Introduction to the Special Issue

• Author: Brent Snook
• DOI: 10.1177/0093854808321525
• Published date: 01 October 2008
• Date: 01 October 2008
• Subject Matter: Articles

INTRODUCTION TO THE SPECIAL ISSUE

Pseudoscientific Policing Practices and Beliefs

BRENT SNOOK

Memorial University of Newfoundland

Within policing there is widespread promotion and use of questionable psychologically

rooted practices as well as the acceptance of erroneous beliefs about police work. For

instance, the articles composing this special issue show that dubious practices—hypnotic

interviewing, polygraph examination, criminal profiling, critical incident stress debriefing,

and detecting of deception solely on the basis of nonverbal cues—are routinely used by

police agencies. Similarly, policing is pervaded by erroneous beliefs about confession evi-

dence, eyewitness memory, lineup identification procedures, police behavior, and criminal

behavior. The tie that binds these practices and beliefs is their lack of strong scientific sup-

port. In fact, these aspects of policing, and numerous others that are not covered in this spe-

cial issue (e.g., psychic detection, authorship analysis, psychological autopsies), contain

many characteristics that are indicative of pseudoscience (Lilienfeld, Lynn, & Lohr, 2003;

Shermer, 2002; Stanovich, 2004). This is highly disconcerting because of the potential for

severe consequences (e.g., miscarriages of justices) when pseudoscientific practices are

employed by the police or when erroneous beliefs guide the consequential decision making

that is inherent in police work.

Tavris (2003) noted that there is a growing gap between the reliance on various practices

in applied domains (e.g., clinical psychology, medicine, and engineering) and the amount

of empirical evidence supporting those practices. Law enforcement does not appear to be

immune to this widening scientist–practitioner gap. Concerns about the divide between

psychological science and police work ultimately lead to questions about how police agen-

cies, and other institutions within the criminal justice system, fall prey to such spurious

practices and what can be done to help reduce their reliance on them. Concern about this

schism, and the need to address these fundamental questions, stimulated this special issue.

The specific goals of this special issue are to (a) identify a range of questionable prac-

tices and erroneous beliefs within law enforcement, (b) subject those practices and beliefs

to incisive scientific scrutiny, (c) explain why law enforcement personnel use those unsub-

stantiated practices and form erroneous beliefs, (d) enhance the scientific foundation of the

police profession, and (e) reduce the scientist–practitioner gap by arming law enforcement

officers, police agencies, and other legal professionals with the knowledge required to iden-

tify pseudoscientific practices. Accordingly, each of the invited articles in this special issue

contributes to the accomplishment of one or more of these goals.

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CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR, Vol. 35 No. 10, October 2008 1211-1214

DOI: 10.1177/0093854808321525

© 2008 International Association for Correctional and Forensic Psychology