Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling最新文献

In this study, the displacement of 687 murderers in Spain (2010–2012) is analysed. The Euclidean distance between the offender's residence and the furthest scene related to the event has been calculated. The analyses showed that the murderers registered a displacement of 0.5 km, with 255 cases of non-traveller homicide (37.1%). The bivariate analysis found that men, young and foreign, with a criminal record and unrelated to the victim, registered a large distance, as well as multi-offender homicides and were related to criminal activities. Traveller homicide registered a displacement of 4.3 km, with adults unrelated to the victim travelling the farthest. Multi-offender and crime-related homicides continued to show the largest distance. Multivariate analyses showed that if the offender is foreign, has no previous relationship with the victim and there are several offenders involved, the distance will be larger. When only traveller homicides were analysed, only the type of relationship showed significant differences.

Over 320,000 missing persons are estimated to go missing annually in United Kingdom due to a variety of intentional and unintentional factors. This article aims to investigate whether the criminal narrative experience framework can be applied to missing persons to acquire a deeper insight into the psychological differences between missing children. Sixty-one previously missing persons completed a missing experience survey, narrative roles questionnaire, and emotions questionnaire. Data were content analysed and subjected to a non-metric, multi-dimensional scaling procedure in the form of smallest space analysis. The results identified four distinct behavioural themes as follows: depressed throwaway victim, distressed pushaway revenger, calm runaway professional and elated fallaway hero. Following a stringent criterion, 88.50% of the sample could be differentiated into one dominant behavioural theme with the remaining 11.50% identified as a hybrid theme. Due to the exploratory nature of the study, additional exploration of the applicability of the framework is required.

Quite possibly, the first application of geographic analysis to identify and characterise the spatial behaviour of the offender concerning the crime scene was developed in 1980 by Milton Newton. Although previous studies have used Newton and Swoope's geoforensic process (Kent, 2009, Essays on the integration of anisotropic landscapes within contemporary geographic profiling models [LSU doctoral dissertations]; Leitner et al., 2007, Police Practice and Research, 8[4], 359–370) to verify the effectiveness of the algorithm, there are, to our knowledge, no investigations that have validated the procedure with cases of serial murderers. The main objective of the study is to analyse a sample of 41 serial killers with a minimum number of six crimes and to evaluate the method proposed by Newton (1988, Geographical discovery of the residence of an unknown dispersing localized serial murder). The results confirm only Newton's first assumption in which after the fifth crime in the series, the estimated ‘haven’ is close to the actual ‘haven’, ruling out that the search area becomes progressively smaller and that the ‘haven’ is located in the search area.

Investigators need to elicit detailed statements from interviewees to find potential leads, whilst simultaneously judging if a statement is genuine or fabricated. Researchers have proposed that the Model Statement (MS) can both (a) increase information elicitation from interviewees and (b) amplify the verbal differences between liars and truth tellers, thereby enhancing lie-detection accuracy. Based upon a critical analysis of the MS literature, we argue that this tool is not currently ready for practical usage, as its utility has not been fully established. We highlight a diverse range of existing MS scripts, and a greater diversity in the dependent measures examined in conjunction with this tool. More robust replications of these procedures are needed. We also highlight why some measures of verbal content may not be suitable as outcome measures and suggest that new research could use the well-established reality monitoring criteria to allow for standardisation across studies.

At present, serial theft case linkage remains at the stage of empiricism. In order to overcome this subjective arbitrariness, this study proposes using a ‘two-step cumulative probability model’ for investigation. In the first step, based on expert grading method, the opinions of 99 policemen were combined to quantify the serial theft case characteristics. In the second step, when a new case occurred, the characteristics of it were compared with the characteristics of each serial theft case, and the corresponding probabilities were added according to the calculations of the second step; when the accumulated points exceeded the threshold, we considered concatenating the new case with the corresponding serial cases. The results demonstrated that the average accuracy of the two-step cumulative probability model was 87.5% and that the average response rate of the irrelevant case (control group) was 12.3%. We concluded that the two-step cumulative probability model could assist in criminal investigations.

