suspects one-at-a-time. In the A2 Psychology of Testimony area we cover aids to recall and recognition and this issue is a very pertinent one.

Much research has provided evidence that this ‘all at once’ approach can have many faults as witnesses expect that the criminal must be there and therefore go for the one that ‘best suites’ the memory of the suspect. With a sequential lineup the witness is not aware of how many people are going to be presented. Each suspect is brought up to the window and the witness must say yes or no. They do not get to go back to look at others again. Some researchers (like Cuttler & Penrod, 1995) have shown this to be a far superior and more reliable way to conduct lineups.

However, a recent report from the US has suggested this might not be the case:

In response to the problems associated with the traditional lineup, pioneering researchers such as Gary Wells spent years developing, researching and testing new lineup procedures. The two major advancements to arise from this thirty year research agenda were The Sequential Lineup, whereby witnesses view suspects one at a time rather than simultaneously; and Double-Blind Techniques whereby the person responsible for the lineup does not know who the real suspect is.

In March 2006, however, a study of an Illinois pilot program, also known as The Mecklenburg Report turned conventional wisdom on its head by claiming that sequential lineups actually result in more false identifications than traditional lineups. [From All About Forensic Psychology]

The Macklenburg report has come under criticism for being methodologically flawed and irresponsible. I have spent a few hours reading several papers which argue both sides of the argument and it seems that most of the research (over 30 years of it actually) supports the idea that sequential lineups are much better – but still police forces around the world are using the conventional ‘all-at-once’ approach.

Read more about this and eyewitness testimony at All About Forensic Psychology.

Tags: A2, Cognitive, crime, testimony

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 “Children See. Children do” which was actually aired in Australia a few year ago a powerful message is passed across to the viewer.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The message in the video is clear: children imitate behaviour that they see around them: talking on a phone, body language … smoking, violence, so make sure that you’re setting a good example. There’s plenty of psychology behind this and it can be related to many areas that we cover: AS, crime and health behaviours, and we’ll look at how this links in to it all now.

Although SLT is a concept that you came across in the first year in relation to children and learned aggression we can apply the same theory to criminality. In the Bandura, Ross, and Ross (1961) study it was found that boys would imitate an aggressive act of a male role model showing physical aggression towards an inflatable ‘Bobo’ doll. SLT simply states that a person will imitate the behaviour of a role model, and this behaviour will continue if they receive positive reinforcement of that behaviour.

Applying this to criminality, we can ignore all of the more complex arguments that would have us believe that criminality is down to biology, genes, neurotransmitters or such else – it’s simply a learned behaviour, imitated from role models. When a person sees a role model performing a behaviour and then receives positive feedback this is remembered. If that person has the chance to imitate this behaviour they will. If they then get positive reinforcement for this imitation then the chance of them repeating this behaviour is increased.

Although this theory does seem to account for many people becoming a criminal, especially petty crime and nuisance offences, it doesn’t take into account those people who become offenders without any apparent poor role models. For example, some crimes are kept secret (white collar crimes – fraud, embezzlement) so people wouldn’t have a role model to copy. This theory also ignores the cognitive element of offending: we all have a choice when it comes to committing an offence.

We can also see the links with health promotion and how some children may ‘learn’ unhealthy behaviours such as smoking or even just eating unhealthily (think back to the parents in those ‘Jamie’s School Dinners‘ TV programmes.)

Overall, I think that the video is an excellent example of using psychology to provoke awareness of a very serious problem.

Your thoughts in the comments: what do you think about the video?

You can get a better quality version (Quicktime) here.

Tags: A2, aggression, AS, Bandura, crime, crime prevention, developmental, health, health promotion, news commentary, SLT, video

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. This section introduces and organises some of the approaches that have been developed to inform crime reduction practice. [quote]

I’ve only had a brief ‘wander’ through some of the resources but it seems like a really valuable resource for anyone teaching or learning about psychology and crime. Well worth a browse if you have a spare five minutes.

http://www.crimereduction.homeoffice.gov.uk/learningzone/lz_learning.htm

Hat-tip to Louise on the OCR E-list for making me aware of this excellent resource.

