PSYC 3402: Sex Offenders

Contents

1. 1. Sexual Offence Trends
2. 2. Types of Sexual Offences
   1. 2.2 Paraphilias
3. 3. Sex Offenders
   1. 3.1 Offender Types
   2. 3.2 Typologies
   3. 3.3 Rates
4. 4. Recidivism
   1. 4.1 Predictors of Sexual Recidivism
5. 5. Treatment and Management
   1. 5.1 Effectiveness of Treatment

This post contains information from the book.

1. Sexual Offence Trends

According to the GSS in 2004,

• Less than 10% of sexual assaults were reported
• Most common reasons for not reporting sexual assaults to police: victim thought it wasn’t important enough to report, the incident was dealt with in another way, they felt it was a personal matter or they didn’t want to get involved with the police.

According to the UCR:

• Over 1/3 of sexual offences were not cleared (compared 26% of other violent offences).
• Most sexual offences were incident of unwanted sexual touching (81%).
• Victim Profile: young (15 to 24) women and girls.
• Men are most likely to be the perpetrator (97%) and are committed more often by young people.
• Children are most likely to be victimized by family whereas adolescents and adults are most likely to be victimized by friends or acquaintances.

2. Types of Sexual Offences

Rape, sexual assault, child molestation (which includes molesters and pedophiles), incest, prostitution (the criminal code defines this as a crime but it’s not necessarily a sexual offence) and paraphilias (see next section).

2.2 Paraphilias

Paraphilia: this is a classification of sexual fantasies, urges or behaviours involving, nonhuman objects; suffering or humiliation of oneself or one’s partner; or children or other non-consenting persons that occur over a period of at least 6 months.

Here are a few types of paraphilias:

• Pedophilia: a sexual preference for children who have not yet begun puberty.
  • Related: hebephilia (preference for children 11-14) and ephebophilia (preference for teens 15-19)
• Sexual sadism: being sexually aroused by inflicting humiliation or pain on others.
• Frotteurism: an interest in touching and rubbing against a non-consenting person.
  • Related – “Chikan”: where men (in Japan) find unsuspecting, quiet, victims on trains or subways and grope them; because there is such a problem, there are designated women-only passenger cars during rush hours. (NSFW [not safe for work] video – they are acting, I promise… and there are pop-ups on this site; and SFW [safe for work] reference – you will need to be logged into scholar.google.com)
• Exhibitionism: an interest in exposing one’s genitals to an unsuspecting stranger.
• Voyeurism: an interest in observing unsuspecting people naked or engaging in sexual activity.
  • Related – “Sharking”: where men (in Japan and apparently Europe) will find unsuspecting females (awake or asleep) and either remove or partially remove clothing from their bodies – this sometimes involves touching; may also refer to ejaculating in public on unsuspecting victims. (NSFW video from Europe; I have no reliable SFW reference – Wikipedia removed the article – but here’s one from Prankpedia; as you can see, there is some debate on how this assault is defined.)

3. Sex Offenders

3.1 Offender Types

Offending groups are heterogeneous, that is, they differ in their backgrounds, offence types and motivations. This affects how we manage and treat them.

Groth et. Al (1982) – this is the most popular typology; it was based on clinical interviews within the context of trying to treat offenders in prison). According to this typology, there are two types of child molesters:

1. Fixated Offenders (the typical pedophile)
   1. Motivation: most likely to be characterized with pedophilia/ephebophilia, these offenders commit premeditated offences against children because they have not developed age-appropriate sexual preferences.
   2. Victim Preference: prefer extra-familial female (prepubescent) or male (pubescent/adolescent) and typically recruit vulnerable children and engage in extensive grooming to ensure continuous abuse. (Related: Sexual offences against children as the abusive exploitation of conventional adult-child relationships, PDF)
   3. Risk of Recidivism: very high and increases according to the number of victims.
   4. This is the closest real-world example I could think of…  (I assume he’s not an offender yet).
2. Regressed Offenders
   1. Motivation: similar to rapists, the act is not necessarily motivated by sexual needs alone – the offence stems from stressors in the environment which undermine self-esteem and confidence, causing them to act against children (which is a departure from their attraction to adults).
   2. Victim Preference: they tend to victimize children (gender depends on who is accessible) to whom they have easy access (which is why they tend to go for intra-familial or acquaintance).
   3. Risk of Recidivism: because they are not sexually fixated on children, with adequate treatment, they are at a lower risk of reoffending. They are capable of feeling remorse.

According to Canter et al. (2003) [PDF], there are 4 major types of rapists (in order of most prominent theme):

1. Involvement: where the offender attempts some form of intimacy (pseudo-intimacy) with the victim, including complimenting and kissing the victim, and apologizing for the attack.
2. Hostility: rape that is both physically and verbally violent (where the offender humiliates and demeans the victim).
   • The gap on the right of the hostility quadrant suggests that there are sadistic sexual offences but they may not show up because they would come up in homicide cases.
3. Control: where the offender is motivated by power and views the victim as an object to be controlled.
4. Theft: where rape is an afterthought to another crime (the offender takes advantage of the opportunity).

All of these themes are measured against three facets of violent: sexual, physical and personal.

3.2 Typologies

Massachusetts Treatment Centre: Child Molester Typology, Version 3 (MTC:CM3): this model suggests that child molesters can be broken down by two distinct axes: degree of fixation and amount of contact.

1. Degree of Fixation: the extent of their pedophilic interest (i.e. how much they fantasize about sexual contact and interpersonal relationships with children), high or low. We can then break this down into low or high social competence (how well they function as adults). This gives us four types of pedophiles (for this axis):
   1. Type 0: high fixation, low social competence;
   2. Type 1: high fixation, high social competence;
   3. Type 2: low fixation, low social competence; and
   4. Type 3: low fixation, high social competence.
2. Amount of Contact: this is the extent to which the person has contact with any children (ex: teacher versus plumber, high versus low). This is further broken down into the meaning of contact and physical injury – and within physical injury, the degree of sadism. This gives us six types:
   1. Type 1: high contact, interpersonal (to develop a romantic relationship);
   2. Type 2: high contact, narcissistic (to satisfy sexual urges);
   3. Low contact, low physical injury and…
      • Low sadism (Type 3 – Exploitative, Non-sadistic): they use only the physical force required to gain compliance from the child (there’s no sexual arousal);
      • High sadism (Type 4 – Muted Sadistic): they use force in order to satisfy sadistic sexual interests and fantasies.
   4. Low contact, high physical injury and…
      • Low sadism (Type 5 – Non-sadistic, Aggressive): violence is used to subdue the child (provoked by anger or accidental) but not sexually arousing; and
      • High sadism (Type 6 – Sadistic): violence is sexually arousing.

Massachusetts Treatment Centre: Rapist Typology, Versions 3 and 4 (MTC:R3 and MTC:R4): this model suggests that rapists are distinguished by four primary motivations:

1. Opportunity: antisocial, impulsive men who commit sexual assault when opportunity presents (ex: as an after-thought during a burglary) – these rapists are further distinguished by their degree of social competence (high or low).
2. Generalized Anger (Pervasively Angry): men with long histories of aggressive behaviour directed at women (sexual aggression) and men (non-sexual aggression). They inflict more physical pain on their victims.
3. Sexual Gratification: these men tend to plan their offence more than the previous two types; they are distinguished by their sadistic (overt or muted) and non-sadistic tendencies (and also by high or low social competencies). The muted sadistic was removed in the fourth version of this model.
4. Misogynistic Anger (Vindictive): these men focus their anger solely against women and are more likely to use physical violence. They are further distinguished by their level of social competency (low or moderate).

In the fourth version, the layout of the model (linear in the third) was switched to a circular model (circumplex) in order to resolve structural problems. The fourth model supports current empirical evidence.

For a great “animation” of why and “how” they solved the issues, go to slides 34-55 of the PPT, Integrating Assessment, Etiology, Prognosis and Treatment from Brandeis University. (Really, it’s pretty great.)

3.3 Rates

Offending rates can vary across time (frequency), crime types, jurisdictions, and sampling techniques. (Ex: in Nunavut, there are higher rates of sexual offending but they also police quite differently there; you can’t keep secrets in small towns.) Here are some trends:

• Significantly more men are accused of sex offences than women and the peak age is 14.

