Showing titles in Criminal & Forensic Psychology

Dr. Mark Freestone has worked on some of the most interesting, infamous, and disturbing cases of psychopathology in recent years. His expertise has led to a consultant role on several TV series, helping them accurately portray their fictional villains. Now, he shares his phenomenal insight into the minds of some of the world's most violent real-life criminals.

¿Por qué hablar de la maldad cuando tendríamos que ocuparnos del lado noble y bueno de la vida? Tal vez porque enfrentamos al mal todos los días y debemos ser fuertes y estar preparados para que no nos hagan daño las envidias, los enojos, las frustraciones y, sobre todo, para no padecer sus efectos, pues todos somos propensos a sentir la ira, el rencor: la esencia de la maldad.

Where can a tin of tuna buy you clean clothes? Which British education system struggles with 50 percent illiteracy? Where do teetotal Muslims attend AA meetings? Where is it easier to get 'spice' than paracetamol? Welcome to Her Majesty's Prison Service, a creaking and surreal world that has been left to rot for decades in the shadows of polite society. Like most people, documentary-maker Chris Atkins didn't spend much time thinking about prisons. But after becoming embroiled in a dodgy scheme to fund his latest film, he was sent down for five years.

Weaving together historical examples, scientific studies, and compelling court cases - from the border collie put on trial in Kentucky to the five teenagers who falsely confessed in the Central Park Jogger case - Benforado shows how our judicial processes fail to uphold our values and protect society's weakest members. With clarity and passion, he lays out the scope of the problem and proposes a wealth of reforms that could prevent injustice and help us achieve true fairness and equality before the law.

Between December 1968 and October 1969, a hooded serial killer called Zodiac terrorized San Francisco. Claiming responsibility for 37 murders, he manipulated the media with warnings, dares, and bizarre cryptograms that baffled FBI code-breakers. Then, as suddenly as the murders began, Zodiac disappeared into the Bay Area fog. After painstaking investigation and more than 30 years of research, Robert Graysmith finally exposes Zodiac's true identity.

A brilliant, no-nonsense profile of the criminal mind, newly updated in 2022 to include the latest research, effective methods for dealing with hardened criminals, and an urgent call to rethink criminal justice from expert witness Stanton E. Samenow, Ph.D.

“If you want to know what the life of a typical police hostage negotiator is all about, reading this book is well worth your time.” —Gary W. Noesner, Chief, FBI Crisis Negotiation Unit (ret.), Author: Stalling for Time: My Life as an FBI Hostage Negotiator In his first book, Fight or Flight, Dr. Andrew Young gave readers an up-close-and-personal look into the lives and work of police crisis/hostage negotiators through riveting accounts from his own experiences of tense and potentially tragic encounters with desperate, disturbed, and/or suicidal individuals. His new book, When Every ...

Revisiting Dr. Michael Stone's groundbreaking 22-level Gradations of Evil Scale, a hierarchy of evil behavior first introduced in the book The Anatomy of Evil, Stone and Dr. Gary Brucato, a fellow violence and serious psychopathology expert, here provide even more detail, using dozens of cases to exemplify the categories along the continuum. The New Evil also presents compelling evidence that, since a cultural tipping-point in the 1960s, certain types of violent crime have emerged that in earlier decades never or very rarely occurred.

In this fascinating, in-depth account of the hunt for serial killers, Colin Wilson, one of the world's leading authorities on the subject, examines the ways they can be tracked down and caught, from the tried-and-true methods of the early 20th century to the high-tech processes in use today. Wilson examines such areas as psychological profiling, genetic fingerprinting, and the launch of the Behavioral Science Unit. He delves into the importance of fantasy to serial killers, the urge to keep on killing, the desire to become notorious, and murder as an addictive drug.

In this groundbreaking book, renowned psychiatrist Michael H. Stone explores the concept and reality of evil from a new perspective. In an in-depth discussion of the personality traits and behaviors that constitute evil across a wide spectrum, Dr. Stone takes a clarifying scientific approach to a topic that for centuries has been inadequately explained by religious doctrines.

Profiler Roy Hazelwood is one of the world's leading experts on the strangest and most dangerous of all aberrant offenders - the sexual criminal. In Dark Dreams he reveals the twisted motive and thinking that go into the most reprehensible crimes. He also catalogs the innovative and remarkably effective techniques that allow law enforcement agents to construct psychological profiles of the offenders who commit these crimes.

The dead talk - to the right listener. They can tell us all about themselves: where they came from, how they lived, how they died, and, of course, who killed them. Forensic scientists can unlock the mysteries of the past and help serve justice using the messages left by a corpse, a crime scene, or the faintest of human traces.

Serial killers: Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, and Jeffrey Dahmer are often the first names that spring to mind. Many people assume serial killers are primarily an American phenomenon that came about in the latter part of the 20th century. But such assumptions are far from the truth. Serial killers have been around for a very long time and can be found in every corner of the globe - and they're not just limited to the male gender either. Some of these predators have been caught and brought to justice whereas others have never been found, let alone identified.

The trial of 25-year-old Casey Anthony for the death of her daughter, Caylee, was the most sensational case in America since O.J. Simpson’s. After being acquitted in July 2011, Ms. Anthony instantly became one of the most infamous women in the world. Dr. Keith Ablow distills tens of thousands of pages of documents he has obtained, his behind-the-camera, one-on one interviews, and his decades of experience in the world of forensic psychiatry to make sense of this troubled young woman.

On June 9, 2008, the butchered body of Travis Alexander was found in his Mesa, Arizona, home. The grisly nature of his death made instant headlines: With 29 knife wounds, his throat slit, and a gunshot to the head, Travis was left to die. The prime suspect in the case was Alexander's ex-girlfriend, the attractive and soft-spoken Jodi Arias. Though Arias initially said that she was nowhere near the scene of crime, little about this case was as it seemed, and before long she had been caught lying to police. As the investigation progressed, her lies evolved multiple times before finally resting on an appalling claim: She had killed Travis in self-defense.

An especially useful book for women living alone, parents who are concerned about their children's safety, and employers worried about employees who might go postal, Dangerous Instincts gives us the tools used by professionals to navigate potentially hazardous waters. Like The Gift of Fear and The Sociopath Next Door, it will appeal to anyone looking to make the right call in an ever threatening world.

Written by the world's leading expert on false confessions, this landmark book reveals the psychology behind why innocent men, women, and children, intensely stressed and befuddled by the promises, threats, trickery, and deception of a police interrogation, are duped into confession, no matter how horrific the crime.

Dealing with some of the most heinous crimes imaginable, forensic neuropsychologist and psychoanalyst Dr. Richard Lettieri gives a behind-the-scenes look at criminal psychology through case studies from his over 30 years of experience as a court-appointed and privately retained psychologist.

Based off Hannah Maguire and Suruthi Bala's popular podcast of the same name, RedHanded explores real-life true-crime cases to help answer once and for all if a killer is born or made.

Lie detection, offender profiling, jury selection, insanity in the law, predicting the risk of re-offending, the minds of serial killers, and many other topics that fill news and fiction are all aspects of the rapidly developing area of scientific psychology broadly known as forensic psychology. This fascinating Very Short Introduction discusses all the aspects of psychology that are relevant to the legal and criminal process as a whole.