Forensic Psychology - Violent offenders

What is a violent crime:

• Violence is physical force exerted to harm a person or damage property - from a clinical point of view acts of aggression to inanimate objects can be a good predictor whether someone is going to act violently) some argue self-harm and suicidal are internal forms of violence and should be treated the same as external forms of violence 
• Criminal violene e.g. homocide, assault, robbery, sexual assault 
• Aggression is (attempted or actual) intended physical or psychological harm 
  • instrumental - violence that's carried out to achieve a specific goal - doesn't have extreme emotional component. Planned 
  • Expressive - strong emotional component, react to larger stressors 
• CE: legal and feminist definitions. Legal requirement in court to establish guilt in violence and also feminist defintiions to see how they differ

Prevalence of violent crime:

• British crime survey: violent crime doesn't make up majority of offending in this country. Under a quarter of all offences 
  • violent offences = approx. 20% of all offences 
  • Victims likely to be young (16-24) males 
  • Increased risk if:
    • mixed ethnicity (or minority grouping)
    • single 
    • unemploted or student
• CE: other methods of measurement? BCS good enough? Data from police and academia that show a different figure?
• Police? claim the violent offences percentage is increasing - this may however, just be due to more people coming forward to report and not an increase iin occurence 

Early predictions of adult violence: (Lipsey & Derzon, 1998):

• Male issue, being a male is a risk factor for this
• Low SES - doesn't predict just being a victim but also a perpetrator 
• Parent's anti-social behaviour: learned behaviours and internalising their attitudes, witnesses aggression and violence and those behaviours are internalised and taken into adulthood
• Poor relationship with parents - unpredictable approach to punishment style 
• Anti-social peers (routine activity theory emphasises that crime occurs when three elements converge; 1 a motivated offender, 2 a suitable target and 3 the absence of a capable guardian. This theory includes the routine activities of both offender and victim 
• Poor attitudes towards school - delinquency in children and development in adulthood and poor school performance 
• Drug use 
• general delinquency 
• early onset of aggression

Other possible factors:

• hostile attrubutional bias (some people see negativity and hostility in what are in fact normal social interactions. Attribute it to aggression, more likely to then react aggressively 
• Emotional arousal; 

• Poor interpersonal skills/lack of non-violent skills for solving conflicts (believe its okay to solve all conflict through aggressive means)

Other possible factors:

• impulsivity - related to personality disorders (difficulty putting own needs on hold, in terms of gratification)
• need for immediate gratification 
• maintains self-esteem 
• low empathy
• alochol
• media? 
• self-esteem, self-identity, self-efficacy: triad of qualities and characteristics that can be used to explain violence, if a particular violent act is good for their self-esteem and how they identify themselves as a man, and they believe that violence that is within their behaviour repertoire, if these three things come together then violence becomes increasingly high

The media aggression hypothesis:

• learn aggression through observing…