LIFP Series – Part 5 – Resources for Forensic Psychology and Investigative Psychology

This is the final post for the LIFP (Look into Forensic Psychology) Series of blog posts.

In this final section, I will simply list the resources – websites, books, journals and downloads, which have provided some of this information for those like me, interested in the fields of forensic or investigative psychology.

Part 5 – Resources on Forensic Psychology and Criminal Profiling

This is my list of resources on Forensic Psychology. I include the most helpful of the many websites dealing with the subject, and several books which have provided knowledge on the topic. Note that many universities provide Criminal, Forensic and sometimes Investigative Psychology courses at degree and master levels, and most nations have overall associations in charge of the psychology accreditations.

Websites

• All About Forensic Psychology.com – this provides some excellent information on several topics of interest. The links page is particularly helpful for more websites to visit.
• Karen Franklin, PhD’s Forensic Psychologist blogspot is a must read. In this article, she takes apart the New Mexico Wizard Hat meme still doing the rounds, and speaks up on behalf of forensic psychologists and psychiatrists.
• Wikipedia – offender profiling, also leads to a good page on victimology
• Wikipedia – Serial Killers, gives some famous serial killers, the definition, and some information on the psychology behind them.
• Centre for Investigative Psychology (CIP) based in Liverpool, UK. (http://www.i-psy.com),
• International Research Centre for Investigative Psychology (IRCIP), The University of Huddersfield (http://www2.hud.ac.uk/hhs/ircip/),
• International Academy for Investigative Psychology (http://www.ia-ip.org),
• David Canter.com (http://www.davidcanter.com )
• International Criminal Investigative Analysis Fellowship (I.C.I.A.F)
• The Royal Canadian Mounted Police has a website page explaining it’s Behavioural Sciences services, available also as a PDF; a page explaining Criminal Investigative Analysis, and one explaining the ViClas system.
• Australian Institute of Criminology
• The American Psychology-Law Society (APLS).
• National Policing Improvement Agency, UK.
• The BPS British Psychological Society provides the  route for training to achieve Forensic Psychology chartered and registered status. Here, the BPS supplies the qualifications that trainees will need to obtain. The BPS has a Division of Forensic Psychology which forensic psychologists can seek membership through. On this page, the Division of Forensic Psychology has a word.doc available explaining what forensic psychologists do.
• American Psychiatric Association (Psyh.org)
• American Psychological Association (APA.org)
• The British Psychological Society (BPS).
• The World Health Organisation administers the International Classification of Diseases. This body of work came into use from 1994, and is available in various forms online via The WHO links here.
• The Royal Canadian Mounted Police has a website page explaining it’s Behavioural Sciences services, available also as a PDF; a page explaining Criminal Investigative Analysis, and one explaining the ViClas system.
• In the USA the Daubert standard sets out four criteria for determining whether expert testimony meets the requirement to constitute scientific knowledge.

Books

• John Douglas, famous FBI profiler, and bestselling author of his memoir book, ‘Mindhunter’.
• ‘Crime Classification Manual ‘(CCM) written by John E. Douglas, Ann W Burgess, Allen G Burgess, and Robert K Ressler from the FBI. This manual has since been amended with additional information, and remains in publication today.  It’s even now available on Kindle.
• Paul Britton’s ‘The Jigsaw Man’
• ‘A Very Short Introduction to Forensic Psychology’ by David Canter is an e-book provides an excellent grounding on forensic psychology as it sits nowadays.
• ‘Professionalizing Offender Profiling: Forensic and Investigative Psychology in Practice’ by Laurence Alison & Lee Rainbow
• David Canter – several investigative psychology books (Amazon link) – ‘Mapping Murder’, ‘Investigative Psychology: Offender Profiling and the Analysis of Criminal Action’, ‘Criminal Shadows, Inner Narratives of Evil’ and ‘Principles of Geographical Profiling’
• Loren Coleman, M.S.W. has written a book entitled ‘The Copycat Effect’ (2004)
• ‘Forensic Psychology’ by Graham Davies, Clive Hollin and Ray Bull.
• You will find many more books listed at all-about-forensic-psychology.com.
• ‘Introduction to Forensic Psychology Research and Application’, 2nd Edition, Los Angeles, Sage by Bartol, C and Bartol, A (2008). Note that you can access a powerpoint presentation on Chapter 3 (Investigative Psychology or Profiling) via the UK Sagepub.com link.
• ‘The Cambridge Handbook of Forensic Psychology’, Jennifer M. Brown and Elizabeth A. Campbell, Cambridge University Press, 2010

