Whilst most children grew up watching CBBC or Disney Channel on the TV, my dinners were often spent immersed in shows like Criminal Minds and NCIS. Not exactly the most child-friendly shows, but dinner time was mum’s time, as my dad used to work away for long periods. So this was not to be messed with.
Exposure to crime-solving produced a fascination that has since shaped my interests. It eventually influenced even my career path, choosing to study Psychology at University. I’m Suvi, a psychology student, currently doing my placement year as a research assistant at the Stress, Psychiatry and Immunity Lab at King’s College London. Even now, everything I watch and read still revolves around the themes of crime and mystery.
For those unfamiliar with Criminal Minds, it follows the work of the Behavioural Analysis Unit (BAU) in the FBI, profiling and interviewing people, to catch the offender. Each episode starts with the team building a profile, based on details of the crime scene and victimology, the study of crime victims, which can be used to apprehend the offender. Whilst this formula does sound repetitive, the exploration of human behaviour and profiling is captivating and, although dramatized, provides an insight into the field of forensic psychology.
Admittedly, I chose to study GCSE Psychology because I believed those years would give me better insight into what the FBI BAU did relating to psychology. I now know; that studying GCSE Psychology does not mean you can go profile people and predict things based on them.
What does the BAU do?
The BAU works has been active for 39 years, and works with investigative analysis and threat assessment, with methods rooted in Forensic, Behavioural, & Investigative Psychology. Forensic Psychology applies psychological concepts to the legal system. A Forensic Psychologist would carry out assessments on the offender to be used in trials. On the other hand, Investigative Psychology applies psychology to the criminal investigative process. It involves offender profiling, an investigative technique where the crime and crime scene are analysed to work out characteristics relating to the offender. This field focuses on attempting to understand criminal behaviour to aid law enforcement. In this article, I’ll discuss two well-known criminal cases, that show how forensic and investigative psychology developed to become what it is now.
Jack the Ripper
If I mentioned Whitechapel and serial killer, could you guess who I’m talking about? Jack the Ripper was a serial killer that operated during the late 1800’s, in the Whitechapel region of London. He targeted women who worked or lived in Whitechapel and those who generally worked as prostitutes. The police never really had a solid suspect, because the location of these killings made it incredibly hard to catch the killer.
At the time, Whitechapel was an impoverished area, with overcrowding and many slums. It was rife with disease, crime, and poverty, to the point not even the police wanted to go there. There were no consistent sightings of the man seen with these women before their deaths, and any evidence found never pointed to the killer’s identity. There is debate on whether the main 5 victims of the Ripper, were even killed by one man. The modus operandi (MO) is what led police to believe these 5 women were killed by the Ripper. Each victim was severely mutilated and had their internal organs removed. As the number of victims increased, the intensity of mutilation increased.
Despite it being unsolved, this case is one of the earliest uses of profiling in a criminal case. The Metropolitan Police reached out for the consultation of police surgeon, Thomas Bond. Bond was asked to give his opinion on the extent of the killer’s knowledge and skill regarding surgery. At this time, many believed the Ripper had to have some sort of anatomical knowledge of either the human body as a doctor or of an animal as a butcher.
But Bond believed that the killer did not possess any surgical or anatomical knowledge of the human body, nor the technical knowledge a butcher would have. He believed that the killer suffered from attacks of homicidal and erotic mania, based on the severe mutilations. Homicidal mania is an uncontrollable urge to harm or kill others. Erotic mania is an overwhelming obsession with love or sex. Both involve uncontrollable thoughts or behaviours that require help are severe mental health disorders that may require psychiatric intervention.
Bond believed that the killer was possibly an eccentric man with an unstable income. To those close to him he may have not seemed “right in the mind”. Here, Bond used his knowledge, and evidence from the autopsies, to predict what kind of person the killer may have been, to guide the Met. But due to limitations at the time – such as the overwhelming number of leads, and the absence of DNA analysis – the Ripper was not caught.
The Railway Rapists
100 years later, still in the UK, we’ll look at John Duffy and David Mulcahy, dubbed ‘The Railway Rapists’. This duo was active from 1982-86. Childhood friends, together they raped countless women and killed three. Their initial attack was the rape of a woman in 1982, taking place nearby Hampstead Heath railway station. This was followed by several more attacks, around multiple railway stations. Their MO consisted of the use of a knife to threaten their victims, tying their victims’ hands with string, and operating nearby railway stations.
1985, was when their attacks escalated from rape to murder with the killing of 19-year-old Alison Day. She was raped, strangled and thrown into the River Lea, with cobbles placed in her jacket to let her body sink.
During the police investigation, David Canter, a psychologist, was called in. Canter used the details of the crime to build a profile, to narrow the suspect list. The profile was built using the killer’s patterns, habits, and victimology. Specifically, Canter believed that the killer would be married but childless, have a history of domestic violence, and possibly live around Kilburn.
Duffy was an ex-railway employee and had previously been arrested for other violent offences. Once the Police arrested Duffy and Mulcahy, after Duffy was caught following a woman in a park. , they found of theOf the 17 observations Canter provided, Duffy met 13, proving the profile to be quite accurate. After his work on the ‘Railway Rapists’, Canter went on to develop investigative psychology. This is a field of psychology thatfield draws from psychological concepts, geography, and other social sciences. Unlike forensic psychology, cases worked on will contain unknown suspects, requiring information to be put together to reveal their identity.
Forensic Psychology has evolved to produce a new field that is crucial to criminal investigations. Investigative psychology enhances our ability to link crimes, identify or narrow down suspects, and generate relevant leads. Profiling provides deeper insights into the offender’s characteristics, as the crime can often reveal a lot about the offender: we simply need to know what to look for.
I’ve learnt that understanding these patterns and behaviours can help law enforcement better understand criminals, and improve the effectiveness of criminal investigations. This work provides the police with an effective technique, whereby the evidence doesn’t provide a clear answer.
Hopefully, by the end of this, I’ve encouraged you to give Criminal Minds a watch, and you now understand how much Forensic Psychology has truly progressed in the last 200 years.