EXERCISE 1 PAYING A VISIT TO YOUR LOCAL COURT
To really capture the realities of the legal system, there is no substitute for actually attending court and observing a trial. Your tutor or lecturer may have already arranged this as part of your course, but if not, there is nothing to stop you attending on your own initiative.
Access to the justice system by the public is a civil right in most countries, with only a few exceptions. In the United Kingdom, for instance, you must normally be over the age of 14 years to attend a trial as a spectator. In addition, judges in criminal trials may use their discretion to exclude the public from cases involving child abuse or where there is a concern over the intimidation of adult witnesses (see Chapter 14). Similar restrictions may apply to cases in the civil and family courts, where sensitive issues of the custody of children may be at stake.
In order to get the most value out of your court visit, you must understand the basic features of the criminal justice system. These are set out in “Understanding the Justice System” at the start of Chapter 13. After you have read the relevant section make sure you can:
Appreciate the roles and responsibilities of the judge, defence and prosecution advocates and the jury in a trial
Understand the differences between inquisitorial and adversarial systems of justice
Distinguish between civil and criminal courts
Recognise the different levels of court and their functions (e.g. the magistrates’ court, the Crown court and the Supreme court).
You are now ready to pay your first visit to your local court! Court hours are usually from 10.00 in the morning until late afternoon, with a break for lunch. Always check the times beforehand (some magistrates’ courts, for instance, do not sit every weekday). Most court centres will have a number of courtrooms with a different trial going on in each. When you arrive at court, look out for the information desk. Introduce yourself and explain that you have come to observe a trial. Don’t be afraid to ask if there is a particularly interesting case going on which you can watch from the public gallery.
SOME DO’S, DON’TS AND NEVERS
Remember the court is a serious place – people’s lives can be changed permanently by the decisions made here – and behave accordingly. You will be called upon to show your respect for the court by rising from your seat when the judge or magistrates enter or leave court. You will prompted by the court usher (“macer” in Scotland) shouting “all rise”. If you need to leave court in mid-session, do so quietly and discreetly, taking advantage of any pause in proceedings.
Do dress conservatively – a suit is never out of place. You are into impression management here: if you want the full co-operation of court officials, then dress the part.
Do make sure your phone is switched off and avoid talking while the court is in session (i.e. the judge or magistrates are in court). In 2011, the Lord Chief Justice relaxed policy on the use of electronic devices such as phones and small handheld laptops for live text-based reports from the courts – but permission is only automatically available to accredited journalists. Spectators are permitted to text or “tweet” but only if permission is given in advance by the presiding judge. If you wish, you can always write up your notes during a recess (a pause in proceedings).
Never take “selfies” or other photographs or recordings in court – you could end up being charged with contempt of court for which the penalties are severe.
Don’t eat, drink or smoke in the courtroom. Most Crown Court centres have a cafeteria where you can buy refreshments – and also indulge in some people-watching: barristers in hushed conversations with their clients; anxious families wondering whether their youngest will get prison this time – all human life is there, as they used to say of the News of the World.
Criminological Psychology
Common law has long recognised the important link between psychology and criminal behaviour. It is embodied in the legal principle of mens rea or “guilty mind”, meaning that an individual cannot be guilty of a crime unless he or she carries out the act both wilfully and intentionally. Early theories of criminal behaviour emphasised the heritability of criminal behaviour, reflected in the work of the Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso (1835–1909). Lombroso also drew on ideas from physiognomy (i.e. the idea that human traits are reflected in the structure of the face and body type) to argue that criminals were born to offend and that this was reflected in their particular facial characteristics and build, which he believed were present among habitual criminals. Even though some would suggest that they believe what a rapist or a murderer should look like (e.g. Goldstein, Chance, & Gilbert, 1984), but there is little evidence that these stereotypes have any reality. As early as 1913, the English physician Charles Goring (1880–1917) found no systematic differences in physiognomy, and other physical characteristics, between a large sample of criminals and a comparison group of soldiers.
The application of psychological theories, starting with the psychodynamic ideas of Sigmund Freud and his successors, has had a significant influence on conceptions of many aspects of everyday life, including crime. The psychologist, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst John Bowlby (1907–1990), argued that separation of mother and child during the second sixth months of life had permanent, damaging consequences for a child’s later development and wellbeing (in terms of attachment to others and self); and could in a number of cases lead the individual to becoming a criminal in later life.
Attachment can be broadly defined as the process by which an infant has an inborn biological need to maintain close contact with its parents/primary carers (Bowlby, 1969, 1973, 1980). Intimate contact creates experiences of safeness, and impacts upon the soothing systems within the brain. Infants are not born with the capacity to self-soothe; therefore, it is the caregiver’s response to distress signals (e.g. holding, caressing, smiling, feeding) that is of paramount importance. Fonagy (2001) suggests that attachment patterns are shaped by a combination of genetic factors and social experiences. The predisposed style is shaped by early social experiences.
