Criminal psychology

Criminal psychology is the professional study of criminals and criminal behavior, with particular emphasis placed on explaining the origins of criminal conduct. This often involves the study of the social and emotional context of the subject’s development from childhood all the way to adulthood. It can also involve analysis of environmental factors that affect the socialization of individuals who grow up to become criminals. These factors can include family structure, genetics, economic status, and learning disabilities. In addition to this retrospective view of criminal behavior, a substantial amount of work in criminal psychology goes into establishing the mental state of a person accused of a crime at the time that the crime is alleged to have occurred. This is important for a number of reasons. First, it can help to establish a person’s motive for behaving in a certain way or committing a specific act. Demonstrating motive can be crucial in a criminal trial, as it helps to show that the accused had a compelling reason for committing the crime. Second, criminal psychology can be vital in making a determination about whether or not a person was in full possession of their mental faculties at the time a crime was committed, which is important in cases where temporary or permanent insanity is raised as a defense from liability for a criminal act.

Brief History

Many people are familiar with one aspect of criminal psychology in particular: criminal profiling, which is the creation of a psychological profile of a person likely to commit a particular type of crime. Profiling is used to identify potential suspects when other forms of evidence surrounding a crime have not been able to pinpoint the responsible party or parties. Criminal profiling has been most famously used by state and federal law enforcement agencies in their attempts to catch serial killers. This is because of the way that serial killer cases develop: initially they appear to be a series of unrelated crimes, each of which may have its own potential suspects, and only later does it become clear that there is a connection between them. In these situations, it is not uncommon for there to be almost no information available about the perpetrator, so criminal psychologists must make inferences about the perpetrator’s personality and identity, based on behavioral clues left behind. For instance, if the perpetrator’s crime scenes tend to be very neat and orderly, it might be possible for a criminal psychologist to infer that the killer likes to have control over his or her environment, and may be fastidious in other areas of life. This could help identify new suspects, or it could help rule out existing ones. It is important to keep in mind, however, that a certain amount of guesswork is involved in this type of criminal profiling, so predictions made about a criminal’s psychological background may not always be accurate; they should be used for guidance but not as conclusive proof of guilt or innocence, since it is always possible to draw the wrong conclusions from a given piece of evidence.

Overview

Criminal psychologists can perform different functions at various times in their careers. Some of these functions are more active, requiring greater involvement by the criminal psychologist, while others take place behind the scenes. Criminal psychologists are often consulted by law enforcement agencies to work in an advisory capacity during an investigation, making suggestions about interviewing techniques that would be especially effective with a particular personality type. Criminal psychologists are also called in to testify in criminal trials, providing their expert testimony about the type of individual that would commit a given act, the potential motivations of a person to commit a crime, or the types of behavior that could be expected from someone if they had broken the law. For example, a prosecutor trying to prove that the defendant committed a murder might bring in a criminal psychologist to testify that there is a high probability that the guilty party was exposed to domestic violence as a child. The prosecutor could then show evidence that the defendant’s parents had been convicted of child abuse. Taken together, these two pieces of evidence—the history of child abuse and the expert testimony of the criminal psychologist—would demonstrate a greater likelihood that the defendant could have committed the murder.

In order to make observations like these, it is sometimes necessary for criminal psychologists to conduct experiments or engage in clinical work such as performing assessments of specific individuals. Criminal psychologists have many different assessment tools in their professional toolkits, including assessments that determine whether the subject has learning disabilities, cognitive disorders, or intellectual disabilities that produce some form of mental illness. These assessments are generally used to demonstrate a person’s mental capacity—or lack thereof—to commit a crime.

In order for police and prosecutors to prove a person’s guilt, it is not always enough to show that the person actually committed the criminal act in question. It is sometimes necessary to also show that the person had the requisite mental state at the time the crime was committed. Thus, in order to prove that a defendant is guilty of first-degree murder, the prosecution would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that at the time the murder was committed by the defendant, the defendant had the mental intent to take the life of another. However, some things can interfere with the formation of intent and prevent a person from being able to develop intent. These can include being under the influence of alcohol or mind-altering drugs, being mentally ill to the extent that one cannot tell right from wrong, or being emotionally distraught. A criminal psychologist can conduct experiments to make a reasonably accurate determination of whether any of these forms of interference was present at the time of the crime. So, if a person lashed out with a knife because they thought monsters were attacking them, and killed someone standing nearby, a criminal psychologist might be able to show that the perpetrator did not specifically intend to kill another person; they were just defending themselves against an imaginary enemy.

