Snagged: A World-Class Criminal's Downfall

The man is chained to the desk, and a beaming light pierces his robin egg-colored eyes. The next thing he hears are muffled voices. The voices now become more clear, and then the first words become comprehensible,”We caught you”. The man then hangs his head in mortification. He was a world class criminal, and had never been snagged before, until now. He has no idea how they captured him. He had hacked into the police department's network and checked on their painfully slow, monotonous progression of their investigation into his previous offenses. Then he remembers the story he heard flash on to the news, “Police Department need to hire more Shrinks to help Reduce Crime.” He then had that moment that in the movies, lightbulb magically appears

and then flashes on and off as if a character was playing with the switch. He was caught. His luck had run out, all because of these new Psychologists. This story could become real if criminal psychologist are employed by police departments. Police departments should hire Criminal Psychologists to predict crime using the knowledge of the culprits mind.

Criminal psychologist analyze the thought processes, intentions, and reaction of criminals. They pick apart the “why’s” of the dark and violent parts of the human brain. They will inspect every nook and cranny of the pink hued oval. They also investigated the intentions of the criminal. Then they use this information to create patterns of crime. These guides are then used to predict the crimes according to the pattern. The psychologists are essential to police departments for these reasons.

Many violent acts can be seen through warning signs.

One warning sign can be antisocial behavior. Don Andrews and James Bonta, authors of the book The Psychology of Criminal Conduct, in the article, “Assessing Criminal Thinking: Attitudes and Orientations Influence Behavior” found that, “An individual who is oriented toward antisocial behavior (i.e., one who thinks like a criminal) and has intermaized anti-social definitions of behavior is much more likely to behave in an anti-social/criminal matter” ( ). Andrew’s and Bonta’s findings parade the fact that persons who are anti-social are more likely to commit crimes than pro-social people, which could be detected by a criminal psychologist. Another warning sign of persons about to commit a crime is a negative or angered attitude. Andrews and Bonta also conducted meta-analyses, and compared with others, in which they deduced, “Several recent meta-analyses have revealed high correlations between negative attitudes, and/or peer associations, and criminal behavior” (Holsinger 22). In the meta-analyses, they showed that subjects that had more opposing attitudes were expected to commit a crime or participate in criminal behavior. These warning signs and behavior patterns are used to predict and prevent possible future crimes. Humans that show emotions, and behavioral similarities to psychopaths and other mental disorders can be at high risk of commit a crime. This makes the psychologist work

irreplaceable.

Law enforcement offices can prevent the crimes by treating people with psychopathic tendencies.

Bruce Bower, author of the article “Cold at Heart Changing minds about how to treat criminal psychopaths”, the pieces main point was violent crimes drop and are prevented after psychopathic offenders completed therapy (Bower 6). This shows that the therapy the inmates went through help prevent the crimes. Another important concept to think about with the therapy is the inmate's had some sort of professional help, including psychologist.

Some may argue that crimes are too unforeseeable to predict, especially since telepathy does not really .The counterclaim is criminals often repeat the crimes, despite being caught already. To go along with that, they may also state there are any criminals that are one time offenders, and show the same psychological factors, but never act on them again. The response is, this takes care of it’s own problem. If the person is not committing the offence, then the police departments do not have to worry about them anyway. The last argument could be that the shrinks and police could invade personal privacy if they have a suspicion or evidence of a future

crime.
The man chained to the desk could have been the next knife wielding serial killer or unforgiving drug lord. Instead, he was caught before a major tragedy happened. This is just an imaginary scenario. The most terrifying idea of this story is that it could, very easily, become real. If this narrative were to come true, the people to help prevent it would be the criminal psychologist. This is why they need to fund the police departments, so they can create a special unit. Police departments desperately need criminal psychologist to help predict unlawfulness and keep the criminals off the streets. the next criminal not evaluated could be the one to ruin your life, and send it spinning into chaos.