ABSTRACT
In the preceding chapters, the focus has been on the contribution psychology can make to help understand why an individual commits a crime. However, the study of crime is wider than just the criminal: the individual’s actions are at the beginning of a chain of events that starts with an investigation by the police, moves through the courts, and may culminate with a sentence and disposal. The police are central to crime investigation and there is a vast literature on the police, including several academic journals given to investigations of the police and policing. The main body of research into police and policing comes principally from criminology, law, politics, and sociology (Newburn & Reiner, 2007): this work broadens out to the substantive topic of law and order (Reiner, 2007) and public confidence in the police (Jang, Joo, & Zhao, 2010; Skogan, 2009), and extends to other disciplines such as anthropology (Kania, 1983). With regard to psychology, there is a more substantial tradition of police psychology in the USA (Reiser, 1982) than in Britain, although there are contributions by British psychologists (e.g., Ainsworth, 2002; Ainsworth & Pease, 1987), and British journals publish some police psychology research (Snook, Doan, Cullen, Kavanagh, & Eastwood, 2009).
