AQA A level PSYCHOLOGY Exam With Verified
Answers
Measuring Crime - outline - Ways of determining how many crimes are
committed, patterns in types of
... [Show More] offences and their causes.
Official Statistics - outline - Counts of number of crimes reported to police
or otherwise discovered.
A way of measuring crime.
Official Statistics - an example - Home Office Figures
Official Statistics - weaknesses - They ignore unreported crimes - "the dark
figure". Criteria for categorizing crime may change.
Victim Surveys - outline - Structured interviews with people asking if they
have been victims of crime within a set period.
Victim Surveys - an example - The BCS (British Crime Survey) takes place
every two years.
Victim Surveys - weaknesses - They are retrospective and may be affected
by "telescoping".
Offender Self Reports - outline - Interviews with known offenders or people
in known risk groups asking for confidential reports of crimes committed
and causes.
Offender Self Reports - an example - The OCJS (Offending, Crime and
Justice Survey) - offenders reports of antisocial behavior, repeat offending,
alocohol & drug use and relationships between perpetrators, victims and
co-offenders.
Offender Self Reports - weaknesses - They assume honesty on the part of
those reporting.
Offender Profiling - outline - Ways of narrowing does the search for an
offender by excluding all those people who do not fit profiling criteria.
Typology - outline - Categorise offenders as organised / disorganised.
Crime scene characteristics indicate offender's lifestyle or personality
characteristics. A method for offender profiling.
Typology - process - 1. Create categories by interviewing known offenders
and linking them with expert impressions of crime scenes.
2. Analyse new crime scenes
3. Predict features of criminal by linking crime scene analysis to categories.
Typology - Is it top-down or bottom-up? - Top-down
Typology - weaknesses - It only works with offenders similar to those
interviewed when the categories were created - 36 convicted serial sex
offenders. There is support for an organized type, but not for disorganized
(Canter, 2004). Categorisation depends on expert interpretation of the
scene - experts are needed and they may be prone to bias.
Geographic - outline - Identify offenders' bases from patterns in their
offending behaviour.
A method for offender profiling.
Geographic - process - Patterns in locations of crimes will predict the
offender's mental map of their area of activity. Use of computers - "smallest
space analysis".
Geographic - Is it top-down or bottom-up? - Bottom-up
Geographic - weaknesses - It may not be valid to assume consistency
across contexts eg Alison's (2002) person-situation effect criticism.
Typology-Geographic Comparison - Geographic works with a range of
different crimes; whereas Typolo [Show Less]