Offender Profiling Series
Profiling
Property Crimes
Edited by David Canter & Laurence Alison (2000)
back to Profiling
Property Crimes
Profiling Property Crimes
David Canter & Laurence Alison
Profiling Property Crimes
The psychological issues that form the foundations
for answering a number of important questions in criminal investigations
are considered in this volume. These are shown to have their roots in
the psychological study of individual differences. In the criminal context
these differences relate to important variations between types of crimes
and also within any type of crime. The notion of a hierarchy of criminal
differentiation is introduced to highlight the need to search for consistencies
and variations at many levels of that hierarchy. Consideration of this
hierarchy also lends support to a circular ordering of criminal actions
as a parallel with the colour circle. In developing the constituents of
this 'radex' structure, it is proposed that the chapters in this volume
support distinctions between criminals in terms of the intensity and seriousness
of their crimes, the nature of their transactions with their explicit
or implicit victims, the amount and type of expertise they bring to their
crimes and the organisational and social contexts within which their crimes
occur. The studies in this volume, then, show a slowly evolving behavioural
science of crime that approaches the study of criminal actions from an
objective, often statistical viewpoint rather than one based on personal
intuition and clinical experience
David Canter is Director of the Centre for Investigative Psychology at the University of Liverpool. He has published widely in Environmental and Investigative Psychology as well as many areas of Applied Social Psychology. His most recent books since his award winning 'Criminal Shadows' have been 'Psychology in Action' and with Laurence Alison 'Criminal Detection and the Psychology of Crime'.
Laurence Alison is currently employed as a lecturer at the Centre for Investigative Psychology at the University of Liverpool. Dr Alison is developing models to explain the processes of manipulation, influence and deception that are features of criminal investigations. His research interests focus upon developing rhetorical perspectives in relation to the investigative process and he has presented many lectures both nationally and internationally to a range of academics and police officers on the problems associated with offender profiling. He is affiliated with The Psychologists at Law Group - a forensic service specialising in providing advice to the courts, legal professions, police service, charities and public bodies.
