Inside the criminal mind

CYNTHIA McDougall has a confession to make. The criminal psychologist, one-time head of psychology with the prison and probation service and an expert in forensic psychology, has never actually seen any of the Hannibal Lecter films.

Her expression becomes ever-so-slightly wary when I mention the name. Is Lecter a true portrait of a psychopath? I ask her.

"I think he's at the extreme end of the violence range," she says carefully. "Not having seen the film, I cannot say whether it's an accurate portrayal. There are people like that - people who will do very unpleasant things, as we know from reading the newspapers. But not many fortunately."

She's unhappy, she admits, about using the term 'psychopath' at all. She prefers to talk about people having 'psychopathic tendencies' - and she stresses they're not all cold-hearted, unfeeling killers like Lecter.

"There are people in the community who may well have never committed an offence in their lives who have some kind of psychopathic tendency," she says.

Nevertheless, such people are, she admits, more likely than others to commit crimes.

"There's a lack of emotion," she says. "They don't feel emotion in the same way as other people. They tend to be cold, they tend to be unfeeling, and we can't reach them in the same way as we can with offenders that may be able to empathise with their victims.

"At this time it is very difficult to see what one can do with people in this category. They are a very small group but they commit a disproportionate number of offences."

The key to learning to deal with psychopaths - sorry, people with psychopathic tendencies - may well lie in understanding why it is that they have problems processing emotions, Professor McDougall says.

That, though, is not what she's here to talk about. We only got on to the subject because I asked if there were any types of criminal offender psychologists couldn't help. Professor McDougall, who heads the new Centre for Criminal Justice, Economics and Psychology at York University, is more interested in talking about those offenders psychologists can help.

Criminals, like other people, don't fit easily into pigeon-holes. To be able to help an offender address his or her criminal behaviour, Prof McDougall says, it's important to understand why they offend.

"Most people respond to society's rules," she says. "Most people in society don't commit offences because we're worried about being caught, about being sent to prison, about what our families will say.

"But there are people for whom this doesn't work."

There could be a number of reasons why that is, Prof McDougall says. An offender may be poorly educated and unable to make a living any other way. He or she may have problems controlling anger and aggression. Or there may be an underlying problem such as dyslexia, or a tendency to act rashly and impulsively.

The kind of help a psychologist can offer will depend on the type of criminal behaviour being displayed, and what causes it. If there is an underlying mental problem, it may be more appropriate to treat it with drugs, Prof McDougall says.

But for other offenders, helping them address the causes and consequences of their behaviour and then change it can work.

One form of crime is the 'opportunist' crime. "The offender sees an opportunity to commit an offence, such as an open window, jumps in and takes something, without really thinking it through or the likelihood of getting caught," Prof McDougall says.

Such crimes are often committed by people who behave rashly and impulsively. It may be possible, she says, to help such opportunists by training them to control their impulses and to think through the consequences of their behaviour: prison, the hurt to family and friends, the ruination of their own lives.

Criminals whose offending is caused by an inability to control their temper on the other hand can be taught to recognise the early warning signs of rage so they can defuse it. If there is a particular victim - wife or husband perhaps - who regularly sparks violent behaviour by behaving in a certain way, the offender can also be made aware of that and be taught how to avoid such situations.

Sex offenders, meanwhile, often have a problem empathising with their victims, or even accepting that they have harmed anyone. "They may think 'I didn't use physical violence against them' and might well think they didn't do any harm. They need to be put in a position where they recognise that their behaviour is causing harm and it does need to be controlled."

Underlying all these approaches, Prof McDougall accepts, is the assumption that an offender wants to change his or her behaviour. Getting them to empathise with their victims and to realise how their own lives can be ruined by repeated criminal behaviour is a very good way of making them want to change, she says.

There is, Prof McDougall says, much excellent work going on in prison and probation services across the country. But not all programmes for tackling offending are as good as each other - and for a programme to work, it has to be the right approach used with the right offender. Added to that, there are still gaps in our knowledge of the way the criminal mind works.

All of which is where the new Centre for Criminal Justice, Economics and Psychology in York comes in. Its main job will be to evaluate the work going on across the UK and around the world to address criminal behaviour - and having evaluated it to spread the word to those working in the front line about the best and most cost-effective ways of tackling offending.

That's where the economists come in. In what is believed to be a world first, economists and psychologists will work side by side to assess which approaches to reducing offending are the most cost-effective.

They will then issue a series of bulletins to prisons and probation services advising them of their findings. With the centre receiving Home Office backing that advice will carry real weight.

The centre's work isn't all about criminals, though. Prof McDougall is also keen to get communities more involved in making their towns and cities safer places to live. That means the centre evaluating a whole raft of community safety measures, such as CCTV cameras, better street lighting - and the numbers of policemen pounding the beat.

"It is very hard when people are afraid to go out for fear of becoming a victim of an offence," Prof McDougall says.

"We need to help these people not only to make where they live a safer place but to make it feel safer."

There is evidence, she admits, that people do feel safer if they see more policemen on the beat - even though it may not be the most effective way of tackling crime. It may be worth having more beat bobbies for that reason alone, she says.

"We need to do some research on that - to see what level of policing people would be reassured by and what they are prepared to pay for public safety."

Updated: 10:38 Tuesday, April 03, 2001