Criminal Psychology

David Canter

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781134697786
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Psicología
• Subtopic: Historia y teoría en psicología

This thoroughly updated and revised new edition provides an essential overview of a full range of psychological contributions to the understanding of crime and the processes of dealing with offenders and helping their victims.

From the cognitive, developmental and social processes that influence a diverse range of crimes, including burglary, fraud, rape and murder, to the challenges faced by the police and courts in investigating crime or securing reliable testimony, the text is packed with pedagogical features that bring this fascinating subject to life. These include boxes highlighting key topics or issues around research methods, further reading and suggested essay titles.

Also including chapters on rehabilitation in prisons and the psychology of victims, the text examines hot topics such as gang membership and terrorism, as well as discussing how psychology may better understand criminals and criminal behaviour in the future. It builds to a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the field. It will be ideal for students across psychology, criminology and socio-legal studies and law.

1Psychology and the criminal process

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LEARNING OBJECTIVES

When you have completed this chapter, you should be able to:

1Recognise the range of topics that are dealt with by psychologists in the area of crime and criminality.

2Understand the difficulties and challenges associated with research into crime and criminals, including practical, legal and ethical demands on study in this area.

3Describe the various approaches to research that are utilised when studying criminal activity.

4Acknowledge the many different disciplines within and outside of psychology that contribute to our understanding of criminality.

5Summarise the dominant theoretical perspectives that are drawn on in this area. 6 Discuss the differences in approaches to knowledge that distinguish psychology from law enforcement and other disciplines.

6Recognise how the present book is organised from considering principles and theories in the early chapters to more practical applications in later chapters.

7Acknowledge the topics that forensic psychologists deal with, which are given greater emphasis in other publications.

The wide range of psychological studies of crimes and criminals, which have emerged over recent years, is reviewed in this book. This introductory chapter lays the foundations for subsequent chapters, by considering the process from crime to investigation, trial and imprisonment, then on to attempts to manage offenders in prison and help them out of criminality. This leads to exploration of the many different institutions and agencies that have to deal with crime and opens up the debate on the ways in which a psychological approach may differ from other ways of considering crimes. This includes an examination of such processes as those by which people become criminal; the variety of ways in which crimes are enacted; how an understanding of criminals’ thoughts and actions can help in understanding and reducing criminality; factors influencing witness testimony; and managing and treating offenders once they are convicted. The differences between criminological studies of delinquency and psychologists’ studies of rare and extremely serious crimes are highlighted. The study of all of these topics raises challenges in gaining access to appropriate data as well as legal and ethical demands on the researchers.

THIS BOOK IS ORGANISED INTO FOUR SECTIONS

Section 1 – Explanation of criminality

The first section considers three broad forms of explanation of criminality; what the basis is of becoming a criminal. This starts by considering biological explanations of criminality: those theories that try to reduce becoming an offender to aspects of a person’s biological makeup. Second, aspects of a person’s psychology are reviewed, including cognitive processes as well as aspects of mental illness. The third area is the social one, which includes family and upbringing. Membership of criminal groups and related social psychological processes are also examined.

Section 2 – Psychological differences between crimes

The second section reviews ways in which crimes differ from each other. This is important to understand because although two crimes may have the same legal definition, from a psychological perspective, they may be very different. The major distinction between crimes is whether the target is property or a person, although there are many crimes, such as arson, that can be either or both.

The section starts with a consideration of acquisitive crimes then moves on to violence within a domestic setting. The special types of violent crime that include sexual assault are such a major area of criminal psychology that they are given a distinct chapter. That is followed by consideration of homicide. The final chapter in this section discusses organised crime and the increasingly significant area of terrorism.

Section 3 – Interacting with criminals

A rapidly developing area of crime psychology relates to what happens when an offender, or offence, is being investigated. This often consists of interviewing those involved, whether it is suspects, victims or witnesses. A chapter is devoted to the nature of interviews, how they can be improved and some fundamental weaknesses to be avoided.

Within the interview, a crucial aspect is whether the interviewee is telling the truth. Some fascinating strides have been made in recent years in using psychological insights and procedures to detect deception. Some crimes, notably fraud, are based entirely on deception, so present some particular challenges for psychologists.

