Criminal Psychology in Action

Criminal Psychology in Action provides a practical, hands-on introduction to criminal psychology through unique projects for students, illustrating the many ways research into crimes and criminals can be conducted. It also provides an overview of many individual and social psychological theories of criminality. Drawing on over half a century of experience supervising hundreds of projects at undergraduate, master's, and doctoral levels, David Canter provides well-grounded and detailed guidance for students of how to conduct a range of relevant and interesting projects designed to engage students directly with empirical research. This includes consideration of the ethical and practical issues of doing research in this area, as well as examples of documents needed for informed consent and submissions to ethical committees. The range of research designs described - laboratory experiments, surveys, case studies and simulations - provide introductions to methodologies relevant to many other areas of research beyond criminal psychology. Both engaging and interactive, this is an invaluable resource for instructors and students from colleges and universities around the world in many different fields, such as psychology, criminology, and socio-legal studies. It will also be of interest to all those who want to know more about the psychology of crime and criminality.

David Canter, Emeritus Professor at The University of Liverpool is highly regarded internationally for his research and many publications in Forensic Psychology. He created the field of Investigative Psychology and earlier developed Environmental Psychology. He has supervised research projects for over half a century, at every level from schools to PhDs, as well as large-scale studies for government departments, industry, and research councils.

Section One - Challenges and Concerns when Studying Crimes and Criminals Section Two - Approaches to Research Section Three - Projects Experiments How to Forge a Signature: Project 1 Detecting Deception: Project 2 Profiling Serial Killers: Project 3 Geographical Offender Profiling: Project 4 Surveys Exploring Crime Seriousness: Project 5 The Seductions of Crime: Project 6 Case Studies How Fraudsters Persuade: Project 7 Justifications for Criminality: Project 8 How to Rob a Bank: Project 9 Role Playing Simulation Exploring Criminal Networks: Aspects of Structure and Communication: Project 10 Section Four - Summary and Conclusions Appendix A: Guidelines for Ethical Psychological Research Appendix B: Very Brief Explanation of Smallest Space Analysis (SSA)