The Crime Assignments

How to do the crime psychology assignments

Assignment 14 is quite straightforward.  Describe and discuss (evaluate in other words) influences on eye-witness testimony (EWT);  do the same for one of the other topics.  (ID Parades,  Criminal Profiling and Police Interviews.)

EWT is susceptible to many influences, but really I should stick to those two or three that have most information available.  Such as the effect of leading questions, which will allow you to introduce the Loftus and Palmer accident research. 

   

Or the effect of culture and race,  demonstrated by Allport on the Subway train.  Or weapon focus and the effect of emotion. 

What about the problems interviewing children or the aged?  I gave out a couple of handouts which could help, but Gross is very good – see the chapter on Cognition and Law in either the 5th or 6th edition.

Of the other three, profiling and police interviews are the best to choose from.  Rember that evaluation is the important thing.  How much use is profiling?  As psychologists, you will probably guess that it isn’t that good!  What about the Cognitive Interview?  Again, what research has been done to  test its efficiency?  And don’t be frightened of criticising the police if it is shown that they can’t interview for toffee!     

And now for your break...

Assignment 15 is, I think more interesting.  You will find information in a variety of places, but a good source is the jury handout pack (4 sheets from the diagrams book).

For the first part, straightforward description and evaluation.  Look for research that says the prettier, more attractive the defendant, or the victim or for that matter any witness the more sympathetic the jury.  Look for anything else that at the psychological level may sway a jury.  Sections 24.1 and 24.2 in the handout are really helpful here.  Be careful not to get carried away!     

The second part asks for an analysis of the way the jury would or could have been affected in the trial of Louise Woodward.  Some of you may remember this at the time it was all unfolding.   There are loads of suggestions and allegations in the article that can be examined psychologically, including e.g. the ethnicity of the victim and family, the order of presentation of evidence and many others which are mentioned and described in the handout.  Also, there is the Angles on criminal psychology book by Diana Dwyer, available in the library and other resources in M41.  You can also ask me.  


And guess what - only one more assignment after this...  By the way, don't do Assignment 16 until you've seen me, and definitely don't do assignment 17!!    

                                        

Insanity - What is it?

Insanity - what is it?

Basically, this is about Assignment 8.  What is madness?  More to the point, how can we define abnormal behaviour?  The assignment asks for you to choose three out of the five, describe/explain and evaluate them.  You know how to do this by now.  You see, the assignment appeared at the beginning of last year's course and the headings in task 2 are designed to help people evaluate.  So you can set the assignment out as a standard piece of writing - describe/evaluate one approach, describe evaluate second approach, describe evaluate third approach, finish off with perhaps a paragraph that brings it all together.

You can actually find all that you need to achieve a pass in the Class Notebook and the handout for DSM IV.  This mindmap is on the website  - in fact, look at the abnormal psychology page.    There's a fair bit of help there.  Gross is helpful.  Used the index to find things like classification systems.  About 750 - 1000 words if you feel you need a ball-park figure.  Remember that an opinion expressed in a text book is perfectly OK as a reference of supporting or contradicting evidence for an approach.

But you can in fact find much more outside the website.  For example, if you choose to discuss classification methods, then you should include discussion on Rosenhahn (1973) "On being sane in insane places".    

The picture is of Bedlam, a famous picture from Rakes Progress.  It is not a picture of room M41 on a bad day.

Meanwhile, here is a picture about as far from Bedlam as you can get.  You could try doing your assignment there, but I expect the laptop would fall through the hammock.