Jason Roach

Home is where the heart lies? A study of false address giving to police

Purpose The purpose of the present paper is to identify the cognitive processes associated with the construction of a false address, and explore how this can be used to identify and trace those who give a false address to police. It is hypothesized that most people find it difficult to spontaneously fabricate an entire false address. As a consequence they provide identifiable clues as to the real address being concealed. Methods A quasi-experimental research design was employed where 142 students were first asked to generate a false address and second to analyse it to ascertain how random they considered it to be. Results Participants, overwhelmingly, stated that the false addresses generated contained elements of truth which could be used to identify their real place of residence. Although most participants appeared capable of generating bona fide false postcodes, comparison with an official UK postcode list identified over 60% did not actually exist. Conclusion People generally rely on pre-existing address knowledge as opposed to random generation, with the latter appearing more cognitively effortful. As such, they often unwittingly provide clues to the real address being concealed, therefore, affording increased possibilities in identifying them as liars at point of contact and in tracing them after the fact.

HO/RT1culture: Cultivating police use of Home Office Road Traffic 1 form to identify active serious offenders

Self-selection policing is the term given to the identification of serious active offenders by dint of their commission of more minor infractions. The paper explores the feasibility of using the non-production of documentation as required after the issue of an instruction to do so (form HO/RT1) as a way of identifying active, serious offenders. Such non-producers (no shows): were more likely to have recorded offence histories on the Police National Computer (PNC); had offence histories comprising two or more offences, significantly more than offending ‘shows’; had offended more recently than offending ‘shows’; were found to have an offence history including serious offences; typically offended after HO/RT1 issue, demonstrating that their offending was more current than historical. The implications of these results for operational policing are contended to be substantial, and are discussed.

Fraudulently Claiming Following a Road Traffic Accident: A Pilot Study of UK Residents’ Attitudes

The United Kingdom Government recently expressed concern about the financial repercussions that feigned whiplash claims following road traffic accidents (RTAs) are having on the insurance industry and the United Kingdom economy. Indeed, this is a problem that is a likely result of a significant percentage of otherwise law-abiding citizens, who interpret this behaviour to be victimless. Nevertheless, feigning illness for some external incentive is not new, and psychiatry has long battled with the problem of ‘malingering’. Previous research has indicated that a substantial prevalence of malingering exists across a variety of contexts; however, establishing the ground truth of those who malinger for financial compensation is problematic. This article presents an alternative approach that provides a brief insight into the problem of malingering following a RTA. A total of 197 United Kingdom residents completed a hypothetical questionnaire that examined their likelihood of malingering with respect to depression, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), or whiplash following a RTA. The results suggest that a substantial percentage of those in the present sample indicated they would be likely to malinger using either a partial malingering or a false imputation strategy. Malingering following a RTA in the United Kingdom appears to be regarded with little severity, and the present paper discusses the wider implications of the findings.

Local variations in reporting deaths to the coroner in England and Wales: a postcode lottery?

Aims In England and Wales, doctors are charged with a responsibility either to report a death to the coroner or issue a medical certificate specifying cause of death. A lack of formal prescriptive or presumptive oversight has resulted in the promulgation by individual coroners of local reporting regimes. The study reported here identified overall and gendered variations in local reporting rates to coroners across the jurisdictions of England and Wales, consistent over time. Methods Analysis was performed on Ministry of Justice (MOJ) data pertaining to the numbers and proportions of deaths reported to the coroner by jurisdiction over a 10-year period (2001–2010). Office of National Statistics (ONS) data provided the numbers of deaths registered in England and Wales over the same period to serve as a denominator for the calculation of proportions. Where coroner jurisdictions (and local authorities) had been amalgamated during this period, the combined reported and registered death figures have been included in line with the current jurisdiction areas. Results While reporting rates for individual jurisdictions were found to be stable over the 10-year period, wide local variations in reporting deaths to coroners were found with no obvious demographic explanation. The gender of the deceased was identified as a major factor in local variation. Conclusions The decision to report a death to the coroner varies across jurisdictions. Implications for coronial investigations are discussed and the need for wider research into coroners’ decision-making is proposed.

Child homicide: generating victim and suspect risk profiles

Purpose – In England and Wales, on average one child every week is a victim of homicide. The purpose of this paper is to explore whether different victim-risk profiles and suspect variables can be differentiated for specific victim ages. Design/methodology/approach – This paper presents a preliminary analysis of more than 1,000 child homicides committed in England and Wales between 1996 and 2013, from data provided through the Homicide Index. Statistical techniques such as cluster analysis were used to identify specific victim-risk profiles and to analyse suspect variables according to the age of victim. Findings – The findings present a clearer picture of the risk-age relationship in child homicide, whereby several specific risk profiles are identified for specific child ages, comprised of crime variables including; likely victim and suspect demographics, the most likely circumstances of the homicide and methods of killing. Using similar techniques, a number of tentative clusters of suspects implicated i...