Tags: A2, crime, resources, teaching, websites

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 chap in a bar, flirting with a young lady and one thing leads to another but the woman tries to stop this and the man continues. The ‘female version‘ puts the emphasis on the fact that you can get support if such a thing happens to you.

Det Ch Insp Carol Ashworth said: “Many young men, like in the commercial, don’t realise the consequences of their actions and I hope the ad makes them understand that they are committing a crime if they fail to gain consent for sex.”

Dr Catherine White, Clinical Director at St Mary’s Sexual Assault Referral Centre said: “These ads are a powerful reminder of how rape can devastate people’s lives and that there are excellent support and counselling services in place to help them. [taken from BBC News]

Will this work? Does this really address the problem of sexual assault that we have at the moment? Will men really be out in a bar flirting and flash back to this advert? I’m not too sure. But it does get the message across with a ‘tag line’ that is short, sharp and to the point.

Rape: short word, long sentence.

This is probably the most provocative part of the advert – well at least in my opinion.

The relevance here? Well we can think of it in terms of preventing crime or crime-victim interaction in the A2 crime unit.

As always your thoughts on the videos (male version & female version) in the comments.

Tags: A2, adverts, crime, crime-victim, news commentary

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 brain damage can cause violent behaviour – but that doesn’t mean that we can ignore the behaviour.  All of these arguments link in nicely with the freewill debate which is raging in the area of neuropsychology at the moment – and it’s studies and articles like those I’m discussing that are adding fuel to the fire.

Imagine this futuristic courtroom scene. The defence barrister stands up, and pointing to his client in the dock, makes this plea: “The case against Mr X must be dismissed. He cannot be held responsible for smashing Mr Y’s face into a pulp. He is not guilty, it was his brain that did it. Blame not Mr X, but his overactive amygdala. …

… If our brains are in charge, and bad behaviour is due to them, our attitude to criminal responsibility, to punishment (the balance between rehabilitation and retribution) and to preventive detention of individuals thought to have criminal tendencies may all have to change. ” [quote]

It’s an excellent article and very thought provoking.  Especially as he discusses the effect of this new ‘neurolaw’ and ‘neuromitigation’ on future courtrooms.  He does make an interesting point though (for any of you who are hoping to get away with murder with the old ‘it was my brain that did it); a fundamental issue within neuropsychology is that the brain is the person.  Therefore, arguing that it was not your fault it was yourbrain would be tantamount to staying “…it wasn’t me, it was me!”

An article well worth a read and keep your eyes open for “The Battle of Ideas 2007” where Professor Raymond Tallis will be debating My Brain Made Me Do It: Biology and Freedom

Hat tip to Lez Weintrobe for making me aware of this story through the OCR e-list.

Tags: A2, crime, freewill, news commentary, Physiological, Raine

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 found research that provides evidence supporting that this might not be the case for all psychometrics:

The Self-Appraisal Questionnaire (SAQ, Loza, 2005) is a self-report measure designed to predict violent and nonviolent recidivism. According to the authors of this study, published in the latest issue of the Journal of Interpersonal Violence, the SAQ has been shown, in several studies, to be valid in a variety of different “populations, settings, cultures, gender, and age groups” (p.672). [quote]

The Self-Appraisal Questionnaire (SAQ) is a recently developed self-report questionnaire designed to predict violent and nonviolent offender recidivism.

An interesting development – a psychometric that apparently controls for biases and social desirability.  I’ve google-d for a while and I can’t find a copy, so if anyone does I wouldn’t mind having a look at one. I’m still rather skeptical of this – I have seen many psychometrics that are used in prisons for both ‘normal’ and violent offenders and I haven’t found one yet that I think is valid in all, if any, settings.

Tags: A2, crime, methodology, Research

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 new research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and undertaken by academics at the University of Portsmouth casts doubt on their effectiveness. However, the discovery that placing additional mental stress on interviewees could help police identify deception has attracted interest from investigators in the UK and abroad.

When I teach this area we cover the Cognitive Interview Technique which has four parts to help elicit as much information as possible from the witness or person being questioned and it is structured in such a way that it should be possible to pick up on any anomalies which might signify deception. Therefore, there’s nothing new to the idea of getting witnesses to tell the story in a differing order.

