Criminal Psychology
Understanding the Criminal Mind
Class Activity
• For the following items, write a description of a life event
related to the description.
– Train
– Ice
– House
– Meeting
– Machine
– Road
– Rain
– Tunnel
Next Step
• For each experience you wrote down, rate whether the
experience was pleasant or unpleasant
• After you have rated all experiences, tally the total
number of pleasant and unpleasant experiences
Final Step
• How have you felt today?
– Happy? Sad? Somewhat depressed?
– The number of pleasant vs. unpleasant experiences
you recalled should be related to your mood today.
– When we are depressed, we remember more
unpleasant than pleasant events.
Medical Student Syndrome
Students can come to believe that they suffer from
almost all of the disorders with which they are made
familiar because the symptoms of disorders usually
overlap with experiences that are universal to the
human condition. For example, feelings of sadness are
not uncommon among people with healthy minds, even
though they are a symptom of depression.
Diagnosis
•
Use of DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders) to classify all psychological disorders and normal
behavior
– Uses a 5 axis system
– Axis 1: lists diagnosis criteria for all classified disorders
– Axis 2: lists long running personality disorders (autism) and
mental retardation
– Axis 3: General Medical Conditions
• Examples: Asthma, Arthritis, etc.
– Axis 4: Psychosocial and Environmental Problems
• Example: stress within one year of diagnosis
– Axis 5: Global Assessment of Functioning
• Socially adaptive functioning for 1 year prior to
diagnosis
Axis1: Psychological Disorders
1.
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3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
Disorders diagnosed in Infancy (ADHD, Stuttering, Autism)
Organic Mental Disorders (depletion of brain tissue, dementia)
Substance Related Disorders (alcohol dependency)
Schizophrenia and psychotic disorders (must have symptoms
for no less than 6 months)
Mood Disorders (Bipolar disorder)
Anxiety Disorders (Panic Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder)
Somatoform Disorders (Hypocondriasis)
Dissociative Disorders (Dissociative Identity Disorder)
Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders (pedophilia, sexual
dysfuntion {ED})
Eating Disorders (Anorexia, Bulimia
Disorders
• The following slides will classify many psychological
disorders
• You may think you have some of these disorders
• Please, do not ask me if you have one, I am not a
licensed psychiatrist
• Remember: You must show symptoms that fall under the
three criterion for treatment for at least 6 months before
any diagnosis will be presented
Symptoms and Diagnosis
• Symptoms: Hallucinations, Delusions, Affective
Disturbance
• In order for a diagnosis: Distress, Maladaptiveness,
Irrationality, Unpredictability, Unconventionality,
Observer Discomfort
Did You Know…
• …until the DSM-IV was released in 1994, Homosexuality
was considered a psychological disorder
• …it is current practice in China to institutionalize all
members of the Falun Gong religion
Anxiety Disorders
• Generalized Anxiety Disorder– Chronic high level anxiety not triggered by a
particular threat
• Worry constantly about yesterday’s mistakes and
tomorrow’s problems
Anxiety Disorders
•
Phobic Disorder – 10-11%
– Persistent and irrational
fear of an object or
situation that provides
no realistic threat or
danger
• There is a phobic
disorder for almost
anything
• Usually the result of
a traumatic
experience
Anxiety Disorders
• Panic Disorder
– Recurring attacks of overwhelming anxiety that
occurs rapidly and unexpectedly
– Occur by an hug majority in females
– Agorophobia: the fear of public spaces
• This is not a phobic disorder
• Once thought to be phobic, but is now classified
as a panic disorder
Anxiety Disorders
•
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
– Uncontrollable urges to participate in senseless rituals
– Typical age of onset is early adulthood
– Full fledged OCD occurs in only 2.5% of population
– Most people experience both obsessions (thoughts) and
compulsions (rituals)
– In order for diagnosis:
• Must inflict major inconvenience
» To both individual and common
acquaintances
» Bath Tub Lady
» Time Clock Lady
Somatoform Disorders
•
Somatization Disorder
– History of diverse
physical complaints
that appear to be
purely psychological
– Can stem to anxiety
and depression
disorders if untreated
– Severity increases with
stress
Somatoform Disorders
• Conversion Disorder
– Significant loss of physical function with no organic
basis
– Sudden loss of body function not medically
associated with any prior diagnosis
• Glove anesthesia (numbness of hand) is not
associated with any known neurological disorder
Somatoform Disorder
• Hypocondriasis
– Excessive preoccupation with ones health and
incessant worry about a potential developing
physical illness
– If a doctor ensures the patient of no problem, they
will eave and go from doctor to doctor until they
receive the desired diagnosis
Dissociative Disorders
• Dissociative Amnesia
– Sudden loss of memory for important personal
information that is too extensive for normal forgetting
– May occur after a single traumatic event
– Cases of amnesia have been recorded and
diagnosed after: natural disasters, combat (PTSD),
physical abuse, rape, or witness of violent crime
– Dissociative Fugue- lose memory for entire life and
loss of personal identity
Dissociative Disorder
• Dissociative Identity Disorder
– Coexistence of two or more complete and
distinctively different personalities within one person
– Previously known as MPD
– Not to be mistaken with schizophrenia
– Personalities are unaware of each other
• What is a common mistake in movies?
