This book should be of interest to students and professionals of criminology, applied psychology, forensic studies, probation and police training

The Psychology of Criminal and Antisocial Behavior: Victim and Offenders Perspectives is not just another formulaic book on forensic psychology. Rather, it opens up new areas of enquiry to busy practitioners and academics alike, exploring topics using a practical approach to social deviance that is underpinned by frontier research findings, policy, and international trends. From the relationship between psychopathology and crime, and the characteristics of catathymia, compulsive homicide, sadistic violence, and homicide victimology, to adult sexual grooming, domestic violence, and honor killings, experts in the field provide insight into the areas of homicide, violent crime, and sexual predation. In all, more than 20 internationally recognized experts in their fields explore these and other topic, also including discussing youth offending, love scams, the psychology of hate, public threat assessment, querulence, stalking, arson, and cults. This edited work is an essential reference for academics and practitioners working in any capacity that intersects with offenders and victims of crime, public policy, and roles involving the assessment, mitigation, and investigation of criminal and antisocial behavior. It is particularly ideal for those working in criminology, psychology, law and law enforcement, public policy, and for social science students seeking to explore the nature and character of criminal social deviance. - Includes twenty chapters across a diverse range of criminal and antisocial subject areas - Authored by an international panel of experts in their respective fields that provide a multi-cultural perspective on the issues of crime and antisocial behavior - Explores topics from both victim and offender perspectives - Includes chapters covering research, practice, policy, mitigation, and prevention - Provides an easy to read and consistent framework, making the text user-friendly as a ready-reference desktop guide

Criminal psychology is the application of the principles of normal and abnormal psychology to the understanding, prediction, and control of criminal behavior. Criminal Psychology: Nature, Nurture, Culture provides an in-depth yet readable introduction to the foundations of criminal psychology as it is understood and practiced from the classroom to the courtroom. The book is organized into five sections. Part I examines the nature and origins of criminal behavior. These chapters outline the role of psychology in the criminal justice system, and review the biology, psychology, and sociology of crime to develop a naturalistic model of criminal behavior that can guide theory and practice in law enforcement, criminal justice, and forensic evaluation. Part II examines the major classes of mental disorder that may be associated with criminal behavior, including psychotic disorders, mood disorders, organic brain syndromes, substance abuse, and personality disorders. Each chapter consists of a description of the syndrome, followed by applications to law enforcement, criminal justice, and forensic mental health issues of competency, sanity, and criminal culpability. Part III deals with death. Topics include homicide, serial murder, mass homicide, workplace and school violence, and terrorism. Part IV covers sexual offenses and crimes within the family, including rape and sexual assault, sex crimes against children, child battery, domestic violence, and family homicide. Part V discusses the psychological dynamics of a variety of common crimes, such as stalking and harassment, theft and robbery, gang violence, organized crime, arson, hate crimes, victimology, the psychology of corrections, and the death penalty. Each chapter contains explanatory tables and sidebars that illustrate the chapter’s main topic with examples from real-life cases and the media, and explore controversies surrounding particular issues in criminal psychology, such as criminal profiling, sexual predator laws, dealing with children who kill, psychotherapy with incarcerated offenders, and the use of “designer defenses” in court. Grounded in thorough scholarship and written in a crisp, engaging style, this volume is the definitive handbook and reference source for forensic psychologists, mental health practitioners, attorneys, judges, law enforcement professionals, and military personnel. It will also serve as an authoritative core text for courses in forensic psychology, criminology, and criminal justice practice.

