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Psychology for Forensic Practitoners,
Towl and Crigthon

Reviewed by Professor David Canter


Getting practitioners to give an account of their activities is rather difficult, especially if they feel the need to put some scholarly gloss on what is always a rather messy real world. It is perhaps, therefore, not surprising that Towl and Crighton have produced a curate's egg of a book. It has good parts, that deal with matters that clearly have form and content in their own working day, such as approaches to anger management and the assessment of risk of future violence. Although the emphasis on presenting judgements of risk as probabilities is rather disingenuous given that an offender cannot be allowed out on 62% of parole. All choices are discrete and psychologists have to grapple with the implications of that if they are to influence those choices.

The sections on the assessment and treatment of sex offenders are also an interesting insight into the current practice of the authors. But, it is rather worrying that professional psychologists should offer up a sort of 'how to do it' manual without a lot more caveats about the need to have experienced, professional supervision Other parts are much weaker. These appear to have been included either in the belief that they will widen the audience for the book, or because the book would have been unconvincingly short if they had just stuck to what they know about. The opening chapters on the psychological approach to crime and the development of delinquent behaviour is never really drawn upon again and is curiously separate from the cognitive-behavioural issues that dominate the more focused part of the book.

Most notably weak and out of place is the chapter on "Offender Profiling" . It perpetuates the myth that the FBI did systematic research of any substance to launch 'profiling' as a formal procedure, and is woefully out of date in not citing the rapidly growing psychological literature that now characterises the discipline of Investigative Psychology. It is most bizarre in having no connection with any other chapters even though those other chapters do report many findings that would be of direct relevance to police investigations. I would advise any reader who buys this book to rip out this chapter. They will not notice the loss, and they will be spared the opinionated, but ignorant generalisations. As the blurb makes clear the book is really about working with sex offenders and helping to assess and reduce the risk of violence in offenders. As such it is a rare, and usefully detailed, account of what practitioners actually do in these areas.

As a review of "Psychology for Forensic Practitioners" it is woefully limited, mentioning little of what goes on in special hospitals, or the contributions psychologists are making to prison management, and virtually nothing of the role of psychologists in the courts. Ethical issues are also dealt with as minor irritants to be considered in particular procedures rather than being central to the role of professionals working on behalf of the agencies of control in any society.

Reading this book it is clear why Forensic Psychologists have had such a bad press in recent years and how far they have to go to become a broad based profession.



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