Forensic Psychology

In the top-down (FBI) approach to offender profiling, an offender who shows planning, controls the victim, leaves few clues and is socially competent would be classified as which type?

• ADisorganised
• BOrganised✓
• CMarauder
• DCommuter

Answer: The FBI typology distinguishes organised offenders (planned crime, high control, few clues, often socially and occupationally competent) from disorganised offenders (impulsive, chaotic scene, little planning). Marauder and commuter are concepts from Canter's geographical (bottom-up) approach, not the FBI typology.

Canter's bottom-up approach to profiling differs from the top-down approach mainly because it is:

• AData-driven, using statistical analysis of crime-scene evidence to generate the profile without fixed categories✓
• BBased on pre-set typologies derived from interviews with convicted murderers
• CConcerned only with the offender's childhood experiences
• DUsed exclusively for property crimes such as burglary

Answer: The British bottom-up approach is data-driven: it builds a profile from statistical patterns in the evidence (e.g. investigative psychology, smallest space analysis) rather than imposing the pre-existing organised/disorganised templates that characterise the American top-down method.

In Canter and Larkin's (1993) geographical profiling, an offender whose crimes form a circle around their home base, indicating they offend close to home, is described as a:

• ACommuter
• BDisorganised offender
• CRecidivist
• DMarauder✓

Answer: Canter and Larkin distinguished the marauder, who operates from and around a home base (crimes encircle the residence), from the commuter, who travels away from home to offend. The circle theory of how offences cluster underpins geographical profiling.

Lombroso's (1876) atavistic form explanation proposed that criminals are:

• AProducts of poor parenting and broken homes
• BIndividuals with an over-active superego
• CGenetic throwbacks to an earlier, more primitive stage of evolution, identifiable by physical features✓
• DPeople who have learned crime through differential association

Answer: Lombroso, often called the father of modern criminology, argued the 'born criminal' was an evolutionary throwback (atavistic) distinguishable by physical markers such as a strong jaw, high cheekbones and extra digits. The other options describe psychological or sociological theories.

Eysenck's theory of the criminal personality predicts that offenders score highly on which combination of dimensions?

• AHigh extraversion, high neuroticism and high psychoticism✓
• BHigh introversion, high stability and low psychoticism
• CLow extraversion, low neuroticism and low psychoticism
• DHigh agreeableness, high conscientiousness and low openness

Answer: Eysenck proposed the criminal personality is high on extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism. Extraverts seek stimulation and condition poorly, neurotics are unstable and react strongly, and high psychoticism is linked to cold, aggressive tendencies. Agreeableness/conscientiousness/openness belong to the Big Five, not Eysenck's model.

In the cognitive explanation of offending, which term describes a criminal minimising the seriousness of their offence (e.g. 'they could afford to lose it')?

• AHostile attribution bias
• BLevel of moral reasoning
• CMinimalisation✓
• DDifferential association

Answer: Minimalisation is a cognitive distortion in which an offender downplays or denies the consequences of their actions to reduce guilt. Hostile attribution bias instead refers to misreading neutral cues as threatening. Both are cognitive distortions, but minimalisation matches the example given.

Sutherland's differential association theory explains criminality as the result of:

• AInherited genes passed from criminal parents
• BAn atavistic, primitive physiology
• CRepressed trauma from the phallic stage
• DLearning pro-crime attitudes, values and techniques through interaction with others✓

Answer: Sutherland argued crime is learned, like any behaviour, through association with others; individuals acquire attitudes favourable to law-breaking and the specific techniques to offend. If pro-crime attitudes outweigh anti-crime ones, offending becomes more likely. The other options are biological or psychodynamic.

Which statement best summarises a key problem with custodial sentencing highlighted by high recidivism rates?

• APrisons reliably rehabilitate the large majority of offenders
• BRecidivism only occurs in offenders with the MAOA gene
• CPrison may act as a 'university of crime', and effects such as institutionalisation and stigma can increase reoffending✓
• DCustodial sentencing has been abolished in the UK

Answer: High recidivism (reoffending) challenges the deterrence and rehabilitation aims of prison. Differential association inside prison ('university of crime'), institutionalisation, stigma on release and the psychological effects of incarceration are argued to raise rather than reduce reoffending.

Behaviour modification programmes in custody, such as token economies, are based on which principle?

• AClassical conditioning of involuntary reflexes
• BOperant conditioning, using secondary reinforcers to shape desirable behaviour✓
• CInsight into unconscious conflicts
• DCognitive restructuring of irrational beliefs

Answer: A token economy applies operant conditioning: tokens are secondary (conditioned) reinforcers earned for desirable behaviour and later exchanged for primary reinforcers or privileges. This selectively reinforces and shapes compliant behaviour. It does not rely on classical conditioning, insight or cognitive change.

A central feature distinguishing restorative justice from custodial sentencing is that restorative justice:

• AFocuses on punishing the offender as severely as possible
• BRemoves the victim entirely from the process
• CCentres on the survivor/victim and involves the offender taking active responsibility to repair the harm done✓
• DIs only available for white-collar fraud

Answer: Restorative justice is victim-centred and rehabilitative: through a supervised meeting or communication the offender accepts responsibility and works to repair the harm, while the victim has a voice in the process. It is not primarily punitive and does not exclude the victim.