World of Crime

Criminals’ Emotional Experiences During Crimes by David. Canter and Maria Ioannou is a scientific article written in the International Journal of Forensic Psychology. The research in the article was conducted with the help of eighty three convicted men in the prison in the UK. The primary goal of the research was to find out what emotions or mixture of emotions the offenders experienced when committing a crime. With the help of scientific approaches already established as measures for non criminals to distinguish their emotional state, the authors attempted to obtain a better understanding of the emotional structure of law offenders. By doing so the researchers intended to discover the internal experiences, emotional background of the crime of the offenders while they were carrying it out. The distance between the external circumstances that lead law breakers to commit a crime and emotional state that helps committing it may decrease when concrete emotional patterns of offenders will be established.

The study of the British criminals was well organized as the participants were of different age and various criminal backgrounds which gave the research a deeper dimension and a better representation of the reality. The authors collected data in an understandable, simple and at the same time accurate way that directly related to the study field. The illustration of the analyzed data with the help of Smallest Space Analysis made it evident and visually supported the idea that authors tried to explain with words. Showing the relation of various emotions on the axis and with variables, the reader can comprehend the meaning of it even without a special explanation. The logical pattern of the article makes the reader to easily follow the logic of the research. For instance when in the beginning of the article the authors were to prove that Russell’s circumplex for emotions has a direct connection to their research, they gradually prove with statistical data that it really does coincide with their set hypothesis. They conclude that Russell’s dominant axis is relevant to the experience of the crime as it shows specifically that crimes are either of pleasurable or not, depending on the type of crime. From the graphic representation of the data, authors show that the most distinct and significant emotions of the crimes are on the extreme sides of the axis, thus proving the idea of having a pleasant or unpleasant association with a committed crime.