Basically, the research suggests that putting people who are being interviewed under increased cognitive load can help identify those people who are lying. Telling a lie – especially an intricate web of lies to cover up a crime can take a massive amount of cognitive effort so by upping the stakes by asking them to tell the story in reverse order there is a greater chance that they will make a mistake.

There have been a few stories in the media about this new technique with the Times and Daily Telegraph which have also highlighted the use of this new technique in identifying those people telling porkie-pies! There’s two really great overviews of the current research over at the Deception Blog and Mind Hacks.

Tags: A2, crime, Research

“I remember Mattingburg’s most famous case: the case of the bloody knife. A man was found next to a murdered body, he had the knife in his hand, thirteen witnesses that seen him stab the victim, when the police arrived he said, “I’m glad I killed the bastard.” Mattingburg not only got him off; he got him knighted in the New Year’s Honors list; and the relatives of the victim had to pay to have the blood washed out of his jacket.”

Blackadder VI, Episode 2

In the crime section of the A2 course we study the psychology of the court room and look at the variables that could effect a juries decision and perception of the case that’s being presented.

One of the big issues in the UK when studying the psychology of the courtroom is that of ecological validity. In the UK it is illegal to speak to jury members while the trail is in progress, also there are many rules surrounding the reporting of trials and no recording equipment is allowed in the courtroom. Therefore, many studies have used different ways to research courtroom behaviour. The two strategies used most are mock trials and shadow juries, both have their limitations.

Mock trials are re-enactments of a courtroom in which participants will take part in a staged trial, each taking a different role, jury member, judge etc. A shadow jury is a group of people who will sit in (usually in the public gallery) on a real-life trial and make their decisions based on what they see.

There has recently been an article discussing the effectiveness of mock trials which centers around the idea that mock trials can’t predict the true outcome of the ‘real’ case, and points to many reasons why using mock trials is very problematic:

” … It’s obvious that mock trials aren’t predictive, if you think about it even briefly. The list of variables you can’t control in a mock trial includes practically every aspect of the exercise:

• The judge, who often will have a huge influence on the real trial, won’t be there.
• One legal team will be entirely different and the other probably won’t exactly match the real trial.
• While lawyers are typically so competitive that both sides try hard in a mock trial, the incentive for the “opponent” to win is different from the real thing.
• The mock jury usually won’t hear (and thus won’t like, dislike, or be confused by) live witnesses in the presentation phase of the mock trial.
• The lawyers will condense their presentation of evidence and documents — which will almost certainly improve the presentation, but also make it different from a “real” trial.
• The jurors’ relationships with each other and group dynamic will be different after a shorter trial.

Most important, even if you could control for everything else, the real trial will have different jurors. The groups are too small to ever be statistically predictable. In our mock trials we usually have three juries, who by definition have all heard exactly the same presentation. Almost never do all three juries rule for the same party.” [quote]

Therefore, this calls into question any findings from research using mock trials and conclusions should be taken into account when discussing the usefulness of that research. For more on mock trials and some of the reasons why they should be used pop over and read the ‘Mock trials for the wrong reasons‘ article.

Tags: A2, courtroom, crime, evaluation, jury

In the A2 Crime module we study Morality and Crime and study if morality is innate or something that is learned from those around us. Some psychologists (Kohlberg) have also developed theories of moral development which predict that we will progress through, and become more moral as we grow older in a linear fashion (test yourself with some of his moral dilemmas).

Recently, there have been a few different perspectives on this which have caught my eye: first, a study investigation if morals based on facts and knowledge, or are they grounded in emotions?

The choices made by patients with prefrontal cortex damage were compared with those made by healthy controls and by patients with damage to parts of the brain not associated with emotion.

The groups didn’t differ in how they made impersonal moral choices and non-moral decisions. Crucially, however, the patients with prefrontal cortex damage tended to answer more ruthlessly than the other participants when it came to 13 out of 21 personal moral decisions. These decisions tended to pit the welfare of the majority against the participant having to commit deliberate harm to others. Repulsion at committing such deliberate harm caused the control participants to sacrifice the well-being of the majority, whereas the patients with prefrontal cortex damage tended to make more ‘utilitarian’, logical choices, harming one person to save the many.

