Psychology and Crime
- Craig Webber - University of Southampton, UK
Key Approaches to Criminology
Aggression & Violence | Criminology & Criminal Justice (General) | Forensic Psychology
This book explores the links between psychology and crime, evaluating psychological explanations of crime and the use of psychology within the criminal justice system. It provides a comprehensive overview that highlights the consequences of crime for victims, offenders and wider society.
The book combines classic theory with new developments in eyewitness testimony, offender profiling and forensic psychology. The resulting text offers an engaging and challenging route to a full understanding of key topics, including:
- the theoretical history of criminal psychology
- interpersonal violence, sexual violence and deviancy
- the psychology of crime in groups
- mass murder and war crimes
- psychology and the criminal justice system.
Psychology and Crime genuinely integrates the two areas with the advanced student in mind, and includes a range of practical devices to support the learning process: chapter overviews; study questions; and further reading. Lively and accessible, it is essential reading for students and academics in criminology, sociology and psychology.
The Key Approaches to Criminology series celebrates the removal of traditional barriers between disciplines and, specifically, reflects criminology’s interdisciplinary nature and focus. It brings together some of the leading scholars working at the intersections of criminology and related subjects. Each book in the series helps readers to make intellectual connections between criminology and other discourses, and to understand the importance of studying crime and criminal justice within the context of broader debates.
The series is intended to have appeal across the entire range of undergraduate and postgraduate studies and beyond, comprising books which offer introductions to the fields as well as advancing ideas and knowledge in their subject areas.
Criminologists have been waiting a very long time for a psychology of crime that speaks their language. Finally it has arrived. Craig Webber brings together a wealth of psychological research that students of criminology ignore at their peril. He also documents the significant in-roads criminologists are now making with regard to matters of the mind too often treated as 'off-limits' by many social scientists, psychologists included.
Dr David Gadd
Keele University
Webber has pulled off a unique feat by writing a book on the psychology of crime that will appeal equally to sociologists and criminologists. The book provides up-to-date and scholarly coverage of the investigative psychology literature on policing serial offending and mass murderers, but also integrates sophisticated discussions of Stan Cohen's theory of denial, the Birmingham School of cultural studies, and Green Criminology. This exciting theoretical integration bodes very well for the future of criminal psychology.
Professor Shadd Maruna
Queen's University Belfast
Craig Webber’s Psychology and Crime does a good job of opening up psychology to criminologists...Webber’s book is ‘criminological’ in its starting position and psychology is not approached as the stand-alone discipline it is often thought to be. That sets it apart from other texts. For that reason criminologists may well find this one particularly accessible... The book as a whole does a good job in cautiously welcoming psychology into the criminological mainstream. For those initially apprehensive of psychology, this is a good choice of text that should find its way onto readings lists in particular for psychology-related modules within criminology courses. That is a readership for whom this text should be particularly valuable.
Dr Francis Pakes
Internet Journal of Criminology
Very good for Access to Law and Criminology.
Clearly written and sufficient detail - Learners like the formatting of this book and agree that it is ideal for newcomers to this topic. Have recommended to our library.
A generalised overview, good starting point.
An excellent book for students with an interest in both criminology and psychology! It is well written in a language that is easy to get to grips with! A long awaited book!
This is a good book that I am wanting to use as the recommended reading for the new Introduction to Pychology module on our Criminal Justice course. The number of students will vary but I am hoping for a regular cohort.
An excellent read for students, linking Psychology and Crime, together in a comprehensive and unique way.
Psychology and Crime book shelps to improve understanding criminologica perspective on the human behaviour.l found it very helpful in terms of undertanding the different aspects of criminology and social inequality from interpresonal violence up to state crime.
Easy to digest, good analysis of a range of issues discussed within Criminology.
This text book does not in my opinion have sufficient breadth of coverage to be used as the sole or main textbook for a final year undergraduate module in forensic psychology. However, it does cover some topics that are rarely included in forensic psychology texts at this level, such as investigating sexual violence, group and gang crime, mass murder (including war crimes), and terrorism. As a result, Webber's text is an excellent supplemental text for use in undergraduate psychology modules.
