Summary book Legal Psychology

Summary Legal Psychology – Eric Rassin
Chapter 1: the legal context

Four questions need to be answered by a Dutch judge:

- Can it be established that suspect committed the crime?  judge can ask legal psychologist
for advice about this
- Does the behaviour qualify as a criminal act?
- Are there any exception clauses precluding the suspect’s guilt?
- Which sanction is called for?

Judge needs to be convinced that suspect committed the crime. Standards for conviction are
generally considered to be quite high. But the legal fact finding is bounded by some rules: not all
information can be used as evidence. The end goal of a criminal trial is to establish whether or not
the suspect committed the crime at hand. This is not always the same as finding out what happened.
While standards for fact finding in criminal procedures are high, the standards are far from absolute.
When a(n unknown) threshold of evidence is reached, perpetratorship is proven.

How to establish perpetratorship?

- Evidence required  need to be strong enough to conclude beyond reasonable doubt that
the suspect committed the crime
- Requires historical and scientific, rather than legal methods
- Police: identify suspect  gather evidence against this suspect  hand over case to public
prosecution
- Casefile: may include information that is put in there by the defence. Generally it contains
mostly incriminating evidence. It is sent to the judges wo will try the case. Judges discuss the
case and all evidence can be reviewed. The judge then decides whether or not there is
enough incriminating evidence to convict the suspect (at least two pieces of evidence).
- In the verdict, the judge is free to display some cherry picking.
- Fact finding is stringently bound by legal rules. Those were established by the idea that the
suspect needs protection against the government. Thus the rules are not meant to and do
not safeguard the validity of the conviction.

Experts in inquisitorial versus adversarial systems:

- Inquisitorial: experts appointed by the judge work for and are paid by the court. It is
expected that the delivered reports are of highest possible quality. There are quality
standards for the working attitude. Despite these standards, there may still be a risk of bias
on the side of the expert. Even in the inquisitorial system, expert witness reports can end up
in the case file, without the expert having been appointed by the judge.
- Adversarial: both parties can bring their own experts. It is then very tempting for experts to
write a report that is favourable for the party that retained them. There is room for
differential focus and emphasis.

Criminal versus civil procedures:

- Criminal: mostly inquisitorial, goal is to determine what happened.
- Civil: mostly adversarial, less stress on fact finding. The goal is to determine which of the two
parties is most right. Both parties can make claims and provide evidence to support these
claims. The legal facts in a civil verdict can be remote from the factual truth (if both parties

, agree that grass is blue, the judge will take this premise as an undisputed fact). Experts are
also bound by quality standards, laid down in a code of conduct. This code dictates that the
expert works impartially, independently, and with integrity. But, being hired by a party may
place some psychological pressure on the expert to produce a report that is favourable to the
party that literally pays for it.

Chapter 2: psychological science

Within psychology four approaches: psychodynamics, behaviourism, cognitivism, neuroscience

- Psychodynamics  Sigmund Freud
o All individuals have to go through five predetermined developmental stages in order
to reach a sane mature mental state. In all stages the mental energy is remarkably
consistently directed at the pertinent body parts.
o Human mental system can be subdivided in two different ways
 Based on guiding principles: Ich (reality principle), Überich (morality), Es
(pleasure)  likely to get in conflict
 Between conscious and unconscious processing (überich & Es are
unconscious, Ich is partly conscious. Most mental activity occurs outside our
conscious awareness.
o Defence mechanisms
o Since individuals are expected to not have good self-insight, because most of the
psychological processes occur outside conscious awareness, psychotherapists need
to employ ingenious instruments to discover the underlying causes of current
psychiatric symptoms.
o Several critiques:
 That all individuals are bound to get into psychological problems
 Most of mental activity occurs unconsciously, so our conscious perception of
ourselves and our environment is not much more than a superfluous side
effect of the truly important processes occurring unconsciously
 He sometimes contradicts his own prior work
- Behaviourism  can be seen as antithesis to the psychodynamic theory
o Limited scope of their research to overt, measurable behaviour
o Inspired by methodology of science  experiments and results in peer-reviewed
journals  peer-review system is crucial, it serves quality filter on the scientific
literature
o They favour the most parsimonious interpretation of observations. Behaviourist will
want to explain behaviour by simple generally applicable predictive rules, relying on
as little assumptions as possible  Ockham’s razor
 This approach leans on views of Charles Darwin, implying common ground
between different species
o It is assumed that individuals are virtually born equally, they all have similar
developmental possibilities.
 John Locke  Tabula rasa, a clean sheet  all what humans have become
when reaching adulthood, all their individual differences, are caused by their
specific learning history.
 Behaviourists choose the side of the nurture view instead of nature

, o Pavlov  conditional reflexes (conditional response to a conditional stimulus). The
conditioned, unnatural response occurs without conscious intervention. It was an
automated response.
 We now believe that this classical conditioning plays a major role in the
determination of human behaviour. It is considered as major cause of
psychopathological symptoms such as anxiety and mood disorders
o Behaviour therapy is one of the major therapeutic interventions for various
psychopathological complaints.
o Zajonc  his findings indicate that the emotional appraisal of stimuli gets more
positive after repeated exposure
o Skinner  his operant of instrumental conditioning is about learning associations
between one’s own behaviour and external consequences. While reinforcement
increases the occurrence of behaviour, punishment will reduce its occurrence. The
combination of stimulus valence and positive versus negative contingency delivers
four behaviouristic interventions (Thorndike’s law of effect):
 Positive reinforcement
 Omission (e.g. sentence reduction upon proper behaviour)
 Punishment
 Negative reinforcement (e.g. taking away someone’s driver’s license)
o Rules of operant conditioning have direct relevance for criminal law. The basic
reason to have laws is to promote societal cohesion. Within this framework several
reasons to punish criminals can be defined:
 Retribution  infliction of harm to the perpetrator by the government, to
relieve feelings of vengeance on the part of the victim.
 Deterrence  perpetrator must know that committing crimes is
disadvantageous  Also general prevention
 Incapacitation or protection
 Rehabilitate ex-criminals
 Restoring relation perpetrator and victim
o How well are these goals fulfilled in practice?  specific and general prevention
partly fails, efficacy of rehabilitation. While restorative justice is valued much in legal
theory, its effects are largely unknown.
 The failure is due to invalid application  invalid application of conditioning
principles
 Law of effect requires the test subject to perceive a causal relation between
behaviour and consequence  five circumstances: covariation, chronology,
contiguity, similarity, absence of alternative causes
 These criteria imply that each unwanted behaviour has to be
punished  in practice this is far from actual  because there is a
one on one relation between crime and punishment necessary + the
punishment has to follow rapidly (short delayed conditioning works
best to learn associations)
 Punishment should be proportional
 Punishment is likelier to prevent future crime  Cigarette experiment of
Herman & Azrin (1964): people can choose to take some punishment, if the
pertinent behaviour also had benefits (but in real life prison sentence
virtually takes away all alternatives to make a living in a non-criminal
manner)