Crime Statistics suggest that Americans are not a notably law-abiding people. With some 13 million felonies reported every year, it is not surprising that few topics engage public attention and imagination more compellingly than the dynamics of criminal behavior. Volume and ubiquity alone might suggest the psychology of criminal behavior is well understood and there exists an integrated body of explanatory theory and empirical evidence. But in fact only fragmentary and incomplete accounts have thus far appeared. Criminal Behavior is virtually unique in providing a comprehensive psychological paradigm that fits across variant species of crime, while meeting the requirements of science and the needs of law enforcement and administration of justice in controlling criminal behavior.The authors begin this remarkable text by outlining a model for criminal behavior based not on abnormal psychology but on the tenets of social learning theory. They illuminate the processes by which criminal activity is initiated and repeated, including personal constructs, stimulus determinants, and behavioral repertoires. They define four process elements that interact in precipitating criminal behavior-inclination, opportunity, expectation of reward, expectation of impunity. They show how these process elements are regulated and confined by a series of complex and variable boundary conditions in specific criminal offenses. Conceptual, methodological, and operational constraints on the study of criminal behavior are defined, and statistically and behavioral science data bearing upon larceny and homicide, two crimes at diametric extremes, are examined in detail.Pallone and Hennessy locate and define those psychological variables that render comprehensible the process whereby formally criminal acts are construed as possible and desirable by individual actors and show how those actors self-select psychosocial environments that facilitate or at least do not impede the commission of crime. They identify and explain the phenomenon of 'tinderbox violence.'Its comprehensive perspective and balanced consideration of competing viewpoints make Criminal Behavior an ideal text for students and teachers of criminology and of the psychology of criminal behavior. It is also a pioneering work for psychologists, sociologists, criminologists, and law-enforcement official.

This book explores the links between psychology and crime, evaluating psychological explanations of crime and the use of psychology within the criminal justice system. It provides a comprehensive overview that highlights the consequences of crime for victims, offenders and wider society. The book combines classic theory with new developments in eyewitness testimony, offender profiling and forensic psychology. The resulting text offers an engaging and challenging route to a full understanding of key topics, including: the theoretical history of criminal psychology interpersonal violence, sexual violence and deviancy the psychology of crime in groups mass murder and war crimes psychology and the criminal justice system. Psychology and Crime genuinely integrates the two areas with the advanced student in mind, and includes a range of practical devices to support the learning process: chapter overviews; study questions; and further reading. Lively and accessible, it is essential reading for students and academics in criminology, sociology and psychology. The Key Approaches to Criminology series celebrates the removal of traditional barriers between disciplines and, specifically, reflects criminology’s interdisciplinary nature and focus. It brings together some of the leading scholars working at the intersections of criminology and related subjects. Each book in the series helps readers to make intellectual connections between criminology and other discourses, and to understand the importance of studying crime and criminal justice within the context of broader debates. The series is intended to have appeal across the entire range of undergraduate and postgraduate studies and beyond, comprising books which offer introductions to the fields as well as advancing ideas and knowledge in their subject areas.

Society today is fascinated by crime. Crime is a hot topic in the media, so that people are continually exposed to criminal events, portrayals of those who commit them, and the suffering of victims. Yet the reality of crime is often very different from how it is portrayed in the media. Most crime is neither violent nor morbid; most offenders are not psychopaths, and although prison generally does not work, there may well be other, less punitive but more constructive interventions that are actually quite effective. This book exposes some of the most prevalent myths about crime and criminal behaviour. In addition it provides the reader with up-to-date knowledge on crime and offending behaviour. It also highlights the ways in which psychological methods of research and psychological knowledge can help us to understand criminal behaviour and the ways that targeted interventions are developed based upon this. Pakes' and Winstone's Psychology and Crime is essential reading for students taking courses in the psychology of crime, criminal and forensic psychology, criminology, and community justice, as well as for other courses where a knowledge of the complex relationship between psychology and crime - and its application in practice - is required. Practitioners and policy-makers will also find it highly informative.

Applied Criminal Psychology provides the reader with a comprehensive and practical guide to psychological research and techniques. It is introductory and wide-ranging and covers important forensic aspects of psychology, psychiatry, and behavioral sciences. Many key forensic issues are covered, including personality disorders, risk assessment, the forensic psychologist as an expert witness, detecting deception, eyewitness memory, cognitive interviewing, forensic hypnosis, false confessions, criminal profiling, and crisis negotiation. With this new edition and starting with the first two chapters, significant focus has been placed upon Psychopathy and the closely associated DSM category of Anti-Social Personality Disorder. Another new chapter has also been included dedicated to the principles of law associated with an accused person's mental status. The book is international and interdisciplinary in its scope and focus. Many of the contributors to this book are well known scholars and/or practitioners. It will be of great interest to psychologists, psychiatrists, criminologists, legal professionals, law enforcement personnel and students who are planning careers in forensic psychology, criminology, and policing.