Matthew Tonkin

University of Leicester | LE · Department of Criminology

Deciding whether two crimes have been committed by the same offender or different offenders is an important investigative task. Crime linkage researchers commonly use receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis to assess the accuracy of linkage decisions. Accuracy metrics derived from ROC analysis—such as the area under the curve (AUC)—offer c...

Introduction Quantification of the social climate of mental health care environments has received considerable attention. Investigations of the resulting measures indicate that social climate is associated with individual outcomes including patient satisfaction and staff burnout. Interest has grown in developing interventions to improve social clim...

Ward atmosphere is an important aspect of forensic mental health care. Positive perceptions have been linked to satisfaction during treatment, quality of life, autonomy, involvement in care, emotional expression and lower rates of aggression. The EssenCES is one of the most widely used measures of ward atmosphere. This study sought to add to the ps...

Comparative Case Analysis is an analytical process used to detect serial offending. It focuses on identifying distinctive behaviour that an offender displays consistently when committing their crimes. In practice, crime analysts consider the context in which each behaviour occurs to determine its distinctiveness, which subsequently impacts on their...

Behavioural crime linkage (BCL) analyses offender crime scene behaviour with the aim of identifying groups of crimes that share similar (and distinctive) behaviours. This allows police to infer that the same person/s were responsible for crimes, allowing them to be “linked” as a crime series. Successful BCL can increase the quantity and quality of...

Efforts to prevent sexual violence against women and children can be evidenced by many local, national, global initiatives. In 2016, the World Health Organisation published its Global Plan of Action to address violence against women and children. The strategy called for a global and nationwide public health multisectoral response to preventing viol...

Property Crime: Criminological and Psychological Perspectives pulls together expertise from a wide range of academics and practitioners who focus on preventing and investigating property crime. From car theft and vandalism to burglary and robbery, this book provides an insight into the motivations and pathways of crime, as well as how it is investi...

This study compared the ability of seven statistical models to distinguish between linked and unlinked crimes. The seven models utilised geographical, temporal, and modus operandi information relating to residential burglaries (n = 180), commercial robberies, (n = 118), and car thefts (n = 376). Model performance was assessed using receiver operati...

Purpose To conduct a test of the principles underpinning crime linkage (behavioural consistency and distinctiveness) with a sample more closely reflecting the volume and nature of sexual crimes with which practitioners work, and to assess whether solved series are characterized by greater behavioural similarity than unsolved series. Method A sampl...

Previous research has clearly demonstrated the positive impact of therapeutic interventions on offenders’ well-being. Much less is known about the impact on prison staff facilitating and delivering such interventions. We employed qualitative methodology to capture a deeper understanding of the work of therapeutic prison officers. Seven prison offic...

Evidence suggests that the majority of crime is committed by a minority of prolific serial offenders who pose a substantial risk to society. Behavioural Crime Linkage (BCL) has been proposed as one method to more effectively bring serial offenders to justice. BCL is a form of behavioural analysis that seeks to identify similarities in offender crim...

Purpose: This study compared the utility of different statistical methods in differentiating sexual crimes committed by the same person from sexual crimes committed by different persons. Methods: Logistic regression, iterative classification tree (ICT), and Bayesian analysis were applied to a dataset of 3,364 solved, unsolved, serial, and apparent...

The social climate of forensic settings is thought to impact on a number of important clinical and organisational outcomes and is, therefore, an important construct in relation to the successful functioning of forensic units. A variety of self-report questionnaires have been developed to objectively measure the social climate of forensic settings (...

Purpose The aim of the study is to compare learning-disabled (LD) and non-LD offenders in terms of their relating styles and to examine the relationship between relating styles and offence types. Design/methodology/approach Two groups of male offenders completed the Person’s Relating to Others Questionnaire -Version 3 (PROQ3) and were compared u...

Social climate is a term used to describe the environment of a particular setting which may influence the moods and behaviors of the people inhabiting that setting. This review explores perceptions of social climate in secure forensic services and the associations with aggression. Article searches were conducted using electronic databases, hand-sea...

Designed as a quick and easy tool to help assess the essential traits of the social and therapeutic atmosphere in forensic psychiatric settings (subsequently expanded for use in correctional facilities), the Essen Climate Evaluation Schema (EssenCES) was originally developed and first published in Germany. It has since been translated into a number...

Within this study the relationship between patient characteristics (age, length of stay, risk, psychopathy) and individual perceived ward climate (n=83), and differences between staff’s and patient perceptions of climate (n=185) was investigated within a high secure forensic hospital. Results show that therapeutic hold was rated higher among staff...

