Forensic 1
Forensic 1
Forensic 1
A forensic psychologist assesses clients who have suffered due to negligence or malevolence. They
provide opinions on the psychological suffering, consequences, and impact on the client's ability to
work, including physical injury, loss of amenity, unemployment, and financial difficulties.
The claimant's psychological injuries, treatment, and long-term effects of the accident are all crucial
aspects to consider, with psychologists occasionally offering expert opinions on negligence allegations.
In civil actions like personal injury claims, the claimant's case is won or lost based on the balance of
probabilities, unlike criminal cases where prosecution must prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt.
In England and Wales, courts can now direct evidence to a single expert, jointly appointed by both
parties, a change from the adversarial arrangement where experts' opinions may be biased. This
imposes a greater responsibility on the expert to be balanced and objective.
Much of the psychologist's report will consist of information - in expanded form - exemplified by the
above. This information is usually derived from an interview with the claimant and often a separate
interview with a confidante such as a spouse
The claimant seeks financial compensation and is angry with the person she blames for her misfortunes.
Her spouse or informant may confirm her account, but they may have discussed her problems.
Consequently she may be inclined to commit errors of attribution, overstating the role of the accident
when attempting to account for any difficulties post-dating it.
A possible solution to this problem is to check for consistency between the claimant's account at
interview and any other reports. As is known, however, while validity depends on reliability, the reverse
is not the case. The claimant's accounts will become reliable (i.e. consistent) with repeated rehearsal.
Her general medical practitioner's records are perhaps one of the best independent sources of
confirmation, although illegibility of written entries presents real problems. Unfortunately, any paucity
of consultations relating to psychological problems may reflects the patient's unwillingness to be open
about them for fear of being designated a 'psychiatric case' or because of the belief that they are not
problems with which her doctor can be of assistance.
Despite this, medical records can provide a useful check on some aspects of validity. For example, a
claimant assessed by the author lost his job after an accident and became depressed and sexually
impotent. His doctor's records verified his account of his depressed state of mind, but it was clear that
his impotence predated the accident and was due to a prostate condition and its treatment. In another
case a claimant also described how she had become depressed after her accident, and her doctor
referred her to the practice counsellor. The medical records confirmed this but made clear that her
depressed mood was associated with family problems and difficulties in acculturation. Her accident was
not mentioned in the correspondence. Of course it may be that in both of these cases the accident
compounded the claimants' problems, but it is very difficult for the expert to give a balance-of-
probabilities opinion with due confidence in such instances
Some psychometric tests have checks for malingering or exaggeration of symptoms. Many of these
measure cognitive abilities (see the review by Rogers et al., 1993), so a question arises as to how well
they can represent exaggeration of symptoms associated with traumatic stress, such as hyper-arousal,
mood disturbances and avoidant behaviours. Doubts may also be expressed about instruments such as
the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2), which have checks for symptom
exaggeration as well as understating symptoms (Berry et al., 1991).
The use of psychophysiological methods such as heart rate and galvanic skin response in the presence of
reminders of an RTA (ROAD TRAFFIC ACCIDENTS) has been investigated by Blanchard et al. (1999) and
Neal et al. (1999). Unfortunately this work has only been aimed at finding a way of corroborating a
diagnosis of PTSD, and while the results are in the expected direction (greater arousal in those subjects
so diagnosed), the scope for misclassification of a single claimant is high. This is not surprising in view of
the known modest correlation between the physiological, cognitive and behavioural components of
anxiety (Eysenck, 1997).
Suspicions of exaggeration of psychological dysfunction may be raised where there are good indications
that this is happening in the case of physical injuries, particularly when this is evident during a medical
examination. Even so, the generalisation is not inevitable, and psychological suffering may magnify
physical suffering such as pain and disability, owing to fear of further injury. Covert video surveillance
occasionally reveals that a claimant is significantly less physically restricted in daily activities than he or
she has claimed. This kind of evidence tends to compromise any formulation that relates the claimant's
reported depressed mood to the impositions placed upon him or her by residual physical injuries.
Providing a diagnosis
In many reports, the psychologist or psychiatrist is required to provide a diagnosis for the claimant's
psychological problems.
These are recognised as mental disorders and defined in the two commonly used diagnostic guides,
namely the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric
Association (DSM-IV) (1994) and the International Classification of Mental and Behavioural Disorders
(ICD-10) (1992). There are a number of important factors that impinge on the provision of a diagnosis in
the report and these will be considered now.
