ABSTRACT
Psychologists focus on individuals rather than broader social, political or economic processes so the knowledge that is gained about the psychology of crime has to be gleaned in relation to the acts of offenders rather than general crime statistics. This means that the task of understanding the underlying cognitive, emotional and interpersonal aspects of the criminal process is very dependent on which crimes and criminals it is possible to obtain information about. Psychologists cannot glean very much from the sort of national crime statistics that are the stock in trade of those sociologists who study crime. To understand the individual and social psychological aspects of crimes, details of actual crimes and their perpetrators need to be obtained.