Purpose: To test whether geographical, temporal and Modus Operandi (MO) crime scene behaviours can be used to support behavioural case linkage (BCL) with crime series that contain several different types of offence. Methods: Crime scene data relating to 749 solved commercial burglaries and robberies were extracted from the databases of the Metropol...

Previous research has examined how age and health can shape workability (WA). This study seeks to explore how a lack of WA (inability) may affect the health of the employee. To explore the effects of work inability on mental wellbeing among therapeutic prison officers. An anonymous cross-sectional study of prison officers conducted in a category B...

Background Previous research has examined how age and health can shape workability (WA). This study seeks to explore how a lack of WA (inability) may affect the health of the employee. Aims To explore the effects of work inability on mental wellbeing among therapeutic prison officers. Methods An anonymous cross-sectional study of prison officers...

A systematic review of the reasons why detained adult offenders fail to attend or successfully complete treatment programme(s) was conducted. An initial search of the literature identified 2,827 articles, which following evaluation against explicit inclusion/exclusion criteria and a quality assessment was reduced to 13 studies. Extracted data from...

Significant time and resources are devoted to the monitoring of social climate in secure settings. However, if these efforts are to help (rather than hinder) attempts to improve the functioning of such units, the monitoring of social climate must be based on sound psychometric methods. The aim of this review was to determine what questionnaires exi...

This study aimed to investigate the case linkage principles, behavioural consistency and distinctiveness, with a sample of serial car thieves. Target selection, acquisition, and disposal behaviours, as well as geographical and temporal behaviours, were examined. The effects of temporal proximity and offender expertise were also investigated as mode...

Offender behaviour is used to distinguish between crimes committed by the same person (linked crimes) and crimes committed by different people (unlinked crimes) through behavioural case linkage. There is growing evidence to support the use of behavioural case linkage by investigative organisations such as the police, but this research is typically...

Much previous research on behavioural case linkage has used binary logistic regression to build predictive models that can discriminate between linked and unlinked offences. However, classification tree analysis has recently been proposed as a potential alternative owing to its ability to build user‐friendly and transparent predictive models. Build...

The social climate of correctional (forensic) settings is likely to have a significant impact on the outcome of treatment and the overall functioning of these units. The Essen Climate Evaluation Schema (EssenCES) provides an objective way of measuring social climate that overcomes the content, length, and psychometric limitations of other measures....

In the absence of forensic evidence (such as DNA or fingerprints), offender behavior can be used to identify crimes that have been committed by the same person (referred to as behavioral case linkage). The current study presents the first empirical test of whether it is possible to link different types of crime using simple aspects of offender beha...

Purpose. The current study tests whether existing behavioural case linkage findings from the United Kingdom (UK) will replicate abroad with a sample of residential burglaries committed in Finland. In addition, a previously discussed methodological issue is empirically explored. Methods. Seven measures of behavioural similarity, geographical proximi...

Purpose. Treatments and risk assessments determined by the offence paralleling behaviour (OPB) framework appear to have found a place in practice well ahead of empirical support and conceptual clarity. Although the framework is intuitively appealing its inappropriate use may have profound negative implications for patients. Incapacitation and unnec...

Recent research on aggressive behaviour in psychiatric hospitals has emphasised the importance of the interaction between characteristics of patients and the hospital environment. Interpersonal style, a key component of personality and personality disorder, has emerged as a potentially important characteristic that may be relevant to a patient's in...

An adaptation of Skinner's verbal behaviour model is proposed as a framework for analyzing the aggressive behaviour of hospitalized psychiatric patients. Few behaviour analytic studies have addressed verbal aggression and none draw upon Skinner's model. These few studies suggest that the aggression of psychiatric patients is multiply determined and...

The social climate of forensic units is important but little investigated, in part because of the unavailability of a clinically practical and statistically sound measure. To provide preliminary psychometric and normative data for the English version of the Essen Climate Evaluation Schema (EssenCES) in UK high-security hospital settings. A total of...

Traditionally, research on offender profiling has investigated the relationships between offender behaviour and offender characteristics. However, evidence about offender behaviour is not the only evidence available at a crime scene. This study extends previous collaborative research between forensic scientists and psychologists (e.g. Bond & Sherid...

Geographical profiling is an investigative methodology sometimes employed by the police to predict the residence of an unknown offender from the locations of his/her crimes. The validity of geographical profiling, however, has not been fully explored for certain crime types. This study, therefore, presents a preliminary test of the potential for ge...

The purpose of the present study is to test the case linkage principles of behavioural consistency and behavioural distinctiveness using serial vehicle theft data. Data from 386 solved vehicle thefts committed by 193 offenders were analysed using Jaccard's, regression and Receiver Operating Characteristic analyses to determine whether objectively o...