Centre of Research & Education in Forensic Psychology (CORE-FP) at the University of Kent

Last year, around 6.3 Million crime incidents were experienced by adults in England and Wales. That's well over 17,000 criminal incidents each day. Forensic psychology seeks to understand why people commit crime, how crimes can be better dealt with by the criminal justice system and how victims are affected by crimes. My name is Theresa Gannon, I'm the Director of the Centre of Research & Education in Forensic Psychology, or CORE-FP.

CORE-FP is one of the largest forensic psychology centres in the U.K. We hold a large team of internationally renowned academics, researchers and practitioners who work on high quality research dedicated to understanding offending, and the criminal justice system. Forensic psychology is so fascinating, in part because it deals with some of the worst things humanity can do. We try to provide more understanding about that and perhaps a way to treat or deal with it at an interpersonal and societal level.

At the moment I'm particularly interested in whether we can objectively measure people's sexual interests. Perhaps assessing whether somebody has a sexual interest in children. I use a variety of different approaches. To what extent your eye is drawn to certain stimuli.

We might also, using the eye again, look at where your eye is looking using eye tracking technology. We run one of the most prestigious and long-standing MSc. Forensic Psychology courses in the country, a BSc. Degree in Forensic Psychology and a PhD.

Programme for talented students who would like to apply psychology to the study of criminal behaviour. What sets CORE-FP aside from other research centres is that if you come to study with us you become part of a huge network of researchers and practitioners ready to provide you with real world challenges and opportunities in forensic psychology. I've always been really keen to work with CORE-FP. To offer opportunities for their budding psychologists and what we provide specifically are assistant psychologist posts and also healthcare worker posts on the wards.

Over the past ten years the majority of applicants for those posts have been from CORE-FP. And have been successful in getting those jobs and that's because of the quality of those students. They are outstanding. There's no better place to study forensic psychology than a place where people are actually doing research that will lead to change in legislation.

Our research has. Whilst studying for my MSc. I was lucky enough to be involved in a project that looked at whether polygraphing released sex offenders would be beneficial in monitoring them whilst on licence. The project actually changed government policy in 2014 and it is now legislation for all released sex offenders who are high risk to be monitored using the polygraph.

Some of our staff work in local prisons and secure hospitals and so you will learn from professionals who know how best to apply psychological principles in a practical forensic context. We are publishing some of the top journals in forensic psychology produce influential government reports and internationally esteemed books on a variety of forensic topics. We have become particularly renowned for our research examining gang behaviour, male and female perpetrated sexual offending, arson, animal cruelty, alcohol and aggression, mentally disordered offending, and sexual harassment. You can read the text book but it's actually talking to people that have the experience.

I look at street gang members and prison gang members, currently focusing more on things like their emotional and mental health. What is really interesting there is what are the consequences for individuals own mental health of the own violence. We have links with local and national employers such as The National Offender Management Service and the NHS. This provides our forensics students with a range of possibilities for conducting dissertations in a forensic environment as well as volunteer work and also employment opportunities after leaving us.

We have contacts that could help facilitate that research, we can help get access. We also have a lot of links for volunteer experience, so when our students are finished here they could say on their CV that they had the experience of working for different types of charities or different types of institutions where they had direct contact with the kind of groups that they might want to work with in  the future. Our research is having an impact on people in society and has led to UK changes in legislation, international assessment and treatment practice with offenders. "I started to learn that arson and fire was a very powerful way of communicating.

Through learning that kind of stuff it helped me to start to look at at what point on each of them little roads I could've taken a different turn." There are still many challenges and questions in forensic psychology. Here at Kent we are dedicated to answering those questions. That's what makes CORE-FP such an exciting and challenging place to study and to work..