Victimization rates: only 5-20% of sexual victimization is reported to police. In a lifetime, 20-40% of women will be victimized whereas only 2-10% will be victimized (take this with a grain of salt: men and children are less likely to report being victims of sex offences). Here are some trends:

• Significantly more females are victimized than men; peak age for men is ~4 and for women, 13.
• 80% of offences are committed by someone you know (friends, family or acquaintance).

4. Recidivism

Majority of sex offenders don’t recidivate but when you are reading research, you have to keep in mind that the length of follow-up, inclusiveness of criteria, detection rates, type of offence and offender characteristics all affect the results – as time goes on, re-offending rates always increase. Here are some trends:

• Rapists and boy-victim child molesters re-offend at the highest rates.
• Recidivism rates increase when a person has any prior sex offence.
• Younger (less than 50) men recidivate at higher rates than older men.

4.1 Predictors of Sexual Recidivism

Risk Factors – a study by Hanson & Brussière (1998) & Morton (2003): (data project) examined and coded studies by quality of treatment in order to determine what individual characteristics increased/decreased the probability of recidivism over the long-term (risk factors).

• Results: the top risk factors were sexual preference, any deviant sexual preference, prior sex offence, treatment not completed, and antisocial personality/psychopathy (1998) or
  sexual deviancy, antisocial orientation, sexual attitudes, intimacy deficits and adverse childhood environment (2003)

Best predictors of sexual recidivism:

• Sexual Deviancy: any deviant sexual interests, sexual interest in children, any paraphilic interests, sexual preoccupation and sex as coping.
  • Conflicts in intimate relationship and emotional identification with children were both significant predictors of sexual recidivism.
• Antisocial Orientation: antisocial personality, antisocial traits and a history of rule violation (within the context of their child- or adulthood)
  • Sex offenders who had been separated from one or both parents at a young age were significantly more likely to sexually recidivate than those who have not been separated.
  .
• Sexual Criminal History: prior sex offences, victim characteristics, diverse sex crimes and non-contact sex offences.
• Incomplete Treatment
• Intrusive sex (penetrative) is associated with lower rates of recidivism.

Factors Unrelated to Sexual Recidivism: victim empathy, denial, lack of motivation for treatment, internalizing psychological problems, and sexually abused as a child.

• Denial was associated with increased sexual recidivism among low-risk sex offenders such as incest offenders but associated (non-significantly) with decreased sexual recidivism in higher-risk sex offenders.
• Beliefs supportive of sex offending – mixed results.
• Self-esteem – mixed results.

5. Treatment and Management

Here are two ways to manage offenders when they’re released:

1. Community Notification: where you inform the public that a sex offender will be released (includes photo, name and offence description in Canada)
2. Sex Offender Registries: where sex offenders register with the police upon release and must keep their information up-to-date (available only to the police in Canada).
   • Negative Effects for Offenders: may hinder their safe reintegration into the community (losing employment, threats, harassment, physical assault etc).

Incarceration: a prison sentence (regardless of the time spent in prison) does not deter sexual recidivism, though it does protect the public.

Three Approaches to Treatment of Sex Offenders:

1. Pharmacological Treatment: treatments designed to reduce sex drive through drugs. Some of these drugs have bad side effects, making them potentially harmful. Not a great option.
2. Behavioural Treatment: treatments designed to reduce deviant sexual interests and in some cases, increase appropriate sexual interests (ex: aversion – pairing deviant sexual stimuli or thoughts with aversive stimuli, covert sensitization – pairing negative thoughts with deviant stimuli, and masturbatory satiation – pairing unpleasant stimulation with deviant fantasies). Not a great option.
3. Cognitive-Behavioural Treatment: combines elements of cognitive and behavioural treatment to address psychological problems and abnormal behaviour; for many years, the dominant approach was relapse prevention (RP) (disadvantages for this model include: does not fit with offenders who want to re-offend; and has a negative tone, in that it emphasizes the avoidance of risky situation and the removal of risk factors (rather than providing them with motivation to change). Best option!
   • Good Lives Model – Comprehensive: goal is to help offenders identify and achieve healthy goals that promote psychological well-being which helps increase the motivation of offenders to participate and engage in treatment and reduce likelihood of reoffending.

You should note that research does suggest that any form of treatment (relapse prevention in particular) helps reduce recidivism, even if it doesn’t address the RNR principles (but obviously we should aim for these).

5.1 Effectiveness of Treatment

Research Trends: how to read a graph – if treatment rate is lower than the control (appears under the line), then treatment works!

• Most treatments are good (some have no effect)
• Most re-offending rates are low anyways
• There is a reduction in sexual and general recidivism when treatments are evaluation with credible designs (i.e. treatment helps).
• Barbaree and Marshall (1988) discovered that extra-familial child molesters who took part in community-based treatment programs fared better than similar offenders who did not participate (though not all research supports this finding).

Problems Assessing Effectiveness of Treatment:

• Sexual recidivism rates are low so we’d have to follow-up with a large number of participants for about 5 years.
• It’s tough to find an adequate comparison group.
• True experimental design would have to be used and offenders would be randomly assigned to treatment and no-treatment groups – this is problematic because the public would be pissed that we withheld treatment from sex offenders in the name of science.
• It’s tough to say what’s effective when we take into account that some offenders refused treatment (had they completed it, would they recidivate more or less?), some didn’t complete treatment and some just didn’t have access to the treatment.
  • Dropping out of treatment is highly related to increased sexual recidivism

Regardless of the problems, meta-analytic research suggests that treated groups show significantly lower rates of sexual recidivism (and they’re best when they incorporate the RNRs).

PSYC 3402: Serial Homicide

Contents

1. 1. Aggression and Violence
   1. 1.1 Prevalence of Violence (Trends)
   2. 1.2 Victim Characteristics
2. 2. Explaining Violence
   1. 2.1 General Aggression Model (GAM)
   2. 2.2 Evolutionary Psychological Perspective
3. 3. Risk Assessment
4. 4. Treatment and Management
   1. 4.1 VPP (Violence Prevention Program)
   2. 4.2 Evaluating Treatment Effectiveness
5. 5. Extreme Forms of Violence
   1. 5.1 Types of Homicide
      1. 5.1.1 Mass Murder
      2. 5.1.2 Spree Murder
      3. 5.1.3 Serial Murder

This post contains a lot of information from the book.

Also, relevant news on Robert Pickton and how the rest of the 20 (of 26) murder charges were stayed.

1. Aggression and Violence

Aggression: any behaviour directed towards another individual that is carried out with the proximate (immediate) intent to cause harm; the perpetrator must believe the behaviour will harm the target and that the target is motivated to avoid the behaviour.

• Hostile Aggression: impulsive reaction to some real or perceived provocation or threat (same proximate and ultimate goal).
• Instrumental Violence: premeditated and aimed at achieving some secondary goal, such as receiving payment (different proximate and ultimate goals).

1.1 Prevalence of Violence (Trends)

The following outlines some of the observed trends since the 1990s, focusing on violent crimes:

• Violent crimes and robbery have been steadily decreasing since early 1990s (though robbery without a weapon has been increasing slightly).
• Violent crime by youth has increased steadily since the 1990s.
• According to the General Social Survey on Victimization (GSS), only 33% of violent incidents were reported in 2004, with reporting rates highest for robbery and physical assaults.
  • Crimes that involve physical injury or weapons are more likely to be reported to police.
  • Victims are most likely not to report crimes because they dealt with it another way, it wasn’t important enough and/or they didn’t want the police involved (among other reasons).

1.2 Victim Characteristics

The victimization rates for men and women are similar but…

• Men are more likely to experience non-sexual violence and women are more likely to experience sexual violence.
• Half of violent crimes are committed by friends/acquaintances/family and 44% are committed by strangers.
• Victim Profile: young (15-24), single, going out in the evening (bars, visiting friends) and living in the cities (this is you, University student); the older you get, the less you are victimized.
• 25% of violent crimes resulted in physical injury to victims (30% of those were robberies and 30% were physical assaults).