Downloads

• On this page, the BPS (British Psychology Society) Division of Forensic Psychology has a word.doc available explaining what forensic psychologists do.
• All About Forensic Psychology.com has several small e-books on subjects such as criminal profiling, interrogation, eye witnesses, all available to download for free. These ebooks have been created from free-to-use justice papers written over the years.
• The FBI has several large publications free to download as reference. These include a lot of statistical reports showing crime rates over the years. And this PDF on Serial Murder – ‘Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives for Investigators’.
• On the FBI Podcast ‘Inside the FBI’ of May 2011, several behavioural analysts who work for the BAU-s unit, speak about their work. This page gives the podcast and transcript.
• Blackwell Publishing has the electronic versions of each chapter online, from ‘Psychology’ by Miles Hewstone, Frank D. Fincham and Johnathan Foster. Chapter 21 provides 19 pages on Forensic Psychology and the Law. You will need to register to obtain the content.
• Sage Publishing also has a chapter on Forensic Psychology available online. Chapter 1.
• There is a 79 page report published on the web called ‘Psychology of Terrorism’, available from the World Defense Review.
• You will find a yearly open access journal of Forensic Psychology here, each journal includes several papers in pdf form.
• The American Psychological Association (APA) has Specialty Guidelines for Forensic Psychology – you can read online, or download the report as a PDF.
• The World Health Organisation administers the ICD-10International Classification of Diseases. This body of work came into use from 1994, and is available in various forms online via The WHO links here.
• There are various Forensic Psychology books available via filesharing sites. I’m unsure as to the copyright of these, but you can find the Handbook of Forensic Psychology, a 1047 page tomb, at mediafire. At the American Journal of Psychiatry online, the Handbook (Now out of print) is described as -
  • In this big book, the editors, both from the Department of Psychology, University of Nevada, have assembled 71 contributors, nearly all from university departments of psychology, to produce an encyclopedic handbook of forensic psychology. The volume is organized into four parts: 1) Basic Issues, 2) Assessment, 3) Mental Disorders and Forensic Psychology, and 4) Special Topics. Each part has several chapters, which, in turn, have several sections on different topics. Repetitive and with uneven writing, as can be expected from a multiauthored work
• The Australian Psychological Society has a few pdf downloads / information sheets for forensic psychologists.
• The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Handbook is available here.
• At the IA-IP website you can also download several key publication PDFs on the topic – ‘Chapter 11 Introducing Investigative Psychology’ is an excerpt from a full text book written by David Canter and Donna E Youngs; ‘Offender Profiling and Investigative Psychology’ by David Canter; ‘Testing a Typology of Serial Murder’ by David V. Canter & Natalia Wentink; ‘Offender Profiling and Criminal Differentiation’ by David Canter; ‘Geographical Profiling of Criminals’ by David Canter; and ‘Predicting Serial Killers’ Home Base Using a Decision Support System’ by David Canter, Toby Coffey and Malcolm Huntley.
• The British Psychological Society has published the ‘Legal and Criminology Psychology’ journal since 1996. You will need to be a BPS member to access past journals, but Wiley Online has these all available as e-books, or provides the latest edition and some previous articles free as PDF http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)2044-8333/issues
• The American Psychology-Law Society publishes a bimonthly journal ‘Law and Human Behavior’. You can access the full online version of the latest edition via the psych.net  page.  http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=browsePA.volumes&jcode=lhb. These go back to Volume 1 published in 1977.
• ‘Introduction to Forensic Psychology Research and Application’, 2nd Edition, Los Angeles, Sage by Bartol, C and Bartol, A (2008) –
  • you can access a powerpoint presentation on Chapter 3 (Investigative Psychology or Profiling) via the UK Sagepub.com link.
  • And ‘Forensic Psychology 2004’ Bartol, Pgs 1 – 29 found at Scribd, introduces some of the history and work settings for forensic psychologists.
  • Sage holds Chapter One as a downloadable PDF here.
  • Sage holds a study site for this text, which contains chapter outlines, downloads and resource link lists.

For a full index of the LIFP (Look into Forensic Psychology) blog series, please see here.

About Hunter

Hunter Emkay writes psychological thrillers set in our contemporary domestic world.

Hunter Emkay grew up and moved between small town surburbia to corporate geekiness – and back. Maybe all that surburban excitement has led to a little too much murder on her mind.