Understanding Criminal Behaviour

For me (Chris), a day just wandering in London with my camera. I had expected to need to take a series of shots for my latest degree course assignment. However, following some review time on Friday I was able to source all I needed from shots taken at the blipmeet at Upper Heyford two weeks ago. As a result I just wandered, revisiting a few locations I'd tried before but trying a few new angles.

I (Annie) spent the day at the London Open University Psychological Society conference entitled "Understanding Criminal Behaviour". One of the great things about having finished my degree is that I can now relax and enjoy the study with no thought of exams!

The day was fascinating. I've always been very interested on what makes the more extreme elements of society behave as they do. What drives someone to kill? I could have listened to the first speaker, Prof Andrew Silke, all day. He was engaging, thought-provoking and funny - an impressive combination when he was speaking on "Exploring the psychology of terrorism". He spoke about the classification of "terrorist" vs. "freedom-fighter", how you might perform a risk assessment on a "reformed" terrorist and what psychological factors have been identified in convicted terrorists. What else would you want to do with a spare Saturday?

The other sessions were "Understanding the Mechanisms of Sexual and Violent Offending: A Neurobiological Perspective", "Serial Killers: Sex and aggression - the toxic fusion" and a talk on the criminal mind by one of the most famous criminal profilers in the UK, Paul Britton. He was my original draw to the session, as his books are fascinating ("The Jigsaw Man" and "Picking Up the Pieces"). He's worked on many of the most notorious crimes in the UK over the last 30 years, including Fred and Rosemary West, James Bulger and (more controversially) Rachel Nickell. He gave us a drawing of a crime scene to analyse and walked us through our analysis. It was all so interesting: time for me to switch to Forensic Psychology as a career? :)

In the evening we both met up with the lovely Lizzie, a friend I met on an OU residential course a couple of years ago. She's always great to talk to, and so the Mexican meal we went for taking a long time just wasn't a problem to us.