Criminal Psychology M-Term 2024

Today we started our day wondering what was happening in the court case we have been watching the past two days. We then went out to Crime Stoppers Of Houston to meet Andy Kahan. Andy Kahan is the current Director of Victim Services and Advocacy. Crime Stoppers began in 1980 based on a similar crime tipping system in New Mexico. Today Crime Stoppers is the largest crime-stopping organization in the nation and the leading non-profit in Houston. Mr. Kahan began by talking about how exactly Crime Stoppers as an organization works. The police reach out to Crime Stoppers and Crime Stoppers then reaches out to the community to hopefully receive an anonymous tip that will help solve the case. Mr. Kahan also talked about how he was part of the reason that the families of victims could attend the execution of the murderer. We came back to the school and had lunch. After lunch, we watched a few episodes of Criminal Minds. Specifically S3 Ep 9, S3 Ep 16, and S3, Ep 17 We were informed that

On Tuesday at 9:00 am we headed over to the Harris County Criminal Justice Center. We were there to observe the case we had previously been to on Monday. The court case we attended, covered an incident of aggravated sexual assault that took place in 2009. The case was from a while ago however, recent research and evidence brought the case to court finally in 2024. We listened to the witnesses that the state had brought in including a forensic analysis. The courtroom morning session lasted from 9:30 am to around 1 pm. After the morning session, we ate lunch at a pizza place close by called Roma’s Pizza till about 2 pm. We then returned to the courthouse for another hour of observation but left early and returned to school just in time for pick-up.

On Monday morning, we left Post Oak School at 9 am and headed to the ERD 3 Courtroom. We spent over 3 hours there, listening to a trial. After (listening for while to) the trial, we grabbed a bite to eat at the Harris County Civil Courthouse. Later, we returned to school and watched Criminal Minds until the end of the day.

This morning we watched mind hunters which is a show about trying to figure out how a criminal thinks. After watching that we talked about it and then started a new case file. Case files are fake unsolved criminal cases that you work together to solve using the evidence and information that they give you. We worked on that until lunch. After lunch we watched an episode of forensic files. After that we talked about everything we have learned so far and we all filled out a paper to help remember what we have learned. It was a really interesting discussion and we wrote definitions for different things in criminal psychology. After that some of us finished the case file and the rest watched an episode of Criminal Minds.

 By: Emma Lai The students heard from Dr. Michael Kane, a criminology professor at the University of St. Thomas. He shared several theories about the cause of criminal behavior. They ranged from basic explanations like that state people just want to break laws, to more complicated theories about how life drives people to. Students were especially interested in the theory of having two switches. Someone's internal switch is the voice that tells them right from wrong, and their external switches (like friends, family, environment) are what push a person to act unethically or break the law. Dr. Kane gave the students a simple example to think about: If you got to class and the teacher was not present, but the upcoming test was on their desk, what would you do? Internally, the students knew cheating on a test was wrong, however, external factors provided a different incentive. Looking at the test would help the student succeed while offering them popularity among their peers by sharing

On Wednesday, we spent most of the day solving a cold case from 1998. Case files is a murder mystery style game where you receive evidence on a case and attempt to solve it. Our’s was Harmony Ashcroft, a 30-year old child psychologist who was murdered the night before her wedding at the rehearsal dinner. Now I’m not going to spoil how it ends, but it was a very interesting case to solve. It took us practically the whole day and there were many twists and turns. Overall it was very fun. After lunch we had a guest speaker, Mrs. Nancy Watts, who was a court liaison in both felony and misdemeanor court. As a liaison she was a messenger for the probation officer and the Judge of the court she was working in. She made pre-sentence investigation reports for the Judges when they need just a little extra help deciding sentences. Mrs. Watts had many stories about working in the courts, and explained a lot of the work that happened behind the scenes of many herings. It was interesting to hea