David Canter

PhD, FAcSS, Hon FBPsS, FRSM, FAPA, C.Psychol, MA (music composition)

Applied social psychologist, creator of Investigative Psychology. Emeritus Professor at The University of Liverpool,
Visiting Professor at Liverpool Hope University.

What Offender Profiling is NOT

The Truth About Offender Profiling

Crime psychology expert David Canter describes how the search for scientific offender profiling became investigative psychology.

Download PDF: The Truth About Offender Profiling

What Offender Profiling is NOT

The Trump Conundrum
November 24, 2020
As a psychologist the most challenging aspect of the recent presidential election, for me, is understanding why 70 million U.S. citizens voted for Donald Trump. Many have pointed out that this ...
How Dangerous is Donald Trump?
October 5, 2020
As a British academic schooled, from an early age, in the niceties of public debate, I’m struggling to understand the acceptability of a president behaving as Donald Trump did in his recently ...
Race is a Racist Concept
July 28, 2020
Race only became a term that implied a radical difference in the nature of people in the 18th century (this illustration of the ‘types of mankind’ dates from the next century, in 1893). ...
Can Social Science Save Lives in a Pandemic?
June 10, 2020
Is this an example of a government following the science? Some years ago, as a way of showing the impotence of social science, especially psychology, I asked, ‘Why has psychology not created any ...
Emergencies: Why Do We Leave It So Late?
April 29, 2020
When the levee breaks … An example of Newton’s First Law of Motion as it applies to human behavior? (Image: Lt. Cmdr. Mark Moran, NOAA Corps, NMAO/AOC) It may be thought that the slow ...
Don’t Tell Me ‘Don’t Panic …’
March 12, 2020
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy had it right Pictures of supermarket shoppers filling their .trolleys to overflowing with large packets of toilet paper is labelled ‘panic buying’. Brought ...
When Is a Terrorist Not a Terrorist?
February 20, 2020
A group of of young refugees known as Youth Aliyah head out to train within the framework of the Haganah in 1948 Israel. (Photo: Government Press Office (Israel), CC BY-SA 3.0) A couple of years ago ...
The Polygraph as Propaganda
January 29, 2020
Usman Khan had been let out of prison having served a sentence for plotting to blow up the London Stock Exchange. On his release he had declared he was not a terrorist. But in November last year he ...
The Politician in the Pocket
June 19, 2019
McMafia : A Journey through the Criminal Underworld, is a remarkable piece of journalism by Misha Glenny. He follows corruption and organised crime around the word, drawing on interviews that reveal ...
Is True-Crime Therapy?
June 17, 2019
A question I can rely on being asked at any public talk I give is “Does your descriptions of how psychologists may help to solve crimes make criminals savvy and better able to avoid detection?” It is ...