Psychology and Crime

An Introduction to Criminological Psychology

Clive R. Hollin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135107390
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Crime is an expensive aspect of society, and each year huge amounts of public money are spent on the courts, police, probation services, and prisons, while the human costs in terms of pain, fear and loss is incalculable.

Psychology and Crime comprehensively covers the vital role of psychological theories and methods in understanding and managing criminal behaviour. It analyzes in depth the application of psychological findings to a range of serious crimes, such as arson, violent crime, and sexual crime. It examines the use of psychology by the police and the courts and discusses the role of psychology in crime reduction strategies.

Written by a leading authority on the subject and informed by over twenty years of teaching experience, the second edition of this popular text has been thoroughly revised and updated to take account of the most recent research in the field. New features also include:

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• Expansive coverage of the development of criminal behaviour;
• Chapter summaries and end-of-chapter discussion points;
• Text boxes throughout highlighting key issues, debates and brief histories;
• Supplementary online resources at www.routledge.com/cw/hollin.

Psychology and Crime is an essential introduction and reference for undergraduate and postgraduate students in psychology, criminology, sociology and related subjects. It also represents an invaluable resource for professional training courses and anyone planning a career in the criminal justice system.

1 Psychology and crime

One of the more enjoyable aspects of studying crime is that it entails reading and understanding theory and research from a wide range of disciplines. This academic range is exemplified by the membership of the Forensic Research Centre at the University of Leicester, which includes a range of university departments including archaeology, chemistry, criminology, economics, engineering, geography, geology, health sciences, law, pathology, psychiatry, and psychology. This list could reasonably be augmented by genetics, economics, philosophy, and sociology; doubtless there are other specialities that could also be added. Given this list of interested parties, it should be clear already that psychology alone is not going to explain crime in its many forms and guises. It follows that psychology is not going to provide all the answers to the question of how to manage and reduce crime. Nonetheless, given that a great deal of crime does involve people, then it can be argued that an understanding of crime should include at least some reference to psychology.

An attempt to formulate an understanding of crime is not an empty academic exercise, there are many important real-life considerations to take into account. For example, reported crimes need to be investigated, those accused of committing crimes are prosecuted and tried, victims may need support, and legal sanctions are delivered to the guilty. In these and many other crime-related matters, psychological theory and research can be applied to make a contribution to managing the realities of crime and the criminal justice system. Thus, the emphasis in this book will be on the contribution that psychology can make to the study of crime and, importantly, to its management. However, before moving to the various topics encompassed within the study of psychology and crime, there are three basic issues to consider, in order to set the scene for what follows. What is psychology? What is crime and criminology? What is the relationship between psychology, criminology, and crime?

What is psychology?

The Oxford Dictionary of Psychology (Colman, 2003) offers the following definition of psychology: ‘The study of the nature, functions, and phenomena of behaviour and mental experience’. As the Oxford Dictionary acknowledges, this deceptively simple definition masks a tangle of complexity. Introductory psychology texts, such as Eysenck (2000), illustrate the range and scope of contemporary psychology, including such diverse topics as child development, occupational selection, social interaction, brain functioning, learning, psychotherapy, and the list goes on. Overall, it is reasonable to conclude that psychology is the study of people (although some psychologists study animals).

The study of people can be approached from two broad perspectives: first, how do we each function as an individual? And second, how do we interact with each other? The psychology of the individual may be concerned with cognitive functioning, such as perception, memory, thinking, and learning; or with the development of qualities such as intelligence, creativity, and personality; or with the relationship between biological and psychological functioning. The study of interactions between people, generally referred to as social psychology, may encompass groupings such as families or people at work, or teams that play sport; the formation of friendships; and cross-cultural differences in social functioning. Of course, individual and social functioning can go awry, leading some psychologists to study abnormal psychology (or psychopathology), which may include conditions such as schizophrenia and depression, or childhood problems, or personality disorder.

