A01 defining and measuring crime
Defining:
1. Cultural issues
2. Historical issues
Measuring:
1. Official stats: reported and recorded, punished by home office
2. Victim surveys: randomly selected households, office of national stats
3. Offender surveys: target groups of likely offenders based on risk factors (background, age), self-report, looks at context of offence
A03 measuring crime
Official stats:
- 75% dark figure, Nottinghamshire thefts under £10
Victim surveys:
+ official stats said 2% decrease, VS said 3% increase.
- Though misremberance of events
Offender surveys:
+provide insight into context
- but may not report serious crimes and only targets certain groups
Top down A01 (American)
A03 topology approach
Bottom up A01
Geographical profiling A01
A03 bottom up
Atavistic A01
Lombroso (atavism) A03
Genetic explanations A01
Genetic:
Neural explanations (inc on genetic page) A01
A03 genetic and neural
A03 genetic and neural: biological reductionism/ determinism
Reductionism:
1. Although crime runs in families so does mental illness and poverty.
2. Also not 100% concordance
Determinism:
1. Legal system based on moral responsibility
2. If In fact biologically determined then no free will over behaviour
3. Raises ethical issues
What are the 4 psychological explanations
What are the 4 ways of dealing with offender behaviour
What are the 2 biological explaintions
Eysencks criminal personality A01
Crim personality (Eysencks theory) A03
Kholbergs moral reasoning A01
Cognitive distortions A01
Cognitive distortions: errors or biased informational processing
Hostile attribution bias: neutral situation as hostile. 55 crims, images of ambiguous faces, signif more likely to see as hostile than controls
Minimisation: out of 26 rapists 55% denied any offence at all, 40% minilasied the crime
Kohlberg A03
+ for levels of moral reasoning
1. Over 300 male/female controls compared with 120 convicts. When given 11 moral dilemmas in SRMSF, group showed less mature moral reasoning
AO3 for cognitive distortions
1. Application of research in rehabilitation of Sex offenders. Made to face up to crime, correlated with reduced reoffending.
Also key in AM
Both are descriptive not explanatory
What does SRMSF stand for
11 moral dilemmas
Differential association A01
A03 differential association