Therefore, an individual’s attachment style can be seen as a set of enduring characteristics for making sense of one’s life experiences and interactions (Young, Klosko, & Weishaar, 2003), in that the relationship between infant and primary caregiver provides a model for future interpersonal and intimate relationships. This model is maintained irrespective of whether the relationship between the individual and their primary caregiver/s in childhood was positive or negative, and hence a model for the individual’s future social interactions is formed, whether this is primarily about approach or avoidance behaviours/interactions or, in extremis, criminal behaviours. These issues are discussed in more detail in Chapter 2, which considers the role of early attachment on later criminal behaviour, while Chapter 5 examines the physical and psychological effects of child maltreatment.
The behaviourist school has also had an important influence on criminological psychology, in terms of both understanding and changing antisocial behaviours through treatment. Behaviourism places a general emphasis upon the role of learning in shaping all human behaviour, whether normal or abnormal, through the mechanism of conditioning. In this context there are two broad lines of thought: Pavlovian/classical conditioning, and operant learning (this approach has largely mutated into Bandura’s (1977) social learning theory).
Hans Eysenck (1916–1997) used the principles of conditioning described by Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936) to develop a general theory linking crime with personality. Eysenck (1977) incorporated biological and social factors into his theory, bringing them together as factors that determined an individual’s personality. According to Eysenck, an individual’s personality determines, in large part, their ability to learn from (or condition to) other people in their social environment. Thus, personality plays a fundamental role the process of the child’s socialisation, with certain configurations of personality more or less likely to behave in a manner that is antisocial or criminal. Eysen
ck’s ideas encouraged psychological research with offenders, and some support has been found for them, but they are now seen as overly mechanistic, biological and deterministic. Hence, while an important landmark at the time in the application of psychological theories to explain criminal behaviour, Eysenck’s theory has not had lasting impact on the current understanding and rehabilitation of offenders (see Chapter 1).
Somebody who has probably had more of an influence is the American psychologist, B. F. Skinner, (1904–1990), who advanced Pavlovian theory with the development of the notion of operant learning. Put simply, Skinner suggested that an individual’s behaviour acts (or operates) on the environment, so producing consequences for the individual. Behaviour that produces consequences (social or material) that the person finds rewarding is likely to be repeated, in which case Skinner would say that the behaviour is being reinforced; if the behaviour produces consequences that the person finds aversive then they are less likely to repeat that behaviour, in which case Skinner would say that the behaviour is being punished. Skinner’s notion of operant conditioning was taken and applied to explain criminal behaviour (Jeffery, 1965). Further, Skinner’s operant learning was put to work, with some success, in working with offenders to reduce the likelihood that they would subsequently reoffend (Laws & Marshall, 2003; Milan, 2001).
In the late twentieth century, the emergence of cognitive psychology encouraged the integration of internal processes, such as thoughts and emotions, into behaviourist learning theory. This integration is most clearly seen in the development of social learning theory (SLT) by the psychologist Albert Bandura (Bandura, 1977, 1986). SLT gave rise to interventions that aimed to change internal processes (i.e. cognitions) as well as overt behaviour, giving rise to the term cognitive-behavioural treatment (CBT) and the associated methods of therapy (see Chapters 17 , 18 and 19 in particular for details of the CBT approach).
CBT interventions have become increasingly popular for use with offenders (e.g. Browne, Beech, & Craig, 2012; Ireland, Ireland, & Birch, 2009). For example, the social psychologist Raymond Novaco (Novaco, Renwick, & Ramm, 2012) emphasises the central importance of anger in understanding some forms of violence, Hence, the use of anger control treatments has become widespread with violent offenders (see Chapter 19). Similarly, in sex offender treatment, CBT is the mainstay of such interventions (see Chapter 18; and Beech, Craig, & Browne, 2009), while a social learning/CBT approach has also been successfully adapted for the treatment of those with intellectual disability (see Chapter 21 for details of such initiatives with such offenders).
The critical importance of appropriate cognitive development was also emphasised by the American psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg (1927–1987), whose work was inspired by the ideas of the great developmental psychologist, Jean Piaget (1896–1980). Kohlberg argued that in order to achieve full moral maturity it was necessary for children to pass through six distinct stages of moral development, starting from a morality based on the threat of punishment, to moral reasoning based on an appreciation of the social value of order and reciprocity (Power, Higgins, & Kohlberg, 1989). The link between the hypothesised stage an individual has reached and their actual behaviour has remained a source of controversy, but as a formal analysis of the development of moral judgment, Kohlberg’s model remains influential in both understanding and working with offenders (see Chapter 1).
A different line of development also took place in the UK in the form of crime prevention measures based on rational choice theory. Cornish and Clarke (1986) proposed that crime resulted from rational choice to offend by the criminal, with the prime motivation being personal gain, while avoiding detection, when the opportunities arose. This theory led to measures known as situational crime prevention (Wortley & Mazerolle, 2008) in which the environment is changed, say by using electronic alarms to minimise the opportunities for crime; or increasing police patrols to maximise the chances of crime detection.