– Transitions occur dramatically and quickly
• Often see facial distortion, change in voice, and
change in mannerisms
– This disorder is often identified in serial killers
Mood Disorders
• Major Depressive Disorder
– Persistent feelings of sadness and inability to find
pleasure
– No energy
– Anxiety, irritability, talking slowly and slurred
– Must occur daily for no less than 5 months
– 7% of population will face this disorder
– 17% of population will face minor depression
Mood Disorders
•
Bipolar Disorder
– Experience both manic and depressive moods
• AKA: Manic-Depressive Disorder
– Occurs in less than 1% of population
– Manic- mood elevated to euphoria, make extravagant
plans, boastful, rapid speech, shift topics, impaired
judgment, impulsive gambling, excessive spending,
sexually reckless
– Depressive- socially withdrawn, unable to make decisions,
delusions of guilt and shame, delusions of disease, difficulty
sleeping, decreased sex drive and appetite, violence
What disorder is this?
•
“Mick Jagger wants to marry me. If I have Mick Jagger, I don’t have to
covet Geraldo Rivera. Mick Jagger is St. Nicholas and the Maharishi is
Santa Claus. I want to form a gospel rock group called the Thorn Oil, but
Geraldo wants me to be the music critic on Eyewitness News, so what
can I do? Got to listen to my boyfriend. Teddy Kennedy cured me of my
ugliness. I’m pregnant with the son of God. I am going to marry David
Berkowitz and get it over with. Creedmoor is the living quarters for the
Nazis. They’re eating the patients here. Archie Bunker wants me to play
his niece on his TV show. I work for Epic Records. I’m Joan of Arc. I’m
Florence Nightingale. The door between the ward and porch is the
dividing line between New York and California. Divorce isn’t a piece of
paper, it is a feeling. Forget zip codes, I need shock treatments. The
body is run by electricity and I have faulty wiring. I am in the Pentecostal
Church, but I am switching my loyalty to the Charismatic Church.”
Continued…
• This patient was diagnosed at the age of 15
• Can not hold a job for any length of time due to
pathological lying
• When the disorder flares, she has no hygiene
• Hears voice talking to her
• Her name is Sylvia…no really that is her actual name
• Although no single symptom is inevitable present at all
times, the combination of all these symptoms is
indicative of…
Schizophrenic Disorders
• Symptoms:
– Delusions: false beliefs maintained despite obvious
lack of reality
• Delusions of Grandeur: self convinced that one is
famous and portrays self as famous person
– Deterioration of socially adaptive behavior
– Distorted Perception
• Hallucinations: gross distortions of perception
– Disturbed Emotions
• Often loses sight of value of life
Sub-Types
•
•
•
•
Paranoid Schizophrenia
– Delusions of persecution along with delusions of grandeur
– Enemy to everyone and compensates with delusions of grandeur
Catatonic Schizophrenia
– Motor disturbances, random motor twitches, muscular ridgedness
– Either motionless or eccentric motion…or rotation of both
Disorganized Schizophrenia
– Severe deterioration of socially acceptable behavior
– Complete social withdrawal
– Delusions satisfy violent urges
Undifferentiated Schizophrenia
– The catch all category
– The most commonly diagnosed type of schizophrenia
Why do I need a psychiatrist?
•
•
•
•
Testing for mental illness
Assessing a perpetrator’s sanity
Assessing mental state at time of crime
Determine ability to stand trial, offer testimony, sign legal
documents, etc.
