User:Fabiola Zayas/Criminal psychology

Criminal psychology also referred to as criminological psychology, is the study of the views, thoughts, intentions, actions, and reactions of criminals and all who participate in criminal behavior. It is a sub discipline of criminology that mixes and applies behavioral and forensic science

The study goes deeply into what makes someone commit a crime, but also the reactions after the crime, on the run, or in court. Criminal psychologists are often called up as witnesses in court cases to help the jury understand the mind of the criminal. They help narrow down the list of suspects from crime using different methods. The need to know behavioral areas, for that reason, they must be educated in criminology, social work, etc. Because it deals with aspects of criminal behavior which can be stated as “Any kind of antisocial behavior, which is punishable usually by law but can be punished by norms, stated by the community,”

Psychology's role in the legal system

Main article Forensic psychology.

Psychologists are licensed professionals that can assess both mental and physical states. Profilers look for patterns in behavior to typify the individual(s) behind a crime. A group effort attempts to answer the most common psychological questions: If there is a risk of a sexual predator re-offending if put back in society? If an offender is competent to stand trial? And whether or not an offender was sane/insane at the time of the offense.

Criminal psychologists can be used to do investigative work, like examine photographs of a crime, or interview a suspect. They sometimes have to formulate a hypothesis, to assess what an offender is going to do next after they have broken the law.

The question of competency to stand trial is a question of an offender's current state of mind. This assesses the offender's ability to understand the charges against them, the possible outcomes of being convicted/acquitted of these charges, and their ability to assist their attorney with their defense. The question of sanity/insanity or criminal responsibility is an assessment of the offender's state of mind at the time of the crime. This refers to their ability to understand right from wrong and what is against the law. The insanity defense is barely used as it is difficult to prove. If declared insane, the offender committed to a secure hospital facility for much longer than they would have served in prison—theoretically, that is.

Legal psychologists, or known as Criminal psychologists are the ones who make the decisions on offenders. They see if those offenders are a threat to society.

The four roles of criminal psychologists

In 1981, one of the fathers of United Kindom criminal psychology – Professor Lionel Haward – described four ways that psychologists may perform upon being professionally involved in criminal proceedings. These are the following:

Clinical: In this situation, the psychologist is involved in the assessment of an individual to provide a clinical judgment. The psychologist can use assessment tools, interviews, or psychometric tools to aid in their assessment. These assessments can help police or other comparable organizations to determine how to process the individual in question. For example, help to find out whether they are capable to stand trial or whether the individual has a mental illness which relates to whether they are able or unable to understand the proceedings.

Experimental: In this case, the task of the psychologist is to perform research to inform a case. This can involve executing experimental tests to illustrate a point or provide further information to courts. This may involve false memory, eyewitness credibility experiments, and such. For example, this way questions similar to “how likely would a witness see an object in 100 meters?” could be answered.

Actuarial: This role involves the usage of statistics to inform a case. For example, a psychologist may be asked to provide the probability of an event occurring. For example, the courts may ask how likely it is that a person will re-offend if a sentence is declined.

Advisory: Here, a psychologist may advise police about how to proceed with the investigation. For example, which is the best way to interview the individual, how best to cross-examine a vulnerable or another expert witness, how an offender will act after committing the offense.

Profiling

Main article offender profiling

"Wher is Jack the Ripper?" by Rob unreal

A major part of criminal psychology, known as criminal profiling, began in the 1880s when Jack the Ripper was profiled. This man terrorized the streets of London mutilating about five women. Even though the killer was never identified he was the first person to ever be profiled by Dr. Thomas Bond.

Criminal profiling, also known as offender profiling, is the process of linking an offender's actions at the crime scene to their most likely characteristics to help police investigators narrow down and prioritize a pool of most likely suspects. Profiling is a relatively new area of forensic psychology that during the past 20 years has developed from what used to be described as art to rigorous science. Part of a sub-field of forensic psychology called investigative psychology, criminal profiling is based on increasingly rigorous methodological advances and empirical research.

In the United Kingdom, Professor David Canter was a pioneer helping to guide police detectives from the mid-1980s to an offender who had carried out a series of serious attacks, but Canter saw the limitations of "offender profiling" - in particular, the subjective, personal opinion of a psychologist. He and a colleague coined the term investigative psychology and began trying to approach the subject from what they saw as a more scientific point of view.

Classifying criminals

A renowned Italian Psychologist Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909) was thought to be one of the first criminologists to attempt to formally classify criminals based on age, sex, physical characteristics, education, and geographic region. When comparing these similar characteristics, he better understood the origin of the motivation of criminal behavior, and in 1876, he published his book called The Criminal Man. Lombroso studied 383 Italian inmates. Based on his studies, he suggested that there were three types of criminals. There were born criminals, who were degenerates and insane criminals, who suffered from a mental illness. Also, he studied and found specific physical characteristics. A few examples included asymmetry of the face, eye defects and peculiarities, and ears of unusual size, etc. These characteristics put criminals in certain groups and that may use different methodologies on a crime helping analyze the criminal.

Motives for committing a crime

Seal of the FBI

Other characteristics help identify the motive of a crime. There is the sexual motive where the individual is motivated by sex and sexual fantasies (It dos not mean that any penetration is necessarily, because every fantasy is different). Anger, the victim may be or represented something the killer has remorse toward and, the victim represents a way of getting revenge of something or someone. Mental illness may incentivize a crime but it doesn't completely justify it because they are other factors that need to be considered. Motivated by profit the killer gains something monetary by committing this specific crime with this specific victim.

