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Criminal psychology, also referred to as criminological psychology, is the study of the views, thoughts, intentions, actions and reactions of criminals and all who participate in criminal behavior.
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Robert Kenneth Ressler was an FBI agent and author. He played a significant role in the psychological profiling of violent offenders in the 1970s and is often credited with coining the term "serial killer", though the term is a direct translation of the German term "Serienmörder" coined in 1930 by Berlin investigator Ernst Gennat. After retiring from the FBI, he authored a number of books on serial murders, and often gave lectures on criminology.
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Gregg O. McCrary is a former FBI agent who served from 1969 to 1995, an expert witness and consultant, an author and an adjunct forensic psychology professor at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, and at Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia. McCrary was a contributing author to the 1992 Crime Classification Manual.
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The Behavioral Science Unit (BSU) is the original name of a unit within the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Training Division at Quantico, Virginia, formed in response to the rise of sexual assault and homicide in the 1970s. The unit was usurped by the Critical Incident Response Group (CIRG) and renamed the Behavioral Research and Instruction Unit (BRIU) and currently is called the Behavioral Analysis Unit (5) (BAU-5) within the National Center for Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC). The BAU-5 currently works on developing research and then using the evidence-based results to provide training and improve consultation in the behavioral sciences—understanding who criminals are, how they think, why they do what they do—for the FBI and law enforcement communities.
The Macdonald triad is a set of three factors, the presence of any two of which are considered to be predictive of, or associated with, violent tendencies, particularly with relation to serial offenses. The triad was first proposed by psychiatrist J. M. Macdonald in "The Threat to Kill", a 1963 article in the American Journal of Psychiatry. Small-scale studies conducted by psychiatrists Daniel Hellman and Nathan Blackman, and then FBI agents John E. Douglas and Robert K. Ressler along with Dr. Ann Burgess, claimed substantial evidence for the association of these childhood patterns with later predatory behavior. Although it remains an influential and widely taught hypothesis, subsequent research has generally not validated this line of thinking.
David J. Icove is a former Federal Bureau of Investigation Criminal Profiler and FBI Academy Instructor in the elite Behavioral Analysis Unit. He was one of the FBI's first criminal profilers to specialize in the apprehension of serial arsonists and bombers. He is Fellow in the National Academy of Forensic Engineers and co-author of Kirk's Fire Investigation, the leading textbook in the field of fire investigation.
Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters (2004) is a non-fiction true crime history by Peter Vronsky, a criminal justice historian. It surveys the history of serial homicide, its culture, psychopathology, and investigation from the Roman Empire to the early 2000s. The book describes the rise of serial murder from its first early recorded instances in ancient Rome to medieval and Renaissance Europe, and Victorian Britain, and its rise and escalation in the United States and elsewhere in the world, in the postmodern era. The book also surveys a range of theoretical approaches to serial killers interspersed with dozens of detailed case studies of both notorious and lesser known serial murderers, illustrating the theory in practice. Considered by some a definitive history of serial homicide, this was the book serial killer Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer, was reading when he was arrested in 2005.
James R. Fitzgerald is an American criminal profiler, forensic linguist, and author. He is a retired FBI agent and best known for his role in the UNABOM investigation, which resulted in the arrest and conviction of Ted Kaczynski.
References
- ↑ Ressler, Shachtman 2015.
- ↑ "FBI – Investigations & Operations Support". FBI.
- ↑ Icove, D. J. (1986). Automated crime profiling. FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, U.S. Department of Justice., 55, 27.
