Criminals especially those who are going through court proceedings may not feel comfortable disclosing certain information to someone they know to be a researcher. Typically most researchers are similar to police in characteristics, white and middle class, so acting covertly will most likely increase comfortability between the researcher and criminals, allowing more valid research to be acquired. Similarly judges and police may alter their behaviours if they know the researchers true identity in a bid to disguise any flaws in their practices and unjustified law enforcing. However, Positivists would argue that data collected by covert observations aren’t at all valid, they are biased as they are based off of the observer’s interpretations. This could be especially true in the case of researching court proceedings as it is unlikely many researchers have gone through one themselves.
However the FBI calls its form of profiling “criminal investigative analysis”; another profiler, a prominent forensic psychologist, calls his work “investigative psychology”; and another calls his “crime action profiling” only further proving the lack of agreement in terminology (8). Often a criminal profiler is thought to be a perceptive unknown or an unconventional intellectual who can solve crimes by trusting a combination of intuition and strong insight into the criminal mind (9). Criminal profiling is a method used by criminal investigators to develop profiles for murders, rapists, and other violent criminals who haven't been arrested yet (4). Profilers rely on perceptive trail and error to predict others’ behavior. They use the growing knowledge from psychiatry, psychology, criminology, and sociology, and utilize each in the field of criminal profiling.
Coerced Confessions Critical issues in forensic psychology are the vulnerabilities and interrogative circumstances which are two key aspects that have been examined by psychologists in relation to false confessions. Police cadets are trained to read body language when interrogating a suspect, and pinpoint whether the suspect is being truthful or lying to them. But relying on how nervous a suspect when being interrogated shouldn’t determined whether he is lying, because most suspect are very intimidated by cops when brought to a room for questioning. In this paper I will be discussing how suspects when interrogated often lead themselves to digging their grave, even though they are in fact innocent. False confessions can be classified as the "coerced-compliant" or "coerced-internalized".
Psychopaths are productive in society, have elements of emotion, and share correlated brain patterns with the “normal” people that are classified as non-psychopathic. Most psychopaths aren’t noticed until they commit a crime or until they make news headlines that read something like, “Violent Psychopath Accused of Murdering 12”. However, there are some psychopaths that carry on “normal” lives while maintaining stable jobs. Not every psychopath is a Jeffery Dahmer or Ted Bundy, and surprisingly psychopaths can be useful in many different professions of today’s society. A psychopath is classified as someone who lacks empathy and a conscience.
‘Outline and evaluate research into eyewitness testimony.’ Eyewitness testimonies are often used as evidence and are an important part of the criminal process. Witnesses to crimes may be perceived to be honest and well intention-ed when giving evidence, however psychological research has shown that eyewitness testimonies may not be as truthful and helpful as it is widely perceived thus debating how valid eyewitness testimonies are. There are many factors that affect eyewitness testimonies, one of the main factors is the role of anxiety. One of the most widely known studies into anxiety affecting eyewitness testimony is Loftus’ study to find out if anxiety during a witnessed incident affects the accuracy of later identification. Within this study participants were exposed to two situations, one a low-key discussion in a laboratory about an equipment failure with a person then emerging from the laboratory holding a pen with grease on their hands.
Introduction: Criminological theories are paradoxically fascinating, frustrating, and nebulous. They are fascinating in that almost everyone has an opinion, sometimes a very strong opinion, on what causes crime. They are frustrating because crime and human nature are too complex for one theory to explain them accurately and comprehensively. Therefore, when one studies criminological theories, criminology as a whole becomes nebulous, confusing, and incomplete. However, choice theories of crime resonate with a conservative person’s sense of right and wrong, common sense, and ability to understand crime causation so that it is not viewed as irrelevant, impractical, academic drivel.
Both prosecutors and law enforcement, sometimes knowingly ignore this behavior, in hopes that their testimony will secure a conviction in their favor. Law enforcement who work closely with the crime lab in their department will often try to influence Pathologists to tailor their analysis and testing of evidence to suit their needs in assurance of a solid conviction. Consequently, Pathologists are criminally mishandling and presenting false testimony of the evidence and tests. Regardless of their underpinning of excuses, we must find some means of addressing these issues on a broader scope within the criminal justice system. Dr. Ralph Erdmann is a prime example of one who would
Eyewitness testimony can leave a deep and lasting impression on the jury, perjury is a harshly frowned upon crime as lying whilst under oath is practically a mockery of the integrity and legitimacy of the court system. However perjury is defined as the act of knowingly making a false statement while under oath – determining the truth is made difficult enough without the added possibility that the witness may not actually be aware of inaccuracies in their testimony. Eye witness testimony is evidence of what a witness believes to have occurred and although eye witness testimonies aid in making a conviction creditable they are often backed up by a lot of supporting evidence as an eye witness testimony can be harmful to a conviction as memories change. The growing length of time, the emotion experienced before and after the event and the pace of which the event happened can alter the memories drastically, there is also the chance that memories can be altered by third parties, enhanced features and false claims; the list above are just some reason for why our court system doesn’t base conviction on eye witness claims and try to find as much supporting evidence as possible to from a creditable conviction. One of the first identifiable flaws in the case of James Taylor is that his conviction was based on eye witness testimonies that throughout the case had been inconsistent and altered after the witnesses were shown a photo of James Taylor several months after the crime had occurred and given information about his past however the witnesses remained unsure and were left with the possibility that it could’ve been him.
In this speech I am going to tell you about the types of insanity defense that are used in court cases, the process that goes into verifying a criminals sanity, and the issues that come about after a plea is entered. Now I’m going to explain what insanity is and the different types associate with it. The insanity defense plea as defined in law journals is a defense that’s asserted by the accused in a criminal prosecution as a way to avoid liability for a commission of a crime because at the time of the crime the person did not appreciate the nature or quality or wrongfulness of the acts. Cognitive insanity is the most common variation of an insanity defense that goes through the court system. This is where the defendant during the time of the crime suffered from a mental disease that impaired his/her psychological ability to see the wrongfulness of the act they committed.
The police used severe beating and torture for years to obtain a confession out of a suspect and this type of activity was known as the “third degree” but now that times have changed mainly because of the Miranda warning, what is used most is deception. The police used the “third degree” type of coercion to get a suspect to admit to a crime and at times this included innocent suspects. This type of coercion would range from depriving a suspect of food, water, restroom breaks, physical abuse, to violating some of their other civil liberties. Here are some small details about Skolnick and Leo