Evolutionary psychology and terrorism

This book explores the evolutionary context of terrorism and political violence. While evolutionary thinking has come to permeate both biological and social-science theorising, it has not yet been applied systematically to the areas of terrorism and political violence. This volume seeks to do this for the first time. It presents a collection of essays on evolutionary psychology and terrorism, which encourage the reader to approach terrorism from a non-traditional perspective, by developing new approaches to understanding it and those who commit such acts of violence. The book identifies evolutionary thought as heuristically important in the understanding of terrorism, explores the key conceptual themes, and provides an evolutionary (and cross-species) understanding of the community-wide effects of terrorist attacks. The contributors bring forward innovative ideas and concepts to assist the practitioner, analyst and academic to better understand and respond to the threat of terrorism. In doing so this book challenges existing assumptions about terrorism and those who carry out such acts, in order to move the debate into new areas characterized by an emphasis on intellectual quality and rigour, an interdisciplinary approach, and a drawing together of theory and practice. The intention is to provide a sufficient discussion to enable the reader to both understand the relevance of evolutionary thinking to terrorism and political violence, and to appreciate the practical implications of conceptualising problems in this way. This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism and political violence, psychology, criminology and security studies.

Mission impossible? Assessing the veracity of a mental health problem as result of a road traffic accident: a preliminary review of UK experts’ practices

ABSTRACT The number of people claiming for personal injury after being involved in a road traffic accident (RTA) in the UK continues to soar. In April 2015, the UK Government intervened to implement measures aimed at reducing the prevalence of fraud within such personal injury claims. However, these reforms did not include claims for mental disorder that arise because of a RTA despite being responsible for substantially larger payouts in comparison with claims for whiplash. The present study examines the assessment practice for detecting fraudulent claims of this nature using a mixed methods survey analysing UK medico-legal professionals’ assessment methodologies (N = 37). The findings suggest comprehensively that assessment practices in this field are idiosyncratic. The findings evidence limitations in all aspects of the assessment process from medico-legal assessors being asked to undertake examinations without the presence of medical records to 44% of examiners being unaware of the three types of malingering. The article concludes with recommendations for improving both assessments and the assessment process for assessing RTA claimants in the UK.

Cognitive and Emotional Stressors of Child Homicide Investigations on U.K. and Danish Police Investigators

In a previous paper, key differences in the form and manifestation of cognitive and emotional stress experienced by investigators of adult and child homicide were identified, along with a cursory look at how investigators commonly deal or cope with these effects. In this article, the findings from 11 interviews with U.K. and Danish police officers with experience of investigating both adult and child homicides suggest that child homicide investigations can have a profoundly different effect on police investigators that can vary between officers. The effects experienced and coping strategies employed were similar among officers in Denmark and the United Kingdom, and these included becoming more emotionally closed and engaging in regular sport and exercise. The findings hold important implications for police training and for the welfare of current and future police homicide investigators particularly where the victim is a child.

Nudging down theft from insecure vehicles. A pilot study

This report presents the preliminary findings of a pilot study to reduce thefts from cars committed against insecure vehicles, using the behavioural insights or ‘nudge approach’. The recipients of the ‘nudges’ were potential victims of theft from insecure vehicles living in high rate areas for this crime, where a bespoke leaflet campaign was developed to nudge vehicle owners into thinking more carefully when leaving their vehicles unattended, particularly when left on their driveways overnight. Although somewhat tentative at this stage, the preliminary findings indicate that the percentage of thefts committed against insecure vehicles in the two treatment areas was reduced significantly when compared with the two control group areas where no nudge interventions were introduced. This demonstrates that if appropriate nudges (grounded in psychological theory) are coupled with and delivered by appropriate messengers, the prosocial behavioural change can be encouraged which can lead to a reduction in criminal behaviour and opportunities for crime.

Going Fishing: Searching for Self-Selection Policing Trigger Offences Committed by Visitors to a Prison

With the theoretical and emergent research base now (hopefully) established by the previous two chapters, the next two focus on identifying triggers for SSP. They are in no sense tablets from the academic mountain (which as readers will have noticed is a mere hillock when it comes to the approach advocated here).