David Canter

Professor David Canter, the internationally renowned applied social researcher and world-leading crime psychologist, is perhaps most widely known as one of the pioneers of "Offender Profiling" being the first to introduce its use to the UK.

More about David Canter...

Undercover Pressures

By David Canter | Published: March 12, 2013

Many fictional accounts of working undercover suggest it is just one long adventure. That is a portrayal by actors, who live to act as if they are someone else. They never suffer the consequences.

Posted in Featured, International Debate, News, Public Policy | Tagged Colin Stagg, crime, Criminology, Donnie Brasco, Gary Frakas, Joseph D. Pistone, Laurence Miller, Lizzie James, Michel Girodo, Mossad, police work, psychological disturbance, Psychology, Psycological trauma, PTSD, Rachel Nickell, Raj Persaud, social science, Wimbledon Common, Working Undercover | 1 Comment

The Myths of Offender Profiling.

By David Canter | Published: February 15, 2013

Recent publications have encouraged me not to keep quiet about this any longer. Now is the time to explain why I find the term ‘profiling’ so problematic yet get stuck with using it.

Posted in Featured, Impact, International Debate, News, Public Policy, Research Ethics, Research Methods | Tagged big data, crime, criminal justice, Criminal Profiling, Criminology, David Canter, Law, Police Reports, policing, Psychology, social science | 4 Comments

Scotland the Brave?

By David Canter | Published: January 3, 2013

The referendum on Scottish independence, scheduled for 2014, may be regarded as an amusing abstraction for those outside Scotland but within it raises many questions about Scottish identity and what is special about Scottish society.

Posted in News | Tagged alcoholism, Criminology, Making the Case for Social Science, policy, Prison, Scotland, Scottish Independence, Scottish Society, social science | Leave a comment

Web 2.0: Anarchy or Revolution?

By David Canter | Published: November 19, 2012

With the exponential expansion even over the last few months of Web 2.0 it is important for social scientists to get a grip on the wide-reaching implications of these developments.

Posted in Impact, Interdisciplinarity, International Debate, News, Research Methods | Tagged Arab Spring, big data, digital citizenship, Digital Humanities, Digital Research, internet, new media, New Media Research, News, Occupy Wall St., Revolution, social media, social science, technology, Web 2.0 | 1 Comment

The Internet Black Widow

By David Canter | Published: October 4, 2012

When some journalist awards a case a sobriquet like The Railway Rapist, or the Moors Murderers, you know that the media has got its teeth into the case and will shake as much life out of it as possible.

Posted in Featured, International Debate, News, Public Engagement | Tagged Criminology, Defense, Law, Media, Media Coverage, murder, Prosecution, Serial Killers | 1 Comment

Beyond the Randomised Controlled Trial

By David Canter | Published: August 20, 2012

The value of Randomised Controlled Trials in very specific contexts cannot be denied, but imperialist claims for its universal applicability and its use as a bench mark for all other studies needs to be challenged.

Posted in Featured, International Debate, Research Methods, Science & Social Science | Tagged Psychology, Randomised Controlled Trial, Randomised Trial, Randomized Trial, Research Methods, science, social science | 2 Comments

People are not Only Biological Machines

By David Canter | Published: July 30, 2012

You can hardly open a newspaper or listen to a factual broadcast without some reference to neuroscience or evolutionary explanations of things that people do, feel or think.

Posted in Featured, Impact, Interdisciplinarity, International Debate | Tagged Bio-truths, Biologising, Biologizing, Biology, evolution, evolutionary psychology, Human Behavior, neeuroscience, social science | 7 Comments

Teaching Internet Ethics

By David Canter | Published: June 11, 2012

Letters to the newspapers from killers and other criminals are as old as newspapers, but there is something about the immediacy and anonymity of the internet and its ability to grab attention from a great mass of people who may not have a voice that will be listened to by authority that encourages its villainous use.

Posted in International Debate, Public Engagement, Public Policy | Tagged Criminology, Ethics, Hiroko Kanoh, internet, Internet Etiquette, Japan, Luka Rocco Magnotta, social science, Tomohiro Kato, Yamagata University | Leave a comment

Dumbing up

By David Canter | Published: April 24, 2012

The challenge of writing popular psychology came home to me recently when I accepted the invitation to write Forensic Psychology for Dummies

Posted in Featured, Impact, Public Engagement, Teaching | Tagged Agatha Christie, Conan Doyle, Criminology, Editing, Forensic, FOrensic Psychology, Forensic Psychology for Dummies, social science, writing, writing popular non-fiction | 1 Comment

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