NCJ Number
142394
Journal
Law and Human Behavior Volume: 17 Issue: 2 Dated: (April 1993) Pages: 151- 155
Date Published
1993
Length
5 pages
Annotation
This literature review surveyed the published research literature on the psychology of law enforcement in four specialty journals that feature law and psychology studies and two additional broadly targeted scholarly publications.
Abstract
In the four specialty journals, few empirical, psychological studies of police/law enforcement have been published in the past 5 years. Across all four journals, only 7.9 percent of empirical articles addressed a police/law enforcement study. The search of all six journals found that 28 empirical studies of the psychology of law enforcement have been published over the last 5 years. Approximately 60 percent of the studies were in one of two categories: assessments or other "clinical" services for the police and investigations of eyewitness identification variables (including the effects of hypnosis on recall). These general topics have been the mainstays of police psychological research for years. There is a clear need for empirical studies of psychological variables that affect the full spectrum of law enforcement activities, including selection and training of personnel, treatment for police psychological impairment, the use of psychological tools in criminal investigations, interrogation methods and confessions, police discretion and decisionmaking, and the psychology of public crisis incidents. 2 tables and 4 references