Forensic Psychology

THE SPECIFICATION: (click on links to open notes for each individual part of the specification.)

• Problems in defining crime. Ways of measuring crime, including official statistics, victim surveys and offender surveys.
• Offender profiling: the top-down approach, including organised and disorganised types of offender; the bottom-up approach, including Investigative Psychology; geographical profiling.
• Biological explanations of offending behaviour: an historical approach (atavistic form); genetics and neural explanations.
• Psychological explanations of offending behaviour: Eysenck’s theory of the criminal personality; cognitive explanations; level of moral reasoning and cognitive distortions, including hostile attribution bias and minimalisation; differential association theory; psychodynamic explanations.
• Dealing with offending behaviour: the aims of custodial sentencing and the psychological effects of custodial sentencing. Recidivism. Behaviour modification in custody. Anger management and restorative justice programmes.