2. Explaining Violence

Read more on Operant Conditioning, and Bandura’s Vicarious Conditioning.

2.1 General Aggression Model (GAM)

GAM: describes the process of our internal decision-making process during a social encounter. This theory is often discussed in the context of exposure to violence in video games and the media.
The process begins with two types of inputs:

1. Person (traits, gender, beliefs, etc) and
2. Situational Factors (aggressive cues, provocation, frustration, etc).

These inputs influence our internal state via three routes: cognition, affect and arousal. These routes are inter-related and can impact each other, influencing how we respond to the social encounter (aggressively or not).

You appraise the information and decide how you’ll act (thoughtfully or impulsively), which influences the social encounter, influencing the person and situation inputs! (Circular theory)

2.2 Evolutionary Psychological Perspective

Evolutionary Psychological Perspective: suggests that most violent people fall into one of three categories:

1. Young men (most common): young men tend to have lower status and fewer resources so it puts them at a competitive disadvantage compared to other men competing for the same resources and mates. By turning to violence, they can raise their status and increase their chances of finding a good mate. As they age, the costs of violence outweighs the benefits and they begin to look for lower-risk, long-term solutions (as more legitimate means of achieving status and success appear).
2. Competitively Disadvantaged Men (life-course persistent): these men are disadvantaged because they don’t have the skills or abilities to achieve status and resources in prosocial ways, so they maintain their risky behaviour throughout adulthood.
3. Psychopaths (life-course persistent): these men select short-term high-risk strategies as an alternate approach.

3. Risk Assessment

FYI: put little emphasis on this section for the exam. Focus on what they’re designed to assess – the more I know about a topic, the easier it is to remember the main points, which is why this section contains more information than needed.

There are three major types of assessment tools:

1. VRAG (Violence Risk Appraisal Guide): an actuarial risk assessment instrument designed to assess the long-term risk for violence recidivism in offenders with mental disorders by examining certain static risk factors (such as the PCL-R score, elementary school maladjustment, personality disorder etc), scoring them and placing them in one of nine risk bins (higher scores = higher risk).
   Disadvantage: not transparent or idiographic.
2. HCR-20: a structured professional judgment instrument designed to assess the risk of violent behaviour with 10 Historical factors, 5 Clinical factors and 5 Risk management factors. The presence of the risk factors is calculated and then we subjectively decide on the level of risk based on case-specific risk factors.
   Risk Ratings:
   • Low Risk: monitor and intervene with low priority and intensity.
   • Mid Risk: monitor and intervene with some priority and intensity.
   • High Risk: monitor and intervene with high priority and intensity.
   
   Results: moderate to strong prediction of violent recidivism.
3. SAQ (Self-Appraisal Questionnaire – no liquor): a self-report actuarial instrument design to estimate the risk of violent and non-violent recidivism. The questions fall under 6 categories: criminal tendencies; antisocial personality problems; conduct problems; criminal history; alcohol-drug abuse; and antisocial associates (higher scores = higher risk). Two subscales were added (Anger and Validity) in order to assess the degree to which anger is present (so we can address it) and how trustworthy the responses were.
   Advantage: quick and easy to fill out.
   Disadvantage: reliability of responses (offenders will respond in socially desirable ways) and answers may lack insight (a lack of self-awareness of their behaviour may bias their responses).

Mental Disorders: on the VRAG, mental disorders are considered a risk factor but on the HCR-20, schizophrenia is considered a protective factor.

Why the difference? If we focus on the entire population mental disorders are more likely to be violent than people without mental disorders. When a person feels like their self-control is overridden by forces beyond their control, or they feel like they’ll be harmed by others, they’re more likely to engage in violence (threat/control override).

But if we’re looking at the population of offenders or forensic psychiatric patients, mental disorders don’t predict violent recidivism but also don’t predict reduced violent recidivism (it neither increases nor decrease the likelihood of violence).

4. Treatment and Management

4.1 VPP (Violence Prevention Program)

VPP: an intensive cognitive-behavioural reintegration program for incarcerated federal offenders, emphasizing violence prevention.

• Target Group: designed for offenders who’ve committed at least 2 violent offences or are at a high-risk to commit a violent offence.
• Goal: to improve the skills of participants (self-control, social problem-solving, education, self-management) and subsequently reduce the risk of future violence.

4.2 Evaluating Treatment Effectiveness

Treatment is better than sanctions (we know this already) but the effectiveness of the treatment depends on three factors: who is treated, what is treated (incorporating ECTs is best, but you can read more in the Offender Treatment lecture) and how treatment is delivered.

Research suggests:

• Treatment for violent offenders is associated with lower rates of violent recidivism.
• Treatments that include anger management, cognitive skills, role play, relapse prevention, and/or homework are associated with lower rates of violent recidivism.
• Treatments delivered by correctional or probation officers were significantly associated with reductions in violent recidivism (as opposed to being delivered by psychologists or other rehabilitation professionals).

Read the book for why you have to be careful to draw conclusions from these results.

5. Extreme Forms of Violence

5.1 Types of Homicide

Homicide has been declining since the mid 1970s; western and northern provinces have the highest rates. Gang-related homicides have been steadily increasing since the early 1990s.

There are four major types of homicide:

1. First-degree Murder: murder that is planned and deliberate; or if the victim is a peace officer or prison employee; or if the victim’s death is caused while committing or attempting to commit plane hijacking, sexual assault, kidnapping, hostage taking, criminal harassment, terrorist activity, use of explosives in association with a criminal organization or intimidation.
2. Second-degree Murder: everything that’s not first-degree.
3. Infanticide: where a woman, who has not fully recovered from the effects of birth so her “mind is disturbed”, kills her child (because her mind is disturbed).
4. Manslaughter: murder committed in an act of passion or sudden provocation; or a death resulting from criminal negligence.

5.1.1 Mass Murder

Mass Murder: three or more victims are killed during one event, in one location with no emotional cooling off period between murders. The reason behind them is believed to be to take back control over themselves and their situation.

Additional Characteristics: these are not required but they are commonly present…

• Handguns or semi-automatic weapons are preferred;
• Primary victims are pre-selected;
• Not necessarily premeditated – debate over this;
• Occurs in public places with the exception of family killers;
• These are more’ understandable’
• The mass murderer is unconcerned with their inevitable capture or death and often ends in suicide.

5.1.2 Spree Murder

Spree Murder: where three or more victims are killed in three or more locations over a period of less than 30 days with no emotional cooling off period between murders. The murder is also accompanied by the commission of another felony, such as armed robbery (high excitation level driven by drugs or a mental illness).

5.1.3 Serial Murder

Serial Murder: the killing of three or more victims on three or more separate occasions over a period of more than 30 days with an emotional cooling off period between each homicide. This is the most commonly accepted definition.

Additional Characteristics: these are not required but they are commonly present…

• Three or more separate locations
• Premeditated
• Offence-related fantasy and detailed planning
• Motive: the thrill of killing another human being
• Victim is killed during a one-on-one encounter
• Serial murder is rarely a crime of passion or for personal gain

Issues Defining Serial Murder: the single most critical stumbling block exists at the definitional level

• Motive: should it matter and how? (ex: think about Contract Killers and Soldiers – we wouldn’t assign them the “serial killer” title, which varies significantly from instrumental murders) Tends to be an internal motivation (no explicit revenge, no monetary gain), normally curiosity, excitement, power and sex.
• Number of victims: how many? How do we determine this number?

US Statistics: we must take into account the definition problems mentioned above when we are looking at the statistics.

• 331 serial murderers were operating in the U.S. between January 1977 and April 1992 according to NCAVC (FBI).
• It has been estimated that 2% of the homicide victims each year are the result of serial killers.
• Estimated that 30 to 50 Serial Killers are operating in the US at any one time.
• Take-Away Point: nobody knows.

Canadian Statistics: less common in Canada than in the US; estimated range is between 5 to 30 serial killers active at any one time – perhaps because we have fewer cities.

Characteristics of Serial Killers

Profile of Killer and Victim: Exam Note: don’t focus on this for the exam.

