The field of criminal psychology entails the use of clinical psychology within the legal system. Some psychologists specialize in working with police and lawyers; others conduct research into criminal behavior and witness testimony; yet others focus on prisons for purposes of inmate management or rehabilitation.
Before the advent of the psychology field, questions of who commits crimes, why they do it, how criminals should be treated, etc., fell to religion, philosophy or the law alone. Since the late 1800s, psychologists have undertaken the task of understanding human behavior and the mind, including that of criminals.
Psychology as an academic discipline was established at European and American universities in the late 19th century. However, criminal profiling had been used informally prior to this. For example, in the 1880s, two physicians used clues from several crime scenes to predict what the serial killer Jack the Ripper’s personality was like.
Late 19-century psychologists and physicians such as Sigmund Freud, J. McKeen Cattell, Alred Binet, William Stern, William Wundt, and William James studied memory in relation to eyewitness testimony.
Hugo Munsterberg, a German psychologist (1863 to 1916), is attributed with having truly started the field of criminal psychology. His book On the Witness Stand and other papers still give insight into the field and support the use of psychological testimony.
Though the idea of using psychologists to analyze criminals was conceived centuries ago, it’s taken a while for the field to develop reliable theories and techniques and for police and other legal professionals to work well with psychologists.
Criminal profiling had been used for decades in the United States and elsewhere, yet police intuition had been the guiding force behind it until more recently. In 1974, the FBI started a Behavioral Science Unit to study serial killers. FBI agents interviewed dozens of serial murderers to get inside their heads and develop theories on offender behavior. Nowadays, the FBI employs professional psychologists to aid in their work.
In the 1990s, psychologist David Canter, Ph.D., founded the field of investigative psychology in Britain so that psychologists could conduct scientific research in criminal psychology and thereby support the legal system more effectively. He now runs the Centre for Investigative Psychology at the University of Huddersfield, UK.
Criminal psychology encompasses many different areas of psychology from developmental to social psychology, and other fields as well. Studies in criminal psychology cover topics such as eyewitness testimony, crime scene analysis, social theories on violence, interview techniques, psychological assessment, offender behavior, offender treatment, statistical analysis of samples and more.
There is some tension between crime enforcement and psychology, as psychologists tend to be more empathetic to human needs but ultimately the legal system is responsible for enforcing the law. However, with new research and understanding, the field of criminal psychology is ever expanding and proving greatly useful to the legal system.
(Sources for all facts: apa.org/monitor/julaug04/criminal.aspx; Bartol & Bartol, History of Forensic Psychology, 2005; Cattell, J.M., Measurements of the accuracy of recollection, Science, 2, 1895, 761-766; Forensic Psychology pdf, Intro to Psychology Gateways to Mind and Behavior, Cengage Learning.)
