PC6051 - The Role of Forensic Psychology in Serial Killers

Assignment Task

1. False Confession

The ministry of justice is concerned about miscarriages of justice relating to false confession. Please write a letter to the minister outlining the issue. This will be used to inform better practice across the Police. Your letter should reference relevant academic literature. This might include studies indicating the extent of the problem. You might also want to include evidence on experiments showing how easily people can be lead io falsely confessing as well as outlining any problems with these experiments. In addition, please indicate policing practices that may lead to false confessions as well as recommending improvements that may reduce the number of false confessions given.

2. Police Interviews

The National Crime Agency (NCA) have recently been charged with developing new, efficient tactics for suspect interviews. The idea is that interviews will be undertaken to yield the best, accurate, most reliable and valid evidence as possible. They have asked you as an expert for advice on best practice surrounding suspect interviews. Your task is to write an evidence-based report, aimed at policy and practice makers (Government decision makers and staff) who have a limited knowledge of psychological terminology and concepts. You therefore need to write clearly and concisely. Your report should explore the literature around the relevant aspects of interviewing suspects. You should critically summarise and make recommendations about the extent to which the approaches, techniques or tools that your report covers are appropriate for ethical and useful techniques. To achieve a good balance of breadth and depth of coverage, you should aim to write about the lessons learnt from previous methods and research. You should end with a brief strategy that summarizes how good practice in operational police interviewing can benefit from research.

3. Detecting Deception

Following the arrest of a serial rapist who was previously apprehended by police but lied to them about his whereabouts over the summer of 2019, Netflix has approached you in the early stages of developing a new programme, ‘How to catch a sexual offender’. They have two questions they would like your assistance with responding to: 1. Is there a way to accurately detect deception in prolific criminals who have are known to the police? 2. Are there common misconceptions or misunderstandings about detecting deception which would be worth considering in presenting deception detection to the public in a meaningful way? Your task is to write an evidence-based report which answers these two questions, aimed at the general Netflix crime viewers and the production team at Netflix who have a limited knowledge of psychological terminology and concepts, and who also want to portray this to the public. You therefore need to write clearly and concisely. Your report should explore the literature around the relevant aspects of detection of deception. In addressing the first question, you should critically summarise and make recommendations about the extent to which the approaches, techniques or tools that your report covers are appropriate for the detection context outline in an accessible and digestible format. To achieve a good balance of breadth and depth of coverage, you should aim to write about no more than two techniques, tools or approaches that you think are a best fit to this report request. In addressing the second question, you should discuss common pitfalls or errors in accurately detecting deception, and you should end with a brief strategy that summarizes alternative approaches that could be deployed or utilized.

4. Witness testimony

You have been approached by a defense lawyer representing a defendant accused of a serious assault. The lawyer has asked you to prepare a report to be submitted to the judge in this case concerning the likely accuracy of the witness evidence given by the main prosecution witness. The witness is an 15-year-old White British adolescent. The accused is a 38-year old British Asian man of Pakistani origin. The assault took place at 330 am on a Sunday morning, as the victim was leaving a nightclub with her friends. The victim was assaulted in an alley near the club, and right off the high street. The witness was on his way home after having spent time at a house party. The witness alleges that he saw the accused running out of the park towards a car (the path is on the opposite side of the road to the side that the car was on, approximately 20 meters away). 

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