Publisher's Synopsis
Psychologists contribute to police enquiries. But what are the origins of these contributions? Canter and Alison have drawn together almost 40 papers that date the process back to Biblical times. Criminal Detection and the Psychology of Crime charts the course that the prime movers in the area have plotted over several decades of research. - - Part One includes some of the earliest reports from the Royal Commission, a survey of the nature and extent of psychological services to police departments and perceptions of organisational performance in police departments. - - A broad range of articles are included in the section on interviewing ? ranging from Fisher and Geiselman?s work on the cognitive interview, Shepherd?s principles of ethical interviewing and Greer?s sociological model of the police informant. The detection of deception also features heavily ? with chapters that include Ekman?s seminal text on comparisons between professional lie detectors and Kohnken?s research on training detectives in detecting deception. Statement validation and psychological autopsy also feature in the volume ? with a review of the USS Iowa Incident, Gudjonsson?s work on retracted confessions and Canters evaluation of the CUSUM technique. - - Parts VI ? X concentrates on criminal behaviour ? with early chapters from Burt and Bowlby, the FBI's research on profiles of arsonists, Green et als cluster analysis of burglars M/Os and more recently Canter and Heritage?s multivariate model of sexual offence behaviour. Thus, later sections consider a broad range of criminal activity from robbery to rape, arson to burglary and murder to fraud. Chapters include the debate over specialisation or criminal eclecticism in juvenile offence behaviour, Clarke?s consideration of insurance fraud, Palmers comparison of murderers and their brothers, Feeny?s consideration of robbers as rational decision makers and Rossmo?s geographic analysis of serial killers spatial behaviour. - - The final section concentrates on inferences on offender characteristics from offence actions ? the process commonly known as 'profiling'. This part considers some of the potential pitfalls of such scientifically controversial area as well as outlining some of the more reliable methods for developing models of association between behaviour and characteristics. - - The volume will be of academic and historic interest to anyone concerned with the development of psychological contributions to the investigative process.
