A-Level Psychology (AQA)

Topic Summaries

Forensic psychology

Dealing with offending behaviour

  • Custodial sentencing: the aims of custody are deterrence, incapacitation, retribution, and rehabilitation. However, the effects of this sentencing are generally negative. These include stress, depression, and institutionalisation. Institutionalisation is a big problem as prison life is extremely boring and the same day-to-day, leading to high reoffending rates and a lack of rehabilitation.
  • Behaviour modification in custody: token economies based on operant conditioning – in custody, selected socially-acceptable behaviours may be rewarded with tokens (a secondary reinforcer) that can be exchanged for a privilege (the primary reinforcer). 👥 Hobbs and Holt (1976) studied 125 male juveniles in an industrial school and found that using token economies caused a significant increase in desirable behaviour from the majority of boys.
  • Anger management: 👥 Novaco (1997) found that anger management focuses on identifying and dealing with emotion that come before anger, not preventing anger in the first place. This is an ‘eclectic’ approach as offenders are taught skills from a variety of different approaches. There are three stages:
    • Cognitive preparation: offenders identify patterns of emotion that occur during, after and before aggression which helps them to predict their anger.
    • Skills acquisition: the offender learns techniques that can be used to manage their anger (e.g. breathing techniques to regulate their mood and emotions). This is direct learning where the therapist does the technique and the offender copies them.
    • Application practice: offender applies learnt skills to a real life situation that would make them angry. If there are successful, the therapist positively reinforced them.
  • Restorative justice:
    • 👥 Braithwaite (2002) found that restorative justice programmes use a different perspective than other methods. This approach aims to focus on the victim, and how they were affected by the aggressive behaviour. There are mediated conversations between the victim and the offender outside of the courtroom.
    • The restorative justice council create guidelines for what survivors, offenders, and mediators can do. If an offender wants to, they can pay for damages caused to the victim, apologise, and show remorse for their actions.

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