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- Holmberg, Ulf, 1946-
(author)
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Police interviews with victims and suspects of violent and sexual crimes : interviewees' experiences and interview outcomes
- 2004
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The police interview is one of the most important investigative tools that law enforcement has close at hand, and police interview methods have changed during the twentieth century. A good police interview is conducted in the frame of the law, is governed by the interview goal, and is influenced by facilitating factors that may affect the elicited report. The present doctoral dissertation focuses on police interviews in cases of very serious crimes of violence and sexual offences. Results reveal crime victims’ and perpetrators’ experiences of being interviewed and police officers’ attitudes towards conducting interviews related to traumatizing crimes. Study 1 revealed that when police officers interviewed murderers and sexual offenders, the interviewees perceived attitudes characterized by either dominance or humanity. Police interviews marked by dominance and suspects’ responses of anxiety were mainly associated with a higher proportion of denials, whereas an approach marked by humanity, and responses of being respected were significantly associated with admissions. In line with Study 1, the victims of rape and aggravated assault in Study 2 also revealed the experience of two police interview styles, where an interviewing style marked by dominance and responses of anxiety was significantly associated with crime victims’ omissions of information. Moreover, a humanitarian interviewing style, and crime victims’ feelings of being respected and co-operative, was significantly related to crime victims providing all information from painful events. Special squad police officers’ attitudes towards interviewing crime victims, in Study 3, also showed a humanitarian approach and two dominant approaches, one affective and the other refusing. The attitude towards interviewing suspects of crimes in focus revealed humanitarian and dominant interviewing attitudes, and an approach marked by kindness. The present thesis shows that, during their entire career, an overwhelming majority of the special squad police officers have experienced stressful events during patrol as well as investigative duty. Results show that symptoms from stressful event exposures and coping mechanisms are associated with negative attitudes towards interviewing suspects and supportive attitudes towards crime victim interviews. Thus, experiences from stressful exposures may automatically activate ego-defensive functions that automatically generate dominant attitudes. Moreover, it is important to offer police officers who have been exposed to stressful events the opportunity to work through their experiences, for example, through debriefing procedures. After debriefings, police officers are better prepared to meet crime victims and suspects and, through conscious closed-loop processes, to conduct police interviews without awaking ego-defensive functions.
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| 2. |
- Corovic, Jelena, 1980-
(author)
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Offender Profiling in Cases of Swedish Stranger Rapes
- 2013
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Swedish national statistics suggest that the number of reported stranger rapes is steadily increasing. Stranger rape is one of the most difficult types of crime for the police to investigate because there is no natural tie between the victim and offender. As a result, there is a need for more knowledge about how crime scene features could be used to make inferences of likely offender characteristics that could help investigators narrow down the pool of suspects. The aim in Study I was to examine how offender behaviors interact with contextual features, victim behaviors, and the assault outcome. Results suggest that the stranger rapes could be distinguished by five different dynamic rape pattern themes, which mainly differed on two dimensions: level of violence to control the victim, and level of impulsivity/premeditation characterizing the rapes. The results also highlight the importance of including contextual features when studying offender behaviors. The aim in Study II was to examine how single-victim rapists and serial rapists can be differentiated by the actions at their first stranger rape. Results suggest that three behaviors in conjunction: kissed victim, controlled victim, and offender drank alcohol before the offense, could be used to predict whether the offender was a single-victim rapist or serial rapist with a classification accuracy of 80.4 %. The aim in Study III was to examine how stranger rapists could be differentiated from a normative sample on background characteristics, and if stranger rapists’ pre-assault and initial-attack behaviors could be used to predict likely offender characteristics. Results showed that the strongest predictions could be made for previous criminal convictions, offender age, and the distance traveled by the offender to offend. Overall, the present thesis has found some scientific support for the use of crime scene behaviors to make inferences of likely offender characteristics that could be useful for profiling purposes.
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| 3. |
- Ahola, Angela S., 1974-
(author)
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Justice needs a blindfold : Effects of defendants’ gender and attractiveness on judicial evaluation
- 2010
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Gender and appearance affect our judgments regarding an individual’s personality, profession, and morality, and create a reference frame within which to act toward that person. The main question of the present thesis is whether these kinds of stereotypical conceptions have implications for the judicial process: how professionals within the judicial process evaluate and judge a defendant, and how and what eyewitnesses remember. Expressed in other words: Is justice blind or do gender and appearances affect the treatment we receive in a judicial process? The main purpose of the present thesis was to study the effects of gender and attractiveness on evaluations of defendants accused of crimes of varying seriousness and type. The second theme was to study under what circumstances these effects are particularly strong; emotionality, retention interval, as well as gender and profession of evaluators, were controlled for. Study 1 aimed at investigating “pure” gender and attractiveness effects, with psychology students as participants. Study II added the variable of emotionality, as well as six groups of evaluators. Emotionality was studied by including emotional photographs of crime victim injury as well as two levels of vividness in the written description the evaluator was to read. The evaluators were professionals working within the judicial process in Sweden–judges, jury members, counsels for the defence, prosecutors, and police officers–as well as law students. Study 1 showed that a male defendant was evaluated more negatively than a female. Study II showed two main tendencies: (i) “same-sex penalty effect”: Sentencing evaluators (judges, jurors) evaluated a defendant of their own gender more harshly than one of the opposite gender; (ii) “male penalty effect”: Nonsentencing evaluators (police officers, counsels for the defence, prosecutors, and law students) evaluated and judged a male defendant more harshly than a female. Study III focused on exploring effects of violence (emotionality) and retention interval in the context of gender differences to investigate under which circumstances gender differences might be especially strengthened. Violence was manipulated using two acts: one neutral (walking in a store) and one violent (robbing the same store). Retention interval was of two lengths: 10 minutes and 1-3 weeks. Results revealed a gender-stereotype-enhancement effect, in which the evaluator evaluated the male defendant more harshly with the longer retention interval as well as in the violent act condition. The results of the present studies may have practical implications for the functioning of the judicial process; on the eyewitness hearing level (Study III) as well as on the evidence evaluation-, guilt-, and punishment assessment levels (Studies I and II).
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