• Killer: 25-35 years old, male, predominantly Caucasian (80%) in the US and normally kill intra-racially.
  • Common Background Elements: rejection, unstable home, physical abuse, mental/emotional abuse, divorce and an alcoholic parent.
  • Additional Characteristics: tend not to be highly educated or hold professional or skilled career, many are ‘police-groupies’, ‘street smart’, often use a ruse or con, focus on one type of victim (IVT – Ideal Victim Types), and have antisocial qualities/psychopathic (ex: charming, charismatic). They also have a criminal history and use alcohol/drugs (in order to cope with the dead bodies).
• Victim: usually younger and female.
  • Additional Characteristics: stranger, tend to be alone (occupational risks in particular, such as nurses, models, waitresses, prostitutes).

Geographic Variation: there are three types of geographically-based serial murders…

1. Geographically Transient (35%): where the serial killer kills victims in more than one state; these offenders are believed to kill more victims and choose this method to avoid detection (linkage blindness - ViCLAS). (Ex: Ted Bundy)
2. Geographically Stable (55%): these killers never leave their states or surrounding cities. (Ex: Paul Bernardo)
3. Place-Specific (10%)

Female Serial Killers

Female serial killers aren’t often included under the traditional definition of serial homicide even though they meet the requirements because of a few reasons…

• Not usually sexually involved with victims;
• Not viewed as physically or psychologically capable (they are viewed as nurturing and vulnerable);
• Not nearly as prevalent as male serial homicide, but has been on the rise since 1970 (17%).

Profile: they tend to be between 20-30 years old, Caucasian (97%), and a homemaker (Black Widow) or nurse (Angel of Death).  They most commonly commit Place-Specific kills (62%); tend not to have a criminal history; and at least 50% experienced some form of physical, emotional or sexual abuse.

Additional Characteristics: most common is poison; they don’t engage in mutilation, torture or dismemberment; they don’t stalk their victims; victims tend to be latent (elderly, children, and mentally ill). Fifty percent have a male accomplice.

The table below summarizes the main differences between male and female serial killers.

Exam Note: understand and list the differences between male and female killers.

Table 1. Differences Between Male and Female Serial Killers

	Male	Female
Monikers (labels the media give them)	Scary, intimidating names to serial killers	Less scary, friendlier names
Sentencing	Harsher sentences	Less harsh sentences
Geographic Mobility	Transient	More likely to be place-specific
Methods	Firearms, strangulation, stabbed (more hands-on)	Poison, shooting (less involved in the crime)
Motives	Sex, control, money, enjoyment	Money, control
Victim Types	Strangers, acquaintances	Family

Serial Killer Typologies

Take-Away Point: current research supports no typologies.

There are four major types of serial killers: visionary (psychotic), mission-oriented (demon- or God-mandated), hedonistic (for lust, thrill or comfort), and power/control.

Organized-Disorganized Model

Organized-Disorganized Model: a theory where the offender’s background and crimes can be classified as organized (self-control/methodical and well-planned) or disorganized (impulsive/psychopathic and chaotic) and that there is a link between the crime scene and the background.

Table 2. A Comparison of an Offender's Organized and Disorganized Crime and Background

	Organized	Disorganized
Offence Behaviours (Crime)	Planning Use of restraints Ante-mortem abuse Use of vehicle Control of victim	Evidence is left Position of the body Post-mortem abuse Keeps body No vehicle
Offender Characteristics (Background)	Intelligent Skilled in job Decent car Follows media	Sexually ignorant Knows victim Lives alone Lives close to crime

Criticisms of Organized-Disorganized Model

The bulk of the research suggests that most offenders fit both profiles to some degree (organized and disorganized). Here are 5 major criticisms:

1. Circular Reasoning for Case Assignment
2. Biased Sample: volunteers in a prison – you have to question why they’re volunteering and how they differ from those that aren’t volunteering.
3. Cross-Cultural Generalizability:
4. Prevalence of Mixed Crime Scenes: most offenders and crimes fit into both the organized and disorganized category.
5. Theoretical Underpinnings: the ‘classic trait’ model is used to infer traits and behaviours about a person in order to predict future behaviour; these predictions are dependent on stable traits which have been proven to be not the case.

And from PSYC 2400:

6. Ambiguous Advice: (Barnum Effect – cold readers) often the way a profile is written can be interpreted in many different ways.
7. Myth of the Expert: professional profilers show no significant increase in profiling effectiveness over detectives, and university students (and regular Joe-Blows).

And here’s the FBI’s response to these criticisms: because their profilers are in high demand, they believe that their techniques are justified – they also downplay the need for empirical evidence.

Attempt to Validate Organized/Disorganized Dichotomy: using 100 cases of US serial killers, they coded for 39 CS variables; they were interested in the degree to which they commit co-occurring crimes  (essentially, the likelihood that certain organized behaviours occur with other organized behaviours).

• Results: organized, disorganized and mixed all tends to correlate (~0.5) which means that there’s a whole bunch of co-occurrence across all types of behaviours (which means the FBI is wrong to use the O/D Model).
• Most offenders are organized but it’s the type of disorganized behaviours that distinguish them from each other.

Three Most Important Factors Used in the Classification of Serial Murder:

1. Victims: specific vs. non-specific; random vs. non-random; affiliate vs. stranger.
2. Method: act vs. process-focussed; planned vs. spontaneous; organization of the event.
3. Location: geographically stable; geographically transient.

Midterm Review for PSYC 3402

Contents

1. Measuring Crime and its Correlates
2. Biological and Sociological Theories of Crime
3. Psychological Theories of Crime
4. Risk Assessment
5. Offender Treatment
6. Young Offenders

Measuring Crime and its Correlates

• Defining crime
• Measuring crime
  • Prevalence rates, incidence rates, per capita crime rates (calculator)
• Ways of measuring crime
  • Official statistics, victim surveys, self reports
• Problems with measuring crime
  • Dark figure, winnowing effect, hierarchy issue
• Measuring crime correlates
  • Pearson correlations
• Problems with measuring correlates  (REC)

Biological and Sociological Theories of Crime

• Biological Theories of Crime (brief): focus on the primary causes of crime; what’s the evidence that exists in support of this theory; criticisms to theories. (No dates.)
  • Lombroso’s Born Criminal
  • Sheldon’s Somatotypes
  • Jacob et al.’s Chromosomal Theory
  • Twin studies
• Sociological Theories of Crime
  • Merton’s Strain Theory – 5 modes
  • Cohen’s Subculture Theory – not on the exam.
  • Becker’s Labelling Theory

Psychological Theories of Crime

Understand the theory in general, what supports it, criticisms, evidence etc.

• Psychodynamic theories
  • Freud’s id, ego, and superego
  • Bowlby’s theory of maternal deprivation
  • Glueck and Glueck’s work
  • Hirschi’s control theories – list BAIC
• Learning theories
  • Classical conditioning (know what the CR, CS, UCR, UCS etc)
  • Operant conditioning – the four types of contingencies; impact of the behaviour; real-world examples.
  • Eysenck’s bio-social theory
• Social learning theories
  • Vicarious conditioning
  • Sutherland’s differential association theory
  • Akers’ social learning theory

Risk Assessment

• What is risk assessment? Know how it differs from the past.
• Static and dynamic (stable/acute) risk factors; provide examples.
• How can we carry out risk assessment?
  • Clinical judgment, actuarial tools, structured clinical guidelines
  • Are we good at assessing risk? Know the general trends.
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of the various approaches?
  • Consistency, accuracy, accountability, validity
• How do we measure the accuracy of our risk assessments?
  • ROC analysis – what the AUC is, how to interpret it, how to interpret the graph;

Offender Treatment

• Historical background
• What works in offender treatment
  • Meta-analysis (know what this is, what an effect size is (magnitude and sign), how to interpret it).
• Punishment-based strategies
  • Meta-analytic results
  • Reasons why punishment doesn’t work (intensity, immediacy, etc)
• Principles of effective correctional treatment
  • Risk, need, responsivity – be able to list, define and talk about studies
• Specific Populations: what populations work with RNR.
• Effective Correctional Workers – 5 important characteristics (high quality of approval, etc)

