Citation

Canter D, Youngs D. Crime Psychol. Rev. 2015; 1(1): 1-4.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/23744006.2015.1033153

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The number and variety of journals and books that deal with many different psychological aspects of crime, criminals and the legal process is growing at a rapid rate. Taylor & Francis alone, who publish this new journal, now have at least 25 journals covering the general area of crime and psychology. A simple search of the Taylor & Francis website with the term Forensic Psychology produces 6890 hits. A Google search of 'Crime Psychology' gives 26,900 hits. When limiting this search to books or journals, there are still 5490 results. Yet these terms were hardly known a quarter of a century ago. The plethora of current publications has increased rapidly in the last few years even though psychological contributions to the legal process have been made from the earliest days of modern scientific psychology. Over a century ago, in 1908, Hugo Munsterberg, one of the first experimental psychologists published On the Witness Stand: Essays in Psychology and Crime. In this book, he laid out many of the issues that are still being studied and explored in the courts today, such as the frailties of memory and the influence of sources external to the legal process on the judgements made in court. Around the same time Sigmund Freud, in 1906, told judges in Vienna that witnesses can have distorted memories because of unconscious processes; an issue that that has still not been fully explored, despite the important studies on false memories, false confessions and false allegations. Since the early days of modern psychology, there has been a steady influx of psychological ideas, theories, methods and findings into all aspects of the investigation and prosecution of crime and the processes for dealing with criminals and helping their victims. But it is only in the last decade or so that there has been such a rapid expansion in the full gamut of interactions between psychology, crime and the law. The expansion has been fuelled by a recently emerging, apparently insatiable interest in all aspects of forensic, socio-legal and criminal psychology. This interest crosses many disciplines and professions, so the area is of significance to people with a wide range of backgrounds, skills and training; students in psychology, criminology, and other social sciences, probation, social work, forensic psychology and psychiatry and those professionals already practising in these areas, as well as attorneys, solicitors, police and other law enforcement officers, who are increasingly receiving informal and formal training that covers psychological matters....

Language: en