Zhongyi (David) Sun 16 Jan 2019
Teacher: CaA
Christian Perrin, a criminal psychologist, he studies “why people commit crimes?” He is now working at Temasek Polytechnic, and he is teaching the Singaporean police his studies.
He starts his working when he was 21 years old, working at a suicide-prevention organization. And then he changed to work in prisons, working with “the worst of the worst” (what he said), such as sex offenders and violent offenders. His “goal” is to rehabilitate them. He found out that sex offenders are friendly and manipulative. Whereas the violent offenders are not manipulative.
2014, a rapist who found this program isn’t working for him, but he still “lies” to Mr. Perrin that this program is “very helpful”, but Mr. Perrin knows that he was lying, this is when he tells us how he “detects lies”: He always conducts the conversation in a small room with nothing but chairs and table, this is to make the prisoner comfortable, and by listening to their responses, he knows that when a person lies or not, because their behaviors change when they lie. He focuses on the words people use, which caused some small conflicts in his daily life.
He worked primarily with men, however, he worked 1 year in a women prison, he thought that women are harder to manipulate.
He thinks that religion can be good or bad, when religious beliefs make one person to commit a crime, that is bad, but when religious beliefs can find criminals a “meaning of life”, it is good.
What triggered him to do this job? When he was doing GCSE, his teacher asked him to do psychology, this is when he started, and when he was volunteering at Samarpan, that is when he truly realized the importance of being a person who can
He said at the end that there are no visible traits of “being a criminal”, everyone is the same, however, he said that some criminals behaviors are caused by biological difference, but he said it still doesn’t affect them that much.
I used to think that psychologists only study on how people respond to certain acts, and I thought that today’s session will be discussing how criminals act differently with others, but now I know that criminal psychologists also study on why some people commit crimes, and try to “get in” their mind and rehabilitate them.
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