Young Offenders

• History of juvenile justice (focus more on the YCJA)
• Youth crime rates and sentencing
  • Patterns but don’t memorize numbers
• Juvenile offending trajectories
  • Talk about two trajectories – their commonality etc
• Theories of juvenile crime
• Risk and protective factors: list them
• Interventions for young offenders: list and give examples
• Internalizing and externalizing problems: list and give examples

PSYC 3402: Young Offenders

Contents

1. 1. History of Juvenile Justice
   1. 1.1 Youth Crime Rates and Sentencing
2. 2. Juvenile Offending Trajectories
   1. 2.1 Theories of Juvenile Crime
3. 3. Risk and Protective Factors
   1. 3.1 Intervention Strategies for Young Offenders
   2. 3.2 Internalizing and Externalizing Problems

1. History of Juvenile Justice

• Prior to 19th century: little distinction between youths and adults when it came to charging, sentencing and incarceration.
• Juvenile Delinquents Act (JDA) – 1908: kids between 7 and 16 could attend separate, informal courts (where parents were encouraged to take part) – those who committed serious crimes could be transferred to adult courts.
• Criticisms: information of courts denied youths certain rights (such as legal representation); judges could impose open sentences and “delinquency” included acts that weren’t illegal for adults (such as truancy).
• Young Offenders Act (YOA) – 1984: recognized juveniles (now 12 to 18) as cognitively different than adults (and changed sanctions and accountability to be in line with this); also implemented Youth Diversion – where if they plead guilty, they could take part in an educational or community program.
• Criticisms: youths could plead guilty to avoid the transfer to adult court – though this was eventually changed to make sure serious crimes were tried and sentenced accordingly; overuse of incarceration.
• Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA) – 2003: primary intention is to keep juveniles out of court and out of custody by first encouraging police to use extrajudicial measures (ex: warnings or referrals for treatments); there are 3 major goals:
  1. To prevent youth crime;
  2. To provide meaningful consequences and encourage responsibility of behaviour; and
  3. To improve rehabilitation and reintegration of youth into the community.

Charged youths can no longer be sentenced in adult courts but they can be given adult sentences (so long as the Crown is okay with it and they are at least 14); judges are also able to use expanded sentences (ex: rehab. custody, reprimands, supervision orders); and victims are allowed to participate in the court proceedings. (Department of Justice or Wikipedia)

1.1 Youth Crime Rates and Sentencing

Though we see a general trend downwards from the time the YCJA was implemented, we have to acknowledge that other factors might influence this (ex: differences in reporting strategies).

YCJA seeks to keep young offenders out of the court system – less guilty offenders are receiving custodial sentences (27% down to 17%); 7% of total cases used new sentencing options (expanded sentences) under the YCJA.

2. Juvenile Offending Trajectories

There are two types of juvenile offenders:

1. Child onset, life-course persistent: not as common (3-5% of gen. pop.); behavioural problems begin in early childhood (ex: as babies, they are difficult to soothe) and they show more persistent antisocial behaviour later in life.
   (Oppositional defiant disorder)
2. Adolescent onset, adolescent limited: more common (approximately 70% of gen. pop.); behavioural problems begin in teen years (ex: truancy, theft) but they are few and limited; they generally stop committing crime early in adulthood (though a few persist).

2.1 Theories of Juvenile Crime

Biological Theories: there are a number of biological and genetic differences between offenders and non-offenders; here are some examples:

• Children with antisocial biological fathers are more likely to engage in antisocial behaviour (regardless of whether or not they were raised with the biological father);
• Antisocial children have slower heart rates (maybe that gives them a higher threshold for excitability and emotionality); and
• Antisocial youths may have less front lobe inhibition, so impulsivity is increased.

Cognitive Theories: cognitive deficits and distortions that occur in social interactions may explain antisocial behaviour; here are some examples:

• Antisocial youths tend to misinterpret ambiguous situations as hostile;
• Children with conduct disorder who have limited problem-solving skills come up with fewer solutions to problems and their solutions are more likely to be more aggressive.

Social Theories: Bandura’s social learning theory suggests that children learn antisocial behaviour through observational learning, especially when they see the behaviour positively reinforced; and violence in the media plays an important role.

3. Risk and Protective Factors

Risk Factors: these are the criminogenic risk factors mentioned in the Risk Assessment lecture; they can be from the following areas...

• Individual: substance abuse (especially from an early age), prenatal and delivery complications, and low verbal intelligence and delayed language development.
• Familial: poor parental supervision, low parent involvement, parental conflict and aggression, and child abuse, neglect and maltreatment.
• School: poor academic performance (especially in elementary school), low commitment to school and low educational aspirations.
• Peer: associating with antisocial peers, engaging in delinquent behaviour and receiving peer approval for delinquent behaviour.
• Community: witnessing violence and access to weapons.

Protective Factors: these are factors that reduce offending in children by: reducing negative outcomes by changing the level of exposure to risk factors; changing the negative chain reaction following exposure to risk; helping develop and maintain self-esteem and self-efficacy; and provide opportunities to children they may not other have. Here are some examples...

• Individual: intelligence, social skills, values and beliefs, intolerant attitude towards antisocial behaviour and being female.
• Familial: support parents, parental supervision, and secure parent-child attachment.
• School: commitment to education and extracurricular activities.
• Peer: associating with prosocial peers.

There are gender differences for both categories of factors; for example, males tend to be more exposed to risk factors and less to protective factors.

3.1 Intervention Strategies for Young Offenders

Intervention strategies can occur at three levels:

1. Primary Intervention - proactive: implemented prior to any violence occurring, with the goal of decreasing the likelihood that violence will occur later on (best approach).
   The goal is to identify groups of children that have numerous risk factors and intervene with these kids to prevent antisocial behaviour; they are targeting all children.
1. Family-oriented strategies: Parent-focussed programs that assist parents in recognizing warning signs for juvenile violence and/or training them to manage behavioural problems.
   • Criticisms: short-term success; parents don’t think they need to be there so these aren’t normally stand-alone programs.
2. School-Oriented Strategies: can include Project Head Start, social skills training for kids, and broad based school interventions designed to change the school environment (ex: Scared Straight).
3. Community-Wide Strategies: these are structured community activities design to increase children’s participation and community cohesion (ex: Outreach Projects).
2. Secondary Intervention: implemented once the violence happens and attempts to reduce the frequency/severity of violence.
   The goal is to provide juveniles who have had contact with the CJS or who have exhibited behavioural problems in school, with social and clinical services so that their behaviour does not escalate.
1. Diversion Programs: (popular) these programs divert young offenders from the JS and into school-based treatment programs (Criticism: may cause more harm than good).
2. Multi-systemic Therapy: (popular) these programs examine children across different contexts in which they live and target them specifically (targets: family communication, parent management, cognitive-behavioural issues)
3. Tertiary Intervention – reactive: attempts to prevent violence from reoccurring.
   The goal is to target juveniles who have already engaged in criminal behaviour and minimize the impact of existing risk factors and foster the development of protective factors (so we can reduce the chance of re-offending). The strategies in this category target treatment rather than prevention.
1. Examples include inpatient treatment and community-based treatments where the approach can be retributive or rehabilitative (ex: boot camps).

3.2 Internalizing and Externalizing Problems

Interventions with children often focus on emotional and behavioural difficulties; these can be divided into two categories:

1. Internalizing Problems:
• Examples: emotional difficulties that people suffer from (such as anxiety, depression, obsessions).
• Interventions: these are not usually the target in interventions designed to manage antisocial behaviour.
• Treatment: they are reasonably treatable but aren’t particularly predictive of antisocial behaviour.
2. Externalizing Problems: (more focus)
• Examples: behavioural problems such as lying, bullying, fighting (destructive behaviours); more of a problem for males.
• Interventions: these are targeted in interventions to reduce antisocial behaviour
• Treatment: fairly difficult to treat; these types of behaviour can develop into more persistent and serious antisocial acts (they are stable) and they need to be viewed from a developmental context.

PSYC 3402: Offender Treatment

Contents

1. 1. Historical Background
2. 2. Why Meta-Analysis?
3. 3. What Works in Offender Treatment
   1. 3.1 Effectiveness of Punishment-Based Strategies
   2. 3.2 Principles of Effective Correctional Treatment (ECT)
   3. 3.3 Effective Correctional Workers

1. Historical Background

• Extensive debate over “what works” in offender rehabilitation
• Early literature reviews did not present favourable conclusions regarding the effectiveness of correctional interventions
• Martinson presented the “nothing works” conclusion in his paper that evaluated 231 primary research studies – even though he later retracted his opinion.

