Psychological Criminology

This chapter briefly recounts the emergence of research on psychology and crime including an overview of where psychological approaches to understanding crime traditionally sit in the overall scientific method. It provides an introduction to psychology and crime, how psychologists have sought to understand prisons, and the role of psychology within prisons. It then provides a critical assessment of the Stanford Prison Experiment and attempts at criminal profiling. The chapter concludes with a discussion on issues around the psychology of child development, including research on crime, adverse childhood experiences and trauma. The overall argument of this chapter is that we need to consider the interactions between biological, psychological and sociological factors.