For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated with figuring out the state of mind and motivation behind the actions of criminals, from something simple as purse snatching to the extremes of rape and/or murder. As Clive R. Hollin stated in his book (listed below):
Is a crime committed because the criminal is a rational being, able to make the decision to offend as an act of freewill? Does the crime occur because environmental influences—parents, peer group, culture, and so on—determined the act would invariably happen? Or is the real clue to be found in the genes: are criminals born, not made? The issue goes yet further; if crime is an act of free will, or determined by environmental conditions, or by biological influence, then the solutions to crime demanded by these different perspectives will be very different.
To understand how an offender thinks, acts, and reacts, members of law enforcement can learn what makes them tick, therefore gaining the upper hand. According to a 1981 FBI stat report, 88 out of 192 cases were solved with the help of criminal profiling, 17% of which were solved using profiling alone- a stat 30 years old, and we’ve only improved. Being able to predict a criminal’s next move can only help the future of law enforcement, but there will always be skeptics of psychological methods versus science- a topic to be discussed later.
Of course, we can't have criminal psychology without psychology on its own. Psychology, or "a study of the soul," according to Webster's Dictionary, is said to date back to Plato's philosophical ideas in 387 B.C. From there, understanding the human mind became a fascination. In 1879, Wilhelm Wundt established the first psychology laboratory in Germany. In 1900 Sigmund Freud published the infamous The Interpretation of Dreams, the groundbreaking book on psychoanalysis. A famous experiment in 1905 by Ivan Petrovich Pavlov showed us that dogs could be conditioned to salivate when hearing a specific tone. The list goes on when it comes to psychological breakthroughs throughout history. One in particular can relate to criminal psychology in a big way: jump ahead to 1954- Abraham Maslow published Motivation and Personality, in it containing his famous "Hierarchy of Needs"(Myers, 2004). This pyramid broke down human needs into five sections for every aspect of our life and what makes us thrive. It's the things included in this pyramid that make motivation for crime easier to identify. When a person is in dire need of fulfilling one of these needs, whether it be something as simple as food or something more complex, such as self-esteem, they may feel it necessary to commit crimes against others in order to achieve it.
Although the topic of criminal psychology only recently became popular with the public within the last decade or so, due to television and film, professionals have been using it to their advantage for hundreds of years. From understanding a crime scene to using it in an interrogation room, psychology has been used by law enforcement in many ways and in many countries. Just look at any general psychology timeline and you'll see that many of the discoveries and tactics that are so vital to us as Americans began in other countries such as Germany, Austria, and France. And who could forget a psychologist's best friend- the Rorschach inkblot test- introduced by a Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach. You can see that psychology is a global tool, and something that's still expanding and improving to this day.
Criminal psychology can be viewed as a very broad and ever-changing subject- everything from Sigmund Freud’s 1890s theory of the human psyche to modern psychological warfare. There are even times when a criminal uses psychology against us, turning the aspect of criminal psychology into a two-sided issue. With that said, I don’t believe any one person is affected by criminal psychology, only that it affects us more as a society and criminal justice system as a whole. Psychology is a very effective tool if used properly... for either good or evil.
References:
Hollin, C. R. Psychology and crime: an introduction to criminological psychology. London: 1989. 3-4.
Myers, A. G. (2004). Psychology. (7 ed.). New York City: Worth Publishers.
www.fbi.gov
