Criminal Psychology certificate

Study House

The course is designed for home study or distance learning and is comprised of comprehensive printed course notes presented in an A4 ring binder, together with course assignments and study guide. Tutor support and a student helpline facility are integral to the course, and students have a full 12 months in which to complete their studies. Actual study time will be of the order of 90-100 hours.

The course is divided up into six study units, each with one tutor marked assignment to be completed. Each assignment contains approx 8-10 written tasks to be completed which are then submitted to a subject tutor for marking. Where required assignments can be re-submitted after amendment in the event that the assessment standards are not full met on first submission

The course units and topics are as follows:

Unit 1 Introduction

• Defining criminal psychology
• Scope of criminal psychology
• Roles of the criminal psychologist

Unit 2 Researching Criminal Behaviours

• The scientific method of psychological research
• Ethical considerations of psychological research
• Designing a research study/experiment:
• - Focus of the research
• - The hypothesis
• - Data collection methods
• - Analysing the data
• - Reaching conclusions
• - Reporting the results
• - The usefulness of psychological research

Unit 3 How Criminal Psychology can be used to Understand Crime

• Factors that influence the incidence of criminal activity
• The major perspectives that try to explain causes of criminal behaviour:
• - Biological/physiological theories
• - Cognitions theories
• - Behavioural theories

• Developmental theories

Unit 4 How Criminal Psychology can be used in Criminal Investigations

• Investigating a crime
• Witness reliability
• Factors that affect memory acquisition
• Factors that affect memory retention
• Factors that affect memory retrieval
• Interviewing witnesses
• Interviewing suspects
• Detecting lies
• Detecting false confessions
• Offender profiling
• Geographic profiling

Unit 5 How Criminal Psychology can be used in Prosecutions

• An overview of courtroom procedures
• How witnesses can affect a jury’s decision
• How child witnesses can affect a jury’s decision
• How expert witnesses can affect a jury’s decision
• How the judicial system can affect a jury’s decision
• How the juror reaches a decision
• Group decision making
• Group behaviour

Unit 6 How Criminal Psychology can be used with Convicted Criminals

• A Brief history of punishments
• The range of punishments
• Imprisonment
• Problems inmates encounter in prison
• Support available in prisons
• Alternatives to imprisonment
• Rehabilitating prisoners
• Offender behaviour programmes

This programme is designed for anyone interested in the psychology of crime and learning more about the use of psychology in crime, its detection and prevention. It is intended for learners studying for general interst or who are planning to work in a crime detection/prevention related occupation in a voluntary of employed capacity.

There are no study pre-requirements as the course is intended for learners who have not studied this topic beforehand.

Designed for anyone seeking to work in a crime detection or prevention environment in a voluntary of employed capacity.