Prognosis
In order to provide a reliable prognosis, the psychologist must be able to draw on available evidence
from follow-up studies of personal injury patients (unless he or she has evidence from his or her own
practice). In reality there is not a great deal to go on. In the case of RTAs, claimants assessed after a
period of several years may still be complaining of travel anxiety and other symptoms of post-traumatic
stress. Some useful long-term follow-up data have been provided for RTA victims (those with PTSD and
'sub-syndrome PTSD') by Blanchard & Hickling (1999).
Does the process of litigation itself encourage disability and compromise recovery? An affirmative
answer so far as physical injuries are concerned (notably 'whiplash' and low back pain) is provided by
studies of the incidence and outcome of these conditions when compensation is and is not available
(Balla, 1982; Schrader et al, 1996) or has been eliminated by legislative changes (Carron, DeGood & Tait
1985; Cassidy et al., 2000; Mills & Horne, 1986).
The Litigation Stress Scale by Koch and colleagues investigates the psychological impact of the litigation
process on claimants' psychological presentation. They found a relationship between items on the scale
and treatment outcome, but adopted a broad definition of 'litigation stress', with items like slow
physical recovery and pre-accident hours working negatively correlated with treatment response.
There is limited evidence that claimants' progress and treatment response are affected by litigation
progress, with exceptions. Studies show that dropouts from treatment often express greater
dissatisfaction with their insurance claim (Taylor et al.,1999). There are no significant differences in
clinical presentation or treatment outcomes(Mayou, 1997). (see also Bryant et al., 1997; Hickling et al,
1998).
Claimants may exaggerate symptoms or face financial uncertainty during litigation, potentially leading to
malingering or exaggeration. The Litigation Stress Scale reveals a negative correlation with treatment
response, particularly in the number of healthcare appointments.
Forensic psychologists often observe litigants over-assessed and receive too many treatments without
benefit, causing them to spend excessive time and energy on health appointments, potentially
impacting insurance policies and suggesting that more healthcare isn't always beneficial.
Once more, the decision to recommend treatment is rather random, depending on whether the residual
psychological problems are sufficient to warrant this, whether they qualify as a disorder, whether they
will remit in time without treatment, and whether they will indeed respond to treatment.
Chapter 7
Individuals and communities must address root causes of crime to prevent it. Understanding the
root causes of crime, which stem from adverse social, economic, cultural, and family conditions,
is crucial for promoting healthy development and respecting fellow citizens
These are complex and interrelated, but can be summarized in three main categories:
• Economic Factors/Poverty
• Social Environment
• Family Structures
Economic Factors/Poverty
Social Environment
Our social structure mirrors to citizens and communities what we value and how we set
priorities. Social root causes of crime are: inequality, not sharing power, lack of support to
families and neighbourhoods, real or perceived inaccessibility to services, lack of leadership in
communities, low value placed on children and individual well-being, the overexposure to
television as a means of recreation.
Family Structures
Families are uniquely placed in contributing to raising healthy responsible members of society.
But the task of putting children first goes well beyond the family to include communities and
society. Dysfunctional family conditions contribute to future delinquency.
• Parental conflict
• Parental criminality
• Family violence
Crime is linked to children's community conditions, with reducing risk and building resilience
reducing crime. Addressing social, political, and economic issues within families is crucial for
children's long-term well-being and development into independent, healthy adults.
Vulnerable children are those at risk for significant and enduring social, emotional, or
behavioural problems. These children are more likely to be dependent on public resources over
the course of their development, particularly through the child welfare, social assistance,
corrections, or mental health service systems. All children are potentially vulnerable and may
develop emotional or behavioural problems when their own physical or emotional resources are
unable to meet the challenges of their social and physical environment.
1. Primary Prevention
Primary prevention efforts try to ensure the health of the community as a whole by attempting
to stop adverse conditions from developing in the first place. Programs which address parenting,
family support, adequate housing, etc. could all be considered primary prevention if they are
universally accessible and offered before any difficulties are identified.
Primary prevention can be the most cost-effective method of dealing with a problem because it
can reduce costs in many different areas over the long term. Universal programs are only ever as
effective as their ability to include and support populations at risk.
2. Secondary Prevention
Secondary prevention attempts to stop a crime from occurring after certain "warning signs"
have appeared. An example might be programs, which focus on a specific problem or problem
group.
Anti-social or delinquent behaviour (e.g., disrespect for school staff; spray-painting slogans on
buildings) can often be stopped through early intervention in problem situations before
3. Tertiary Prevention
Sentencing a person to prison ensures that they will not commit a crime while serving their
sentence. This is crime prevention after the fact because the person is known to the community
and has already broken the law. While these measures ensure (for a time) that an offender
cannot commit another
Fundamental to prevention is a commitment to the essentials of adequate care for all children.
• Reduce the incidence of serious, long-term emotional and behavioural problems in all
children.