There are several specialist areas of applied psychology, mostly developed from the mainstream areas of enquiry and generally studied at postgraduate level before leading to professional practice. Alongside criminological psychology, educational and child psychology is concerned with psychological aspects of teaching, children’s learning, and the educational system. Occupational and organisational psychology are concerned with the application of psychological theory and expertise to the recruitment and training of staff, organisational structures and systems, leadership and management, and so forth. There are a cluster of specialities to do with improving psychological (clinical psychology and counselling psychology) and physical (health psychology) well-being, as well as sports psychology that, unsurprisingly, is concerned with exercise and sport.

Psychological theory

Psychology is rich in theories. A broad theoretical distinction is neatly illustrated by the titles of two texts, Psychology: The Study of Mental Life (Miller, 1969), as opposed to Science and Human Behaviour (Skinner, 1953). Is psychology concerned with our ‘interior’ world or should it focus on what we do? In other words, do we emphasise mind or behaviour? The notion of ‘mind’ and the associated philosophical ‘mind-body problem’ (Gregory, 1987) is central to theories of psychology and, as will be seen, is important in how we understand and, as a society, respond to criminal behaviour.

In classical Cartesian dualism, as expounded by René Descartes (1596–1650), the mind and body are separate both in substance and in operation. In contrast to this mentalist tradition, with many shades between the two, there are materialistic views of the mind. One materialistic position, which Gregory refers to as the peripheralist view – often associated with behaviourism, itself a complex web (O’Donohue & Kitchner, 1999) – holds that internal or ‘private’ events are to be understood as elements of behaviour and not afforded any causal status over our actions. Another materialistic stance, which Gregory calls the centralist view, takes mental activity to be identified with biological processes in the central nervous system. In psychology, the centralist view is currently fashionable, as can be seen, for example, with cognitive neuroscience.

The history of psychology shows the rise and fall of variations of mentalist and materialistic theories (Richards, 1996). At the turn of the 20th century, Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) devised an elaborate mentalist theory, which gave rise to psychoanalysis, involving psychic energies, or psychodynamic forces, driving our actions at both the conscious and unconscious level (Kline, 1984; Storr, 1989). On the other hand, the American John B. Watson (1878–1958) argued that behaviour should be the focus of psychological enquiry. The advent of behaviourism – to be followed by social learning theory (Bandura, 1977) – as a mainstream approach within psychology can be directly traced to Watson’s influence. The cognitive revolution in psychology (Baars, 1967) saw psychologists turn to the study of attention, memory, reasoning, and so on. The search for the biological correlates of cognition has more recently seen the emergence of cognitive neuroscience.

The psychodynamic tradition

The greatest figure associated with this approach is, of course, Sigmund Freud who, although medically trained, had a profound influence on the nascent psychology of his day. Indeed, Freud’s theory and its subsequent growth remains a major force in some areas of contemporary psychology and psychiatry. Freud was a prolific writer. The (translated) standard edition of his complete works runs to 24 volumes as compiled over several years by Strachey, Strachey and Tyson; and there are two museums given to Freud’s memory (see Box 1.1).

Freud’s theory is concerned with the structure of the mind, placing it squarely in the mentalist tradition. In particular, Freud sought to explain different levels of consciousness. Freud suggested that there are three levels of consciousness: first, the conscious level that includes the mental events which we are aware of experiencing at a given time; second, the preconscious level that concerns what we could bring to mind if we were prompted; third, the unconscious, which is the part of the mind that we are unaware of and unable to access at will. The unconscious is where we keep all those nasty and unpleasant memories and desires that, should they enter consciousness (as they sometimes do in dreams), would cause us extreme anxiety.