A major issue that criminal psychologists must contend with is that of confidentiality. Confidentiality means that private information is kept private until and unless the person it concerns agrees that it can be released. Certain professions have a duty of confidentiality that they owe to those they work with, including doctors and other health care providers, lawyers, and psychologists working to treat clients in a therapeutic setting. This duty of confidentiality is primarily based upon the realization that in certain situations people have strong incentives to keep information to themselves, but the best outcome for all concerned requires full or partial disclosure of that information. For example, a doctor attempting to diagnose a patient’s ailment would need to know if the patient had been engaging in recreational drug use or unprotected sexual intercourse, yet the patient could be apprehensive about sharing such details due to the social and legal implications of doing so. By imposing a duty of confidentiality on the doctor, requiring him or her to keep confidential any treatment-related information the patient shares, society tries to protect the vulnerable person by ensuring that they do not need to worry about getting in trouble.

In the case of criminal psychologists, situations can arise in which the psychologist is asked to treat an offender or suspect, and in the course of this treatment, the psychologist gains access to information needed by law enforcement officials to further an investigation or to protect innocent persons. This can place the criminal psychologist at the center of an ethical dilemma. On the one hand, the criminal psychologist has a duty to aid law enforcement by providing them with the information, yet, on the other hand, the criminal psychologist’s duty of confidentiality to the patient may require that the information be kept secret.

Another challenge for criminal psychologists is the issue of "malingering." Malingering can have different specific meanings depending on a client’s situation, but in general it refers to a situation in which the client either pretends that a mental disorder is more severe than it really is, or the client pretends to have a mental disorder that they do not actually have. While those who actually experience mental disorders may find it difficult to comprehend why anyone would pretend to have one, there are a number of reasons why criminals may seek to feign or exaggerate mental illness. The most obvious reason is an attempt at avoiding punishment for their crimes. In other cases, a criminal might feign a mental disorder in order to be transferred to a different facility, such as a prison hospital, which might be considered more comfortable than a conventional prison facility. There have also been cases in which someone in a correctional facility pretends to be mentally ill in order to receive medications to treat the condition, or simply in an effort to receive more attention and to alleviate the boredom of a long prison sentence. Because none of these scenarios represents an appropriate use of mental health resources, criminal psychologists are often called upon to determine whether a person’s symptoms are authentic or artificial. There are a number of psychological instruments that criminal psychologists can use to assess whether a person purporting to suffer from mental illness is telling the truth, lying, or exaggerating.

As noted above, the provision of expert testimony during criminal trials is one of the functions commonly performed by criminal psychologists. Here, too, ethical conflicts can arise between the criminal psychologist’s duty to tell the truth, the duty to further the best interests of the client, and the need to cooperate with the party whose attorney has hired the criminal psychologist. This can be a difficult situation for the criminal psychologist to navigate, because typically the criminal psychologist is hired either by the prosecution or the defense in order to present the accused in a particular light, suggesting that the person is either more likely or less likely to have committed the crimes in question. In exchange for this service, the criminal psychologist receives a fee that can range from several hundred dollars per day all the way up to several thousand dollars. This creates a powerful incentive for the criminal psychologist to make conclusions about the accused that fit with the desires of the party that is paying the criminal psychologist.

The criminal psychologist must then answer the question of what happens when the legal team that is paying the criminal psychologist wants one type of finding but the criminal psychologist’s examination of the accused leads to a different kind of conclusion. Making conclusions that contradict the desires of the legal team paying the bills could mean that the legal team will avoid hiring the criminal psychologist for other cases in the future, which could mean a huge loss in potential income for the criminal psychologist. The criminal psychologist could also miss out on possible referrals to other lawyers that otherwise might have been made, representing still more lost income. On the other hand, a criminal psychologist that develops a reputation for always saying what their employer wants to hear can quickly lose credibility in the courtroom, making it easier for the opposing side to attack the criminal psychologist’s findings by pointing out, for example, that in 95 percent of the cases they have testified in, the psychologist has made conclusions that support the side they are testifying for. When a jury hears this kind of statement, it is easy to conclude that the criminal psychologist is simply parroting what the lawyers want them to say, rather than providing meaningful insights into the behaviors and motivations of the accused. In situations such as this, the role of a criminal psychologist can be extremely challenging, as it often appears that there is no clear way for the criminal psychologist to find a positive outcome.

Bibliography

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