Spotlight on Psychology Careers: Criminal Psychology

Are you fascinated by what goes on inside the minds of the criminals? Do you want to be able to profile the criminal mind and help the different law enforcing agencies identify, understand and catch the criminals? If your answer to these questions is a yes, then a career in Criminal Psychology or Forensic Psychology is the right choice for you.

Criminal Psychology or Forensic Psychology is the application of psychology to the criminal justice system. In your career as a criminal psychologist you will study the different perspectives of psychology and apply them to the criminal justice system. You will also be dealing with the different legal aspects such as deciding whether an individual was insane when the crime took place. So, you will have to be an expert in both psychology and the justice system involved in dealing with criminal law.

Typically, to work as a criminal psychologist, you will have to get a doctorate in criminal, clinical or counseling psychology. Ideally, your post doctoral fellowship should concentrate on criminal psychology. All of this takes 5 to 7 years to complete. As a criminal psychologist, you will also need to pass a state certification exam and complete a year of field work. The doctoral training program should be completed from an institution which has been accredited by The American Psychological Association (APA). Typically, criminal psychologists earn a median salary of approximately $56,000.

Within the field of criminal psychology, you can also specialize in different fields. Clinical Forensic Psychology focuses on individuals who are suffering from mental problems while there are legal decisions surrounding their life. Developmental Psychology focuses on juveniles, elderly people, and their situation according to the law. Social Psychology is concerned with how jurors interact and arrive at their group decisions. Cognitive Psychology focuses on how people make decisions in legal cases. Criminal Investigative Psychology is the specialization that deals with criminal profiling, police psychology and psychological autopsy.

In your criminal psychologist career, you will be involved in several aspects of the law where psychology is applied. These areas include: judging the competency of the defendants at the time of the trial, deciding if the defendant was insane at the time when the crime took place, serving as an expert witness for both prosecuting and defending attorneys, working in the area of criminal profiling and also working with attorneys for selecting juries.

So, if you are looking forward to a career where you help people and make a difference in their life, where you can change the way institutions such as prisons are run, how juvenile offenders are treated and also conduct research on the different aspects of forensic and social psychology, then a career as a criminal psychologist can prove to be very rewarding to you.