Psychology and Crime: Understanding and Tackling Offending Behaviour

Like criminologists, forensic mental health professionals who provide criminal defense consultation or practice in correctional settings are interested in understanding socially deviant behavior, explaining it to others, and identifying methods of controlling the behaviors. It seems reasonable, therefore, for a forensic psychiatrist to appreciate how criminologists conceptualize these matters. Psychology and Crime: Understanding and Tackling Criminal Behaviour was authored by Francis Pakes and Jane Winstone, two criminal justice scholars at the University of Portsmouth, United Kingdom. Although the intended readership is not stated by the authors, the text seems to be written for a British undergraduate survey course in criminology. The authors primarily based the text on the British system of criminal justice, although there are references to the U.S. system.

Each of the book's 11 chapters is sufficiently focused to be read separately. The quality of each chapter varies from very interesting to bland. Punishment versus treatment of mentally ill offenders is briefly discussed, as is offender profiling. The authors introduce readers to a typology of sexual offending as well as risk of violence, including aggravating and mitigating factors. The discussion of current research topics is, at times, unnecessarily superficial, because undergraduate students tend to be technologically and media savvy. For example, a brief discussion of the relevant neurobehavioral and risk assessment research would have been useful, since most students are aware of a connection between the brain and human behavior.

Too often, authors of books about criminology dismiss the significance of white collar crime, which causes substantial damage to society. In this book, the absence of a discussion of white collar crime suggests economic and class bias that are evident when the authors examine juvenile offending. The only discussion of white collar crime in the text is found in “Stalkers and Their Victims.” The authors explain that, like celebrities, female college students are at high risk of being stalked. The role of alcohol and illicit drugs in date rape situations is examined in “Date Rape and Drugs,” as are the characteristics of crime victims. The latter topic will be informative for clinicians and security professionals who are seeking to educate their clients.

In the chapter titled “Pathways into Crime: Understanding Juvenile Offending,” Pates and Winstone review approaches to understanding and containing juvenile offenders in Britain. Although this chapter is one of the more interesting and well-written ones, readers who are not familiar with the British juvenile justice system may find themselves wishing that the authors had included a few more case examples to elucidate how the system operates.

Although I looked forward to reading the chapter on “Insanity, Mental Health and the Criminal Justice System,” I was disappointed. The description of mental disorders is simplistic and the authors did not address the concept of insanity as a legal defense. The authors digress into a discussion about dangerousness and mentally ill offenders. Although they contend that “predicting violence remains hazardous” (p 73), they do not mention the importance of competent risk assessment. In a different chapter, “Sexual Violence: From Theory Into Practice,” the authors use an unusual definition of sexual violence that includes nonsexual violent physical attacks against females who are targeted because of their gender (p 75).

In the chapter “Can Prison Ever Work?” describing institutional rehabilitation for offenders, Pates and Winstone present a thoughtful introduction to current debates about the penal system and alternative rehabilitative practices. “Victims and Fear of Crime” contains a useful discussion of statistics related to the risk that a citizen will be a crime victim, as opposed to the fears that often drive policy.

I read “The Psychology of Addiction: Are There More Questions than Answers?” with great interest and came away disappointed. The authors' interpretation of the research was cursory, and they favored the transtheoretical, or stages-of-change, model as a therapeutic method of changing addictive behavior. Although the authors' approach to this chapter may be appropriate for addiction specialists, it is not suitable for undergraduate students. An unbiased discussion of various clinical approaches to treating addiction would have been more helpful.

In sum, this book, which is geared toward undergraduate criminology students in the United Kingdom, often digresses into advanced and, at times, biased discussions that are not suited to young scholars. Although forensic mental health professionals who teach undergraduates may find value in this book, it lacks sufficient sophistication to recommend it to advanced forensic mental health professionals.

• American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law