• Promote the optimal social, emotional, behavioural and cognitive development in children at
highest risk.
• Strengthen the ability of communities to respond effectively to children and their families in
social and economic need.
• Enhance children's mental health and promote a healthier environment for children.
Maximize the likelihood of positive outcomes and produce cost-savings when compared to
Treatment
Risk Factors
Combining multiple risk factors increases crime probability. "Root cause" is not accurate, as a
cause-effect mindset makes it easy to assume risk factors lead to criminality. Poverty is often
linked to criminal behavior, but many don't. The data is supported by life-cycle studies in other
disciplines including health, education and social science. Research from studies in Europe,
Canada and the U.S. examined personal characteristics of convicted offenders, relationships
with family and peers, self reporting data, neighbourhood characteristics and other data to
come to four major conclusions:
We need to distinguish between occasional and persistent offenders. For example, 81% of
adolescents commit a criminal offence at some time during their adolescence (e.g. self-harm,
experimentation with drugs, shoplifting, etc.); 9% of adolescent offenders commit serious
offenses. In economically disadvantaged areas, 7% of men are responsible for over 50% of all
offenses. Persistent offenders engage in criminal behaviour earlier and continue longer
Crime rates differ markedly within cities as well as different areas across Canada. For example,
northern communities in Canada have substantially higher violent and property crimes than the
national average. Police forces everywhere can point to neighbourhoods and urban areas which
experience higher crime rates.
There are many regional and area differences: dismissal of charges, reporting criteria for crime,
media attention to certain crimes are not consistent across Canada. In Pakistan, it can also be
difficult to obtain an accurate picture of crime because many criminal offenses are not reported.
Conversely, policies of zero tolerance in schools can significantly "increase" reported crime
Multiple Factors
Risk factors combine to make the probability of criminal behaviour more likely. No one variable
should be considered in isolation. Following are the major risk factors supported in research.
Many persistent offenders begin their involvement in anti-social activities before and during
adolescence. Age alone is not a risk factor. It must be looked at in context of poverty, racism,
family violence, parental and community neglect and problems at school. Research into
persistent offending has emphasized the need to focus prevention efforts on early childhood
years. Birth to age 5 is the most critical time for healthy social and emotional development.
Gender
While crime rates for females have increased in recent years, males are much more likely to be
involved in crime. The research points out that crime usually involves aggression, risk taking an
destructive behaviour.
POOR FAMILY INCOME AND HOUSING often lead to poor parental supervision, marital
disharmony, inconsistent care, poor nutrition, chronic health issues, poor school performance,
and psychological disorders. Pregnancy stress negatively impacts development, neurological
problems, and behavior disturbances.
Persistent Unemployment
Many studies find that a high number of youth and adults admitted to correctional facilities are
unemployed. Persistent unemployment often creates a sense of despair, particularly amongst
youth and can provoke angry expression including theft, substance and alcohol abuse, as well as
child and family violence. Similarly, unemployed men released after terms of incarceration are
more likely to re-offend. Failure in school and an unstable job situation can combine to continue
an individual's involvement in crime.
Home Environment
There is a direct link between the abuse of women and child abuse and future delinquent
behaviour. This link is well researched and documented and shows that over 50% of violent
young offenders witnessed wife abuse in the home. Physically abused children are five times
more likely to be violent adults. Sexually abused children are eight times more likely to be
sexually violent as adults.
It has been estimated that up to 80% of incarcerated males have experienced some form of
physical or sexual abuse as a child.
Lack of parental supervision, parental rejection and lack of parent-child involvement are
consistent indicators of delinquent behaviour.
INEFFECTIVE PARENTING
encourages youth to associate with peers who are involved in criminal activities. At the risk of
oversimplifying a complex problem, research suggests that there is a direct link between
dysfunctional parenting and the tendency for the youth to associate with delinquent peers.
As children, offenders are less successful in school, have lower attendance rates and are more
likely to leave school early than their peers. Early school leavers experience many difficulties, the
most obvious being unemployment or under-employment. Canadian studies show that 40%
of federal inmates have a learning disability which remained undetected throughout their
childhood.
Substance Abuse:
Alcohol and substance abuse are often associated with criminal behaviour. Many offenders are
under the influence of drugs or alcohol when offenses are committed. Regular alcohol use
during adolescence can lead to higher conviction rates in adulthood. To a lesser extent, research
speaks of the influence of television and other multi-media on the behaviour of children. There
is also some evidence that there are links between diet and violent behaviour.
Chapter 8
Juvenile Delinquency
Juvenile delinquency refers to youths between 11 to 18 years having contact with police and
court officials for law-violating behaviour.
