Criminal Psychology

ONLINE STUDY CRIMINAL PSYCHOLOGY

• Learn about the psychological problems associated with criminal behaviour.
• Learn about applying theory to criminal investigations, and treatment of criminals.
• Learn from qualified, expert psychologists
• Deepen your knowledge of psychology, and broaden your career prospects

Lesson Structure

There are 10 lessons in this course:

1. Introduction to Criminal Psychology
2. Psychological approaches to understanding crime
3. Psychology and understanding serious crimes
4. Mental disorder and crime 1 - Learning disabilities and crime
5. Mental Disorder and Crime 2 - Psychopathy
6. Gender and Crime
7. Youth and Crime
8. Psychology and the Police
9. Psychology in the Courtroom
10. Psychology and Crime Prevention

Each lesson culminates in an assignment which is submitted to the school, marked by the school's tutors and returned to you with any relevant suggestions, comments, and if necessary, extra reading.

What is a criminal psychologist?

Criminal psychologists may be known by a variety of names –

• Criminal psychologist
• Forensic psychologist
• Investigative psychologist
• Profiler
• Criminologist

In this course we will use the term criminal psychologist. A criminal psychologist deals with the psychologist aspects of the legal processes. This includes –

• Understanding the psychological problems associated with criminal behaviour.
• Treatment of criminals.
• Applying theory to criminal investigations.

What do Criminal Psychologists do?

Criminal psychologists will cover a range of roles, such as –

• Research evidence to support practice
• Implementing treatment programmes
• Modifying offender behaviour
• Advising parole boards
• Responding to changing needs of prisoners and staff
• Stress management techniques for staff and prisoners
• Statistical analysis used for prisoner profiling.
• Crime analysis
• Mental health tribunals.

Research into Murder

Buss (a Psychologist in America)  looked at over 400,000 FBI homicide files. Of these, 13,670 were husbands killing their wives. A man finding out that his wife is having an affair was one of the leading causes for the woman being murdered, particularly if the woman was a lot younger than the husband. Buss suggested this was become women are sure of their fertility and maternity as their ability to have children is internal. So if a woman has an affair, she can still become pregnant, it doesn’t matter really who she has sex with, she will be sure that any child she bears is hers. However, before paternity testing, a man did not necessarily know that. A woman could have sex with many men and bear a child and no one would know who the father was. So men came to rely more on their looks, status and youth to ensure the fidelity of his mate. This suggests that the more good looking, fertile and healthy the woman, the more motivated the man will be to kill her when he discovers she has been unfaithful.

When the woman leaves a man for another partner, he loses the ability to have children with her. When studying homicides in Chicago, 50% of killings of wives took place within the first two months of separation. 85% of these women were killed within the first year! Buss argues that the main danger is not the length of time, but when the man realises that she is never coming back to him.

Punishment in psychology is a practice of imposing something unpleasant on a person or animal in response to their disobedient or morally wrong behaviour.

Legally, the definition of crime would be the infliction of some pain or loss on a person for their transgression of the law, which would be given by someone in authority such as a public official etc.

In psychology, it is a bit more complicated, technical and restrictive than this. In psychological experiments, for example, a rat may be given an electric shock for going the wrong way round a maze. Obviously this is more simplistic than the punishment a criminal would receive committing a crime. Skinner introduced the concept of operant conditioning and punishment. Operant conditioning refers to learning with a punishment or a reinforcement. In psychology therefore, a punishment is the reduction of a behaviour when a stimulus is applied (positive reinforcement) or a stimulus is removed when a behaviour is “good” (negative punishment).

EXAMPLE ASSIGNMENT QUESTIONS

• Why is crime thought to be socially constructed?
• Define reconstructive memory.
• What are the differences in offending between male and female young people?
• What factors are thought to influence whether a young person becomes an offender?
• Define a young offender.
• Develop your understanding of criminal psychology and how psychology is used in law enforcement and crime prevention.

Extract from the course notes -

How do people become psychopaths?

Research has suggested that psychopaths with lower intelligence or a poor education are more likely to end up in prison than psychopaths with higher intelligence. Researchers involved with psychopaths will often note that they lack emotional insight, but when they have a history of criminal behaviour ,they do not seem to learn from that experience, just think up ways to avoid getting caught. So it appears that psychopaths with lower intelligence are less likely to be able to think of ways to avoid getting caught.

In childhood, some theorise that the child is not able to learn right from wrong. The parents become angry and frustrated and try to shield the child from the consequences of their behaviour, trying to educate the child about right and wrong. The child is always in trouble and does not appear to be able to learn. Some parents may feel that the child will eventually understand, but if they don’t the parents may resort to punishment. This is the worst thing that the parent can do, what the child really requires is training in choices, consequences and supervision.

There has also been suggestions that there is a genetic link to the psychopathic personality. Psychopaths appear to lack the ability to feel what others do, the physical sensation of guilt. They may feel anger, sadness or fear, but not guilt for what they have done. Some theorists believe that sexually promiscuous psychopaths who are able to live off other people are survivors and may represent one of the genes for survival in humans.

Other research has shown that adult psychopaths do not benefit from counseling and therapy and may in fact commit further crimes more quickly and again because of it.

Brain scan research has shown that the brains of psychopaths functions and processes information differently. One piece of research showed dead bodies from car accidents to psychopaths and found that they remained calm, whereas other people were clearly upset. They do not appear to use their brain in the same way that others do, suggesting they are physically different to “normal” people.