These findings indicate that, for a selective set of moral dilemmas, parts of the prefrontal corxext are critical for normal judgements of right and wrong. The findings support a necessary role for emotion in the generation of those judgements. This therefore suggests that if morals are learned they are stored in a particular part of the brain, other interpretations of this however could be rather deterministic and argue that morality is an innate ability.

Second, Discover, has an article discussing if Morality is Innate and Universal?

A healthy man walks into a hospital where five patients are awaiting organ transplants. Is it morally acceptable to kill the man in order to harvest his organs to save the lives of five others? If you instantly answered no, you share a near-universal response to the dilemma, one offered by peoples and cultures all over the globe. (Test your moral instincts here.) But how did you reach this conclusion? Was it a rational decision learned in childhood, or was it—as Harvard evolutionary biologist and cognitive neuroscientist Marc Hauser claims—based on instincts encoded in our brains by evolution? In his recent book Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong (HarperCollins), Hauser argues that millions of years of natural selection have molded a universal moral grammar within our brains that enables us to make rapid decisions about ethical dilemmas. (Read a review here.)

So, is our morality innate or learned?  I would argue that we all have the innate ability to be moral beings, however, our experience will shape massively how we experience and interpret any situation that we are in.

Tags: A2, crime, morality, Research, resources

The practice of jury selection, choosing those people who are going to be the ‘representative’ group of peers that are there to judge the defendant. Is this process becoming more of a dark art or is it a science based on the lawyers previous experience?

“Despite all the reforms of the latter half of the last century, juries in England and Wales mostly still do not reflect the broad range of skills and experience or ethnic diversity of the communities from which they are drawn.” [quote]

In the crime section of the A2 module we look at the psychology of the courtroom and how many factors can influence the decision that is made. What kind of influence can the makeup of the jury have on the decision though? Some would argue quite profound: “…almost every case has been won or lost when the jury is sworn,” legendary attorney Clarence Darrow once claimed.

There have been a few articles recently looking at jury selection and the effect it can have on the decision of that jury. In America, jury section is becoming a thriving business whereby consultants will come in and coach people involved in the trial:

“…Today, trial [jury] consulting is a whole industry that just begins with jury selection; experts also offer witness preparation, rhetorical coaching, refinement of arguments.” [quote]

Does scientific jury selection even work? Real-world success rates are impossible to measure. A true controlled study would require two parallel juries, one selected at random, one professionally culled. Demographics and personality indicators improve the ability to predict a juror’s decision only by 10 to 15 percent on average.  Scientific jury selection may be best at identifying the most extreme jurors, those most likely to drive the deliberation in a particular direction.

Obviously, if the jury is biased in anyway then this raises issues as to the reliability and validity of any verdict that they come to. It’s the whole idea behind trial-by-jury to be tried by a fiar and impartial group of your peers? If this is the case then should the jury selection be random? However, this itself raises issues of representativeness as the size of juries are relatively small (usually 12) and one adamant juror in a group of 12 could create a runaway jury that pumps up the award in a civil case. In criminal cases, just one reluctant panellist can hang the whole jury.

Tags: A2, courtroom, crime, jury

In the Crime module in psychology of the courtroom we look at what factors influence juries decisions and one of the studies that I use is the Castello et al. study which looks at how the attractiveness of a defendant in relation to that of the plaintiff may be a variable in a guilty verdict in a sexual harassment case.

More research to back up this thesis has recently been discussed in a recent BPS Press release which has found again that attractive defendants were less likely to be found guilty:

“The study involved 96 participants, 48 white and 48 black, given a fictitious transcript of a ‘mugging’ with an attached photograph of the defendant. The transcript content remained constant but photos varied depending on condition participants were blindly allocated to. In some cases the defendants were attractive and in others not, in some they were white and in others not.