The large and rather scattered body of research has identified different variables that place
individual at risk factors for delinquency. Individual delinquent behaviour during adolescence
and adulthood can be predicted from both family characteristics and environmental
characteristics.
It is suggested that ineffective and poor parental supervision is a key risk factor among family
characteristics, whereas association with delinquent peers is a common risk factor among
environmental characteristics. When both parents and peers are supportive, adolescents
perform best. However, studies suggest that peer influence is four times more potent than
parental influence on substance use. Similarly, studies have consistently reported that rates of
delinquency and substance use are all higher within adolescents than among adults and during
adolescence, serious delinquency reaches a peak and is more frequent among males than
females.
Gottfredson and Hirschi’s (1990) theory is held up as the first type of developmental theory of
delinquency, and it proposes that people have different capacities to resist temptation. It
explains that why not all boys who face the same opportunity for deviant behaviour become
delinquent. Self- control is the central concept of the theory. According to the theory, poor self-
control is the product of poor and inappropriate child-rearing practices. The theory proposes
that those individuals who have strong self-control they resists criminal opportunities more
often than those who have weak self-control. The theory further suggests that those individuals
who have strong self-control resist criminal opportunities more often than those who have weak
self-control.
Loeber’s Developmental pathways model (1988, 1990, and 1991) is the second type of theory
suggesting different paths leading to different types of criminal behaviour in adolescence and
adulthood. He identified three types of adult offenders: versatile, exclusive property offenders
and exclusive substance abusers. He further suggested that these offenders can be
differentiated based on the type of behavioural problems they faced in their childhood; the
onset age of these behavioural problems; the progression rate towards criminal behaviour and
the probability of desisting from criminal behaviour. Moffitt (1993) and Patterson et al. (1989)
suggested similar models. These developmental path models emphasize different risk factors, at
different ages, depending upon which developmental path a child assumed to be following.
The third type of theoretical framework focused on the cumulative risk factors model for diverse
disorders is the Cumulative risk model Based on the findings of longitudinal studies
(emphasizing more than one risk factor), this model suggests complex interaction among early
risk factors, among later disorders and between risk factors and disorders.
According to this model, careful study is essential to understand and prevent criminal behaviour
in terms of determining the role of external forces that are important in promoting the
individual’s willingness to break the law.
The above theorists suggested that multiple factors such as social class, broken homes, age,
race, and urban or rural location are responsible for an individual’s criminal behaviour.
Sociologist theorists are criticized by other theorists, in that they are reluctant to acknowledge
biological factors and individual traits in explaining crime. However, theorists who excessively
emphasize environmental factors are also criticized by many criminologists.
Sociological learning theories dominated criminology by the middle of the twentieth century
and remain dominant to date. These theories emphasize the importance of environmental
factors (to which individuals are exposed) in understanding criminal behaviour rather than
individual differences. These theories stated that multiple social factors such as family, school,
peer groups and community are conducive to crime and increase the likelihood of crime. These
theories have little or no emphasis on the individual differences concerning criminal behaviour
(Cullen & Agnew 1999).
Sutherland’s Differential Association Theory argued that individuals become delinquent due to
their interaction with criminal others. Therefore, such associations may be used as indicators of
the basic causes of criminal behaviour. His theory further argued that an excessively favourable
definition of law-breaking is responsible for criminal behaviour.
Another criticism is that Differential Association theory fails to explain the process by which
crime is learned and simply states that individuals learn criminal behaviour through developing a
definition favourable to crime by association with criminal others.
Later on Aker (1966) comprehensively described the process by which individuals learn to be
involved in criminal behaviour (Cullen & Agnew 1999).
Sykes and Matza (1957) postulated that individual learn both the techniques of committing
crime and ways to rationalize and justify their criminal acts. They further argued that crime is
influenced by multiple factors such as social class, race and broken homes and these factors
ultimately influence the individual to associate with others who present definitions favourable
to crime. An individual exposed to definitions favourable to crime in his early life more
frequently, for a long period of time, and from sources he likes and respects, is more likely to
engage in criminal behaviour.
Most criminals try to neutralize their criminal acts by perceiving themselves as conventional
rather than criminal. Delinquents believe that delinquency is bad, but they justify their
delinquent acts by employing neutralization techniques. Those criminals who accept more
neutralization usually engage in more frequent delinquent acts because such rationalization
protects them from self-blame and help them to inflict their blame on others, afters committing
criminal acts. Consequently, by learning these neutralization techniques they become more
delinquent. Sykes and Matza explained five methods, offenders commonly used to justify or
excuse their criminal behaviour. These five techniques are: the denial of responsibility, the
denial of injury, the denial of victim, the condemnation of the condemners, and the appeal to
higher loyalties.