In his later work, Freud introduced the notion of three distinct mental structures, the id, the ego, and the superego. The id is the source of mental energy, striving to release energy into the mental system. The id seeks to maximise pleasure and to avoid pain and so is said to operate according to the pleasure principle. The superego strives for perfection in meeting the moral standards we seek to maintain. The ego seeks to perform a balancing act between the id and superego: operating according to the reality principle, the ego seeks to curb the urges (including sexual urges) for instant gratification demanded by the id, and to moderate the restrictions and constraints of the perfection-seeking superego. Influenced, perhaps, by the physical and engineering sciences of his day, Freud offered a view of the mind that is analogous to a closed mechanical system in which energy is moved from one part of the system to another, with the safety valves of defence mechanisms along the way, to maintain a steady functioning equilibrium.

Box 1.1 The Freud museums

There are two Freud museums, one in London and one in Vienna. The London museum is at 20 Maresfield Gardens, London NW3 5SX, which became the home of Sigmund Freud and his family in 1938 when they escaped the Nazi occupation of Austria. As can see seen from the museum’s website (www.freud.org.uk), which has a fantastic archive of photographs of Freud and his relatives and of great figures from the history of psychoanalysis, there is a wealth of material on show at the museum.

The Freud museum at Berggasse 19, Vienna 1090 (www.freud-museum.at/cms) is situated in Freud’s apartment and office where he both worked and lived with his family for 47 years until fleeing from the Nazis in 1938. The museum has an exhibition documenting Freud’s life and work including the original furnishings, articles that Freud used on a daily basis and pieces from Freud’s collection gathered over the years. I can say that when I visited it was an unexpectedly moving experience: being so close to the history of one’s field was rather humbling.

Freud’s complex ideas inspired some of the most famous names in the history of psychology including, among others, post-Freudians such as Carl Jung (1875–1961), Alfred Adler (1870–1937), Erik Erikson (1902–94), Karen Horney (1885–1952), Harry Stack Sullivan (1892–1949), and Freud’s daughter, Anna Freud (1895–1982). The ideas and theories that flowed from Freud’s theory (Brown, 1961) have been and continue to be highly influential in mainstream psychology and other disciplines. Psychoanalysis specifically and psychodynamic therapies generally are practised by many practitioners all over the world from a range of professional backgrounds. Indeed, Freud’s ideas have permeated the art, drama, literature and cinema of Western culture. There are many, many examples but Freud’s influence is perhaps at its most obvious in Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945). Freud also makes a guest appearance alongside Sherlock Holmes in The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, a novel by Nicholas Meyer published 1974, which became a film in 1976, written in the style of a Sherlock Holmes adventure. Freud’s guest appearances in novels continued when in 2006 he was a character in The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld.

The behavioural tradition

The materialistic approach advocated by Watson, strongly influenced by the work of the physiologist and Nobel Prize winner Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936), is best seen in his paper Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It, published in 1913. This paper presents Watson’s manifesto for the discipline (see Morris & Todd, 1999) and set in train a line of thinking and empirical research that includes contributions from major figures such as Edward Thorndike (1874–1949), Edward Tolman (1886–1959) and Clark Hull (1884–1952). The culmination of this behavioural endeavour is to be found in the work of Burrhus F. Skinner (1904–90), often referred to as radical behaviourism (Bjork, 1993; Ringen, 1999; Skinner, 1953, 1974, 1985).

The emphasis in Skinner’s behaviourism is on understanding the role of environmental, rather than internal or ‘private’, events in bringing about behaviour (Skinner, 1974, 1985). This is not to say that Skinner and other behaviourists deny the existence of private events, rather such phenomena are not afforded a causal status in explaining behaviour.

Theoretical developments, as exemplified by the work of Albert Bandura, saw behaviourism evolve into social learning theory (Bandura, 1977, 1986), then into social cognitive theory (Bandura, 2001). The particular contribution of social learning theory was to attempt to make explicit the place of thought and emotion within a behavioural position. As research into cognition grew in scope so mentalist accounts of human action became more sophisticated and an explicit cognitive psychology emerged.

Cognitive psychology

If behaviourism was concerned with observable behaviour, what is the focus of cognitive psychology? Well, cognition obviously, but how can we be more precise? The dictionary definition for cognition is: ‘The mental activities involved in acquiring and processing information’ (Colman, 2...