• Evaluate suspects for signs of deception and faking an
illness
• Criminal profiling
Forensic v. Clinical Psychology
•
Forensic
– No intention of
improving patient’s
condition
– Probe an individual’s
moral character to
discover motives
– Subject and
professional do not get
along…most of the time
•
Clinical
– Improve patients
condition through a
trusting relationship
– Patient opens up and
spills guts
– Psychologist does not
make moral or value
judgments
– The process is
cooperative…most of
the time
How the mind matters in Forensics
• Psychologists are often called to testify in court about:
– Role of drugs and/or alcohol in defendant’s
conduct
– Determine sanity
– Assess defendant’s understanding of reality and
responsibility
– Offer information disclosed in an interrogation
– Present profile of probable suspect
– In suicide cases
• Prepare a psychological autopsy
Testing the Brain
•
•
•
Wide battery of testing to determine mental health
– A goal of uncovering psychiatric disorders and to discover thought
processes
Attorneys argue that test are inaccurate
– Argue that testing can prove present or past mental status but not
status at time of crime
Getting started
– Determine any neurological or psychiatric problems
– Get list of prescription or unauthorized drugs
– Gather medical, work, and military records
• If considered a suspect, can gather police and witness reports,
CS photos, autopsy reports
• If needed, can order MRI, EEG, or CT
– If normal results, further testing is required
Digging into the Psyche
• 3 categories of testing
– Personality test
• www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp
– Projective test
– Intellectual test
Personality Testing
• Used to determine personality type
• Can discover antisocial tendencies, OCD, and other
disorders
• These tests are highly reliable
• Examples:
– MMPI, CPI, MCMI, Meyer Briggs Test
• Chances are, you have taken at least one of
these sometime in your school career
Projective Testing
• Evaluates thought processes
• Less standardized and more subjective than personality
testing
• Often uncover fantasies and obsessions
• Examples:
– Rorschach Test- inkblot exam
– Projective drawing- produce drawings after
exposure to stimuli
– Thematic Apperception Test- show common picture
and have subject write a story about picture
Intellectual Testing
• Determine intelligence, mental capacity, thought
processes, and ability to understand own behavior
• Most important tool in determining ability to stand trial
• Examples:
– IQ and WAIS
Getting to know you…
•
•
After testing is completed, the interviews begin
– Have you ever had a job interview? How did you feel?
In general, the psychologist tries to get the subject to relax and
feel comfortable enough to speak freely
– Begin with simple non-confrontational questions
• Usually questions about job, spouse, hobbies
• If mental conditions are known, these are explored
• Questions become more probing as the professional
determines the subject’s attitude towards past and
current events
• Eventually questions relate to events that brought the
subject to the professional
– The psychologist is more interested in the motive,
not the events
Using Dubious Techniques
•
Two techniques often seen cause great controversy
– Hypnosis
• Induction of a trance like, highly relaxed state
• Used to force recall of certain events
• Major problem: faking hypnosis is not hard to do
• Under hypnosis, you are highly susceptible to
persuasion, so questions are thought out carefully
– Sedation
• Although there is no such thing as truth serum, some
drugs and alcohol make people talk
• Sodium pentothol is a short lived sedative that creates
a relaxed state of euphoria
– Makes the subject quite chatty
Dealing with Deception
•
•
Criminals lie, otherwise there
would be no sense for
forensics
Witnesses also lie
– Sometimes the lie is
inadvertent and is
caught by a
psychologist
Recognizing Liars
•
•
•
Signs of nervousness
– Sweating, dilated eyes, tremors of hands and lips, failure to
make eye contact, hesitant or rapid speech, changing the
subject
Read Body Language
– Hand-wringing, slumping or slouching, finger-tapping,
fidgeting, facial distortion, looking at the ground
Use Neuro-Linguistic Programming
– Reading a person’s eye movements to determine mental
state
– Looking from side to side without a stimulus when talking is
picked up by the software
– Also, jittery voice is detected
– There is not any reliable evidence of this method’s success
Dealing with a False Confession
• Falsely confessing to a crime is not intended to deceive
police, but an effort to get the interrogation over with,
dealing with guilt, or an out burst of sympathetic
emotion
• Whenever a sensational murder is released in the press,
it is estimated that approximately 24 people will confess
to the murder
• Often, family members will falsely confess to prevent the
prosecution of a loved one
• Others confess as a result of low self esteem, desire for
fame, or to fulfill a gang related task
Catching the False Confession
•
Interrogators use a simple
technique called repetition
– They will ask the same
questions over and over
again, changing the
wording
– They will also change
the subject and then
catch the person off
guard
• This often results in a
change of story
Classifying the Multiple Murderer
•
•
•
Mass Murderer
– Kill more than 4 people at one time and in the same location
– Example: person walks into his/her workplace and kills everyone
that he/she works with
Spree Killer
– Kill more than one person at more than one location
– Locations are usually linked
– This killer does not have down time, they are killing, running, hiding,
or plotting until they are caught
– Usually end in suicidal confrontation with authority
Serial Killer
– Kill more than one person at more than one location
– There is obvious down time between murders
– Down time allows flare up of mental state to cool down
Rapists…what defines one?
