Criminal Psychology: Definition, Degree, & Careers​

By Charlie Huntington, M.A., Ph.D.​
Criminal psychology uses the tools of psychological science to study when, where, how, and why people engage in criminal behaviors.
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My father was a lawyer for over thirty years, and every once in a while, if he was wearing an especially fancy suit, I knew he might be headed to court for the day. Only as a teenager did I begin to consider the possibility that this meant he was interacting directly with, or at least spent time in the vicinity of, actual criminals. While I knew his work focused on white-collar, nonviolent crimes, it was nonetheless a bit of a stretch to imagine my humble, passive, and soft-spoken 
father going toe-to-toe with people who knowingly broke the law in substantial ways.

When I entered the field of psychology, I encountered the possibility that I too could end up having contact, in a professional setting, with the previously, currently, or potentially incarcerated among us. Whereas my father understood criminality from a legal perspective, I began to wonder what it would be like to work with people, from a psychological standpoint, who committed crimes. For good reasons that we will shortly explore, psychologists have expended quite a lot of energy trying to understand the psychology of criminality. Let’s see what the field of criminal psychology looks like: what distinguishes it from other fields of psychology, what research in the field tells us, and what training and career options there are.
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What Is Criminal Psychology? (A Definition)​

To define criminal psychology, we need to first have a working definition of crime, and even this might not be as straightforward as it seems. For example, many behaviors violate social norms and are seen as deviant, but you cannot point to a law that declares them illegal. At the same time, some behaviors, such as jaywalking across an empty street or speeding on the highway when there are no other cars around, may be technically criminal but seem to incur little potential risk of harm.
 
For this reason, from the perspective of criminal psychologists, we can think of a crime as a behavior that is not sanctioned by society, causes harm that can be attributed to the actor, or receives general condemnation from the public (Agnew, 2011). Criminality, in the sense that we will be discussing it here, is therefore about behaviors that have an antisocial flavor to them—they can or do cause significant harm, violate widely held morals, or break laws.
 
So criminal psychology is the field of psychology that seeks to understand the who, what, when, where, and why of these behaviors. Criminal psychology concerns itself with human activity ranging from serial killing and terrorism to everyday lies that one spouse tells another about their gambling problems, financial difficulties, or infidelity (Canter, 2017). More specifically, criminal psychology seeks to understand these behaviors using the tools of psychology as an academic and scientific discipline (Durrant, 2018).
 
If you have some familiarity with the field of psychology, you might also know the term “forensic psychology” and wonder how it is different from criminal psychology. Where criminal psychology focuses specifically on understanding the causes and nature of criminal behavior (Durrant, 2018), forensic psychology is the practice of applying psychology within a legal system (Bull et al., 2009).
 
For example, while a criminal psychologist might be interested in understanding how psychopaths develop their antisocial personalities over time, a forensic psychologist would be more interested in knowing how to accurately assess whether a psychopath is legally competent to stand trial, or how to provide optimal rehabilitative therapy to such a person while they are incarcerated (Bull et al., 2009). Another way we might summarize this distinction is that criminal psychologists study criminal behavior from a basic science perspective—how does it work?—while forensic psychologists study criminal behavior as something that is regulated and controlled by legal and administrative systems.

Why Is Criminal Psychology Important?​

One of the key premises of criminal psychology is that if we understand how criminal behavior comes about, we may be able to better help reduce criminality in people and aid people in recovering from the consequences of their criminal behaviors (Canter, 2017). For example, many criminal psychologists study the nature of juvenile delinquency and how it predicts criminal behavior in adulthood; they look for ways to predict who will engage in criminal behavior and how to prevent them from reaching that point.
 
A second reason we need criminal psychology as a field is that people who commit crimes do so for many different reasons, which we can boil down, for the sake of brevity, into both macro-level and micro-level factors (Rosenfeld, 2011). Understanding predictors of criminality at both of these levels helps psychologists predict risk of crime—and also can reduce stigma related to criminality.
 
For example, many commentators on crime are eager to focus on just the micro-level factors, such as characteristics of the individual criminals themselves, that seem to predict their engagement in criminal activity (Rosenfeld, 2011). Operating from this perspective makes it easy to pin the blame on demographics—criminals are criminals because they are not White, or are raised poor, or come from a culture with dubious morals. Instead of doing this, criminal psychologists focus also on the structural factors that might incentivize people to behave criminally, such as systemic oppression or a lack of economic opportunity. In this way, criminal psychologists can provide a more nuanced and holistic understanding of why people commit crimes.
 
That said, criminal psychology has definitely highlighted important characteristics that predispose people to law-breaking. For example, the trait of psychopathy has been shown time and again to be related to rates of criminal behavior (Dhingra & Boduszek, 2013). People high in psychopathy—in other words, people with poor emotion regulation, low levels of empathy, and a tendency to act impulsively and aggressively—are more likely to violate laws and to perpetrate violence to get what they want. Whether they will break laws in a particular situation is not reducible to this trait, however; one needs to understand the contexts in which criminal behaviors happen too.