The Verifiability Approach (VA), a lie detection method, postulates that genuine statements contain more verifiable information, whereas fabricated reports include more non-verifiable details. We investigated whether participants low (n = 19), medium (n = 23) and high (n = 26) on fantasy proneness differ in the (non)verifiability of their genuine and fabricated accounts. The results showed that groups did not differ in terms of statements' (non)verifiability. Overall, fabricated accounts included more non-verifiable details, but did not differ in verifiable details from genuine stories. The fabricated accounts from each group were given to legal psychology experts (N = 13) who rated accounts' authenticity. Experts more often recognised false accounts from the high fantasy proneness group, hence, high fantasy prone deceivers might be easier to detect than people with lower fantasy engagement. Overall, our results show that the VA is not sensitive to fantasy proneness, however, that experts might be.

In this study, we examined how different types of interviewing (eliciting more complete vs. less complete accounts) used in an interview conducted shortly after an event affected truth tellers' and liars' responses when they were interviewed again after a two-week delay. Participants (n = 80) were shown a mock intelligence operation video and told either the truth or lied about its contents in two interviews, immediately after watching the video, and after a two-week delay. In the immediate interview participants were instructed either to report everything they remembered, or asked spatial questions related to the event. In the delayed interview, all participants were asked to report everything. The differences between truth tellers and liars were slightly larger in the report everything than in the spatial questions condition. Results suggest that an immediate “report everything” instruction can aid to effectively discriminate between truthful and deceptive accounts.

The high number of missing person reports that occur globally each year highlights the need for research in this academically neglected field. This research focuses on establishing whether there are different scenarios or behavioural themes that consistently appear in missing person cases in Spain, which could assist the police investigation process. A representative sample of 341 missing person police reports was collated and up to 27 behaviours, which occur during the disappearance, have been codified, as well as circumstances surrounding the case. Through multidimensional scaling four behavioural themes have been identified: intentional-escape, intentional-dysfunctional, unintentional-accidental, and forced-criminal. These findings entail implications, both in terms of prevention and in the scope of police investigations. Specifically, this research is considered a key step in the development of: (a) a predictive risk assessment system for harmed or deceased outcomes, and (b) in-depth review of forced-criminal disappearances that concur with homicide.

Given the inherent difficulties in validating the comparison question polygraph test (CQT) by using a wide range of the conventional two categories of studies—field and laboratory— (NRC - The polygraph and lie detection, 2003), the innovative method presented by Ginton (Psychology, Crime & Law, 2013, 19, pp. 577–594), has been considered to be a breakthrough (Raskin & Kircher, 2014, Validity of polygraph techniques and decision methods. p. 82). In their recent review of the current status of polygraph validity, Iacono and Ben-Shakhar (Law & Human Behavior, 2019, 43, pp. 86–98), dedicated a significant portion of their article to scrutinising that novel approach. They did applaud Ginton's innovation for the development of the new methods but criticised its outcomes to the point that nullified any contributions it might have had in dealing with the long-lasting controversy regarding the CQT validity. The present response to that critique examines their argumentations in dismissing Ginton's study point by point, indicating reliance on some speculations that had nothing to do with reality and a profound misunderstanding or misinterpreting of the data.

This study used cluster analysis in 126 homicide cases based on Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI; Morey, 1999). PAI was implemented by 126 homicides and then dichotomously coded for the presence or absence of cut-off PAI scale score in order to create criteria for analysis. These cases were input for the agglomerative hierarchical cluster using Ward's method as the clustering algorithm. The results of the analysis classified five clusters: “normal,” “antisocial,” “submissive-depressive,” “soma-anxiety” and “isolated.” The representative characteristics were explored and compared with five clusters. As a result, these five clusters significantly differed in various criminogenic variables, such as criminal record and imprisonment experience. But, other variables were not significantly discriminated.