Investigative psychology is a relatively new area of criminal psychology that seeks to draw on many aspects to improve the investigative process. Given the current author’s involvement in establishing and naming this area, it is no surprise that a chapter is devoted to it.

Section 4 – Areas of application

The final section deals directly with the applications of psychology in law enforcement, the courts and prisons. The too-often neglected area of victimology is also reviewed in this section. These chapters draw on earlier chapters to show how the theories and methods of criminal psychology can make a difference.

The final chapter looks to the future of crime and its implications for psychology. This is the chapter that had to be updated on almost a weekly basis when it was being written because of the rapid technological and social changes that are influencing crime and criminality. Perhaps more emphasis should have been given to what changes in psychology have implications for offending, but unfortunately, psychology changes far more slowly than society. Perhaps a younger generation, especially the lively students who read this book, will be able to get ahead of the curve and be ready for changes in crime before they occur.

THE CRIMINAL PROCESS

To put subsequent chapters in context, it is useful to think of criminal activity as being part of a process, rather than a particular action or an act committed by a particular type of person. The process starts when people carry out illegal acts, but even those acts are likely to have their roots in earlier experiences. Once the act has been committed, there are then victims and witnesses, as well as other processes that become associated with the act, most notably aspects of law enforcement. Thus, an important feature of crime that emerges if the offence is recognised and reported is the police investigation. Furthermore, the criminal is likely to be part of various social networks that will also influence and be influenced by the crime. Other crimes may also be associated with the initial act, so that the crime itself can become part of an unfolding process of criminality.

Psychologists focus on individuals, rather than broader social, political or economic aspects. So, the knowledge that is gained about the psychology of crime has to be gleaned from the acts of offenders, rather than general crime statistics. This means that the task of understanding the underlying cognitive, emotional and interpersonal aspects of the criminality is very dependent on which crimes and criminals it is possible to obtain information about. There is not very much of value for psychologists in the sort of national crime statistics that are the stock in trade of those sociologists who study crime. To understand the individual and social psychological aspects of crimes, details of actual crimes and their perpetrators have to be obtained. This forces the crime psychologist to work mainly in the field with ‘real-world’ data. The tightly controlled laboratory studies favoured by many academic psychologists are just too artificial to provide valid results that can be applied to actual events.

THE CHALLENGES OF CRIME PSYCHOLOGY

Yet, when considering criminals and their actions, it has to be borne in mind that a very biased sample of people is being dealt with. For example, in most places, the offender is appprehended in less than 10 per cent of burglaries. There is, thus, an open debate on whether the burglars who get to court or are studied by researchers are typical of all burglars or are, possibly, the less competent ones who do not escape arrest. By contrast, around the developed world, as many as 95 per cent of murderers are caught. This means that studies of those who kill others may be more representative of the range and variety of homicides than is the case for most other crimes. It also means that there is more information on this very rare crime than for other crimes that are far more prevalent.

Different crimes provide different forms of challenges to understanding what exactly is being studied. For example, arson that is committed as a carefully planned act to make money from insurance, as might be done by a failing business, is extremely difficult to detect. So, this ‘arson for profit’ is rarely studied by psychologists because there are so few people convicted of this type of arson.

Rape and sexual assault provide yet other kinds of limitation on the sorts of cases and people who become the focus for study. A conviction on these crimes is dependent on a decision as to whether there has been consent to the offensive act. The decision about consent relies on the interpretation of the social context of the actions. Consequently, many of the social issues surrounding how consent is determined by the courts will inevitably cloud the picture of who rapists actually are.

However, although in many cases, psychologists do need direct contact with offenders to develop an understanding of crime and criminality, there is an emerging area of psychology known as investigative psychology (Canter and Youngs, 2009) that pays particular attention to the actions of criminals. Information on these actions may be available from victim and witness statements, as well as police and court reports. This information is independent of any direct contact with the offender, but the emphasis is still on understanding criminals, rather than crime in general.

Crime and criminality can never be considered in isolation from the processes by which the actions that are considered criminal come to notice and the route by which the offender emerges into view. The psychology of crime always interacts with the institution or agency that has recognised the criminal activity and the offending person. There are many of these agencies and institutions, all of which deal with different kinds of events and individuals, having different objectives and carrying out differe...