In Summary: since the 70s, the meta-analytic approach has become more common.

2. Why Meta-Analysis?

• Meta-Analysis: statistical aggregation of the results derived from many independent studies in order to integrate the findings
• Effect Size: (the primary unit) this reflects the degree to which the comparison and treatment groups differ on a particular measure – the size of the effect.
• Positive Effect Size: reduced recidivism
• Negative Effect Size: increased recidivism

Examples (not real, except boot camps):

• Cognitive-behaviour treatment has an effect size of +0.20 – small reduction in recidivism.
• Relapse prevention therapy has an effect size of +0.60 – large reduction in recidivism.
• Boot camps as compared to nothing have an effect size of -0.2 – small increase in recidivism.
• Long prison sentences have an effect size of -0.60 – large increase in recidivism.

3. What Works in Offender Treatment

We’re interested in the impact of offender treatment and punishment strategies.

3.1 Effectiveness of Punishment-Based Strategies

Get Tough Strategies

Historically, CJS used “Get Tough” strategies to deal with offenders; these strategies vary in degree of severity from incarceration to intermediate sanctions (e.g. house arrest, curfews, and restitution), where the objective is to reduce recidivism through specific and general deterrence. (See video below for an example of a Scared Straight program - language is NSFW).

Results: “Get Tough” strategies are not effective only if our goal is to reduce recidivism.

Research – Gendreau et al.: conducted a meta-analysis of several strategies and found that the effect sizes of all of them were small and most of them increased recidivism.

5 Reasons Why Punishment doesn’t work in the CJS

Punishment is defined as a negative consequence to a behaviour that decreases the likelihood of a behaviour from re-offending. Because we know that punishment can work, why doesn’t it? Here are 5 reasons (PIINC):

1. Person Variables: many people (e.g. psychopaths) don’t learn via conditioning very well so punishment is less effective anyways.
2. Intensity: high intensity punishment can stop behaviour but it’s not ethical.
3. Immediacy: punishment must immediately follow the bad behaviour. (Hard to do in CJS – some people don’t get caught and even if they are caught immediately, they have to be tried.)
4. No Escape: escape routes (from punishment) must be blocked in order for punishment to be effective.
5. Consistency: punishment needs to be given every time the target behaviour occurs until it’s gone. (Hard to do in CJS – inconsistent sentences and crimes often go unpunished.)

Why do we keep punishing them?

• Public wants it, regardless of the empirical.
• Rehabilitation is viewed as soft and ineffective and it takes time to revamp current strategies.
• Some people don’t care about rehabilitation.

3.2 Principles of Effective Correctional Treatment (ECT)

RNR Strategy

1. Risk Principle:  correctional interventions should target offenders who are at high risk to reoffend (not low risk offenders).
2. Need Principle: interventions should target criminogenic needs (they should be dynamic risk factors that when changed, are associated with changes in the probability of recidivism)
1. Criminogenic Needs: can be changed through intervention – the Big Four...
   Antisocial attitudes;
   Antisocial personality;
   History of antisocial behaviour; and
   Antisocial peers – targeting these needs will have a great impact on the probability of recidivism.
2. Non-Criminogenic Needs: though the offender needs to improve in these areas, they do not affect the probability of recidivism.
   Increasing self-esteem;
   Focusing on vague emotional/personal problems;
   Increasing cohesiveness of antisocial peer groups; and
   Neighbourhood-wide improvements without touching the needs to higher risk individuals, etc.

• Responsivity Principle: refers to delivering treatment programs in a style and mode that is matched to the ability and learning style of the offender and their personality.
• General Responsivity: (learning) we have to deliver the intervention in a way that we know the offender will respond to – which means that we need to use cognitive-behavioural approaches.
• Specific Responsivity: (personality) we have to deliver the intervention in a way that acknowledges the individual differences that exist in an individual, which includes their motivation, personality and demographics.

Empirical Evidence for RNR Principles

The following summarizes the empirical evidence we’ve collected:

• Responsivity: results show that meeting responsivity in your treatment program is the most effective way to reduce rates of recidivism (with need and risk following shortly after).
• RNRs: incorporating more of a combination of the RNRs increases the success of the treatment program; not including the RNRs results in an increase in recidivism rates.
• Setting: programs offered in the community are better than in residential areas (i.e. offender facility).
• Targets: targeting criminogenic has better results than targeting non-criminogenic needs.
• Women Offenders: some criminologists don’t believe in gender-neutral treatment programs.
• Staff: must be motivated and well-trained.

3.3 Effective Correctional Workers

Correctional Workers should have the following characteristics to be effective:

• Relationships: Must be able to establish high quality relationships with offenders.
• Modeling: Must effectively demonstrate anti-criminal expressions.
• Reinforcement: Must approve of offender’s anti-criminal expressions.
• Punishment: must disapprove of the offender’s pro-criminal expressions
• Authority: must make appropriate use of their authority.

PSYC 3402: Risk Assessment

Contents

1. 1. Why Should We Care?
2. 2. Risk Assessment
   1. 2.1 Goals of Risk Assessment (CAT)
   2. 2.2 Three Major Approaches to Risk Assessment
   3. 2.3 Evaluating Risk Assessment Tools

1. Why Should We Care?

• The public cares.
• The media cares: recent news items.
• Risk assessment informs: sentencing (especially dangerous offender hearings), security classification, treatment needs and intensity, parole decisions, level of supervision in the community or prison, notification decisions, release conditions, etc.

2. Risk Assessment

Nowadays, we asses both risk prediction and management – prediction and management are correlated. Before, we used to stop at prediction (people were either dangerous or not). We have also expanded on our assessment instruments: different types of risks, how risks change in different circumstances etc. Risk potential can change over time.

Risk Prediction: assess the risk that people will commit violence in the future.
Risk Management: develop effective intervention strategies to manage that risk (prevention).

2.1 Goals of Risk Assessment (CAT)

The following is a partial list of the goals of risk assessment in a parole board (in addition to treating offenders as individuals):

1. Improve Consistency: risk assessors should come up with the same decision looking at the same sorts of cases. This is a legally, ethically important variable.
2. Improve Accuracy: want to be confident that the person they’re releasing is a low risk and the person they’re not releasing is a high risk.
3. Improve Transparency: their procedures must be as transparent as possible (to the victim, public, federal government, CJS, etc). Describing why you used the procedure you did is the toughest question to answer; it’s much easier to explain how and what procedures you used.
   • Accountability: clinicians want to feel like they’ve made the right decision about offenders.

In Canada, we use the follow 2 types of risk factors to assess risk:

1. Dynamic Risk Factors: variables that are related to recidivism (dynamic, criminogenic needs). These change with time, less convenient and less reliable, less frequently used but they are sensitive to change (with a level of intervention we can change the level of risk).
   • Acute Factors: change very rapidly, such as current level of substance abuse; your social group; getting divorced; losing your job.
   • Stable Variables: they change slowly over time, such as levels of impulsivity; attitude towards violence; anything related to inherent dispositions, traits and attitudes.
2. Static Risk Factors: these are variables that are fixed and unchanged (they simply exist in the offenders lives), not hard to measure (convenient), frequently used in risk assessment, can be reliably measure and are very predictive.
   • Examples of static variables: three categories – demographic variables, history of criminal behaviour, history of mental disorder. The presence of these doesn’t necessarily increase the risk of re-offence. (Examples: The time at which you first offended, family history of alcohol abuse, gender of the offender.)

