Criminological Psychology

Description

Criminal justice systems use the help of criminal psychologists. Criminal psychologists talk to potential suspects or proven criminals so as to investigate and assess their mental state. Some testify at trials as to the health of patients. They have a background in criminology as well psychology making these specialized psychologists experts in mental states and behaviour of criminals. A criminal psychologist may study why people commit crimes. They can also be asked to assess criminals in order to evaluate how likely the person is to re-offend in the future. At times they are asked to make educated guesses about the actions that a criminal may have taken after committing a crime. \nCrime rates, its' seriousness, and the frequency of different types of it, all vary considerably from one country to another. That could be a reflection of varying definitions and recording methods rather than underlying differences. The subjectively experienced fear of crime also shows sizeable variations, but they are only indirectly related to the patterns of crime recorded in official statistics. No matter what, the fact is that directly or indirectly, crime touches the lives of nearly everyone and is covered extensively by the media, on most occasions. This book has been prepared mostly on the basis of author's own empirical studies on different aspects of crime, and is one of the few books on this topic available.