PROF MAURICE ONLY --- Assignment 1: Assault in the City: Criminal Profiling

Module 3 Overview

In Module 2, you learned about police psychology and the roles and functions of mental health professionals working with law enforcement officers. You were introduced to investigative techniques such as interviewing, interrogation, and polygraphy examinations that officers employ during the course of their duties. In Module 3, you will learn about two areas closely related to police psychology: criminology and investigative psychology.

This module will focus on criminal profiling, the use of the polygraph and other lie detection techniques, forensic hypnosis, and the ways to enhance the accuracy of eyewitness testimonies. When studying criminal profiling and forensic hypnosis, direct your attention to their validity and accuracy and the potential for introducing false and misleading information into an investigation. You will examine the role of psychopathy in criminal behavior. Finally, this module will focus on various types of criminal acts, including violent crimes and sexual assault.

Many students and forensic psychology professionals alike have become increasingly interested in the process of criminal profiling—the process by which information pertaining to a crime is utilized in creating a description of the likely offender. In your first assignment, you will discuss the techniques involved in criminal profiling. In addition to discussing techniques, though, you will consider the issues of accuracy and validity in criminal profiling. Given that profiling has had some major failures—consider, for example, the misidentification that occurred in the Atlanta Bomber case (Dewan, 2005)—issues of validity are important to be kept in mind. Following from the issue of accuracy and validity is the courtroom admissibility of profiling data. If you are unsure of the accuracy of profiling data, would you recommend its use in a court of law? If so, under what circumstances would you allow or not allow its use.

Another investigative technique in which forensic professionals are involved is forensic hypnosis—the process of eliciting memories of an event or events while under hypnosis. In forensic hypnosis, as opposed to clinical hypnosis, an examiner attempts to elicit memories for the purposes of identification of subjects or for understanding details of a crime. In your assignment, you will discuss your understanding of forensic hypnosis. Like profiling, there are significant questions of accuracy and validity. In memory recall under the influence of hypnosis, there is a potential for recalling memories, which are inaccurate or patently false. Once again, this raises the issue of courtroom admissibility. In conducting research on the admissibility issue, you will find that courts have varied in how they have decided the admissibility of recovered or refreshed memories. As you work on your assignment, ask yourself whether you will be in favor of allowing recovered memories in court.

Fieldwork Observation

Another important activity in this module is completing your fieldwork observation and submitting your fieldwork report. If you had no difficulty with your first two fieldwork assignments, in which you developed a list of potential placements and then submitted a plan for your fieldwork placements, the observation experience itself should be enjoyable and informative. Some students do encounter difficulties, such as finding that an appointment has been cancelled or the professional is no longer available to talk. If this occurs, remain patient and persistent, and rely on your backup plans. And, of course, contact your instructor if you need assistance.

Reference:

Dewan, S. (2005, August 25). Olympics bomber apologizes and is sentenced
           to life terms. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.
           nytimes.com/2005/08/23/national/23bomber.html

• Describe key processes and players within the legal and correctional systems.

• Identify and evaluate key data sources related to the populations served by the practice of forensic psychology (e.g., National Uniform Crime Reports, court decisions, statistics related to competence and sanity defenses, demographics of prison populations, etc.).

• Compare and contrast how forensic mental health professionals work within mental health, corporate, government, legal, and correctional systems.

• Examine sources of professional ethical standards (e.g., APA, ACA).

Repression of Trauma

Within the literature pertaining to victims of sexual abuse, there are contentions that have been hotly debated for many years. One of the most contentious issues centered around the debate is "repressed" versus "false memories." Some individuals in the mental health profession suggest that victims of child sexual abuse frequently repress the memory of the abuse causing it be outside of conscious awareness (unconscious). Some clinicians who treat sexual abuse victims argue that the emotional scars can heal only through treatment and recollection of the abuse. Researchers and practitioners have hotly debated the veracity of memories that were lost and later recovered through therapy. One side of the debate suggests that these memories are false memories planted by suggestive therapeutic techniques. Another camp argues that repression of trauma is normal and that these memories need to be retrieved in therapy to alleviate symptoms. Either way, both recovered memories and false memories appear to exist and can cause irreparable harm to the families involved. In part due to therapeutic techniques aimed at recovering the repressed memories, there have been a number of lawsuits and criminal trials in which accusers have cited their recovered memories as evidence of childhood abuse. Many states altered their statutes of limitation laws to allow prosecution many years after the memory recollection was recovered as opposed to starting the statutes of limitations several years after the incident occurred.

Criminal Profiling

Who hasn't watched a television show or a movie in which the psychology professional is called upon to help the law enforcement catch the serial criminal terrorizing a community? In this module, you will explore the area of investigative psychology. This area includes criminal profiling, the use of the polygraph and other lie detection techniques, and the use of forensic hypnosis as a technique for enhancing the accuracy of eyewitness testimony.

Criminal profiling, or offender profiling, is a general term describing any process used to infer distinctive personality characteristics, behavioral tendencies, physical and demographic characteristics, or even geographic locations of individuals responsible for committing criminal acts from physical and behavioral evidence. Different terms have been used interchangeably to describe profiling, including psychological profiling, sociopsychological profiling, or criminal investigative analysis. The latter term was adopted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) profilers to distinguish their procedures from those used by mental health professionals.

The numerous terms and lack of a clear definition have led to confusion both in the field and among the general public. Part of this confusion can be attributed to the relatively recent attempts to increase the professional standards in the field. Though the concept of inferring behavioral characteristics of perpetrators from crime scene evidence has existed for centuries, it has been relatively recently when scientific principles have been used to test and develop these theories.

Conclusion

At the end of this module, you will have an understanding about the differing approaches to the identification and apprehension of criminal suspects. Many suspects who are arrested for crimes are apprehended based on good old-fashioned police work, including activities such as interviewing witnesses and those with information about the crime and examining physical evidence. However, when police and other investigative agencies are unable to identify a suspect, they sometimes call on forensic psychology professionals for help. Through the process of criminal profiling, the professional attempts to use known information about the circumstances of a crime to narrow the field of potential suspects. While profiling has had a number of well-publicized successes and has become popularized in the media, it has also led to the misidentification of subjects in some cases. As a method for identifying suspects, its reliability and validity have not been fully established. Therefore, its use in court of law has been limited.

Similarly, validity concerns have been raised with regard to forensic hypnosis. As a method, forensic hypnosis was developed in order to elicit individuals' memories of crimes for which insufficient information was available. However, given concerns about recovered (or refreshed) memories—and due to concerns that some recovered memories may be false—the method has been scrutinized. No reliable method for differentiating "true" from "false" memories has been established. Accordingly, some courts have been willing to accept hypnotically recovered memories as evidence at trial, while many have not.

As you plan for fieldwork experience, you may want to consider interviewing professionals involved in law enforcement investigative techniques or forensic psychology professionals with experience in profiling or forensic hypnosis. Alternatively, you may want to interview professionals who have professional credentials pertaining to other areas discussed in this course. Regardless of whom you decide to interview, be sure that the experience will be stimulating and informative with regard to your education in the area of forensic psychology.