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Review: Investigative Psychology: Offender Profiling and the Analysis of Criminal Action

Understanding the psychology of those who commit crime is a challenge that continues to intrigue and frustrate police officers, criminologists, psychologists, sociologists, lawyers, law makers, fiction writers, and many others. If the professional and academic rewards for any real-life Mentalist are considerable; the personal challenge of thwarting and apprehending lawbreakers is compelling. But while the application of science is now routine in crime scene investigations, the development of a forensic psychology that offers insight into the thinking and reasoning of those who perpetuate ‘criminal’ acts, sufficient to create a psychological ‘profile’ (if such a thing is indeed achievable), has yet to be found. Cue David Canter and Donna Youngs, the authors, and architects of the theory of ‘Investigative Psychology’ (IP). Throughout the last 20 years, Canter and Youngs have been steadily developing and honing IP. Now, for the first time, their eclectic framework of ideas is set out in a text designed to showcase the ‘theoretical basis and practical applications’ (xi) of this nascent discipline. Investigative psychology, they insist, is a systematic and empirically rigorous approach that recognises and avoids the shortcomings of earlier attempts at what is popularly referred to as ‘offender profiling’. The authors sell IP as a discipline with genuine practical applications; so, as a police officer who is also a rhetorical psychologist, I approached the book with considerable professional and academic interest. Canter and Young’s claims to innovation rest upon several presumptions, some of which are more convincing than others. Central to IP’s credentials is the claim that it is grounded in ‘scientific method’ and the knowledge which such a method is