• Sociopathic- egocentric, self-centered, narcissistic
• Serial rapists and serial killers are thought to be one in
the same…usually serial killers begin as serial rapists who
delve deeper into morbid psychopathic behavior
– Pathological tendency can be detected very early
in life…just ask an elementary teacher…
– The psychopathic thoughts could be brewing for
decades before they are acted upon
– Fantasy to overcome childhood adversity plays a
major role in the severity of the psychopathic
behavior
Fulfilling the Fantasy
• Ted Bundy imagined a world with beautiful brown
haired women, parted down the middle, that would
satisfy his sexual demands
• He captured these women, raped them, and killed
them…then it was time to calm down, and attack
again
• The fantasies are specific…think about your own
personal dreams and goals…they are fairly specific as
well…hopefully yours are not psychopathic…
Criteria of Abnormal Behavior
• Deviance
– Behavior deviates from what society considers
socially acceptable
– Normality varies within cultures
• Some behavior is considered abnormal in all
cultures
– Transvestic fetishism- sexual disorder in which
men dress in female clothing for sexual
arousal
Criteria of Abnormal Behavior
• Maladaptive Behavior
– Everyday behavior is prevented or impaired
– Example: substance abuse
• When normal socially acceptable behavior is
prevented due to drug or alcohol use, it is
considered a disorder
Criteria of Abnormal Behavior
• Personal Distress
– An individuals personal recollection of distress or
social maladaptive behavior
– Typically seen in a person suffering from depression
or anxiety disorder
• More to come on these later…
• Although all 3 criterion might be met, it only takes one
criterion to be considered as a disorder
Legal Stuff
•
Insanity
– Legal status indicating
a persons inability to
differentiate between
right and wrong due to
an impending mental
disorder or
incapacitation
– This defense is used in
37% of felony cases
• Although it is only
successful in 1% of
cases
Involuntary Commitment
•
•
•
Occurs when
– Dangerous to self (suicidal)
– Dangerous to others (homicidal)
– In need of treatment (only in severe cases)
Temporary commitment
– Periods of 24-72 hours
– Can be authorized by medical or psychological
professional
Long term commitment
– Only by court order
– Typically 6 month periods, but can be renewed
Profiling the Perpetrator
• Answer questions such as:
– How did the killer gain access to the victim?
– What did the killer do to the victim?
– Did the killer try to cover his tracks? If so, how?
– What is it about the victim that attracted the killer?
– What motive or fantasy drove the killer to harm the
victim in the manner at the particular time and the
location?
Assessing the Perpetrator’s Psyche
•
•
•
Organized Offenders
– Crime show evidence of planning
– Tend to be of average or better intelligence, employed, and in
active social relationships
– Tend to use restraint mechanisms and brings all necessary tools to
the CS
Disorganized Offenders
– Usually live alone or with immediate relatives
– Lower than average intelligence and are unemployed or hold
menial jobs
– Do not bring tools, but use what is available at the CS
– Do not cover their tracks and leave the body in its original position
Mixed Offenders
– Show evidence of planning and sophisticated MO (method of
operation), but the assault is frenzied or messy
Common Descriptors
•
•
•
•
•
Age: most serial killers are in
their 20s or 30s
Sex: mostly males
Race: do not cross racial
lines, whites kill whites and
blacks kill blacks
Residency: See previous
slide
Proximity: most kill close to
home, especially with the
first few victims, with
experience, the killer may
expand boundaries
•
•
•
Social Skills: usually have
good social skills (used for
manipulation), those who
use a blitz-style attack tend
to have poor social skills
Work History: see previous
slide
Educational Level:
organized offenders tend to
have more education than
disorganized offenders
Understanding the MO
•
10 points to recognize a criminal’s MO
– Location
– Point of entry
– Method of entry
– Tools used
– Objects taken from CS
– Time of day
– Alibi
– Any accomplices
– Method of transportation
– Unusual features (killing a pet, taunting note, etc.)
MO v. Signature
• A signature is something that the killer repeats at all
crime scenes as a way of claiming responsibility for the
crime
– Examples: torturing the victim, postmortem
mutilation
• MO is the method of completing the crime
– Examples: see previous slide
Victimology
• Studying characteristics of crime victims
– High Risk:
• Prostitutes, those who work only at night, interact
with strangers regularly, drug users
– Low Risk:
• Stay close to work and home, do not visit
unfamiliar areas, lock doors at night, have steady
jobs and many friends
– Medium Risk:
• Usually employed full-time, but have
promiscuous outings at night