Its role in the United States and the FBI

In the 1950s, an United States psychiatrist James A. Brussel came up with the profile of the Mad bomber this individual terrorized the city of New York for 16 years during the 1950s even before the Second World War (He promised the police to stop during the war) Brussel analyzed everything the police had on the case and he stated that the individual would be older than 40, suffered from a mental illness, and was polite, etc. With this profile, the police narrow down their suspect and caught George Metesky the Mad Bomber in 1957.

One of the bombs was placed in Radio City Music Hall in New York.

Criminal profiling was introduced to the FBI in the 1960s when several classes were taught. At the time people didn't have knowledge of criminal psychology and what it was, eventually, films based on the fictional works of author Thomas Harris caught the public eye as a profession in particular Manhunter (1986) and Silence of the Lambs (1991).

This leads the FBI to open its training academy, the Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU), in Quantico, Virginia in the 1970s, and they establish the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime.

Narrowing down the list of suspects

Criminal profiling is a process now known in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as a criminal investigative analysis. Profilers, or criminal investigative analysts, are trained and experienced law enforcement officers who study every behavioral aspect and detail of an unsolved violent crime scene in which a certain amount of psychopathology has been left at the scene. The characteristics of a good profiler are discussed.

Five behavioral characteristics that can be gleaned from the crime scene are described:

• Amount of planning that went into the crime

• Degree of control used by the offender
• Escalation of emotion at the scene
• Risk level of both the offender and victim
• Appearance of the crime scene (disorganized versus organized).
• The process of interpreting the behavior observed at a crime scene is briefly discussed.

Other ways that help identify the killer are the Method of operation (M.O), and the weapon used. The recollection of data, criminal records, the motive behind the crime, along with the help of forensic and personality traits reflect on the crime scene and the victims can be useful too.  

Criminal Psychologist has to consider profiting from racial content. Race plays big parts in our criminal justice systems. Over the years, federal and state prisons in the United States held 475,900 inmates who were black and 436,500 who were white, giving a difference of 39,400. Many police, throw many blacks in prisons because of stereotypes. The stereotyping of Blacks as criminals throughout society, that “criminal predator” is used as a substitute for “young Black male.” This common stereotype has incorrectly served as abstruse reasoning for the unofficial policy and practice of racial profiling by criminal justice practitioners. Many psychologists look over these stereotypes because race doesn't make you violent or a threat to society. The cultural, environmental, and traditional concepts of every race play a big part in psychology, to see the background or why were these crimes were committed. Some races don't have equal opportunities as others, so certain people choose different paths. They also evaluate if prison is a stable place for certain criminals because some commit crimes due to mental health issues that were never addressed. There are many measures Criminal psychologists have to look over during these investigations while overlooking the law.

Victimology

Main Article Victimology

Other ways that help identify the killer are they're victims and there approached to them. Victimology is the study of the victims of a crime and how it changes its life moving on. It finds the relationship between possible victims and offenders, but not only between them but between victims of the same offender and their relationship between them like age, physical characteristics, social cycle, jobs, hobbies, etc. Victimology helps answer: Why this person choose this victim at this specific time?

Organized crime vs disorganized crime

Main Article Organized crime

There are organized killer and disorganized killer, that is reflected on the crime scene this allows profilers to understand the killer and help narrow down the list the suspects, both crimes have a different characteristic to difference it.

• The Organized crime haves structure, order, is well planned, and well developed. These crimes are usually committed in groups.

• Disorganized crime is sloppy, random, not planned, and usually committed by lonely people with a low IQ.

We have to be conscious that there's not a definition of this term that is by the book.

Requisites to be a criminal psychologist

To become a criminal psychologist the main thing you need to have is experienced in law enforcement and working with criminals and victims and, there are some steps you can that can help you start in college to gain theoretically experience.

• Bachelor's degree in any behavioral science
• Research in your undergrad years
• Graduate degree
• Research during the graduate degree
• Thesis
• Internships (It will be beneficial if the research, internship, and thesis are related or are about profiling.)  

Applied criminal psychology

The effect of psychological and social factors on our brain is the question forensic or criminal psychologists deal with, due to the fact it is the seed of all our actions. For forensic psychiatry, the main question 'Which patient becomes an offender?', or 'Which offender becomes a patient?'. Another question asked by these psychiatrists is, 'What came first, the crime or the mental disorder?'. Psychologists also look at environmental factors along with genetics to determine the likeliness (Profiling) of a particular person to commit a crime.

Criminal and forensic psychologists may also consider the following questions:

• Is a mental disorder present now? Was it present during the time of the crime?
• What is the level of responsibility of the offender for the crime?
• What is the risk of reoffending and, which risk factors are involved?
• Is treatment possible to reduce the risk of reoffending?

Accordingly, individual psychiatric evaluations are resorted to measuring personality traits by psychological testing that have good validity for the court.

Key Studies

A number of key studies of psychology especially relevant to understanding criminology have been undertaken, these include:

• Bobo doll experiment, Bandura, Ross & Ross (1961)
• The Stanford prison experiment, (Philip Zimbardo 1973)
• Loftus and Palmer (1974), eyewitness study

See also

• Forensic psychology
• Moral psychology
• Criminal anthropology
• Antisocial personality disorder
• Psychopathy
• Malignant narcissism
• Sadistic personality disorder
• Paranoia
• Offender profiling
• Jack the Ripper suspects
• Child abuse
• Victimology