Forensic Psychology : Criminal Profiling Certificate

Explore crime fundamentals, including violence, abuse, theft, and cyber crimes, and why they are morally wrong. Examine motives, nurture versus nature, and the role of free moral agency in crime.

Explore crime motives—money, lust, and hate—and how premeditated, opportunistic, and situational crimes arise, with environmental context shaping criminal behavior.

Explore how situational crime differs from opportunistic crime, with a dash cam narrative illustrating how specific circumstances can entice people to lie or break the law.

Explore how criminals establish a street code and rules of procedure, including the no snitch rule, to evade law enforcement, illustrating how laws serve those in power.

Explore forensic psychology in civil and criminal court, showing how question wording shapes eyewitness testimony per William Stern; compare hostile and neutral phrasing and note memory and age differences.

Learn how profiling blends psychological state, modus operandi, and crime scene evidence. Apply this approach with guidance from John Douglas and the CAP program.

Explore the continuum of planned and impulsive crimes, compare organized and disorganized offenses, with examples like ambushes and daylight robberies, and describe forensic awareness and offender traits.

Analyze the crime scene to understand the criminal mind, their intentions and modus operandi (signature), and determine if the crime was planned or impulsive.

Analyze the crime scene using the four w's (who, what, where, why) and reconstruct the sequence of events with a forensic team to profile the suspect.

Explore forensic science as the gold standard for definitive court evidence. Analyze flaws and misinterpretations of DNA, fingerprinting, bloodstain analysis, and crime reconstruction, citing the Ray Chrom case.

Examine how a controversial case reveals the misapplication of forensic science, including bite marks and reckless logic that led to a wrongful conviction.

Learn how forensic science analyzes crime scenes through blood pattern analysis and firearm investigations, including arterial spurting, blood droplets, and high-velocity splatter, to infer how crimes occurred and suspect positioning.