Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T08:49:51.446Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1.3 - Investigative Psychology

from Part I - Psychological Underpinnings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2021

Jennifer M. Brown
Affiliation:
London School of Economics and Political Science
Miranda A. H. Horvath
Affiliation:
University of Suffolk
Get access

Summary

Investigative Psychology (IP) as an empirical field of study that focusses on the psychological input to the full range of issues that relate to the investigation of crime. IP focusses on three overall processes present in any investigation that can be improved by psychological study; 1) Retrieving information from the crime scene for the purpose of analysis and research; 2) Making decisions during criminal investigations; and 3) Analysing criminal behaviour. For this last component, three general interlinked areas have been the focus of research: individual differentiation which aims to establish differences between the behavioral actions of offenders and identify subgroups of crime scene types; behavioural consistency which aims to understand an offender’s behavioural consistency across a series of crimes; and inferences about offender characteristics, which aims to establish the nature of the consistency between the most likely characteristics of an offender based on the way an offender acts at the time of the crime, and is at the core of offender profiling.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alison, L. (2013). The forensic psychologist’s casebook: psychological profiling and criminal investigation. Willan.Google Scholar
Bateman, A. L., & Salfati, C. G. (2007). An examination of behavioral consistency using individual behaviors or groups of behaviors in serial homicide. Behavioral Sciences and the Law, 25(4), 527544.Google Scholar
Bennell, C., Bloomfield, S., Emeno, K., & Musolino, E. (2013). Classifying serial sexual murder/murderers: An attempt to validate Keppel and Walter’s (1999) model. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 40(1), 525.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bennell, C., Snook, B., Macdonald, S., House, J. C., & Taylor, P. J. (2012). Computerized crime linkage systems: A critical review and research agenda. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 39(5), 620634.Google Scholar
Canter, D. (1994). Criminal shadows: the inner narratives of evil. HarperCollins.Google Scholar
Canter, D. V. (1995). The psychology of offender profiling. In Bull, R. & Carson, D. (Eds.), Handbook of psychology in legal contexts (pp. 343355). Wiley.Google Scholar
Canter, D. (2000). Offender profiling and criminal differentiation. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 5, 2346.Google Scholar
Canter, D. (2010). Criminals’ personal narratives. In Brown, J. M. & Campbell, E. A. (Eds.), Cambridge handbook of forensic psychology (1st ed., pp. 791794). Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Canter, D., & Alison, L. J. (2003). Converting evidence into data: The use of law enforcement archives as unobtrusive measurement. The Qualitative Report, 8(2), 151176.Google Scholar
Canter, D. V., Alison, L. J., Alison, E., & Wentink, N. (2004). The organized/disorganized typology of serial murder: Myth or model? Psychology, Public Policy, & Law, 10(3), 293320.Google Scholar
Canter, D., & Heritage, R. (1990). A multivariate model of sexual offence behaviour: Developments in “offender profiling.” I. Journal of Forensic Psychiatry, 1, 185212.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Canter, D. V., Heritage, R. C., Wilson, M., & Donald, I. (1991). A facet approach to offender profiling: Final Report to Home Office.Google Scholar
Canter, D. V., & Wentink, N. (2004). An empirical test of Holmes and Holmes’s serial murder typology. Criminal Justice & Behavior, 31, 489515.Google Scholar
Canter, D. V., & Youngs, D. (2009). Investigative psychology: offender profiling and the analysis of criminal action. Wiley.Google Scholar
Plous, S. (1993). The psychology of judgment and decision making. McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Rainbow, L. (2008). Taming the beast: The UK approach to the management of behavioral investigative advice. Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, 23(2), 9097.Google Scholar
Salfati, C. G. (2000). Profiling homicide: A multidimensional approach. Homicide Studies, 4(3), 265293.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salfati, C. G. (2003). Offender interaction with victims in homicide: A multidimensional analysis of frequencies in crime scene behaviors. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 18(5), 490512.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salfati, C. G. (2006). The Homicide Profiling Index (HPI) – a tool for measurements of crime scene behaviors, victim characteristics, and offender characteristics. In Gabrielle Salfati, C. (Ed.), Homicide research: past, present and future: proceedings of the 2005 meeting of the Homicide Research Working Group. Homicide Research Working Group.Google Scholar
Salfati, C. G. (2008). Offender profiling: Psychological and methodological issues of testing for behavioural consistency. Issues in Forensic Psychology: Investigative Psychology, 8, 6881.Google Scholar
Salfati, C. G. (2010). The Homicide Profiling Index – Revised to include rape and sexual offenses (HPI-R©). Investigative Psychology Research Unit (IPRU), John Jay College of Criminal Justice.Google Scholar
Salfati, C. G. (2011). Research methods in offender profiling research. In Rosenfeld, B. & Penrod, S. (Eds.), Research methods in forensic psychology (pp. 122135). Wiley.Google Scholar
Salfati, C. G. (2019). Consistency of offender behaviors and victim targeting in serial sexual violence: An overview of the field. In Handbook of sexual assault and sexual assault prevention (pp. 781800). Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salfati, C. G., & Bateman, A. (2005). Serial homicide: An investigation of behavioral consistency. Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling, 2(2), 121144.Google Scholar
Salfati, C. G., & Canter, D. V. (1999). Differentiating stranger murders: Profiling offender characteristics from behavioral styles. Behavioral Sciences and the Law, 17, 391406.Google Scholar
Salfati, C. G., & Sorochinski, M. (2019). MATCH: A new approach for differentiating & linking series of sex worker homicides and sexual assaults. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 63(9), 17941824.Google Scholar
Trojan, C., & Salfati, C. G. (2009). Methodological considerations of determining dominance in multi-dimensional analyses of crime scene behaviors and offender characteristics. Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling, 5(3), 125146.Google Scholar
Trojan, C., Salfati, C. G., & Schanz, K. (2019). Overkill, we know it when we see it: Examining definitions of excessive injury in homicide research. Journal of Criminal Psychology, 9(2), 6174.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woodhams, J., & Bennell, C. (2014). Crime linkage: theory, research, and practice. CRC Press.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×