Big 4 Risk Factors:

• Criminal History: static
• Antisocial Personality: stable dynamic; impulsivity, aggression
• Antisocial Attitudes: stable dynamic
• Antisocial Associates: dynamic acute and dynamic stable

Not Risk Factors:

• Low SES (socio-economic status)
• Personal distress/psychopathology (low self-esteem and depression)
• Fear of punishment
• Verbal intelligence
• Remorse/empathy
• Offence severity

Unique Risk Factors: below we list specific risk factors related to particular circumstances…

• Domestic Violence: jealousy, number of step-children, hostility towards women.
• Sexual Offending: sexual preoccupations, deviant sexual interests, intimacy deficits, emotional identification with children, stranger victims

2.2 Three Major Approaches to Risk Assessment

1. Unstructured clinical judgment: this is still sometimes used; where clinicians assess the offender with variables they think are important – subjectively selecting, analyzing and interpreting risk factors. Illusionary correlation – where the clinician interprets two variables as correlated but they’re not.
   AUC = 0.55
   • Advantages: flexible (variables can be adjusted to the offender, the context, etc) and idiographic (case-by-case – personalized rather than generalized).
   • Disadvantages: inconsistent (different variables might be used and analyzed in different ways) and has low accuracy (cognitively, we can’t process and identify risk predictors in a sensible way, beliefs, schemas about offenders).
2. Actuarial (statistical) tools: where we collect pre-specified risk factors and enter them into a statistical model that combines and weights them (the opposite of unstructured clinical judgment).
   AUC = 0.68 to 0.80
   • Advantages: consistent (everyone is assessed exactly the same way) and highly accurate.
   • Disadvantages: nomothetic (generalized – not taking into account the individual… especially does not include uncommon, rare events) and validity across different samples (sometimes people don’t do cross-evaluations so they don’t know if the tool is valid and sometimes the tool isn’t valid at all).
3. Structured professional judgment: where we collect pre-specified risk factors while adding in any case specific details (a hybrid of the previous two approaches); the final assessment is a clinical judgment that’s informed by empirical risk factors.
   AUC = 0.62 to 0.75
   • Advantages: flexible (allows individual factors to be important) and nomothetic-idiographic.
   • Disadvantages: moderate accuracy (clinical judgment) and less consistent than actuarial (because it’s idiographic).

2.3 Evaluating Risk Assessment Tools

Short answer: yes, we’re pretty good at it. We are primarily interested in accuracy (do they re-offend and do higher risk offenders re-offend more than low-risk offenders) but it has to be easy-to-use, consistent and gives us a good, fuzzy feeling.

ROC (Receiver Operating Characteristic) Analysis: gives you a particular accuracy measure (AUC – area under the curve) – the probability that an outcome (re-offence) will occur.

• Where we measure the accuracy of risk assessment across decision thresholds (where thresholds are determined by the tool you’re using to assess risk); there are four possible outcomes when predicting risk:
1. True Positive (Hits): correct prediction of re-offending.
2. True Negative (Correct Rejections): correct prediction of not re-offending.
3. False Positive (False Alarms): offender was predicted to re-offend but did not.
4. False Negative (Misses): offender was predicted not to re-offend but did.
• Advantage: ROC is the only procedure that allows researchers to establish accuracy scores that are not biased by decision thresholds (i.e., scores on an assessment tool)  or impacted by base rate (like the correlation)
• Base Rates: the percentage of people within a given population who engage in a specific behaviour or have a mental disorder; it tends to be easier to predict frequent events than non-frequent events.
• Plotting the ROC Graph: plot the hits (y) and false alarm rates (x); the area under curve (AUC) gives you the overall measure of accuracy (more area = more accurate) which is not threshold specific.

Methodological Issues in Predicting Risk: three main issues have been identified…

• Limited number of risk factors being studied
• (How the variable is measured) Official records underestimate the number of crimes actually committed (undiscovered true positives).
• (How the variable is defined) In addition to whether or not they committed a violent act, we need to include the type, severity and motivation for violence.

PSYC 3402: Psychological Theories of Crime

Contents

1. 1. Psychodynamic Theories
   1. 1.1 Freud’s ID, Ego and Superego
   2. 1.2 Bowlby’s Theory of Maternal Deprivation
   3. 1.3 Glueck and Glueck’s Emprical Approach (Not a Theory)
   4. 1.4 Hirshi’s Control Theories
2. 2. Learning Theories
   1. 2.1 Classical Conditionning – Method of Learning
   2. 2.2 Operant Conditionning – Method of Learning
   3. 2.3 Eysenk’s Biosocial Theory
3. 3. Social Learning Theories
   1. 3.1 Bandura’s Vicarious Conditionning
   2. 3.2 Sutherland’s Differential Association
   3. 3.3 Akers’ Social Learning Theory
   4. 3.4 PIC-R (Personal, Interpersonal and Community-reinforcement Theory)

Updated July 21, 2010:
This post contains notes from the book.

1. Psychodynamic Theories

Overview: crime is the result of dynamic internal forces within the individual and the result of early childhood experiences.

1.1 Freud’s ID, Ego and Superego

Most Freudian theories contain elements of early childhood implications, unconscious desires and a predisposition towards aggression and satisfying sexual gratification.

Theory: Freud’s theory involves the interaction between three elements:

• ID – Pleasure Principle: obtain immediate pleasure and ignore reality.
  Ex: young children looking for cookies!
• Ego – Reality Principle: satisfy demands of the ID while also satisfying demands of superego.
• Superego: Socialization process – internalization of rules and restrictions of society which develops primarily due to parenting; and Conscience Process and ego-ideal – morals (right and wrong) and socially accepted standards (i.e. aspirations)

5 Stages of Psychosexual Development:

1. Oral: (0 to 1.5yrs) child seeks gratification through sucking and feeding; primary conflict is weaning.
2. Anal: (1.5 to 2) toilet training stage; primary conflict is control – delayed gratification through bodily expulsion.
3. Phallic – superego development: (2 to 5) unconscious desire for opposite-sex parent and fear of retribution from same-sex parent; primary conflict is sexual: Oedipus Complex (boys) – gradually identify with father through fear of castration; Electra Complex (girls) (penis envy) – girls gradually identify with their mothers.
4. Latent: (5 to puberty) sexual drive is de-emphasized and same-sex friendships are developed.
5. Genital: (adolescence to adulthood) interest in genitals is reborn and individual focuses on intimacy with opposite-sex partners.

Crime and Superego Development: criminals encounter problems with superego development in one of three ways:

1. Harsh Superego – neurotic criminal: leads to pathological levels of unconscious guilt, typically over unresolved infantile desires, and criminal behaviour is meant to subconsciously invite punishment in an attempt to resolve this guilt.
   Ex: David, the guy who needed to feel punished because his father was an ass.
   Discussion: some people (police) believe that many serial killers fall into this category.
2. Weak Superego - egocentric: where the superego fails to regulate the primitive and instinctual needs of the ID; the offender is characterized as psychopathic – impulsive, guiltless and unempathic.
   Discussion: accounts for a large portion of criminals today; violent and serial offenders.
3. Deviant Superego: where the superego has developed standards that reflect a deviant viewpoint; parents advocated antisocial behaviour.

1.2 Bowlby’s Theory of Maternal Deprivation

Theory: where criminal behaviour is a consequence of early separate from caregivers (either before 6 months or before 3 years of age); this separation prevents effective social development from taking place and without effective social development, a person experience long-term problems in positive social relationships (they lack socialization/conscience). They develop antisocial behaviour patterns.

Research: Bowlby studied matched delinquent and non-delinquent children and discovered that 39% of the delinquent children (as opposed to 5% for non-delinquent) had experienced separation from their mother for 6 months or more in their first five years of life.

Evidence: support for the importance of parental involvement but it doesn’t necessarily have to be the mother or within the critical window.

Criticisms: limited empirical support…

• Methodological issues – didn’t necessarily match experimental and control groups for other key variables.
• Children can form attachments with more than one adult.
• Doesn’t account for children who were maternally deprived but didn’t become delinquents.
• How do we measure someone’s conscience? How can we prove it?
• Fallen out of favour but some of the more general concepts are considered more useful, such as Attachment disorder.

1.3 Glueck and Glueck’s Emprical Approach (Not a Theory)

Research – Juvenile Delinquency: the Glueck’s collected data from cross-sectional and longitudinal studies using matched delinquent and non-delinquent boys; they examined social, psychological and biological information for each boy from interviews from the boy, their parents and their teachers. They discovered that the primary cause of delinquency is a lack of proper parenting.