… “jurors” were less likely to find attractive defendants guilty and were more likely to find less attractive defendants guilty on the scale used. An interesting finding was that ethnicity had no effect on whether or not defendants were found guilty. However, unattractive black defendants who were found guilty were given harsher sentences than white ones irrespective of the ethnicity of the “juror.”

Also, it has also been highlighted that this effect could be a cross cultural one. There are many other studies of mock-juror decision making and defendant characteristics, including attractiveness; the relationship is somewhat complex but it is usually advantageous for a defendant to be good looking, e.g.:

“A meta-analysis of experimental research on mock juror judgments was conducted to test the theory that jurors use characteristics that are correlated with criminal behavior as cues to infer guilt and to recommend punishment. In general, it was advantageous for defendants to be physically attractive, female … although these advantages were nil for some crimes. There were no overall effects of race on mock jurors’ judgments, but the effect of defendant race on punishment was strongly moderated by type of crime.”

Ronald Mazzella & Alan Feingold (1994)

These studies (and many others) show how easily we make impressions about a persons guilt based only on physical attractiveness. This has obvious implications when considering the validity and reliability of jury decisions. Whilst researching this post the most concerning finding that I found was from a US psychologists work on sentencing where she found that “…male murderers with stereotypically ‘black-looking’ features are more than twice as likely to get the death sentence than lighter-skinned African American defendants found guilty of killing a white person.”

Evokes many thoughts and I would hope critical discussions, don’t you think?

Taken from crimepsychblog.com (a fab blog relating psychology to crime: well recommended) – apologies for not pointing this out the first time Emma – very bad of me I know. :)

Tags: A2, courtroom, crime, Research

From a recent Guardian article (24/03): “Every child to be screened for risk of turning criminal under Blair criminal justice plan“. Is this the nanny state gone mad – should we soon be expecting double-speak and the ministry of truth?

“A new-style “11-plus” to assess the risk every child in Britain runs of turning to crime was among a battery of proposals unveiled in Tony Blair’s crime plan yesterday.

The children of prisoners, problem drug users and others at high risk of offending will also face being “actively managed” by social services and youth justice workers. New technologies are to be used to boost police detection rates while DNA samples are to be taken from any crime suspect who comes into contact with the police…”

It is hoped that these “who wants to be a criminal?” tests (no steal a phone from a friend, or mug the audience) will allow early intervention, thus stopping the child turning to crime, by providing them with support workers and creating preventative programs to tackle social exclusion and drugs.

Can we really tell who is going to be a criminal from one psychometric test?  I think not.  Saying that some child is going to be come a criminal at age 11 is not only massively deterministic but is morally dubious as well.  As psychologists we know about the effects of labeling and self-fulfilling prophecies.

Obviously, this idea has found itself facing massive criticism from other MP’s as well as the public.

You can find the full Guardian article here.  Discussion and thoughts in the comments as always.

Tags: A2, crime, crime prevention, news commentary, psychometrics

We look at eye witness testimony in the first year looking at Loftus and Palmer and investigate the reliability of witnesses and what can effect witness recall in the Crime module of the second year. Many studies have investigated the reliability of children as witnesses and this is even a sub-topic in the course; however, one issue that isn’t usually center stage is the reliability of older people when witnessing crimes.

In a recent University of Virginia press release (Dodson & Krueger 2006) it was suggested that:

“A University of Virginia study suggests that older adults are not only more inclined than younger adults to make errors in recollecting details that have been suggested to them, but are also more likely than younger people to have a very high level of confidence in their recollections, even when wrong. The finding has implications regarding the reliability of older persons’ eyewitness testimonies in courtrooms.”

Many factors that effect accurate recall have been extensively studied such as weapon focus, arousal, and the methods used to prompt, however age of the witness needs to be carefully considered when deciding on the reliability of testimony. We need to make sure that our attention isn’t fixated at the other end of the chronological spectrum looking at children as witnesses.

Reference
Dodson, C. S., & Krueger, L. E. (2006). I misremember it well: Why older adults are unreliable eyewitnesses. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 13, 770-775.

Technorati Tags: Courtroom, Crime, Eyewitness

Tags: A2, courtroom, crime, loftus and palmer, memory, Research