However, despite such developments in psychological theory and practice in the 1970s to 1980s, the popular view was that “nothing works” in offender rehabilitation (Martinson, 1974)1. This view led politicians and policy makers in some parts of the world, including the UK, to the pessimistic consensus that the only answer the criminal justice system could offer to rising crime was to build more prisons (Hollin, 2001). However, building on decades of research, this view was challenged by several groups of psychologists, principally from Canada and the UK, who rallied under the banner of the What Works initiative (see Chapter 17 and Andrews & Bonta, 1994; McGuire, 1995). These psychologists argued that the meta-analyses of the results of treatment trials with offenders showed that interventions, principally employing cognitive-behavioural methods, produce lower rates of recidivism compared to controls.
Recently, the idea of a “criminal brain” continues to intrigue researchers (see Johnson, 1998 and Chapter 4), but the pessimistic view that “criminals are born not made” has been consistently challenged, and tested, by psychologists and psychiatrists from the beginning of the twentieth century. However, it is still observed that there is a hard core of individuals who would seem very intractable in treatment. Of particular interest is the notion of what is happening in the brains of those with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD)2 and/or identified as being psychopaths3. Figures from 1995 to 2016 from http://mentalhealth.com would suggest that 80–85% of incarcerated offenders can be diagnosed as having ASPD (see http://mentalhealth.com/home/dx/antisocialpersonality.html), which is hardly surprising given the tautology of this premise, while 20% can be regarded as psychopaths (as compared to 1% identified in the general population, see Hare, 1999 and Chapter 3). Here, it should be noted that psychopaths account for roughly half of all the most serious crimes committed, including half of all serial killings and repeat rapes (http:// mentalhealth.com) and 80% of psychopaths released from prison commit another crime, usually within three years.
It is a moot point to what extent there is a genetic aspect to criminal behaviour, but evidence would suggest that monozygotic (identical) twins were concordant for criminal behaviour (52%) compared to 22% of the dizygotic (non-identical) twins in a sample of 3,586 Danish twins (Christiansen, Holm, Mcgue, Corder, & Vaupel, 1977). Blonigen, Carlson, Krueger, & Patrick (2003) reporting on 271 adult twins of self-reported psychopathic personality traits found substantial evidence of genetic contributions to variance in the personality construct of psychopathy. Although there is a growing body of evidence that has shown there is a strong genetic contribution to juvenile delinquency (Popma & Raine, 2006), and a number of genes have been shown to have an association with antisocial behaviour, no one gene seems to “explain” criminal behaviour (Goldman & Ducci, 2007). Investigating the potential genetic basis for complex behaviours is inherently complicated as they are likely to involve multiple genes, in contrast to conditions where there is a single-gene effect, as in classic Mendelian genetics (Uhl & Grow 2004).
Poor upbringing is equally likely to lead to subsequent criminal behaviour. For example, over 60 years ago in his book, Forty-Four Juvenile Thieves, Bowlby (1946) argued that in all cases he described in his book the cause of the delinquency could be traced to “maternal deprivation”. More recently, a number of authors have noted a problematic upbringing (in terms of coercive parent-child interactions and the absence of positive and affectionate attachment bonds between parent and child, neglect, inconsistent parenting and severity of punishments) can lead to the development of disruptive, aggressive and often violent behaviours (see Chapter 1 for a critique of Bowlby’s ideas).
Chapter 4 examines some recent findings in the neuroscience area regarding brain scanning and other techniques that are looking at the structure and function of antisocial offenders; and an understanding of how to assess the risk of such individuals for future offending, and how to treat them is an important part of forensic psychology.
However, it is important not to lose sight of the fact that around 70% of those in prison (men and women)
have mental health problems, in that there are many men, women and children in prison who need healthcare above all else (see Chapter 22 for a discussion around the issue of mentally disordered offenders). Certainly if you had to invent a way to deepen mental health problems and create a health crisis, overcrowded prisons, and particularly the bleak isolation of a segregation unit, would be the way to do it! It is also of note that over 30% of prisoners are incarcerated for drug-related offences and that drug use would appear to be responsible for the great majority of some types of crime, such as shoplifting and burglary (85% of shoplifting, 70–80% of burglaries, 54% of robberies), while more than a quarter (29%) of robbery victims believed their attacker to be under the influence of drugs. Similarly, epidemiological studies show that around 55% of those received into custody are problematic drug users.
As we move into the twenty-first century, the emphasis placed by the What Works movement upon an evidence-based approach to penal policy within the criminal justice system has begun to find support among more pragmatic policy makers in Europe and North America, while Tony Ward and colleagues eloquently outline where rehabilitation may be going in terms of a more holistic and positive approach to treatment, in terms of his Good Lives model (see Ward & Gannon, 2006; and Chapter 23 of this book for a fuller exposition of this approach), and the desistance model outlined by Richard Laws and Tony Ward (2011). We would also note that the correct application of drug rehabilitation strategies and treatment of offenders with mental health problems would take the burden of the penal systems to deal with such individuals, and free up resources to deal with the more intractable personality disordered individuals who carry out most serious and violent crimes.
Forensic Psychology Page 4