Criticisms: there is reasonable support…

• Causation/Correlation: Causal ordering of variables – what caused what?
• Methodological weaknesses: base rate of delinquency is not 50/50 (half of all children/adults are not involved in crime); they declared they could predict delinquency at a young age before it happened (ethical issues of labelling someone).
• Omission of key variables in their explanation, such as antisocial associates and misconduct in school.
• Good for examining the correlates of delinquency and non-delinquency (not a criticism).

1.4 Hirshi’s Control Theories

Theory: tries to explain why more people don’t get involved in crime; attempts to explain what controls peoples’ behaviour why people choose to conform to conventional norms. The lower you are in one of these 4 social bonds, the more likely you are to engage in crime (BAIC):

1. Belief: if you don’t respect the societal value system, you’re more likely to get involved in crime.
2. Attachment: if you lack attachment to other people (especially parents and teachers), you are more likely to engage in crime because you don’t fear ruining any relationships. (It depends on the quality and depth of attachment.)
3. Involvement: involvement in conventional activities, you have less time to be involved in crime.
4. Commitment: a lack of commitment to conventional values will result in an increased risk of becoming involved in crime (you have nothing to lose).
   Ex: you don’t engage in crime while you’re in University because you don’t want to make your sacrifices count for nothing.

Criticisms: largely supported but...

• Order of causation
• Attachment to peers can lead to crime (doesn’t matter what the attachment is).
  Today: the attachment needs to be to prosocial people.
• Some bonds are more important than others.
• Certain bonds are more important at different times and different genders.

Gottfredson and Hirshi’s General Theory of Crime

Theory: a lack of self-control combined with criminal opportunity explains all criminal and deviant behaviour.
Low-self control also explains root causes of crime in other theories (such as low attachment school and teachers).

Research: The level of self-control is thought to be stable throughout life and relate to the quality of parenting, where you need to:

• Monitor children’s behaviour;
• Recognize deviant behaviour;
• Appropriate discipline.

This leads to the ability to delay gratification; sensitivity to others; and are more willing to place restraints on activities.

Criticisms: largely supported but...

• Self-control is a key issue but not the sole cause of crime;
• Tautological problems (circular theory)
• Social bonds developed in adulthood can redirect offenders into pathway of conformity.

Criminal Opportunity Triangle: motivated offender; suitable victim (person or property); absence of guardianship.

2. Learning Theories

Theories that are based on principles of conditioning; they speculate that criminal behaviour is learned and maintained by its consequences.

2.1 Classical Conditionning – Method of Learning

Theory: where behaviour is learned through conditioned stimuli – when a UCS (unconditioned stimulus) paired with a NS (neutral stimulus) causes a UCR (unconditioned response); eventually the NS becomes a CS (conditioned stimulus) and results in a CR (conditioned response)

Stopping Crime: extinction – break the link between the CS and CR! Deviant sexual behaviour emerges as a result of classical conditioning – aversion therapy is based around this notion of conditioning.

Eysenk’s Biosocial Theory

Theory: suggests that there are individual differences in nervous system functioning, impacts the degree to which people learn from an environment’s stimuli; and NS functioning shapes personality an behaviour (extraverts and neuroticism). Criminals are deficient with respect to classical conditioning (conditionability) a process he believed was important to the socialization or conscience-building process.

Conscious Building Process:

• Child engages in act against or to something (CS).
• Punishment by parent (UCS) elicits a UCR where the child feels uncomfortable. This occurs several times until the UCR turns into a CR.
• The actual CS and thoughts of CS prevent the child from engaging in the original act.

Criticisms: some support for link between crime and conditionability (e.g. psychopaths)...

• Weak evidence for link between your ability to learn through conditioning and the overall process of socialization.
• Mixed support for personality predictions.

2.2 Operant Conditionning – Method of Learning

Theory – B.F. Skinner: where behaviour is learned through rewards and punishment; consequences that follow responses influence whether the response is likely or unlikely to occur; the four ways in which operant conditioning occurs:

1. Two types of consequences: positive (pleasant) or negative (aversive) consequences, which are subjective – depends on the person.
2. Two types of actions can be done with the consequences: add to environment or subtract from environment.

Comparing the Four Conditions of Operant Conditioning

	Added Action	Subtracted Action
Positive (Pleasant) Consequence	Positive Reinforcement: behaviour increases Ex: token economy – in schools, you get stickers when you do something good or not doing something bad	Withholding: behaviour decreases Ex: taking away privileges in prison
Negative (Aversive) Consequence	Punishment: behaviour decreases Ex: prison sentences (though research suggests that offenders reoffend at higher rates)	Negative Reinforcement: behaviour increases Ex: removing parole conditions

The above examples outline the ways in which we can reduce criminal behaviour.

Factors that affect the effectiveness:

• Immediacy: reinforcement (or punishment) must immediate follow the behaviour, otherwise we run the risk of reinforcing (or punishing) some other behaviour.
• Consistency: consequence must consistently follow the behaviour.
• Intensity: strong consequences improve the effectiveness (though you have to be careful not to suppress other desirable behaviour). (Responsivity principle?)

3. Social Learning Theories

This is more currently accepted within the scientific community. They were developed because learning theories give insufficient attention to internal mental processes (hearing and seeing leads to remembering and reasoning) and rarely speak to the role of social context in learning (vicarious conditioning).

3.1 Bandura’s Vicarious Conditionning

Theory: observation learning can occur through three primary contexts – family, peers and media; the more significant and respected the model, the greater their impact on our behaviour.

Research – Bobo the clown: more kids in the assaultive condition imitated the assaultive behaviour.

Results: current meta-analytic research suggests that antisocial behaviour is strongly influenced by both antisocial peers and violence on film, television and video games.

3.2 Sutherland’s Differential Association

Differential Association Theory: people are likely to become deviant if they associate more with people who hold deviant ideas. This is due to 4 major factors: who we associate; length and frequency of association; and how early these interactions develop in our development. People engage in deviant behaviour because of an excess of values and attitudes unfavourable towards the law.

• Differential association may vary in frequency, duration, priority (how early in life you encounter criminal/anti-criminal definitions) and intensity (how much you value that person).
• The message is more important than the associates.

Criticisms: considerable empirical support (especially around antisocial peers)...

• “Favourable” and “unfavourable” definitions (attitudes) are unclear.
• No way to measure these definitions.
• No way to measure frequency, duration and intensity.
• No statement made about how learning occurs.

3.3 Akers’ Social Learning Theory

Differential Association-Reinforcement: deviants are likely to engage in deviant behaviour if they have been rewarded (rather than punished) for their behaviour and if they associate more with people who hold deviant ideas.

Criminal behaviour can be learned through a history of associate learning, by being personally reinforced for criminal behaviour and by watching others be reinforced for their antisocial behaviour (both observational learning and vicarious conditioning).

Primary role models: parents, friends and media

Theory: general theory of crime that focuses on classical, operant and vicarious conditioning (through parents, peers and media) but the major focus is on learning in group interactions; criminal involvement depends on past and present rewards and punishment attached to antisocial behaviour and alternate forms of prosocial behaviour.

Criticisms: consistent support but...

• Causal ordering, especially in relation to delinquent peers.
• Too much weight put on peer associations rather than other group interactions (unfair).
• Aker says – kids hang out with antisocial peers and then criminal behaviour develops.

3.4 PIC-R (Personal, Interpersonal and Community-reinforcement Theory)

Behaviour is assumed to be under the control of both antecedent and consequent events.
These antecedent and consequent events signal various reward and costs for different classes of behaviour (which can be additive or subtractive). (Operant conditioning)

The controlling properties of these events are assumed to be from four major sources:

1. Individual: personally mediated events, such as rewarding yourself for engaging in a criminal act.
2. Other people: interpersonally mediated events, such as approval from your antisocial group.
3. The act itself: non-mediated events, such as getting away with the crime and feeling good about it.
4. Other aspects of the situation: environmental factors

Includes the Big 4; socio-economic class (as what influences behaviour by establishing the fundamental reward/cost contingencies that are in effect within various social settings and communities.

Support and Criticisms: indirect support from offender treatment evaluations that are based on principles derived from the theory. The same issues that apply to the theories this one is based on apply to this theory.