Criminal Psychology History

Psychologists have had some interest in criminal behavior since the field began, with pioneers in the field conducting research into lie detection tests, eyewitness testimony, and whether people’s nonverbal behaviors can communicate their guilt (Sahni & Phakey, 2021). During World War II, many psychologists were employed in the assessment of soldiers prior to, during, and after their combat service; this led to an increased interest in understanding personality traits related to antisocial behavior and crime. By the 1970s, specialized training in criminal and forensic psychology was developing, as were national organizations of like-minded psychologists and legal scholars. Academic journals focused on the subject began to publish research as well. In the present day, criminal and forensic psychology are thriving subfields, amply represented in university psychology departments across the United States.

Examples of Criminal Psychology Research

You might be surprised to learn that criminal psychologists concern themselves not just with criminal behavior but also with the people tasked with controlling that behavior: law enforcement officials. Psychologists have observed that a “cop culture” develops in most police departments as law enforcement officers adopt a particular culture—one whose imperfections our modern culture is all too familiar with—to cope with the stress of their work (Twersky-Glasner, 2005). For this reason, police departments seem to recruit people who fit this seemingly adaptive police “personality” and also deliberately nurture this kind of personality in their recruits over time.

Another example of research in criminal psychology is that of understanding how criminal networks form and how involvement in them shapes individuals’ criminal behaviors (Canter & Alison, 2021). For example, what is the effect of cutting off a criminal from the network of people with whom they engage in crime, whether that is an adult bank robber or a teenage boy who has recently joined a gang? This kind of research is in keeping with the model we described above: People who commit crimes do so in a social context, for reasons related to their social worlds as well as their own personalities.

A third area of research in criminal psychology concerns characterizing and predicting different kinds of crimes. For example, how are people who engage in white-collar crime (such as an account manager stealing money from the corporation they work for or someone trying to evade paying taxes on their income) different from people who engage in non-white-collar crime (such as shoplifting, assaulting someone, or selling drugs)? Interestingly, one study found that while people who committed white-collar crimes were engaged in less criminal activity overall, on average they scored higher on measures of psychopathy than people who committed non-white-collar crimes (Ragatz et al., 2012).

Criminal Psychology Degrees

While criminal psychology is an established subfield of psychology, it is not one that you can earn a PhD in. People who want to conduct criminal psychology research typically get a doctoral degree in forensic psychology, meaning that they are also trained in how to apply psychology to understanding and navigating the legal systems in their country. At this time, there are over thirty graduate programs in the United States offering specific training in forensic psychology, and graduates who focus heavily on research may end up becoming criminal psychologists. Although people with other training may conduct research on criminal behavior, it is generally understood that one is only a criminal psychologist if one has completed a PhD.

Criminal Psychology Job Description & Careers​

People with a psychology PhD and the right training in contexts related to criminal psychology are well poised to take one or more of several criminal psychology career paths (Sahni & Phakey, 2021). First, they may become forensic psychologists, using their skills to work with criminals as clinicians—conducting assessments, providing testimony and writing legal briefs, and conducting therapy as needed. Second, they may conduct research or serve as a consultant to lawyers or courts on what the research literature says about the psychology topics that are relevant to a particular case. Third, they may help law enforcement personnel with ongoing investigations, such as by creating profiles of likely suspects. Finally, they may help law enforcement organizations with training and with consultation about how best to manage their own organizations (Aumiller & Corey, 2007).

Criminal Psychology Courses

Psychologists who receive training in criminal psychology usually do so through graduate coursework in forensic psychology programs. In this field, they may engage in coursework on topics such as conducting forensic assessments, the nature of psychopathy, child welfare systems and child custody law, and what rehabilitative (versus punitive) options are available for criminals.

Criminal Psychology Facts

As we noted above, one of the best-established facts of criminal psychology is that people high in psychopathy are more likely to harm others and commit crimes (Hare, 2003). Psychopathy has a strong genetic component, meaning one’s levels of it are somewhat inherited from parents, and it is a relatively stable personality trait. But again, its impact should always be understood as being influenced by the context in which the person finds themselves. And just as importantly, psychopathy is a dimensional trait, meaning that levels of psychopathy exist on a spectrum from low to high (Hare, 2003).

Criminal Psychology Profiling

Criminal profiling by psychologists has received lots of attention in the popular press and on TV shows (Godwin, 2002). This does not mean, however, that it is a thoroughly validated and consistent practice. For example, there is lots of research that suggests that higher levels of psychopathology—general mental health challenges—are related to rates of criminal behavior (DeLisi et al., 2022). This does not mean that anybody with a mental health diagnosis is going to commit crimes, though. It is specific traits, such as being uninhibited and impulsive and being susceptible to negative emotions one cannot control, that seem to put people at risk of committing crimes (Sher & Trull, 1994). People low in self-control that are easily upset by and reactive to others may be especially likely to develop a criminal lifestyle (DeLisi et al., 2020; Vazsonyi et al., 2017). This pattern is quite robust: People who have these traits as children and adolescents reliably are at greater risk of criminal behavior in adulthood (DeLisi et al., 2020).

If you would like to know more about the work of criminal profiling, I recommend watching this video:​

Video: What It's Like Meeting Serial Killers Face to Face

Articles Related to Criminal Psychology

​Want to learn more? Check out these articles:

Books Related to Criminal Psychology

If you’d like to keep learning more, here are a few books that you might be interested in.

Final Thoughts on Criminal Psychology​

If you are curious about why people break rules or passionate about addressing inequities in our criminal justice system, the field of criminal psychology might be a good fit for you. More research is always needed to better understand how we can prevent crime and rehabilitate people who have committed crimes.

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