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 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 ...
Heard the One About a Politician Who Became a Friend on Facebook? New Political Communication
May 31, 2019
Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, from comic to president. Pepsi and Coke fight over their share of the market not by major changes in their products but by their advertising and marketing. Like ...
The Risks of Doing Research That Has Impact
March 13, 2019
The pragmatic desire to ensure that research, especially social science research, has ‘impact’, that is consequences for those outside the research community, is growing priority for funding agencies ...
Environmental Sustainability Begins at Home
June 12, 2018
It is well established that climate change and environmental degradation are intensifying the pressures on crucial resources such as food and water security and air quality. These pressures are ...
Archive, Therefore I Am
April 19, 2018
What is the measure of a man? There are various emetics, but here’s one … Photo: David Canter) Having recently enjoyed voluntary severance from my academic post (less troubling than my ...
How Young People Cope with Challenging Contexts
February 13, 2018
Tin-yuet Ting from Hong Kong interviewed those who took part in recent protests over democratic crises in Hong Kong.(Photo: Studio Incendo/Flickr/CC BY 2,0) It is generally accepted that it is ...
When Is It Appropriate to Call a Crime ‘Terrorist’?
October 16, 2017
A crime or a terrorist act? Or both? The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) was quick to claim that 64-year-old Stephen Paddock, who killed dozens and injured hundreds ...
Political Activism is Not Just for Youngsters
September 25, 2017
The usual image of political activism is of young people, probably students, waving banners, or even throwing cobbles at serried ranks of law enforcement. But as the eleven papers, brought together ...
To Know a Society, Know Its Crime
September 6, 2017
Although most citizens in developed Western societies have relatively little direct contact with crime as victims and even fewer as offenders, criminality reaches out to influence most aspects of ...