Case Study Analysis and Findings
Running head: INVESTIGATIVE PSYCHOLOGY 1
INVESTIGATIVE PSYCHOLOGY 2
Investigative Psychology
Lisa Braden
CRJ 522: Psychological Factors in Criminal Justice
Professor Blake Lafond
January 10, 2022
Investigative Psychology
Investigative psychology is defined as an application that helps in the criminal investigation process; investigate psychology helps retrieve information or data from the crime scene and helps in deciding the given data and, in the end, applies in analyzing the criminal behavior. The paper focuses on examining the criminal investigators and how assumptions and biases affect the evaluation of people and comprehends mental profiling in law enforcement.
The behavior of Criminal Investigator
During the evaluation of crime scenes, investigators get involved in protecting and securing crimes and gathering proof from incidents, post-mortems, and crime scenes. The investigators are also called forensic scene investigators and crime officers (Poyser, 2021). These investigators are accountable for overseeing tentative agents' appropriate storage, administration, handling, and obliteration. These roles are vicarious to the properly authorized person, where the investigator also plays an important role to sustain the ultimate role. Investigators also play an important role to confirm the investigation for securing the welfare, safety, and rights of subjects beneath the care of the investigator and the regulation of drugs beneath the investigation.
The criminal investigator also testifies in law courts regarding evidence and findings, coordinated arrest warrants and search, collected proof and made conclusions and decisions by retaining logical analysis and reasoning, and examined complicated criminal actions or state, federal, and local rules violations. Best criminal investigators must remain conscious of their thinking and remain at the intentional procedure. Investigators should be capable of eloquent the thinking procedure and lay the proof that is considered to find conclusion according to decision making procedure (Brimbal, 2021). They also collect proof, examine crimes, interview observers, and arrest defendants.
Effect of Psychological, Behavioral, Environmental, and Cognitive factors on Investigation
The psychological factors that influence the criminal investigation include the association of criminality to cognitive illness, inherent personality qualities, violence, and aggression. Other factors include deviant behavior, lack of self-control, aggressive behavior, depression, and mental illness (Matsumoto, 2021). Psychology is crucial in criminal investigation, as it explains an association between characteristics and behavior of offenders and helps investigators in case of what and where kind of individual to search for. Behavioral factors that affect the criminal investigation include substance abuse, pessimistic social environment, negative experiences of childhood, and medical risk factors.
Substance abuse and criminal behavior are connected, as some intoxicants negatively influence decision-making and self-control. People frequently get worried, as they don’t introduce a method according to wrong or right thinking. Various environmental factors affect the criminal investigation, as it participates in violence and juvenile crime comprising permissive and violent family members, criminal peers, and unbalanced regions. Moreover, the cognitive factors influencing the investigation include antisocial performance and enhanced danger for violence. Cognitive bias includes various outlines for nonconformity from rational thinking. These biases can be risky once examining a crime that can collect the worst kind of proof while recognizing the bad individual accountable for risk.
Psychological profile
The role of the psychological profile of the offender in the investigation of court proceedings is to make evaluations of perpetrators to focus on competency to stand provisional (Akca, 2021). Psychology profiling includes a technique of suspect recognition that also finds the recognition of personality, emotional and mental characteristics based on things complete or left at the crime scene. Behavior constancy is a technique that shows that crimes of criminals are often the same as each other. The chief psychological evidence behind profiling is that there would be a continuation between the ways criminals work at the crime scene. Offender profiling help to convict, apprehend, and recognize the unknown. Psychological profiles keep various traits, which manual the investigators to decide whether someone can dedicate the crime. Police can decide the functionality of someone committing the crime and their reasons for committing the crime. Sometimes they will not be particularly powerful places that offer crucial records about someone. Therefore, the culprit's profile is turned into determining their abilities and reasons for committing the crime. The records may be utilized in courtroom docket court cases to persuade the jury and judges that the individual dedicated the crime.
Influence of biases and assumptions
Almost all human beings of this world of a different race, cast, and crude have a common thing: all of these people judge other people based on their first appearance, characteristics, and numerous other factors (Campbell, 2021). Such judgments are mere assumptions and biased because one has to realize or recognize someone so they may be capable of choosing them. These biases are bad and feature a bad impact on tests of people with inside-the-crook justice. Bias is not an unusual place inside the cutting-edge society. The bias, which includes racism, has created quite a few injustices wherein humans were wrongfully murdered or sentenced via way of means of police officers. Bias can lead us to do incorrect reviews that aren't genuine and affect our judgment. People have to keep away from making assumptions and most effectively base their judgment on concrete help or backing that allows them to get the proper results.
Cultural-based behavior patterns
In the whole world, many cultures exist, different kinds of people believe in different religions. In the United States of America, there are numerous religions followed by different kinds of individuals. Because of having different religions, every person has numerous perceptions of how they should approach different things. These people also have different opinions on how different things should be done. For illustration, many cultures allow them to carry a weapon with them so that they can defend themselves. Doing this can be dangerous because such a person has a bad assumption about individuals when that person interacts with people.
Such assumptions result in making negative selections that include taking pictures of harmless people. Most of this is associated with mental profiling, wherein an officer will suspect a man or woman sporting a weapon. Such profiling has caused instances of racism inside the pressure whereby innocents had been wrongly arrested or shot at virtually because they were diagnosed with positive cultures. That is why there are bad behaviors and impacts cultural-based behavior patterns specific to certain segments of the population impact these biases and assumptions, particularly relative to psychological profiling in law enforcement.
Conclusion
It is concluded that it is important to analyze the investigator's behavior, which includes the crime scene analysis, and every factor should be considered that can influence the investigation. The psychological factors that influence the criminal investigation include the association of criminality to cognitive illness, inherent personality qualities, violence, and aggression. These all things are important in investigative psychology.
References
Akca, D. L. (2021). Assessing the efficacy of investigative interviewing training courses: A systematic review. International Journal of Police Science & Management, 73-84. Retrieved from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/14613557211008470
Brimbal, L. C. (2021). "Evaluating the benefits of a rapport-based approach to investigative interviews: A training study with law enforcement investigators.". Law and Human Behavior 45, no. 1, 55. Retrieved from https://psycnet.apa.org/journals/lhb/45/1/55/
Campbell, M. R. (2021). Is discrimination widespread? Testing assumptions about bias on a university campus. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 756. Retrieved from https://psycnet.apa.org/journals/xge/150/4/756/
Matsumoto, D. &. (2021). An initial investigation into the nature and function of rapport in investigative interviews. Applied Cognitive Psychology. Retrieved from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/acp.3825
Poyser, S. &. (2021). The time in between a case of ‘wrongful and ‘rightful conviction in the UK: Miscarriages of justice and the contribution of psychology to reforming the police investigative process. International Journal of Police Science & Management, 5-16. Retrieved from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/14613557211006134